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jured. 




THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



A 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



OF 



GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, 



VOL. XLI. 
APRIL, 1885, TO SEPTEMBER, 1885. 



NEW YORK: 
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO., 

Q Barclay Street. 
1885. 



Copyright, 1885, by 
I. T. HECKER. 



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



CONTENTS. 



American Boarding-House Sketches (Posthu- 
mous Paper). Lady Blanche Murphy, 

455, 657 

Among the Insects in a Southern City. T. F. 

Galwey, 5^3 

Anglo-Russian Question, The, and the Testa- 
ment of Peter the Great. Rev, John 
Gmeiner, 4 22 

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

Hewit, D.D., * 

Coincidence of Theistic, Christian, and Catho- 
lic Analytics. .fo^. A. F. Heiuit, D.D., I4S 

Common Sense versus Scepticism Revela- 
tion. A . F. Marshall, . .189 

Contributors, A Talk with, . . . . **3 

Curse of Print, The A Lay Sermon, . . 395 

Delectable Seville. John Augustus ffShea, 729 
Dublin of To-day. J. B. Killen, M.A., . 802 

Early Settlement, An. M. P. Thompson, . 5 8 S 
Etienne Brule". William Seton, . . *97 

Facts and Suggestions about the Colored Peo- 
ple. Rev. J. R. Slattery, 3 

Falsehood as a Moral Agent. Agnes Rep- 
flier 597 

Farming Experiment in. West Virginia, . 526, 617 

Freedom of Worship in Practice./?. H. 

Clarke, LL.D., 363, 479 

French " Liberal Catholic's " View, A, of Lib- 
eralism and the Church. P. F. de Gour- 



nay, 



849 
780 



61 



396 



French Lover of Nature, A.F. J. M.A. P., 

French Quarter of New York, The. William 
ff'Donovan, 

Fullerton, Lady Georgiana. Maurice F. 
Egan, 

Future of French Canada, The. J. C. Flem- 
ing, 472 

Half-Breed Revolt in Canada, The, . . 279 
Hegel and his New England Echo. Very 

Rev. Henry A. Brann, D.D., ... 56 
Herbert Spencer's Enigma. Right Rev. F. S. 

Chatard, D.D S77 

Ireland's Moderation. James Redpath, . 94 
Irish Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Charles 

de Kay, 333 

Japanese Town, A.//. Yardly Eastlake, . 768 



Katharine. Elizabeth Gilbert Martin, 104, 256, 
409. 495. 674. 833 

Lady Georgiana Fullerton. Maurice F. 

Egan, . . . ... . . . 296 

Lunatic Literature. E. Raymond-Barker, . 605 

Meaning of the Idyls of the King, A 

Condi! B. Fallen, 43 

Mediaeval Study of the Temperance Question, 

A.. Rev. Thos. McMillan, . . .721 

Modern Crusader, A. Jean M. Stone, . . 323 

Moral Side of the Tenement-House Problem, 

The. Charles F. Wingate, . , .160 

New England Pilgrimage, A.. Edith W. 

Cook, 433 

*New French View of the Irish Question. G., 692 
Nosology of Reigcide, The. -John Augustus 

O'Shea, 517 

" Old Files" of Ireland, The. Charles de 

Kay, 20 

Origin of Historical Societies, The. Right 

Rev. Monsignor Seton, D.D. , . . . 445 

Penetanguishene. Rev. E. McS-weeny, D.D., 309 
Pre-American Philosophy. R. M. Johnston, 757 
Protestant Hero, A. J. C. B., ... 813 

Recent Irish Novel, A. A.G.Thomas, . 242 
Republic and St. Genevieve, The. P. F. de 

Gournay, ....... 709 

Scienceville Society, The, for Psychical Re- 
search, 289 

Solitary Island. Rev. J. Talbot Smith, 70, 221, 
377> 533i 634, 788 

Some Heroes of Charles Dickens. R. M. 

Johnston 165 

Some Non-Believers on Easter in Rome, . 120 

Stray Leaves from English History The 
True Story of the Assassination of Rizxio. 
5. Hubert Burke 178 

Talk with Contributors, A, .... 213 
Tragedy of .Beningbrough Hall, The. Agnes 

Repplier, 347 

Two Education Reports. * * * . . . 549 

Victor Hugo and his Work. P, F. de Gour- 
nay, . , 



555 

Welsh Conquest of Ireland, The. Charles 

de Kay, .... . 740 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



POETRY. 



A Day-dream. Rev. James Kecgan, . . 739 
Alleluias of Paderborn. Rev. R. S. Dewey, 

S.J., 18 

Catherine Tegakwita. -John T. Canavan, . 584 

Christ-Child, The. Edward Mclntyre, . 464 

Church Hymn for Paschal Time. M. E. T., . 55 

Hawthorn, Heart, and Homily. James Owen 

O'Connor, 596 

Idleness. Marian S. La Puy, . . . 493 

In the Garden. Ruth A. O'Connor, . . 346 



Jeanne D' Arc. Thomas Ewing Steele, , 471 
Jesus to the Soul Oppressed. Ruth A. 

O'Connor, ....... 69 

John in Patmos. James Owen O' Connor, . 33* 

Nun's Prayer, The. Marian S. La Puy, . 691 

Saint Agnes. Edward Mclntyre, . . 240 

Silent. Jenny Marsh Parker, . . . 127 
St. Columbkille and the Mower. Rev. James 

Keegan, 307 

St. Cecilia's Bridal. Ethel Tane, . . .376 

Victor Marie Hugo. F. A . McCloskey, . . 673 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



Art of Oratorical Composition, The, . .- . 859 

Biogen, _ 143 

Bookkeeping by Single and Double Entry, . 432 

Carmina, 719 

Champion Parish School Hymn-Book, The, . 575 
Characteristics from the Writings of Cardinal 

Manning, 135 

Chemistry or Cookery, The, .... 575 

Christian Manhood and its Duties, . . 136 

Constitutional and Political History of the 

United States, The, 858 

Cross of Monterey, The, and other Poems, . 139 
Cuneiform Text of a Recently-Discovered 

Cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar, King of 

Babylon, 430 

Descriptive Atlas, A, of the Cesnola Collection 
of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropoli- 
tan Museum of Art, New York, . . 284 

Diluvium, 137 

Divine Origin of Christianity, The, Indicated 

by its Historical Effects, .... 129 

Divus Thomas, 431 

Essays and Speeches of Jeremiah S. Black, . 573 

Eve of the Reformation, The, .... 572 

Fact Divine, 286 

Friends in Feathers and Fur, and other 

Neighbors, 144 

God's Way : Man's Way, .... 720 

Goose-quill Papers, 720 

Gray Masque, The, and other Poems, . . 140 

Histoire des Persecutions pendant les Deux 
Premiers Siecles d'apres les Documents 



Arche'ologiques, . 
History of the United States of America from 



'35 



the Discovery of the Continent, . . 572 

History of St. Monica, The, .... 717 

Holy Mendicant, A, 574 

Inglorious Columbus, An, .... 716 

In the Lena Delta, 138 

Irene of Corinth 140 

Irish Garland, An, 138 

Lectures delivered at a Spiritual Retreat, . 719 

Life around Us, The, 573 

Life of St. Thomas Becket, The, . . . 287 

Lina's Tales, 14! 

Louise de La Valliere, and other Poems, . 576 

Louis Pasteur 432 

Manual of Scripture History, A, . . . 718 

Mary in the Gospels, 719 

M-emoir and Letters of Jenny C. White del 

Bal S74 

Memorial Volume, The, 287 

Memorial Words, . 288 



Mistakes of Modern Infidels, .... 717 

Money-Makers, The, 142 

Montalembert, ....... 132 

Morals of Christ, The, 570 



Nature and Reality of Religion, The, 
Nature and Thought, 



428 
569 



Office of the Blessed Sacrament, for the Use of 

Members of the Nocturnal Adoration, . 133 

Origene et la Critique Textuelle du Nouveau 

Testament, 132 

Our Own Will, and How to Detect it in Our 

Actions, 575 

Paradise Found, 428 

Philosophy, The, of Disenchantment, . . 570 
Preparation, The, of the Incarnation, . . 430 
Prophecy and History in Relation to the Mes- 
siah, 568 

Protestant, A, Converted to Catholicity by her 

Bible and Prayer-book, .... 136 

Protestant Faith, The, 574 

Pulpit Orator, The, 432 

Ravignan's, Last Retreat, 288 

Reflections on the Sufferings of Our Lord, . 288 

Religions of Mankind, The, .... 130 
Revision of the Anglican Version of the Hebrew 

and Chaldee Books of the Holy Scripture, 567 



Sancti Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi 
Mariale, ....... 

Short and Practical May Devotion, A, . 
Songs and Sonnets ; Carmina, .... 

Stories for Stormy Sundays, . 



429 

432 
719 
142 



Tale of the Terror, A 1794, . . . .143 
Theatre and Christian Parents, The, 

Training of the Apostles, The, . . .858 

Tributes of Protestant Writers to the Truth 

and Beauty of Catholicity, . . . 431 

Vapid Vaporings, .... 
Village Beauty, A, and other Tales, 
Virgin Mother of Good Counsel, The, 

Walking Trees, The, and other Tales 

Wanderer, The, 

Wild Flowers, . 

Wild Flowers from the Mountain-Side, 

Women of Catholicity, 

Wonder Tales for Boys and Girls, . 

Works of the Rt. Rev. John England, , 

Young Explorers, The, . . 



719 

860 



141 

149 
576 
132 
718 
s88 
570 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XLI. APRIL, 1885. No. 241. 



CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 

PART SECOND. 

IT is not easy, perhaps it is not possible, to analyze and 
clearly state the reasons in Carlyle's mind for rejecting- the Scot- 
tish Presbyterian belief in which he had been brought up, and 
with it belief in historical, dogmatic Christianity. Some of the 
reasons on account of which others have come to a conclusion in 
part or wholly the same with that which he arrived at by a pro- 
cess of his own do not seem to have affected his mind. Mr. 
Froude says that he always remained a sort of Calvinist, which, 
indeed, can be seen in his writings. The notion of hell as a lake 
of everlasting fire appears to have been attractive to him, rather 
than repugnant. The reformers, and particularly Luther and 
Knox, were in his view heroes; and the Reformation has all his 
sympathy. He does not protest against the idea of believing in 
that which transcends the understanding, against the assertion of 
some one religion as for the time being the exclusive truth, or 
even the use of coercive means to advance and defend its cause. 
His road was not the one travelled by James and John Stuart 
Mill. So far as I can see, from his works and from the memoirs 
edited by Mr. Froude, Carlyle's doubt and unbelief sprang from- 
the shock his early, traditional, Scottish view of man, of nature, of 
God, of the universal meaning and end of all things human, re- 
ceived from collision with the ideas he found in modern Euro- 
Copyright. Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1885. 



2 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [April, 

pean literature. The Ecclefechan and Burgher-dissenting hori- 
zon, even the Edinburgh-Presbyterian one, with Dr. Brown and 
his like to make demonstration of its philosophical and theologi- 
cal dimensions, could not longer appear to bound the world 
after he had gone up on the heights of German literature and 
philosophy. More than anything else, he was a man of litera- 
ture and imagination, disposed by his individual genius and men- 
tal gifts to ascend the highest summits, where Dante, Shakspere, 
Goethe, and their equals reign. For the contemplative highlands 
of philosophy, where such as Plato dwell, he had also an inborn 
love. One of his special capacities was for mathematics and 
some parts of physical science for which mathematicians have a 
natural attraction. Certain aspects of history viz., those which 
are dramatic, and which present the intellectual and moral strug- 
gles of humanity awoke his interest and drew his attention very* 
strongly. Metaphysical or theological genius he had not ; no 
more had he a singular capacity or a vigorous bent towards the 
inductive branches of knowledge and the acquisition of what is 
properly called learning ; in general, he had neither the natural 
inheritance nor the acquired outfit which are necessary to make 
qne a philosopher in the complete and comprehensive sense of 
the word. Carlyle did not attempt what was to him impossible. 
We can find no studied, systematic argument, theological, phi- 
losophical, critical, historical, or scientific, against the Christian 
demonstration ; no system whatever which professes to supplant 
and overthrow the traditional orthodoxy of Scotland or England, 
or that of universal Christendom. Carlyle expresses in strong 
language his conclusions, convictions, sentiments ; but he does 
not describe the process by which he arrived at them, or argue, 
except in a concrete form by depicting historical events and pre- 
senting characters and the actions of persons in a dramatic way, 
according to his own preconceived theory. Neither does Mr. 
Froude supply the lack by giving himself the underlying argu- 
ment in a formal manner. 

I have at hand many excerpts bearing on the point at issue, 
but for the sake of a necessary brevity I shall insert them only 
sparingly, relying rather on the reader's own acquaintance with 
the writings and the memoirs of Mr. Carlyle for the justification 
. of the statements which I make, derived as they are from exami- 
nation of the documents at hand, with such inferences or conjec- 
tures as my own reflection on them has suggested. 

Mr. Froude, speaking of what Carlyle had been taught in 
childhood as facts and truths contained in the Bible, says : 



1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 3 

"Carlyle's wide study of modern literature had shown him that much 
of this had appeared to many of the strongest minds in Europe to be 
doubtful or even positively incredible. ... If any part of what was called 
revelation was mistaken, how could he be assured of the rest ? How could 
he tell that the moral part of it, to which the phenomena that he saw 
round him were in plain contradiction, was more than a ' devout imagina- 
tion ' ? " * 

Carlyle himself says : 

" It is certain we have in these two centuries greatly improved in our 
geologies, in our notions of the early history of man. Have got rid of 
MOSES in fact, which surely was no very sublime achievement." t 

" He did not," Mr. Froude says, " think it possible that educated, honest 
men could even profess much longer to believe in historical Christianity." \ 

Miracles Carlyle asserted to be incredible, a priori, as being 
impossible ; and, of course, he could not believe in any divine 
revelation or revealed religion. All religions, according to him, 
are embodiments of the sublime, eternal truths and laws known 
by our natural intelligence, good and useful so long as they are 
believed in undoubtingly, useless, even noxious, after they be- 
come questionable and incredible. For this reason Catholicism 
had to be got out of the way ; so that the Reformation was neces- 
sary and useful, and, for the same reason, the Church of England, 
though the best of all the sects in his estimation, was still re- 
garded by him as a rusty kettle, sure to be knocked in pieces by 
the attempts which are made to tinker it, and only made ridi- 
culous by claiming for it " celestial-miraculous " prerogatives. 
Catholicism long ago become incredible ; Protestantism, in its 
orthodox, Unitarian, and rationalistic forms, rapidly becoming 
incredible and useless ; Christianity in general, though credible 
and true as to its spirit and soul, not credible in any embodied 
form of it is the summary of Carlyle's prophecy of negation, so 
far as religion is concerned. He prophesied against some other 
things also, which are pet theories and projects of great classes 
of unbelieving agitators against the old in favor of a new order 
of things. Such are agnostic, materialistic, utilitarian, radical 
theories and schemes for the progress of humanity. For all 
pseudo-science he had a most hearty contempt, and for real 
science in respect to corporeal things he professed only a very 
moderate veneration. In his view, human affairs are at a very 
low ebb indeed, the tide still sinking lower, and a refluent wave, 
on which humanity can ride, only to be expected after some ages 
more have passed. 

* Life, part i. vol. i. ch. v. t Part ii. vol. ii. ch. xxxv. J Ibid. c. xxxiv. 



4 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [April, 

It is a question which has interested me very much, how far 
Carlyle was affected by the objective scepticism of Kant and the 
subjective psychology of his successors in the German transcen- 
dental school of philosophy. How far did a theory of the objec- 
tive unreality and phenomenal nature of external, physical, sen- 
sible things render the mind of Carlyle impervious to evidence 
of such facts as the miracles of Scripture, the Resurrection, and 
the historical events which lie at the basis of the motives of the 
credibility of the Christian religion ? I confess that I am not 
clear on this point, but here are some utterances of Carlyle 
which throw some light on it. In a letter to his brother, Dr. 
John Carlyle, written in 1827, he thus expresses himself :- 

"I am glad to find that you admire Schelling, and kow that you do 
not understand him. That is right, my dear Greatheart, Look into the 
deeply significant regions of transcendental philosophy (as all philosophy 
must be), and feel that there are wonders and mighty truths hidden in. 
them ; but look with your clear, gray Scottish eyes and shrewd Scottish 
.understanding, and refuse to be mystified even by your admiration-." 

, The year before this Carlyle had written : 

" For the present, I will confess it, I scarce see how we can reason with 
absolute certainty on the nature or facts of anything, for, it seems to me r 
we see only our perceptions and their relations ; that fs to say, our soui 
sees only its own partial reflex and manner of existing and acting." * 

More than forty years later on he wrote : 

"Matter itself the outer world of matter is either nothing or else a 
product due to man's mind." t 

So much as this is evident. Carlyle, after Plato, considered 
the world of ideas as far more real than the world of bodies. 
Yet he had an uncommon fund of Scottish common sense and 
practical reason which did not permit him to become mystified in 
respect to matters of every-day experience and the historical 
facts with which he was familiar and about which he wrote in 
his great historical works. Perhaps this tincture of Platonic, 
Kantian idealism did., however, mystify him in respect to events 
and facts connected with divine revelation and the supernatural 
order, and open to his mind a door of escape from extrinsic evi- 
dences of realities which he determined by an priori method 
must be intrinsically, ideally unthinkable and incredible. 

Turning now to the positive part of the preaching of Carlyle 
to his age, there is, first, his proclamation of the Godhead. He 

* Life, part i. vol. i. ch.xxif. and xx. t Life, part ii. vol. ii, ch. xxxv. 



1 88 5.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET* 5 

has been regarded as a pantheist by some. I think this is a mis- 
take. There may be a nebulous ring of pantheistic vapor around 
the body of his doctrine, though that part of his phraseology 
which has led some very fair and friendly critics to charge him 
with pantheism appears to me to have been used rather as a veil 
than as a medium of his thought. There is too much promi- 
nence given by him to those divine attributes which are terrific, 
and too litfcle to those which present God, in our human concepts, 
as the Eternal and Infinite Love. Yet I must think that a tribute 
of admiration .and gratitude is due to Carlyle for his mighty 
and vehement protest against atheism, and eloquent affirmation 
of the being of God as the supreme Fact of facts and Truth of 
truths, 

Next, there is his affirmation of the reality of the world of 
spirits and spiritual verities, of intelligence and the order of the 
super-sensible, intelligible ideas, and the expression of an undying 
hope for the immortality of the soul. 

Finally, there is his proclamation of the Eternal Law, of the 
intrinsically and unchangeably Right, of the Moral Law of the 
universe, founded on the righteousness and sovereign will of 
God. 

I fully endorse the statement of an able Catholic reviewer of 
Carlyle's works,* whose article, he says himself, gave him matter 
of serious consideration for several'days : 

" In devoting great power and earnestness to the overthrow in English 
minds of this mechanical philosophy ; in recalling the hearts of an unbe- 
lieving generation to the recognition of eternal truths, we feel sure that 
Carlyle has done good. . . . 'Man,' he forever repeats, 'is here in the 
centre of immensities, in the conflux of eternities, with but one life to lead, 
not in frivolity or self-indulgence, but in noble self-denial.' " 

Carlyle was a deeply religious man, and it is his one position 
that religion is the root of all moral, political, and social good for 
mankind. Mr. Froude says : 

"The hope, if there was hope, lay in a change of heart in the English 
people, and the reawakening of the nobler element i^i them ; and this 
meant a reverent sense of ' religion.' . . . Yet, what religion ? " f 

The Catholic reviewer quoted above \ correctly says : 

" The Christian religion Mr. Carlyle freely concedes to have been the 
highest thing ever attained by man, and the Catholic Church of the mid- 
dle ages to have been the only wide or permanent embodiment of Chris- 

* Dublin Review, September, 1850. t Ut supra, ch. xxxiv. 

J Mr. Froude conjectures that this reviewer was Mr. Ward. 



6 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [April, 

tianity. . . . He looks upon the middle age of Western Europe, with its 
feudal body and Catholic soul, to have been the greatest realized ideal 
ever yet attained by man ; the greatest yet, but far, ineffably far, from what 
mankind are capable of achieving. Its culminating point he places about 
the time of Dante. Such a poet as Dante is, to him, the interpreter of 
a whole cycle. Such a poem as the Commedia comes as the consummate 
flower and crown, the exponent and eternal representative of what men for 
long ages had done and thought. Shakspere, too, he looks upon as an- 
other blossom of Catholicity, the poet of the external life of the middle 
ages, as Dante was of the internal. ... In about two hundred years, or 
thereabouts, he calculates something like a foundation may turn up for the 
world again. . . . With Carlyle this boasted nineteenth century is not 
worthy to sit at the feet of any age animated by religious faith." 

Mr. Froude says : 

" He was not always consistent in what he said of Christianity. He 
would often speak of it, with Goethe, ' as a height from which when once 
achieved, mankind could never descend.' "* 

Carlyle always retained a great veneration of the Bible as the 
best and most wonderful of books. He regarded Jesus Christ 
with profound reverence, and near the close of his life he told 
Mr. Froude that in the dispute between Catholics and Arians 
and Semi-Arians about the Homoousion of the Nicene Creed, " he 
perceived Christianity itself to have been at stake. If the Arians 
had won it would have dwindled away into a legend " (ch. xxxv.) 

"That the Christian religion could have any deeper foundation than 
books, could possibly be written in the purest nature of man, in myste- 
rious, ineffaceable characters, to which books, and all revelations, and au- 
thentic traditions were but a subsidiary matter, were but as the light by 
which that divine writing was to be read nothing of this seems to have, 
even in the faintest manner, occurred to him [Voltaire], Yet herein, as 
we believe that the whole world has now begun to discover, lies the real 
essence of the question, by the negative or affirmative decision of which 
the Christian religion, anything that is worth calling by that name, must 
fall, or endure for ever. We believe also that the wiser minds of our age 
have already come to agreement on this question, or rather never were 
divided regarding it. Christianity, the ' Worship of Sorrow,' has been re- 
cognized as divine, on far other grounds than ' Essays on Miracles,' and by 
.considerations infinitely deeper than would avail in any mere 'trial by 
jury.' He who argues against it, or for it, in this manner, may be regarded 
as mistaking its nature : the Ithuriel, though to our eyes he wears a body 
and the fashion of armor, cannot be wounded by material steel " (Misc. 
Essays: Voltaire). 

"The Christian doctrine we often hear likened to the Greek philo- 
sophy, and found, on all hands, some measurable way superior to it; but 

* Ut supra. 



1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. ^ 

this also seems a mistake. The Christian doctrine, that Doctrine of Hu- 
mility, in all senses godlike, and the parent of all godlike virtues, is not 
superior, or inferior, or equal to any doctrine of Socrates or Thales ; being 
of a totally different nature ; differing from these as a perfect ideal poem 
does from a correct computation in arithmetic '' (Ibid.) 

" Small is it that thou canst trample the earth with its injuries under 
thy feet, as old Greek Zeus trained thee [Stoicism] : thou canst love the 
earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee ; for this a 
greater than Zeus was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou that 
' Worship of Sorrow' ? The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen cen- 
turies ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of dole- 
ful creatures : nevertheless venture forward ; in a low crypt, arched out of 
falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp 
still perennially burning " (Sart. Res., ii. 9). 

Mr. Froude having expressed the opinion that it was possible 
that Catholicism might prevail anew, and for a long time, after 
Protestantism had ceased to be credible, he tells us that 

" Carlyle would not hear of this ; but he did admit that THE MASS WAS 

THE MOST GENUINE RELIC OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF NOW LEFT TO US." * 

The positive part of Carlyle's prophesying is, therefore, con- 
fessedly all contained in Christianity not proceeding from a new 
and original inspiration. It is only the negative part which pre- 
sents an appearance of prophetic originality demanding to be 
examined. The question is, whether the spirit and soul of the 
Christian, and in general of all religion is simply and merely 
what Carlyle affirms as certain, eternal truth or reasonable hope, 
to the exclusion of all the rest, as obsolete, at present not credi- 
ble, or rapidly becoming incredible. 

The mere fact that historical Christianity is disbelieved or 
doubted by a great many cannot be taken as a proof of its in- 
credibility without upsetting the whole of Carlyle's own philo- 
sophy. Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Froude hold up certain ages of 
faith as the ideal periods of the past. But in all those ages there 
were many unbelievers, sceptics, men of hollow profession and 
most inconsistent practice. Carlyle's theistic, spiritual, and 
moral ideas are widely doubted or denied by modern anti-Chris- 
tians. There must be a sufficient reason pretended for incredu- 
lity, and everything turns on the validity of the reason assigned. 
I find no reason of this kind, presenting even a show of being 
formidable, in Mr. Carlyle's writings. There is little except 
strong, frequently violent assertions. The most distinct and for- 

* Life, part ii. vol. ii. ch. xxxv. 



8 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [April, 

mal statement of his case is found in the fragmentary piece en- 
titled Spiritual Optics. 

The upshot of that is, that there is a similarity between the 
system of historical Christianity and the Ptolemaic system of 
astronomy. The Copernican system and Kepler's laws present 
the universe in such a new and real aspect that Ptolemaic as- 
tronomy and historical Christianity, no longer tenable and 
credible, must be relegated to the region of the imagination, as 
illusions which the awakened intellect of man has discarded. 

The Ptolemaic system was refuted, and the Copernican 
system demonstrated, by clear, definite reasoning, supported by 
carefully-observed facts. If there is any real analogy between 
this case and that of historical Christianity, then a conclusive 
argument supported by historical facts must be forthcoming, 
refuting the argument for the credibility of Christianity, and 
establishing a more reasonable and credible theory in its place. 
Of this I find no trace, but, on the contrary, a mere negation of 
the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the great central fact of the 
Christian creed, together with all supernatural revelation, mira- 
cles, and similar objects of Christian belief, which is purely 
priori, involving a sceptical principle which would undermine 
and overthrow all certain and credible history. 

The Resurrection furnishes the best touchstone and logical 
test of Carlyle's theory as interpreted and commented on by 
Mr. Froude : 

" He did not himself believe in the Resurrection as a historical fact, yet 
he was angry and scornful at Strauss' language about it. ' Did not our 
hearts burn within us ? ' he quoted, insisting on the honest conviction of the 
apostles." * 

Was there ever a more flagrant piece of self-contradiction ? 
Take this sentence in connection with all that we find in the 
utterances of both the master and his disciple, about the great 
superiority and advantage enjoyed by ages of faith and believing 
men, about the earnest convictions of St. Paul, the credibility of 
the entire Christian and Catholic religion during the early and 
the mediaeval period, and then apply the criterion of common 
sense and common logic to such a way of accounting for this 
faith as the following: 

"The Resurrection of Christ was to him only a symbol of spiritual 
truth. As Christ rose from the dead, so we were to rise from the death of 
sin to the life of righteousness. Not that Christ had actually died [did he 

* Life, part ii. vol. ii. c. xxxiv. 



1885.] CARLYLE A.S PROPHET. 9 

not even die, then ?] and had risen again. He was only believed to have 
died and believed to have risen, in an age when legend was history, when 
stones were accepted as true from their beauty or their significance." * 

Then comes an application of Copernican theology. Men 
who could believe that the sun and stars revolve around the 
earth, and credit the ancient myths, could believe in the Chris- 
tian creed. The story of the Son of God, born of the Virgin, 
dying and rising again, " presented no internal difficulty at all." 

This is the exact spot where the probe finds the radiating 
centre of incredulity. It is the internal difficulty. And this 
brings us back to the enigma which out of the mouths of thou- 
sands of unbelievers and doubters asks solution : Cur Deus 
Homo ? 

If the earth goes around the sun, and the sun itself is only 
one among a multitude of other suns, and the vast universe is 
governed by the same constant laws, which have been active for 
we know not how long a period, how can the earth and men be 
the spiritual centre around which God's plan revolves? How 
can such transcendent means be necessary, or even suitable, to 
correct an aberration and disorder on our planet ? Especially, 
what, sufficient reason could there be why the Son of God should 
become man and die on the cross? Nature, governed by natural 
laws proceeding from the First Cause, ought to complete the 
creative cycle in returning to the Final Cause through the virtue 
of the original efficiency which gave it first being and movement. 
And no more power ought to be exerted on one minute part of 
the whole to keep it in its order than its relative importance 
deserves. Therefore jtt/Vr-natural revelations, miracles, above 
all the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, are 
a priori incredible in themselves, still more so when they are 
supposed to have been decreed as a remedy for a flaw and failure 
in the nature of one species of rational creatures inhabiting one 
small world ; a kind of flaw, moreover, which it is absurd to 
suppose could exist in nature, while it is equally absurd to sup- 
pose that any flaw or aberration could not be easily remedied by 
the Creator. 

This seems as plausible as the nebular hypothesis, but, like it, 
it must be shattered to fragments if it comes into collision with 
facts. 

Is the Resurrection a fact? This is the question. Aside 
from the entire accumulation of evidence for it, the honest con- 

* Ibid . ch. xxvi. 



io CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [April, 

viction and faith of the apostles with its triumphant results, as 
confessed by Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Froude, is something 1 which 
cannot be accounted for in any way except by the actual reality 
of this fact. The solid, impregnable mass of the historical evi- 
dences of Christianity has not been stormed and destroyed. It 
has been shunned and left on one side for the road of hypothesis ; 
and it remains, commanding the entire camp and position of 
unbelief. 

The Son of God having become man, having died and risen 
again, having given a divine revelation of truth, the facts demand 
belief, and the revelation demands assent, on the best of all mo- 
tives the veracity of God. One who withholds assent to the 
revealed truth, because he cannot understand 'the why and the 
how of God's acts, can be reduced to silence by Carlyle's own 
words. If you cannot understand these facts you may know 
that they are mysterious. God has a reason and an end, known 
to himself, though you may not find it out. 

" Mysterious ! Be it so, if you will. But is not the fact clear and cer- 
tain ? Is it a ' mystery ' YOU have the smallest chance of ever getting to the 
bottom of? Canst thou, by searching, find out God? I am not surprised 
thou canst not, vain fool ! " * 

There is something mysterious about this earth, man, his des- 
tiny, his relation to the universe and God, a mysterious reason 
why God became man. Mere human philosophy cannot dis- 
cover or explain it. It can only be disclosed by God himself, 
and practically explained by a religious, a Christian philosophy, 
which proceeds from data of divine revelation, as well as from 
the intuitions of the intellect, the truths of reason, and the know- 
ledge gained by experience and testimony. St. Paul taught this 
" wisdom " to the " perfect," to those who were intelligent, well 
instructed, and fitted by their moral and spiritual virtue to appre- 
hend the more profound sense of the articles of the creed : 

"We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery which is hidden, which God 
predestinated before the world to our glory, which none of the princes of this 
world knew ; for, if they had known it, they would never have crucified 
the Lord of glory. But, as it is written : The eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath 
prepared for them that love him : but to us God hath revealed them by his 
Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, even the profound things of 
God." t 

The key to the mystery, the answer to the enigma, according 
to St. Paul, is to be found in the knowledge of a destiny for hu- 

Li/e, part ii. vol. ii. ch. xxxv. f z Cor. ii. 6-10. 



1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. n 

manity above what the human mind is capable of conceiving i.e., 
above all natural good, or, strictly speaking, sufler-natural. Igno- 
rance of this divine idea is the reason of that ignorance of the 
character and mission of Jesus Christ on account of which he is 
entitled to be called " Lord of Glory." It is because men were 
ignorant of this that they were capable of crucifying him, and 
because they are ignorant of it that they can refuse to give him 
and his religion now the entire homage which they would not 
refuse if they had the same intellectual light which was given to 
St. Paul. 

I said in the first part of this article that the errors of the 
Calvinistic theology, and the ct priori objections to supernatural 
facts and revelations arising from a confusion of these errors with 
genuine Christian doctrine, have their root in the want of a clear 
conception of the supernatural order, and of the distinction be- 
tween this order and the order of nature. It is now this state- 
ment which I am intent on explaining. 

If it is presupposed that the whole intention and scope of 
God as the First Cause is to bring all created nature back to 
himself as Final Cause, by the development of that which nature 
contains in itself as its essence or as what springs from its essence, 
or is demanded by its natural exigency and tendency toward its 
final end, the objection is reasonable. It is, namely, reasonable 
to infer that such a purely natural end is attainable by means of 
natural laws and by an invariable process, without recourse to 
miracles. The introduction of supernatural means and forces, 
especially those which are of a stupendous magnitude, into a 
natural order, to further the attainment of a natural end, does 
seem incongruous. 

All those who believe with simplicity of mind and heart in 
the great facts and fundamental doctrines of Christianity do 
really, though implicitly, apprehend the truth that the end of 
man is actually stiver-natural, and that the scope and process of 
the Creator in respect to the universe does not lie exclusively 
within the lines of a mere development of natural powers and 
capabilities. Erroneous conceptions are nebulosities around this 
solid nucleus of Christian belief. They are theological and 
philosophical theories. Objections of unbelievers are valid 
against these, but not against the articles of the faith in them- 
selves. A clear and distinct conception of the supernatural 
order expels from the field of argument all #zz>-conceptions and 
all objections to which they have given rise or furnished plausi- 
ble pretexts. 



12 CARLYLE AS PKOPHET. [April, 

The term " supernatural " is in continual and frequent use 
among- believers and unbelievers in the truth of historical Chris- 
tianity who have no conception which is explicit and correct of its 
meaning as a term in Catholic theology. It is used as synony- 
mous with " super-mundane" and " super-human," denoting what is 
beyond this earth, this present human world, the present sphere 
and conditions of human nature, regarded as in an imperfect or 
in a depraved state. In its genuinely Catholic and theological 
sense it denotes that which is beyond and above the essence, 
nature, powers, state, capabilities, and end of all created and 
finite being, considered as such. The supernatural destiny of a 
rational creature is one which is not due to his nature, not attain- 
able by its development, consisting in an affiliation to God, an 
intuitive vision of the divine essence, a kind of apotheosis, which 
can only be effected through an elevation of nature by the imme- 
diate action of God upon it, and attained by means of gifts and 
qualities infused by grace, and acts proceeding from the same 
grace of God. This is the idea of a supernatural order, as dis- 
tinguished from a mere arrangement of supernatural -means of 
remedying defects and concurring to produce results in the 
order of nature. 

The elevation of human nature into this order being purely 
of free grace and gratuitous goodness, the conditions of human 
probation in respect to the supernatural destiny are absolutely 
at the sovereign disposition of God. Adam was placed in it on 
trial, to gain or lose for the whole human race a permanent en- 
dowment of its sublime privileges. His sin was a lapse of entire 
humanity from its high estate, in its very origin, by virtue of 
which his posterity have been conceived and born with a nature 
despoiled and in that sense deteriorated, which is the state of 
original sin. 

Such an aberration and deordination as this is of infinitely 
greater moment than a mere moral disorder in the course of 
nature, and a supernatural remedy for it is not out of proportion 
according to a ratio of fitness. A restoration of the supernatural 
order in a more perfect way, especially when this restoration is 
not purely for the sake of mankind alone, but is in view of a 
more sublime order to which the supernatural destiny of man- 
kind is subordinated, is entirely congruous to the eternal reasons, 
of which we get a glimpse in the works of the Creator. This 
sublime order is the order of the Incarnation, to which the entire 
universe is subordinated. 

Cur Deus Homo ? Because it was the most perfect and divine 



1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 13 

work which he could accomplish, the masterpiece of divine wis- 
dom and art, the utmost possible glorification of the Creator and 
likewise of the creature. Next to this most perfect possible 
affiliation of all created nature, represented in the specific human 
nature and the individual manhood of Jesus Christ, to the God- 
head by the hypostatic union, is the adoptive affiliation of his 
specific and generic kindred, which is consummated in the state 
of eternal beatitude. 

The fall of the human race in Adam furnished the occasion to 
the Mediator of appearing on the earth and before heaven as the 
Redeemer. Why did God become Man in such a state of humili- 
ation and make himself " obedient unto death, even the death 
of the cross " ? Because, though a satisfaction of infinite worth 
was not necessary to enable God to grant remission of original 
sin and all actual sins, it was congruous to the Divine Majesty 
that the only One who could offer it should do so ; and because, 
though suffering and death were not essential to a condign ex- 
piation and perfect redemption, they were the occasion of the 
greatest possible glory to God, to the humanity of the Redeemer, 
and to the whole universe of created beings, especially to the 
redeemed. " The Worship of Sorrow " ! This is the most di- 
vinely beautiful manifestation which God has made of himself 
and of his infinite love ; it is that which gives the " Lord of 
Glory " now his strongest hold on the minds and hearts of men 
who are unmoved by the manifestations of his divine power. 

The reality, the possibility even, of a supernatural elevation of 
created nature to filial fellowship with God, which naturally be- 
longs to the Only-Begotten Son of God alone, in the hypostatic 
and in the beatific union, is absolutely transcendental. It is un- 
knowable, inconceivable, to created intelligence, by its natural 
light. It can be apprehended and known only by a revelation of 
God. 

It was therefore necessary that God should reveal his secret 
mystery to men by his prophets and by sending his Son clothed 
in our humanity. It can be believed only by divine faith, on the 
veracity of God. To accredit the messengers and the message of 
God, miracles were morally necessary. The birth of the Em 
manuel, the God with us, from the Virgin, his divine-human life, 
death, resurrection, are essentially supernatural events. A pre- 
ceding, preparatory dispensation of a supernatural character is con- 
gruous and proportioned to the great event and fact of the com- 
ing of the Son of God upon earth. The organization of a human 
society endowed with supernatural qualities is the suitable and 



14 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [April, 

congruous sequel of the coming of The Christ to begin on the 
earth his kingdom, which is to be consummated in the heavens. 
All these things fit harmoniously into a supernatural order to 
which the whole course of nature is subordinated. 

Is it self-evident or demonstrable that such a supernatural 
order is impossible or incongruous? Are there any truths or 
facts known with absolute certitude, either & priori or & posteriori, 
which are seen with evidence to be incompatible with the existence 
or the possibility of this supernatural order? From actuality to 
possibility the inference is just and logically necessary. The 
question turns wholly on the fact. Is the Resurrection a fact of 
which we are made certain by conclusive evidence ? Then the 
truth of historical Christianity and of everything which is ex- 
plicitly, implicitly, or virtually included in it is established, to 
the exclusion of every valid objection, tenable counter-theory, or 
reasonable doubt. 

What resource is left to one who looks facts and evidence in 
the face, who admits the sincerity of the faith of the apostles 
and of ancient Christendom, the reality and sublimity of medi- 
aeval Catholicism, and who yet denies the reality of the fact of 
the Resurrection? I can see but one: to assert that " we are 
living in a boundless phantasmagoria and dream-grotto, and that 
he sleeps deepest who fancies himself most awake." Such an 
hypothesis is not to be reconciled with any genuine and consis- 
tent theism. It is a notion unworthy of God and incompatible 
with his veracity to suppose that he can play such a histrionic 
part, and make a magic-lantern show of illusive phenomena be- 
fore the intellectual spirits whom he has created to know the 
Truth, to love the Supreme Good. The hypothesis is more child- 
ish than the physics of Aristotle and the Ptolemaic astronomy. 

Belief in God, the Infinite, All- Wise Creator, the Author and 
Source of our intelligence, implies the reality of all things in the 
order of finite being, whether corporeal or spiritual. It de- 
mands belief in God as the Final Cause, who has decreed, and is 
constantly carrying into actual execution, an order consonant 
to the plan and end of the universe to which he has given being 
and laws, after the ideas and types of his own Divine Mind. If 
he has revealed a supernatural order, a supernatural end which 
is at the apex of ultimate metaphysical possibility, culminating 
in the Incarnation of the Word and the consummation of the 
glorified state of rational creatures, what reason can there be 
for doubting the possibility and disbelieving the reality of the 
" celestial-miraculous " facts and events which are the objects 



1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 15 

of Christian faith? The misconceptions, the partial views, the 
tnistakes and blunders about facts or the true reading and inter- 
pretation of facts, the intermingling of legend w'ith history, of 
notions and opinions with doctrine of faith, all the human, the 
temporary, the accidental appendages which have got hung 
about religion in its concrete forms, in pre-Christian or Christian 
times, and have been associated with the belief in its dogmas and 
facts in the minds of believers, have nothing to do with the 
reality and the evidence of the genuine revelation. These acci- 
dents may be compared to the obsolete notions of Aristotle and 
Ptolemy about the solar and stellar and telluric spheres. The 
stars were there and were visible. The science of Copernicus, 
Galileo, and Kepler did not blot out any of them or create new 
ones. The stars in the heaven of religion disclosed to the eye 
of faith, the wonderful events and sublime doctrines made known 
by divine revelation, are not to be altered to suit theories. 
Theory is to be conformed to the known facts and truths. What 
is the order, intellectual, moral, spiritual, and universal, which 
God has established, and the law which he has prescribed ? 

While I have been writing these latter pages, reading again 
one of the later works of the matured genius of Lord Lytton, I 
have come across this sentence: . 

" The man, growing old in years, strode noiselessly on, under the gas- 
lights, under the stars : gaslights primly marshalled at equi-distance ; stars 
that seem, to the naked eye, dotted over space without symmetry or 
method Man's order, near and finite, is so distinct ; the Maker's order, 
remote, infinite, is so beyond Man's comprehension, even of what is 
order ! " 

Is not, then, a theory, taken as a purely human and & priori 
measure of the possible and real order of God's celestial plan 
and operation, like the application of the order of street-lamps 
to the order of the stars f 

Here is another sentence from the same author: 

" Man is always a blockhead and a blunderer when he mistakes a speck 
in his telescope for a blotch in the sun of a system." 

Plato taught that the most transcendental concept of God as 
the All-Perfect is the concept of the Sovereign Good. Being 
supremely good, he is incapable of envy, and diffuses good, only 
good, by bringing the eternal idea and prototype of good intQ 
actual form, so far as that is possible in a term of his action essen- 



1 6 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [April, 

tially finite, so as to produce the best and most perfect similitude 
of himself in the universe. 

St. Paul, and the Catholic theology which has sprung from 
his teaching as its principal source, teaches that God imparts to 
the blessed angels and men in heaven his own highest good, the 
immediate contemplation of his essence by the intellect, with an 
equal complacency of the will ; and that this glory is given to 
the manhood of Jesus Christ in the most perfect way by a per- 
sonal union to the Godhead. The God made Man must, by his 
divine prerogative, live for ever, even as to his body, which is an 
essential part of human nature. There was a reason why he 
should taste death for all men ; and because he did die on the 
cross, it was necessary that he should rise again. He has con- 
quered death and brought life and immortality to light. 

The most sublime ideas of Plato, which were an after-glow 
from the ancient revelation and a foregleam of the new, are re- 
tained, corrected and sublimated, and new disclosures of truth are 
made, in that teaching of St. Paul which captivated and convert- 
ed Dionysius, the philosopher of Athens. 

If Thomas Carlyle is a prophet, a peer and a successor of St. 
Paul, what has he brought to light as a more perfect manifesta- 
tion of eternal truth? Mr. Froude says: "If, like his great 
predecessors, he has read truly the tendencies of this modern age of 
ours, and his teaching is authenticated by facts, then Carlyle, too, 
will take his place among the inspired seers" * 

How did he read them ? His prophesying is one sad dirge 
over the death of faith, one sorrowful wail over a " poor pro- 
toplasm generation," with a deep and continually deepening sigh 
for the renovation of religion in the world. 

" There is clear prophecy to me that in another fifty years atheism will 
be the new religion to the whole tribe of hard-hearted, hard-headed men in 
the world who for the time have practical rule in this world's affairs. Not 
only all Christian churches but all Christian religions are nodding towards, 
speedy downfall in this Europe that now is. Figure the residuum man 
made chemically out of Urschleim, or a certain blubber called protoplasm- 
man descended from the apes or the shell-fish virtue, duty> or utility an 
association of ideas, and the corollaries from all that." 

" He was perplexed by the indifference with which the Supreme Power 
was allowing its existence to be obscured. I once said to him, not long be- 
fore his death, that I could only believe in a God which did something. 
[Surely a sensible and pregnant remark.] With a cry of pain which I shall 
never forget, he said : ' He does nothing." t 

* Life, part i. vol. i. p. 4. + Life, part ii. vol. ii. ch. xxxv. Ibid ch. xxvi. 



1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 17 

This is his claim to be a prophet ! His stern and wholesome 
training- in the hard school of Scottish peasant labor made him 
a strong and rugged Man. The religious instruction and exam- 
ple of his pious parents, notwithstanding the defects of their 
sectarian form of Christianity, implanted deeply and ineradicably 
in him the belief in God, in virtue, and in an invisible and eternal 
world, which made him an honest, a virtuous, a God-fearing man. 
He had genius, culture, untiring diligence, from which proceed- 
ed works which must last as long as the English language is 
read, and are filled with many grand utterances of truth and 
noble sentiments. But the monument of his genius is only a 
broken shaft ! Thomas Carlyle himself, in dying, does not posture 
as El Mahdi, challenging our homage to a new proclamation of 
religious truth from heaven. He appeals to God for mercy, and 
he calls forth our compassion and sympathy, which we freely 
give him with all due honor. 

"DECEMBER 4, 1869. This is my seventy-fourth birthday. For seventy- 
four years have I now lived in this world. If this is my last birthday, as is 
often not improbable to me, may the Eternal Father grant that I be ready 
for it, frail worm that I am. Nightly I look at a certain photograph, at a 
certain tomb the last thing I do. Most times it is with a feeling of dull 
woe, of endless love, as if choked under the inexorable. In late weeks I 
occasionally feel able to wish with my whole softened heart it is my only 
form of prayer ' Great Father, oh ! if thou canst, have pity on her, and 
on me, and on all such.' " * 

In laying aside the writings and biography of Carlyle, proba- 
bly never again to read them or write of them, it is with the feel- 
ing of one who bids farewell to the grave of a life-long friend, 
and with the sincere wish that God may have heard his prayer. 

* Ut supra, ch. xxxv. 



VOL. XLI. 2 



1 8 ALLELUIAS OF PADERBORN. [April, 



ALLELUIAS OF PADERBORN. 

THE day that sees the Saviour rise, 

The first-fruits of the souls who slept, 

Knows too the fast and vigil kept ; 

With that blest dawn the evening sorrow flies : 

The glory breaks ; the bells are rung, 

And Alleluia thrice is sung ; 

Mary, sad Mother, is no more forlorn. 

The choristers the chancel throng ; 

Joy shall be at the morning song : 

But none shall sing as once was sung in Paderborn ! 



In the greenwood the gay birds sing 

From the first coming of the spring : 

The hermit in his soul all day 

Sang like the birds, as blithe as they ; 

And in his sleep his heart awake 

To God with tuneful beating spake. 

Far from the busy city's ken 

He knew no more the ways of men ; 

How shall he sing aright in Paderborn 

Glad Alleluias of the Easter morn? 



The bishop, holding new command, 

Has bid him come : " I do no wrong ; 

Each true priest knows the holy song : 

I ask this one proof at thy hand." 

Under the rudely arching aisles 

White-robed the long procession files ; 

Before the hermit in his cope, 

His coarse gown hid by cloth of gold, 

Two surpliced boys the great book hold : 

He clasps his hands, abandoning hope ; 

His golden mantle seems a cloak of lead ; 

In prayer and anguish low he bows his head. 



1885.] ALLELUIAS OF. PADERBORN. 19 

The people all expectant wait ; 

The bishop stares with kindling eyes ; 

The hermit, spite of tears that rise, 

With full heart yields him to his fate : 

And list, from out his open mouth 

What Easter measure ! From the south 

The winds of spring blow soft at morn, 

And throstles ease their pent-up throats ; 

So now the Alleluia upward floats, 

And falls with cadence new to ears of Paderborn : 



Come, ye Christian people, see 
How Christ arises from the gloom 
And sadness of the silent tomb, 
Setting imprisoned spirits free : 

While birds beneath the greenwood tree 

Sing Alleluia ! 

And sweeter than their wont the choir-boys sing 
Responsive to the holy song of spring. 



Transfigured in his shining cope, 

The hermit takes again the tone, 

As when the nightingale alone 

Flutes to the moon her too long waiting hope 

Come, ye Christian people, see 
How we one day from death shall rise 
Before the Saviour's gracious eyes, 
From sin and from all sorrow free : > 

And 'neath the Cross's greenwood tree 

Sing Alleluia! 

And out again the children's voices ring 
That burden clear the joys of Easter bring. 



And now the hermit sings with radiant eyes 
The third tone in its order due ; 
Even as the lark climbs up the blue 
Until its song is lost in morning skies : 



20 THE " OLD FILES " OF IRELAND. [April, 

Come, ye Christian people, see 
The bliss of heaven's own Easter day, 
Whose brightness shall not fade away, 
The clear day of eternity : 

And by Life's fount and greenwood tree 

Sing Alleluia ! 

The people all drank in the sound ; 

The bishop bowed him to the ground 

And pardon craved : " Year after year 

The Easter voices ring out clear, 

But holy song like thine on this glad morn 

Shall never more be heard in Paderborn ! " 



THE "OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. 



ONLY of late have any large body of people calling them- 
selves Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon by descent condescended to 
listen to the claims of the Kelt ; partly because the claims seemed 
absurdly broad ; partly because the men who acknowledged 
themselves Kelts were at the disadvantage of belonging to a 
conquered and impoverished race ; partly because the Irish, the 
purest and best known type of Kelt, have a genius for saying the 
word, for doing the thing, which is certain to irritate. 

Nevertheless few citizens of Great Britain, Ireland, and the 
United States can be sure they have not in their veins blood of 
true pagan or Catholic Kelts, according as the strain may have 
entered before or after the conversion of the Teutonic invaders. 
The old theory that the latter did not intermarry with the 
British holders of the soil is no longer tenable. Recall on one 
hand the constant colonization of the shores of Ireland by Scan- 
dinavian settlers, in peace or at war, up to the eleventh century, 
and on the other the permeation of Great Britain at later periods 
by bands of Irish laborers and soldiers of fortune ; in still later 
times, particularly since the marvellous growth of London, re- 
call the steady influx toward that centre of Cornishmen, Welsh, 
and Highland Scotch. The amalgamation of the elements of 



1885.] THE "OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. 21 

population is complete, judged scientifically, politics aside. In 
America the first settlers came largely from an already mixed 
race, and the lists of names show besides a large contingent of 
Kelts more or less pure. Why, then, should we find the rancor 
to-day as strong as if in Great Britain there were really conquer- 
ing and subject races, as if the Teuton were still oppressing the 
Kelt, as if there never had been this commingling of races ? In 
Ireland because the Norman and Saxon settlers were absorbed 
by the larger Keltic mass, and in many cases became not Catho- 
lic only, but imbued with the peculiar race-traits of the Kelt ; in 
East and South Britain because the Saxon conquerors, having 
assimilated the- old British remnant, were strong enough to di- 
gest all the arrivals from those parts of the British Isles where 
the Kelt remained comparatively pure. Hence it is a prejudice 
founded on misconception of history that keeps thinking Irish- 
men and Englishmen aloof from each other, encourages each 
race to hold itself superior to the other, and permits the ignorant 
and self-seeking to make political capital out of an empty phrase. 
Yet these prejudices, ill-founded and wrong as they are in the 
old country, are worse here. Looking back to the beginnings of 
history, we find that the two strains of the great stock we' call 
Aryan were once so near each other as to be indistinguishable ; 
they diverged so far in later periods that race-hatred was in- 
evitable and well founded ; but in the present epoch they have 
been so thoroughly comminuted in France, Belgium, the Bri- 
tish Isles, and America that their absolute union in sentiment has 
only been prevented by the most diligent use of religious and 
political means of irritation. 

At no time more than the present should we strive to sift fact 
from misconception, when the struggle against class-privileges 
in the old country has gathered so much venom, when on both 
sides of the Atlantic large sections are held responsible for the 
work of dastards, when panic before the threats of skulking 
crime goads even the cool head into indiscriminate abuse. It is 
no light count against English scholarship that in all the cen- 
turies of close comradeship between English-speakers and Keltic- 
speakers no Englishman whose name was powerful should have 
made a profound and sympathetic study of the Keltic prob- 
lem and demanded of scholars that the rightful place of Kelts in 
history should be ignored no longer. The Welsh, the Scottish 
Highlanders, the Irish have been unpopular owing to their re- 
ligious and political views, their poverty, their consciousness of 
deserving better treatment. Englishmen have sailed to all parts 



22 THE " OLD FILES " OF IRELAND. [April, 

of the world, meddlesome, assertive of sympathy with the under 
man in every other sort of fight; but no research, no sympathy, 
no justice have been at hand for the Kelt until the very latest 
years, when these have all the appearance of being extorted by 
violence. And even to-day we look to Germans, Frenchmen, 
and Irishmen rather than to those who boast themselves Eng- 
lish by descent for the most valuable light on the history of 
their common past. 

Among the brags of Irishmen that fall dull on ears of men 
who call themselves, with more or less accuracy, more or less 
knowledge of their true ancestry, " Saxon," are the claims of an 
early scholarly and literary renaissance between the fifth and 
the eighth centuries. Yet it is known that Europe was at that 
date overrun by savage Goths, Burgundians, and Franks ; that 
Gaul was full of colleges and schools, such as they were, where 
Romano-Gallic was spoken and taught, and that the barbarians 
made their continuance impossible. What more natural than 
that the teachers and scholars should have fled to Britain, where 
almost the same tongue, Latinized Keltic, was spoken ? We 
know that Britain was to the Gaul what Ireland afterward 
seemed to the Briton the mysterious land of the west, ever con- 
founded in the popular mind with legends having sometimes 
their rise in the eternal warfare of night with day the last station 
toward that Dark House into which the Sun enters so dramati- 
cally at eventide. We have as good evidence as need be that 
there was a flight of savants from the Continent to England, 
where for a time letters and Christianity held out against the 
Heathen wave. Expelled from most parts of Great Britain, the 
literati found Ireland a final resting-place, and because Ireland 
was so favored, that island became famous for its colleges ; Irish 
missionaries were able to swarm back again into England and 
Europe, and by force of brains Irishmen converted the barba- 
rians and gave them letters and education. Compare the present 
German alphabet with that in which Irish is printed, if you wish 
to know why the Germans received the Roman letters under so 
odd a form as that we call Gothic. 

For many reasons it is well to realize what number of per- 
sons still speak, read, and write Keltic tongues, wholly or in part. 
The ancestry of all of us yes, perhaps it will be shown some 
day, the ancestry even of Germans is certainly in part Keltic. 
If all the Keltic dialects were perished as utterly from the ranks 
of living tongues as Cornish is to-day, the subject would remain 
of the first importance. About 1880 M. Paul S6billot calculated 



1885.] THE " OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. 23 

that there were in Europe three and a half millions who spoke 
some Keltic tongue habitually or occasionally. Of these one and 
a half millions are on the Continent, chiefly in Brittany and on the 
lower Loire, and two millions in Great Britain and Ireland, speak- 
ing Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish. In the Emerald Isle eight hun- 
dred thousand persons use Irish, and in Great Britain about 
eighty thousand. Statistics for the United States are not trust- 
worth)'', owing to the scattering of immigrants and the practice, 
common to populations more or less hostile, more or less scorn- 
ful of the old tongue and the old legends, of discrediting those 
who use them and causing them to conceal their knowledge. 

Injustice makes the sufferer unjust. The Irish, having suf- 
fered for centuries from their brothers in control at home and 
their cousins in high places in England, cannot be expected to 
lack the human trait of vindictiveness. The wonder is they 
bore so much so long. The rancor of clashing sects, political 
parties, and social grades has kept the most purely Keltic land 
in a constant broil as unfavorable to fairmindedness as to letters. 
The ancient literature and legendry have had powerful enemies 
to meet at home as well as across the Irish Channel. English- 
men and Scotchmen, the Welsh, the Irish Protestants, have given 
little welcome or encouragement to these remains; the English 
through race-jealousy, the Scotch and Welsh because the claims 
of Ireland relegated their own Keltic literature to a second 
place as regards originality and antiquity, the Protestant Irish 
because contempt and hatred of the Irish-speaking counties are 
as unmeasured with them as undeserved. Yet time, bringing 
to light most things, is now illuminating the exaggerations of 
Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish writers. Though it appear that each 
nation has regarded the records of its own part of the old Kel- 
tic stock from a narrow view, overestimated its relative impor- 
tance, ludicrously outclaimed its antiquity, and blended fact 
with fiction in the strangest way, it is also true that they have 
only done what writers of other peoples at the same epoch have 
done. The important fact is that under the frothy declamations 
natural to an absence of combined, systematic research really do 
lie the remnants of a great buried literature. 

Of this literature large fragments have been luckily preserved 
in the dialect sometimes called Erse. Certain stories and poems 
have been published in this century, others are about to appear, 
but the great bulk of Irish manuscripts known to exist has yet 
to find its editors. It has been estimated that it would take one 
thousand large octavos to issue them properly. Professor H. 



24 THE "OLD FILES" OF ICELAND. [April, 

d'Arbois de Jubainville, of the Coll6ge de France, made a pilgrim- 
age recently to the British Museum, the Bodleian of Oxford, 
three libraries in Cambridge, and three in Dublin. Without ex- 
hausting all the sources of information, he drew up a catalogue 
of the printed books and manuscripts in Irish relating to the old 
epics that form of literature which has come down the centuries 
in the greatest abundance. In the Royal Irish Academy, Dub- 
lin, he found five hundred and sixty manuscripts in Irish ; at the 
British Museum one hundred and sixty-six ; in Lord Ashburn- 
ham's collection, now owned by the government, sixty-three ; and 
at Trinity College, Dublin, the same number. The Franciscans 
at Dublin have twenty-two, so far as the grudging methods of 
allowing their treasures to be examined permitted the professor 
to see. The Bodleian has fifteen, the Cambridge libraries three, 
and other libraries sixty-one more, making in all nearly one 
thousand manuscripts known. Some have been printed, others 
in part fac-similed, others reprinted partially. The greater num- 
ber belong to the centuries eleven to sixteen, but there are some 
which may be held much earlier in date. It is known that the 
Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College library have other 
manuscripts not on the catalogue. Singularly enough, only some 
sixty manuscripts are known on the Continent, but these few 
represent an average range much earlier, and it is quite possible 
that other finds of manuscripts will occur. To be sure, many are 
Latin books with Irish notes glosses that are fine prizes for the 
philologist, but drier than dry bones to the general. But, taken 
altogether, the number of manuscripts wholly or in part Irish 
has surprised the Keltic scholars of this age, beginning with 
Zeuss, who founded the study of the language on a solid gram- 
mar; including Ebel, his editor; Windisch, the most accom- 
plished living Kelticist in Germany ; Gaidoz, the editor of the 
Revue Celtique ; Hennessy and Whitley Stokes, Irishmen who 
have rendered brilliant services ; and Arbois de Jubainville, to 
mention only one other of several Frenchmen who have made 
a mark in the study of the ancient tongues of Gaul, Britain, and 
Ireland. This buried literature is not sufficiently disengaged 
from the earth clinging to it, from the impress of its environ- 
ment, to be considered dogmatically. Many manuscripts will 
have to wait long for the time when the general progress of 
Keltic studies shall coincide with the labors of some man suffi- 
ciently patient to decipher them. But the existence of this 
literature can be pooh-poohed no longer. It points to an Irish 
past that is not inglorious ; it speaks finely for Irish imagination 



1885.] THE " OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. 25 

and originality ; it shows what is now known to be the most 
hopeful sign for the future in a family or a nation viz., an early 
state of cultivation lying back of centuries of oppression. Final- 
ly, a realization of it may help to increase the self-respect of all 
who have Keltic blood, and serve to counteract in some degree 
the prejudices from which abused, misgoverned, restive Ireland 
suffers in the minds of other nations. 



II. 

" He's a queer old file," you hear people say who deprecate 
a tendency among Irishmen to use long, classical terms and pride 
themselves on their short "Saxon" words. File? Whence, in 
English, that word ? From much the same direction, by much 
the same path, and possibly at nearly the same epoch as the word 
"juggler," for instance. Only the latter is Norman and therefore 
comparatively a recent formation, while the former is Keltic and 
reaches back to the almost mythical advent of Kelts to the white 
cliffs of Albion and the pale green shores of lerna. The filt 
was once a personage in the rude but not wholly uncultured 
lives of the ancestors of Irishmen, Scots, English, Normans, and 
Bretons. The waves of conquest beat over him on the Conti- 
nent ; in Great Britain they obliterated his guild, just as waves of 
cold will destroy from large areas special forms of vegetation or 
compel them to assume shapes under which only a botanist will 
recognize them. By the hordes of Jutes, Angles, and Saxons 
we must imagine the profession of fiti to have been destroyed in 
the greater part of England, while in Wales and Scotland it may 
have lingered longer as bardism. Yet even in Saxon Britain 
we can detect its existence under the vague term " fellow." 
The fellows of a college or a society are the English equivalent of 
the filedha y members of the literary order in the transition peri- 
od from paganism to Christianity and later. Like a college, of 
which the " fellows" are now a comparatively unimportant part, 
the filedha was a corporation of scholars who took rank accord- 
ing to intricate laws of precedence, at the council, at meals, and 
in processions, and watched over its rights as against king, 
nobles, and clergy. What was ay//, then ? 

He was poet, author, historian, something of a lawyer, and a 
good deal of a courtier. As if this were not enough, he was 
a magician who could heal and blight men, cattle, and crops. 
Druids disappeared early before the united efforts of military 
and Christian Rome, since they were of weightier position in 



25 THE " OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. [April, 

Keltic communities, more learned, more feared, better reverenced 
and obeyed than any other class of men, and their extirpation was 
necessary to keep the people quiet. The bards, who seem to have 
been fitis not so well organized as the latter are found in Ireland, 
appear to have vanished from Europe with the onsets of the Franks 
and the loss of the Gaulish as a reigning language. But in Great 
Britain they exist in Wales during the eighth century and may 
be said never to have died out ; since to-day, on both sides of the 
Atlantic, they appear at the Eistedfods, or musical congresses. 
Perhaps as a singer dependent on nothing but his lyre for liveli- 
hood the bard is extinct ; yet it may be that practically the bard 
was never independent, never only singer-magician and nothing 
else. Like the heathen priests whom we find in Iceland before 
its conversion, the bard was probably often a man of substance, 
who joined this accomplishment to thrift at home and prowess 
as a fighter abroad. The Druid and the bard are, indeed, not 
unknown to Irish history, but the fiti occupies their positions, 
with certain differences. He does not reach quite to the level 
of the old pagan Druid ; he is careful to relegate the bard to 
a distinctly inferior place. For while in Wales the bard had a 
right to sit at the king's table, in Ireland he was a poor devil who 
sang eulogies of great or rich men for alms. He was not al- 
lowed many servitors in his train ; he was an improvisator of 
the type of the lower orders of minstrels in Normandy. While 
the^?// wished to keep the bard where he belonged, he also tried 
to assume some of the awe-inspiring functions of the Druid. It 
was as if the memory of the pagan days lingered. As we can 
work back from the sleight-of-hand man, the juggler, to the Nor- 
man jongleur a person of no very exalted station, yet a favorite 
in the middle ages, sometimes noble, and often the companion of 
princes so we can trace the " old file " back to an itinerant singer 
of the middle ages who had from the people extraordinary re- 
spect. Indeed, it is not many centuries ago that in the Scot- 
tish Highlands and Ireland the fitts wielded important powers, 
keeping as they did in capacious memories thousands of verses, 
which they sang on festal days, and brandishing the rod of satire 
after a fashion unknown to the present. One reason why so much 
of the ancient epic literature was committed to writing between 
the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, and not before, was that the 
druidical traditions were set against the writing-down of legends. 
The memory became weakened by so doing. Few readers of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD are unfamiliar with the stories of celebrated 
fitts who killed their man with a satire. The shame was too 



1885.] THE " OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. 27 

great to live under. Undoubtedly the nucleus of such tales, 
that attest the power of satirical verses, belongs to pagan times. 
The popularity of the fiti must often have interfered with the 
chiefs or kinglets, the " bosses" in the unending snarl of Irish 
politics ; and we have excellent testimony that at various epochs 
fotfiltdka, or literary fellowships, were attacked by the king, much 
as in other lands the clergy has been assailed. Keating tells us 
that King Aedh assembled at Dromketh a great convention, and 
brought before it as one of the first needs of the country the 
immediate expulsion of the poets from Ireland. This was not, 
as the modern humorist might suggest, because he was tired of 
hearing from the singers how much braver, stronger, more mag- 
nanimous and munificent than himself were the heroes of a preced- 
ing cycle. It was " on account of the greatness of their numbers 
and of the difficulty there was both in governing themselves and 
in satisfying their demands. For the train attendant upon an 
Ollamh (a poet of the first rank) numbered thirty persons, and that 
attendant upon the Annruith (the next in the order) was fifteen. 
So that about that epoch nearly one-third of the men of Ireland 
belonged to the Poetic Order, all of whom were wont to quarter 
themselves upon the other inhabitants from the season of Sam- 
hain to that of Beltaini." As a matter of fact, it seems to have 
been the rulers rather than the ruled who threatened the lite- 
rary men, though it is plain that the latter, like the Brahman 
caste of India, grew at times oppressively large and arrogated to 
themselves privileges that no self-respecting people would bear. 
However, we are safe in believing that as a rule the temporal 
chief was embarrassed by the fondness displayed by the people 
for these intellectual leaders, who held the folk by recital of the 
myths and hero-tales, colored the history of the past, and checked 
the king by calling up precedents that did not suit his claims. 

The fitt occupied a position apparently subordinate, per- 
haps historically subsequent, to the fully pagan Druid, while 
between him and the bard it is difficult to draw the line. We 
must not take too literally the wonderful tableau of ranks and 
orders laid down as governing the guild. Undoubtedly there 
was some such division into poets of the first, second, and third 
ranks, whose places at the grand councils were duly appointed, 
their dress regulated, the number of their attendants limited. 
But among social elements so loosely held together the schedule 
must be considered to show what was desirable rather than what 
was put into practice. If the Druid was a composite of priest, 
physician, lawyer, and chief ; if he retained traditions of a time 



28 THE " OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. [April, 

when the sacrifice of human victims was common and cannibalism 
not at all unknown to the mysteries of his faith, the fitt was all 
those with the exception of priest a function completely assumed 
by the Christian pastors. Doubtless sporadic cases of canni- 
balism and human sacrifice lingered among the fiU down to the 
middle ages, as they certainly did among other European na- 
tions, the former always hiding from sight, the latter open to the 
day but masquerading under other names. As time went on the 
special features of the Druid fell away from thefitSs. They became 
more organized and increased in numbers, exercising at once a 
regulating pressure in their own ranks and a stronger influence 
without. They still used magical powers, like the Druids, and 
occasionally had trances and prophesied, with as much success 
as befalls prophets in other parts of the world. But their chief 
use was to conserve and repeat the literary monuments of old, 
since that was what they could do best, and that interfered least 
with the interests of other and stronger bodies of men. Thus the 
history of the filedha of Ireland is only another example of the 
fittest surviving ; of the object going inevitably where the re- 
sistance is least; of the division of labor in a community as it 
passes by slow stages from barbarism to civilization. 

What the fitt could do in the way of magical incantation is 
best seen in the records from purely pagan times, for the later 
stories are not half so graphic or so singular. In that historical 
twilight where loom the gigantic bodies of half-gods typifying, per- 
haps, night and day, the upper world and the under world, winter 
and summer, they?// is already at work with the terrible forces of 
nature at his command. As Irish mythology crystallizes a little 
more into such views of heaven and earth as the Iliad shows 
among the Greeks of the ^Egean Sea, we find the fitt an actor in 
a drama worthy to form the outline of a Greek play, but with a 
purely local flavor of its own. Caier of Connaught, a king 
whose name reflects a society so primitive that the man of the 
cai (enclosure, house, fort, castle) is a magnate and takes his 
appellation from his residence, has a wicked wife who falls in love 
with Nede, her husband's nephew. She wooes him with the gift 
of a silver ball, but he is virtuous. Then she promises to make 
him king and marry him ; but first he must satirize Caier, cause 
thereby some physical blemish to appear on him, and thus, in 
accordance with old Irish prejudices, prove him no longer fit to 
reign. Ned6 does not question his power to cause a blemish to 
appear on his uncle by the magical force of satire, but objects 
that Caier has always treated him with the greatest love and 



i885-] THE " OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. 29 

kindness, refusing him nothing in the world that he has to give. 
Then the wicked wife bethinks her of one thing a dagger which 
Caier is forced to withhold. Nede finally yields and demands 
the dagger. Note the old Irish trait of noblesse oblige which the 
Spaniard still keeps as a phrase if not a fact. A king must 
refuse nothing to his household, his clan, his followers. But 
Caier has to refuse this dagger, for he has sworn never to part 
with it. The weak young fil has now his excuse. " Evil death, 
short life to Caier ! May the battle-spears tear Caier ! Death upon 
Caier ! May Caier go below the sod ! May Caier lie beneath the 
wall, below the cairn ! " The next morning when the king goes 
to bathe at the spring he feels three blemishes on his face, and 
in the water he sees that one is red, the other green, the third 
white ; spot, blemish, and shame are their names. He flies in 
despair, and the faithless poet-nephew reigns in his stead until 
overtaken by the just reward of his guilt. On another occasion 
the threat made by a poet against a king who flatly contradicted 
a statement of fact connected with the death of a famous hero 
was enough to bring king and court to the most humiliating offers. 
He swore he would curse the king's ancestors in ascending series 
(a touch that reveals how real to the old Irish was the existence of 
the world of spirits) curse his waters and fish, his trees and fruit, 
his fields and their crops. The king, who was named Mongan, 
sued for forgiveness, but, while he would pay for the affront with 
half his kingdom, would not recede from his denial of the poet's 
fact. A very curious trial of the king's knowledge as against the 
poet's then took place, when the king summoned up from the 
under world, as witness, an old champion, dead long ago, who 
had been an actor in the matter at issue. Another curious trait : 
this King Mongan knew about the past because he himself had, 
in a former existence, been the great hero Find MacCumhail (the 
Fingal of Macpherson), who was present at the time of the occur- 
rence. Thus in a side-stroke we find metempsychosis among the 
old Irish beliefs, and remember that Pythagoras was thought to 
have learned his theories of the transmigration of souls from 
Abaris the Scythian (Scythian being the convenient Greek term 
for all northern barbarians), and by at least one writer was said 
to have known and admired the Gallic Druids. 

But there is not space to consider further the habits of the 
filedha. Perhaps on another occasion the history, legendry, and 
mythology of the Irish -literary remains may be followed through 
wonderful changes that are not unlike those of water, whose 
elements are ever in movement up from the earth and down- 
ward again from the sky. 



30 THE "OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. [April, 

in. 

A trait of our common human nature which as usual shows a 
Janus face, good and bad, is the impossibility of destroying in a 
people the memory of former states of civilization, of intelligence, 
of religious faith. Nowhere more than in Ireland has the Catho- 
lic faith triumphed ; nowhere in northern Europe are its roots 
more ancient; nowhere have political circumstances, and perse- 
cutions of the most difficult sort to endure, aided more in endear- 
ing it to the people. Yet we have to read but a little way in 
Irish history to come on the incessant contest of the remains of 
paganism with the overwhelmingly dominant faith. Old Irish 
literature offers ballads (called of Oisin, or Ossian) such as else- 
where are to be found only hinted priceless literary documents 
dating from the time when paganism was still powerful in Ireland 
and had successfully invaded the greater part of Britain. The 
^//in Christian times is typified by Oisin, the old singer-warrior, 
who has seen Christianity triumph, but recollects with anguish 
how much finer was his own position before the priest weaned 
the people from him and his pagan lays. As W. H. Drummond 
has paraphrased the retort of Oisin to St. Patrick: 

" Since I no strength nor spirit boast, 
Since Finn no more the Fenian host 

Arrays in martial state, 
Small joy to me your clerics bring ; 
I loathe to hear them sadly sing 

Their dismal chant I hate." 

The antagonism between settled priest and itinerant^//, be- 
tween monk and stroller, was that between agriculturist and 
nomad, farmer and tramp ; it could not fail to favor the priest. 
While intellectual things in general drew them together, intel- 
lectual things of certain kinds kept them at silent war. Yet 
many acts of sympathy between poets and monks and priests are 
recorded. We speak of the past. But quick-witted readers may 
review the situation to-day, and, making large allowances for 
changes, detect the same forces at work in the nineteenth cen- 
tury under all the disguises of literature and art, science and 
education. 

Realize firmly this oneness of time, this permanence of great 
factors while the details change, this existence of the bud-scars 
if not of the branches of paganism on the tree of Christian life, 
this solidarity of all men who trace their descent from Keltic or 
Teutonic stocks, if you care to understand the meaning of Irish 
ancient literature. Study of it will not merely teach us how 



1885.] THE " OLD FILES" OF IRELAND. 31 

men thought and fought in the little island farthest toward the 
setting sun that island called tar or " west " island because the 
pagan sun-worshipper turned his back (tar) to it at the impressive 
moment of sunrise; that island famed in the middle ages for 
scholars, strolling singers, hireling soldiers, and magicians. It 
ought to teach us lessons of half-pagan and fully pagan life else- 
where in Europe ; for in a chaotic way Ireland seems to have re- 
tained layers of religious and social life that can be assigned by 
the expert to various parts of two epochs, one before and one 
after Christ, which have almost vanished in the rest of Europe. 
Pagans, Catholics, Protestants, kings, chiefs of clans, free cities, 
the liberty of a democracy, and the most grinding tyranny of the 
rich over the poor, have co-existed at times in Ireland, as if to 
laugh to scorn the historian who should attempt to depart from 
the ordinary course and write impartially, not as a rabid political 
or religious partisan. No people have been so cruelly misjudged 
as the Irish, none suffered so equally from its friends and ene- 
mies. It is enough for a writer to be Catholic and Irish to 
make readers suspect his impartiality ; and perhaps for that reason 
the writer who is neither one nor the other will get more confi- 
dence, since he must be free from the prejudices bred in the bone 
of natives of the British Isles. Irishmen as well as others are 
often hopeless, imagining that the natives of that luckless island 
are, as it were, fatally dragged down by defects inherent in the 
blood we call Keltic, which, though completely mixed with other 
strains, is still the most powerful. It is true that we find traits in 
Connaught Irishmen very like those which Julius Caesar found in 
the Britons. The insularity of the latter was seen in their battle- 
array and their chariots, war-engines at that epoch so out of date 
as to have been almost forgotten on the Continent. But in com- 
paring peoples there is always danger of forgetting surround- 
ings and of misunderstanding the relative position of, ranks one 
toward the other. It is a common error to compare the rawest 
Irish peasantry with the English villagers of quite another plane 
of wealth and education. Yet the fact remains that the Irish 
have grave defects, whether or not they are as radical as their ill- 
wishers imagine. Such defects can be cured only by learning 
their origin, and to that end a cautious but fearless examination 
of the Irish past is a preliminary. The literature of ancient 
times is, with proper control by analogies from other nations, a 
firm ground for proceeding. It may substitute facts concerning 
the songs and literary monuments, the men who composed them, 
and the persons for whom they were composed, in the place of 



32 FACTS AND SUGGESTIONS [April, 

vague claims of feudal and monarchical grandeur which, if true, 
would not present the original and fascinating traits we find 
here. Not all, but a great deal, can be told of a plant and its en- 
vironment from the structure of a flower, its color, its perfume. 
The literature of a people is its most enduring bloom. Not in 
all cases are the remains of Irish literature fresh and glowing ; 
but compare them with those of most nations, and see how 
astonishingly vivid they are ! What would not Germans, what 
would not Frenchmen, give for the honor of pointing to such a 
wealth of epic and historic literature ! The Irish literary past 
reminds one of the chambers recently discovered in the cliffs of 
Egypt, where the blossoms wreathing the bodies of the royal 
dead are stiff and without perfume, but retain much of their 
original brilliance, so that the imagination can recover the 
flower-beds of the Pharaos, and the scientific intellect can recon- 
struct the flora of Egypt as it was in the age of the pyramids. 



FACTS AND SUGGESTIONS ABOUT THE COLORED 

PEOPLE. 

IN the present article we wish to make the reader acquainted 
with what is being done for religion and morals among the 
Southern negroes. It may be well at the outset to simply indi- 
cate why no considerable portion of the race is Catholic. Like 
master, like man ; the masters of the slaves were Protestants al- 
most everywhere in the South. Our little germ of Catholicity 
at present among the blacks is owing to the Catholic training 
given their slaves by the very small number of slave-holding Ca- 
tholics. 

Let us first take a glance at the doctrinal beliefs of the 
colored masses. To say that their views are vague, divergent, 
contradictory but feebly expresses the true state of things. 

Some years ago, in company with some friends, we visited the 
Howard University at Washington, one of the most prominent 
places of higher studies for colored youth in the Union. When 
the courteous professor led us into the divinity class, " Gentle- 
men," said he, " here are members of seven different persuasions 
being prepared for the ministry." And our smiles rather per- 
plexed him. In fact, the Protestant blacks but imitate the Pro- 
testant whites in doctrine, and of course fall far below their 



1885.] ABOUT THE COLORED PEOPLE. 33 

models. They have but the vaguest notions of the most funda- 
mental truths, such as the Trinity and Redemption. Not seldom 
we meet them with scarcely any idea of God at all. and ignorance 
of even the Ten Commandments may in many districts almost 
be called general. As to morality, to say that either in principle 
or practice it is anything like equal to that of our white Protes- 
tants would be to show utter ignorance of slavery's deep pits, 
from which this people have so recently come forth. To expect 
a race to rise from a state such as that of the negroes in ante- 
bellum times to a healthy moral tone within twenty years is ask- 
ing too much. History church history even has no such in- 
stance. And what race in all our broad land can fling the stone 
of innocency at them? for their hybrids can claim kinship with 
every race among us. Judge Tourgee's words about this ques- 
tion are as true as they are eloquent : 

"'The fact,' said the chief-justice of the Supreme Court of South Caro- 
lina, ' that two slaves have taken up with each other, no matter under what 
pretended ceremony of marriage, and have lived together as if in the mari- 
tal relation, in no sense constitutes them husband and wife, nor clothes 
them with any of the rights and privileges of that relation.' The influence 
of this doctrine is no doubt distinctly visible in the morals of the race to 
which it was applied. . . . The chief difference between American slavery 
and that which the world has known in other lands and ages was that it 
did not pass through the intermediary stages of serfdom in its downfall. 
The American slave was transformed into a freeman without development, 
without instruction ; one day a slave, the next a citizen changed in the 
twinkling of an eye. Hitherto the road from slavery has always been a 
harsh and rugged one. One right after another has been won with dif- 
ficulty and danger. Blood has flowed and generations of struggle have 
engendered a fortitude worthy of the liberty that came at length as its 
reward. This is the universal history of European development. . . . We 
may hope we must hope ; but that very hope should teach us that simple 
liberty is not all that is required to transform the slave into a freeman. 
The African of America must have time to learn very much ami to forget 
still more before the Proclamation of Emancipation will have become ef- 
fectual. On this fact depends the duty of to-day. The slave may be eman- 
cipated ; the freeman must be developed. We may believe in a result con- 
sonant with liberty and our ideas of justice ; but the fact that such an out- 
come is not demonstrable should teach the people of the whole land that 
the end of duty is not yet " (Hot Plowshares, p. 148). 

No one will gainsay these conclusions ; the colored man needs 
moral development, and it is the duty of all to aid in this de- 
velopment. Let us see the work of the religious denominations. 
Of the Catholic churches of the South there are about a dozen 
set apart for colored people exclusively. There are also a few 
VOL. XLI. 3 



34 FACTS AND SUGGESTIONS [April, 

churches where white and black worship together on a footing 
of something like equality. In the ordinary parish churches of 
the South there are galleries reserved for colored Catholics. 
To every Catholic church this poor people are of course wel- 
come most welcome. Within the walls of her temples the Ca- 
tholic Church recognizes all alike. The confessional, the altar- 
rail, the word of God, the Holy Sacrifice are for all men without 
distinction of race or color : the church rejects no man. But 1 we 
know that there are many individual Catholics, and we fear some 
congregations, for whom this spirit of their holy mother is only 
in the high regions of sentiment and theory. The unlucky child 
of Cham who is seen anywhere but on a side-bench or demurely 
kneeling in the rear, or up in the colored-gallery, or in the space 
fenced off for his accommodation will, in many localities, not 
soon forget his blunder. 

The Protestant churches for colored people alone are num- 
bered by thousands in the Southern States. They dot the whole 
face of the country and are numerous in towns and cities, and 
are of all kinds, from the shed built by the Freedmen's Bureau 
to the metropolitan church of Baltimore, built of stone. Com- 
pared to them the Catholic churches of every kind are but as 
oases in the desert. 

The following list giving the number of communicants is 
taken from official sources : 

African Methodist Episcopal Church 214,808 

Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (colored) 190,000 

Colored Methodist Episcopal Church 1 1 2,300 

Methodist Episcopal Church (colored members estimated) 300,000 
Colored Baptists (estimated) 500,000 



1,317,108 

Communicants computed, as we are reliably informed, from the 
age of seven years may be safely set down as half the entire 
membership of every kind. Add then the few hundred thou- 
sand Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Quakers, the 
number of nominal Christian negroes in the South may be about 
three millions. There cannot be more than 100,000 Catholics 
among the colored people. And since the negroes in the whole 
United States were in 1880 6,580,793, of whom 6,082.764 were 
in the Southy it is clear that about six millions of this race are 
numbered not among the children of the mother and mistress 
.of all the churches. 



1885.] ABOUT THE COLORED PEOPLE. 35 

But what interests us particularly is the study of the mission- 
ary enterprises of white Protestants of the North among the 
blacks. The following is a statement of the work of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church ; we quote from an instructive work by a 
Methodist minister, entitled Our Brother in Black, p. 180: 

" From 1865 to January, 1881, the society [Church Extension Society 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church] donated for building churches, in 
round numbers, $830,000. Of the whole amount nearly $200,000 have been 
used for the benefit of the colored people. Of their loan-fund used only 
in loans about $50,000 have been used among the colored people. The 
society has aided not less than 1,000 churches which are for the use of the 
colored people exclusively." 

The Methodist Episcopal Church, then, gives one-fourth of its 
church-building funds to the colored race ; of the church build- 
ings of all kinds which it assisted, one-third are for their use 
exclusively; of its loans to its church societies in the South, 
the negroes received one-fourth. We have not space to detail 
the contributions of other Protestant bodies. But this is a fine 
specimen of religious zeal giving regular and liberal help to a 
despised race. Where is there any such organized action among 
Catholics ? Yet this is the work of but one sect, and we know 
that pretty nearly all the Protestant bodies in America are 
engaged in the same field. Let us now turn to the educational 
field. 

One of the most attractive novels of an author who writes 
in behalf of the black race Bricks without Straw ends with a 
cut of an open spelling-book, across the pages of which are 
printed the words, " In hoc signo vinces." There are multitudes 
who think with that charming writer that education and by 
that term they, for the most part, mean any kind of schooling, 
secular or religious is the chief force to elevate the colored 
race. True education, such as the Christian alone knows how to 
give, including the development of the whole man, looking to 
his welfare both temporal and eternal, giving a right under- 
standing of this life and the next, unfolding his true relations 
to both God and his fellow-men, would elevate any race. At 
all events a determined, we might say an heroic, effort is being 
made to educate the children of the colored people. We first 
offer a table of public-school statistics taken from the report of 
the Commissioner of Education for 1880 : 



FACTS AND SUGGESTIONS 



[April-, 



COMPARATIVE STATISTICS OF EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH. 

Table showing comparative population and enrolment of the -white and colored races 
in the public schools of the recent slave States, with total annual expenditure for 
the same in 1 8 80. 



STATES. 


WHITE. 


COLORED. 


Total expen- 
diture for 
both races. 


School 
Population. 


Enrolment. 


N 

I! 

<u t) 

K 


School 
Population. 


Enrolment. 


IN 
il 

0, " 


Alabama 


217,590 
181,799 
3T.505 
46,410 
236,319 

478,597 
139,661 
213,669 

175,251 
681,995 
291,770 
83,813 
403,353 
171,426 
314,827 
202,364 
29,612 


107,483 
53,229 

25,053 

18,871 

150,134 
241,679 
44,052 
I34,2IO 
112,994 
454,218 
136,481 
61,219 
229,290 
138,912 
152,136 
138,779 
16,934 


49 
29 
80 

4i 
64 
50 
32 
63 
64 
67 
47 
73 
57 
81 
48 
68 
57 


170,413 
54,332 
3,954 
42,099 
197,125 
66,564 
134,184 
63,591 
251,438 
41,489 

167,554 
144,315 
141,509 
62,015 
240,980 
7,749 
13,946 


72,OO7 
17,743 
2,770 

20,444 
86,399 
23,902 
34,476 
28,221 
123,710 
22,158 
89,125 

72,853 
60,851 

47,874 
68,600 
4,071 
9,505 


42 

33 
70 

49 
45 
36 
26 

44 
49 
53 
53 
50 
43 
77 
28 

53 
68 


$375,465 
238,056 
207,281 

"4,895 
471,029 
803,490 
480,320 

1,544,367 
830,704 

3-152,178 
352,882 
324,629 
724,862 
753,346 
946, 109 
716,864 
438,567 


Arkansas 


Delaware 


Florida 


Georgia 


Kentucky 


Louisiana 


Maryland 
Mississippi 
Missouri 


N. Carolina .... 
S Carolina 


Tennessee 
Texas 


Virginia 


West Virginia . . 
Dist. of Colum. . 


Total 


3,899,96! 


2,215,674 




1,803,257 


784,709 




$12,475,044 





It seems strange that the three States having the most per- 
haps nine-tenths of the Catholic negroes have a very low per- 
centage of attendance : Maryland, less than one-half; Kentucky, 
a little more than one-third ; and Louisiana, something more 
than one-quarter. The attendance at Catholic schools one six- 
hundredth part of the school population would not sensibly 
affect this percentage. It is unfortunate that in Catholic cen- 
tres they seem to have the poorest chances for schooling. For, 
according to Sadliers' Directory, these three States, Maryland, 
Kentucky, and Louisiana, have over one-half of the Catholic 
population of all races in the South viz., 666,918 out of a total 
1,255,201. 

We now turn to the work of the Protestant societies in the 
school-rooms of the South. We again quote from Our Brother in 
Black, p. 170: 

"The American Missionary Association (supported mainly by Congre- 
gationalists) is carrying on 8 chartered institutions, 12 high and normal 
schools, and 24 common schools in the South. In all of them there are 



1885.] ABOUT THE COLORED PEOPLE. 37 

7,207 pupils taught by 163 teachers. . . . This work costs money a great 
deal of it. Saying nothing of the hundreds of thousands invested in build- 
ings and school property, the work of the society in the South costs con- 
siderably more than $100,000 a year." 

Speaking of another denomination, the same author writes 
(p. 174): 

"The Freedmen's Aid Society is the child of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. I quote here from the thirteenth annual report [apparently for 
1879] : The society has aided in the establishment and support of the fol- 
lowing schools : Chartered institutions with collegiate powers, 6 ; theo- 
logical schools, 3; medical college, i; institutions not chartered, 10. In 
these institutions the number of pupils taught during the year is classified 
as follows; biblical, 372 ; law, 23 ; medical, 85; collegiate, 90; academic, 
220; normal, 1,100; intermediate, 217; primary, 832 total, 2,939. Amount 
of permanent school property, more than $250,000. Number of teachers 
employed this year, 80. This society has expended in this work during 
thirteen years $893,918 46. Nearly every dollar came from the North." 

Now for the Baptists (p. 178): 

''The American Baptist Home Mission, of New York, has expended 
something over $200,000 for buildings for educational purposes among the 
colored people of the South, about $300,000 for salaries, and about $300,- 
ooo for current expenses and beneficiary students. These sums, together 
with amounts contributed for permanent endowment, represent an aggre- 
gate of about $1,000,000 contributed through the society for educational 
(including theological and normal) instruction among the freedmen. The 
institutions assisted contained an aggregate of 1,191 pupils in 1880. There 
is now an institution in Selma, Alabama, with 260 students, partly sup- 
ported by the board; and one at Live Oak, Florida, the number of students 
not reported." 

The Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, and the Quakers are 
also engaged in this work. The first-named had in 1880 "two 
normal schools in the South ; three institutions for secondary 
instruction ; one university (sic] located at Charlotte, North 
Carolina, and one at Oxford, Pennsylvania " (ibid. p. 180). We 
may mention in passing that some years ago the one in Penn- 
sylvania, named after Lincoln, offered free education and sup- 
port to two Catholic colored boys of Baltimore. Love for 
their faith, however, made them refuse the offer, though they 
knew very well that the advantages they were then rejecting 
could never be theirs, since no Catholic college in the United 
States, great or small, would receive them children of the same 
holy mother. " The Episcopalians have established two normal 
schools and seven schools for secondary instruction " (ibid. p. 
181). It is noteworthy that long before there was a white Catho 



38 FACTS AND SUGGESTIONS [April, 

lie sisterhood specially devoted to the colored mission ah Episco- 
palian community was in the field. To their credit be it written, 
these women have been known to send, and even to come them- 
selves, for a priest, when asked to do so by the sick whom they 
were visiting. Besides the organized efforts of the Protestant 
societies and the private donations of their members, there is 
another permanent revenue, which we may be sure will go to 
them " The John F. Slater Fund." Mr. Slater was a mill- 
owner of Connecticut, and gave one million dollars in four per 
cent, bonds to form a fund for the education of the negro. Forty 
thousand dollars yearly are administered by a board of trustees, 
whose president is R. B. Hayes, ex-President of the United 
States, and whose agent is a Methodist clergyman named Hay- 
good, of Atlanta, Ga. At first the money was to go to normal 
schools; later on the trustees concluded to help schools in which 
trades were taught. The whole affair savors strongly of Meth- 
odism, and that denomination is likely to be the dispenser of this 
revenue. It is needless to say that over and above all this there 
are scattered efforts of various .Protestant societies and indivi- 
duals whose aggregate assistance must be very material indeed. 
The History of the Negro Race gives as the number of pupils dur- 
ing 1879 m a ^ such schools 14,054, very many of whom were 
normal scholars or pursuing an academic course of studies. 

Let us now look at what the Catholic Church is doing. The 
following figures, taken from Sadliers Directory for this year, seem 
to cover all our efforts : 

Dioceses. School's. Pupils. 



Baltimore, Md 


c 


808 


(Colored Sisters' Academy included.) 


Charleston, S. C 


I 


IOO 




Cincinnati, Ohio 


I 


QO 




Leavenworth, Kansas ..... 


. . . I 


80 




Louisville, Ky 


6 


312 




Mobile, Ala 


I 






Natchez, Miss 


e 


jac 








60 




New Orleans, La. .......... 


. . 6 


380 


(No report of one school ) 


Richmond, Va 


I 


CO 


(Not in Directory ) 


Savannah, Ga 


a 


7* 


(No report of one school.) 


St. Augustine, Fla. 













160 














39 


2,253 





The attendance of 8 schools is not given. Allowing for them 
the average of the schools where the numbers are given that is, 
72 then 576 must be added to the above total, making in all 
2,829. There are, moreover, a few orphans in the asylum at 



I885-] 



ABOUT THE COLORED PEOPLE. 



Leavenworth, 35 in St. Francis' Asylum, Baltimore, and 30 strays 
in St. Elizabeth's Infant Home, Baltimore. In all about 2,900 
children are under Catholic tutelage. 

To sum up, then, the attendance at all schools, public and pri- 
vate, for negro children in the Southern States, we have the fol- 
lowing statistics (Report of Commissioner of Education for 1880) : 

Table showing the number of schools for the colored race and enrolment in them, by 
institutions, without reference to States. 



Class of Institutions. 


Schools. 


Enrolment. 


Public schools. ., . 


16,669 


784.700 


Normal schools 


/I/I 


7 4.O8 


Institutions for secondary instruction ... 


?6 


e.217 




15 


1,717 




22 


800 







T? 




2 


87 


Schools for the deaf and dumb and the blind 


2 


122 








Catholic schools (less 220 in four schools included above) 


16,793 

*C 


800,113 
2,6OQ 










16,828 


802,722 



In these figures are not included the colored children of the 
Northern States. We have, then, the grand total of attendance, 
or rather enrolment, of colored children, 802,722, while their 
school population is 1,803,257. In other words, one million col- 
ored children never darken the door of any school-room. More 
than one-half of this unfortunate race must grow up in utter 
ignorance. And what is remarkable about this matter is that, 
according to the reports of the Commissioner of Education, as the 
years roll on the ratio of enrolment does not keep up with the 
increase of the school population. 

As to the cost of education in the South, we may say that in 
the public schools the number of white children is about three 
times that of the colored, and the gross expense for all is over 
twelve millions; we have thus something over four millions ex- 
pended on nearly eight hundred thousand colored children, mak- 
ing the cost of each child yearly about $5. The cost of every 
child educated by the American Missionary Association is about 
$14, and every one under the Freedmen's Aid Society costs 
nearly $17. In the Catholic schools that we know the cost of 
a child is not quite $5. In other words, the Protestant societies 
spend in proportion half as much again as 'the States and the 
Catholic Church taken together. There are good explanations 



40 FACTS AND SUGGESTIONS [April, 

for this, as the societies mentioned have advanced schools, un- 
known to the States or the church, which entail heavy expenses. 
The most curious point is that the District of Columbia spends 
an absurdly large amount to educate its children viz., $438,567 
on .16,934 white children and 9,505 colored. It may be added 
that in the District colored school-teachers predominate in their 
own schools. 

In educating- the colored children the States receive h'elp 
from the Peabody fund, and in the future will no doubt be great- 
ly assisted by Congressional appropriations. The Protestant 
religious schools are supported by rich and well-organized 
bodies in the North ; but the poor Catholic colored schools shift 
on, no one knows how. Some of them are supported by the 
parents whose children attend them; others are partly sup- 
ported by the parents ; others are kept up by the money raised 
by entertainments, concerts, etc., by the colored members of the 
churches to which such schools belong, and white Catholics of 
the localities have continually contributed with generosity. But 
we doubt very much if any of the Catholic colored schools 
receive help from other sources than local, excepting the trifle 
spared from the pittance granted to some dioceses by the Asso- 
ciation for the Propagation of the Faith. 

We have joined education and religion in our view of the 
negro problem, because one without the other can hardly flour- 
ish nowadays. Education which leaves eternity out of account is 
but a poor boon to beings destined to live for ever ; and religion 
in the nineteenth century without the rudiments of secular in- 
struction is apt to be poorly equipped with the necessary means 
of self-preservation. 

Now, any amount of practical knowledge of the American 
people and institutions produces the conviction that, in a gene- 
ration or two at most, every child in this country will have a 
school to go to and a teacher paid by somebody to give instruc- 
tion in the primary branches. For a Catholic child, black or 
white, to go to a public or private non-Catholic school in the 
Southern States is going to be far more dangerous to his religion 
than in the North; for the Southern Protestants are much more 
bigoted and enormously more numerous in proportion than 
their Northern brethren. There is no place in America where 
the dread and hatred of Catholicity is so intense as in the States 
where the negroes live. Calumnies stale for twenty-five years 
in the North are current in the South. You often find Maria 
Monk's Revelations beside the Bible. There are populous coun- 



1885.] ABOUT THE COLORED PEOPLE. 41 

ties in every Southern State, except the border ones and Louisi- 
ana, where there is not the faintest resemblance to a Catholic 
congregation ; localities where a Catholic priest was never seen ; 
and vast and powerful States, like North Carolina, where the 
Catholics are less in number than the smallest congregation of 
the city of New York. It is easy to see, then, that a neutral 
school, if such a thing could be possible anywhere, is not possible 
South. Every uncatholic school there will be strictly and 
squarely anti-Catholic. These facts we state that Catholics may 
bear in mind that if the education of the masses of the negroes by 
somebody is a foregone conclusion, so is their deeper and deeper 
aversion to the true religion as time goes on, unless we set to 
work to establish Catholic mission-schools among them. 

Mission-schools and mission-churches for the Southern col- 
ored people, supported by the Catholics of the North, are the 
need of the hour, in our opinion, if we are going to do any nota- 
ble work for the spread of the true faith. 

The field is vast and the prospects are inviting. About three 
millions of negroes are professedly of no religion. As many more 
follow Protestant vagaries in their lowest type. Of doctrine 
ignorant, in morals to a great extent depraved, as a race despised, 
and with prospects very doubtful, they need tender hands like 
the Good Samaritan's. Of their children over a million are now* 
shut out from the chance of being educated, and will be so for 
at least a* few years to come ; while of those going to school, only 
a handful bow the head to the crucified Saviour in the Catholic 
school-room. Now, for so gigantic a work it is idle to look to 
the Catholics of the South, though it is true that the little now 
being done is supported to a great extent by their charity. The 
population of the States in which the negroes live, according to 
the census of 1880, is 18,412,402 whites and 6,082,764 colored. 
The Catholics are about one-tenth of the white, one-fi'fth of the 
colored, and one-sixteenth of the whole number. Two-thirds of 
the Catholics, moreover, are in Maryland, Kentucky, Louisiana, 
and the diocese of St. Louis. The remaining third are scattered 
over thirteen States and a part of a fourteenth viz., Alabama, 
Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Vir- 
ginia, and a part of Missouri. These States are larger than 
Great Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy to- 
gether. How very few Catholics in such an extensive territory ! 
The prophet, did he visit them, might well liken them to the old 
grapes left here and there upon the vines after the vintage. It 



42 FACTS ABOUT THE COLORED PEOPLE. [April, 

is unnecessary to say anything about the poverty of the Southern 
Catholics. The few families once wealthy belonging to the old 
faith lost their all in the war. 

Southern Protestants, who are so much more numerous and 
of far greater wealth than their Catholic neighbors, depend on 
their Northern friends to care for the cause of religion and edu- 
cation among the colored people. " I want to publicly thank 
you, men of the North," said United States Senator Brown, of 
Georgia, in 1880, speaking of the Northern aid for educating the 
blacks, " for doing what we were not able to do. We are too 
poor. But it needed to be done. You have done it. I thank you 
and pray you to continue your help." He was permitted to 
speak for millions and to millions. He voiced the crying needs 
of multitudes who could not speak for themselves, who did not 
even know the depths of their need. The Catholics of the 
North are willing to help in this great work. But it must be 
presented to them. The adage, " Out of sight, out of mind," is 
particularly true of charitable deeds. Some way by which the 
great harvest within their own country will be regularly and 
constantly kept before the view of our brother-Catholics of the 
North seems obviously necessary. This implies an harmonious 
and organized method. That this is the mind of the hierarchy 
'was plainly shown by the words of the pastoral of the recent 
Plenary Council directing the raising of funds for the purpose. 

The favorable manner in which the press of the land, far and 
near, received the bishop of Savannah's eloquent pastoral on the 
church's work among the negroes seems to indicate that any 
movement on her part to cultivate so greatly neglected a portion 
of the Master's vineyard would be cordially encouraged on all 
hands. Catholics cannot but desire the conversion and salvation 
of this race. And the conservative element among Protestants 
must recognize in the church a stanch bulwark against the evils 
asserted as menacing the country because of the unfortunate 
position of the negro. The church, moreover, has the only true 
means to. uplift him, and in doing so in nowise endangers the 
safety of the country. A stupendous task, indeed, but not too 
great for the church, whose power is that of the Lord of Hosts ! 
And begin she will soon. Then the reproach will disappear 
that in a Christian land there are six millions of men, almost an 
entire race, who are strangers to the Catholic Church. 



1885.] A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING" 43 



A MEANING OF THE IDYLS OF THE KING. 

IT would seem that an apology is necessary in presuming to 
interpret Lord Tennyson's Idyls in a sense, as far as the writer 
knows, hitherto never given to them by their host of admirers. 
Yet it seems so evident that they warrant such an interpretation 
that it is strange they have never before been so regarded. I 
rely solely upon their own intrinsic evidence, by which light is 
revealed a unity and depth of meaning far beyond what is com- 
monly supposed to be their only contents. Like a string of 
pearls, each of which is individually independent of the other 
yet bound together by the same strand, each shedding its own 
brilliancy yet blending its lustre with that of its neighbor, to- 
gether they flash out in unison a color and a fire such as would 
be wholly lost were they separated. It is true that each dis- 
tinctly possesses its own value and beauty, but this is enhanced a 
hundred-fold in the bond of a common unity. What this is we 
shall better learn from the poems themselves. For the want of 
space we shall take only three of them to illustrate what we 
mean. These three shall be the first, the " Coming of Arthur," 
one intermediate, " Gareth and Lynette," and the last of all, the 
" Passing of Arthur." 

Before the coming of Arthur discord reigned in Britain ; there 
was neither law nor peace ; internal strife from within and war 
from the heathen without. 

" For many a petty king ere Arthur came 
Ruled in this isle, and, ever waging war 
Each upon other, wasted all the land ; 
And still from time to time the heathen 
Swarm'd over seas, and harried what was left. 
And so there grew great tracts of wilderness, 
Wherein the beast was ever more and 
But man was less and less, till 

That central idea to which we just now 
more fully see later on, lies in the moral u 
Arthur's spiritual nature, by which he o 
within, the heathen without, and establishes 
head, to whom all else is subject. Before the coming of the spiri- 
tual man there was perpetual petty war between the passions of 
man and himself as to which should gain dominion. The pas- 
sions predominated, and so the beast grew stronger in him, while 




44 A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING." [April, 

the man grew less and less. Not till Arthur came, subjugating 
the lower to the higher, the carnal to the spiritual, creating the 
order of the Round Table, which is the organized life of the 
spiritual man, was a kingdom founded wherein one was king and 
all others subjects. Arthur goes to the assistance of Leodogran, 
King of Cameliard, who 

" Sent to him, saying, 'Arise and help us thou ! 
For here between the man and beast we die.' " 

When Arthur comes to the land of Leodogran he there sees 
Guinevere, the king's daughter, and 

" Felt the light of her eyes into his life 

Smite on the sudden " ; 
and 

" Passing thence to battle, felt 
Travail, and throes and agonies of life, 
Desiring to be joined with Guinevere." 

Here is the spiritual element, in so far as the human soul has 
been created for union with the body, evincing its natural ten- 
dency to be joined to that body for which in the natural order it 
is* destined. Arthur then thinks to himself: 

" ' Shall I not lift her from this land of beasts 
Up to my throne, and side by side with me ? ' ' 

In that union he is to work his will, and 

" Have power on this dark land to lighten it, 
And power on this dead world to make it live." 

The spiritual nature, by uniting itself to the carnal, is to lift it up, 
infusing its own spiritual life into it, and by means of this make 
the dead world live, which otherwise would lie dead in the flesh. 
Here is the keynote to the Idyls the war of time and the grosser 
elements of human nature upon the soul. In " Gareth and 
Lynette " we find it depicted in the allegory sculptured on the 
walls of the pass leading to the hermit's cell : 

" ' Sir Knave, my knight, a hermit once was here, 
'Whose holy hand hath fashioned on the rock 
The war of Time against the soul of man. 

Know ye not these ? ' And Gareth lookt and read 

' Phosphorus,' then ' Meridies ' ' Hesperus ' 
' Nox ' ' Mors,' beneath five figures, armed men, 
Slab after slab, their faces forward all, 
And running down the soul, a Shape that fled, 
With broken wings, torn raiment, and loose hair, 
For help and shelter to the hermit's cave." 



1 88s.] A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING." 45 

The soul seeks refuge from the pursuit of its enemies in the spiri- 
tual life. Arthur rescues the body from its own passions by lift- 
ing it to himself and yet holding it as subject. 

When Arthur asks Leodogran to give him Guinevere to wife 
the king doubts Arthur's kingship, as the flesh calls in question 
the soul's supremacy. He asks for confirmation of Arthur's 
title ; sending for his chamberlain, requires his counsel : 

" Knowest thou aught of Arthur's birth ? " 

The chamberlain refers him to Bleys, who typifies knowledge, 
and Merlin, who typifies wisdom, who alone know " the secret of 
our Arthur's birth." Bleys was Merlin's master, but the latter 
soon outstripped him, for wisdom is greater than knowledge as 
we read in " In Memoriam " : 

" Let her know her place : 
She is the second, not the first. 

For she is earthly of the mind, 
But wisdom heavenly of the soul." 

Merlin is Arthur's great friend, builds him his cities and palaces, 
and guides him in the ruling of the realm. We are referred to 
Merlin for the secret of Arthur's birth. When Merlin presents 
Arthur to the quarrelling barons they cry out: 

" 'Away with him ! 
No king of ours.' " 

There shall be no spiritual supremacy for the warring pas- 
sions; each desired to rule his own, and preferred the strife of 
carnal license to the unity of spiritual liberty. None know of 
Arthur's birth, and most doubt ; some few, as Bedivere, Ulfius, 
Brastias, and Bellicent, believe in him as true king, but their 
acceptance of him is on faith. 

Whilst Leodogran is debating within himself the legitimacy 
of Arthur, Bellicent comes to Cameliard and tells the king at his 
request what she knows of Arthur's coming, and how 

" In simple words of great authority " 
he bound his knights 

" By so straight vows to his own self 
That when they rose knighted from kneeling, some 
Were pale as at the passing of a ghost, 
Some flushed and others dazed, as one who wakes 
Half-blinded at the coming of the light " ; 



46 A MEANING OF THE " IDYLS OF THE KING" [April, 

and when he speaks " large, divine, and comfortable words " to 
them in order to confirm them in their vows, she beholds 

" From eye to eye through all their order flash 
A momentary likeness of the king: 
And ere it left their faces, through the cross 
And those around it and the Crucified, 
Down from the casement over Arthur, smote 
Flame color, vert, and azure, in three rays, 
And falling upon each of three fair queens, 
Who stood in silence near his throne, the friends 
Of Arthur, gazing on him, tall, with bright, 
Sweet faces, who will help him at his need." 

Merlin was there, 

"And near him stood the Lady of the Lake 
Who knows a subtler magic than his own 
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful ; 
She gave the king his huge cross-hilted sword, 
Whereby to drive the heathen out ; a mist 
Of incense curled about her, and her face 
Well-nigh was hidden in the minster gloom ; 
But there was heard among the holy hymns 
A voice as of the waters, for she dwells 
Down in a deep calm, whatsoever storms 
May shake the world, and, when the surface rolls, 
Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord." 

The picture here presented to us is replete with meaning. First 
we have a spiritual organization effected by the knights swearing 
their vows to the spiritual man, and becoming like to him because 
of the vows that lifted them up to his great desire and purpose. 
Whilst the vow still trembled on the lip, from above comes a 
three-colored light in three rays, falling upon each of three fair 
queens, Charity, Hope, and Faith, according to their respective 
colors, flame, vert, and azure. They are Arthur's friends, the 
three theological virtues, who are to help the soul in its need. 
Merlin is there, but more especially to be noticed is the Lady of 
the Lake, typifying religion, who possesses a subtler magic even 
than Merlin's. She dwells beneath the waters in a deep calm, 
and, like her Lord and Founder, has power to walk the troubled 
waters. She gives to Arthur his brand Excalibur, wherewith to 
drive the heathen out that is to say, it is religion who gives the 
soul the spiritual weapons wherewith to war against the passions 
and hell, typified by the heathen. Excalibur is to be used and 
then cast away, but not until the soul itself leaves its earth 1)' 
tenement, after which it no longer has need of a weapon, for it 



1 88$.] A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING" 47 

then passes from the body militant either to the church trium- 
phant or suffering. 

Let us here consider the description of the image of the Lady 
of the Lake as it is depicted sculptured on the gates of Camelot 
in " Gareth and Lynette " : 

" And there was no gate like it under heaven ; 
For barefoot on the keystone, which was lined 
And rippled like an ever-fleeting wave, 
The Lady of the Lake stood : all her dress 
Wept from her sides as water flowing away ; 
But like the cross her great and goodly arms 
Stretched under all the cornice and upheld : 
And drops of water fell from either hand ; 
And down from one a sword was hung, from one 
A censer, either worn with wind and storm ; 
And o'er her breast floated the sacred fish ; 
And in the space to left-of her and right 
Were Arthur's wars in weird devices done, 
New things and old co-twisted, as if Time 
Were nothing, so inveterately that men 
Were giddy gazing there ; and over all, 
High on the top, were those three queens, the friends 
Of Arthur who should help him at his need." 

It is scarcely necessary to make any comment on this passage. It 
speaks for itself. The upholding arms of the Lady of the Lake 
signify the sustaining power of religion in the social and spirit- 
ual order ; the water flowing from her hands, absolution ; the 
suspended sword, her spiritual weapons ; the censer, prayer ; 
and the sacred fish, the Christian symbol of Christ. Arthur's 
wars in the spaces to her right and left typify the soul's battles 
with time ; the three queens above, Faith, Hope, and Charity, 
the theological virtues. Whilst Gareth and his followers are 
staring in wonder at the gate an ancient, gray-bearSed man 
comes out from the city and asks them who they are. Gareth, 
keeping his incognito, tells him falsely, and at the same time asks 
him to convince his doubting followers of the truth of the city's 
reality, which they had just called in question: 

"'These my men 

(Your city moved so weirdly in the mist) 
Doubt if the king be king at all, or come 
From fairyland ; and whether this be built 
By magic, and fairy kings and queens, 
Or whether there be any city at all, 
Or all a vision.' " 



48 A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING" [April, 

Camelot is the spiritual city, which the tillers of the field, 
whom the old seer afterwards calls cattle of the field, declared 
was no real city, but a vision the carnal man, in other words, 
holding to matter as the only reality. 

"Then that old seer made answer, playing on him 
And saying, ' Son, I have seen the good ship sail 
Keel upward and mast downward in the heavens, 
And solid turrets topsy-turvy in air; 
And here is truth.' " 

To those who are submerged in the grossness of their lower 
nature the truth appears as absurd as the wonders the old seer 
narrates. For all that there is truth in the narration, although 
incomprehensible to Gareth's henchmen. 

" ' But an' it please thee not, 
Take thou the truth as thou hast told it me. 
For truly, as thou sayst, a fairy king 
And fairy queens have built the city, son. 

And, as thou sayst, it is enchanted, son, 

For there is nothing in it, as it seems, 

Saving the king ; though some there be that hold 

The king a shadow and the city real.' " 

If Gareth enters he will fall a victim to the king's enchant- 
ments ; but if he dread to swear the king's vows, 

" ' Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide 
Without, among the cattle of the field.' " 

The spiritual man is a shadow to the carnal man, and this is truth 
to him, but it is falsehood to the one who knows the reality of 
things. He who wishes to abide within the spiritual city must 
swear the King's vows and keep them, and only in that way can 
he know the truth ; otherwise he must abide without among the 
cattle of the field, who as brutes know only matter. 

When Gareth, angered by the seer's mocking answer, retorts 
indignantly, he replies : 

" ' Know ye not, then, the riddling of the bards ? 
"Confusion, and illusion, and relation, 
Elusion, and occasion, and evasion " ? 
I mock thee not but as thou mock'st me, 

And now thou goest up to mock the king, 
Who cannot brook the shadow of a lie.' " 

You who are blinded to the spiritual nature of things, take my 



1885.] A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING" 49 

words after the manner of your own affliction, blindly. The 
truth is confusion and illusion to you who regard it as a lie. It 
is not I who mock you, but yourself, mocking the truth, think all 
else mockery. You even dare to go into the presence of the 
king with this falsehood on your brow ; but he will not brook 
such deception. He who wishes to enter into the spiritual city 
must do so cleansed and free from all taint of falsehood, and un- 
less he be so purified that city will seem an hallucination and a 
mockery to him. Arthur, the spiritual man, cannot suffer false- 
hood to abide with him. 

In these passages from " Gareth and Lynette " we have Con- 
firmation of the passages we quoted from the " Coming of Ar- 
thur " : religion, as typified in the Lady of the Lake, arming the 
soul with its spiritual weapons, and endowed with a superhuman 
power to guard and uphold the social and spiritual fabric ; the 
spiritual man lifting up the carnal to the vision of the truth by 
union with him, and bestowing upon him freedom from the flesh 
in binding him to the obedience of the noblest in him, the spi- 
ritual. 

After Bellicent describes to Leodogran the founding of the 
Round Table she narrates the story which the dying Bleys told 
of Arthur's coming : how he and Merlin, descending to the beach 
on a stormy night, 

" Beheld, so high upon the dreamy deeps 

It seemed in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof 
A dragon winged, and all from stem to stern 
Bright with a shining people on the decks, 
And gone as soon as seen." 

They 'then " dropt to the cove," and as they stand upon the 
beach, borne upon a huge wave "full of voices," "and in a 
flame," a naked babe is washed up from the deep, whom 'Merlin 
catches in his arms and cries : " The king ! Here is an heir for 
Uther." As the seer stands there a flame of fire surrounds him 
and the child, 

" And presently thereafter followed calm, 
Free sky and stars." 

Merlin, when questioned by Bellicent as to the truth of this tale, 
answers her in " riddling triplets of old times ": 

" Rain, rain, and sun ! A rainbow in the sky ! 
A young man will be wiser by and by ; 
An old man's wits may wander ere he die. 
VOL. XLI. 4 



50 A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING" [April, 

" Rain, rain, and sun ! A rainbow on the lea ! 
And truth is this to me and that to thee ; 
And truth or clothed or naked let it be. 

" Rain, sun, and rain ! And the free blossom blows! 
Sun, rain, and sun ! and where is he who knows ? 
From the great deep to the great deep he goes." 

Bellicent here stands for that human desire to pierce all mystery, 
to know whence comes that spiritual element ; and Merlin an- 
swers her in what she calls riddles, because they are beyond her 
limited comprehension, for it is only the eagle's eye can gaze 
upon the full glory of the sun. Besides the allusion to Bleys' 
wandering wits, Merlin's triplets cloak a great truth, but which 
Bellicent fails to grasp, and hence calls them riddles. Life has 
its many vicissitudes, its rain and its sunshine, storm and calm, 
hopes and fears, but truth ever abides the same in the midst of 
all, whether clothed or naked. The soul, which is the house of 
truth, passes through all changes of time, all vicissitudes of space, 
but from eternity to eternity it passes. 

" From the great deep to the great deep he goes." 

Merlin's riddling angers her, but wisdom knows better than to 
unveil the light to eyes too weak to endure its brilliancy. So 
Merlin's words are riddles to Bellicent, yet she believes in the 
king, for her faith stands her in the stead of knowledge. Merlin 
has sworn, 

" Though men may wound him, that he will not die " 

wisdom affirming the immortality of the soul, which passes but 
cannot die. 

Leodogran is pleased with what he hears, but still doiibts, and, 
growing drowsy, nods and sleeps, and sees a land filled with 
war, rapine, and fire, and on the top of a high peak, half-hidden 
in a thick mist, a phantom king, who cries out to others there in 
a loud voice; but they heed him not, and slay on, and burn, and 
cry out, " No king of ours ! " Then his dream changes ; the solid 
earth disappears, and the erst phantom king stands out the only 
reality of all, standing " in heaven crowned." In Leodogran's 
dream we have the turmoil and strife of life, the fierce war of 
the passions, blinding the healthy vision, poisoning the atmo- 
sphere, whilst men in the heat and rage of contest are crying out 
against their better natures and swearing the spiritual man is no 
king of theirs. Each is his own master and owes obedience to 
none. When the battle is over and the dust of contest laid, and 



i885-J A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING." 51 

the smoke and flame of passion passed away which had obscured 
the light, the spiritual man stands out in his glory a crowned 
king, the only abiding presence where all else has perished. 

Leodogran consents, and Guinevere is given to Arthur to 
wife, which twain Dubric the high-priest blesses, saying : 

u ' Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world 
Other ; and ma)' thy queen be one with thee, 
And all this order of thy Table Round 
Fulfil the boundless purpose of the king.' " 

The world is to become other by the union of the flesh with 
the spirit, " men lifted up above the brutish sense," and the 
spiritual order established in the Round Table to work the pur- 
pose of the king. At the marriage-feast the great lords of Rome, 
" the slowly fading mistress of the world," come and demand 
tribute ; but Arthur refuses it, telling them that 

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new " ; 

that the reign of Rome is over ; a new era, a new law, has come 
in, and the might of Rome is dead. Henceforth man is to be 
governed by a spiritual king ; the old allegiance to the world 
has passed away, and a new kingdom has been established. Ar- 
thur and his knights strive with Rome, and, through being " one 
in will," 

" Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame 
The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reigned." 

The spiritual order is established and proven in its warfare with 
the heathen, and the knights cemented together by their vows : 

" To reverence the king as if he were 
Their conscience, and their conscience as their king ; 
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ ; / 
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs ; 
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it ; 
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity ; 
To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
And worship her by years of noble deeds 
Until they won her." 

By this means was to come about the cleansing of the realm, 
the purification of the heart and strengthening of the will by 
directing the desires to a pure object and disciplining them by 
repeated efforts to the attainment of its ideal. In this way the 
passions are to be subjected to the control of right reason ; not 
stamped out, but guided to their true and proper objects. We 



52 A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING." [April, 

have here a grand and beautiful harmony effected the affec- 
tions, the will, and the intellect in unison tending to the goal of 
perfection : law, order, and justice reigning in the spiritual man. 
Dagonet, in the "Last Tournament," calls it "Arthur's music," 
the soul's harmony with the true and the good. But all this is 
soon to be broken by a hideous discord ; this beautiful house 
which the soul has builded up to the music of truth and good- 
ness soon falls into ruin and desolation. The music is broken 
by the discord of evil, and Dagonet, seeing the approaching dis- 
solution, declares, in the " Last Tournament," that Arthur's harp, 
as before, 

" ' Makes a silent music up in heaven, 
And I and Arthur and the angels hear, 
And then we skip.' " 

But Tristram cannot hear, for he has sinned and broken that 
harmony. The first discord comes in the sin of the queen and 
Lancelot : the flesh rebels against the spiritual dominion of the 
soul, and in seeking its carnal gratification breaks the bond of 
union. Then follows the sin of Tristram and Isolt. 

' ' Then others, following these my mightiest knights 
And drawing foul ensample from fair names, 
Sinned also.' " 

The passions are let loose from the bridle of restraint, and 
finally leap beyond all curb. One defection succeeds another ; 
treachery, treason, and war quickly follow ; peace dies and 
strife again is born. The spiritual kingdom is broken up, for 
there is rebellion in the flesh. 

To trace the course of this pollution through the successive 
tableaux of the different idyls is beyond our present scope. We 
will but take a hasty glance at the closing picture of the " Pass- 
ing of Arthur." 

The smouldering fires of treason have at length broken forth 
into the lurid flame of rebellion, and the king is about to fight 
his last great fight before he passes. Arthur is forewarned of his 
coming departure by the ghost of Gawain, who, blown 

" Along a wandering wind and past his ear, 
Went shrilling, ' Hollow, hollow all delight ! 
Hail, king ! to-morrow thou shalt pass away 
Farewell ! there is an isle of rest for thee ; 
And I am blown along a wandering wind, 
And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight ! ' " 



1885.] A MEANING OF THE "IDYLS OF THE KING" 53 

This is Gawain, " light of love " and faithless to his word, for 
ever blown about upon a wandering wind, and, like Dante's 
Francesca, bewailing that irrevocable past which he once revelled 
in as the very substance of life, and now, finding its emptiness, 
moans out the vanity of the world. But to Arthur, the spiritual 
man, who has ever stood firm in the midst of the shocks of the 
conflict around him, he promises rest, and passes on with his 
wail of perpetual sorrow. 

Then follows the great battle in the west with its true Ho- 
meric proportions. Arthur and Bedivere remain alone upon the 
field, and Bedivere, in the full puissance of faith, hails him as 
king even in that last extremity : 

"' My king ! 

King everywhere ! and so the dead have kings. 
There also will I worship thee as king.' " 

Modred approaches them and Bedivere points him out to Ar- 
thur : 

" ' He that brought 

The heathen back among us, yonder stands, 
Modred, unharmed, the traitor of thine house.' 
Then spake the king : ' My house has been my doom. 
But call not thou this traitor of my house, 
Who hath but dwelt beneath one roof with me. 
My house are rather those who sware my vows, 
Yea, even while they brake them owned me king. 
And well for thee saying in my dark hour, 
When all the purport of my throne has failed, 
That quick or dead thou boldest me for king. 
King am I, whatsoever be their cry.' " 

Through Modred's treason the heathen had been brought back 
again ; internal discord had opened the doors to the foes with- 
out ; the lower man, through sin, had betrayed the peace and 
unity of the soul, whose integrity, now shattered, lay bare to the 
attacks of all rnalignants. Bedivere still declares Arthur king 
and reiterates his fidelity and allegiance. The spiritual man, in 
the midst of all afflictions, rebelled against and betrayed, still 
asserts his authority, and, rising up in the dignity of his right, 
cries out: 

" ' King am I, whatsoever be their cry.' " 
Those are of his household who swear his vows, and even in the 



54 A MEANING OF THE " IDYLS OF THE KING" [April, 

breaking of them, spite of their perfidy, must own him king-, as 
did Gawain in his vision when he addressed Arthur, " Hail, 
king ! " Arthur, sorely wounded, commands Sir Bedivere to 
throw his brand Excalibur into the lake, and then report to him 
what happens. After being twice faithless through temptation 
of the riches in the hilt, Bedivere flings Excalibur into the mere 
and reports to Arthur : 

" 'Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him ; 
But when I looked again, behold ! an arm, 
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, 
That caught him by the hilt and brandished him 
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.' '* 

The soul's spiritual weapon, by which it had smitten its ene- 
-mies in the battle of life, is returned to religion, the Lady of 
the Lake ; for no longer is there need of it on the long journey to 
that "isle of rest," where is no warfare, but long peace and rest. 
Arthur is borne by Bedivere to the shore, where lies a black 
barge whose 

" Decks are dense with stately forms, 
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream ; by these, 
Three queens with crowns of gold." 

These are the three queens who should help Arthur at his 
need ; the three theological virtues now come to the assistance 
of the soul passing to the eternity beyond. Bedivere, at the 
king's command, places him in the barge, whence Arthur ad- 
dresses him before departing : 

" The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

The time has come when the soul must pass from the old order 
life in the ftesh to the new order beyond space and time. The 
barge moves slowly from the shore, and finally vanishes beyond 
the horizon to Bedivere, 

" Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand." 
He has passed ; the spiritual fight is over ; 

" And the new sun rose, bringing the new year." 



1885.] CHURCH HYMN FOR PASCHAL TIME. 

CHURCH HYMN FOR PASCHAL TIME. 

(TRANSLATED.) 

To Christ the King let praises ring 1 , 
And at his royal banquet sing, 
Who, clothed in robes of purest white, 
Have tracked the Red Sea in your flight. 

'Tis love of God's own Son divine 
Gives sacred blood to drink as wine ; 
'Tis love is priest to sacrifice 
Christ's body blest, salvation's price. 

God's striking angel passes far 

The doors with blood that sprinkled are ; 

The waters ope for Israel's path : 

On Pharao close in drowning wrath. 

Our Pasch and Paschal Lamb are one : 

The Father's co-eternal Son, 

The azymes of sincerity, 

To minds from guile and malice free. 

Hail, chosen Victim of the skies ! 

To thee all Hell subjected lies ; 

The bonds of death thy death has broke, 

And hopes of life thy rising woke. 

The gates of Heaven open fly, 
The victor Cross illumes the sky; 
While back to night flies conquered Hell, 
Minion, and prince, and chieftain fell. 

Our Paschal joy thou, Jesus, be 

For time and for eternity. 

From sin's death freed, new-born to grace, 

May we possess thee face to face. 

To God the Father, Lord of Heaven, 
To Christ his Son, from death arisen, 
And to the Holy Ghost, we'll raise 
Our hymns in everlasting praise. 



56 HEGEL AND HIS NE w ENGLAND ECHO. [April, 



HEGEL AND HIS NEW ENGLAND ECHO. 

THE rarest quality in this world is what theologians call 
" prudence,"* or counsel, or judgment, and what ordinary peo- 
ple call "common sense." Its deficiency is often most marked 
in men otherwise most gifted. Great orators and great poets, 
even great statesmen, sometimes show a lamentable lack of it ; 
but great metaphysicians most frequently lead the vanguard in 
the army of fools. We are not surprised to miss it in poetic 
characters in which imagination and passion predominate ; but 
it is astonishing to find it lacking in men gifted with logical 
powers of extraordinary force. These are the thoughts that 
come naturally into the mind of one who reads George William 
Frederick Hegel's Propadeutik, in which he explains his theory of 
the " Logic of Being." The coolness with which this wonder- 
fully gifted man wades through page upon page of serried argu- 
ment to expound a system repugnant to the common sense of the 
average child, is but one instance of the imperturbable gravity 
with which other metaphysicians propound equally absurd sys- 
tems of philosophy. He is the most logical and consequently 
the most absurd of the modern German metaphysicians. 

Starting out with the admission of Kant's false assertion that 
it is impossible to get from the subject to the object in the realm 
of thought, like Fichte and Schelling, Hegel holds to the uni- 
versal identity of all things. Kant would not concede that the 
mind apprehends any real object, or that there is a bridge unit- 
ing the subject and the object in thought, and consequently he 
led logically to scepticism, although he was not willing to ad- 
mit the conclusion of his own premises. He spurred his rea- 
son to the dividing line, to the abyss which he said separated 
the thinking subject from its object ; and then, balking at the 
imaginary chasm, he applied the whip of a dictamen practicum 
rationis to his intellect, and made it bound to the other side in- 
stead of walking along the straight road and the safe bridge 
pointed out to him by homety common sense and self-conscious- 
ness. 

Fichte, shutting his ears to the voice of the same monitors, 
and not willing to admit the " practical dictate " of reason, to 
get from subject to object identified them both, and made them 

* Recta ratio agibilium St. Thomas calls it. Plato names it $p<5>i<r. 



1885.] HEGEL AND HIS NEW ENGLAND ECHO. 57 

mere forms or modifications of his own personality. For him 
there is nothing in the universe but one large capital I, to which 
everything physical, intellectual, and moral is referable. Schel- 
ling advanced a step farther in the direction of silly systematiza- 
tion. Fichte considered everything objective a mere form of the 
I ; Schelling made all things mere forms of the absolute. This 
absolute destroys the personal in nature and develops itself in the 
real order in the forms of weight, of light, motion, life, and or- 
ganization, and in the ideal order produces virtue and science, 
goodness and religion, beauty and art. The absolute, personal 
I, of which all things are forms with Fichte, becomes the abso- 
lute, impersonal not-I of Schelling. Yet his conscience gave the 
lie to his theory. 

Farther onward marched Hegel with a theory of his own 
which he intended to be an improvement on the two preceding 
ones. He built all things on what he calls the idea. Its object 
is being, which is found by analysis in all our conceptions. This 
being is conceived with various and often contradictory attri- 
butes. It is one, it is multiple ; it is material, it is spiritual ; it is 
absolute yet it is relative, it is finite and yet it is infinite. These 
attributes of being suppose one another at the same time that 
they destroy one another. Thus the finite supposes the infi- 
nite, and the infinite supposes the finite, as they are correla- 
tive terms ; yet they destroy each other, for what is finite cannot 
be infinite, nor can what is infinite be finite. Therefore beyond 
the finite and the infinite we must look for a term common to 
both, a term neither finite nor infinite, yet which can be either. 
Such a term is being, taken in its most general sense that is, being 
without any properties, modes, or determinations. This idea of 
indeterminate, abstract being supposes another idea namely, the 
idea of nothing. We cannot conceive being without thinking of 
its opposite, no-being ; nor can we think of no-being, or nothing, 
without thinking of being, its contrary. The ideas of being and 
nothing are therefore correlative ideas. But these ideas do not 
differ like those of the different beings already mentioned. For 
the being of which Hegel speaks is the same in all things and 
entirely destitute of properties, and, since no form or modifica- 
tion can be apprehended in it, it does not really differ from no- 
thing. Hence the fundamental principle of Hegel's system 
nothing and being are identical. Yet this being-nothing is not 
the same as absolute nothing. Being-nothing is a medium be- 
tween being, properly so-called, and absolute nothing. This 
medium is the becoming das Werden ; because, although it is 



58 HEGEL AND HIS NEW ENGLAND ECHO. [April, 

nothing real, it may become so. This becoming, in developing 
itself, produces logic, nature, and the human race ! Such is the 
pantheistic nightmare begotten of this great man's mind in the 
full possession of his mental powers, and such is the system now 
in vogue even among hard-headed and practical New England 
thinkers. 

" TfKTfl TtpOOTlffTOV V7tTjV}A.lOV Nv T) JteXaVOTTTepOS CfOr."* 



The " wind-egg " has burst, and out of it a high-soaring transcen- 
dental fledgling has sprung into existence in New England, in 
the character of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Hegel's pupils, young 
and intelligent Germans, used to listen in raptures to his vaga- 
ries, and go into ecstasy over his high-sounding phrases about 
the idea, which is ever producing God and the universe, the 
chimeras of human intelligence. In like manner the " Concord 
School of Philosophy " in Massachusetts, has been, season after 
season, dilating on the Emersonian philosophy and writing essays 
on the words of the " master," as they love to call him. Clever 
men like Oliver Wendell Holmes blasphemously compare him 
to the Messiah and write his life as that of an original genius 
and a saint. Professor W. T. Harris and F. B. Sanborn extol 
him as a new Plato or a Socrates, and would have us take his 
poetry and prose as the great masterpieces of the age. And yet 
Emerson is purely a plagiarist. There is hardly an original 
thought in his works. There are odd forms of expression, con- 
ceits of thought, and striking peculiarities of style, a crispness 
and brilliancy peculiarly his own ; but the matter, the ground- 
work, the ideas are all stolen. He read almost every volume of 
Goethe fifty-five of them at least, according to his own testi- 
mony f and the pantheism of the German poet impregnates 
his whole mind. In his essay on Books Emerson himself con- 
fesses that his learning is second-hand. A hundred passages in 
his works point to the Hegelian sources from which he drew his 
inspiration. " The receiver," the human mind, " is only the All- 
Giver in part and in infancy." Again he writes : " We can point 
nowhere to anything final but tendency ; but tendency appears 
on all hands." This is Hegel's eternal Werden. Nothing is. 
Everything is only becoming or going to be. Such is the teach- 
ing. But how nonsensical it is ! We know that things are fixed 
in existence and we see them. There are real trees and animals 
around us, fixed in their nature, their life, and their death. There 

* Aristophanes' 'Opiaflet, v. 695. 

t Lift o/Emtrson, by Holmes, p. 380. Boston : Houghton & Co. 1885. 



1885.] HEGEL AND HIS NEW ENGLAND ECHO. 59 

is in them a tendency to death ; they are going to die, if you 
will ; but there is no indefinite tendency and nothing of the infi- 
nite in them. " The true Christianity is a faith in the infinitude 
of man." Humbug ! Man is not infinite, and he knows it. Mr. 
Emerson knew that even he, great as his followers thought him, 
was limited on every side, physically, mentally, and morally. 
Why, then, this twaddle about the " infinitude of man "? 

" The idealist takes his departure from his consciousness, and 
reckons the world an appearance. His thought that is the uni- 
verse." Here is another Hegelian aphorism in New England 
clothes. Now, if the " idealist " that is, the transcendentalist 
takes his departure from his consciousness and he is not crazy, he 
knows that he is a distinct, finite existence ; and that the uni- 
verse, the trees, flowers, birds, stars around and above him, are 
realities and not appearances. Botany is as much a science of 
reality as astronomy ; and the transcendentalist who asserts that 
their objects are only appearances and not realities deserves only 
to be laughed at. " His thought " is not " the universe," and he 
knows it. His thought is his mental act ; the universe is exter- 
nal to him and not identified with his personality. He surely 
ought to know it, for every child does. A hot stove is a part of 
the universe, and when the child burns his fingers by touching it 
he knows that the stove is not in his head nor a part of himself. 
Mr. Emerson knew that the cabbages in his garden were not a 
part of himself. Then why pretend to believe that they were ? 
And why should sensible men call such raving by the dignified 
name of philosophy ? " The mind is one, and nature is its cor 
relative," and in the light of these two facts " history is to be 
read and written." * This man expects every one to accept his 
assertions as gospel. The Concord School of Philosophy may 
do so, but we cannot. Nature is not the correlative of thenlind ; 
there is no essential connection between them ; the one is con- 
ceivable as existing without the other, and their relation is purely 
accidental. History written from Emerson's standpoint is simply 
fiction and imagination. It cannot be written a priori. If it is a 
science at all, or if there is anything scientific in it, it is all & pos- 
teriori. It is a statement of facts, of the acts of free agents gov 
erned by an all-wise Providence, and not a development of the 
me or the absolute or the idea. Ordinary people think so and know 
so, and so did Emerson before he got moonstruck by reading 
Goethe, the German pantheist, and Swedenborg's dreams. Emer- 
son shows evidence of insanity in some of his expressions. Thus 

* Emerson's Essay on History, 



60 HEGEL AND HIS NEW ENGLAND ECHO. [April, 

he says, " I become a transparent eyeball," in his essay on Nature. 
We wonder, when he wrote that, whether he was not bilious and 
his "eyeball" bloodshot as he looked at it in the glass? How 
can the practical and usually sensible New-Englander be enchant- 
ed by such crazy poetry as the following ? 

" The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene 
So like the soul of me, what if 'twere me ? " 

Was Emerson drinking when he thus could not tell whether 
the clouds and the air were himself or not ? No, he was a sober 
man. Was he insane, or was he merely writing this transcen- 
dental stuff to make a name as an original thinker? We know 
that Seneca says, " Nullum magnum ingenium sine quadam mix- 
tura insaniae." We know that men have burned temples and 
leaped into volcanoes, impelled by a desire for notoriety, the 
morganatic sister of fame. Has the New-Englander been copy- 
ing Hegel for the same motive ? 

" Saying, Sweetheart ! the old mystery remains 
If I am I ; thou, tkou or thou art If " 

If Emerson could not really tell the difference between himself 
and his sweetheart, she should have boxed his ears to bring him 
back to his senses and a knowledge of his distinct personality. 
He should have taken counsel with his dog to get proof of the 
identity about which he is always in doubt : 

" If it be I, he'll wag his little tail ; 
And if it be not I, he'll loudly bark and wail." 

The dog might be a better authority than the " clouds " or the 
" sweetheart." 

The fact is, the New-Englander out-Hegels Hegel in fantastic 
expressions. Hegel is dry and logical. His style is sober, his 
opinions themselves are the monstrosities of his system ; but his 
argumentation is consecutive, and he insists on convincing his 
audience. Emerson disclaims any such purpose. " Do not set 
the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do 
not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I un- 
settle all things. No facts are to me sacred ; none are profane ; 
I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my 
back." * Here is a confession for a pretended philosopher to 
make ! He has nothing to give to hungering humanity. He 
means to unsettle convictions, disturb the peace and happiness of 
minds, and give nothing in return. He has no reverence for the 
hoary and venerable past with its creeds and churches, some of 

* Essay on Circles. 



1885.] THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW YORK. 61 

which have done so much good for the moral regeneration of 
mankind ; no veneration for the Mosaic laws which, given from 
Sinai, are the perfection of reason in the government of human 
morals ; none for the Christian Church, which abolished paganism, 
barbarism, and their atrocities, and is still engaged, like its divine 
Founder, in " going about doing good." What is the use of such 
a man, of such a seeker, who upsets all that men hold dear, burns 
their homes and temples over their heads, and sends them adrift 
in the cold, bleak world of doubt and uncertainty ? To borrow 
his own expression, he has been engaged in "tapping the tempest 
for a little side-wind " ; and he has filled himself with the wind ! 
Sensible people, however, will follow his advice. They will not 
" set the least value " on what he says or does. They will hold 
to the teaching of inner consciousness and continue to believe in 
their distinct personalities. The transcendental lover may be- 
lieve, if he pleases, that his sweetheart is himself; but the common- 
sense Yankee farmer will believe no such rubbish, nor will he 
give up his reason to believe that he is the " cloud " or the 
"breeze," or the west wind or the south wind, though the " Cor- 
cord School of Philosophy " may consider themselves the whole 
cave of ^Eolus, if they please. 



THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW YORK. 

THERE is little in the external appearance of the French 
quarter of New York to distinguish it from any other industrial 
section of the city. Its streets, houses, stores, and saloons are as 
un-French as they could well be. There is hardly anything in 
the costume of the people to single them out as natives of sunny 
Gaul. The well-washed blouse which the workman wears at 
home is replaced by a more or less dilapidated coat retired from 
Sunday service. A battered derby stands in lieu of the natty 
round cap of silk or alpaca of the old country. The female 
population show a still more decided falling-off in neatness. 
Save on Sundays, when they, and the men too, come out in all 
their splendor, they are untidy to the verge of slatternliness. 
And on the day of rest, when they emerge from their chrysalis 
of week-day grime, the butterflies are nearly undistinguishable 
from the American variety. But for the names over the doors, 
the loud tone of street conversation, the animated gestures of 



62 THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW YORK. [April, 

the, passers-by, and the national physiognomy, which defies dis- 
guise, the casual visitor to the French quarter of New York 
might thread its uninviting thoroughfares without suspecting 
that he was in the midst of an alien population. 

Yet, for all their changed externals, the French of New York 
are thoroughly French from the skin inwards. In essential 
habits and in nearly all their ideas they are less modified by their 
surroundings than any other of the foreign elements, save per- 
haps the Chinese. Here, be it understood, we speak of the 
French of Celtic race. The Alsatians, who form such a large 
portion of the " colony," amalgamate readily enough with the 
native population. Like all bilingual peoples, they pick up a 
. third tongue readily. They are not fixtures in the French 
quarter, being helped to employment all through the city by 
their knowledge of German. The genuine Frenchman, on the 
other hand, is practically confined to the limits of the district 
where his language is understood. On arriving he generally 
makes a desperate but short-lived effort to master the speech of 
the country. As a rule he gives up the distasteful task soon. 
There is a free school intended for his benefit in Thirteenth Street, 
but the scholars, plenty as blackberries when the session opens, 
may be counted on the fingers at its close four months later. 
Having acquired a certain familiarity with the most energetic 
expletives in the English language, the French immigrant puts 
his abbreviated Ollendorff on the shelf and concludes that his 
professor does not know how to teach. Others, more modest, 
shrug their shoulders and say that " Frenchmen have no talent 
for language." The fact simply is that they have no idea of the 
price an adult must pay for fluency in a tongue hitherto strange 
to him. 

One of the results of the French immigrant's ignorance of 
English has been mentioned. He practically becomes a unit in 
a small community isolated in the midst of a vast, busy popula- 
tion to which he is a stranger. Small as the French immigration 
is, that portion of it which becomes fixed in New York is out of 
proportion to the demand for labor. The Parisian ouvrier has 
left a city of two millions and a quarter for a French town in 
America a hundred times less populous. When he gets employ- 
ment he is not as well paid as English-speaking workmen, and he 
is constantly out of work. The change is for him generally the 
reverse of an improvement. The higher wages are swallowed up 
by the excess of idle time. The immigrant has to give up the 
wine which he invariably took with his meals while the money 



1885.] THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW YORK. 63 

he brought with him lasted. He abandons the cigar for the 
pipe. He cuts off one luxury after another, and not until most 
of those to which he has been used have been amputated can he 
make ends meet in a kind of a way. When a year or two have 
gone by he is often in debt and too frequently demoralized. He 
cannot understand the English drama, the German concert has 
no attractions for him, he gets tired of playing at soldiers in the 
Lafayettes or the Rochambeaus, the innocent amusements pro- 
vided for him are few and far between and the saloon is always 
open, warm, well lighted, snug, and inviting. Drunkenness is a 
most un-French vice, but it is not unknown in the French quarter 
of New York. 

The French artisan at home is apt to be discontented. It is 
no wonder, then, that, under conditions more trying to his pa- 
tience than those encountered in his own country, he should be 
a grumbler. To hear the French New-Yorker talk about the 
institutions and people of America, one only marvels that he does 
not take the first steamer back to Havre. Doubtless many do 
go home, and a great many more would if they could ; but there 
is a remnant who do not seem to have the slightest idea of 
changing their penates, and who yet delight in painting the coun- 
try of their adoption in the blackest colors. Much of this is due 
to that same ignorance of English before dwelt upon. An asser- 
tive individual and there are many such among Frenchmen 
everywhere has only to launch some monstrous absurdity, based 
on some misconception of a law or a custom, to find a ready and 
credulous audience. We heard a leader of opinion of this kind 
triumphantly citing, in proof of the hypocrisy of American legis- 
lation, that several members of the board of aldermen were 
themselves owners of saloons. This gentleman was firmly per- 
suaded that the aldermen made all the laws for New York City, 
from carriage regulations to the organization of the National 
Guard. Another delusion, which is fortunately not very cur- 
rent, is that a written agreement of separation between man and 
wife enables the parties to remarry without violating the law. 
Those who have travelled in the interior, or who by some other 
process have assimilated the fact that different States have differ- 
ent laws, scoff at it as a proof that America is as backward as 
France before the proclamation of the immortal principles of '89. 
They have, of course, not the remotest notion how much the 
men of '89 were indebted to the authors of the English Bill of 
Rights and the American Declaration of Independence. 

The Sunday-closing law is an inexhaustible theme for the 



64 THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW YORK. [April, 

ridicule and scorn of French New-Yorkers. That the open and 
systematic connivance of the civic authorities at its evasion 
lends a handle for deserved satire there can, of course, be no ques- 
tion. But this is not the point of view from which Frenchmen 
chiefly look at it. They regard the law as a monstrous invasion 
of human rights which no legislature has any title to commit. 
It is, of course, useless to talk to them of the religious aspect of 
the matter. Even religious Frenchmen and we regret to say 
they are few among the French working-class in New York 
have a conception of Sunday radically different from that pre- 
vailing here. But it is even vain to suggest that honest legisla- 
tors may sincerely believe they are striking at crime by repress- 
ing drunkenness, or that they are protecting the workingman by 
withdrawing temptation from him in his unoccupied hours. No ! 
it is all hypocrisy, all make-believe religion. Let them send a 
man to the Island for being drunk, but let him drink when he 
will. They forget that in France men cannot drink when they 
like, or gamble at all in public, and that the old-country restric- 
tions are based on very much the same principle that underlies 
the Sunday-closing law. 

French workmen of almost every trade are constantly land- 
ing in New York, but a relatively small proportion of them find 
employment in the handicrafts to which they have been^trained. 
After getting rid of their savings and enduring their first sharp 
trials they gravitate into some one or other of the industries of 
which the French quarter is more especially the seat. Numbers 
engage in artificial-flower making, feather manufacture, lace and 
fringe making trades which are poorly remunerated and. have a 
long slack time. Mechanicians, stove-makers, pork-butchers, pas- 
try-cooks, and confectioners have a fair chance in the French 
quarter. Bakers mostly Alsatians are well paid and have 
pretty constant employment, as they have for customers, along 
with their own countrymen, the " upper ten " of New York, 
whom many of them follow in their summer migrations to the 
seaside. Then there are the cooks, of whom Frenchtown has its 
due quota, since its inhabitants hold fast by their native fare and 
regard American cookery with horror unspeakable. 'And here 
be it said in parenthesis that the elaborate meals which the 
humblest French workman appears to think demanded by nature 
may to some extent account for his inability to make ends meet. 
As has been said, he gives up wine at an early stage of his New 
York experience, for fifteen or twenty cents makes an addition to 
the cost of a meal wholly disproportionate to his income. But he 



1885.] THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW YORK. 65 

must have French bread, which is dearer than common Ameri- 
can bread, and he insists on soup and boiled beef as preliminaries 
to other solids preceding his dessert, while black coffee after- 
wards is indispensable, and a " stick " in it rarely foregone. 

To return to the cooks. He must be a poor artist indeed, or 
one singularly devoid of push, who remains long a denizen of the 
French quarter. All America is before him where to choose, 
French nationality being supposed to carry with it some innate 
fitness for the artistic preparation of human food. This is so 
well known to other foreigners of the profession that they make 
all haste to get up some French in order to be able to pass them- 
selves off as born culinary artists. Germans become Alsatians, 
and Italians gallicize their names and insist they were born in 
Provence or Gascony. The French cook commands high wages 
and is a personage. He rules over a large staff of assistants, 
whom he appoints himself and carries about with him in his 
migrations. These are all French, or must at least understand 
French in order to take the commands of their general, who is 
above learning English. Some of these chefs put on airs of su- 
periority to the common run of mankind which would be con- 
sidered impertinent in a Verdi or a Millais, and we would be 
scarcely surprised to hear that, like Thackeray's Alcide Mirobo- 
lant, they were in the habit of sitting down to a piano to seek 
inspiration before composing a menu. One of the results of this 
irrational run on French cooks is that a vast number of American 
worshippers on the altar of fashion devoutly receive badly-pre- 
pared victuals from the hands of men who were perhaps black- 
smiths or ticket-porters before a short residence in the French 
quarter of New York revealed to them the golden opportunities 
open to persons of their nationality in this country. 

It has been said that a majority of the immigrant workmen 
have to change trades to suit themselves to the special demands 
of the quarter. Their native intelligence and manual dexterity 
ena*ble them to do this with great readiness. It is otherwise 
with another class of French immigrants, men of fair or superior 
education whom misfortunes or defects of character have com- 
pelled to seek their bread abroad, or who have come here 
prompted merely by the vague notion that fortunes are easily 
made in America. Most of these have either no knowledge at 
all of English or such an imperfect reading acquaintance with it 
as is of no practical use to them. Their only chance is to get 
employment in some educational institute, and for every one 
such place there are dozens of applicants. Failing this, failing 
VOL. XLI. 5 



66 THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW YORK. [April, 

means or liberty to return "to France, they are surely doomed 
either to menial occupation or to misery. As domestic servants 
there is an opening for them, or they can enroll themselves under 
the orders of some chef. The alternative is starvation wages at 
factory work for a few months in the year, with the parks as a 
lodging for the rest of it. We know of an ex-captain of engi- 
neers probably cashiered for misconduct, but undoubtedly an 
ex officer whose present occupation is dish-washing in a restau- 
rant. Another a handsome, bright young fellow, who shows 
official documents to prove that he held a cavalry commission 
and was wounded at Villiers-sur-Marne was recently a chronic 
applicant for lodgings at the Salle d'Asile in South Fifth Ave- 
nue, and sold pins in the streets for a living. An ex-artillery 
captain is a corn-porter on the North River. An ex-notary lights 
the fires and sweeps the floors in an up-town school for four dol- 
lars a week. A talented young artist was lately barkeeper for 
his board in a little beer-shop near Washington Square. And 
most New-Yorkers have heard of the Vicomte d'Aspremont, 
who died last year, who had been a commandant in the French 
army, had devoured two large fortunes, and ended his days as a 
newspaper-carrier in the French quarter at the age of seventy- 
five. 

A class of men who are very apt to go to the bad in the 
French quarter are ex non-commissioned officers. Used for 
years to having all their work done for them, having forgotten 
whatever trade or occupation they had on entering the army, 
without acquiring any knowledge in exchange which can be of 
service to them here, they are the most helpless kind of immi- 
grants. We knew of one whose history here affords material for 
reflection. Though he had passed the examination entitling him 
to leave the army after a year's service, he preferred to stay, and 
for several years held the rank of sergeant-major. He had pre- 
viously been an apothecary, and on leaving the army set out for 
this country on the strength of his acquaintance with that branch 
of the medical profession. He had barely money to pay his way 
for a month, but when that was gone he had a remarkably fluent 
and persuasive tongue to fall back upon. He used it to some 
purpose, inventing the most complicated stories of his expecta- 
tions to keep his landlord in patience. Month after month went 
by, the ex-sergeant-major denying himself nothing, especially in 
the line of drinkables. In his language he was as profane as the 
sapper to whom rien nest sacrt. He was so " advanced " an in- 
fidel as to have no patience with the superannuated ideas of Vol- 



1885.] THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW YORK. 67 

taire and Jean Jacques. All of a sudden he dropped swearing, 
took to drinking soda-water, and received visits from a clerical- 
looking compatriot. A week or so later he disappeared. For a 
length of time no tidings of him could be had, but the duped 
landlord subsequently discovered that his present calling is that 
of evangelical missionary to the French population of New 
York. Though a couple of years have elapsed since this notable 
conversion, the credulous host is as yet not a dollar the better 
for it. 

A majority of the workmen inhabiting the French quarter re- 
tain their original nationality and comply with all the formalities 
exacted from Frenchmen residing abroad. The young men get 
funds from the consul, when they are due, for military service ; 
the older ones get regularly excused when their turn comes to 
serve their twenty-eight days. In fact, the man who " declares 
his intentions " is looked upon with no friendly eye in the quar- 
ter, unless he happens to be an Alsatian. Logic, indeed, de- 
mands that France, having been unable to prevent the Alsatians 
from being forcibly turned into Prussians, should leave them free 
to get rid of that abhorred name in the handiest way they can. 
And, by the way, frequently as the Alsatians become American 
citizens, they remain French in feeling to a degree singular in 
men of Teutonic blood who are rarely able to express them- 
selves easily in French and always retain a strong German ac- 
cent in speaking it. Now and then, but very seldom, one comes 
across an Alsatian who accepts the fait accompli in his native 
country. He is generally found to have been corrupted by rub- 
bing elbows with Germans in Dutchtown or by having taken to 
himself a helpmate of Teutonic nationality. When such a one 
as this gets into society with countrymen of his who fought or 
starved in Metz, Strasbourg, or Paris fourteen years ago, even 
though the latter be naturalized Americans, he not unfrequently 
has to leave the company more precipitately than is pleasant to 
him. 

American politics are a profound mystery to the denizens of 
the French quarter. Those. who are American citizens allow 
themselves to be led by the noses by a few politicians of their 
race with extraordinary docility. On critical occasions as at 
the last presidential election, for instance all the vauriens of the 
quarter, be the date of their arrival in America ever so recent, 
become possessed in some mysterious way of naturalization 
papers, and doubtless show their gratitude to the political mana- 
gers who have smoothed their way to citizenship. But, as has 



68 THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW YORK. [April, 

been said, the majority remain Frenchmen, and the politics with 
which they occupy themselves are French politics. However 
rational may be the political views of an immigrant on his arri- 
val, he is greatly in danger of being converted to some " ism " by 
a short residence in the French quarter. It is impossible to enter 
one of the dingy saloons how unlike the French cafe ! where 
the workmen foregather in their hours of leisure, without hear- 
ing some real or pretended hero of the Commune mouthing 
doctrines which can only be appropriately called anarchical, 
though often enough the pot-house orator would protest that 
his " ism " is not anarchism but collectivism or some other form 
of political insanity. Gambetta, long before his death, was de- 
nounced by these wiseacres as a reactionist, a deserter to the 
bourgeoisie, a traitor to the democracy ; and Jules Ferry is at 
present their bete noire. Some years ago Federative Commu- 
nalism the programme for which the insurgents of 1871 fought, 
in so far as they can be said to have had any programme at all 
was the" favorite political doctrine with the would-be leaders 
of thought in the French quarter. But that has been in great 
measure left behind. The yearning to be " advanced," and com- 
munion with the German and Russian refugees, have led the 
ex-insurgents to adopt the wild doctrine that civilization must 
be destroyed before the rights of labor can be secured. Every 
Russian, German, or even Irish outrage is hailed with triumph 
as indicating the steady march of the saving nihilistic idea. 
Toleration, the rights of minorities, even the right of the ma- 
jority, are scoffed at as antediluvian notions. And the principle 
of nationality is denounced as a monarchical invention for the 
enslavement of peoples. 

It is, indeed, this internationalism of the revolutionists of the 
French quarter which chiefly safeguards the bulk of their coun- 
trymen against their pestilent influence. The French immigrant 
may go once to the celebration of the anniversary of the Com- 
mune, but he seldom returns to it. He is surprised and shocked 
to hear German spoken all round him and to recognize in the 
faces of the most enthusiastic commemorators of the Paris insur- 
rection a strong family resemblance to the foreign soldiers who, 
two weeks before its outbreak, were still camped in the Champs 
Elysees. The Commune may be all very well, but then it must 
be a French Commune that is to say, if it be at all a thing to be 
desired, seeing that so many Germans seem to want it. In sum, 
notwithstanding all the international anarchism talked in the 
French quarter, it may be safely asserted that the great majority 



1885.] JESUS TO THE SOUL OPPRESSED. 69 

of its inhabitants are good French nationalists. They may have 
irrational hopes about the benefits attainable through govern- 
mental processes, and they may be determined to hostility 
against a government by the mere fact that it happens to be in 
power ; but they would throw up their work to-morrow at the 
bidding of any French executive, and go home merrily to fight 
Germany or defend the sacred soil of la' patrie. 



JESUS TO THE SOUL OPPRESSED. 

I CANNOT take thee yet, My child : the journey 
Is still a little longer ; nerve thy heart 

To meet with fortitude the weary hours 

That oft confront thee in the great world's mart. 

Rest on My love, whate'er thy trials be 

The most afflicted heart is most belov'd by Me. 

I know each pang with which thy soul is wrestling, 
And fain would take thee, had I not in store 

A crown of light for ail thy brave endeavors 
Each cloud surmounted makes its beauty more. 

Amidst the harsh world's tumult and the fret, 

Abide awhile, My child ; I cannot take thee yet. 

Not yet, poor soul ! A few more darksome hours, 
And sore temptations met and overcome, 

A few more crosses bravely, meekly carried, 
Ere I can proudly call the tried one home. 

Nerve, then, thy heart ; the toil will soon be done, 

The crown of self-denial nobly earned and won. 

For soon will come a day when all thy conflicts, 
As waves receding on a stormy sea, 

Will vanish from thee, and some fair, glad hour 
Will bring the tried and chosen unto Me. 

Then thou'lt be freed from ev'ry pain and smart, 

And rest thy tired head upon My wounded Heart. 



70 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 



SOLITARY ISLAND. 
PART THIRD. 

CHAPTER II. 
OF ROYAL LINEAGE. 

THE railroad depot at Clayburg was the hot-house of the 
most interesting news of the town, where the male gossips and 
the notable men assembled before train-time to discuss business 
and public matters, and catch the first sight of the very few 
strangers whom destiny's wave threw upon the Clayburg shore. 
The most inveterate loafers at the station were Billy Wallace and 
Squire Pendleton. When threatening rheumatism did not inter- 
fere, or absence from the town, the two veterans' might be seen, 
the one coming down from the square house on the hill, and the 
other turning the curve of the bay, at precisely one half-hour 
before the train was due, or to depart, both in their every-day 
clothes ; the squire rolling pompously along, as became a stout 
man of historical fame, and Billy making up for his diminutive- 
ness by the erectness of his body and the general majestic sever- 
ity of his manner, both conscious that when they walked forth in 
silent power the whole town walked also, or at least looked on. 
So invariable was this custom that the dwellers along the route, 
and particularly those concerned with meal-getting, never looked 
at the clock, but " Maria, tea-time ! Billy Wallace is just comin' 
down the hill," or " Sally, you'd better wind the horn an' call 
in the men, for I see Squire PenTton roundin' the p'int," made 
up for the stroke of time-keepers. Among the rising generation, 
whose respect for the fathers of the town was misty, they were 
known as the " time-keepers," " the twin clocks," " train-start- 
ers," and other appropriate names which never reached the 
ears of the worthy gentlemen ; otherwise there would have been 
considerable havoc in the ranks of the rustic youth, the squire 
insisting most particularly on being paid that respect which his 
position demanded, and punishing the want of it with awful 
severity. On a spring evening, when the fishermen were begin- 
ning to appear with early catches, or when a few hotel men and 
laborers arrived to open up hotels and prepare for the summer 
season, all the town assembled there and hummed and hawed on 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 71 

the platform while the light of day faded behind the islands and 
the red water changed into gray or was covered with mist. It 
was not rare to see Pere Rougevin or Mr. Buck or the Methodist 
minister sauntering in and out among the groups. Pere Rouge- 
vin was more at home there than either of the Protestant clergy- 
men, and his short figure, reserved smile, and right-hand gesture 
were noticeable in every group as he passed from one to an- 
other and exchanged witticisms or the newest stories with those 
inclined. The pere had an inveterate fondness for a story and a 
love of interesting bits of gossip. He was fond of striking peo- 
ple and curious people and people with a history, and, as a con- 
sequence of gratifying these propensities, he was a most interest- 
ing talker, a capital story-teller, and never called your attention 
to a person or a thing without having a queer incident to relate 
in its connection. For instance : 

"Do you observe, sir," he would say to the stranger, " that 
stout, florid, imposing old man yonder whom you just heard 
called the squire ? You do, of course. Well, he was concerned 
in the late Canadian rebellion, was hunted by the two govern- 
ments, and a reward offered for his head," etc., etc. 

" That graceful shaft which you see on the hill in the distance 
covers the grave of a very sweet girl who died here some years 
ago. I merely mention it because her brother is the famous 
New York politician, Hon. Florian Wallace, an old pupil of 
mine." And then at your desire you were treated to a faithful and 
vivid description of the most interesting points in Florian's his- 
tory. Having a wide extent of mission, he might be said to have 
the gossip of four countries at his disposal ; and he was, when he 
allowed it, the centre of a group whose ears tingled with delight 
as they heard the news of the day, local and universal, served out 
so delicately and so expressively, and with a flavor of ingenious 
and witty comment to brighten the dish. The squire was a 
source of awe to all his little world, and his ponderous voice, as 
he referred for the one thousandth time to the occasion when 
the two governments were " after my head," could be heard over 
all sounds and brought every ear in that direction. As a sort 
of echo Billy sat beside him with his wrinkled features mov- 
ing, moving, moving, and eyes blinking and winking, jerking out 
sharp, short notes of approval or confirmation. Billy was the 
best moral support the squire could find, for he swore to every- 
thing which that bald sinner asserted. 

" If it isn't so," the squire would roar, with a series of brim- 
stone expletives, uttered in a low key when the clergymen were 



72 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

present, " may I be eternally married to every cussed widow in 
the county." 

" I'd swear to it," Billy would cry, " on me life." 

" And two is testimony, gentlemen," was the squire's last in- 
variable remark, which clinched the matter legally for all time. 

On one particular evening in April it was very cold, too, but 
the sun was shining the usual crowd were standing about the 
station in wait for the evening train. As it rattled into the 
depot the loungers ranged themselves along the platform in the 
most favorable positions for seeing the passengers alight, the 
squire visible, by his tall form and glowing face, over every other 
soul, and Billy exalted for the moment on a barrel. No strangers 
were among the passengers, who were town residents or people 
already too well known to raise a ripple of excitement. The dis- 
appointment was too common, however, for people to feel or 
express any surprise, but the squire gibed the conductor on the 
railroad which ran between Utica and Clay burg without so 
much as a new importation. 

" There was one," said the conductor, " quite a man, too, but 
he got off at the rear end of the car." 

"That's the sort of a divil we want to see," said Billy, run- 
ning off down the platform ; but there was no trace of the stran- 
ger. 

" Oh ! we'll see him, if he stays long enough," said the squire 
musingly. " I was just thinking, as that train came in, how you 
and I would look and feel if Florian was on it." 

" Eternal thunder ! Don't speak of it," said Billy, as if struck 
electrically. 

" And what an almighty jam of people would stand here, and 
what screaming and hurraying, and handshaking and speech- 
making ! I declare, Billy, I think it would throw you and me 
into apoplexy." 

" Wouldn't want to be here at all," said Billy. " Certainly 
apoplexy. Couldn't stand it, ye divil couldn't stand it." 

And he poked the ticklish squire, and danced about until he 
was red in the face from laughing and exertion. The squire 
laughed, too. 

" It just tickles me to think of it," continued he, " and I know 
him since he was a child so high ; and he coming back a Congress- 
man, and a big gun in politics, with prospects of better things be- 
fore him. Why, I'd just go mad." 

In order to give proper vent to his feelings the squire swore 
considerably for there was no one in the immediate vicinity save 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 73 

habitues not to be scandalized until a second glance showed 
Pere Rougevin in the dim nearness. An eloquent jerk of the 
thumb to Billy and a grimace showed the little man the cause of 
his sudden silence, and the pere, coming over in a casual way, 
asked if he were not to call on him that night to have a game of 
checkers, and would he not leave now with him ; which was a 
polite way of preventing the scandal of further swearing. 

" Jes' as you say," humbly replied the squire. He was stun- 
ned and conscience-stricken, for the pere had never before heard 
so much wickedness issue at one burst from his respectable 
mouth. 

Left to himself, Billy began to parade the platform in deep 
meditation. The lamp with its strong reflection was shining at 
the door, and he passed and repassed the line of light, stopping 
at times to blink at the curious scientific phenomenon of a thing 
you could not look at steadily. Out on the water a few patches 
of twilight were still burning like expiring lamps, and a few 
forms walked and talked in the gathering darkness, while train- 
men and officials rolled in the freight and hurled bad language 
at the bad boys. It was after a few turns up and down the plat- 
form that Billy became aware of a gentleman's presence a few 
feet distant whose outline impressed him with a sense of strange- 
ness. His face could not be seen, although it was turned towards 
Billy, and he was idly leaning against the building. With the 
boldness customary to townspeople Billy walked up to him, bade 
him good-evening, made remarks on the weather, asked if he was 
a stranger in town, how long he was going to stay, and could he 
be of any use to him ; to some of which the stranger did not re- 
ply, and at the rest merely grunted grunted so meanly and im- 
politely that only one consideration prevented Billy from knock- 
ing him down, which was the fear of his being an acquaintance 
playing a dodge on him. He resumed his walking, and noticed 
that the gentleman was observing him closely, whereupon he 
turned abruptly and went home. He was half-way up the street 
when it occurred to him that this might be the traveller who had 
eluded them by stepping off at the rear end of the train ; and he 
turned back at once, determined to see his features and be able 
to point him out to the squire next morning. Billy was a rapid 
walker, and as he had walked up the hill in the heat of indigna- 
tion, so he rushed back again in the heat of curiosity, and rushed 
upon the stranger standing unconcernedly under a lamp-post, 
looking around him. He turned his gaze on Billy. It may have 
been the unexpectedness of meeting him that puzzled the old 



74 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

gentleman's faculties, for he stopped in confusion, gasped out 
" The divill " faintly, and fled with the idea that the stranger was 
in pursuit. 

Mrs. Winifred, sitting calmly in the back parlor sewing, and 
weaving in a tear with an occasional stitch as she thought of the 
gay voices that made the night pleasant years ago, heard the 
door open and shut violently, and saw Billy as in a vision appear 
and throw himself in a chair exhausted, with the sweat on his 
brow and his face wrinkleless from terror. Nothing alarming in 
Billy's appearance ever provoked alarm in Mrs. Winifred, and 
she continued her sewing without comment or question. 

"Divil! divil!" Billy kept muttering until his breath came 
back to him. 

" The favorite word, dear," she said placidly. " Always in 
your mouth, and always in your company, I'm afraid." 

"It was a face the face of the divil," continued Billy ; "a bad 
face, worse than Buck's oh ! ten times worse an' he's standing 
under the lamp-post at Briggs'. Clear as day. My dear," said 
he suddenly to Mrs. Winifred, and the unusual epithet aroused 
the lady at once, "the divil has visited Clayburg at last." 

"No wonder you're frightened," was her consolatory remark, 
with her quiet laugh to accompany it. " Seemingly, you and 
Squire Pendleton had better keep indoors at night." 

" Oh ! you'll see this divil night and day," said Billy ; and 
finding that there was something unusual in his fright, Mrs. 
Winifred tried to get the story from him, but he became sullen 
and refused to speak. She went on with her sewing. Behind 
her, but some distance to her left, was a window looking out into 
the garden, and opposite to the window hung a mirror so placed 
that, without seeing herself in it, Mrs. Winifred could see the 
window, whose curtain was only half down. In one casual 
glance at the mirror she saw outlined against the darkness be- 
hind the window a white, peculiar face. Mrs. Winifred was a 
queer woman in some of her moods, as the present instance will 
show. She dropped her eyes immediately on her work, in fear 
that her senses were misleading her ; and when she was certain 
of the place, the hour, the work in her hands, and the very 
stitches, she looked again. There was the face still, ugly, pale, 
and cruel the very face that had so disturbed Florian during the 
winter in Washington. She could see nothing else but it. Its 
eyes were fixed on Billy as he sat between her and Ihe window, 
and seemed as if they would never leave the study of his fea- 
tures. A feeling of horror began to creep over her, a nervous 



i885-J SOLITARY ISLAND. 75 

dread that the terrible sight would direct its glances to her ; but 
she was so fascinated and terrified, and doubtful of herself, that 
she did not venture to move, only sat there staring and fearing 
and waiting like a criminal for his fate. And at last the eyes did 
fall on her, and, with one wild scream of terror, the spell was 
broken and the face disappeared. Billy, jumping a foot from his 
sleep in the chair, found her nervously sewing as usual. He 
looked around him in amazement. 

" What's up ? " said he. 

" You," she answered, choking down her sobs ; " perhaps you 
have seen your divil since. Seemingly, I have." 

Disgusted, Billy proceeded to retire without giving due at- 
tention to her words. Mrs. Winifred had a nervous time of it 
for an hour or two before following his example, when it came 
to locking doors, closing shutters, examining rooms, closets, and 
those terrible spaces under beds. She saw nothing to cause her 
further fright, however, and slept at least two hours in fitful 
dozing. 

It became known the next day that a foreign gentleman was 
stopping at the hotel known as the Fisherman's Retreat ; and 
this was the first piece of information which was hurled at 
Billy when he made his appearance next morning to institute 
inquiries as to the stranger with the mysterious countenance. 
He could speak but very little English, and seemed to be a sort 
of Dutchman, and to all appearances impressed the people very 
favorably. He came into the office while they were discussing 
his probable antecedents, and at once fixed his eyes greenish, 
unpleasant eyes on the wrinkled face. It was more than Billy 
could stand without an explosion, and he went away hastily, and 
so long as the man was in the town contemplated him at a 
distance. 

The mysterious stranger made himself acquainted, by sight 
at least, with all the villagers, and was more talked about than 
if he were the president. One day he would spend his time 
wandering about the docks, watching the boats or the stormy 
waves ; another he would be seen in this or that quarter staring, 
simply staring. 

Pere Rougevin, reading his weekly Freeman after dinner, was 
moved to look out of the window by a passing shadow, and saw 
the stranger's face the very first moment ; thinking it a very 
disagreeable one and not willing to show it any courtesy. The 
stranger was looking at the church a plain, homely affair not 
worth inspection but it pleased him so much that he came in to 



76 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

ask by signs for permission to enter. The pere spoke to him in 
French, German, and English, but he shook his head, muttering 
very raw syllables. 

" You are a Russian," said the pere ; and the man made a 
dubious gesture which was translated as an affirmative by the 
light that spread into his stolid, unpleasant face. The priest went 
out with him, and he looked over the church solemnly, examin- 
ing some parts curiously, and with a bow withdrew when he was 
satisfied, following the pere into the house, and with many signs 
expressing his gratitude before he left. 

" I think we had better look to our valuables while he is in 
town," said the priest to his servant ; " he would not hesitate to 
murder us, I fear, for it is seldom one sees so ugly a counte- 
nance." 

And so Mrs. Buck thought when it first fell under her sharp 
glances. She had heard the reports in the town about the mys- 
terious stranger, and was desirous of seeing him. Her desire 
was gratified, one morning, as she stood on the veranda coaxing 
her young son for his airing. A stranger came down the street, 
and stopped pleasantly to smile on the pretty boy defying his 
mamma so bravely and so wickedly. Young Florian received 
the advances with a great distrust, which, after one glance at 
the stranger, she had no wish to banish. Shallow as she was, 
the venom expressed in it pierced her ; and as she did not again 
look at him, the man stood ostensibly coaxing the child, with 
his eyes greedily devouring every line of her fair face. When 
Florian junior began to yell his distrust to the air the man re- 
tired, .and Mrs. Buck was furnished with matter for three days 
of speculation as to who and what he was. Her final conclusion 
contended that he must be a vile assassin, and many in town 
agreed with her. 

Coming down the road one fair morning in time to meet the 
train, Squire Pendleton's ponderous glances rested sorrowfully 
on the marble shaft which bore Linda's name, and then bright- 
ened a- little at sight of a stranger examining the monument and 
the grave. Who could this be? The squire had heard of the 
new-comer and the mystery that surrounded him, and this he 
felt to be the man. What was he doing there ? Around that 
grave, too ! He came down the road as the squire passed, and 
gave that gentleman an opportunity to put on his most awe-in- 
spiring, Mackenzie's-rebellion look, and to roll forth a sonorous 
good-morning, to which no answer was given, nor did the great 
personage seem to inspire him with any respect. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 77 

" I said good-morning, sir," he repeated with restrained force ; 
and the stranger, beginning to comprehend the drift of his re- 
marks, bowed and smiled effusively, but said nothing. . 

" Foreigner, I suppose," thought the squire, with contempt. 
" Lucky for you that you recognized my greeting, or it would 
have been all the worse for us two. I saw you surveying that 
pretty monument on the hill," continued he without unbend- 
ing, and flinging mentally all sorts of epithets at the man's 
disagreeable looks. " Nice stone ; beats Italian marble all to 
smash ; wears well for the climate. After next election we 
don't import any more stone oh! no. Cut and carved by 
home talent. In a century or so we shall discount your sculp- 
tors fifty per cent. We've got the money and the brains, but 
we need time time." 

This was what the squire called tall-talk, and was bestowed 
only on foreigners who looked like sneerers at republicanism. 
But the stranger grunted something like " pshaw " in answer to 
the tall-talk. 

" Sir," said the squire most villanously, " do I understand 
you to say ' pshaw ' to my remarks ? " 

The gentleman bowed and smiled in so doubtful a way that 
Pendleton knew not how to take it, but concluded that his in- 
tentions were not insulting. The frown on the squire's face was 
a menace to the stranger, and his appearance showed that he felt 
a coming danger. His wide nostrils began to swell, and his 
ugly expression was intensified, and it seemed to the squire as if 
his very clothes began to bristle. At this interesting crisis the 
whistle of the approaching train'brought Pendleton to his senses. 

" Late, by the almighty cats ! " he said, and blushed yes, 
blushed like a school-boy ; and, regardless of appearances, he fled 
for the depot with all speed, leaving the stranger to stare in cold 
surprise after him. 

There were a number of enterprising citizens gathered on the 
dock at another time watching the approach of a sail-boat flying 
a white pennant a privilege allowed only to those who had 
caught a muskallonge on their fishing-trip. Pere Rougevin was 
there, and Billy and the squire. 

" Who's the lucky man ? " said the pere to the squire. 

" I rather think it's the hermit/' he replied, " but he doesn't 
usually fly a rag in honor of his Victory over the big fish. I 
suppose he has caught more muskallonge than any man on the 
river, but I never knew him to put up the flag. He's a queer 
fellow, but a good one." 



78 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

" He ought to take out the divil on a fishin'-trip," said Billy, 
with a dry laugh. The pere looked at him inquiringly, and the 
squire for a time could not make out his meaning. 

" Oh ! you mean the foreigner. Yes, he ought to get a chance 
at a muskallonge and have his fancy tickled with the idea of a 
whale." 

"You are speaking of the Russian," said Pere Rougevin 
" the man with the peculiar face and look, pale and red-haired?" 

" Russian or Prussian or Hessian, it doesn't matter ; but I 
think him a pretty hard bit of humanity, and he can have no 
good object in moving around this place. If I catch him trip- 
ping I'll arrange a few months in jail for him." 

" And he's a Russian ! " said Billy, repeating the word many 
times, as if it surprised or pained him. " Who'd think so to look 
at him f A man might be a divil in this country, and ye couldn't 
tell from his face where he was born." 

" He seems to have made a stir in the town," said the pere, 
"frightening people; and yet Simmonds tells me he is very well- 
behaved and pays as he goes. A man is not to blame for his 
face, I suppose." 

" It is the hermit," said Pendleton, as the boat approached 
the dock and the red beard and sharp blue eyes came into view ; 
"and yet the boat isn't his. He's got his canoe in tow, and 
there's something covered with a blanket. Halloo, boys ! here is 
an accident, as I'm a sinner." 

The crowd wished to cheer as the sail-boat swung into her 
landing, but Scott stopped it with a gesture, and the loud re- 
mark of the squire sent a thrill through every one. They 
gathered silently around the hermit as he stepped on the dock 
and displayed a muskallonge nearly four feet long. 

" It's not mine," he said shortly. " The men who caught it 
are dead. There's one of 'em " pointing to the blanket in the 
boat " the other is at the bottom of Eel Bay. This is their fish 
and their boat." 

The first fish and the first disaster of the season ! The squire 
reverently removed the blanket, and those present took a look 
at the drowned man, a young fellow in rough clothing ; but no 
one knew him, and the vessel was tied up. The fish was carried, 
at the hermit's request, to the hotel. Then Scott took his seat 
in his canoe and prepared to return to his island. Numbers of 
people came running down to see the dead body, and among 
them the stranger walked coldly and leisurely as one who goes 
to be interested. His manner was in contrast so sharp to the 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 79 

hurried steps, pale faces, and sympathetic looks of the crowd 
that he was visited at once with unpleasant attentions. 

" There he comes," said Billy in a whisper to the squire " the 
divil ! So easy, too, and he knowing well there's something 
wrong." 

" We have a curiosity here," the squire said to Scott, " a 
real Russian that has done more in one week to upset this town 
than any man could do in a year. I won't say why, for I'm 
anxious to see if he strikes you as he strikes most people. He's 
a Russian, didn't you say, Pere Rougevin ? " 

" I supposed so," said the pere, " from his looks and his lan- 
guage." 

" He's pretty far out of his way, then," the hermit said, pull- 
ing down his cap in readiness to start. 

" Wait and have a look at him," said the squire ; " here he is." 

The stranger appeared at this moment in the front line of 
those crowding around the dead body, and stood in profile to 
the group, unconscious that the hermit's sharp eyes were upon 
him. Pendleton watched for the changes he expected to see in 
Scott's face, but he was disappointed. 

" Hard-lookin' sinner," Scott said, as he swung the canoe 
around and paddled off. 

" 'T would take something more than a Fourth of July parade 
to move that man," the squire muttered angrily. " I don't 
know but that we should have detained him for the inquest." 

" The inquest will not come off till the coroner arrives," said 
Pere Rougevin. " Eel Bay is his chief treasury. I do not know 
how many souls have found the gate of eternity there." 

With the inquest the story had nothing to do, but it was 
noted by the townspeople that the stranger departed instantly 
from Clayburg, and, although no word was uttered, it was gene- 
rally understood that a great many people of matured thought 
were positive that in all human probability the dead body fished 
out of Eel Bay and the face of the stranger had a mysterious and 
awful connection. What it was none dared to say, and with the 
memory of the face the tradition of its appearance in Clayburg 
has faded. 

All the letters which reached Florian from his native town 
during the summer nearly brought him to despair by their ter- 
rific descriptions of the mysterious stranger, and one day there 
arrived a plain note, posted in a place unknown, warning him 
to be on his guard against the man, for he meant him evil. It 



8o SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

was plain that this individual was making himself familiar with 
Florian's affairs. A man does not meddle without an object. 
Florian felt himself in possible danger. His first impulse was to 
put the matter in a detective's hands, but after reflection he de- 
cided to take another course. Recalling the incident of Count 
Vladimir and the stranger in conversation, he thought it pro- 
bable that they might be acquainted, or even connected, since the 
"stranger appeared to be a Russian. Then it occurred to him 
that he had opened himself to the count with unnecessary frank- 
ness, and had told him enough about his past life to make the 
work of a spy trivial and successful. This idea plunged him 
into a maze of speculation which threatened to have no end, and 
he cut it short by going to visit the count. 

Vladimir and he had become very good friends, and the 
young nobleman had come to New York for the sole purpose 
of seeing political life under the guidance of his distinguished 
friend. He did not trouble himself much about the political life 
when he had made the acquaintance of a few fast men of the 
city and had found means to pass the time pleasantly in his 
usual haunts. Gambling and horse-racing, fine dinners and ques- 
tionable company, had irresistible attractions for this scion of a 
noble house. Florian tried often to bring him into the paths of 
virtue, but desisted on finding that the count considered his 
advice impertinent and puritanical. It was not difficult to ac- 
quire an affection for the young fellow, and Florian deeply ad- 
mired him. He was handsome, open-hearted, and engaging, 
and sinned with such thoughtlessness and relish that the grave 
Congressman often wished his own disposition had as little mal- 
ice. In the presence of so attractive a scamp his own correct 
notions looked a little odd and silly, and he occasionally dropped 
a few of them in order to seem of a similar nature to this butter- 
fly ; so that in time he came to like descriptions of doubtful 
character in which the count was apt to indulge, and to attempt 
them himself in a constrained fashion which secretly amused 
Vladimir, and by degrees he raised about himself an atmosphere 
rather obnoxious to the pure in thought and word. But this was 
one of the accidents of his position, he thought, as became a man 
who was destined to meet all sorts of people and be placed in 
all sorts of circumstances. He must look upon these things as 
trifles. He felt very disappointed in himself, however. To think 
that he should be so thoroughly deceived by this boy, to have all 
his life drawn from him so apishly that it might furnish matter 
for a spy's recreation, was galling! He did not allow it to dis- 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 81 

turb him, however, and when he entered the count's apartments 
was as offhand as usual and showed no feeling in mentioning 
the incident of the mysterious stranger. 

" My dear count," said he, " I have no objection whatever to 
an inquiry into my past life, but if I am to furnish the material 
I have a right to know the object. What possible interest can 
you or any man have in ferreting out an open record ? My life 
from birth has not been remarkable and has no mysteries. I 
could have saved you some trouble, if you had come to me in the 
beginning and stated the matter candidly." 

The count had just risen from sleep and looked pale and 
heavy. "The work I had to do," said he, "required secrecy for 
two reasons: that it might be more deftly done, and might awake 
no unreasonable hopes in the bosoms of American citizens whose 
birthright of freedom they would not exchange for an earldom." 

" Peace ! " said Florian. " That is tolerated on the Fourth of 
July only." 

" Well, be it known, my friend, that I am commissioned by 
the Prince Louis of Moscow, father of that Prince Louis to 
whom you bear so remarkable a resemblance, to search for two 
or more of his relatives who came to this country just thirty 
years ago. It is whispered that the good prince, whose charac- 
ter is not of the best, was under the necessity of doing some dirty 
work years ago that he might get into his present lordly posi- 
tion. He trumped up a charge against a young and no&le rela- 
tive ; said relative fled with his wife and two children to this 
country ; the prince entered upon his relative's possessions, and 
the story ended. Now, in his old age Prince Louis fears for his 
wealth and standing. He begins to look for a Nemesis. To 
avert it he commissions me to find the exiled prince or his chil 
dren, and settle with them for a respectable sum to remain here 
and leave him in the enjoyment of his estates. He gave me 
some portraits to help the search. You so closely resembled one 
of them that I took you for a possible heir and sent to inquire 
into your antecedents. I shall now show you the portraits. 
First, do you hold me absolved from any crime against your 
majesty's fame and honor ? " 

"By all means," said Florian. "You have proceeded admi- 
rably, but you are on a wrong scent, my friend, though I must 
say I regret it." 

"And why, if I may ask?" 

" I would like to barter for the mess of pottage with Prince 
Louis ; money is more to me now than a princeship or a kingship." 
VOL. XLI. 6 



82 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

" Money, money, money ! It is the one cry that makes itself 
distinctly heard amid the jargon I have endured since I came 
to this country. I have never met a people with noses so like 
miners' tools, well fitted for digging up gold. What a nation 
you will be when your children are educated into this notion ! " 

" The portraits, count the portraits," said Floriari impatiently. 

Vladimir brought them out from an inner room and placed 
them for his inspection. 

Florian noticed the rich cases before he opened them, and 
tried vainly to make out the monogram. The faces were done 
in oil and well executed. The first was a young man with red- 
dish hair and smooth, delicate face, of too fine a nature evidently 
to cope with the gross wickedness of the material villain, his 
relative ; and the second a lovely woman of dark complexion, 
whose sweet face was indicative of great strength of character. 

" I should fancy this woman would not take very well to 
flight," he said after a pause. " She would hold her castle to the 
end." 

" So she did, and died," the count responded. " There are 
more ways than one of bringing an enemy to terms." 

Two children of lovely appearance took up the third case, 
and Florian laughed at the idea of these being taken for himself 
and dead Linda. There was no resemblance, except that the 
eyes of the boy were of a brown color and the dark eyes of the 
girl sparkled with some of Linda's mischievousness. But be- 
tween himself and the exiled prince there certainly was a very 
striking resemblance, and it extended in a lighter degree to the 
portrait of the princess. The count watched him closely as he 
examined the pictures, to see what impression they made on 
him ; but Florian felt only disappointment and disgust. 

" Has your Russian friend reported to you yet ? " he asked. 
"For I suppose I have some right to know." 

" He has," the count answered frankly ; "but he had nothing 
more to say than that you did not resemble your father or 
mother, and had not been baptized in Clay burg." 

" True, and I could not say where I really was baptized. 
But if you wish it we shall go together to Clayburg and inter- 
view my parents and friends. It is a queer time of day to bring 
up question of my paternity. We shall have to proceed cau- 
tiously for two reasons. My mother is nervous and my father 
hot-tempered, and inquiries among the townspeople, if too open, 
-might act unpleasantly on my good name." 

; so Oh ! I assure you the whole matter will be conducted most 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 83 

honorably and delicately. Allow me to thank you for your kind 
offer. I accept at once, and, having done with you, I shall pro- 
ceed to persecute some other individual. But have I your par- 
don, Florian, for my want of candor ? I was so fearful of " 

" Not a word, count. I only wish you had succeeded in 
proving- me a prince. It would have been a great help in my 
political life. Let me advise you. Get rid of your troublesome 
friend, and do not use him as a an agent. His face is against 
him." 

" He is a helpful fellow and a good fellow. But his face is 
against him, although I do not pay attention to it now. He dis- 
turbed you, it seems. He impressed you as " 

" An assassin," said Florian, with an outburst of long-re- 
strained disgust and horror. 

"Ah ! " was all the count said, and Florian could not tell why 
the simple exclamation set him wondering as he went away. 



CHAPTER III. 
FLORIAN THINKS OF MARRYING. 

MADAME LYNCH and Frances were spending the summer 
among the mountains, and the big house, with its wide halls and 
staircases, was uncommonly dull. Florian found it so whenever 
he came in worn out with the day's labor and the jaggedness of 
life in general. He missed Frances exceedingly, for in the pri- 
vate reception-room she usually sat at the twilight hour, and 
her music was the first thing he heard on entering the house, her 
form in its light drapery gleaming through the darkness the first 
he saw, and he found it pleasant and restful to sit listening to the 
sweet melodies. He admired Frances for her gentle, lady-like 
ways and her good breeding, for her small hands, her cleverness, 
and her beauty, and did not think it a fault, although it might 
have been dispensed with, that she was deeply religious. He 
admired Mrs. Merrion from a different standpoint from what 
standpoint he could hardly define; only he would not wish to 
have one the other, for the reason that Barbara's ways would not 
very well suit a Catholic lady, and if chic was to be admired it 
suited very well where it was. 

Unconsciously, almost, Frances had grown into his life since 
Ruth was lost to him. Those evenings by the piano had left 
their impression on him. It would be very sweet always to have 
her waiting in the twilight for him in his own house ; and she 



84 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

was so very good and beautiful, not very brilliant as Barbara was, 
not so full of character as the strong-souled Ruth, but unique 
and perfect in her way, and made to reign over a household. It 
troubled him when he thought what was his idea of a politician's 
household and a politician's wife : balls and parties and receptions 
to be given and attended, at which she was often to complete by 
her charms what he had begun in the busy world. It did not 
promise much of real home enjoyment, but it would not last 
always. With her religious feelings so well cultivated, Frances 
might some time prove an intractable wife in matters which could 
not grate upon without injuring conscience. The political world 
had great moral knaves, and yet it would be an absolute neces- 
sity to receive them hospitably, to feast and entertain and cajole 
them. It was humiliating, but when one prepares to fly high he 
must stoop a little at first. Barbara was a brilliant woman, and, 
though fond of home-life, admirably suited to such a position. If 
there were such another ! But it was idle to think of it. 

It might be venturesome to give Frances the position his 
wife was expected to fill. He did not wish to do violence to so 
gentle a spirit, but when it came to a question of his life-interests 
he felt that he could be hard and unyielding as iron. It would 
never do to make the mistake of marrying a scrupulous and 
therefore obstinate woman. He had no wish to attempt the 
breaking of any woman's will or to add domestic infelicity to his 
political troubles. With such a woman as Barbara Merrion to 
be asked in marriage, his work was done. Surely there were 
more like her, but in his experience he had never met them, and 
now it was too late to begin the search. He might be exaggerat- 
ing the defects of Frances. ' Love and association do a great deal 
towards making a husband's will the will of his wife. She was 
very gentle, and so unsophisticated that it would be quite easy to 
bring her to a disagreeable work by plausibly hiding its bad 
side and bringing out into prominence its best parts. When he 
sought for instances in the girl's character to support this in- 
ference he was surprised not to find any. She was inclined to 
yield to persuasion, but her yielding was ever of the right kind, 
towards good, and he recalled an incident in which she had po- 
litely . ignored rude persuasion. He felt amused at the habit 
which he had long ago acquired of taking for granted the suc- 
cess of any enterprise he undertook. It was a fashion of success- 
ful men. He was not at all certain of winning Frances, but if 
the attempt was to be made he was determined to do his best, as 
he always did It occurred to him to consult Mrs. Merricm. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 85 

Women know one another thoroughly, and she was a sharp-mind- 
ed female, generous and over-willing in giving advice, and would 
be happy to help one of her warmest admirers. She was resid- 
ing for the summer in a villa on the Jersey coast, whither the 
count and himself often journeyed to dine, as it was but an hour's 
ride from New York. It had surprised the gentlemen that she 
should choose so quiet a spot instead of following the fashionable 
crowd. 

" Well, I am in a mood," said Mrs. Merrion, " a serious mood, 
and I am going there to read, to think, to listen to the sea roar- 
ing, and to enjoy the moonlight nights alone." 

" She must have some exquisite plot hatching," was the 
count's comment ; but Florian, who thought he understood her 
better, saw no reason to doubt the plain meaning of her words. 

There was time to catch the noon boat and return late the 
same evening, and he hurried away at once to the dock. In the 
hall he met Paul coming in from a walk up-town. The poet 
looked pale and dragged, and his step had lost its springiness. 

" Halloo!" said Florian, with a coldness which alt his assumed 
ofthandness could not hide. " How is the drama getting on ? " 

" So, so," answered Paul, with a weary smile, as he climbed 
the stairs to the attic chamber. A coolness had come between 
them since Ruth's departure. They avoided one another as 
much as possible because of the strain which it cost to keep up 
a semblance of the old familiarity. To Paul it was a real pain, 
for he saw no cause why they should degenerate into mere ac- 
quaintances ; but so fate had ordained, and they drifted apart day 
by day until they had lost sight of each other. When he reach- 
ed his attic he found Peter in the customary attitude on the bed, 
snoring as' if he had not enjoyed eight hours of sleep the pre- 
ceding night. He did not wake him, but the noise of moving 
about brought Peter's eyes into view, much swollen and leering 
doubtfully. 

" I kem up, Paul, b'y," said he, " to have a chat an' a smoke ; 
an' seein' ye were gone, I made meself comfortable. Was it 
sleepin' I was ? Ah' snprin' too ? Well, it's a convanient place 
to snore. Ye disturb nobody. Yer lookin* pale, b'y, wid yer 
long, beautiful face an' yer yallow curls ! There's not a- purtier 
b'y in New York than yer own self this minit, an' ye have a 
heart which isn't a gizzard like that blackguard politician's. 
Yer workin' too hard ; night an' day yer always at it. Sure 
yer a rich dramatist now an' can afford to be idle for a while. 
Throw sorrow to the winds an' dull care to the dogs, an' take a 



86 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

good glass of Irish whiskey, a good sleep but I see it's Frances 
yer mournin' after; I noticed ye began to look pale from the day 
she went to the mountains. But she'll be back again, sure." 

" With a husband, I think," said Paul cheerfully. 

" No, b'y, no ! " cried Peter, jumping from the bed with un- 
usual energy. " If I thought that I'd go to the mountains at once. 
I'd fight a duel with every mother's son o' them. I'd shoot her 
husband. She'll never marry unless she takes the man I lay out 
for her." 

" And whom have you laid out? " said Paul. 

" Yerself, of course. Well, never mind who," he replied, with 
a laugh, " but it's not the lawyer." 

Paul began to write reluctantly, for he was not in the humor. 

" Throw away them things," said Peter in disgust ; " better 
for ye to be doin* somethin' to save yer soul instead o* writin' 
milk-an'-water dramas. I'm always sick after 1 review one o' 
them for the journal." 

" No sicker than I for writing them," said Paul, giving way to 
depression and throwing aside the papers. " This is a poor way 
to make a living, and very painful. I feel as if I were pulling my 
brains out piece by piece and putting 'them on paper." 

" So ye are, b'y, but fortunately ye have a big supply. Ah ! 
but it's beautiful to have brains enough for twenty. It gives ye 
power. An' then it's not so hard as ye make it out. I'd rather 
write a drama than say me prayers. See, now, it's a greater work, 
for ye are instructin' thousands that never say a prayer, may be ; 
an' if you could introduce a girl prayin' and a little lecture on 
prayer, it's beyond countin' all the good ye'd do. Cheer up, me 
b'y ! Yer dramas are the neatest things of their kind, and it gives 
me a real pleasure to write them up for the journal ; it does, 
indeed." 

" Well done, Peter !" said the poet, with a laugh ; " you are at 
least consistent in your inconsistency." 

"Don't be laughin' at me," said Peter gruffly; "remember 
the story of the laughing boys and the prophet. I'm old and 
I'm entitled to respect." 

" But then this writing is so childish," said Paul sadly ; 
" you never can rise above it. It is a butterfly sort of work, 
which flutters through this season, dies, and next season flutters 
again. I have no extra pay for it, although I am one of the 
most popular writers. The manager will not let me out of a 
certain groove. I shall stay in that till I die." 

" Just so. It's a bad idea, a groove. I never could stand 



;Ci Vx t. vV i -i. /t '-. \ i ,V > < - 

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 87 

i J. : >Hi fciVt fJS- V'* >Ji>U i-J* i . 'ti^f-i; nt ----i 

that anyhow. Well, ye can better yerself; it's always in yer 
power to do that, b'y. Now, there's the. Repeal movement, with 
O'Cpnnell and Davis, and the writers of the Nation " 

" That's the work," said Paul, with enthusiasm, " if we had 
some of it to do here. There's a soul in it. I could starve and 
write for such a cause," 

" Faith, yer not far from starvin' now, ye poor creature, an' 
yer looks show it. An' why can't ye cross the ocean an' throw 
yerself into the cause? I'll go with ye, b'y, an' we'll both raise 
the hearts of Irishmen as the American contingent. I'll do the 
talkin' an' ye'll do the writiu', an' we'll live from house to house 
on pure whiskey an' potatoes. No Saxon fol-de-rols for us, no 
insipid water, no beef, no h'ale, but potatoes an' whiskey, whiskey 
an' potatoes, from night till mornin'. Divil a bit else I think they 
have in some counties. I'd like a few fresh vegetables in the 
spring, an' a dessert finishes up a meal purty well, but sure whis- 
key has all these things rolled into one. The tears of Erin are 
the only substance that can make the b'ys forget their own sor- 
rows and think more deeply of their country. 

(< ' Ould Ireland, you're me darlin'.' " 

He sang the notes as he danced about the room cracking his 
fingers, and finally he plunged over the dressing-table head-fore- 
most. 

" Now that you are cooled off," said Paul, as Peter disconso- 
lately rubbed his head, " will you give me some advice on the 
matter? I need change and excitement. I think it would not be 
a bad idea to go to Ireland." 

" Are ye in earnest, b'y ?" said Peter, fixing eyes and mouth 
upon him. 

" Are not you in earnest, too ? " replied the poet in pretended 
surprise. . 

" Well," said Peter, with some hesitation, and then briskly, 
" of course I am. Would I have mentioned it if I wasn't? It's a 
glorious thing to die for one's country. Shoulder arms and 
down with the Sassanagh ! I'll shed me best blood against the 
English. Drive them out root and branch, particularly the land? 
lords. O Paul ! just fancy me behind a hedge, an' a landlord 
comin' along the road, an' me takin' aim an' thinkin' of all his 
bloody acts of tyranny, an' his rack-rentin', an' the thousand pthei: 
circumstances, to nerve me arm. Pop goes the weasel! down 
he tumbles, an' you turn the whole thing into poetry an' send 
it to the Nation. Me name 'ud go down to posterity as the 



88 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

Landlord-Killer. I'd become as terrible as a rover of the 
plains " 

" Shut up," said Paul, clapping his hands to his ears; "you 
are going mad." 

" I will if you say so. This jumpin' about tires me." 

" And now let us hear something sensible," said Paul. " If I 
went to Ireland I suppose the first thing in order would be a 
spirited article or poem which, with my services, I would offer to 
the leaders." 

" I s'pose so. Pshaw ! b'y, what would smart men like them 
want wid a mere b'y scribblin' dramas all yer life an' not " 

" That will do, Peter. The next thing would be to settle 
down to work and make a living some way." 

As Paul appeared to be looking at the scheme in earnest, 
and as a practical plan for getting away from the severe routine 
to which he had been bound for years, Peter's enthusiasm grew 
beautifully less. 

, " Ah ! b'y, I was only jokin'," he said, resuming his seat. " An' 
now let us have a plain, sensible chat on love the all-devouring, 
none-excepting love that fastens alike on age an' youth, an' burns 
as fiercely in the Indian's veins as in the Caucasian's. Paul, yer a 
poet: what is love?" 

" You've had a longer experience than I," said Paul, " and . 
ought to know. I confess that I don't." 

" Love," said Peter mysteriously, " is a conglomeration of 
accidents which a a forming, or I should say rushing a a 
a tumultuously into the heart of man, by their multitudi- 
nous variety a a a smother his real nature an' make hircua 
jackass of the first water. Now, b'y, that's what must happen to 
you in regard to that sweet beauty in the mountains. I often 
thought what a fine thing it 'ud be for ye to go incog, to her hotel, 
win her heart without her knowin' it, get married an' come back 

" To her mother's attic, hey ? That would be a surprise for 
Frances." 

" Oh ! no. Of course ye'd have the whole house when ye'd 
marry the heiress." 

" I would not hesitate a minute," Paul said seriously, " if I 
thought madame would give us the establishment and retire." 

" Well, I dunno about that either," Peter responded dubious- 
ly. " She has a mighty tough grip on the money an' the place, 
has the ould lady. But see, Paul, I have a plan that I've been 
thinkin' of this long time, an' it's a mighty good one, I'm sure, if 
ye'd listen an' act on it." 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 89 

" I'll listen, of course," said Paul. 

" But it must be a secret," said Peter, coming close to him 
and beginning to whisper his mysteries. 

Whatever they were, Paul listened for a short time only, 
when he rose up and pushed Peter violently into the hall, lock- 
ing the door after him and enduring in silence his pathetic re- 
proaches outside. With an effort he resumed his writing. His 
face in the afternoon light looked doubly pale and wan. The gar- 
ret was cool and the waters of the river were shining pleasantly 
far away, with steamers and sails dotting their surface. Paul's 
thoughts would rise occasionally from the paper and float off 
into the realms of the might-have-been with unusual persistency. 
He was beginning to be haunted again by the face of Ruth! 
Some words that a stranger had uttered about Miss Pendle- 
ton's conversion and her present mode of life had waked what, 
after all, was but a sleeping image when he had thought it dead 
and buried. He did not care to indulge the feeling, but. the face 
which had haunted him for years before he saw its substance was 
not to be so easily loosed from fancy's meshes. So he dreamed 
and suffered in patience. 

Meanwhile Florian had gone on his way to Seagirt, and, 
arriving an hour after dinner for the old-fashioned meal-times 
were kept there found Mrs. Merrion unexpectedly absent. She 
had promised never to be away from home when the boats 
arrived. Neither did the servant know whither she had gone, 
and he was left to walk the verandas impatiently and to stray 
through the rooms. The cottage was small and built without 
any pretensions to beauty. It had a good situation and was 
comfortably furnished, and many of Mrs. Merrion's latest sea- 
sketches ornamented the walls. He wandered from room to 
room, idly inspecting them, and finally intruded into one which 
perhaps it was intended he should not have seen. It was a mere 
closet holding a desk, and a chair and prie dieu, some pictures, 
books, and statues. But the character of this furniture almost 
took the breath away from the honorable gentleman. On the 
desk lay a few manuscripts, and an open book beside them sug- 
gested copying. The book was the Imitation of Christ. At the 
back of the desk hung a crucifix ; the pictures were of a pious 
character, and one was a copy of a miraculous picture ; the books 
were either controversial or works of pure Catholic devotion. 
As he recollected that these things were not intended for his 
eyes, he withdrew hastily to the outer air. 



90 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

What new freak was Mrs. Merrion meditating-, and was this 
the quiet and seclusion she had spoken of ? Where had she 
gotten these ideas? He had never spoken to her on religious 
matters, and he was unaware of any Catholic acquaintances who 
would lead her to such thoughts and doings. Evidently this 
freak would spoil Mrs. Merrion without doing her any good, 
and he thought, with a jealous pang, how much this incident 
resembled Ruth's conversion. He had been her nearest friend, 
yet was unable to make any religious impression upon her, 
when a strange poet cmes along, speaks a few words, and forth- 
with she is all tears. Who could be the stranger in this instance? 

While he was discussing the point and gloomily wondering 
over its future results Mrs. Merrion returned, her cheeks very 
red after a lively walk, and with many meek apologies for her 
delay. He looked at her curiously and remarked the change 
which had almost imperceptibly come upon her. Formerly she 
would have thrown the blame of her own delay on his shoulders, 
and maintained her position with saucy defiance of truth, rea- 
son, and politeness. Now she was a meek, quiet culprit await- 
ing a well-deserved sentence. She was losing her chic. It was 
really painful, and he told her so immediately. 

" I suppose it's the sea air," she said, with a touch of the old 
archness; "it makes everything damp and clinging. You can 
hardly stand up when the wind is full of salt." 

" But the wind is blowing off the land now," said he. " It 
pains me to see you so changed. I hope you are not ill." 

" What nonsense ! " she cried ; " you have been coming and 
coming all the summer, and never noticed it before. Why 
should you notice it now ? I am happy enough, and one should 
be different at the seaside from what one is in the city. Wait 
until I resume my position in society if I ever do " 

" Oh ! ' if I ever do ' ! " repeated Florian in mock amazement. 

" Well, well ! Ruth Pendleton went into a convent and you 
were not surprised. Why should not I do the same?" 

" Oh ! by all means. You are just suited for it." 

" Have you any news from the city ? " she said. 

" Yes ; I am going to be married." 

She turned upon him a pair of wide, startled eyes, and, un- 
seen by him, a faint pallor crept about the trembling lips. 

" Well," said he, delighted, " other people are married ; why 
should not I be ? " 

She did not speak at once, but turned to the window and 
looked over the plunging sea. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 91 

" It is hard to know which sex can do the strangest things," 
she said ; " they seem to vie with each other." 

"In foolishness, you mean. However, I have not dreamed 
of a monastery yet. I am waiting to hear your questions about 
the lady, but you seem to have forgotten your natural curiosity. 
To tell the truth, I hardly know who she is myself." 

" No? Have you fallen in love with an ideal?" 

" I have not fallen in love at all. I am to marry as a political 
necessity. I shall marry a woman I care for, of course, and who 
cares for me " 

"It is not essential in a political marriage," she said, with 
sly sarcasm, then took a look at his stolid, darkening face from 
under her gipsy hat. But he was thinking and not gazing, and 
missed the by-play. 

" I know that, but I came to ask for your advice. I am in 
doubt as to the wisdom of asking a certain lady to be my wife 
I shall demand so much of her in return for my own condescen- 
sion. I would not wish to embitter her life by making demands 
which she could not supply. You can tell me whether she fs 
capable of sustaining the burden of becoming Mrs. Wallace. 
You know Miss Lynch ? " 

" De Ponsonby's daughter? Oh! quite well;' and she is of 
your own religious belief, too, which is an advantage." 

" Perhaps it draws me towards her out of many indifferent 
fair ones, and she is very beautiful." 

" And very good, I know pious as an angel, without losing 
a woman's vivacity or interest in worldly matters." 

" Her piety I consider a drawback. Women are not like 
men in these matters. If moved at all they are carried too far, 
and they mount a mere ceremonial observance and call it stand- 
ing on principle. Such women are dangerous." 

" Very true. But Frances Lynch will not be dangerous 
unless you come within reach of her claws." 

"You think she has claws, then?" 

"Nature always provides its weak children with ugly means 
of defence, and the weaker the animal the uglier its weapon. 
Then, you know, woman has a tongue, but that is nothing." 

" Oh ! yes, it's a great deal. But I came to you for advice. 
You know the kind of a woman I need. Do you think she is the 
woman? I am not egotistic. I have not won her, but I shall 
try to win her if you can make my doubts certainties, like the 
good fairy you are and always have been." 

" If jl do I shall ask a service at your hands," she answered 



92 SOLITARY ISLAND. [April, 

softly. " Well, my advice is, never mind so much the general 
unfitness of the lady to be your wife. If she is a lady such as 
Frances Lynch is, she will be well able to hold the first place in 
your house. Follow your heart first " 

" I did follow it once," he interrupted, " and you know how it 
ended. I shall not try it again. The first part of your advice 
seems sensible, though. It agrees exactly with what I had 
thought." 

" And the last part, not agreeing with what you had thought, 
is not sensible. That is fair reasoning." 

" Never mind. Shall I take it for granted that you distinctly 
encourage me to offer myself to Frances? " 

" Why, no ! That is most unjust. Are you trying to make 
me responsible for your marriage ? " 

" Forgive me, but in my haste I misunderstood your mean- 
ing. I understand now. You think, as I do, that the lady would 
be an admirable wife for any man, and therefore for me. Well, 
the next time you see me it will be at the feet of Miss Frances. 
I thank you for your very kind advice. Perhaps I might be use- 
ful to you in return." 

" Perhaps so," she said shyly. Florian was in despair. These 
manners were not Mrs. Merrion's, and while they became her, as 
everything did, they did not please him so well as the ordinary 
sauciness and defiance. If the oratory was the cause of it he 
would like to abolish it. She waited for some time after her last 
words before speaking. "I have something to show you," she 
said reluctantly. He knew it was the oratory, and she led the 
way there. He was now at liberty to express his surprise, while 
she 'stood blushing. 

" I see it all," he said ; " this is the meaning of your de- 
sertion of the fashionable world, of your loss of old-time cheer- 
fulness and your increase of melancholy. Who would have 
believed it?" 

" You seem to pay great attention to my moods." 

" If you are to pay attention to 'women you must watch their 
moods, for their moods are themselves. I don't like to believe 
that this summer's mood is you. Perhaps it will pass before 
winter." 

" Oh ! I hope not, I hope not," she said earnestly. " Would 
you not wish me to become a Catholic ? " 

" It is natural, I suppose, to wish it. But it does not suit 
every soul to get the faith. I hope it will not do you any more 
damage. I would like to be of service to you and to advise you. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 93 

The first thing- I advise is, don't enter a convent. It's the worst 
possible place for a convert." 

" I will not, if you say so," she answered mildly, and, the bell 
ringing for tea, they changed the conversation. It was pleasant 
to Florian how much at ease he felt with Mrs. Merrion, and he 
thought with some regret of the change which his marriage would 
make in their present happy relations. He was meditating on 
this as they walked down the beach towards the dock when the 
hour of departure came. He had offered her his arm, and they 
had stopped to gaze on a vessel disappearing seaward with its 
colored lights twinkling through the twilight. The sea was 
moaning heavily at their feet. 

" It makes me sad," she said, " to see a vessel going off like 
that into the depths of darkness and the sea. It pictures our 
lives a little, doesn't it ? Our destiny carries us off out of the old 
happy paths 'into the new unknown ones, and we have only the 
colored lights of past memories to brighteh the way. If this 
could but last for ever ! " 

" It is too beautiful to last for ever," he answered. 

And they went on their way in silence down the moaning 
beach. 

" O Linda ! " murmured Florian as he stood on the steam- 
boat's deck. The name frightened him. It was forced from his 
lips as if by some unfelt power within him. This voice from the 
grave no longer struck a tender harmony. It jarred like" an 
angry accusation. How had he not changed from the Florian 
who stood by the death-bed in Clayburg, his soul echoing to 
the breathed prayer, "That we may meet again ! " How he was 
stumbling ! Whither, whither was he rushing ? And in the 
dimness and the vastness, the voice, growing fainter, seemed' to 
plead : " Halt, my brother ! Turn back that we may meet 
again ! " 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



94 IRELAND'S MODERATION. . [April, 



IRELAND'S MODERATION. 



i. 

ALMOST every educated American has been unconsciously 
influenced against Ireland and the Irish cause by the unfriendly 
spirit of England, as expressed, not in her historical records only, 
but in her current literature, her oratory, her dramatic and pic- 
torial art, and in the popular music of the day. The Irishman 
of English and English- American art is not " created a little lower 
than the angels," but only a little higher than the gorillas. The 
Irishman of Punch, for example, and of Puck and Harper 's Weekly, 
is never seen in actual life either in Ireland or in America. He 
is as purely a creation of imaginative art as. Caliban, or the stage 
Yankee, or the " good Irish landlord " whose tenants shoot him 
from " behind hedges " in parishes where there are nothing but 
stone fences ; for, if such a creature ever lived on this planet (which 
I doubt), he has perished as completely as the dragon that St. 
George slew, or vanished like the fairies who once frolicked 
around Tara's Hill. Yet this hairy, grinning, and semi-articulat' 
ing gorilla is persistently presented as the type of a race sensitive, 
emotional, affectionate, and courageous ; a race whose barefooted 
peasant women receive the traveller in their earth-floor huts 
with more- than the dignity of hereditary queens and with the 
warm, pure welcome of sisters ; a race whose history is a shining 
trail of human glory, luminous* with the genius of poets and 
warriors, and orators and saints. 

The American never knows how much he has been influenced 
by these slanders until he has lived among the people they 
asperse ; nor then always, unless he has not an open mind only, 
but a heart to feel for sorrows not his own, and unless also he 
carries in his mind's satchel, so to speak, a few crumbs, at least, 
of that humor and imagination of which even the poorest Irish- 
man has usually so bountiful a feast. Garrick's description of 
Oliver Goldsmith is really a clever portrait of the Irish race. It 
is a race rich in great traits and great contradictions. When the 
" Saxon " invader seized their land the Genius of Ireland gave to 
her sons a dreamland in compensation for it. The "Saxon" 
might hold the good fields, but the Celt owned the "good folks." 



1885.] IRELAND" s MODERATION. 95. 

The Puritan might destroy their sacred temples, but he could 
not evict the sacred memories that still cluster around them. 



II. 

These caricatures of the Irish evoke in Ireland so many refu- 
tations, by eye and ear, that I have never yet met an American 
who, after visiting that country, did not hesitate to tell the whole 
truth about it, lest (being so hostile to the popular belief) his 
testimony should be discredited as prejudiced and untrust- 
worthy. For example, there is no Irish fact that impresses the 
impartial student more than the political moderation of the Irish 
people. Again, he sees if he has studied, not systems only and 
history, but men and practical politics that, of all white races, 
the Irish are the quickest to forgive, and therefore that they 
would be the easiest to govern, if only they were chivalrously 
treated. They are a race to whom insults are crueler than 
wrongs ; who would forgive the grievances of centuries in an 
hour, but who would nourish for centuries the memory of an 
hour of contumely. This is one of the contradictions of Irish 
character. What is its genesis ? An old race of warriors, after 
centuries of self-rule and domination, find themselves governed 
by a nation that sneers at them. Their pride resents the indig- 
nity, while their religion restrains them from the ancient pagan 
system of retaliation. The old Asian pagan and the old Roman 
Christian are still waging war in the Irish heart. That the 
Christian so firmly holds back the pagan is one of the greatest 
of religious miracles. Yet who regards the Irish as moderate, 
or forgiving, or easy to govern ? 

Yet, again, what most impresses the impartial student in the 
character of English rule in Ireland is its callousness and its pet- 
tiness. It is cruel and paltry in about equal proportions. It 
not only stabs but it nags that is, it systematically and per- 
sistently enforces a policy that both starves the body and wounds 
the spirit of the people. 

These opinions also are opposed to the common belief. 

ill. 

Are the Irish moderate in their demands ? Let us see. 

What the Irish ask is the chance to live in decent comfort on 
their native soil ; to own what they earn, after duly paying their 
just debts, after " rendering unto Caesar the things that are 
Csesar's and unto God the things that are God's." They do not 



g6 IRELAND'S MODERATION. [April, 

demand the restoration, without compensation, of the land that 
was wrested from their ancestors. They are willing they are 
eager to pay for it. While they may theoretically deny the 
rightful claim of the invader to compensation, they recognize his 
power and the practical necessity of paying him ransom money 
for release. 

What the Irish ask, as to land legislation, if granted, would 
injure no man, and no class, and no nation ; it would even and 
inevitably result in yielding a greater revenue to England her- 
self; it would render an army of occupation and a perennial 
plague of constabulary locusts, now needed, unnecessary in Ire- 
land ; it would increase the population and the wealth, and there- 
fore the conservative power, of the island, and of the British Em- 
pire with it ; it would promote every good, moral and physical, 
that just and wise governments desire to foster and seek to 
extend among their people. The experience of many and diverse 
nations, the teachings of saints and philosophers, political sci- 
ence and the natural law, unite in bearing testimony to the 
truth that the native inhabitants (or the first legitimate commu- 
nity) of a country are the rightful owners of its soil, and that 
they cannot be deprived of that birthright without results dis- 
astrous to the morals of the people and injurious to the land 
itself, and therefore to every industry that derives its welfare 
from the prosperity of the cultivators of the soil. 

Is not this demand moderate? 



IV. 

The next demand of the Irish people is for Home Rule that 
the Irish shall govern Ireland, as the people of New York gov- 
ern the State of New York, subject only in imperial affairs, as 
we are subject in federal affairs, to the authority of the general 
government. 

Without reference to British precedents, this demand com- 
mends itself as a rightful and wise and moderate policy. Every 
people has the natural right to govern itself not necessarily 
as a democracy, but within itself and without foreign dictation 
or other external domination. Whether by acquiescence or by 
election, the rulers whom any people prefer are the rulers best 
adapted for them that is, most fitted to promote their general 
welfare and thereby the manifest intention of the Overruler. 

Now, the government of the Irish by the English is a govern- 
ment of force. It is neither the government of their deliberate 



1 88s.] IRELAND'S MODERATION. 97 

election nor is it sanctioned by their voluntary acquiescence. It 
may offend many Irish patriots for me to say it, but I do believe 
and say that, given Home Rule to Ireland and the self-ownership 
of the soil, a large majority of the Irish people of to-day would 
prefer to remain, as Canada remains, a self-governed member of 
the British Empire. But, without these two conditions prece- 
dent, no permanent peace is possible between Ireland and Eng- 
land. For centuries every generation of the Irish race has made 
its protest against the existing system of English domination; 
and with the world- wide spread of democratic ideas and of 
democratic aspirations, it would be idle to suppose that the 
future will be less prolific of protestations than the past. We 
may have a peace, but it will be a truce of hate only. 

V. 

But while, as Americans, we believe that every people are 
best governed by themselves, within themselves, the Irish race 
have no need of invoking any " abstract theories," any so-called 
" glittering generalities " of American political philosophy, to 
justify their demand for Home Rule in Ireland. 

The final- test of wisdom in all worldly policies is Success. 
Any policy that always fails, whether in commerce or politics, is 
an unwise policy. Now, whether we take seven centuries, or 
seven generations, or seven decades, or even seven years or 
any single century, generation, decade, or year and examine the 
records of English rule in Ireland during that period, we shall be 
compelled to return a verdict of failed. Of course, in thus ex- 
amining, we must hold that government is the human science of 
so ruling peoples as to promote their general welfare, not the 
mere tiger power of keeping a firm clutch on human prey, or 
else the verdict might be nay, it would be reversed ; because 
whatever else England may have failed to do, she has succeeded 
in maintaining the grip that she began to get over Ireland in the 
days of King Henry II. and completed in the days of King 
Henry VII. 

But she has not converted the Irish people, although Henry 
VIII. and his equally saintly successors tried it; and she has not 
exterminated the Irish people, although Oliver Cromwell and his 
savage swarm of psalm-singers tried it ; and she has not banished 
the Irish people, although Lord John Russell and his equally 
senile imitators tried it. 

In each of these Irish policies England has failed utterly. 
VOL. XLI. 7 



98 IRELAND'S MODERATION. [April, 

Neither has she absorbed the Irish people in blood, as the 
Saxons were absorbed ; nor by protection, as European revolu- 
tionary exiles have been absorbed in England ; nor by personal 
interest and political sympathy, as America absorbs every immi- 
grant of every race who lands on her hospitable shores. 

The Irish to-day, as a people, are as distinct in sympathies from 
the English as the Picts and Scots and the ancient Britons were 
distinct in civilization from the Romans in the days of Caesar. 

Thus, failure is the perennial result of English rule. Yet the 
Irish are not made of a tougher texture than other races ; for, 
thrown into the crucible of American nationality, they fuse as 
readily and rapidly as any other people. But, like all great races 
and great men, while they easily blend they cannot bend. Eng- 
lish rule has not sought to blend them but to bend them, and 
therefore its history in Ireland is a long and dreary list of politi- 
cal bankruptcies. 

I have no desire to be unjust to the English people. They 
are a positive, ruling, unimaginative race, with a rough and 
crude, almost protoplasmic, sense of justice, which owing to 
their insular position has degenerated into a general and pro- 
found conviction that whatever is English is right. Now, when 
a policy is both right and English as sometimes happens they 
show magnificent traits in advocating or defending it; but the 
same bulldog tenacity, and the same want of insight, impel them 
to set their teeth mercilessly into the hearts of foreign peoples 
when they themselves are in the wrong. It makes them cruel, 
and it makes them petty also. As absorbers of weak races the 
English have always failed. As rulers they are hated and feared 
never loved and cherished. 



VI. 

These traits explain many of the saddest episodes of Irish 
history. The most radical English friend of Ireland will never 
admit, even as an abstract historical proposition, that the Irish 
have any inherent right to an independent nationhood. Still less 
will he grant it as a problem of practical politics. Now, al- 
though the question is an abstract question only, having no 
place whatever within the sphere of practical statesmanship, 
yet this English incapacity to see that any race within the 
empire has the natural right to be independent is a key that 
unlocks many historical chambers of horrors not in Ireland 
only but in every quarter of the globe. 



1885.3 IRELAND' s MODERATION. 99 

This tolid trait of the English is the source of incessant irrita- 
tion in Ireland, as well as of serious wrongs. The English never 
try to understand the Irish. If they should do so, and should 
discover the secret ciphers of Irish character, they would make 
it an easy task for statesmen to " create a more perfect union," 
even while and by re-establishing " Grattan's Parliament on Col- 
lege Green." 

VII. 

They would see, for instance, that the Irish are a people 
whose love of the past has become one of their most distinguish- 
ing racial characteristics. The Irish are proud of their old war- 
riors and saints. The ruins of their ancient churches and palaces 
are tenderly revered. A round tower; an old Celtic cross ; the 
swamp where the last of their pagan kings and the abbey where 
the last of their Christian kings were buried ; the holy wells ; 
the fairy mounds; the sites of the cells of St. Bridget and St. 
Columbkille; the "sentinel hills" where the watchman stood to 
give notice of the approach of the soldiery when the priest was 
saying Mass in some secluded glen in the not- so-far-away days 
of the penal laws ; every memory and every relic of the ancient 
times each and all of them are cherished with a love that no 
other race seems capable of feeling, and hardly of comprehend- 
ing when they see its manifestations. 

The desecration of such shrines or what the Irish people re- 
gard as the desecration of them is a perpetual and galling re- 
minder of the overthrow of their independence as a nation. No 
wise ruler would keep alive such memories. Yet the English do 
it in Ireland. 

I well remember the shock it gave me, as an American, when, 
stopping over at Athlone for dear Goldsmith's sake, I saw, op- 
posite the hotel there, an ancient bell-tower, and was told that it 
had been confiscated from the Catholic Church and was now 
actually held by the Church of Ireland. To be sure, in my early 
boyhood, I had seen in the Scottish Lowlands the ruins of great 
abbeys and monasteries, but I had seen there also the remains 
of the works of the Romans who did battle under Cassar : and 
the Roman legions had not disappeared from the scene more 
completely than the Roman Catholics. No sense of an injustice 
done to any living men jarred on the enjoyment of the marvel- 
lous beauty of fair Melrose or of Dryburgh Abbey, where the 
body of Walter Scott lies buried. But in Ireland there is 
hardly a relic of ancient Catholicism that does not arouse a 



ioo IRELAND'S MODERATION. [April, 

sentiment of shame in the heart of an American non-Catholic, 
and that does not arouse a spirit of resentment in the heart of 
the patriotic Irish Catholic. 

Their noblest and most cherished religious monuments were 
not only defaced by English troops and confiscated by the 
English government, but they are still kept in ruins even where 
the people desire to restore them, and they are entrusted to 
boards from which Catholics are practically excluded, and ex- 
hibited by ignorant Protestant guides who have no sympathy 
with their ancient memories. Every guide I met near these 
ruins was a Protestant, ignorant and bigoted, whose religion 
consisted in hating the pope and whose patriotism consisted in 
hating the Celt. The majestic ruins of the Rock of Cashel, for 
example, are shown by a babbling Orangeman, who is generally 
drunk. The tomb of the last Irish Christian king at Cong is 
owned by a rich Protestant brewer, whose wealth was won by 
debasing three generations of the Irish race, and every repre- 
sentative of whose family has been noted as an enemy of every 
national movement, from the earliest days of O'Connell to the 
latest days of Parnell. I visited the church at Drogheda, built, 
as the guide told me (with a base exultation), on the site of the 
Catholic church in which Cromwell slowly burned to death the 
helpless worshippers, and whose troopers, as he wrote to Parlia- 
ment, " knocked on the head " the unarmed friars who sought to 
escape the flames. I supposed it to be a Catholic church until I 
entered it and saw that it was a Protestant church. Everything 
I had read of the terrors of the siege of Drogheda at once 
rushed into my mind. I heard the shrieks, I saw the writhing 
forms of the victims, and I rushed in horror from the building. 
The guide thought that I was sick. He could not understand 
my feelings of indignation and amazement. He saw nothing out 
of place in worshipping God in that place. " Sure, it was a de- 
cent church ! " He was only puzzled how a Protestant could 
feel as he saw that I felt about it. 

VIII. 

Now, altogether apart from any question of the validity of 
ancient titles; admitting, to avoid vain arguments, that a con- 
queror has the right as well as the power to confiscate church 
property what an American sees in the policy of England with 
respect to these Irish ruins and other ecclesiastical and ancient 
national edifices, judging it from a strictly secular and political 



1885.] IRELAND" s MODERATION. 101 

point of view, is the want of common sense shown in it, the un- 
worthiness of it, the paltriness of it in one word, the brainless- 
ness of it. 

What possible good can come from this policy of nagging ; 
ol reminding a proud people of old sword-thrusts by present 
pin-prickings ; of harrying a race who fought bravely before 
they were defeated, and who have shown themselves ever since 
the equals, in every field of human endeavor, to the race that 
overwhelmed them by its numerical preponderance? 

Our North overthrew our South ; yet to-day the South is 
loyal. If there had been no other problem to settle there than 
the political problem, the moral effects of the civil war would 
have been effaced within a decade of Appomattox. It was be- 
cause so many of the Southern people believed unjustly but 
honestly believed that our policy of reconstruction was a nag- 
ging policy, that we liberated and enfranchised the blacks in order 
to humiliate the whites, that it needed two decades to fully 
restore unity of national sentiment as well as unity of national 
power. If our North had adopted the English policy in Ireland, 
our South to-day would have been more disloyal than when her 
boys in gray rallied under the banners of Jackson and Lee. 
" Your magnanimity," said fiery Roger Pryor. " disarmed us! " 

Common sense should teach England to restore to the Irish 
their sacred ruins, both national and ecclesiastical, and thus make 
them stony monuments of her magnanimity instead of ivy-clad 
memorials of ancient wrongs. 

But the Irish do not ask for such restorations. They are 
even expected to express gratitude for such acts as that of Ba- 
ron Guinness-Ardilaun for " restoring St. Patrick's Church " in 
Dublin, not (as an American might suppose) to the lineal heirs 
and successors of its builders, but only to its former architec- 
tural semblance, leaving it still in the hands of the impenitent 
holders who now possess it and use it for divine worship of a 
class of men who seem to believe that God will listen to the 
prayers that arise to His Throne from a stolen church ! 

But it would require too much space to outline the extent of the 
policy of nagging that prevails in Ireland, and, besides, further 
indications of it are not needed to illustrate Ireland's moderation 
under causeless and ungenerous irritation. 

IX. 

Is Ireland's demand for Home Rule a moderate demand? 
Let us examine this question, not from an American but an Eng- 



102 IRELAND'S MODERATION. [April, 

lish point of view. Let us admit, to begin with, that the policy 
of all nations, ancient and modern, our own included, founded on 
the instinct of self-preservation, would justify England in resist- 
ing by the sword any attempt to dismember the British Empire 
in the interests of Ireland or of any other nationality. Further- 
more, we might admit that it would be legitimate in England 
to resist by law any policy that would be sure to foster a spirit 
of rebellion. We can easily admit these propositions without 
denying the right of every people to win their legitimate inde- 
pendence. 

But England is estopped from the plea that the establishment 
of Home Rule in Ireland would be a revolutionary policy. Ex- 
cepting the United States, no country has sanctioned the policy 
of Home Rule, under imperial rule, so often and so universally as 
England. She has even gone further than the United States in 
the extension of the principle and admission of the wisdom of 
this policy, because she has permitted it in some colonies, and 
almost forced it on Canada, without first exacting a recognition 
of the supremacy of the imperial government. America insists 
everywhere on implicit obedience, at least, to the national autho- 
rity, and it would rather lay a score of States in ashes than aban- 
don that position. 

X. 

England's territorial possessions are found in every zone ; and 
wherever they are found Home Rule exists, excepting only in 
India, Jamaica, and Ireland. The position of India is exceptional, 
and it need not be discussed here. Jamaica is a Crown colony. 
It has no responsible Home Rule. Jamaica, like Ireland, is disaf- 
fected. " Whites," " browns," and " blacks" her entire tri-col- 
ored population are discontented. 

Elsewhere there is loyalty to the red flag wherever it floats. 
Home Rule, in different forms, has been granted to the British 
colonies of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward's 
Island, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, British Columbia, 
Manitoba north of us ; to the Bahamas, to the Bermudas, to 
Barbadoes, to British Guiana, to St. Kitt's, to Dominica, to St. 
Vincent, to Tobago, to Nevis, to Alderney, to the Isle of Man, 
to Guernsey, to Malta, to Honduras, to Natal, to the Cape of 
Good Hope, to Sierra Leone, to Australia, to Australia West, 
to New South Wales, to New Zealand, to Queensland, to Tas- 
mania, and to Victoria. 



1885.] IRELAND'S MODERATION. 103 

XI. 

Why, then, should Home Rule be denied to Ireland ? Surely 
no one will assume that the Irish are less intelligent than the 
natives of the colonies to whom Home Rule has been conceded. 

Besides, Ireland demands no new right, no untried experiment. 
She asks only what she has possessed and what was taken from 
her, as England now admits, by bribery and corruption " Grat- 
tan's Parliament in College Green," under which, short-lived as 
it was, statistics show that Ireland made unparalleled strides 
toward a stable prosperity. 

XII. 

Thus : the Irish demand for Home Rule is sanctioned by natu- 
ral law, by the acknowledged failure of the English policy in Ire- 
land, by the unvarying success of the experiment of self-govern- 
ment in the British colonies, as well as by the resplendent exam, 
pie of America; by every consideration of justice, of experience, 
and of prudence ; by a generous regard, not for the interests of 
Ireland only, but also and equally for the welfare of the English 
people, the peace of nations, and the success and permanence of 
free institutions wherever they exist. 

The demand for Home Rule is moderate because it is just, 
and because it is just it should be granted not grudgingly, but 
with an eager alacrity. England is a powerful nation, but she is 
not strong enough to resist the just demands of any great race 
to-day when it is led by men of clear vision and strong will, who 
ask for no more than what is rightfully their due, and who can 
neither be cowed nor bribed into silence. 

Such leaders Ireland now has in Mr. Parnell and Archbishop 
Croke, in Bishop Nulty and Mr. Justin McCarthy, in T. D. Sulli- 
van and William O'Brien, and in a brilliant group of young 
men, both in secular and religious life, of whom they are the 
types and representatives. Sooner or later they are sure to suc- 
ceed ; for prudence in leadership is as indispensable as patriot- 
ism, and these eminent champions of the Irish race to-day are dis- 
tinguished as much by their civic wisdom as by their love of the 
old isle of heroes and of saints. 



104 KATHARINE. [April, 



KATHARINE. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

ALTHOUGH her sympathetic outworks had been stormed and 
taken by the unexpected but determined assault that had been 
made upon them, the inner citadel of Mrs. Danforth's common 
sense was still unbreached. It would have been strange if the 
thought of her daughter's marriage in some not very distant 
future had never occurred to her as a desirable and likely issue 
for some of the perplexities with which that future at present 
seemed entangled. But American mothers of a generation back 
probably speculated little, as a rule, on that contingency, and 
seldom formed deliberate plans having it in view. That their 
girls would marry sooner or later was a thing to be expected at 
one period of their lives, pretty much as chicken-pox and measles 
might be at another. Chance and propinquity were likely to 
bring about each result in its appropriate season, and with good 
constitutions and reasonable care the patients might always be 
counted on to survive the attack and gain from it a happy 
immunity against repetitions. 

But in Katharine's case the mother had hardly ceased, as yet, 
to regard her as a child. At the time of her own marriage she 
had been several years beyond her daughter's present age, and 
the tie which then united her to her husband had only drawn 
closer the bonds of a friendship which dated from almost the 
earliest consciousness of either. As her thoughts now followed 
the train of associations induced by what had just occurred, she 
reflected that she could not reproach herself with having been 
too easily won, even then. She had kept her lover dangling for 
a while in a suspense which perhaps might have been more agi- 
tating had its result been less clearly foreseen, but which, at all 
events, had satisfied her maidenly pride, as the remembrance of 
it now doubly irritated that of her motherhood. Whatever 
might be the ultimate result of this hasty wooing, which seemed 
to have terminated where in all conscience it should scarcely 
have begun, the girl, at least, ought not to go scot-free of repri- 
mand. Curiously alike as these two were in certain obvious 
ways, having the same tenacity of grasp and singleness of intel- 
lectual vision, the same apparent want of expansiveness and cold- 



1885.] KA THARINE. 105 

ness of exterior, they were as curiously unlike in all that lay 
below the surface. If the depths of her heart had remained un- 
stirred, as those of the majority of her sex probably always do 
remain, and she had yet lived the ordinary life of women, Katha- 
rine would have grown into a still more apparent likeness to her 
mother in the course of years, but to do so she would have had 
to crush out, or suffer to die of inanition, a thousand longings 
and aimless, vague regrets which the elder woman had never 
known. It was as if the same snowfall had enveloped, in the soft 
white mantle which veils all dissimilarities, here the unsuspected 
subterranean fires of a volcanic region, there a smooth, fertile 
plain lying under temperate northern skies, which, when its 
spring-time comes, blossoms with pale and faintly odorous flowers, 
and rustles, later on, with homely, nourishing grain. 

Prepossessed as she had undeniably been in favor of Katha- 
rine's suitor by her only conversation with him, and quick as she 
was to recognize the advantages which might follow from an 
early marriage contracted under favorable conditions, what the 
mother was most clearly conscious of at present was an instinc- 
tive revolt, if not against the thing itself, at least against the 
manner of it. Nevertheless her criticism extended to her daugh- 
ter only. As regarded men in general her creed was very sim- 
ple. They were a sort of irresponsible creatures, prone to hasty 
impulses, impetuous and rash by nature, and incomplete without 
that sober drawback of womanly good sense and prudence con- 
templated by Providence in instituting the indestructible and 
ordinarily inevitable tie of marriage. That a girl should be 
sought after was natural and to be expected, but it was equally 
natural that she should fly the pursuer and not yield at the first 
summons to surrender. She had, indeed, long felt that her 
daughter's nature lay in some ways outside the range of her 
understanding and her sympathies, but what she had observed at 
this unlooked-for revelation of it was as incomprehensible to her 
as were the feelings by which it had been prompted. 

" What does she know about him ? What can she know about 
him ? " was still the burden of her thoughts as she went about 
superintending the household tasks which had been suspended in 
this unprecedented fashion, and the early dinner to which, in 
spite of her scruples, she had determined to invite the victorious 
invader of her domestic sanctuary. "And how could she oh! " 
until the exclamation, half-surprise, half-displeasure, with which 
her cogitations occasionally terminated when they reached this 
explosive point, excited Hannah's sympathies and drew forth 



io6 KATHARINE. [April, 

from her a well-meant but coldly-received suggestion as to the 
stomachic value of peppermint essence. She followed Mr. Gid- 
dings to the door when he departed, to make an inquiry and give 
a prudential injunction. 

"You are staying with the Whites?" she began. "You can- 
not, surely, have mentioned this this affair as yet? " 

" Reassure yourself," the other answered, with a smile. " I 
will wait now for your permission before making further dis- 
closures." And then, seeing her disturbed and anxious face, 
" Really, I beg your pardon a thousand times for my precipita- 
tion. But if you knew how unexpected was the opportunity, 
and how great the temptation to profit by it ! Don't be too hard 
on her, I beg you. I see you have a rod in store, but, in all fair- 
ness, it is my shoulders and not hers that ought to feel it." 

" Oh ! you ! " she said, with a fine feminine scorn which trans- 
lated itself into her tone and gesture in a manner he found irre- 
sistibly amusing. " Men act according to their kind, of course. 
But so ought she ! " 

" I wish I could make you see," he answered, as he shook 
her hand in parting, " that it is because she acts so entirely 
according to her own kind that I find her so altogether 
charming." 

" There is a pair of them," he mused, as he walked slowly 
down the hill, " and the mother's innocence is at least as char- 
acteristic and unworldly as her daughter's. But if Katharine's 
had taken the same turn, how inexpressibly uninteresting it 
would have been to me ! " 

Katharine had fled to the shelter of her own room when Mrs. 
Danforth re-entered the parlor, and there, for a while, the mother 
left her undisturbed. The girl felt an almost physical need of 
solitude and silence. The joy, the exhilaration of the morning 
had all vanished, and though the strength of the passion which 
had swayed her was undiminished though it had been deepened, 
even, by the tale she had listened to yet she had rightly com- 
pared the nervous shock she had received to that which one 
might feel who discovers at sunrise that he has been travelling, 
careless and unconcerned, on the very brink of a bottomless 
abyss. Gratitude for actual safety becomes for a moment a 
secondary impulse, and the imagination tortures itself with a 
vivid presentation of the horrors that have been escaped. It was 
characteristic of Katharine that when at last she put these from 
her by an effort of her will, and opened her consciousness once 
more to the sense of what seemed to her an absolute and perfect 



1885.] KATHARINE. 107 

happiness, her compassionate thoughts went straightway to the 
unfortunate woman whose history had revealed to her a hitherto 
undreamed-of depth of duplicity and guilt. 

" Poor creature ! " she sighed beneath her breath. " How 
could she bear to tell a lie to him ! " 

Mrs, Danforth, meanwhile. malgrJ her perturbation, had set- 
tled herself mechanically beside the basket of mending which 
Hannah brought up from the ironing-table. But her needle 
moved more slowly than its wont, and accomplished fewer of 
those marvels of fine darning on which she prided herself with 
sufficiently good reason. Her purpose to give her daughter 
almost the first serious rebuke she had ever felt called on to 
administer remained as fixed as ever, but beside it was growing 
an increased satisfaction with the prospect that apparently lay 
before her. And when at last the girl came down and took her 
usual place on the hassock beside her mother's knee, and bent 
her head in silence over her work, the memory of the past which 
the child had made so sweet to her, and with which she suddenly 
seemed the only connecting link, softened her voice and made 
the task she meant to undertake more difficult than she had 
anticipated. But she warmed to her work when once she had 
begun it. A prolonged pause, which had nothing unusual in it 
save the mutual sense that something different from the ordinary 
commonplaces of daily intercourse lay beyond it, ended in the 
inquiry : 

" How happens it, Kitty, that you allowed me to be so taken 
by surprise by this gentleman ? Why did you never mention his 
name before ? " 

The answer to this was comparatively easy, though it came 
in a tone a trifle lower and more hesitating than usual. 

"How could I? I heard auntie tell you that we met him, 
and that was all there was to say." 

" Did you expect to see him again ? Did he say anything 
special to you last summer? " 

" I don't know I thought perhaps he might come here with 
Richard. He said he was a friend of Mr. White's, but not much 
of anything else." 

" You are quite sure ? " 

"Quite." 

" Then yesterday was the first time you had any talk to- 
gether ! Anna was out, I suppose ? What time did he come ? " 

" I don't know. It was dark enough for Dinah to light the 
gas when she brought him in." 



io8 KATHARINE. [April, 

" And Hannah says you came home with a headache just at 
tea time ! You made quick work, my dear." 

The girl blushed furiously, but returned no answer. The 
mother went on again with her inquisition. 

" How could you know your own mind if you had never con- 
sidered it before ? What do you suppose he must think of you 
for being so ready to throw yourself into his arms the instant 
that he held them out? You curtsied to him, perhaps, and 
thanked him for his kindness ? " 

This thrust came so near the truth that Katharine, finding 
no parry for it possible, only drooped her head still lower and 
kept silence. 

" He told me himself," pursued the mother, " that you ac- 
cepted him at the first word, without knowing the least thing 
about his position or his prospects. I knew you were odd and 
unaccountable in many ways, but certainly I would never have 
believed that a daughter of mine could have so little sense of 
what is delicate and modest. I am ashamed to have it to say to 
you, but your haste seems to me almost less than decent." 

Tears of mingled shame and anger w,elled up into the girl's 
eyes. The mother watched them dropping on her work, and 
saw that even the fingers that held it glowed with a sudden red. 
She began to relent, and when she spoke again it was in a tone 
less like the cutting of a whip. 

" I have nothing to say against him personally. He seems, an 
honest man and one likely to know his own mind. But you, 
who are always blowing hot and blowing cold how can you 
know anything of yours ? And then appearances, no matter 
how fair they are, are nine times in ten deceitful. For aught you 
or I know to the contrary, he may be just such another as old 
Sammy Fidler, who used to lie up in the Presbyterian graveyard, 
under a broken tombstone, with his six wives all round him, as 
if he were Bluebeard in the midst of his victims. He came over 
here from Ireland when I was little, and set up a school to which 
all the first people in the city sent their children. He was so 
well educated and so smooth and fair-spoken, not to mention 
his having some money into the bargain, that everybody made 
much of him, and presently he got one of the Pruyn girls to 
promise to marry him. She came very near doing it, too ; but 
one morning a sloop from New York landed a veiled lady at the 
dock, who came into mother's the first thing, because our house 
happened to be nearest to the landing. She threw up her veil, 
and behold, she hadn't any nose only a black patch, with two 



1885.] KA THARINE. 1 09 

slits in it, where one ought to have been. They said she was the 
daughter of a wealthy man in Ireland, who tried once in a foolish 
freak to run past a sentry on duty, without knowing the counter- 
sign. The man put up his sword to stop her, but on she went, 
and the blade came down and sliced her nose clean off. Her 
father gave her ten thousand pounds dowry, and Sammy Fidier 
married her. He got tired of looking at her after a while, I sup- 
pose, and ran away with a good share of her money, thinking she 
would never be able to trace him. But such secrets are like 
murder they will out ; and here she was, asking mother if she 
could give her any information concerning the whereabouts of 
her husband, Mr. Samuel Fidier. That ended Sammy's game 
for one while, at all events. He lived with her then until she 
died, and afterwards found five other fools to take her place, one 
after another." 

As usual, the current of reminiscence had swept Mrs. Dan- 
forth into the haven of placidity. She had in reality no doubt 
of the good faith of her new acquaintance, and was far from 
surmising either the nature or the strength of poor Katharine's 
impulse to impart to her the grounds of her security in this re- 
gard. But the girl's loyalty had already been transferred into 
new hands, and she found nothing more convincing to say than " I 
thought you seemed to like him, mother. You said you thought 
him honest. And if he were not, he would not be the dearest 
friend that either Mr. White or Richard Norton has." 

" I like him well enough as well as one can like a stranger 
who presents his card and then asks for all you have as coolly 
as though you had simply been taking care of it for him all your 
life. But marriage is a more serious thing than you seem to 
think it. It lasts for life. You may repent of it a thousand 
times, but you can never undo it once. And that is why, for you 
especially, who seem to drop your friends so lightly and without 
the least regret almost before you have had time to know them 
reasonably well, it would have been better to let common sense 
and judgment guide you, and not such a sudden fancy as I have 
seen you take up so many times already. How long ago is it 
since you were so wrapped up in that teacher of yours, Miss 
Falconer? I heard nothing but her name for one spell, and then 
it was all over." 

Katharine laughed. " Well," she said, "that was different." 

" I know it was different. But you are the same fickle- 
minded creature that you always were. You don't know your- 
self well enough to act in such haste. But you are your father's 



no KATHARINE. [April, 

child all over in that way. It was a word and a blow with 
him, too ; but he kept to his word when once he gave it." 

Katharine's self-possession had returned by this time. " I 
am not really fickle, mother," she said. " I am only a scientific 
explorer. I have been geologizing for gold and have always 
hit on iron pyrites. Give me credit for never trying to assay 
and coin it. There comes Anna up the stoop. You won't tell 
her yet, will you ? " 

" Not I, indeed," rejoined the mother, whom the question 
had reassured. "1 shall tell nobody until I have had time to 
think it over and make inquiries." 

CHAPTER XXX. 

" THE age of miracles has not passed," said Mrs. White, sit- 
ting that evening in matronly state behind the tea-tray in the 
library. " The impossible certainly happened to me this after- 
noon." , 

" Youthful simplicity spoke in that remark, Mrs. White," 
returned her guest, on whom her eyes had fallen as she finished 
it. " In my experience it is only the impossible which can be 
reckoned on with any degree of probability." 

" Perhaps this ought to be counted as one phase of your ex- 
perience, then ; it went so far beyond the range of mine that 1 
did not quite know how to receive it. Fancy, Arthur ! Cousin 
Eliza invites us three to pay her a visit, to take tea and pass an 
evening with her." 

" You will give Mr. Giddings rather an odd idea of the hos- 
pitable instincts of your relatives," said her husband, with a con- 
strained sort of smile, " if an occurrence which ought to be so 
ordinary strikes you in that way." 

" Oh ! you know how she is, Arthur. If she were a Roman- 
ist she couldn't have much stiffer notions about heretics and 
unbelievers. It is my father's cousin, Mrs. Danforth," she ex- 
plained, turning again to Mr. Giddings, who was engaged at 
the chimney-piece in cleaning and filling the great pipe which 
formed the usual solace of his evenings, and whose use was not 
interdicted even here. 

" My wife pretended at first to dislike my cigarette," Mr. 
White had said the night before, when the question of an out- 
door stroll during its enjoyment had been mooted, "but I soon 
found that if I prolonged my smoke a little the doors between 
these rooms did not long remain closed. She is getting accli- 



1 88s.] . KATHARINE. in 

mated, and, like a sensible woman, prefers rational talk with 
tobacco to silence without it. Make yourself at home, old fel- 
low. The house is wide, you see, and I retain ownership of 
just this one corner in it. But if tea is not served here I shall 
be much mistaken." 

" The mother of the young lady whom I found when I came 
in here yesterday? " asked Mr. Giddings, with an unmoved face, 
tapping the bowl of his pipe gently on the marble as he spoke. 
" I might have mentioned, by the way, that I had met Miss Dan- 
forth once before. I think I told you in Boston that I spent a 
week in the Adirondacks last August with a friend who hails 
from this city. He turned out to be an old acquaintance of all 
the members of her party, and they passed us on their way out 
of the woods." 

" That is odd ! " said Mrs. White. " She never mentioned 
meeting you to me." 

" Wouldn't it be odder still if she had ? " he asked. " If one 
kept in one's memory and talked of all the strangers one casually 
meets, life would not be long enough to attend to what few 
other things there are to speak of." 

" That depends," said Anna, with a shrug and an enigmatic 
smile. " Perhaps it will help us come to a decision on the affair 
in hand. I went up there this afternoon to propose to my Cou- 
sin Kitty to come home with me and finish the evening which 
her headache interrupted so mal-h-propos yesterday, but her mo- 
ther was unaccountably stiff in her refusal. She astonished me, 
however, before I came away, by giving me the invitation I just 
spoke of, and doing it so seriously that I have been wavering 
ever since between surprise and curiosity as to her motive. Of 
course I told her I would bring it about, if possible. I knew I 
could count on Arthur, but you are such an uncertain quantity, 
Mr. Giddings, that I promised to send word later on concerning 
our engagements. 1 left you a loophole for escape, you see." 

" I am entirely at your disposition for the very short time I 
shall be here," he returned, " but a little curious to know why 
such an apparently commonplace invitation should seem to re- 
quire a miracle to bring it about." 

"That is because you don't know my Cousin Eliza." 

" The thing is wider than that," said Mr. White. " Unless 
you had tried it, Louis, you would never understand the strength 
and bitterness of the religious rancor that still animates the elder 
generation of the orthodox part of our American community. 
The new leaven is spreading rapidly among their children, but 



ii2 KATHARINE. [April, 

it was a revelation to me on coming here to find myself regarded 
in so many quarters as a wolf in sheep's clothing, who must be 
kept out of the fold even at the risk of something worse than 
incivility and coldness. I have young people listening to me 
every Sunday, and teaching in my Sunday-school, whose parents 
refuse to recognize me in the streets, and would not hesitate to 
spread any kind of prejudicial report they thought likely to re- 
sult in driving me from the city. They are beginning, though, 
I think, at least in certain quarters, to consider that a man may 
possibly have some claim to the ordinary courtesies of life in 
spite of his belief or want of one. For example, I received last 
week a note signed by a temperance committee, all of them 
members of orthodox churches, asking me to be one of a set of 
speakers on that topic in different churches throughout the city. 
I accepted, as a matter of course, and to-day's post brought me 
a notice that I have been announced to hold forth in one of the 
Methodist meeting-houses some evening in December. But it is 
uphill work. I have been tempted a thousand times to throw it 
over and devote myself to something that holds out a prospect 
of more immediate fruit." 

" That is our old bone of contention," returned his friend. 
" All that is of positive human value in your system, so far as I 
have ever been able to see, is just as clearly, and, to my notion, 
much more effectively and practicallv, taught in that you are en- 
deavoring to displace. And the other has a decided advantage 
in the leverage it gains in motives which you have put it out of 
your power to appeal to." 

" You are less pugnacious than I am. The old Adam in me 
stirs at the sight of the dreary stupidities, the logical absurdities 
and downright falsities that underlie the structure of popular 
orthodoxy as it faces us here. I can't help hammering away at 
it and trying to make people see that what they are really aim- 
ing at the perfecting of life, the systematic culture of the af- 
fections and sympathies, with a view to the gradual ameliora- 
tion of humanity has absolutely no connection with a set of 
arbitrary beliefs, let them concern who or what they may. To 
my mind, it would be quite as sensible to contend that a beaver 
or a bee must have clearly-defined notions on geometry before 
it can build its habitation, as that men must settle their base of 
action on a creed which concerns the next life supposing that 
one exists before they can be trusted to do justice and love 
mercy in this one. All my personal experience goes to contra- 
dict that assumption, and my reading of the book of humanity 



1 88 5 .] KA THARINE. 1 1 3 

in general confirms what my knowledge of myself had previous- 
ly taught me." 

" Happy man ! " said Giddings, smiling. " The sweet in- 
genuousness of your boyhood flourishes in perennial bloom, I 
see. Supposing your contention to be true perhaps it may be, 
in the long run, though I greatly doubt it why should you 
rouse bad blood by refusing to let what is, on your own show- 
ing, well enough alone? You want men to be honest and in- 
dustrious, good fathers and good citizens, and so does your next 
neighbor, who pounds the cushion of his pulpit and shouts him- 
self hoarse in denouncing hell-fire on those who persistently re- 
fuse to live up to that programme. Which of you gets the 
larger audience and produces the more immediate and perma- 
nent effect? " 

" If that is your test, why not leave the cushion-banger at 
the outset and go on to his still more successful rival, the priest ? 
I doubt if all the churches in the city, putting their forces to- 
gether, could muster on a wet Sunday such a throng as I have 
seen overflowing the cathedral here and kneeling uncovered 
in the rain at six o'clock of a cold, winter morning. I have a cer- 
tain respect, too, for the priest, for his creed, his methods, and 
his results, which I find it impossible to entertain for these 
others, who hate him with only one more degree of energy than 
they do me. I laugh to scorn his premises, which are pretty 
nearly identical with theirs, but he is at least consistent in what 
he attempts to build upon them." 

" He does seem to touch some springs which aesthetic ethics 
might possibly fail to reach, doesn't he?" 

" Well, you, at least, have what looks like a substantial rea- 
son for thinking so. Something of the same kind, though on an 
infinitesimally smaller scale, happened, I remember, during my 
earliest experiences in housekeeping, with an Irish servant to the 
fore in the kitchen. Some of our belongings which had myste- 
riously disappeared during her reign below-stairs reappeared 
again, at least as mysteriously, except on the supposition that 
she had been enjoined to return them, after her departure. A 
bundle was thrust into the area and the bell rung, one dark 
night, and there were our missing spoons, enveloped in a hither- 
to unmissed blanket. But what can you argue from that, except 
that there are a good many ignorant and vicious people in the 
world, and that coarse means are best adapted to them until the 
day when they can be reached by something finer ? " 

" I might argue," said his friend, " if I were concerned to de* 
VOL. XLI. 8 



ii4 KATHARINE. [April, 

fend the divine justice and the divine mercy, or even the divine 
verity as I might feel myself concerned supposing I called my- 
self in any sense a Christian minister that all history and all 
probability going to confirm the notion that the ignorant and 
the poor will be the majority in the future, as they have been 
in the past, it would be natural to suppose that their Maker had 
adjusted means to ends, where their moral and spiritual needs 
are concerned, at least as nicely as in the case of the beaver and 
the bee of whom you were just now speaking. If moral re- 
sponsibility has any deeper basis than the mere need of society 
for an effectual police force, it must have roots as profound' and 
consequences as far-reaching in the case of a red Indian, whose 
most pressing present need seems to be deliverance from his 
white friend's whiskey-bottle, as in yours or mine. If, to bring 
about that deliverance for either of us, it is necessary as in his 
case, at least, it seems to be to persuade us thlat we have ac- 
countable souls, that we cannot escape personal immortality, and 
that it depends on ourselves to make eternity everlasting misery 
of a sort we can appreciate, or an equally intelligible happiness, 
I should myself say that either those statements are true, or else 
that we might as well get what pleasure we can, right here and 
now, and in whatever shape we can find it, undisturbed except 
by the equal right of our neighbors to go and do likewise. 
Practically, the people who have settled the negro and the In- 
dian questions for us thus far have acted on that theory, though 
I don't suspect them all of consciously holding it. Whatever 
their speculative notions may be concerning the immortal souls 
of the ' nation's wards ' or those of their private chattels, they 
seem to me to have acted pretty steadily on the underground 
conviction that they don't possess any of their own." 

" You are as impracticable as my Cousin Kitty," said Mrs. 
White. " If we have gone over that ground once in the last 
year, we have gone over it a dozen times. Isn't that so, Ar- 
thur?" 

" Yes," he answered; "she is another of these people whose 
minds seem to throw a sort of calcium light on just one point, 
and to leave them in total darkness on all others. When we 
were up near the Scottish border I noticed the ships coming 
into Newcastle for coals, and unloading their useless ballast of 
stones and earth. Ballast hills they call them as they gradually 
pile up made of refuse from distant shores where it also pos- 
sessed no apparent usefulness to mankind. Afterwards, as we 
were returning to England from Paris by way of Havre and 



1885.] KATHARINE. 115 

Southampton, I remember seeing in the outskirts of a little sea- 
port town, where we passed a day, certain cliffs from whence 
much of this rubbish must have been taken, and the boats in 
harbor hoisting in their loads. I recollect thinking of Miss 
Danforth at the time. She might be of so much use in the 
world, if only she could get over her bad habit of looking 
straight at the immediate object in hand, and demanding Cut 
bono ? before being willing to take one step forward. Suppose a 
ship, well built, full rigged, tide and weather propitious, refusing 
to start unless its hold can be laden with articles of real value. 
Dirt and rubbish are of value enough if they will keep her steady 
until she reaches the coal-bearing coast." 

" I don't quite catch the force of your comparison," said Mr. 
Giddings. " Argument by analogy, when the analogy is between 
a soul and a piece of machinery, is apt enough to be misleading 
in any case. If I were going to apply your figure I should be- 
gin by denying that any sort of ballast is useless, providing that 
it is necessary and the only thing to be had supplying sufficient 
weight. But suppose I deny that any motives you can offer me 
have force enough to keep me on a steady keel ? I must, in the 
nature of things, be the best judge of that. I want to be sure 
that Newcastle exists, and that there are coals there, and that 
they will give me just the kind of warmth I stand in need of, 
before I shall put my shoulder to the work either of excavation 
or exploration. My pipe is out and so is my tobacco, and, rea- 
soning from experience, I conclude that if I don't go out also 
and stir myself up before bed-time I shall have more hours of 
wakefulness between now and morning than will be altogether 
pleasant. Will you take a walk, old fellow ? I will return him 
in good season, Mrs, White." 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

ON the whole, the course of true love in the case of these two 
ran with exceptional smoothness and rapidity to its appointed 
term. 

" I begin to think," Louis said during one of the brief but fre- 
quent visits which diversified the winter, "that it is time to make 
a determined stand against so much unalloyed happiness. It 
alarms me by its unlikeness to anything I have known before 
it. What do you say to propitiating Hymen and the Fates 
by an unbroken absence until April, and a total cessation of all 
correspondence? I might recover mental health and energy, 



ii6 KATHARINE. [April, 

perhaps, on a maigre diet of that description. At present I am 
demoralized by superabundance. A sky all sunshine and the 
prospect of a future without clouds is too unprecedented to be 
real." 

" I am not too happy," answered the girl ; " I am only just 
happy enough. But I give you leave to stay away. You might 
send me a copy of the Chronicle now and then, perhaps, with a 
marked article whenever you have anything new and important 
to say about the tariff question or the attitude of Southern poli- 
ticians, so that I may be sure that you are still in existence. I 
shall have my political horizon enlarged to a fabulous extent in 
that way. And, for. my part, whenever I succeed in making a 
light gingerbread without constant supervision, I will forward 
you a specimen by express." 

" You are a heartless little humbug, and I have a hundred 
minds to take you at your word. The sad thing is that I am 
too much of Tony Lumpkin's way of thinking. I don't care 
about obliging you, but ' I can't abear to disoblige myself.' " 

Katharine smiled and sighed at once. " Ah ! " she said, " let 
us take the goods the gods provide and not look at them too 
closely. One of these days, perhaps, there will be nothing but 
the remembrance of them left to either of us. I am like you 
I fear and hope, and never feel secure but when I know you 
are close at hand." 

The marriage was to take place late in April, the earliest date 
which Mrs. Danforth would consent to fix. 

" Things will be settled by that time," she argued, " or, at any 
rate, I shall know just how they stand, and can make my arrange- 
ments accordingly. Even that is far too soon for an ignoramus 
like Kitty. Her time has been simply thrown away for these 
last three years learning a lot of useless things and leaving her 
in utter darkness as to what she ought to know. From one 
week's end to the other I can't trust her to remember how 
much saleratus ought to go into biscuits or how much sugar 
into cake." 

" It is fortunate that I hate cake," said Louis, " and that I am 
on the point of securing lodgings above a graham-bread baker. 
Saleratus has been strictly prohibited by my attendant physi- 
cian." 

"You laugh," the mother answered, "but what a woman 
needs to know is what belongs to the care of a house ; and that 
this child of mine has yet to learn before I graduate her into 
marriage. It takes either a philosopher or a fool to make even 



1885.] KA THA RINE. 1 1 7 

a fire properly, they say ; and as Kitty is no fool, she will have 
to submit to training." 

The result of Mrs. Danforth's inquiries, made for the most 
part through the intermediation of her brother-in-law, had proved 
highly satisfactory. Mr. Warren himself was in a state of as 
nearly unmixed jubilation over it as was possible to a man of 
his temperament, taking to himself some unexplained credit as 
the remote cause of a condition of affairs which relieved him of 
anxieties more pressing than he had heretofore been willing to 
admit. 

" I was afraid," he said, " that it was going to be a pretty 
close shave, not merely to save anything out of the wreck, but 
to wind up without a compromise and paying a percentage on 
the dollar. It would never have done to have trusted the girl's 
future entirely to the chance of your living, so long as there was 
anything besides it, and my mind was fully made up that neither 
the house nor the rent from it should be diverted from her, even 
to avoid that disgrace, so long as I could stand between it and 
you. But now she and her husband can settle it when she comes 
of age, and meanwhile he is not likely to object to the rents ac- 
cumulating until then. And if you are going to give up this 
house and take to boarding until they come back, you can .easily 
manage in the end to pay dollar for dollar. There couldn't have 
been a better way out of the difficulties. As to the man himself, 
I took a fancy to him on the spot, and I don't often go astray in 
that direction." 

On one point only the mother had conducted her investiga- 
tions in person. 

" You are a friend of Mr. White's," she said to Mr. Giddings 
during the course of his second visit to the city ; " do you share 
his views? " 

Louis was beginning to comprehend his prospective mother- 
in-law, and was not, besides, altogether averse to a little diplo- 
macy of the straightforward order. 

" White's views are rather hazy," he replied. " I shouldn't 
like to be obliged to define them to myself or to listen too at- 
tentively to his exposition of them. I can safely say they are not 
mine." 

" But you have some?" the mother urged. " You are not a 
professing Christian, I suppose few young people are until they 
have had a good chance to find out for themselves that life is not 
all sunshine and plain sailing. But you don't deny the truth of 
Christianity ? " 



n8 KATHARINE. [April, 

" I don't deny I don't affirm. I simply know nothing. 
Speaking literally, I suppose I ought to call myself a Chris- 
tian ; I certainly was baptized one." 

" Humph ! what has that to do with it? I was baptized one, 
too, when I was a baby, but there was not much Christianity in 
me until I was converted. Your people were Episcopalians, 
then, I take it ? " 

"No; my mother went just one step back of that. As for 
my father, he was like most men who die at forty after a life 
too busy and too happy to leave room for much thought about 
uncertainties." 

'' One step back ? " Mrs. Danforth repeated, with a disturbed 
face. " You don't mean that your mother was a Catholic ? " 

" Precisely, but one who had the misfortune to lose her 
faith.". 

" You have curious notions about misfortune. Then you 
were not trained that way ? It is well for you, since you are 
bent on Katharine." 

" You mean that it would have made a difference with you ? " 

" I would never have consented. I could not have prevented 
it in any case, I suppose, but that would have marked the limit 
for me. An unbeliever is bad enough, but an idolater is worse." 

" Oh ! I am an idolater, if you come to that," he answered, 
turning the subject with a jest. " Haven't you observed my unre- 
mitting devotions at the shrine you have here ? " 

" It is a shabby pair of divinities you have between you,'' 
she retorted, " but at least they are better than stocks and 
stones." 

Katharine had listened in silence to this dialogue, but later 
on she returned to the subject of her own accord. 

" You were fencing with my mother awhile ago," she said. 
" Why do you do that ? " 

" I have such a respect for truth," he answered, smiling. " I 
hate to waste it. Besides, though. I fenced, all I said was literally 
true. I don't deny and I don't affirm Christianity, and I am, as a 
matter of fact, what the majority of Christendom has for nearly 
nineteen centuries agreed to call a Christian. That is as certain 
as that I am my father's son and hope some day to be your fa- 
ther's daughter's husband. Why did you accuse me of fencing? " 
" Because that is just what you were doing. 'But tell me, 
.what is it that you really believe? The night I saw you at 
Anna's" and the blood came up hot again in the face that kept, 
nevertheless, its steady, serious eyes bent full on his " I remem- 



1885.] KATHARINE. 119 

her often I never shall forget, I think all that you said to me, 
and how repeatedly the name of God came to your lips. You 
have said it sometimes since, but not often, and not that way. 
What did it mean to you ? " 

" When you ask what one means," he answered, as seriously 
as she had spoken, " you enter a purely intellectual region, and 
in that region such a question strikes me dumb. I have never 
been able to give myself an intelligible account of my intuitions, 
and, not being able, I usually succeed in banishing them from 
my consciousness. I like to be master of all I survey within 
myself, and, when in full possession of my waking faculties, these 
wandering tramps of the imagination get small hospitality from 
my reason. But there are things in one's experience which may 
fairly make one doubt whether the discursive reason really has a 
right to the supreme place we are inclined to give it whether 
we do well to make it both executive and judge and demand 
that even our deepest instincts shall bear its stamp upon their 
passports. I cried out to God when I found that you were 
mine, and that the chord that throbbed in my heart vibrated as 
I hoped it would in yours, as inevitably, as instinctively as I sup- 
pose I shall do if I approach death with my consciousness intact. 
But what I meant by it I cannot tell you. If I could I should 
probably be a Christian in something more than the bare, actual 
fact of baptism." 

" Ah ! " said the girl, " how often I have longed for God ! It 
seems to me that my childhood was full of the thought of him, 
and that it passed away only when that thought became ob- 
scured to me. I tried, too, to make my reason give me an ac- 
count of that longing, when I turned back from the road that it 
seemed to me my reason had first pointed out to me, but it grew 
dumb, like yours. It speaks no more, but it never ceases to fret 
and to torment me. I am in a worse plight than you, for I cannot 
cry out to him even when my heart is stirred to its foundations. 
I feel guilty, and 1. don't know why." 

" If I say," he answered, " that you and I have come together 
on ground lower than that of our intelligence, I mean simply 
that it supports and underlies it. We shall emerge into clear 
air in that region also in due time, I doubt not. My creed is 
very short even now, but it is very natural and easy for me to 
say Credo in unum Deum when I have you. I was always like 
the traveller in the fable. The sun thaws me out of my cloak, 
when the wind only binds it closer round me." 

" How hard it is sometimes," the girl began again after a 



1 20 SOME NON-BELIE VERS ON EASTER IN ROME. [April, 

somewhat protracted pause, " to know what is right, when all 
your profoundest instincts draw you one way, and all your 
duties, or what you suppose to be your duties certainly all 
your habitudes and all the inclinations of those who are about 
you draw you in the other. You are looking for happiness, of 
course, but it seems to you then that it lies at neither extreme. 
When it came to the point with me I could not determine to 
take my own way ; yet, after all, I took no other. And you 
heard what my mother said just now. The inconsistencies of 
Christianity, or rather of Christians, are what puzzle and perplex 
me most. She was quite in earnest. If you had been Catholic 
I could have gone to you only in face of her absolute prohibi- 
tion. And yet they believe all that she believes to be essential. 
And Mr. White denies it all, but she would not have refused me 
to you if you had owned to her that you do the same." 

" She must stand or fall to her own master," he returned. 
" Certainly it is for neither you nor I to judge her." 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



SOME NON-BELIEVERS ON EASTER IN ROME. 

IN the course of some recent reading we were forcibly struck 
with one thing the completeness of the effect of the church's 
dignity as manifested in the Eternal City on the minds of 
unbelievers. Let a visitor have been ever so sceptical, so nar- 
row, so hostile to Catholic traditions, the glory of the church in 
Rome never failed to reach his inmost soul and overwhelm it and 
compel his reluctant homage. How happy for such a man if- 
that moment of light lasted for him ! Especially did the ceremo- 
nies of Easter impress the sceptical beholders. One of the most 
eloquent passages in modern Spanish literature appears in a 
recent book * of Castelar's, descriptive of the intoning of the 
"Miserere" in Holy Week in St. Peter's. The passage is a 
jewel from a garbage-heap, for the book reeks with stale Vol- 
tairianism and the stock slanders of flippant unbelief. 

"No pen," says Castelar, " can describe th,e solemnity of the 'Miserere/ 
The night advances. The basilica is in darkness. Its altars are uncov- 
ered. Through the open arches there penetrates the uncertain light of 
dawn, which seems to deepen the shadows. The last taper of the ' Tene- 

* L'Art, la Religion, et la Nature en Italie. Paris : Hachette et Cie. 



1885.] SOME NON-BELIEVERS ON EASTER IN ROME. 121 

brario ' is hidden behind the altar. The cathedral resembles an immense 
mausoleum, with the faint gleaming of funereal torches in the distance. 
The music of the 'Miserere ' is not instrumental. It is a sublime choir, ad- 
mirably combined. Now it comes like the far-off roar of a tempest, as the 
vibration of wind upon ruins or among the cypresses of tombs; again like 
a lamentation from the depths of the earth or the moaning of heaven's 
angels, breaking into sobs and sorrowfully weeping. The marble statues, 
gigantic and of dazzling whiteness, are not completely hidden by the dark- 
ness, but appear like the spirits of past ages coming out of the sepulchres 
and loosing their shrouds to join the intonation of this canticle of despair. 
The whole church is agitated and vibrates as if words of horror were rising 
from the stones. This profound and sublime lament, this mourning of bit- 
terness, dying away into airy circles, penetrates the heart by the intensity 
of its sadness. It is the voice of Rome supplicating Heaven from her load 
of ashes, as if under the sackcloth she writhed in her death-agony. To 
weep thus, to lament like the prophets of old by the banks of the Euphra- 
tes or among the scattered stones of the temple to grieve in these sub- 
lime cadences becomes the city whose eternal sorrow has not marred her 
eternal beauty. . . . Rome, Rome, thou art grand, thou art immortal, even 
in thy despair and abandonment. The human heart shall be thy eternal 
altar, although the faith which has been thy prestige should perish as the 
conquerors who made thy greatness have departed. None can rob thee of 
thy God-given immortality, which thy pontiffs have sustained, and which 
thy artists will for ever preserve." 

The reader must only conjecture how much this passage loses 
by translation from the majestic Spanish of which Castelar is 
truly the greatest living master. 

A very different kind of witness is Mr. Lyman Abbott, an 
American writer, who records some interesting impressions of 
Easter in Rome.* He says : 

" It would be unjust not to advise the reader that it is claimed that all 
this effort at splendor and magnificence is purely and wholly a tribute of 
man to honor the religion which God in his love and mercy has given, and 
that no part of it is for man's own honor. 

"Two circumstances lend confirmation to this view and give to the 
ceremonials of the Romish court a peculiar character which distinguishes 
them from those of royalty. 

"One of these is the honor which the Supreme Pontiff himself pays to 
the symbols of the Deity. He yields allegiance to no man ; but he pub- 
licly and solemnly proclaims his allegiance to a Divine Master. Before the 
altar he bows as the commonest peasant in his church must do, and stands 
before the Host in reverential attitude and with uncovered head. The same 
veneration which he demands for himself as the representative of Christ 
he pays to Christ. When he showers his benedictions upon the people or 
walks the street in ecclesiastical procession they uncover before him. 
Woe to the luckless wight who dares refuse this token of homage to his 
sacred person ! But when on Holy Week he carries the sacred emblem, 

* Harper's Magazine for June, 1873. 



1 22 SOME NON-BELIE VERS ON EA STER IN ROME. [April, 

converted by ecclesiastical benediction into the real body and blood of 
Christ, to his private chapel in the Vatican, he walks bareheaded, protect- 
ed from the burning sun by a canopy borne above him by eight attendant 
bishops and by an umbrella carried by a ninth ecclesiastic. Thus he 
teaches the people, in theory if not in fact, to transfer to God the honor 
which they pay to him. The whole system of ecclesiastical homage, ris- 
ing in such elaborate gradation from the lowest to the highest rank of 
the hierarchy, constitutes the successive steps by which the worshipper 
ascends to the very throne of God." 

We find in another Protestant writer, William W. Story,* an 
admirable description of the glorious festival. 

"Easter has come," he says. " You may know it by the ringing of the' 
bells, the sound of the trumpets in the streets, the firing of guns from the 
windows, the explosion of mortars planted in the pavement. . . . By 
twelve o'clock Mass in St. Peter's is over and the piazza is crowded with 
people to see the benediction ; and a grand, imposing spectacle it is. Out 
over the great balcony stretches a white awning, where priests and atten- 
dants are collected and where the pope will soon be seen. Below the 
piazza is alive with moving masses. In the centre are drawn up long 
lines of soldiery with yellow and red pompons and glittering helmets and 
bayonets. These are surrounded by crowds on foot, and at the outward 
rim are parked carriages filled and overrun with people mounted on seats 
and boxes. There is a half-hour's waiting, while we can look about, a 
steady stream of carriages all the while pouring in and, if one could see 
it, stretching out a'mile behind and adding thousands of impatient spec- 
tators to those already there. What a sight it is ! Above us the great 
dome of St. Peter's, and below the grand, embracing colonnade and the 
vast space, in the centre of which rises the solemn obelisk, thronged with 
masses of living beings. Peasants from the Campagna and the moun- 
tains are moving about everywhere. Mounted on the colonnade are 
crowds of people leaning over beside the colossal statues. Through all 
the heat is heard the constant plash of two sunlit fountains that wave to 
and fro their veils of white spray. At last the clock strikes. In the far 
balcony beneath the projecting awning, that casts a patch of soft, trans- 
parent shadow along the golden, sunlit facade, and surrounded by a group of 
brilliant figures, are seen two huge fans of showy peacock plumes, and be- 
tween them a figure clad in white rises from a golden chair and spreads his 
great sleeves like wings as he raises his arms in benediction. That is the 
pope. All is dead silence, and a musical voice, sweet and penetrating, is 
heard chanting from the balcony. The people bend and kneel ; with a cold, 
gray flash the forest of bayonets gleams as the soldiers drop to their knees 
and rise to salute as the voice dies away, and the two white wings are 
again waved. Then thunder the cannon, the bells clash and peal joyously, 
and a few white papers, like huge snowflakes, drop wavering from the bal- 
cony ; these are indulgences, and there is an eager struggle for them 
below. Then the pope again rises, again gives his benediction, waving to 
and fro his right hand three fingers open and making the sign of the 

* Roba di Roma. By William W. Story. London : Chapman & Hall. 



1885.] SOME NON-BELIEVERS ON EASTER IN ROME. 123 

cross, and the peacock fans retire, and he between them is borne away ; and 
Lent is over." 

The most awe-inspiring of all the Easter ceremonies is cer- 
tainly this solemn benediction given, " Urbi et Orbi " " to Rome 
and the world " by the Sovereign Pontiff. Borne into the great 
gallery over the porch of St. Peter's, the pope stands at a stu- 
pendous height above the watching multitudes that swarm in the 
court below, his robes radiant with gems and heavy with gold, 
his tiara sparkling with diamonds, the mitred prelates attending 
him likewise gorgeously invested. A silence as of death is 
spread over the vast, majestic place as Christ's vicar enunciates 
the words of blessing. As there is no temple in the world equal 
to St. Peter's, there is no ceremony in the world so impressive 
as this. 

" The scene of the benediction on Easter day is truly magni- 
ficent," says an anonymous author.* 

" The pope comes out on the. balcony of St. Peter's ; thousands upon 
thousands fill the area below. He stretches forth his arms towards the 
waiting multitude, pronounces his blessing upon them, upon the city, upon 
the world. The moment of the blessing is indeed solemn and imposing, 
and, in the midst of the stillness of death, nothing is heard but the voice 
of the pope and the waters of the fountain ; and immediately afterwards 
the cannon of St. Angelo announce to the world that it has been blessed. 

" The illumination of the dome of St. Peter's in the evening is also a 
magnificent sight ; if the second, sudden, and much more splendid illumi- 
nation be a sensible image of the church upon earth, the first appeared to 
me, as I viewed it from a hill in the distance, to partake more of the genu- 
ine character of art. As the dome from moment to moment seemed to ex- 
tend its giant form, it appeared to me as if 'a temple not built with hands ' 
an image of the living Christian church had been let down from hea- 
ven. As I stood gazing with astonishment at this overwhelming spectacle, 
the well-known voice of a beggar close beside me called out, Povero cteco 
(poor blind man). I had often heard this before ; it had never appeared to 
me so pertinent and striking." 

"Who shall picture," says William Ellery Channing.t " the splendors 
of a beautiful Easter Sunday in St. Peter's ? Who can imagine the over- 
wrought feelings of the pious Catholic ? As the Holy Father passed in 
the pontifical chair, followed by the most sacred bodies of the church, and 
the centre of admiration to his united children, I involuntarily knelt upon 
the pavement and murmured my prayers ; as he blessed the prostrate mul- 
titude from the exterior I offered up to Heaven my ardent gratitude for be- 
ing permitted to take part in this great jubilee." 

Thackeray, in one of Clive Newcome's letters to Pendennis 

* Rome : Its Ecclesiastical and Social Life. London : Newby. 

t Conversations in Rome. By William E. Channing. Boston : Crosby & Nichols, 



1 24 SOME NON-BELIE VERB ON EA STER IN ROME. [April, 

from Rome describing the Easter ceremonies, makes his young 
hero indulge in the following remarkable outburst : 

*' There must be moments, in Rome especially, when every man of 
friendly heart who writes himself English and Protestant must feel a pang 
at thinking that he and his countrymen are insulated from European 
Christendom. An ocean separates us. From one shore or the other one 
can see the neighbor cliffs on clear days ; one must wish sometimes that 
there were no stormy gulf between us, and from Canterbury to Rome a 
pilgrim could pass and not drown beyond Dover. Of the beautiful parts 
of the great mother-church I believe among us many people have no idea 
we think of lazy friars, of pining cloistered virgins, of ignorant peasants 
worshipping wood and stones, bought and sold indulgences, absolution, and 
the like commonplace of Protestant satire. Lo ! yonder inscription which 
blazes round the dome of the temple, so great and glorious it looks like 
heaven almost ; and, as if the words were written in stars, it proclaims to 
all the world that this is Peter, and on this rock the church shall be built 
against which hell shall not prevail. Under the bronze canopy his 
throne is lit with lights that have been burning before it for ages. Round 
this stupendous chamber are ranged the grandees of his court. Faith 
seems to be realized in their marble figures. Some of them were alive but 
yesterday ; others, to be as blessed as 'they, walk the world even now 
doubtless, and the commissioners of Heaven, here holding their court a 
hundred years hence, shall authoritatively announce their beatification. 
The signs of their power shall not be wanting. They heal the sick, open 
the eyes of the blind, cause the lame to walk to-day as they did eighteen 
centuries ago. Are there not crowds ready to bear witness to their won- 
ders? Isn't there a tribunal appointed to try their claims ; advocates to 
plead for and against ; prelates and clergy and multitudes of faithful to 
back and believe them? Thus you shall kiss the hand of a priest to-day 
who has given his to a friar whose bones are already beginning to work 
miracles, who has been the disciple of another whom the church has just 
proclaimed a saint hand-in-hand they hold by one another until the line is 
lost up in heaven. Come, friend, let us acknowledge this, and go and kiss 
the toe of St. Peter. Alas ! there's the Channel always between us ; and 
we no more believe in the miracles of St. Thomas of Canterbury than that 
the bones of His Grace John Bird, who sits in St. Thomas' chair presently, 
will work wondrous cures in the year 2000; that his statue will speak or 
his portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence wink.'' 

Here is a German writer of sceptical tendency somewhat 
similarly impressed. He writes under a nom de plume in Die Gar- 
tenlaube : 

" When the Paschal morning pours vast populations into the vast nave, 
and above an ocean of heads you see coming, his brow bearing the triple 
crown and his frame dignified by the sacerdotal habit, this prince of priests 
and father of kings, then the mind pictures that vast line of descent, and 
all the popes appear to you in one only. That sparkling and voluminous 
tiara, which makes you think of the sovereign of Nineveh ; that dais high 
in the air; those great fans and feathers which evoke reminiscences of 



1 88 5 .] SOME NON-BELIE VERS ON EA STER IN ROME. 1 2 5 

India all amaze you in the presence of the majesty which approaches 
you thus. 

" Seen close, when you can discern his features, the Holy Father causes a 
lively sensation ; this comes from a formal contrast between the dominant 
and bold situation of the only sovereign of our levelling times who still 
has human beings to bear him, and the modest, fatherly, and collected 
bearing of the prince who seems to cling to the world only by the bless- 
ings that he scatters. The pope chants correctly and has the modulation 
of a true master. His basso-cantata voice has the roundness and power of 
a bell ; it fills the bays of the basilica, and when from the height of the 
Loggia the Sovereign Pontiff blesses the city and the world, none of the 
nations represented before the basilica loses a syllable." 

We find in a book of Taine's, Italy, Rome, and Naples, the fol- 
lowing eloquent description of the crowds which on Easter Sun- 
day fill the church of St. Peter's : 

"The crowd is spread all over, in the square, on the stair-cases, in the 
porticoes, engulfing itself, with a prolonged murmur, in the immensity of 
the basilica. In this human ocean the slow, undulating billows gradually 
form and break before the statue of St. Peter; the flood advances and 
recedes under the reflex of preceding waves. Pushing and crowding, 
every moment augments or decreases the disorderly movement of this 
mass, a tumultuous and noisy confusion of steps, of rustling robes, and 
of words rumbling among the grand walls ; while aloft, above this agitation 
and murmur, one perceives the peaceful, vaulted spaces, the luminous void 
of the ceilings and domes, the statues and ornaments superimposed sub- 
limely one above the other and filling the winding abyss of the cupola. 

"In this sea of bodies and heads a double rank of soldiers, chanters, 
and choir-boys form an aisle in which flows the solemn and pompous reti- 
nue ; first are the garda nobtle, red and black, and wearing casques ; then 
red chamberlains ; further on prelates in purple ; then masters of cere- 
monies in pourpoints and black mantles ; after these the cardinals ; and last 
the Sovereign Pontiff, borne by acolytes in a chair of red velvet embroi- 
dered with gold, and on his head the triple golden tiara. Fans of the 
plumes of ostriches wave around him. He has a benevolent, affectionate 
expression; his fine, pale countenance is that of an invalid; you think 
with regret how much he must suffer at this moment as he gives his bene- 
diction with a quiet smile. . . . 

"The people, the peasants, look as if they were gazing on God the 
Father. You ought to see their faces, and those especially round the 
statue of St. Peter." 

We will conclude our little string of extracts by a passage 
from one of the saints of the church describing the joy of the 
Roman crowds celebrating the festival of exultation in the fourth 
century. St. Gregory Nazianzen draws a vivid picture. 

"All labor ceased," he says, "all trades were suspended ; the husband- 
man threw down his spade and put on his holiday attire ; the very tavern- 
keepers relinquished their gains. The roads were empty of travellers, the 



126 SOME NON-BELIEVERS ON EASTER IN ROME. [April, 

sea destitute of sailors. The mother came to church with the train of 
her children and domestics, her spouse and her kinsfolk. All Christians 
seemed for the day members of one tribe. The rich wore their gayest attire, 
and the poor borrowed from their neighbors and seemed as well dressed as 
the wealthy. The very slaves shared in the general joy and exulted like their 
free-born masters. Every sorrow was put to rest on Easter day, nor was 
there any one so overwhelmed with grief as not to find relief in the mag- 
nificence of this festival. Now the prisoner is loosed," continues the saint, 
" the debtor is forgiven, the slave is liberated, and he who continues in bond- 
age receives desirable benefits." 

What a miracle it is, this joy of the faithful at Easter time ! 
Have you ever dwelt on the striking fact that joy is the exclusive 
privilege of the faithful ? that faith alone is accompanied by joy, 
while melancholy is the companion of scepticism ? The devil is 
inevitably sad. " Which way shall I fly ? " cries Satan in Para- 
dise Lost 

" Infinite wrath and infinite despair ! 
Which way I fly is hell." 

And Satan's followers participate more or less in his settled 
melancholy ; whereas "the faithful in a certain degree resemble 
the angels, who are all light and joy. " If I had the pen of an 
angel," says Nicholas Caussin in his Holy Court, " I could not 
convey what God does to the hearts of those who love him and 
keep his commandments the ecstatic joy and delight he in- 
fuses into their souls 1 " Reflect upon it there are no truly 
joyous peoples in the world but the Catholic peoples. The 
Mohammedan is sad, the Buddhist is sad, the Protestant German 
is a gloomy, suicidal soul. But the Irish, the most unfortunate, 
is the gayest race on earth. It is not the race, it is the faith 
which does it. When England was Catholic she was " Merrie Eng- 
land " ; since John Bull lost the faith he has become sunk in the 
dismal dumps and takes to wife-beating and gin. It was while 
the French were sincerely Catholic they became famous for their 
gayety. Now their hilarity is an absinthe-fever ; and in its morn- 
ing headaches the " grande nation " rivals the dolefulness of the 
herring-mongers of the Low Countries. Last of all, here is young 
America at the knee of mother-church, learning of her the cheer- 
fulness that God loveth. Oh ! may that happiness be in store 
for our own country. May she soon be bathed in the holy " sun- 
shine of the heart" that is only known within the ring of the true 
fold, within the light of the true church ! 



1885.] SILENT. 127 

SILENT. 

i. 

" ABIDE with me," I said. 
And lo ! the Master led 
My tender feet beyond his garden-walls. 
O'er dreary waste of sand 
Still, still I held his hand, 
And climbed the rocks where song-bird never calls. 

And there I sang 
Of his sweet waterfalls. 

II. 

And when I would return 
For all my soul did yearn 
For Eden shade, and song and river flow 
With kingly smile he said, 
"Abide you here instead, 

And o'er these rocks make tender grasses grow, 
Whereon the few there be 
To climb this height for me 
Who feast, and song, and ease of flesh forego 

May rest and sing 
Of joy thou shalt bestow." 

in. 

And still might love restrain 
Her dumb, rebellious pain. 

" Have pity, Lord, nor ask for wheat or flowers ; 
Sweet song Thou gavest me, 
Sweet song I give to Thee; 
How can I sing in exile from Thy bowers? 

There let me serve 
The feast Thy love endowers." 

IV. 

And yet the Master said, 

" Wait here for me instead ; 
My gardens bloom wherever love obeys. . . . 

Release from bitter pain 

My pilgrims here shall gain 
'Tis thine to wake their melody of praise. 
Now they are dumb 

Who walk these desert ways." 



O sterile, hateful spot ! 
And yet I flee it not. 



128 SILENT. [April, 

For when I would he scourgeth me full sore. 

And in my bitter pain 

My eyelids shed the rain 

These brambles drink, and only grow the more. 
My rock is bare 

The pilgrims shun my door. 

V. 

'Twas yesterday I heard 
A voice like singing bird 
A pilgrim climbing ah! how could he sing? 
And he bore sorest loss 
And more the Master's cross. 
My well was dry the thorns have choked the spring- 

Far spent was he, 
But fainting he did sing : 

" Dear Lord, if Thou canst see 

In my humility, 
My barren life, some sign of hidden germ, 

That yet may break 

The earth and take 

Form of Thy will, though it be thorn to burn, 
Spare it, dear Lord, 

From drought and worm. 

" Reveal in favor sweet 

What wouldst have to complete 
The harvesting Thy purposes do claim ; 

And if my life untaught 

In beauty yieldeth naught, 
Let love pay its full tribute still the same 
A tuft of grass 

If not much grain." 

VI. 

In the long silence then 

He waited my "Amen." . . . 
Ah ! bitter night when song was [dead with me ! 

" Farewell ! " at dawn he sang. 

" Farewell ! " the valleys rang, 
And " farewell " from the Eden by the sea. 

VII. 

And song sweet song 
Said no farewell to me. 



1 885 .] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 1 29 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY INDICATED BY ITS HISTORICAL 
EFFECTS. By Richard S. Storrs. D.D., LL.D. New York : Anson L>. 
F. Randolph & Co., 900 Broadway. 

The ten lectures comprised under this title were delivered before the 
students of the Union Theological Seminary and the Lowell Institute of 
Boston. It would be interesting to know what effect they and the course 
of Dr. Fisher's lectures have produced in the cultured, free-thinking circles 
of Boston. They are levelled against agnosticism, and also that kind of 
gnosticism which pits yv&6iS against xidrt?. Dr. Storrs is specifically an 
orator, and his productions are marked by that kind of eloquence in style 
which needs to be spoken and listened to for its full effect. The rhetoric 
is sufficiently elaborated and polished, the argument sufficiently well sus- 
tained, the matter solid and copious enough to make of admirable lectures 
very readable as well as instructive essays for private perusal. The mass of 
excerpts from many men of many minds, each one of whom is made a 
tributary to the stream of the author's discourse, enhances the value of the 
text and makes a sort of anthology which has its own separate interest. 
The publisher has done his work extremely well. Such a book as this is 
particularly in need of an index. The one who has to make an index, and 
the one who looks in vain to find one, are alike to be pitied. In this case, 
since there is a clear, copious index, the one who' made it is worthy of 
praise, and the reader may congratulate himself. Ten or a hundred able 
writers might write each ten ora hundred able lectures on the philosophy of 
religion and Christian history without exhausting its vast and fertile field. 
Dr. Storrs presents a few generalized views of, as it were, extensive and 
crowded areas, seen from a balloon at a great elevation. It is often true 
that/iz//rt'rt latet in generalibus. The philosophy of history furnishes count- 
less ambushes for fallacies. Generalizations are not, however, so hidden 
when they are fallacious that they cannot be hunted out by a skilful re- 
connoissance in force, nor are they necessarily fallacious. There is a philo- 
sophy of history which is one of the most formidable antagonists of Chris- 
tianity. There is another which is one of the most powerful of the forces 
arrayed in its defensive and aggressive polemics. The dispute between 
the two contrary systems of generalization turns on the validity of the in- 
duction from the facts. It is boldly asserted that intelligent and educated 
men cannot much longer maintain the truth of historical Christianity. 
What ought to take its place when it has been universally given up t 
whether theism, pantheism, atheism, optimism, or pessimism, some gnos- 
tic system or agnostic no-system and chaos of ignorance, is matter of fierce 
dispute among the anti-Christians. The argument for theism and natural 
religion against agnostics, Christianity and revealed religion against the 
gnostics, from history ; which consists in marshalling certain, indubitable 
facts with all possible completeness, and making from these a logical in- 
duction as valid as that on which Kepler's laws are based ; is a principal 
part of Christian polemics. This is the contention of Dr. Storrs : that cer- 
tain facts are effects of the Christian religion, by which their causes are 
VOL. XLI. 9 



130 . NEW PUBLICATIONS. . [April, 

made known and intelligible. The secular edifice of Christendom or Chris- 
tian civilization rests on the Christian religion as its foundation, which 
itself rests on the reality of the Gospel-history of Christ, which in turn 
is based on the religion of pure monotheism. In a word, God is mani- 
fested as Creator and Lord, Christ as the Messiah of God, in the effects of 
Christianity; wherefore, it is divine. There is a condensed summary of the 
arguments of the preceding lectures in the Tenth Lecture, which is an ex- 
cellent piece of composition, both in respect to reasoning and style. Dr. 
Storrs has kept mostly within the domain belonging to the preamble of 
Christianity. It would be difficult to find a work on religion in which there 
is a greater or even an equal proportion of the contents to which the 
Suffrage of approbation must be given by all who can in any sense of the 
word be called Christians. Indeed, all except certain "lewd fellows of the 
baser sort " admit with Goethe that Christianity has taken humanity up to 
the greatest height as yet attained. Even these must, therefore, assent to 
a large part of Dr. Storrs' argument. There is just as much reason why 
mankind should stay on this height, and climb higher in the same path 
under the same guidance, as there ever was for ascending. No God, no 
true manhood ; no Christ, no God ; no genuine humanitarianism without 
theism ; no theism without Christianity. Dr. Storrs does not take the 
higubrious view of the future of Christianity viz., that its great day is on 
the decline, and the blackness of darkness before the world. Quite the 
reverse. But we cannot protract our remarks any further. If this volume 
has a large circulation it will be a good omen. 

THE RELIGIONS OF MANKIND. (Histoire des Religions. Problemes et 
Conclusions. Par 1'Abbe de Broglie.) i vol. 121110. Paris. 1885. 

This book will be welcome to many of our readers as meeting, from a 
Catholic point of view, a growing need of the period. For some time back, 
but particularly during these latter years, the religious history of mankind 
as a whole, and the endless variety of its shapes, have been the object of 
much attention and study. At all times, indeed, religious beliefs and prac- 
tices have had the privilege of attracting the notice of those who visited 
and undertook to describe strange countries and peoples. They are also, 
referred to constantly by those ancient writers to whom they were familiar, 
but as things of daily life, and with scarce any attempt to discover their 
antecedent forms or to account for their origin and growth. Such prob- 
lems were reserved for our times. In fact, up to a recent period the reli- 
gions of the greater part of the human race were but very imperfectly 
known, and to deal with them as a whole was practically impossible. 

The Germans, as might be expected, were the .first to take them up. 
Nor could they have fallen into better hands; for the German mind, with 
its peculiar gift of collecting and mastering numberless details, its breadth 
of comprehension and power of seeing into the distant past, was peculiarly 
fitted to deal with the difficulties of the subject. Hence, from Kreuzer 
down to the " mythologists " of the present day, a series of studies covering 
the whole field of investigation, and, taken together, fairly representing the 
strong points, as also some of the faults, of the great German historical 
school. 

France followed, but, until recently, with little to show of original work 



1885.3 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 131 

save in the wide researches of her great Orientalist, Eugene Burnouf. Eng- 
land, last engaged on the general issue, is rapidly making up for lost time. 
In fact, everywhere at the present day the whole question is held promi- 
nently before the public mind. Special chairs are established in several 
universities with no other object, and from the higher regions of learned 
research it is being brought by our reviews and daily papers within the 
reach of the general reader. 

And here comes the danger which has to be met. Those forms of reli- 
gion, past and present, now coming for the first time to be generally known, 
whilst suggesting to thoughtful minds the most interesting problems, give 
rise at the same time to a number of objections againstthe Christian faith 
of which unbelievers have not been sjow to avail themselves. We meet 
with them in works on ancient history and modern travel, in learned essays 
and in the pages of our periodicals. The very fact of their being put for- 
ward, not as objections, but as the ascertained results of enlightened and 
unprejudiced research, gives them additional power to unsettle the faith 
of unwary readers. 

It is for the latter that the book of Abbe de Broglie is invaluable. 
There is hardly a general question raised by the study of religions which 
he does not deal with, no serious objection which he does not meet. His 
work is the summary of his public lectures given on the subject at the 
Catholic Institute of Paris during a period of several years. There is con- 
sequently much in it of condensed thought. The tone is that of one per- 
fectly conversant with the facts, who looks them full in the face and never 
strives to blink or minimize them because they may prove inconvenient. 
Facts are inconvenient only for such as are unwilling to part with their 
prejudices or delusions. What the abbe wants is clearly to get at the truth. 
For instance, the strange and striking resemblances between the religions 
of the East and certain Catholic doctrines and customs, of which so much 
has been said, the writer deals with in a spirit of manifest candor, aiming 
only at fixing the exact nature and extent of those resemblances and then 
endeavoring to account for them. Hence the perfectly reliable character 
of his facts and of the conclusions they lead him to. Those who have de- 
voted any special study to the subject may question some of his minor 
positions, but we venture to predict that to them the book will be particu- 
larly enjoyable as containing the impressions of a thoughtful and highly 
cultivated mind on the many grave problems which have not failed to 
occur to them. 

To all enlightened Catholics it will be gratifying to see so important a 
subject taken up at last in a truly Catholic spirit by one so competent to 
deal with it. A book of this kind in English would be a help and a protec- 
tion to an ever-increasing number of Catholic readers. Perhaps a trans- 
lation of the present might best suit the purpose. To such as are familiar 
with French, in its present form it will be found equally useful and inte- 
resting. Its thoughtful and moderate tone is in keeping with the author's 
other philosophical writings, whilst the style, in its perspicuity and sober 
chasteness, more than once reminds one of the eminent literary gifts of the 
family to which the distinguished professor belongs.* We would call atten- 

* Abbe de Broglie, formerly an officer in the French navy, is brother of the eminent writer 
and statesman, Due de Broglie, and grandson of the celebrated Madame de Stael. 



132 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 

tion to the tenth chapter (" La Transcendance du Christianisme ") as con- 
taining one of the most striking and unassailable arguments we have met 
with in favor of the Christian religion. The eleventh and last chapter is a 
most interesting and valuable summary of the conclusions to which an un- 
prejudiced mind is led by an attentive study of the religions of mankind. 

ORIGENE ET LA CRITIQUE TEXTUELLE DU NOUVEAU TESTAMENT. Par M. 
1'Abbe Martin, Professeur a 1'Ecole Superieure de Theologie de Paris. 
Paris : Victor Palme. 1885. 

A new and startling theory as to the text of the New Testament was 
propounded by the well-known author of this pamphlet in an article 
published in the July number of the Recueil des Questions Hisloriques. 
The present publication is a defence of the position taken in that article. 
As is well known, the principle assumed as certain by all schools of 
textual critics has been that the nearest approximation that can be 
made (so far as texts are of service for such approximation) to the 
genuine text of the New Testament is in and by means of the most an- 
cient manuscripts known at present, and especially by means of the Sinai- 
tic, the Alexandrine, the Vatican, the Ephraem, and that of Beza. There 
is no agreement as to which of these is the best ; Tischendorf has chosen 
the Sinaitic, Westcott and Hort the Vatican, but all agree in making some 
one or other or the whole the standard and criterion. In direct opposition 
to this generally-received principle, the Abbe Martin contends that these 
manuscripts, instead of being trustworthy guides to the original text, are 
positively misleading, and that security from error will in general be in- 
sured by distrusting them. He maintains that these manuscripts were 
never intended to be faithful copies of the text received in the church at 
the time they were written ; that they contain an eclectic text, the product 
of the traditional text, combined with readings found in the Fathers, and 
especially in Origen. They may, therefore, be called critical editions of the 
New Testament, made for the use of the Eastern Church, of which the 
traditional text is the base, but modified by the various readings found in 
Origen and the other Fathers. The extent of these modifications was 
greater or less according as the acquaintance of the respective editors with 
the Fathers was greater or less. This is the theory which a long, care- 
ful study of Origen and the Fathers along with the texts, without any 
preconceived notions, has forced on the abbe, and to the proof of which 
he has devoted this pamphlet of sixty-two pages. We had intended to 
make an abstract of his argument, but have found it impossible to do justice 
to it in the space at our disposal, and we are unwilling, handicapped as he 
is by the novelty of his theory and by the weight of authority against him, 
to add to his difficulties by a necessarily inadequate presentation of its 
proofs. All, however, who are interested in textual criticism are bound, it 
seems to us, to give this pamphlet careful consideration. 

MONTALEMBERT ; A Biographical Sketch. By Joseph Walter Wilstach. 
New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1885. 

All who are already well acquainted with the life and work of Monta- 
lembert will be glad by means of this interesting sketch to go over again 
the chief incidents in a compact form ; while those to whom this little book 
affords the first opportunity of making this acquaintance will find in it a 



1885.] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 1 3 3 

good introduction to that fuller study which the life and works of so promi- 
nent a defender of the faith in our times deserve. The author has singled 
out the salient features in Montalembert's 'career, and a thing essential 
to the understanding of that career has been careful to bring out its rela- 
tion to the principal events of his time. The " Table of the Important Con- 
temporary Events in France," which is prefixed to the work, is a great help 
for this purpose. The first idea which most people have of Montalembert 
is, of course, that he was a "liberal." Mr. Wilstach enables us to under- 
stand in what sense and how far this is true. In his speech on the Sonder- 
bund, delivered before the House of Peers in 1848, Montalembert said : 
"That to which I have been devoted is liberty in its entirety, liberty for all 
and in all things "; and it was the fear a foolish fear, as every Catholic 
must see lest the doctrine of infallibility should be made use of against the 
political ideas which he held dear which made him oppose the definition of 
the doctrine as inopportune. But by liberty he did not mean radicalism. 
Radicalism in his eyes was despotism in its most odious form. " Liberty 
sanctifies the rights of minorities ; radicalism absorbs and destroys them." 
He was opposed, consequently, to the extension of the functions of the 
state, and gave his support to the dictum of Aristotle, that the smaller the 
number of things over which a government exercises its authority, the 
longer that government will last. Neither can it be said that he rejoiced 
in the advance of democracy. " I am no democrat, but I am still less of an 
absolutist. Looking on in advance, I see nothing anywhere but democracy. 
I see the deluge rise rise continually everywhere, and overflowing every- 
thing. I fear it as a man, but as a Christian I do not fear; for where I see 
the deluge I see also the ark. Upon that great ocean of democracy . . . 
the church alone may venture forth without defiance and without fear. 
She alone will not be swallowed up there." Mr. Wilstach tells us also that 
the subject of universal democracy is said to have embittered his last days. 
If Montalembert had made a study of the American Constitution, and had 
seen the checks and safeguards which its framers devised in order to bring 
this power under control, would he have been so down-hearted ? Other 
notable points are the struggle for the rights of the church as regards 
education, and the relations of Montalembert with Napoleon III. In the 
account of these and other things Mr. Wilstach writes in an interesting 
and pleasing manner. Sometimes, however, he seems to be striving after 
effect. Moreover, there are a few strange words here and there, and at times 
common words are used in a strange way. At first we thought ^jjjs arose 
from a want of familiarity with the English language, but it would swf m on 
closer study to spring from the laudable desire of writing forcibJju^We can 
assure Mr. Wilstach that the modern English vocabulary 
to express with all desirable force any idea he may forrnj 
under the necessity of coining or resuscitating such we 
" anarchize," " nocent." With the exception of these sll 
sketch deserves praise, both for the matter and the styl 
its subject. 

OFFICE OF THE BLESSED SACR\MENT, FOR THE USE OF MEMBERS OF THE 
NOCTURNAL ADORATION. Baltimore: Foley Brothers. 1884. 
This is an English translation of the whole of Matins and Lauds of the 

Office of the Blessed Sacrament, to which is added the Office for the Dead. 




134 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 

The Douay version of the Psalms is used, the English breviary of the Mar- 
quis of Bute furnishing the remainder. The compiler, Father William E. 
Bartlett, Pastor of St. Ann's Church, Baltimore, has been instrumental in 
spreading this confraternity in that city, and offers this as an aid to the 
members for spending the night-watches in a profitable manner. The 
print is very large, and the rubrics are simplified. 

We have much pleasure in recommending this translation of what many 
consider the most sublime office in the whole breviary, and also the confra- 
ternity itself. The priest who introduces the Nocturnal Adoration among 
his people (and Father Bartlett has proved that it is no very difficult mat- 
ter) brings within the reach of men living in the world one of the practices 
of contemplative prayer of which holy church is so fertile, and enables 
them to taste the fruits of holy silence and solitude, and clothes with at- 
tractiveness a high degree of mortification. 

THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF GOOD COUNSEL: A History of the Ancient Sanc- 
tuary of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano. By Monsignor 
George F. Dillon, D.D., Missionary Apostolic. Rome: Printed at the 
offices of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda Fide. London : 
Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884. 

The object of Mgr. Dillon in writing and publishing this work is to 
promote the devotion to Our Lady of Good Counsel among English-speak- 
ing Catholics. Impaired in health, as he tells his readers in the preface, by 
twenty years of missionary labors in Australia, he spent a considerable 
time in Italy in order to regain his strength. This stay gave him a better 
opportunity of learning the real religious state of the masses of the pepple 
than is afforded by the fleeting visits ordinarily made by tourists, and of this 
opportunity he made the most. He mixed much with the people, espe- 
cially in the country districts, and studied to ascertain their most intimate 
convictions and feelings. He found that they have been shamefully misre- 
presented. "No people," he says, " could be more devoted to their religion 
than the mass of the people of Italy " ; and in the Pontifical States the bulk 
would gladly receive back the temporal government of the pope. "Italy," 
he says in the preface, " is still pre-eminently a land of faith and fervor. ... At 
no period of its Christian history were the mass of the inhabitants of the 
country more attached to their religion, more firmly fixed in its principles, 
or more devoted to its practices than at the present moment. . . . Nine-tenths 
of the masses are earnest and practical Catholics. In general, family life 
among them equals the purity and innocence of the farm-homes of Ireland. 
They live, in truth, by faith." This is wljat his own observation showed to 
be the true state of things. What is the cause of this unyielding faith and 
devotion in the midst of so many trials ? This was the question Mgr. Dillon 
put to himself.; and its answer he finds in their remarkable devotion to the 
Blessed Mother of God, practised as they practise it ; and believing that this 
devotion, and especially the devotion to Our Lady of Good Counsel, which 
has proved so powerful for good amid such trials in Italy, will be equally 
efficacious among those with whom his own long experience has made him 
so well acquainted, cast, as they are, as exiles in the midst of the frost-laden 
blasts of heresy and worldliness, he has made this effort to explain this 
devotion. In some five hundred pages he gives the history of the victory 
of the Virgin Mother of Good Counsel over paganism, the miraculous 






1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 135 

translation of her shrine from Scutari to Genazzano, with a critical exami- 
nation of the proofs of this wonderful occurrence, and an account of the 
numerous miracles which have been worked at her sanctuary. Special at- 
tention has been devoted to the Pious Union of Genazzano, for it is by 
means of this that the devotion possesses a world-wide character and is 
capable of serving the practical objects Mgr. Dillon has in view. The 
chapters on the Devotion of the Italian People and on Roman Ecclesiastical 
Education deserve special attention. There are many other things of great 
interest in this book which make it well worth reading. While he writes 
with all the zeal and enthusiasm which every one must have for the object 
of his devotion, we do not think any Catholic will think him exaggerated 
or injudicious. As he says, "he has had to treat largely of the super- 
natural. Yet he desires to say no one ever came to the shrine of Our Lady 
of Good Counsel less inclined to be credulous than he was. But in the 
sight of miracles wrought before one's eyes, and carefully examined and 
proved, one can only say that the hand of God is not shortened, and the 
miracles wrought through the intercession of his Mother will never cease. 
The facts narrated will speak for themselves. With regard to these facts the 
writer has endeavored to be scrupulously accurate, and in this, at least, 
he believes he has succeeded." Prefixed to the work are letters of His 
Holiness Leo XIII. and Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect of the Propaganda. 

HISTOIRE DES PERSECUTIONS PENDANT LES DEUX PREMIERS SIECLES 
D'APRES LES DOCUMENTS AKCHOLOGIQUES. Par Paul Allard. Paris: 
Victor Lecoffre. 1885. 

This is one of the numerous literary offspring of the great works of 
Rossi on the Roman catacombs. M. Allard was the French translator of 
the Roma Sotteranea of Northcote and Brownlow, an English work in which 
the substance of Rossi's Italian folios was recast, condensed, and made 
generally legible. The present history of the persecutions from M. Allard's 
pen is derived from these archeological discoveries in the catacombs and 
from the literary remains of the early centuries of the Christian epoch, both 
Christian and pagan. The period covered begins with A.D. 64 and ends at 
A.D. 313. The treatment of the subject is thoroughly historical and sharply 
Critical, with ample references to authorities ; yet it is in the manner of a 
flowing and pleasing narrative adorned with all the charms of a purely lite- 
rary style. 

CHARACTERISTICS FROM THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL MANNING. Ar- 
ranged by W. S. Lilly. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The 
Catholic Publication Society Co. 1885. 

Selections from the writings of eminent authors are often merely antho- 
logies, or collections of choice gems. Mr. Lilly's arrangement of extracts 
from the works of Cardinal Manning is somewhat different from and more 
than an anthology. The cardinal is a very consecutive writer. Not only does 
he handle each single topic in a consecutive manner, but his distinct works 
are consecutive in relation to each other, embracing many topics under a 
general method, in their mutual bearings and common relation to general 
principles. Mr. Lilly has arranged his excerpts methodically and judi- 
ciously. They present, each one, an epitome of the eminent author's ex- 
position of a single topic, and in their collective arrangement an epitome of 



136 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 

his general and consecutive doctrine as a whole. Thus there is a complete- 
ness in the work which is very satisfactory. It is useful and agreeable 
reading to those who have read the cardinal's writings, and also to those 
who have not done so. It is cream cream of political, philosophical, and 
religious essays which are sni generis, with their own peculiar character, ex- 
cellences, and value, distinctive of their quality and mode of treatment, as 
Compared with other works on the same topics and of the same doctrine. 
Mr. Lilly's volume is so handy, so easily to be had and read, and so full of 
interesting and instructive matter that it is well adapted to wide and gene- 
ral circulation. 

CHRISTIAN MANHOOD AND ITS DUTIES: A Sermon. By Rev. James J. 
Moriarty, A.M., Pastor of St. John the Evangelist's Church, Syracuse, 
N. Y. Syracuse, N. Y. : T. W. Durston. 1884. 

This is what in old times in New England would have been called an 
election sermon, having been preached the Sunday preceding the last gen- 
eral election. It is a good sermon, well worded, glowing with fervor, en- 
tirely unpartisan, direct and to the point, and displaying the zealous pastor 
of souls in his true relation to politics. " It is not the duty of priests," 
it says, "to tell you for whom you should vote, but it is their duty to tell 
you to vote honestly, fearlessly, conscientiously." We venture to say that 
as years pass on we shall have more of such preaching. May it all be as 
eloquent and judicious ! 

A PROTK.STANT CONVERTED TO CATHOLICITY BY HRR BIBLE AND PRAYER- 
BOOK ; AND THE STRUGGLES OF A SOUL IN SEARCH OF TRUTH. With a 
Preface by the Right Rev. Stephen Vincent Ryan, Bishop of Buffalo. 
Buffalo, N. Y. : Catholic Publication Company. 1884. 

This book is small but precious, for it is the artless story of God's deal- 
fng with a noble soul. Mrs. Fanny Maria Pittar was reared a Protestant of 
the bitterest kind in the city of Dublin ; but she was faithful to grace from 
the dawn of reason. At the first suggestion of doubt she began to inquire. 
The reader may fancy her earnestness when he learns that perplexities aris- 
ing in her mind while hearing a sermon she forced the minister to consider 
on the spot : she confronted him at the foot of the pulpit- stairs. To re- 
solve her doubts on another occasion she brought about a private contro- 
versy between a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister; and, not being 
quite certain about a quotation from Luther, she went alone to the library 
of a great university and sought and obtained a verification of the transla- 
tion. 

One of the great charms of this book for it has more than one is that 
it is truly a woman's book. The struggles of the heart and of the intellect 
cross each other on every page of the narrative. How great those struggles 
were, especially just before the final victory, may be guessed from the fact 
that not only did she suffer bitter persecution, but was even for a time sepa- 
rated from her own children. 

One question that we are inclined to ask a convert is about the first im- 
pulse that pointed towards the church. The answer in the case of Mrs. 
Pittar reveals not only the wonderful ways of God's providence, but also 
the value of reading Holy Scripture with a reverent mind, 

Give this little book to a fervent, old-fashioned Protestant, and it will 
doubtless do a good work. 



1885.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 137 

DILUVIUM ; or, The End of the World. By George S. Pidgeon. St. Louis : 
Commercial Printing Co. 1885. 

Having been requested to notice this book, we will not refuse the au- 
thor any help which a notice may give him. It is perhaps worthy of 're- 
mark on its own account, as a curiosity. 

The object of the work is to warn the world against the digging of the 
canal by which it is proposed to turn the waters of the Mediterranean into 
certain portions of the desert of Sahara, which are known to lie below the 
ocean level. The author is aware that it is not expected or regarded as 
possible to flood the whole desert ; in fact, in his calculations he assumes 
that only about one-fifteenth part of it will be inundated. This is a large 
figure, but let it pass. 

Now comes the astounding part. Assuming that only this surface 
about 220,000 square miles will be covered by the sea, and that only to a 
depth of 275 metres, or, say, 900 feet, he calmly concludes that the volume 
of water thus put on it will be equal in weight to about one-thirty-fifth of 
the entire mass of the globe ; and that consequently the most serious con- 
sequences must be feared from the transference of so large a fraction of the 
earth's weight from one part to another. There is no telling, according to 
him, what terrible catastrophes may not ensue. 

The slightest examination will convince any one familiar with the 
simple formula for the volume of a sphere that to cover the whole earth 
and sea with water a mile deep would only add about one-thirteen-hun- 
dredth part to its whole volume; and, on the well-determined value which 
we have of the density of our globe, would only add about one-seven-thou- 
sandth part to its weight. Now, according to the author's own estimate, 
the portion of the earth's surface which is to be covered is only about one- 
nine-hundredth part of the whole; the weight of the water turned upon it, 
then, even if a mile deep, would be only one-six-millionth that of the 
earth ; and if, as he assumes, the water would be only nine hundred feet 
deep, its weight would be about one-sixth again of that, or, say, one-thirly- 
*\x.-millionth, instead of one-thirty-fifth part, as he imagines, of the weight of 
the globe. 

What is the cause of this astonishing mistake, which he certainly 
would have detected, if he had drawn the roughest diagram to represent 
the facts ? Simply, as it would seem, that he has misunderstood the fig- 
ures of the authority which he quotes for the weight of the earth. He 
gives it as 5,852 trillions of tons, according to Dr. Dick. But he seems not 
to be aware that what Dr. Dick, using the English system, calls a trillion 
is what we call a quintillion. In short, our author, in his comparison, makes 
the weight of the earth only one-millionth part of what it actually is. 

Dr. Dick's trillion is a million million millions; our trillion is a thou- 
sand thousand millions that is the whole difference, and, as will be seen, 
entirely explains the unfortunate error into which Mr. Pidgeon has fallen. 

This curious misapprehension is really the text and foundation of 
the whole book. Remove it, and there is nothing to speak of left. The 
only consideration amounting to anything which is brought forward 
is that of the climatic changes which might be feared in Europe if the 
warming influence of the Sahara were removed. This certainly is a point 
well taken ; but, considering that it is but a small part of the great desert 



138 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 

which is to be flooded, the fall in temperature would probably be imper- 
ceptible except by careful meteorological observations. This objection to 
the proposed canal has of course been brought up before. 

It is a pity to see so much time, study, and ingenuity wasted. The au- 
thor could write something much better than this, if he would only take 
more care. 

IN THE LENA DELTA : A Narrative of the Search for Lieutenant-Comman- 
der De Long and his Companions. By George W. Melville, Chief-Engi- 
neer U. S. N. Edited by Melville Philips. With maps and illustrations. 
8vo, 477 pp. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. 

Of the several books which have been written about the unfortunate 
Arctic expeditions of the last five years, this is certainly the best. Com- 
mander De Long's diary lost sight of Mr. Melville after the separation of 
the whale-boats in the storm of September 12, 1881. Mr. Melville takes up 
the narrative of the more fortunate Jeannette survivors at this point. He 
details their reaching the Siberian settlements, their terrible march north- 
ward in search of De Long, and the return home of the decimated expe- 
dition. It is a consecutive, detailed, authoritative story, told with frankness 
and simplicity, of one of the most extraordinary adventures in the history 
of Arctic explorations. It is impossible not to be thrilled by this recital, 
terrible, shocking, uncomfortable as it is. The descriptions of some of the 
hardships endured by these explorers are so realistic as to make one shud- 
der, and in their graphic simplicity they are almost Homeric. But one 
constantly exclaims, '' What a waste of heroism ! " Arctic exploration 
seems to be as barren a field for enterprise as an Arctic sea. And yet Mr. 
Melville, nothing daunted by his experience, is anxious to go in search 
of the north pole again, and appends to his volume an improved scheme 
for getting a new expedition there ! The illustrations of the book are 
excellent. 

AN IRISH GARLAND. By Sarah M. B. Piatt. Boston and New York : 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. 

There is some good work in this little collection of poems. All of 
it is careful and conscientious ; the diction is lucid and often very elegant. 
Mrs. Piatt seems to be at her best in the expression of tender pathos. 
" On the Pier in Queenstown " is an exquisitely touching picture of a 
poor Irish widow, amid the throng of gay and laughing tourists returning 
to America, whose only son, " a young man, tall, with dark, curled hair, 
the rose of Ireland in his cheek," is emigrating; 

" And there sat she her cap of snow 
No whiter than her head, her face 
(A gracious one, I thought) bent low 

In withering hands there in her place 
While, careless of us all, she wailed 
For one who in the steerage sailed." 

Among the other poems in the garland, "A Child's Cry," "The Con- 
fession of my Neighbor," and " The Gift of Tears " are specially good. 



1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 139 

THE CROSS OF MONTEREY, AND OTHER POEMS. By Richard Edward 
White. San Francisco : The California Publishing Co. 

Several of these poems relate to legends in connection with Father 
Junipero Serra and the earlier missions in California. " The Cross of Mon- 
terey " is, perhaps, the best of these. They display -considerable descriptive 
power and are infused with a local coloring which is not overdone, not- 
withstanding the temptation offered by the glowing Spanish atmosphere 
of the Pacific region. The following verse is a specimen of the author 
at his best : 

11 And the Indians told the padre 

That Portala's cross that night, 
Gleaming with a wondrous splendor, 

Than the noon-sun was more bright, 
And its mighty arms extended 

East and westward, oh ! so far ! 
And its topmost point seemed resting 

Northward on the Polar Star." 

" The Midnight Mass " is one of the legends which the peasants at Car- 
melo tell 

" Of Junipero the Padre, 

In the sweet Castilian tongue : 
Telling how each year he rises 

From his grave the Mass to say, 
In the midnight 'mid the ruins, 
. . . On the eve of Carlos' day." 

" The House on the Plain " tells how Padres Serra and Palon, being over- 
taken by night on the plains, saw a house before them, where they were 
sheltered and entertained by an old man, a lady, and a beautiful child. In 
the morning, on resuming their journey, they meet a muleteer, who tells 
them there is no such house on the plain. They look back it has van- 
ished. Then the padre, after a pause, exclaims that the truth has come to 
him : 

" By spirit hands was built that house, 

And the old man whom we saw there 
Was Joseph, the good Virgin's spouse, 
And Mary was the lady fair. 

" And well I know the youth was He, 

The meek and lowly Nazarene, 
Who died for us on Calvary, 
The thief and penitent between." 

" Waiting for the Galleon," " The Discovery of San Francisco Bay," and 
a sonnet on San Francisco deserve mention. In some of the other poems 
there is an attempt at Bret-Hartean humor which is not a success. 

WILD FLOWERS FROM THE MOUNTAIN-SIDE. Poems and Dramas. By 
Mercedes. Philadelphia: Press of J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1885. 

The author of these poems and dramas is a Sister of Mercy ; the object 
of their publication is to aid in completing and supporting the Mercy Hos- 
pital at Pittsburgh. Under these circumstances, is it possible for us to per- 
form with all due justice and severity the office of the critic, and to judge 
the work without favor or bias, on its merits, not, on the one hand, lavish- 
ing undeserved praise, or, on the other, playing the part of the candid 



140 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [April, 

friend ? Our own opinion we find very well expressed by the writer of the 
preface: "There are" in these poems "heart and soul and faith." Not a 
few of them possess a melodiousness and persuasiveness which recall some 
of the best hymns of one of the best modern hymn-writers Dr. Bonar. 
An occasional fault in the versification, however, detracts from the plea- 
sure they give. But we venture to s"ay that no one who loves holy things 
our Lord, his church, his Sacred Presence can read some among these 
poems without his love for these sacred objects growing warmer. The 
words may not imprint themselves on the memory, but a deeper sense of 
the worth and reality of those things which alone are of value and which 
alone are real will have been left in the mind. The second part consists of 
dramas written for various occasions, which always, we are told, appeared 
with success. The volume is beautifully bound and printed, and is in every 
way well suited for a gift-book. 

THE GRAY MASQUE, AND OTHER POEMS. By Mary Barker Dodge. 
Boston : D. Lothrop & Co. 1885. 

The readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD are not unacquainted with the 
poetry of Mrs. Dodge. Two of the pieces collected in the volume under 
notice namely, " Birthdays" and " Sabbath Rest" were first published in 
this magazine. Much of the poetry in this volume rises to a very high 
level; all of it is wholesome and pure. This is a rare distinction in a day 
when nearly every versifier thinks it necessary to make some offering at 
the shrine of the senses. Mrs. Dodge finds her inspiration in the domes- 
tic affections, in the mysteries and consolations of religion, in the beauties 
of nature, in the patriotic sentiments, and in themes of history that appeal 
to the imagination. Every line she writes is sincere and conscientious 
work. Her Muse is graceful and very tuneful. 

IRENE OF CORINTH : An Historic Romance of the First Century. By Rev. 
P.J.Harold. Lewiston, N. Y. : Index Publishing Co. 1884. 

The history and topography of the tale Irene of Corinth are very accu- 
rate, and there is dramatic talent shown in the plot and persons of the 
story, graphic power in its descriptions. Its principal scenes are Jerusalem 
during the latter part of its siege by Titus, Rome, and Alexandria. The 
interest increases from the beginning to the end. Among the historical 
personages introduced, two of the chief ones are Matthias, the last Jewish 
high-priest, and St. John the Apostle. Irene and her brother, Cyprian, are 
niece and nephew to Matthias, though Christians; another principal person 
of the story, Anna, is his daughter, who is converted to the faith through 
her cousins. The lover of Irene, Julius, is a Roman centurion, who becomes 
a Christian. The destruction of Jerusalem, the triumph of Titus, and the 
persecution of Domitian are vividly depicted during the course of the nar- 
rative of the personal adventures of these four, which are up to the highest 
mark of the romantic. To our taste the romance would have been im- 
proved by a more solid and subdued tone of coloring, a diminution of its 
intensity, and a more castigated style of composition. The author of that 
remarkable story, Dion and the Sibyls, informed the writer of this notice that 
he spent thirteen years of labor upon it. As he was a gifted man, the result 
of his careful labor was a true work of art. Mr. Wallace spent three years, 
upon Ben-Httr. Father Harold has the gifts which need only experience, 



1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 141 

study, and labor in perfecting his composition to make him an author of 
works similar to these in excellence. The first three centuries of the Chris- 
tian era present an inviting field to one who will undertake the composition 
of classical, Christian romances which are true pictures of the real life and 
history of those times. It will not be time lost which is spent in writing 
or reading such a kind of works of fiction. Ben-Hur has done more good 
than some volumes of sermons or didactic instructions. Irene of Corinth 
will do good as well as give pleasure to those who read it. We recommend 
it especially for all young people, and think it worthy of a wide circulation, 
especially if it be republished in a better edition. 

THE WALKING TREES, AND OTHER TALES. By Rosa Mulholland. With 

Illustrations. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1885. 
LINA'S TALES. By Mrs. Frank Pentrill. Same publishers. (For sale by 

the Catholic Publication Society Co., New York.) 

It is a big word to say that Walking Trees, and other Tales is one of 
the best of Rosa Mulholland's books for the young. Miss Mulholland, as. 
a writer for the young, is unsurpassed among living authors. Her chil- 
dren's stories are invested with a certain aerial quality which distinguishes 
them above even the work of Andersen and the Grimms. Perhaps this is 
because Miss Mulholland's genius is exquisitely Celtic. " Walking Trees" 
is not only a delightful child's story, it is a poem. Little Leo has a fancy 
about seven tall ash-trees that grow on a ridge of upland in front of his 
father's house. He believes they walk and go off on expeditions every 
night. He watches one night to see. Sure enough, they tear their roots 
out of the ground and start. One of the trees invites him to go with them, 
and, being a brave little man, he jumps up into its branches. The trees 
tramp away to a strange country so near the sky that when Leo climbs to 
the topmost branches and gives a spring he finds himself in a bed of 
fleecy cloud. Leo's adventures in cloud-land with the cloud-man, the sum- 
mer-cloud children, the beautiful women poised in the great lake, the sky, 
and called Hours, with the rain-children in Bad-weather country, in the 
home of King Storm, and in Snow country, are a series of delightful fan- 
cies, of which the descriptions are alternately droll, gorgeous, dramatic, 
and delicately poetic. The description of what Leo sees at the Gates of 
Sunrise, and the account of the palace of King Storm, where among " vast- 
halls lined with crystal pillars " the visions of what is being done on earth 
by all his minions, from the shipwrecking tempests to the zephyrs fan- 
ning the buds open, are to be seen "dim pictures, wide and dim, with 
lights and colors struggling in them, as if out of a deep and wonderful 
distance " are about the finest things we have read in this kind of litera- 
ture. "The Girl from under the Lake" is a daring development of the 
'legend of Lough Neagh, and is, if possible, a more charming conceit than 
"The Walking Trees/' Both stories to a certain extent recall Alice in 
Wonderland, but that spirituel quality of Miss Mulholland's imagination 
places them in a different category altogether from that fascinating fabri- 
cation. The two other stories in the volume are "Little Queen Pet and 
her Kingdom " and " Floreen's Golden Hair." 

Lina's Tales, by Mrs. Frank Pentrill, are an admirable collection of very 
short stories for young people. The book is quite a little volume, yet it 
contains two sets of stories, one of eight, the other of ten, separate pieces.] 



142 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 

THE MONEY-MAKERS : A Social Parable. New York : Appleton & Co. 
1885. 

' The Money- Makers is advertised as '' an answer to The Bread- Winners."* 
What is The Bread- Winners? It is a curious comment on this kind of 
patent literature that one asks one's self this question on hearing again the 
name of that once so ingeniously-puffed book. The Money-Makers is an 
attempt to gain notoriety by the same devices that helped to sell the other 
book an anonymous author, a "social parable," and the query, "Who 
wrote " the thing? The author of the present affair takes occasion to im- 
press the fact that he wrote it in a little over a month. It has all this ap- 
pearance. It appears to be the work of some smart New York press-man 
who thinks he knows a great deal of "inside facts," and who feels that he 
is the coming satirist of the age. It is very knowing and very juvenile. 
We have counted seven foreign words in one sentence. In one page, de- 
scribing something done by a New York newspaper man, we find allusions 
to Froude, Motley, Carlyle, Mary Queen of Scots, the court of St. Ger- 
main's, Henry VIII., Essex, Bacon, Charles Stuart, Henri Quatre and the 
Valois kings, Savonarola, the sunshine of Fiesole, the pyre in Florence, 
the methods of the Borgia, Leo X. and " Monk Luther," the Galileans, 
Tiberius, Cromwell and his " Greek predecessors," George III., Frederick 
the Great, Voltaire, Ovid, Suetonius, Numa, Tarquin, the great Julius, 
Louis XVI., Napoleon I., Montesquieu, Alexander, Charlemagne, Philip 
II., and the black bread and Lebenwurst of the peasants whom the author 
met in the wilds of Bohemia ! It is as if the young man had been fed on 
intellectual black bread and Lebenwurst all his life and suddenly got a meal 
of learning, which having bolted ravenously, it lies upon his chest and 
gives him the nightmare. The whole book is pitched in the same absurd 
key. It pretends to make " revelations" for the author is possessed of 
the idea that " newspaper men know everything" but it reveals nothing 
that the public who follow the newspapers don't think they know as well 
as he. Its characters are " portraits from life," thinly veiled under pseu- 
donyms, of certain well-known editors, bankers, railway presidents, politi- 
cians, and so forth. This may make the book piquant. But as a whole 
The Money-Makers is a failure to handle properly somewhat promising 
material. 

THE WANDERER; or, Cast Away in a Great City, and other Stories for 
Boys. Boston : Thos. B. Noonan & Co. 1885. 

STORIES FOR STORMY SUNDAYS : A Collection of Tales for Young Folks. 
Reprinted from the Ave Maria. Same publishers. 

What an excellent title is Stories for Stormy Sundays! You can almost 
see the young folks grouped together in the cosey room, one of them read- 
ing a story aloud, while the rain beats against the window-panes and im- 
prisons them within-doors for the day. The youngsters who have such 
a book to read as the one bearing this happy title will not miss their open- 
air fun very much. The stories are so short that eighteen of them fit in a 
handy volume. That they are well suited to Catholic children, the fact 
that they are reprinted from the Ave Maria is a guarantee. The Wan- 
derer, and other Stories is a set of four thrilling and at the same time edify- 
ing tales for boys, j 



1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143 

1794 : A TALE OF THE TERROR. From the French of M. Charles d'Heri- 
cault. By Mrs. Cashel Hoey. Dublin : Gill & Son. 1885. (For sale by 
the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

M. d'Hericault is a French writer of the first rank; and we know no 
translator of French into English who surpasses Mrs. Cashel Hoey, her- 
self an original author of distinction. This book of D'Hericault's translated 
by Mrs. Hoey is worthy of the collaboration. It is a tale of the Terror, but 
not one of the thousand-times hackneyed order. M. d'Hericault has given 
his mind to the study of a special and engrossing phase of the French Revo- 
lution. Between the noble and the peasant whose vicissitudes the nov- 
elist has not yet tired exploiting there was the vast bourgeoisie whose 
children became " that generation of French people who grew up without 
a religion." How did the Revolution affect the social and moral life of 
this great class ? M. d'Hericault's book is a partial answer to this question. 
He has thus gone off the beaten track. He has drawn a vivid picture, 
made a stirring drama, in illustration of this theme. The time, the interest- 
ing period of the Terror, abounded in contrasts grotesque and tragic; and 
M. D'Hericault has misused none of his materials. 

BIOGEN : A Speculation on the Origin and Nature of Life. By Professor 
Elliott Coues. Boston : Estes & Lauriat. 1885. 

This essay, which was read before the Philosophical Society of Wash- 
ington, and of which this is the second edition, has a threefold object. 
The first is a criticism of the attempts which have been made to explain 
the fact of life without having recourse to a vital principle. "Granted," 
says Professor Coues, " that all substances, including protoplasm, have 
been evolved from nebulous matter; granted that evolution to the proto- 
plasmic state, and in the very manner claimed, is required for any mani- 
festation of life ; granted even that life always appears in matter thus 
elaborated, it does not follow that the result of the process by which mat- 
ter is fitted to receive life is the cause of the vitality which it manifests. 
Sequence is not necessarily consequence ; and in this matter it does not 
seem that even a post hoc, much less zpropter hoc, can be maintained. For 
all that is known to the contrary, protoplasm and vitality are simply conco- 
mitant. If any causal relation is to be established, it must be upon other 
considerations than have been presented. I believe the relation to be 
causal, but the reverse of that claimed : vital force being the cause of the 
peculiarities of protoplasm." So much for the philosophical cogency of the 
physico-chemical theory. Its unscientific character is shown from the 
fact that while it involves the theory of spontaneous generation, the ex- 
istence of a single case of spontaneous generation has never been estab- 
lished. Moreover, living protoplasm never has been and cannot be ana- 
lyzed, and its composition remains unknown. It is dead when it is analyzed, 
and must necessarily be dead ; and consequently chemistry and physics can 
give us no information as to what constitutes the difference between a 
thing alive and the same thing dead, for it cannot analyze the live thing. 
The second object of this essay is to give the true solution of the problem. 
By the way in which he does this Professor Coues shows that he must be 
numbered among those true philosophers who make it their first duty to 
take the facts in their entirety, and afterwards to explain them if they can ; 



144 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 1885. 

but who never attempt to explain the facts away in the interest of some 
darling theory of their own. And so he appeals to the data of his own 
consciousness. "I can only declare that I do not believe my mind to be 
matter-made only, because it is so made that I cannot so believe. The 
consensus of mankind has reached this identical conclusion. While I can- 
not imagine what life is or may be apart from matter, so far is it from being 
impossible for me to conceive of life apart from any known conditions of 
matter that it is impossible for me not to form that conception. This is, of 
course, to invoke the 'vital principle,' to postulate the reality of a kind of 
force called 'vital,' as a veritable Biogen, or life-giver, which may be where 
no known form of matter is, and can therefore exist apart from such mat- 
ter, and not as a resultant of any such material forces ; . . . some real entity 
which defies the observation of the senses." The necessity for making 
this postulate Professor Coues proceeds to draw out ; but for this the reader 
must himself go to the work, as the argumentation cannot be compressed into 
our limits. After having shown the necessity of a vital immaterial princi- 
ple for the explanation of the facts, the third object of the author is to 
show how the wholly immaterial spirit is connected with the wholly material 
body. Spirit is nothing if not immaterial ; it cannot act directly upon matter ; 
there must be something intermediate in order that there may be interaction. 
This intermediary is, according to Professor Coues, a certain substance 
which serves for the manifestation of the spirit, to which he gives the name 
of Biogen. While agreeing with Professor Coues that he has a similar (we 
will not say the same) right to assume the existence of this semi-material 
substance as scientific men have for assuming the existence of luminiferous 
ether, we cannot, on philosophical grounds, accept his hypothesis. Granted 
that the manner in which spirit is to act on matter is a mystery, yet it is 
but one mystery, and it does not diminish but increase the number to in- 
terpose an intermediate, semi-material substance. Nan sunt multiplicanda 
mysteria. It is better to leave things as they were. This essay well de- 
serves reading; taking into account the high authority of its author and 
its own merits, it cannot be neglected by any student of this subject. We 
shall look out with some interest for the answers to the questions asked by 
Professor Coues on pp. 59, 60. The style is bright and vigorous, and renders 
what is itself an abstruse matter interesting and intelligible. We con- 
gratulate Professor Coues on the courage and ability with which he has 
faced the lion of materialism in the den of their " Philosophical Society." 

FRIENDS IN FEATHERS AND FUR, AND OTHER NEIGHBORS. For young 
folks. By James Johnnot. New York : Appleton & Co. I2ino. 1885. 

Here is a new method of teaching natural history to young folks. As 
far as we can judge, we think it a good method: It attempts to treat the 
subject more simply and familiarly than natural-history books usually do. 
The author presses everything into his service, from .a nursery-rhyme to a 
fairy-tale, which brings the animal world in the youthful mind into plea- 
sant association. The illustrations are so clear and good that he would 
be a dull child who is not interested and enlightened by them. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XLI. 



MAY, 1885. 



No. 242. 



COINCIDENCE OF THEISTIC, CHRISTIAN, AND 
CATHOLIC ANALYTICS.* 

THE man who believes in God, if he would be consistent and 
logical, ought to believe in Christ, and, if he believes in Christ, 
ought to believe in the Catholic Church, of which the Vicar of 
Christ is head. True, genuine theism, as a universal and prac- 
tical religion, identifies itself with Christianity, Christianity with 
the Catholic communion of the Roman Church. The analytical, 
inductive process of reasoning in proof of the being and perfec- 
tions of God is by way of ascent from effects to causes up to the 
First Cause. The same kind of argument for the divine origin 
of Christianity traces its effects, through nearer and remoter 
causes, to the faith of the apostles, to Jesus Christ, and finally to 
God. So, likewise, effects and facts in the history of the Catholic 
Church, and the Papacy its centre, traced to their origin, indicate 
coincidence in the same line of causality terminating in God. 
For the same reason that we say the stars are the work of 
God, we say Christianity is his work, and the Bible, and the 
hierarchy, and religious orders, and episcopal councils, and the 
primacy. The order shows the mind and hand of the divine 
ordainer ; the origin his creative act. The effects produced, by 
their tendency toward the Final Cause, their orderly sequence, 
and their excellence, manifest the concurrence of their second 

* The Divine Origin of Christianity Indicated by its Historical Effects. By R. S. Storrs, 
D.D., LL.D. Which Is the True Church? By C. F. B. A. (Allnatt). Characteristics of 
Cardinal Manning. By W. S. Lilly. 

Copyright. REV. I. T. HECKER. 1885. 



146 COINCIDENCE OF THEISTIC, CHRISTIAN, [May, 

causes with the First Cause, and exhibit the presence of an effi- 
ciency which it alone is able to exercise. 

Among these effects which are facts and events in the his- 
torical order, intellectual and moral effects hold the first place. 
The subject of them is man, who is the chief being in his own 
world, who is an end in himself, to whom inferior beings are 
subordinated, whose destiny and development are the sufficient 
reason for the arrangement of things in his environing sphere, 
and for the entire course of its events. 

The existence of his intellect and will, the tendency of his 
intellect toward the intelligible without limit, of his will toward 
good without bounds, furnish, therefore, to minds of the highest 
order the most convincing evidence that the first cause of his 
being is personal, self-conscious, intelligent ; the supreme intelli- 
gible and lovable Object of uncreated and created intellect and 
will. 

The whole moral order of mankind, the rule and standard of 
personal virtue, the law of conscience, social and political insti- 
tutions, and all else which unites individuals and nations in 
organic relations, are for the sake of the intellectual and moral 
perfection of human nature, for the fulfilment of human destiny. 
They have their root in the belief in God, an eternal law, the 
soul and its immortality, in all which constitutes the substance 
of pure and rational monotheism. The more clear and pure 
these concepts are, the more is the intellect and will of man per- 
fected, and the better are all the social, political, and generally 
moral outcomes of constructive and organizing power in man- 
kind. 

This belief is therefore of divine origin, it is from God ; it is 
unaccountable and inconceivable, except as having its foundation 
in reality, in the being, the creative efficiency, the sovereign 
direction and providence of the supreme intelligence and will. 
Natural theology and natural ethics are indissolubly bound to- 
gether. The ideas of God, of worship, of the dignity of man, of 
the law of duty toward self, toward one's family, toward society, 
are all cognate to each other. 

The line of argument proceeding from the intellectual and 
moral effects of Christianity to demonstrate its origin and cause 
in God, as presented in the first of the books whose titles are 
prefixed to this article, designates in Christianity the presence of 
all the elements found in other religions and in philosophy 
which can be traced to an original and universal religion, or 
to the common ideas and aspirations which are spontaneous in 



1885.] AND CATHOLIC ANALYTICS. 147 

human nature. But it shows, farther, a transcendence of Chris- 
tianity above and beyond all religions or philosophies, in respect 
to the essential elements of theology and ethics, the principles of 
general enlightenment and human progress. 

The argument can be carried much farther on the same line. 
Christianity not only promulgates rational monotheism in such a 
way as to make belief in One God and his perfections easier, 
clearer, more certain, more universal, more practically efficient 
than it ever was or could be otherwise ; but it reveals the per- 
sonality, the interior life, the blessedness, the goodness diffusive 
of itself upon the creation, of the One God, in a transcendent 
manner, by the revelation of the Trinity. The Three Persons, 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are disclosed to the contemplation 
of faith which raises the intellect far above the plane of reason. 
The revelation of the Incarnation brings God still nearer to man, 
and man nearer to God, by means of the descent of the Eternal 
Son into human nature, his conception and birth of the Virgin, 
his human life and teaching, his death, resurrection, and ascen- 
sion. In the revelation of the Son, the Father is revealed as our 
Father, and the Spirit as our Life-giver. This is a far higher 
and better theology than the purely natural theology of philo- 
sophers, or the dimmer supernatural theology of the foregoing 
revelations. 

Moreover, Christianity teaches that dignity of man, unspeak- 
ably greater than his natural dignity, which has been given him by 
his adoption as a son of God. It glorifies humanity by the un- 
speakable elevation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of 
God. Manhood is infinitely more glorified by that highest,of 
all elevations and unions, the hypostatic union of the human, to 
the divine nature in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Marriage and social life, the entire moral order, political or- 
ganization, the universal brotherhood of mankind, the sphere of 
intellect and imagination, of science and art, the end and the pro- 
gressive development of humanity all are ennobled by those 
relations of man to God, through Christ, the redeemer and re- 
storer of all things, which Christianity discloses and realizes* 
The enlightening and improving and generally beneficent effect 
of Christianity upon the natural order of human affairs is an ac- 
companiment and a sequel of that grace vyhich illumines, purifies, 
sanctifies, and brings to everlasting beatitude the souls of men. 

That civilization which is the secular outcome and environ- 
ment of the Christian religion is now, as it was in pasfe times, 
the most excellent flower of humanity in the natural order. The 



148 COINCIDENCE OF THEISTIC, CHRISTIAN, [May, 

religion itself as religion, is now, even more than ever, consider- 
ing the failure of all others and the hopeless decadence of all 
philosophy which is apart from Christianity, unique and trans- 
cendent in the world. 

It is, moreover, reasonable to hope for a wider, even a world- 
wide extension in the future of this best of all civilizations and 
religions, and for renovation and improvement in Christendom, 
both in the secular and in the spiritual order. 

The great agent and instrument through which all the intel- 
lectual, moral, and religious effects which the doctrine and the 
law of Christianity have brought to pass in the secular and in 
the spiritual order, in past ages effects by which the divine 
origin of Christianity is indicated is the Catholic Church. This 
is the testimony and the judgment of non-Catholic writers of 
great and universally respected authority. Christianity, being 
unaltered and unalterable in its spirit, doctrine, and law ; its 
embodiment, organic instrument and medium, is now the same 
that it was, and must remain the same always, even to the con- 
summation and end of the world ; that is, it must always be the 
Catholic Church. The centre and the seat of sovereignty in the 
Catholic Church is the Church of Rome. The last and highest 
of all the second causes of the effects of Christianity, the cause 
which is next to the First Cause and immediately moved by it, 
is therefore the Roman Church, the Papacy ; and all the argu- 
ments proving the divine origin of Christianity from its intel- 
lectual and moral effects deliver the whole force of their logical 
impetus in a stroke which drives home and fixes immovably 
the thesis of the divine origin of the Papacy. Up to a certain 
point, the plea for the identification of the ideas expressed by 
the terms " Christian " and " Catholic," both in an abstract and a 
concrete sense, has become .superfluous through the concession 
of enlightened Protestants, theists, and even partially of ag- 
nostics. This is emphatically true of the historical school of 
professed exponents of Christianity as a grand world-idea and 
world-power. Among these writers on the historical aspect of 
the Christian idea, those who make a demonstration of the posi- 
tive truth and divine origin of historical Christianity as a re- 
vealed religion, from its historical effects, are obliged to iden- 
tify Christianity with Catholicity, in a certain general sense of 
this latter term, during the entire historical period between the 
age of the apostles and the era of the Reformation. They are, 
moreover, compelled to seek for a historical continuity of that 
which they regard as a truly reformed and purified Christianity 



1885.] AND CATHOLIC ANALYTICS. 149 

with the Christianity of the past, and to claim a substantial 
fraternity with the larger portion of modern Christendom, by 
stretching the definition of Catholicism to a width which will ' 
make it cover and shelter their own position. So far they have 
abandoned the primitive and extreme theory of Protestantism, 
and have become more catholic. 

The field of argument is therefore narrowed and shortened 
in all its dimensions, so as to include only the question of the 
identification of the Papacy with Catholicity. This one ques- 
tion being determined in favor of the Papacy, every other disap- 
pears by evaporation ; and from these two premises Historical 
Christianity is of divine origin : The Papacy is of the essence 
of historical Christianity logically follows the conclusion : The 
Papacy is of divine origin. The corollaries from this proposi- 
tion will embrace all things belonging to faith and morals, doc- 
trine and law, for which a Catholic wishes to contend. 

The labor of proving the second premise is almost entirely 
taken from our shoulders by the concessions of those who are 
not Catholics, and some of whom do not call themselves Chris- 
tians. In their historical exposition of the progress and effects 
of Christianity, they cannot and do not try to separate the su- 
preme and controlling power of the Roman Church from the other 
principles and active powers which are co-ordinated in an or- 
ganic unity in the universal society which, as a moral and juri- 
dical person, is properly called " the Catholic Church." 

Gibbon, in his summary of causes and reasons for the triumph 
of the Christian religion the most singular case on record of an 
advocate destroying his own cause by his plea mentions as one 
of these causes the hierarchical organization of the church. 
This presupposes unity in the episcopate,, which never did or 
could exist except through a common centre and head. 

Renan ascribes the organization of the episcopate to the 
Roman Church : 

" What was in process of development in the Christian Church about 
the year 120 or 130 was the episcopate. Now, the creation of the episco- 
pate was evidently the work of Rome. . . . Thanks to the Church of Rome, 
the religion of Jesus thus acquired a certain solidity and consistency. . . . 
The phrase ' Catholic Church ' breaks upon us from all sides at once, as the 
name of the great communion which is destined thenceforth to come down 
the ages in unbroken unity. . . . ROME was the place in which this great idea 
of Catholicity was worked out. More and more every day it became the 
capital of Christianity, and took the place of Jerusalem as the religious 
centre of humanity." * 

* Hibbert Lectures, pp. 148-199. 



150 COINCIDENCE OF THEISTIC, CHRISTIAN, [May, 

Dr. Salmon, of Trinity College, Dublin, speaking of Pope 
Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians, a document of the first cen- 
tury, says : 

" Very noticeable in the new part of the Letter is the tone of authority 
used by the Roman Church in making an unsolicited interference with the 
affairs of another church." * 

Neander admits that 

" Very early indeed do we observe in the Roman bishops traces of the 
assumption that to them, as successors of St. Peter, belonged a paramount 
authority in ecclesiastical disputes. ... In the Montanist writings of Tertul- 
lian we find indications that the Roman bishops already issued peremp- 
tory edicts on ecclesiastical matters, endeavored to make themselves con- 
sidered as the Bishops of Bishops, and were in the habit of speaking of 
the authority of their ' antecessores. " t 

Even Mosheim says that 

" No one is so blind as not to see that between a certain unity of the 
universal church, terminating in the Roman pontiff, and such a community 
as we have described out of Iren&us and Cyprian, there is scarcely so much 
room as between a hall and chambers, or between a hand and ringers." \ 

Neander, Trench, and other writers of the same class connect 
closely the ecclesiastical pre-eminence of the Roman Church dur- 
ing the Ante-Nicene and Nicene period with its unswerving or- 
thodoxy. Casaubon says : 

" No one who is versed in ecclesiastical history can doubt that God 
made use of the Roman pontiffs during many ages to preserve the doc- 
trines of the true faith." 

That this was the case during the whole period between the 
end of the first and the beginning of the fourth century is noto- 
rious. The Sixth (Ecumenical Council states as an undoubted 
fact that the First Council of Nicsea was convoked by Constan- 
tine and Sylvester jointly ; Gelasius of Cyzicum (A.D. 470), that 
Hosius presided in it as legate of Pope Sylvester ; and the 
Roman Council of A.n. 485, that the council " referred the con- 
firmation and authority of matters to the holy Roman Church. "| 

From Sylvester to Gregory the Great i.e., from the fourth 
century to the seventh it was the Roman Church which upheld 
the Nicene Creed and the faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ 
against Arian and Semi-Arian heresies, not exclusively but 
principally. Mr. Palmer says : 

* Diet. Chr. Biog. and Lit., vol. i. p. 558. t Bohn's Ed. Hist, of Ch., i. 298. 

J Diss. de Call. Appell., etc., sect. xiii. Exercit. in Annul. arom'iXV. 

| Allnatt, Cath. Petr., third ed. p. 130. 



1885.] AND CATHOLIC ANALYTICS. 151 

"We find that the Roman Church was zealous to maintain the true 
faith from the earliest period, condemning and expelling the Gnostics, Ar- 
temonites, etc. ; and during the Arian mania it was the bulwark of the Catho- 
lic faith." * 

Strictly speaking-, it is the fourth century which is the period 
of the Arian mania and of the life-and-death struggle over the 
Nicene Creed. Carlyle admitted that this was the struggle for 
life of Christianity itself. 

When we come down to the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, 
the period of the councils from the third to the sixth, of the 
Nestorian, Eutychian, and Pelagian heresies, crowded with great 
bishops and doctors, rich in literature, momentous in historical 
crises, the position of the Apostolic See is so manifest and so un- 
hesitatingly acknowledged by historians that it is almost super- 
fluous to cite evidences or authorities. 

Guizot says that " it was the Christian Church which saved 
Christianity" in the fifth century, and that "after the fifth cen- 
tury the Papacy took the lead in the conversion of the pagans." f 
Milman says it was " as the successor of St. Peter, of him who 
was now acknowledged to be the head of the apostolic body, 
that the Roman pontiff commanded the veneration of Rome 
and of Christendom"; that "the majesty of the notion of one 
all-powerful ruler," " the discord and emulation among the other 
prelates," "the manifold advantage of a supreme arbiter," "the 
unity of the visible church " " all seemed to demand, or at least 
had a strong tendency to promote and to maintain, the necessity of 
one Supreme Head" \ 

The same author says that " on the rise of a power both 
controlling and conservative hung, humanly speaking, the life 
and death of Christianity"; and also that " from the sixth cen- 
tury to the fourteenth the papal power was the great conserva- 
tor of Christianity." 

I have touched but lightly on the Papacy in the first six cen- 
turies. I am aware that those to whom a historical view familiar 
to scholars is something novel might ask for a fuller treatment. 
I may refer all such readers to a long series of articles in this 
magazine in which I have treated these topics more fully. And, 
besides numerous other works in English, I may refer them to 
two of small bulk and cost, but very full and complete, by Mr. 
Allnatt Cathedra Petri and Which is the True Cliurch ? And in 
these two books all my citations in this article will be found, 

* On the Church, ii. vi. 3. t Civil, in France, ii. 173. 

\ Latin CAr., i. 104, seq. & Ibid. ii. 100. Essays, p. 364. 



152 COINCIDENCE OF THEISTIC, CHRISTIAN, [May, 

with the most exact references to original sources, as well as 
many others to the same effect. 

In regard to mediaeval Catholicism, every well-read person 
knows what a treasury of testimonies is available in the works of 
Guizot, Maitland, Milman, Hallam, Leo, Neander, Herder, Von 
Miiller, Lecky, Carlyle, Froude, and many others. The whole 
chorus proclaims in unison with Von Miiller that "all the en- 
lightenment of the present day . . . came originally from the 
HIERARCHY " ; and with Lecky, that " Catholicism laid the very 
foundations of modern civilization." * 

There is another thing which must be taken into considera- 
tion. The hierarchical and papal constitution of the church 
cannot be regarded merely as a certain form of church govern- 
ment, an ecclesiastical polity. It must be considered also as the 
Ecclesia Docens, or magistracy of doctrinal and moral teaching, 
with its continuously affirmed and universally admitted claim of 
supreme and infallible authority, and with reference to the actual 
doctrine and law which it ever declared and enforced. Now, 
Nicene Christianity embodied not only the dogmas of the 
Trinity, the Incarnation, Original Sin, Redemption, Grace, the 
Inspiration of the Scriptures, the irreversible, everlasting sepa- 
ration in destiny of two classes of angels and men, and whatever 
else is held to belong to orthodox doctrine by a common consent 
of many Protestants with all the formularies of the Greek and 
Catholic churches, but several other things besides. The pro- 
test of the Reformers was against mediaeval Catholicism, as a 
concrete, complex system, a whole which was false as such, and 
worthy to be renounced, although retaining some things from the 
genuine and pure ancient Christianity. 

Isaac Taylor, whose writings were to me exceedingly attrac- 
tive in my younger days, in his work on Ancient Christianity has 
maintained and very satisfactorily proved that Nicene Chris- 
tianity was identical in all important respects, as to doctrine and 
practice, with this mediaeval Catholicism of which Protestantism 
is the opposite and the antagonist. What is the inference from 
this position? That the Protestant religion is based on the 
denial and rejection of all ancient and historical Christianity. 

George Eliot read the writings of Isaac Tavlor when she was 
about twenty-two years of age, in the year 1841, and just before 
the sudden and complete transformation which occurred in her 
religious opinions. One of her friends of that epoch, and her 
husband, Mr. Cross, agree in thinking that the perusal of Ancient 

* Hist. o/Switzer., iii, i. Hist. Rational., ii. 37. 



1885.] AND CATHOLIC ANALYTICS. 153 

Christianity prepared her mind for accepting a little later Mr. 
Hennell's and Strauss' theory of the purely natural and partly 
mythical origin of Judaism and Christianity. The process is 
perfectly plain and intelligible. It is taken for granted from the 
beginning that mediaeval Catholicism is human, natural, and myth- 
ical. Some kind of "evangelical religion" is supposed to have 
been the original, genuine, historical Christianity of the apostolic 
age, and of some two, three, four, or five next following centuries, 
during which a slow and insensible alteration was taking place 
of pure and simple Christianity into Catholicism with a germ of 
the Papacy at its centre. Now, when such a person as George 
Eliot, with a mind confessedly of a very high order, strictly and 
intensely religious according to the so-called evangelical type, 
becomes convinced that Catholicism was substantially in being 
and dominant at the epoch of the decisive conquest achieved by 
Christianity over the Roman Empire, and that this Catholicism 
in blossom at the early and heroic age of Christianity became 
the flower in full bloom and the ripe fruit of mediaeval Catho- 
licism the highest actual realization of the ideal as yet attained 
by humanity what must be the result? Such a mind must 
either seize the conclusion that Catholicism is divine, or lapse 
into unbelief in the divinity of Christianity and of Christ its 
Founder. The influence of early evangelical training and of the 
prejudices of education was so strong in the mind of Marian 
Evans, the bewilderment of controversy and dissension over the 
origin and the original nature of the religion of Christ was so 
great, that the first alternative did not present itself as reasonable 
and credible. During the period of her evangelical piety, as she 
herself tells us, her mind and reason had been on the rack. As 
soon as what seemed to be a plausible way of accounting for 
Judaism and Christianity without admitting miracles and a su- 
pernatural revelation was opened before her mind, she eagerly 
freed herself from the rack. It is surprising how quickly and 
easily she dropped the garment of her evangelical religion. She 
is a specimen of a large number of similar individuals. Her 
case furnishes a singular instance in proof of the slight hold 
of Protestant orthodoxy upon the reason and conscience, when 
thought and knowledge have awakened them out of a drowsy 
acquiescence. Just as Hume has been in philosophy, so Gib- 
bon has been in history, the real precursor and leader of a 
series of followers, many of whom have been walking backwards 
towards infidelity while their faces have been turned towards 
Christianity. Hallam, Milman, Guizot, Neander, and other very 



154 COINCIDENCE OF THEISTIC, CHRISTIAN, [May, 

able and well-meaning writers have been defending Christianity 
on a line of retreat, like Lee's last backward march on-Richmond. 
Ewald, Comte, Renan, Froude, Carlyle, Strauss, George Eliot, 
Emerson, Theodore Parker, Francis Newman, Lecky, and others 
have carried out Gibbon's plan of campaign, and have broken 
through one fatal gap, which left an open road to the cita- 
del. This gap is the admission that Catholicism with its papal 
centre, although it be to such a considerable extent identified 
with historical Christianity, so grand, useful, and even necessary 
in its place in history, and indeed the chosen agent and instru- 
ment in the hand of Divine Providence for the regeneration, en- 
lightenment, and civilization of Christendom, is nevertheless purely 
human and natural, a clever invention of the Roman hierarchy. The 
history of Christianity is the history of Catholicism ; its triumphs 
and conquests, its beneficent effects in the secular and in the 
spiritual order, those intellectual and moral results which all, 
from Comte and Lecky up to Milman and Neander, unite in 
glorifying, are the achievements of Catholicism, principally 
through the Papacy. Is that which has produced such effects 
a natural and human cause ? Is it something which was con- 
structed upon the apostolic foundation from new and foreign 
materials? Did it, nevertheless, so supersede and hide original 
Christianity that it was universally received and believed in as 
apostolic ? Then it is quite credible that the four gospels grew 
up in a similar manner, that the apostles laid their foundations, 
each after his own peculiar ideas, in a like human and inventive 
way upon the ground of their Master's teaching. Then he was 
not the founder of a kingdom ; he was not the author of the reli- 
gion which was called by his name; there is no evidence that he 
was or ever claimed to be divine ; and the Christ of Catho- 
lic faith is a mythical personage, an ideal being, the real Jesus 
magnified and transformed by pious and credulous imagination. 
Thus the whole battery of Dr. Storrs' arguments from histori- 
cal effects is turned aside and rendered powerless against the 
position of rationalists and naturalists. 

In one sense, indeed, the conclusion that Christianity is of 
divine origin remains valid. But it is in the same sense in which 
Carlyle admitted the divine origin of mediaeval Catholicism. It 
originated, namely, from the human effort, proceeding from a 
God-given intellectual and moral energy, to realize and embody 
conceptions of the divine. It was like Buddhism, Zoroastrian- 
ism, Mohammedanism, possessed of a spirit, animated by a soul, 
of divine origin, and it was a better embodiment of this soul. 






1885.] AND CATHOLIC ANALYTICS. 155 

Theism may stand when Catholicism is presented as no more 
than the most beautiful of ideal myths. But Christianity cannot. 
Belief in a divine revelation, in a " celestial-miraculous " religion, 
cannot. There is One God, and Carlyle is his prophet: is a 
fitting formula of this modern profession of faith. Or, if one 
is disposed, he may take some other man of genius in Carlyle's 
place, besides a considerable number of Mahdis among philoso- 
phers and literary men. 

Nevertheless Dr. Storrs' argument is really valid and con- 
elusive. This may seem to be a paradox in view of what I have 
said above, but it is not. I made use of a metaphor, which al- 
ways limps. To speak with precision, the argument itself is 
valid, but there is something mixed with it, foreign and inco- 
herent, from which inferences can be logically drawn which con- 
tradict the legitimate, logical conclusions to which the argument 
leads from its premises. This incoherent streak of bad metal 
needs to be replaced by another kind, consonant to the general 
quality of the reasoning. 

In so far as the analytics of theism are concerned, the entire 
notion of God teaching men the truth by means of that which is 
false, employing myths and illusions, leading mankind through a 
cloud-land or dream-land of changing phantasies, or leaving them 
to weave these imaginary tissues for themselves, without any 
guidance, is contrary to a proper conception of the perfections of 
God, and inconsistent with a true theism. 

The works of God demonstrate his existence and perfections 
by the argument from effect to cause. So, also, the religion 
which, from the beginning of human history, as its records from 
Genesis to the gospel of St. John testify, has been the instru- 
ment of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual perfection of men, 
testifies to its author, and is accredited as to its facts, moral pre- 
cepts, and doctrines by his veracity. The effects of Christianity, 
which are effects of the providence which directs the course of 
events toward the Final Cause of creation, are from the same 
First Cause from which the creative act proceeded. They are, 
indeed, God's masterpieces. It is incredible that Christianity, 
the Bible, the mysteries of faith, the regeneration of nations in 
Christendom, should have had a human origin. Call, if you 
please, the character of Christ in the gospels, the story of his 
life, death, and resurrection, an ideal poem. It transcends the 
inventive faculty of human genius. It is the Divine Ideal in 
act. The triumph of Christianity is superhuman. " A nd I saw : 
and behold a white horse : and he that sat on him had a bow : and a 



156 COINCIDENCE OF THEISTIC, CHRISTIAN, [May, 

crown wis given to him ; and he went forth conquering that he might 
conquer." * 

It is the Christ of the Nicene Creed, " God of God, Light 
of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten not made, Con- 
substantial with the Father," who has gone forth, crowned, to 
conquer the world by intellectual, moral, and spiritual force, by 
truth and grace, by divine love, by that mercy in which he most 
delights to show his omnipotence. It is impossible that there 
should be a figure more spherical than a sphere, a line between 
two points more direct and shorter than a straight line. The 
Catholic faith is orbicular, the way to God through Christ the 
straightest way. The idea of Godhead, the idea of manhood, the 
law of the spirit of life, the end to be attained in beatitude, the 
moral ideal of human perfection, in Christianity, are transcendent. 
It is absurd to suppose any higher possibility. Incessu patet Dea. 

Now, as God alone can form the human body, create the hu- 
man soul, and unite the two in one living, organic substance ; so 
God alone, the author of the spirit and soul of Christianity, could 
give it its fitting embodiment. The orbits and the laws of the 
heavenly bodies have been fixed by the Creator who gave them 
existence. The theistic argument from design and order proves 
the intelligent will of the First Cause from the adaptation and 
efficiency of means toward ends, the wise arrangement of second 
causes in co-ordinate and consecutive relations, directed under a 
reign of law, in a course of events, toward the Final Cause. 

In the course of divine, governing providence, the true re- 
ligion, especially in its final and perfect form of Christianity, 
draws a parallel line on which the same argument from design 
travels with equal force and directness to the conclusion that 
the Christian religion has a divine origin and author. 

But still further: admitting that the Nicene faith in the 
divinity and humanity of Christ united in the One Person of the 
Eternal Son is the genuine Christianity of Christ, it follows 
that the. fitness and moral necessity of the means by which this 
faith has been proclaimed, preserved, and perpetuated, by the 
same argument from design, proves the divine designer. The 
divine origin of the Catholic episcopate centred in the Papacy is 
proved by the argument which proves the divine origin of the 
faith. Trustworthy in respect to one article of faith, the Incar- 
nation, it is equally trustworthy in respect to the " whole coun- 
sel of God," the total sum of Christian doctrine and law. 

The adaptation of mediasval Catholicism and of the Papacy 

* Apoc. vi. 2. 



1885.] AND CA THOLIC A NA L YTICS. 1 5 / 

to produce the effects in the secular and spiritual order ascribed 
to them by common consent, the moral necessity of the mediaeval 
Papacy to the production of these intellectual and moral results, 
the agency given to it by Divine Providence in Christendom 
all these prove the same conclusion. 

The general laws and the direction, impelling and regulating 
the progress of humanity toward its consummation, are from 
God, who created man. The laws of the universe, the orbits and 
revolutions of the heavenly bodies, are from the God who creat- 
ed the worlds. Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour, being the 
author of the doctrines, principles, and laws of the Christian reli- 
gion, must have constituted and organized the church, and em- 
bodied in it the spirit and soul of Christianity, with a divine 
wisdom, with an arrangement of second causes and means, fully 
adequate to the effect intended, the fulfilment of his purpose to 
regenerate and save mankind. He must have given stability and 
perpetuity to his own institution, he must have founded and con- 
tinued to govern his own kingdom Christendom. To say that 
he did not, that he left this work to be done by men without any 
supernatural inspiration, or that he suffered a new and human 
organization and institution to supplant his own, and yet made 
this human invention the instrument of accomplishing that which 
his own divine institution failed to effect, is derogatory to his 
divine character. 

It is also derogatory to the dignity of human nature to 
ascribe the greatest of its achievements to a belief which was 
an illusion. All the power of the Papacy and the hierarchy, of 
councils and their definitions, of' the teaching and laws of the 
church, proceeded from the belief in the divine authority of the 
church, of the Papacy, of the Catholic rule of faith, of the entire 
system of Catholicism. If this was a deliberate invention, the 
authors of the invention were impostors, and all the rest were 
dupes. If it was not a deliberate invention, all were alike their 
own dupes. The dilemma is unavoidable. Ancient Catholicism 
was either the original, genuine, apostolical Christianity, or it 
was a human invention substituted in its place. When, how, by 
whom substituted? Substituted on purpose, or substituted by 
mistake ? Whenever, however, by whomsoever substituted, the 
intention and work of Christ and the apostles was a failure, and 
the whole argument from the history of Christianity for its 
divine origin and the divinity of its Author falls to the ground. 
If the new, human religion was substituted on purpose, it was 
stronger than that which it supplanted, and its founders were 



158 COINCIDENCE OF THEISTIC, CHRISTIAN, [May, 

superior to the founders of the institute which they threw down 
to build their own on the ground it had occupied. If they 
erected their edifice in good faith, erroneously believing that 
they were following the plan of the divine Architect, it is evident 
that the plan was not clearly and intelligibly drawn. Was the 
New Testament the chart? If it were, and it could be so en- 
tirely misunderstood in an age so near to that of the apostles, 
with what show of reason can any sect or individual pretend to 
draw out a scheme of Christianity, now, from the New Testa- 
ment which is certain, commands belief, is capable of bringing 
Christians into unity, and can be successfully put in opposition 
to the consent of ages and multitudes in Catholicism ? 

What is to be the consummation of the great Christian EPOS 
in this world before the end comes, is a question of the most 
momentous character and of the most intense interest. Have 
we before us no other prospect than that of decadence and a 
catastrophe? Is the prophecy that the kingdoms of this world 
are to become the kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ but 
partially, as yet, fulfilled, and awaiting its most complete accom- 
plishment? "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, and to 
whom have his counsels been revealed?" Some take a bright 
and hopeful view of the coming ages, and they can give pro- 
bable reasons for it. Dr. Storrs is one of these ; and surely it is 
more agreeable and encouraging to cherish a hope of this kind. 

Suppose that a renovation of Christendom, the downfall of 
Islam, the conversion of the Jews, the general gathering of the 
nations into one fold with us, under one Shepherd, are really 
determined in the eternal decrees of God ! % They will, then, in- 
fallibly come to pass. It may be necessary that God should 
intervene in an extraordinary way, that stupendous miracles 
should be wrought, in order to bring about this result. Yet 
the history of Christianity will be consecutive, homologous, and 
in the main composed of a series of events in the human order, 
regulated by the general law of divine providence, and linked 
together in the ratio of second causes producing intellectual and 
moral effects which are the sequel of those which have gone 
before, and have been produced by Christianity during the ages 
which have elapsed and that which is now passing. Every age 
is the child of the one which was before, and the parent of the 
one which comes after. " The boy is father of the man." If 
Christianity has had its manhood and is sinking with the world 
into old age, mediaeval Catholicism was the most perfect de- 
velopment of early historical Christianity, and whatever it is 



1885.] AND CATHOLIC ANALYTICS. 159 

still capable of achieving is by virtue of the remaining vigor of 
its youth and adult period. If Christianity is exempt from the 
common law of human institutions, and destined to achieve its 
greatest triumph in the last age of the world, it must show forth 
in more colossal stature and gigantic proportions the figure which 
it had in infancy and youth, and its universal empire must be an 
expansion from its centre outwards. 

If we look facts in the face, and argue upon historical data, 
we cannot see any probability of union and renovation in Chris- 
tendom otherwise than by a general reconciliation to the Roman 
Church. We cannot see any species or form of Christianity 
which seems in the least likely to prevail throughout the world, 
except Catholicism. If there is any religious movement in 
Christendom going on which is a gravitation towards a common 
centre, that centre is Rome. The opposite movement of agnos- 
ticism, even, as a sort of reconnaissance of the region of chaos 
and old night, may change, perhaps is beginning already to 
change, into a reaction towards Christianity. 

I have seen lately an extract from a private letter of a man of 
high distinction, whose name would give great weight to his 
words, if I were at liberty to mention it ; which reads as follows : 

"The pendulum is swinging back from the extreme of agnosticism, and 
I think this generation may yet see a union of all Christian forces, not in 
doctrinal statements, but in earnest endeavors to uphold faith and apply 
charity to all the problems of modern society." 

Such earnest endeavors can only be towards union by a move- 
ment from different points towards an objective point of concen- 
tration, where the forces can unite and act together in one 
organic body, having one faith and one law of charity. 
Agreement in the conviction and belief of what is the authentic 
and genuine Christianity is necessary to a real and practical 
union. "To say that Christianity is Catholicism, and Catholi- 
cism is Christianity," writes Cardinal Manning, " is to utter a 
truism. There cannot be two Christianities, neither can a frag- 
ment be mistaken for the whole." * 

Historical Christianity is identified with Catholicism centred 
in the Papacy from its earliest age, and it cannot change its 
nature. As it was in the beginning, so it is now, .and must ever 
be until the end of the world. It is the mountain of solid rock 
which must fill the whole earth, and not a heap of drift and 
detritus from its sides shovelled into an artificial mound. 

* Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, p. ao. 



160 THE MORAL SIDE OF [May, 



THE MORAL SIDE OF THE TENEMENT-HOUSE 

PROBLEM. 

THE tenement-house problem is an old story, yet is constant- 
ly taking new aspects. The physical effects of massing people 
by the hundred under one roof are shown by the records of the 
boards of health in all our cities. Economists reckon the annual 
money loss by preventable deaths at millions of dollars ; but I 
am chiefly concerned at present with the moral side of the sub- 
ject. 

New York is distinctly a city without homes. Two-thirds 
of its population live in tenements, and the remainder either oc- 
cupy palatial but cheerless " brown-stone fronts " on Murray 
Hill and its vicinity or " board." The rich and the poor are 
increasing, while the great middle class of thrifty and intelligent 
people are being crowded into the suburbs. 

" As the houses so are the people." What, then, can be the 
condition of the people of New York, when we know the condi- 
tion of their houses ? 

The moral effects of tenement-life are seen in the growth of 
intemperance and immorality, in the disruption of families, the 
turning of children into the street, the creation and fostering of 
crime. District-Attorney Fellows declares that there is less 
outward crime in New York than in any ordinary city of 250,000 
inhabitants. Yet the amount of social vice and immorality in 
the metropolis is astounding. Notwithstanding -the efforts of 
benevolent societies to place neglected children in institutions 
or to transport them to homes in the West, our streets are over- 
run with gangs of " toughs," who are the direct product of the 
tenement system and who are a constant nuisance to the commu- 
nity. It was this very class of reckless youth who committed 
the worst excesses of the draft riots of 1863 and who set on fire 
the Cincinnati Court-House. 

The harrowing stories of crime and brutality related day 
after day in the newspapers are chiefly significant because of the 
wide influence, which such occurrences exert. Every tenement- 
house is a community in itself, and the malign example of vice 
cannot fail to exert its full influence. The drunkard, the wife 
or child beater, the immoral woman, and the depraved child 
infect scores of their neighbors by their vicious acts. How is it 



1885.] THE TENEMENT-HOUSE PROBLEM. 161 

possible to preserve purity amid such homes, or to bring up 
children to be moral and decent? 

On the corner of Cherry and Catherine Streets, a century and 
a half ago, eleven negroes were burned at the stake on the 
charge of poisoning the wells. Any one familiar with the locality 
might fancy that the ashes of the fire, wind-scattered over the 
tenement region around, had entailed on it an everlasting curse. 

Every one has heard of the worst type of " barracks " and 
" dives " which for years have been a notorious feature of the 
metropolis. It is needless to describe them or their inmates 
ignorant, filthy, and more or less debased, especially the Italians, 
Poles, Russians, and Bohemians. While these constitute only a 
small part of the total tenement population, yet the half-mil- 
lion people who dwell in New York tenements are all subject to 
influences which seriously threaten their moral and physical health. 

Take the bald facts of overcrowding in these houses, and 
what a lesson it tells ! In Philadelphia, Boston, Brooklyn, St. 
Louis, Chicago, and Baltimore the average number of inmates 
per house is from six to nine. Of the total number of dwellings 
in New York, 10.314 contain one family, or six persons, including 
domestics ; 16,982 houses or flats contain one family on a floor, 
or twenty-five persons; while 18,966 tenements accommodate fifty 
persons each on an average, or almost a million persons. This 
is unexampled crowding of population. In 1864 it was esti- 
mated that half a million persons lived in tenements. To-day 
the number is not far from a million. At this rate of increase 
what will be the total at the beginning of the next century? 
From 5 to 15 per cent, will fairly represent the proportion of 
very bad tenements, or, say, 2,600 as a maximum. Every year 
must add to this number, as time and neglect bring ruin upon 
houses which are now with difficulty kept in decent repair. 

Among the Italians and Polish Jews taking lodgers is the rule, 
and six and seven persons of all ages and of both sexes will be 
found in one or two rooms. Only by night-inspections can the 
extent of this crowding be known. Tenement-houses are filled 
to suffocation. Hardly a vacant room is to be found in them. 
New tenements are rented in advance of their construction, and 
occupied before the paint is fairly dry, and while still reeking. 
In the " Gap," in West Twenty-sixth Street, I found a room and 
closet bed-room which had been occupied by a man and his 
wife, four women, and two children, with occasional lodgers. 
A physician reports finding two adults and five children, the 
oldest a girl of thirteen, occupying one bed in a tenement-house. 

VOL. XLI. II 



1 62 THE MORAL SIDE OF [May, 

The fact that the chief inspector of the Tenement Commission 
found scarcely any houses in which there were no violations of 
the sanitary code speaks volumes as to the condition of these 
buildings. 

The returns from New York tenement property vary from six 
to twenty-five per cent., according to the rapacity of the land- 
lords and the helplessness of the tenants. The more miserable 
the people the higher the income squeezed out of them. Rents 
in comparatively good tenements up-town are not much less than 
in wretched buildings in the lower parts of the city. The report 
of a charitable society says: " Our poorare seemingly at a loss to 
know where to find suitable accommodations within the limits of 
their means and answering their requirements." It is one of the 
greatest misfortunes of the respectable poor that they cannot 
.escape contact with debased and disagreeable people. Constant 
regret is expressed that poverty compels them to live in close 
contact with undesirable neighbors. Miss Octavia Hill, an ac- 
tive advocate of tenement-house reform in London, says : " It is 
a most merciful thing to protect the poor from the pain of living 
in the next room to drunk and disorderly people. ' I am dying,' 
said an old woman to me the other day ; ' I wish you would put 

me where I cannot hear S beating his wife ; her screams are 

awful. And B , too, he do come in so drunk.' ' 

Probably seventy-five per cent, of the maladies of the cities, 
which often pass over into the better quarters, arise from the 
tenement-houses. Ninety per cent, of the children born in these 
dens die before reaching youth. The amount of sickness is 
proportioned to the death-rate. There is a gradual physical 
degeneracy. Wasting diseases prevail. Infantile life is nipped 
in the bud ; youth is deformed and loathsome ; decrepitude 
comes at thirty. The slow process of decay is aptly called 
" tenement-house rot." The frequent expression of the poor, 
" We have no sickness, thank God ! " is uttered by those whose 
sunken eyes, pale cheeks, and colorless lips speak more elo- 
quently than words of the unseen agencies that are sapping 
the fountains of health. The pure Londoner of the third gene- 
ration is very hard to find, because the progeny soon ceases. 
When he is found this is what he is : "A picture of physical 
decline, involving shortness of stature, narrow chest, defor- 
mity of jaws, miserable appearance (squint prevailing), scro^ 
fulous diseases, and small head." The only thing a pure Lon- 
doner is fit. for is to " light porter " and to sell papers. When 
we have had another decade of tenement-life the native New- 



1885.3 THE TENEMENT-HOUSE PROBLEM. 163 

Yorker may show similar traits. Children in the tenements be- 
come inured to horrors, but it gives them a prematurely aged 
look. A child of twelve lately appeared as a witness in court 
and told how her mother tried to throw herself out of a window 
in a drunken fit, and she stoooVby and saw her, while her father 
sought in vain to prevent the horrible catastrophe. The report 
said the child's face was like that of an aged person. A high 
medical authority points out that the children of vicious parents, 
and those not born in wedlock, are not as vigorous as those 
which are legitimate or whose parents are moral and decent peo- 
ple. It is the general rule that abandoned children become cri- 
minals and vagrants with few exceptions. No institution can re- 
place the home, and a paid official, particularly if appointed for 
political reasons, is a poor substitute for a parent. 

In talking recently with a police justice of his experience on 
the bench, he said the tenements were simply " moral pest- 
holes," and cited scores of examples of the ruin they had 
wrought on young and old. 

"A flare of lamp-light in a shameful place, 

Full of wild revel and unchecked offence, 
And in the midst one fresh, scarce-sullied face, 
Within her eyes a dreadful innocence." 

This fitly describes the lot of the growing child amid the con- 
tamination of the tenement-home. 

These dens of iniquity are a disgrace to civilization, a satire 
on Christianity. Says a well-known city philanthropist: "So 
long as these terrible rookeries exist in our midst, which are a 
shame to us in their filth and their foulness, we cannot be said to 
have even begun to act out the true dictates of brotherliness." 
A professor at Johns Hopkins University once said that the na- 
tional, State, and municipal systems of government might be de- 
stroyed, and yet in a nation whose families were pure society 
would soon reconstruct itself ; it may be said conversely that if 
the family is destroyed the state will soon decay. Sanitary In- 
spector Tracy speaks of the almost total destruction of decent 
morals which results from a constant and unavoidable comming- 
ling of the sexes. If the sexual immorality of the tenement-houses 
of New York could be laid bare by some Asmodeus, the com- 
munity would be aghast at the revelation. A. prominent physi- 
cian remarks : " The only law of God which is heeded by the 
poor in the tenements is to 'increase and multiply.' ' A patrol- 
man at Roosevelt Street who accompanied. a. Sun reporter through 



164 MORAL SIDE OF,THE TENEMENT-HOUSE PROBLEM. [May, 

the neighboring slums, where the reporter noted particularly 
that the residents were not the very poor or seemed to lack food 
or money, made the following observations : 

" He was no sentimentalist, but he spoke gravely of the effect of such 
scenes and modes of living upon little children brought up as participants 
in them. ' If outcast women were to behave in the streets as do some of 
the young girls brought up in those places,' said he, ' we would be obliged 
to lock them up. Their mothers look on from the windows and laugh at 
what would startle you if you should see it." 

My present object is simply to state the facts without at- 
tempting to suggest specific remedies. Sanitary laws have done 
much, but private effort can do more, to remove unsanitary con- 
ditions. With the example of Gotham Court before us no one 
can deny the possibility of effecting a vast improvement in ex- 
isting tenements. In 1859 this huge building contained 504 per- 
sons, of whom 148 were sick at one time. During two years and 
eight months there were 98 deaths. At this rate over 1,000 per- 
sons would have died there in the intervening twenty-five years, 
while the number of sick cannot be estimated. Yet through 
private effort this den of misery, whose former death-rate is ex- 
ceeded nowhere in the world, has been within recent years com- 
pletely transformed, and is now filled with decent, respectable 
tenants, who are rarely sick. In every tenement-house a like 
change might be made, and with such a reduction in mortality 
aj>d improvement in morals as would astonish the world. 

To deal adequately, however, with the tenement problem we 
must apply preventive measures. A Londorr missionary well 
says: " We are mitigating the extreme sufferings of the destitute, 
but we are not arresting those deeper causes which breed desti- 
tution." The Bitter Cry of Outcast London echoes this admis- 
sion and declares that the tide of suffering is rising faster than 
the means of relief. A Sister of Charity said to me : " We are 
fighting against a dead- wall of ignorance and apathy in the New 
York tenements." What New York wants is a revival of civic 
pride in her citizens to stimulate them to give their time 
and thought as well as their money to public duties. Our peo- 
ple are too absorbed in their private affairs and content to dele- 
gate responsibilities to ill-paid and harassed officials. Self-in- 
terest should teach them, if necessity does not, that a different 
course of action is imperative. But above all the clergy and all 
who are interested in the moral welfare of the community need 
to feel the urgent necessity of mastering and reaching a practical 
solution of this vast problem. 



1885.] SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 165 



SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

AMONG those who have written of mankind, Dickens knew 
best the world around him, especially in that class whom, being 
a large majority, it is most important to understand. Sprung 
from almost the lowest stratum, having suffered many of the 
pains which befall their varied conditions, even when a little 
child his eyes were ever looking around him, and, though un- 
consciously then, studying and learning them well, destined 
never to lose the interest which such knowledge inspired, but to 
devote a hard-working life to imparting it to others, among other 
purposes in order to impart to them a compassion that he never 
ceased to feel. Never a demagogue nor a vulgarian nor a 
snob, when rich, illustrious, courted by the great he busied him- 
self as when poor, unknown, and friendless, and died in the midst 
of his benign work. The recollection of some accidents of his 
childhood was always painful not from shame at the contrast 
with established prosperity, yet not without some, a shade of 
bitterness in the reflection that a child so sensitive to hurt should 
have been subjected, sometimes unnecessarily, to such privations. 
Before reading the Biography of Forster we knew that to him 
who had written the histories of Tiny Tim and Jo of Tom-All- 
Alone's early sorrows had come that could not be forgotten. 

Such things as these, as was the case with Akenside and 
Gifford, sometimes make either a satirist or a despiser of those 
in one's same lot. In minds except the greatest it is not un- 
natural for both shame and resentment to rise from such humiliat- 
ing recollections. Even among the greatest, tears must some- 
times come in the eyes and a shadow be upon the heart ; but 
these qualify them better for the histories which they are to indite. 
They are only the greatest also who can become just historians of 
the poor and humble. Of these Dickens was never an undiscrim- 
inating champion. As the best of his creations were taken from 
their midst, so were his worst. The latter, indeed, had become 
known right well in the jails and ships of transport to penal 
colonies. He would make known the former as well impor- 
tant information in a community such as London city, where, 
not as in country life, the social positions of the high and the low 
are so far apart that, passing and^ repassing each other every 
day, not only is there little accord of sentiments and feelings, 



166 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. [May, 

but unhappily often an utter ignorance on the part of the upper 
of the characters of the lower, their conditions, aims, and possi- 
bilities. The poor are known to be poor indeed, and many the 
charities that are extended. Yet money-charities are far from 
being the highest. Indeed, money-charities, when not bestowed 
from a sense of their necessity to the giver, or from a sort of 
pleasant consciousness in the giver of a condescension from pecu- 
liar loftiness of mind, are sometimes bestowed for the purpose of 
buying one's self off from those more benignant, seeking acquaint- 
ance with the afflicted and oppressed, and visiting them with 
intent to comfort and relieve. Dickens knew these classes,* 
their squalid poverty, their sickliness, their hopes and despairs, 
their desires to pull the rich out of their great houses and splen- 
did equipages, and soil their fair garments in the dirt on which 
their own beds were laid, their children born, and their poor 
meals spread. But he knew as well their integrity, their fear 
of God, their unvaunting courage, their love of wives, parents, 
children, brothers, sisters, friends, their merry-hearted droller- 
ies, their absurd sentimentalities. He knew all their grief and 
their frolic, sympathized where sympathy could be afforded, 
pitied where it could not, and laughed when he could laugh 
without the petulance that embitters instead of sweetening 
mirth. It is a rare gift when one who portrays the earnest can 
do as well with the sportive. Scott had done so, and, to a less 
degree, Miss Edgeworth also; both late, because readers of books 
had not yet come to be profoundly interested in the multitudes. 
It was reserved for Dickens to bring in the satyr as he is in his 
native wilds. I say satyr, for in such condition, between man 
and beast, the multitudes seemed long to have been regarded. 
By the hand of Dickens these were shown to be human beings 
with eyes, ears, wants, aspirations like those of the gifted and 
the fortunate. 

* Forster in his biography says : " That he took from the very beginning of this Bayham- 
Street life his first impression of that struggling poverty which is nowhere more vividly shown 
than in the commoner streets of the ordinary London suburb, and which enriched his earliest 
writings with a freshness of original humor and quite unstudied pathos that gave them much of 
their sudden popularity, there cannot be a doubt. ' I certainly understood it,' he has often said 
tome, ' quite as well then as I do now.' But he was not .conscious yet that he did sounder- 
stand it, or of the influence it was exerting on his life even then. It seems almost too much to 
assert of a child, say at nine or ten years old, that his observation of everything was as close and 
good, or that he had as much intuitive understanding of the character and weakness of grown- 
up people around him, as when the same keen and wonderful faculty had made him famous 
among men. But my experience of him led me to put implicit faith in the assertion he unvary- 
ingly himself made, that he had never seen any cause to correct or change what in his boyhood 
was his own secret impression of any boy whom he had had, as a grown man, the opportunity 
of testing in later years." 



1885.] SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 167 

There is somewhat surprising in the rashness with which, 
when first feeling- his mission, he went to its work. Yet rashness 
belongs to the young, and, when it succeeds, its successes are 
splendid. Witness the Cockney in Pickwick ; in Barnaby Rndge 
the idiot and the raven; the pauper in Oliver Twist ; the child of 
shame under a coward schoolmaster's rod in Nicholas Nickleby ; 
in Curiosity Shop a motherless child with no friend but God ; in 
Bleak House another, most unhappy for not being fatherless also, 
and yet another, even nameless, persecuted for the sake of a 
secret accidentally lodged in his simple breast, and dying in neg- 
lect, want, and exile ; in Copperfield a perennial prisoner in the 
Marshalsea. 

What reflections were to be had, what morals deduced, from 
these histories of the lowly ? Betterment of the conditions of 
poor-houses and mean boarding schools, awakening to the mise- 
ries entailed by the endless delays, hinderings, and sellings of 
Chancery decrees, and fixing regard upon other evils which had 
shocked him when a child, and now nigh overwhelmed him with 
horror. The eminent success of his efforts for these superior 
purposes was due, perhaps, mainly to the humor which he pos- 
sessed in greater abundance than any novelist of any time. For- 
tunate for his own being, fortunate for us, that his spirit was so 
healthy. Bitterness could never rise in the heart of one who 
could laugh as heartily as he could weep. Not less did he pity 
the privations of the lowly because he could be amused by their 
harmless absurdities. What these were he knew not only from 
observation but experience. His " home," as he styled it, had 
once been the Marshalsea, its inmates his parents, brothers, sis- 
ters, his special friends and acquaintance. Suffering, unmixed, 
constant, dwelt not here more than pleasure unalloyed among the 
prosperous. The little joys of the humble how he loved to 
exaggerate, in order to show how easy it was to multiply and en- 
hance them, and thus conciliate and persuade to this humane 
purpose! For charitv comes from the laughers oftlimes more 
abounding than from the weepers. The singing girl who in 
tattered garments stands upon the cold pavement and carols a 
merry roundelay will often delay some that'hasten past her who 
lifts only the song of wailing that is known to belong to all her 
kind. Often it is that the mirthful man, more readily than the 
serious, will draw from his pockets and bestow to what has made 
him laugh yet another time. 

It is not contended herein that the mind of Dickens was al- 
ways bent mainly to the production of beneficent results ; though 



1 68 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. [May, 

we do believe that these were never wholly absent from it. He 
was intent upon describing states of existence in all their phases' 
of lights as well as shadows. That the sportive in him pre- 
dominated over the serious was a special felicity. Whoever 
has read Forster's Biography has been amused as heartily by the 
real as ever he was by the unreal. Take the following : 

"I was such a little fellow, with my poor white hat, little jacket, and 
corduroy trousers, that frequently, when I went into the bar of a strange 
public-house for a glass of porter or ale to wash down the saveloy and the 
loaf [ had eaten in the street, they did not like to give it me. I remember, 
one evening (I had been somewhere for my father, and was going back to the 
borough over Westminster Bridge), that I went into a publit-house on'Par- 
liament Street which is still there, though altered at the corner of the 
short street leading into the Cannon Row, and said to the landlord behind 
the bar, ' What is your very best the VERY best ale a glass ? ' For the oc- 
casion was a festive one for some reason; I forget why. It may have been 
my birthday or somebody else's. 'Twopence,' says he. 'Then,' says I, 
'just draw me a glass of that, if you please, with a good head to it.' The 
landlord looked at me in return, over the bar, from head to foot, with 
a strange smile on his face, and, instead of drawing the beer, looked round 
the screen and said something to his wife, who came out from behind it 
with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying me. Here we 
s:and, all three, before me now in my study in Devonshire Terrace 
the landlord, in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; 
his wife looking over the little half-door ; and I, in some confusion, look- 
ing up at them from outside the partition. They asked me a good many 
questions, as what my name was, how old I was, where'l lived, how I was 
employed, etc., etc. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I in- 
vented appropriate answers. They served me with the ale, though I 
suspect it was not the strongest on the premises; and the landlord's 
wife, opening the little half-door and bending down, gave me a kiss that 
was half-.admiring and half-compassionate, but all womanly and good, I 
am sure." 

This occurred when he was about nine years of age, living on' 
seven shillings a week, " insufficiently fed." " I know," he says, 
" that but for the mercy of God I might easily have been, for any 
care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond." 

The man who could thus write about his own childhood's 
existence showed that the droll was remembered and dwelt upon 
as often as the sad. It was a pleasure-giving smile with which 
he contemplated the urchin balancing his economic resources 
with the importance of producing effect upon the trading world. 

The hero of many of the children in the novels of Dickens 
was himself.* At one time he was Jo, moving, ever moving 

* " My father had left a small collection of books in a little room up-stairs to which I had 
access (for it adjoined my own), and which nobody in our house ever troubled. From that 



1 88 5-] SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 169 

before the pursuant detective ; at another he was Paul Dombey 
looking up with awe to Mrs. Pipchin, and when alone wonder- 
ing what may be the voices of the sad sea-waves; yet at another 
Kit, honorably bent upon the fulfilment of his promise to lead 
his younger brother to the knowledge of " what oysters is." 
Childhood, in its privations, in its innocence, in its ambitions, in 
its dreams, no man was ever so acquainted withal, and none ever 
so delighted to portray it. In the case of Little Nell there was 
danger, for a space, that the judgment of the artist would be 
swayed by the feeling of the man and fall short of consummation 
of a creation so felicitously conceived. Convinced by the reasons 
of a friend, who argued that the survival of sufferings of the 
kind undergone would not well comport with the ends of fiction, 
he yielded ; and when the picture was finished Jeffrey said there 
had been nothing to compare with it since Cordelia. It is 
among these children that we must look for the pathos needed 
as well by a novel as a tragedy. The story of Jo of Tom-All- 
Alone's, more brief, is scarcely less touching than that of Little 
Nell. He whose home had been in the Marshalsea had known 
Jo long before, his story was to be told, and others like him. 
Homeless, nameless, friendless, and harmless, except that a fatal 
secret in a great family had been lodged by accident in his simple 
breast, he moves and moves till the powers of locomotion are 
exhausted, when a good man appears, too late for any other office 
than to teach him a little part of one prayer and fold his arms 

blessed little room Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humpki-ey Clinker, Tom Jones, The 
Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, and Robinson Crusoe came out, a glorious host, to 
keep me company. They kept alive my fancy and my hope of something beyond that place 
and time they and the Arabian Nights and the Tales of the Genii and did me no harm ; for 
whatever harm was in some of them was not there, for me: / knew nothing of it. It is as- 
tonishing to me now how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier 
themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled my- 
self under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me) by impersonating my favorite 
characters in them. ... I have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) 
for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a 
stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of voyages and travels I for- 
get what now that were on those shelves ; and for days and days I can remember to have gone 
about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot trees, the 
perfect realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal Navy, in danger of being beset by savages 
and resolved to sell his life at a great price. . . . When I think of it the picture always rises in 
my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard and I sitting on my bed 
reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighborhood, every stone in the church, and every 
foot of the churchyard had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with these 
books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen- Tom Pipes go climbing 
up the church steeple ; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest 
himself on the wicket gate, and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. 
Pickle in the parlor of our little village ale-house." Then the biographer adds : " Every word 
of this personal recollection had been written down as fact some years before it found its way 
into David Copperfield." 



170 SOME HEKOES OF CHARLES DICKENS. [May, 

upon his breast. Hereat comes that outburst of indignant re- 
monstrance against a Christian community wherein such things 
are allowed to exist : 

"The light is come upon the dark, benighted way. Dead! 

" Dead, your majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right 
reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, 
born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us 
every day." 

With self-made men who try not to forget nor conceal their 
lowly origin there is often the disposition to talk of it much, 
and exaggerate the hindrances which their extraordinary gen- 
ius and spirit have overcome. With others the proclivity is to 
praise their forebears when these are so far removed that praise, 
not known to, be unmerited, will not be ridiculous. From both 
these infirmities Dickens seemed to have been uncommonly free. 
He neither ignored nor sought to praise. Forster tells that the 
original of Micawber was the novelist's own father, and that he 
was quite vain of the office of an amanuensis to his son. We 
can well believe this of one whose creations so frequently were 
elaborated from characters whom he had well known. There 
are few things in literature more humorous than the intimacy 
between this boy of a man and little Davie. The taste of such a 
work it is not to the point here to discuss ; it is mentioned as 
another proof of how closely the author had studied human life 
among its humblest elements, and with what consummate skill he 
could invest them with unflagging interest.'* 

Fortunate it was, we repeat, that the mind of Dickens was 
not embittered by the poor life of his childhood. The love and 
the power to write satire rise in either an unloving or a disap- 
pointed spirit. What might have been done in pleasanter fields 
by Archilochus of Pa^os but for the accidents attending his fond- 
est ambition we cannot tell, knowing no more of the antece- 
dents of his youth. But it was his lot to love the beautiful 
Neobule, daughter of Lycambes. The maid returned his pas- 
sion, and the father gave his consent to their union, but after- 
wards withdrew it because, though the youth's father was a 
man of high consideration, his mother, it was ascertained, had 
been born a slave. Whereupon the disappointed lover vented 
his feelings in such verses (the first of their kind) that Neobule 
and her sisters were said to have hanged themselves out of 
shame and despair. Whoever will take the pains to study the 
lives of the satirists will find, more often than he might expect, 
transmission of the personal bitterness of the Parian founder 



1885.] SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 171 

through the generations of his successors. The sadness that 
darkened the young iif e of Dickens was upon that of all his 
manhood, often drawing from his eyes floods of tears; but it 
was of a kind to create compassion for distress such as no Eng- 
lish writer has ever evinced, yet a compassion tender, loving, 
sometimes indeed changing to indignation, not against indi- 
viduals, nor even against society for acts of positive injustice, 
but for neglect or tardiness in ascertaining the wants of the des- 
titute multitudes and providing for their betterment. Such a 
man can look upon the sportive as well as the earnest side of 
life among these multitudes. The more he compassionated the 
one the more he could be amused by the other. For, indeed, it 
would be a hard life for the poor if they had no seasons of fun 
and frolic, no simulations of sentimental experiences, no harm- 
less exaggerations of their own importance, no attempts of en- 
acting upon their own little stages representations of the doings 
of the gifted and the great. Therefore merryheartedness is 
among them as well as privations and sorrows. The poor man's 
holidays have a relish peculiar to themselves, and their gushing 
abandon in merrymakings is one of the most pleasing things 
to witness and is one of the most interesting themes for the 
study of the philosopher. 

In the portrayal of this side of humble life doubtless all agree 
that Dickens has never been equalled. From I y ickiuick to 
Drood in the great novels, the novelettes, the Christmas Stories, 
the brief sketches, humorous characters come on and on, making 
us wonder if the list is never to have an end. How many thou- 
sands have they made actually weep with laughter ! 

The prodigious success of these works was almost as sur- 
prising to the English public as was the genius to construct 
them. Let us reflect somewhat upon this success. How was 
it that the man who presented characters taken from the lowly 
exhibited them so that we looked and listened with an interest 
beyond that ever felt in contemplation of the great lords and 
dames in fiction heretofore ? How is it that these uncultured, 
poorly-fed, often homeless waifs on the ocean of society, per- 
sons with whom ourselves had no previous acquaintance, delay 
us as much as, even more than, Montrose, Leicester, Osbaldis- 
ton, Bradvvardine, even kings and queens of English or Scottish 
story? It is because the historian of those, better than any 
other, knew how to wake the chords of human sympathy, the 
emotion which when exalted to its utmost is our most power- 
ful, our most benign, our fondest and dearest, This, world is 



i/2 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. [May, 

far more sympathetic than generally it seems to be. No man 
can live without sympathy of some sort. Even old Timon was 
put to shame by the philosopher pointing to his eagerness that 
the indifference which he pretended should be known and ob- 
served. They are few, and they not of tke best, on whom 
neither a sad nor a humorous story can make an impression and 
prompt to a charitable action. One may claim to despise this 
world, yet he will linger and mingle in it as long as he can, and, 
when about to depart from it, indulge the hope that he will not 
be forgotten except for the evil he has done. Even the gossip, 
as Carlyle says, is a lover of mankind, and backbites because 
the standard that she has fixed for her victims they persist in 
refusing to attain. Dickens was almost the first who was really 
great to attempt, not, indeed, a diversion of sympathy from any 
of those to whom heretofore it had been extended, but to include 
within its sweet influences those who needed it most. It seems 
like an anomaly that the course of pity should so long have been 
mainly upward. The tragic poets made mankind weep over 
the sufferings of Prometheus, Orestes, OEdipus, Medea, Lear, the 
Prince of Denmark ; and it was beautiful how even the humblest 
pitied the misfortunes of the great. ' The multitudes who consti- 
tute nations, who make up the world, who build cities and high- 
ways, who fight wars and defend and uphold kings and govern- 
ments these had small space in books or upon the stage. In the 
fulness of time Richardson, a commoner, gave representations 
from among them, and even the prosperous and titled, notwith- 
standing the weak sentimentality of these new endeavors, felt 
how abundant and refreshing were the tears that came to their 
eyes. Then Fielding, of the blood of the Denbighs, laughed his 
laugh at the misdirected feeling, and Tom Jones made ashamed 
those who had wept with Pamela and Clarissa. Scott came on, a 
scion of the stock of the Buccleughs, and he dwelt mainly on the 
sorrows of Montrose, Amy Robsart, and others of noble and gen- 
tle blood. But he was a man with a heart in his breast that could 
feel for men and women less than these. The most pathetic, the 
most admired recital that he ever made was that, in The Heart 
of Midlothian, of the sorrows and struggles of the daughters of 
Deans, the cow-feeder. The success of these few tentative en- 
deavors in sympathies of the cheapest was prophetic of what was 
to be when a man born and reared amid the scum of mankind 
should have the heart, and the genius, and the opportunities to 
represent life therein in such forms as to enlist men's attention to 
all the purposes that he had in view. At first he was thought to 



SOME HEROES OF CM A RLE s DICKENS. 173 

be interested only in the sportive side of that humble existence, 
and would only lead men of leisure to laugh at what was baldly 
ludicrous and nothing more. But when he had exposed .their 
levities, lest men should conclude that they had been created 
only to be ridiculed, he proceeded to show the serious and the 
respectable among those who, even as the prosperous, reflected 
the image of the Creator. It is very pleasing to contemplate 
how he strove to exhibit in some of his very humblest characters 
loyalty to every behest of honorable manhood. Take the name- 
less Jo f for whom what might not have been done but for the 
want of examples and opportunities ? Let us hear the words of 
the dying little exile when they have at last driven him where he 
can " lie down and get a thorough good dose of sleep." They 
had asked him if he knew any prayers. 

" No, sir, nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands he wos a prayin' wunst at Mr. 
Snagsby's, and I heerd him, but h'e sounded as if he was a-speakin' to his- 
self and not to me. He prayed a lot, but / couldn't make out nothink on 
it. Different times there wos other genTmen come down Tom-all-Alone's 
a-prayin', but they all mostly said as the t'other ones prayed wrong, and 
all mostly sounded to be a-talkin' to their selves, or a-passin' blame on the 
t'others, and not a talkin' to us. We never knowed nothink. / never 
knowed what it was all about." 

Yet he begged them to put in his will his message to Mr. 
Snagsby that " Jo, what he knowed once, is a-moving on right 
for'ards with his duty, and I'll be wery thankful." Or let us take 
Joe Gargery. What a limited volume of understanding ! What 
a blundering giant of a booby ! blundering the more ridiculously 
when specially striving with the proprieties of deportment and 
conversation! How humbly triumphant at his one great essay 
at elegiac verse ! These make us laugh until we cannot sit 
longer in our chairs, but must go lie down and rest our heads 
upon pillows. Yet how loyal was Joe to his shrew of a wife, 
always making prominent her one great distinction, she being 
" a fine figger of a woman " ; to his ungrateful and rather worth- 
less brother-in-law, even while, with the delicacy of the best 
society-man, keeping himself aloof when his presence was em- 
barrassing to one who had risen so far above his beginnings. 
Courageous as simple, manlike as humble, Joe Gargery merited 
the name that a true man likes most to be given him. He was a 
gentleman. 

To interest justly in these multitudes required pre-eminent 
genius and the spirit of an apostle. Dickens had both. A 
patriot, his love of country radiated from its central point, warm- 



174 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. [May, 

ing most his familiars with whom he had freely shed tears both 
of sorrow and of joy, and, when become renowned and power- 
ful, striving to draw closer together the widely-separated consti- 
tuents that made up the people of his native country. Faithful 
to the demands of fiction, he taught more continuously than any 
novelist that neither the greatest good nor the most despicable 
evil is peculiar to any class, and that among the very humblest 
were characters equal to the best and equally to be respected by 
all mankind. 

It is not difficult to account' for some of the adverse criticism 
of Dickens (especially of late) on the ground that his characters 
were so much overdrawn, and therefore less faithful representa- 
tives of real life than those of Thackeray, George Eliot, and 
more particularly some recent novelists. The characters of 
Thackeray are indeed natural, often painfully so; and if the pur- 
pose of fiction were to represent life just as it is, he would be at 
the head of the list of artists of all times. Many women are like 
Rebecca Sharp, and many men like Barnes Newcome. Many 
doubtless are the quarrels among the genteel in the privacy of 
home, and the disputants come forth with smiling faces and de- 
ceitful words. But is the purpose of fiction to represent this life 
just as it is, and worse than it is to exhibit birds in their cages at 
seasons when in their most revolting uncleanness? Is it to put 
before our eyes men and women, boys and girls, and, tearing 
away the veils with which they try to hide their deformities, 
show us that these husbands and wives, ostensibly discharging 
relative duties with reasonable fidelity, are all -perfidious to 
solemnest obligations, accustomed in secret to quarrellings and 
abusings ; and that these boys and girls, even the best, apparently 
pliant to sweet domestic control, long to see their parents dead, 
and then, while clothed thickly in black and subdued to demure- 
ness in walk and conversation, chuckling in secret at the removal 
of constraints and the fulfilment of post-obit expectations ? More 
than these, when such things are shown in the strongest as the 
weakest, must we be reminded that we are no better, we nor our 
children, but that we, like all gone before and all to come after 
us, reek with ingratitude and perfidy? No. This is not the 
purpose of fiction. It is to represent human life, indeed, but, in 
its most elaborate endeavors, to represent the extremes of good 
and evil and to lead each to its appropriate consequences. The 
poet (and for this end the novelist is a poet) makes new concretes 
out of the discordant elements of this lower world. He paints 
virtue with as little blemish as is possible to a fallen estate, and 



1 885.] SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 175 

vice irredeemable except by repentance and abandonment. The 
struggle between these combatants may be fierce, sometimes ap- 
pearing doubtful even to the most valiant; yet in time either 
victory or deliverance must come to the upright who have re- 
fused to despair whether present triumph, like that of Nicholas 
Nickleby over the reprobate Ralph, or translation, like that of 
Little Nell or Jo of Tom-all-Alone's ? It is easy, therefore, to 
understand why many of the. great poets have been unhappy. 
From their efforts to rescue themselves from despair by means of 
the creation of better worlds than this have we gotten some of 
our most important lessons and sweetest consolations. 

For what end did God impart to a few of those lashioned in 
his image a portion of this his most peculiar attribute this power 
to create worlds wherein the virtuous man is more surety and 
highly exalted, and the vicious more surely and condignly pun- 
ished, than at the bar of this world's tribunals? Partly that we 
may get the benefit of examples always more efficacious than the 
most studied precepts of the wise, and partly that we may be 
kept from despondence, from the jarring discords around us. It 
is a wholesome thought that the good are better than really they 
be. It is hurtful to believe them to be worse. For our human 
hearts take on other forms of ambition than to surpass in good- 
ness the best of those around us. The multitudes of mankind 
are not only more capable, but they prefer to follow than to 
lead. There is a certain degree, if not of self praise, of self- 
gratulation when we sincerely point to one whom we admit to 
be superior not only to what we are, but what it is possible for 
us to become. We often assuage our remorse for failing in the 
practice of virtue by the hearty praise we bestow upon those 
whom we acknowledge it to be not possible for us to imitate, and 
such praise often rescues one who otherwise might lapse into de- 
spair. Let the artist, therefore the artist who is not a mere 
painter of portraits bestow, if he will, upon his pictures a touch 
here and there to render more attractive the beauty we love to 
admire. Even the painter of portraits does a graceless thing 
when he lifts the hair or tears away the kerchief of his original, 
merely to show a ghastly scar whose existence we would rather 
have ignored. * So of the sportive. When the time comes for us 
to laugh, let us laugh with breasts healthy, full of mirth that is as 
harmless as exuberant. Such as these are imparted by the char- 
acterizations of Dickens. The best things and the worst are ever 
in contrast and conflict. We see the saddest and the gayest, and 
for both tears come to our eyes, bringing the sweetest relief i that 



176 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. [May, 

the human heart ever gets from a surfeit, whether of sorrow or 
of gladness. In reading the Biography these tears, so like and 
yet so dissimilar, will often flow as they flowed from his own 
eyes in contemplation of the varying conditions of mankind. 
With him humor was an antidote to the sadness which, if he had 
yielded to it, would have overwhelmed him. In one of his let- 
ters he tells of a strange dream that he had in Italy, wherein a 
lately separated relative seemed to have appeared before him 
and advised him to seek refuge from his religious doubts in the 
Catholic faith. It is painful to contemplate how a mind in 
which the serious predominated could never find the assurance 
which it sought. There was some bitterness mingled with the 
tenderness in inditing the will of poor Jo ; and herein we can tell 
some of the thoughts of the great writer when putting into the 
mouth of a dying child words humbly complaining of the insuf- 
ficiency of those who undertook to guide in the Way of Life. A 
man so beset must often turn for relief from the severe to the 
lively ; and the more profound has been his sadness, so the higher 
in hilarity will he rebound. 

Another cause for the relegation of Dickens from the position 
he once occupied has grown out of a change in the tastes of the 
reading public that has led to preference for the delicate and the 
nice in art, literary as well as pictorial. It is the miniature 
rather than the life-size that pleases now, or, if the life-size, with 
curious, elaborate drapery. Favorite is the mosaic, compounded, 
like the melancholy of Jaques, of many simples, and conjoined 
with microscopic painstaking and accuracy. The analyst of a 
hero's or heroine's motives for conduct more and less important, 
especially in genteeler circles, finds now more admirers than not 
only Dickens but Thackeray and George Eliot. Even the 
Becky Sharps and Maggie Tullivers are postponed to opulent 
ladies with trains sweeping with pleasant rustling over costly 
carpets, jewelled hands daintily plying fragrant fans, and tongues 
chattering with exquisite modulation on somethings, and on no- 
things also. But such a taste will be, as its likes have ever been, 
of temporary duration. Genuine art will ever endure, however 
often it may be passed by for a brief space by those who are be- 
guiled by new ornamentations in unimportant particulars. We 
remember how Cowley was for a time preferred to Milton, and 
the poets of the Restoration to those of the period of Elizabeth, 
and how dramatic poetry in general declined with the rise of 
scenic decoration. The bonanza kings, their wives and daugh- 
ters ; the nouveaux ricke, removed from low to up-town, or from 






1885.] SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 177 

East to West End, are pleased, or believe themselves to be pleased, 
with witty sayings, bright dinner and tea-parties among the gen- 
tility, cunning analyses of human motives in varying positions, 
and just enough of pathos and humor as may effect a pleasing 
sigh or an unexpected brief smile. As in the time of Richard- 
son, even thoughtful minds have become somewhat wearied of 
being stirred by the thrillingly earnest and comic, and ask for 
repose. Writers of ability notice this condition of things in the 
reading public, and more or less reluctantly conform to their de- 
mands. How often does history repeat itself! In his twenty 
years of exile Charles II. grew to be not only not a patriot, but 
not even an Englishman. Restored to the throne of his ances- 
tors, he brought to his court those tastes which the French men 
of letters had been forced to adopt by the lack of rhythm and 
melody in their language. Lord Orrery, a time-serving cour- 
tier, was the first to begin with the use of rhyme in dramatic 
composition. An interesting chapter is that which tells of the 
struggles of Dryden in these degenerate times. If otherwise he 
could have gotten his bread, " The Indian Emperor " and " The 
Conquest of Grenada " would never have been put into rhyme. 
Even as it was he turned at length from the pursuit of things 
foreign to his native country, and languished in poor old Soho, 
with what consolation was to be had in the thought of being 
again faithful to the behests of patriotism. 

It was always curious what various and often what trifling 
and unsubstantial causes may divert art from its legitimate pur- 
poses, and with what little complaining artists themselves real 
artists, with genius and feeling will work in conformity with 
tastes which they know and feel to be not only untrue but 
vicious, and prefer to an enduring fame a capricious favor whose 
end they cannot fail to foresee. It is so with pictorial art, as 
those most versed in such matters tell us. It is less sincere, less 
genuine than it was a score or two of years ago. But they tell 
us also that it is bound to return to its native simplicity an,d in- 
tegrity. So it will be with fictitious narrative. So will ife ever 
be with contending forces. The fittest will survive. 



VOL. XLI. 12 



1 78 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [May, 



STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 

THE TRUE STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF DAVID RIZZIO. 

PLOTTED against by her brother, on whom the Queen of 
Scots bestowed so many favors, shamed and impeded by her 
vicious husband, it is not to be wondered, under the circum- 
stances, that the queen made the most of the honesty of her sec- 
retary, who was entrusted with the secret political correspond 
ence which the circumstances of the times forced upon her. She 
may not have been wise in the expression of her appreciation oi 
Rizzio's talents and devotion. The gross-minded Scotch nobles 
could not comprehend the meaning of platonic friendship exist- 
ing between* men and women of high culture and pure minds. 
It is no wonder that Rizzio soon incurred the deadly hatred of 
the nobles and chiefs. Sir James Melville, in his Memoirs, re- 
lates many narratives of the conduct of the nobles and gentlemen 
towards the queen's Italian secretary. " The lords frowned 
fiercely upon Rizzio, and others would thrust him bodily aside, 
muttering some gross expressions." * 

In a letter of Sir George Douglas to his friend Andrew Kerr, 
he boasts how he " stood upon Maister Rizzio's lame foot, and 
made him yell out for his brother Joe." Kerr often spoke of the 
dagger in relation to the secretary. 

Darnley was quite ready to fall in with the murderous designs 
of Lords Morton, Ruthven, and Douglas ; he had a personal feel- 
ing against Rizzio not that of jealousy, for such would have 
been absurd. Rizzio had honestly and wisely advised the queen 
not to confer upon Darnley the " crown-matrimonial." This 
judicious advice won the enmity of Darnley, who soon became 
the tool of those who had far more extensive designs to accom- 
plish than the assassination of Rizzio. It was also said that 
Rizzio had lent sums of money to Darnley and Douglas, and 
" both repudiated their bills." Darnley was heavily in debt, 
" without the queen's knowledge " ; and Sir George Douglas 
had the character of rarely paying his debts. In the negotia- 
tions for murdering Cardinal Beaton he expected to have re- 
ceived as much money from the English Council as would "square 

* Sir James Melville's Account of the Murder of Rizzio. 



1885.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 179 

all his difficulties " ; but the negotiations were broken off under 
extraordinary and disgraceful circumstances. 

The work of death, according to the arrangements made, was 
not to be confined to David Rizzio, for a wholesale slaughter was 
contemplated. Those members of the Queen's Council who had 
shown themselves opposed to her deposition by refusing to con- 
cur in granting the crown-matrimonial to the queen's ungrateful 
husband, became marked men. The intended victims were the 
Lords Bothwell, Huntley, Atholl, Fleming, Livingstone, and Sir 
James Balfour the last was, for some unexplained reason, to be 
hanged at the queen s chamber -door. 

A selection was also made of the court ladies who were to 
suffer. Six of the queen's most confidential maids of honor were 
to be tied up in sacks and drowned. The queen herself, if she sur- 
vived the horrors of the tragedy proposed to be acted in her 
presence, was either to be slain or imprisoned in Stirling Castle 
till she consented to acknowledge her husband's usurpation.* 

The amount of dissimulation with which so young a man, yet 
of a bent so reckless and utterly unprincipled as Darnley, con- 
cealed these atrocious designs appears far more remarkable than 
the readiness with which his lost honor, his want of common 
sense, not to mention conscience, urged him to adopt many 
schemes in order to avert suspicion as to his deadly plans. Darn- 
ley challenged Rizzio to play a game of tennis with him, and 
was actually thus engaged with his victim the very day preced- 
ing that appointed for the assassination.f On this occasion the 
conspirators suggested that it was " a good opportunity to de- 
spatch ' Auld Davie.' " 

" No," replied Darnley; " the best time to select is when he is 
at supper with the queen and her ladies ; and then we can strike 
terror or blows, as required." 

The accounts concerning this tragic narrative are somewhat 
contradictory. The statements furnished by such men as Ran- 
dolph and Lord Bedford must be' received with caution, for they 
were aware of the entire conspiracy for many weeks. Did these 
agents of the Queen of England do anything to avert the mur- 
der ? According to their own despatches still extant they un- 
doubtedly did much to promote the assassinations which quickly 
followed. 

My narrative now almost arrives at the fatal moment of this 
savage butchery a scene which some Scotch nobles may still 

* Reports to Cardinal de Lorraine in Teulet. 

t Italian Memorial in LabanofFs Appendix, vol. vii. 



i8o STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [May, 

look back on with shame and downcast eyes. On Saturday 
evening, the 9th of March, 1566, about seven of the clock, when 
quite dark, the Earls of Morton and Lindsay, with one hun- 
dred and fifty men bearing torches and deadly weapons, occu- 
pied the court of the palace of Holyrood, seized the gates 
without resistance, and closed them against all but their own 
companions. At this moment the queen was at supper in a 
small room, or cabinet, which opened from her bed-chamber. 
She was attended by three of her ladies, four gentlemen in wait- 
ing, the captain of the guard, and her recently-appointed secre- 
tary, David Rizzio, who, accompanied by two pages, stood be- 
hind the queen's chair.* The bed-chamber communicated by a 
secret staircase with the king's apartment behind, to which the 
assassins had been admitted. Darnley, ascending this stair, 
threw up the arras which concealed its opening in the wall, 
entered the little apartment where the queen sat, and, with ap- 
parent affection, kissed his wife. A mysterious silence ensued, 
and in about five minutes a change of scene took place, when 
Lord Ruthven, clad in complete armo'r, rushed into the room. 
He had just risen from a sick-bed ; his features were sunken and 
pale from disease, his voice hollow, his whole appearance hag- 
gard and weary ; yet murder in its direst form was traceable 
upon his countenance. In the words of one of the ladies present, 
he " appeared like a vampire thirsting for more blood." The 
queen became terror-stricken ; still she had the courage to tell 
Ruthven to retire from her presence a command returned by a 
look of insolent scorn. 

" Are there no true Scots present," exclaimed one of the 
ladies, "who would strike down this coward ruffian who styles 
himself the Lord Ruthven?" 

The young lady's interrogatory was received with a coarse 
laugh by the men who stood near the door. In another mo- 
ment torches flamed in the outer chamber, and the clash of arms 
was heard amidst ferocious shouts from the followers of the 
chief assassins. 

" Mother of God ! " exclaimed the queen, with hands uplifted 
to heaven, " what is all this about? " 

A momentary silence, and then a shout of " Forward ! " was 
heard. 

George Douglas bounded into the room like an uncaged 

* Sectarian and party writers allege that Rizzio was seated beside the queen at the supper- 
table ; but such was not the fact. The secretary and pages partook of their meals in another 
apartment. 



I 



1885.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 181 

tiger. Dagger in hand, he looked every inch a murderer to 
whom pity or mercy was unknown. He was followed by Kerr, 
of Faudonside, and the other assassins.* Lord Ruthven un- 
sheathed his dagger and called out that their business was with 
David Rizzio, and made an effort to seize him. 

" If my secretary has been guilty of any crimes," said the 
queen, " his case shall be investigated ; and if he has done wrong to 
any of my subjects the law shall punish him to the utmost extent. 
The law makes no distinction between the lord and the peasant 
when the/ have done evil. I wish you all, however, to under- 
stand that I will not permit any man to take the law into his 
own hands." 

This short speech of the queen, which was delivered with 
firmness and dignity, excited an ironical laugh from Sir George 
Douglas. 

" Here is the means of justice," exclaimed one of the assas- 
sins, producing a rope. 

" O good queen ! " said Rizzio, "I am a dead man." 

"Fear not/' said her highness in a firm voice. "The king, 
my husband, will never suffer you to be slain in my presence; 
neither can my husband forget your faithful services." f 

At this stage of the proceedings Darnley looked quite be- 
wildered. He trembled from head to foot, whilst the assassins 
uttered another ironical laugh and pointed at him with scorn. 
Ruthven, in an insolent tone, told Darnley " to take charge of 
his wife, and hold tJie woman tight till " The savage slogan 
yell, " A Douglas ! a Douglas ! " now resounded through the 
palace. Morton and his eighty followers, impatient of delay, 
rushed forward to the scene of slaughter, and were disappointed 
that several of those whom they came to murder were absent. 
Rizzio, bleeding profusely, again caught the queen's robe. His 
last exclamations were : " Mercy ! mercy ! for the love of Jesus 
Christ ! " A scene of horror ensued ; the queen cried and sup- 
plicated ; the tables and lights were overturned. 

" Drag Auld Davie out," exclaimed several voices. 
. " I must plunge my dagger in him again," were the words of 
George Douglas. 

The end of the tragic scene was now at hand. The cold- 
blooded and coward husband of the queen came forward to play 

* See Queen Mary's Despatches to the Archbishop of Glasgow ; Keith ; Queens of Scotland, 
vol. iv. ; Fraser Tytler, vol. v. 

+ Birrel's Diary ; Adam Blackwood ; Queens of Scotland, vol. iv. ; Historical Portraits of 
the Tudor Dynasty, vol. iv. 



1 82 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [May, 

his part and fulfil his pledge to the conspirators whose misera- 
ble creature he had become. He succeeded in unlocking the 
death-grasp with which the unhappy victim clung to the queen s robe, 
and then forced his outraged wife into a chair and stood behind it, 
holding her tightly that she might not rise. This scene extinguished 
Mary Stuart's fast-fading love for her cruel and profligate con- 
sort; and, perhaps for the first time in her life, she felt what 
species of resentment gives birth to hatred. All further ob- 
struction to the murderers was now removed. They plunged 
their daggers in the body of the dying man, each blow accom- 
panied by fearful oaths and words of demoniac triumph. The 
body was mangled by fifty-six wounds and left in a pool of blood. 
Kerr and Douglas returned to the scene and further disfigured 
the reeking corpse, tied it up with a rope, and flung it into the 
street. During the struggle Andrew Kerr, the most sangui- 
nary of the blood-stained men present, placed a pistol to the 
queen's breast, and, with a terrible imprecation, assured her he 
would shoot her dead if she offered resistance. The queen stood 
undaunted. She exclaimed in a firm voice : " Villain, fire ! Fire, 
if you respect not the royal infant in my womb ! " * The assas- 
sin was not moved by the speech of the queen ; he pulled the 
trigger, but the pistol accidentally hung fire. Nor was this the 
only attempt made on the life of the defencejess Mary Stuart 
during that dreadful night, when a set of miscreants, reckoned 
amongst those who were called " the Scottish nobles," covered 
themselves with infamy. James Bellenden, brother of the lord 
justice clerk, aimed a murderous blow at the queen under cover 
of the tumultuous attack on unfortunate Rizzio ; but his purpose 
was observed by one of the pages in attendance upon the queen, 
who, with equal courage and presence of mind, parried the blow 
by striking the rapier aside with the torch he had been holding. 
The name of the page was Anthony Standen, a handsome young 
English gentleman. When an old man and residing in Rome, 
Mr. Standen related many particulars of the terrible scenes that 
occurred on the night of Rizzio's murder. He had a personal 
knowledge of the principal actors. 

When the murder had ended, Lord Ruthven returned to 
the royal presence to make himself, if possible, more hateful to 
the queen, who became dreadfully excited upon beholding the 
bloody hands of Ruthven uplifted in thanks to Heaven for what 
had just occurred. As the excitement caused by Ruthven's pre- 
sence had somewhat calmed, the queen stood still with clasped 

* Italian Memorials in Labanoff's Mary Stuart. 



1885.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 183 

hands, in prayer, evidently expecting that her own life was the 
next to be sacrificed. After his blasphemous thanksgiving for a 
barbarous murder Ruthven indulged in gross allusions to the 
queen's ladies. He threw himself upon a seat and called out 
for a goblet of wine. " Wine, wine I must have quickly." 
Then, addressing himself to the queen, he said: "Good queen, 
you are in no danger. But your favorite is done for ; and my 
dagger and my hand aided in sending him down to hell. So 
perish every man or woman who are enemies to our holy religion 
of tJie reformed gospel ! " * Ruthven not only attempted to vindi- 
cate himself and his associates, but he added enduring poignancy 
to the queen's feelings when he assured her that the conspiracy 
and the murder were all planned with the express approval of 
her own husband, who actually led them into her private apart- 
ment, and " held her down whilst they were plunging their steel 
into the body of Maister Davie. What think you of your hus- 
band now ? " 

The queen, starting from her seat, intensely excited, uttered 
the following words: " My husband! my husband! Then fare- 
well tears ! We must now think of revenge.'" 

Mary Stuart's high spirit quailed not a moment before Ruth- 
ven. With renewed energy of mind and spirit she continued 
her address to Ruthven, who sat opposite with rude and un- 
dignified bearing. " I trust," said the queen, " my Lord Ruth- 
ven, that the Almighty God, who beholds this scene from the 
highest heavens, will avenge my wrongs and move that which 
shall be born of me to root out you and your treacherous pos- 
terity." f The prophetical denunciation of the Queen of Scots 
as to Ruthven was fully accomplished by her son (King James) 
on the house of the " red-handed Ruthven." " That poltroon 
and vile knave, ' Auld Davie,' was justly punished on the gth day 
of March, in the year of God 1565-6, for abusing the common- 
wealth, and for his other villany, which we list not to express, by 
the counsel and hands of Sir George Douglas, the Earl of Mor- 
ton, Patrick Lord Lindsay, and the Lord Ruthven, with other 
assisters in their company, who all, for their just act, and most 
worthy of all praise, are now unworthily reft of their brethren 

* Anthony Standen's Narrative (Antwerp edition). 

t Notes of Anthony Standen, who was present and stood behind the queen throughout this 
terrible scene ; also the statements in corroboration of the ladies in waiting ; Ruthven and Mor- 
ton's Narrative ; Keith's Appendix ; Spottiswood and Tytler. The statement put forward by 
Ruthven and Morton must be considered as the allegations of the principal assassins. Anthony 
Standen and the ladies who were witnesses to the whole proceeding must be accepted as the 
genuine evidence of what occurred. 



1 84 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [May, 

and suffer the bitterness of punishment and exile."* The above 
remarkable passage was written by Knox during the exile of 
Morton and the other assassins of Rizzio. Knox adds a " fer- 
vent prayer that God will restore them to their country, and 
punish the ' head and tail ' that now trouble the just and main- 
tain impiety." The marginal note explains that Knox was then 
predicting the fate of his queen and her ministers. " The head," 
he observes, " is known ; the tail has two branches the temporal 
lords that maintain her abominations, and her flattering coun- 
sellors, blasphemous Balfour, now called Clerk of Register, and 
Clair, Dean of Restalrig, blind of one eye, but of both in his soul, 
upon whom God shortly took vengeance." Andrew Kerr was 
Lord Ruthven's nephew, f Many years subsequent to the death 
of Rizzio, Kerr married the still young and handsome widow of 
John Knox. This poor lady became the wife of another bad 
husband. A cruel, licentious, drunken creature was this dagger- 
man. Yet, strange as it may appear, Sir Andrew Kerr ranks 
amongst the "saints of the Kirk of Scotland." 

On the night of the murder of Rizzio the queen was made a 
prisoner in her own palace. The excitement was immense ; the 
assassins took to drink freely, to pray, and to fight amongst 
themselves. The dagger was again in use. On Sunday the 
rebel lords, with Moray at their head, returned to Edinburgh, 
where they were received by Darnley, who cordially welcomed 
his cousin Moray. Let it be remembered that Moray and his 
companions were fully aware of the assassination. on the previous 
night. Moray had an interview with the queen, when "she 
flung herself in his arms and wept bitterly, exclaiming, ' If my 
dear brother was here poor Rizzio would not have suffered the 
terrible death he received last night.' " Moray " cried heartily, 
and assured his sister that he would protect her and shed the last 
drop of his blood in her defence." Only a few hours after this scene 
Lord Moray assembled the "enterprising " of the late murder, 
and several of the disaffected who had returned to Edinburgh 
with him. The questions Moray submitted for the consideration 
of this band of assassins was " whether it was expedient to im- 
prison the queen at Stirling Castle or put her to death at once," 
remarking that " delays were dangerous." Lord Lennox, the 
father of Darnley, was present at this council as the friend of 
Moray, who, at the same time, was secretly pledged to have his 

* History of the Reformation in Scotland, by John Knox, vol. i. p. 235. 
t Lord Ruthven did not live to see the results of his evil deeds. A sudden and a violent 
death closed his career ; and history ranks him amongst the worst of his order. 



1885.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 185 

(Lennox's) son "murdered as soon as possible" A " more secret 
meeting " was held at Lord Morton's house, where the fate of 
the queen was again discussed. The conspirators desired par- 
ticularly to know what course Lord Moray would recommend. 
He replied, without hesitation, "that they should put the queen 
to death quickly" " Put to death quickly " that trusting sister 
whose tears had so lately commingled with his own they had 
wept together, as we have seen as she clung to him in her 
agonizing welcome of trusting confidence, the confiding depen- 
dence of a sister who had neither husband nor friend to shield 
her. This unparalleled brother concluded his address by telling 
his audience that it' was for the good and the security of their holy 
religion that the queen should die. And again he impressed upon 
his followers that " delays were dangerous." * 

Within a few hours the most extraordinary incidents occurred, 
and the queen's faith in human nature and its professions of 
loyalty and love was tested to the utmost. The conspirators in 
the case of Rizzio had quarrelled amongst themselves and sud- 
denly laid the whole plot before the queen, and in the most dis- 
tinct and positive manner accused Darnley of being the " instiga- 
tor and contriver of the murder." To prove this they laid " the 
bonds or covenants before her highness," and the dreadful truth- 
broke upon her in all its horrors.f Mary now understood for 
the first time, but from a hostile source, that " her husband was 
the principal conspirator against her, the defamer of her honor, 
the plotter against her liberty and her crown, the almost mur- 
derer of herself and her infant child." Darnley stood convicted 
as a traitor and a perjurer, false to every principle of honor, 
false to his wife, false to his sovereign and, like the basest of 
criminals, false to his associates in crime. \ 

The queen was reduced almost to despair, not knowing in 
whom to confide. Up to this time Mary did not believe in the 
reports of her husband's treachery to herself and his desire to 
dethrone her. Seeing the results of his own conduct, Darnley 
made a confession to the queen implicating his accomplices in 
conspiracy and murder. When too late he ascertained that his 
own life was in as much if not more danger than his wife's at this 
very period. Then, subordinating all to the " principle " of self- 
preservation, he besought pardon and obtained it. But the con- 

*Adam Blackwood's Life of Queen Mary, Maitland Club edition ; Tytler, vol. v. 
t Italian Memorial in Labanoff ; Queens of Scotland, vol. iv. ; MS. letter, State Papers ; 
Thomas Randolph to Sir William Cecil. 

\ Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, vol. iv. 



1 86 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [May, 

spirac}' of the red-handed " nobles " made flight necessary. 
Many plans were arranged for the escape of the royal couple 
from Holy rood ; but all proved hazardous. Mary's spirits rose 
with the excitement of the adventure. At last a scheme was 
devised which proved successful. In order to avoid suspicion 
the king and queen retired early, but rose two hours after mid- 
night ; the queen being only attended by one faithful maid, 
Margaret Cawood. The party stealthily descended a secret stair 
to a postern leading through the cemetery of the royal chapel. 
The night was dark, which added to the difficulties of the fugi- 
tives, but the guards were asleep or intoxicated. At the outer 
gate of the cemetery the faithful young Standen was waiting 
with a horse for Darnley, who seemed to feel his situation much, 
for he sobbed and cried ; next came the queen. Her doctor 
stated that there was danger in lifting a woman in her delicate 
condition to a pillion ; however, after some fear and excitement, 
Queen Mary was seated behind brave Arthur Erskine. Traquair 
took charge of Margaret Cawood, and Anthony Standen and 
Bastian rode singly, accompanied by three young ladies, who 
were well muffled and played their part courageously. The 
party cleared the precincts of the palace without alarm being 
"raised, and after a sharp gallop arrived safely at the residence of 
Lord Seton. Seton, with two hundred armed cavaliers, was in 
readiness to receive his queen and to escort her to Dunbar.* 1 
Invigorated by the sharp air and exercise, Queen Mary insisted on 
taking a horse to herself, and was not only able to support her- 
self in the saddle, but performed the last twelve miles of the 
journey with such speed that she and her chivalrous body-guard 
arrived at Dunbar before sunrise and demanded admittance to 
her royal fortress. The warder's challenge was answered by 
the startling announcement, "Your queen!" Four-and-twenty 
hours had scarcely elapsed since Lord Moray and his rebel con- 
federates had swept past the fortress on their triumphant return 
to Edinburgh, escorted by one thousand spearmen, proclaiming 
as they marched along the tidings that " Holyrood Abbey was 
occupied by the followers of Lord Moray, that wicked little 
Rizzio was served out as he deserved, and the queen a prisoner 
in Darnley 's hands, who meant to destroy her for the public 
good." 

Such had been the current reports. Now it turned out that 

* Prince LabanofTs Appendix; Lord Herries' History of the Queen of Scots. Jane Kennedy 
states that Herries, then very young;, was present at many of those adventures. Randolph's 
letters to Cecil at this period correctly describe the extraordinary scenes which were passing, and 
the courage and perseverance of the Queen of Scots. 



1885.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 187 

the royal couple Mary and her handsome, worthless husband 
had eloped together, and were riding, side by side like romantic 
lovers, in the gray light of morning. The whole thing appeared 
so strange to the warder in command that he ventured not to 
raise the portcullis till he had ascertained how the chatelain 
stood affected. The suspense was quickly over ; the governor 
of the castle hastened to offer homage to the queen and her hus- 
band. Darnley received a cold reception from the more devoted 
loyalists. But when the base part he had taken in the brutal 
murder of Rizzio became known a feeling of horror possessed 
every right-minded person. Having been duly admitted to the 
Castle of Dunbar, the first thing the queen did was to order a 
fire to be made to warm herself. " I am cold and hungry," said 
her highness; " I want some new-laid eggs and a warm drink." 
The queen cooked the eggs herself, which caused Archibald 
Mackenzie, a chivalrous old follower of the Stuart family, to 
burst into tears. "My royal mistress to be allowed to cook eggs 
for her breakfast ! Oh ! has Scotland lost her pride ? " * 

On this occasion the queen walked through a crowd of her 
supporters, the majority of whom belonged to the Kirk congre- 
gations, and she said something kindly to each, and thanked 
them for the devotion they evinced for her cause that morning. 
Darnley, who was present at " this interviewing " of the queen 
by a crowd of some hundreds, remained silent, and was perfectly 
unnoticed. 

This scene in the hall of Dunbar over, Mary Stuart sat down 
and wrote letters to her French relatives, detailing her recent 
troubles. In the letter to her uncle, the Cardinal de Lorraine, 
she subscribed herself " your niece, Marie, queen without a king- 
dom" Mary was mistaken when she signed herself a queen 
without a kingdom, for the hearts of the people of Scotland were 
undoubtedly with her at that period. In a few days thousands 
flocked to the royal standard. Men sixty and seventy years of 
age came from remote districts with their sons and grandsons, 
ready and willing to defend their queen the granddaughter of 
their " beloved Bonnie King Jamie." 

The rebel league now began to split, and the dagger-men 
were quite willing to betray one another. The principal men 
amongst the assassins of Rizzio fled to England, where they 
were entertained by the agents of Queen Elizabeth till their evil 
services were again required. 

A distinguished writer of the present day, and sometimes 

* Memorials of the Royal Flight to Dunbar, 



1 88 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [May, 

a reasonless defamer of Mary Stuart, describes her at this crisis 
of her eventful history : " Whatever credit is due to iron forti- 
tude and intellectual address must be given without stint to this 
extraordinary woman. Her energy grew with exertion. The 
terrible agitation of the three preceding days, the wild escape, 
and a midnight gallop of mere than twenty miles within a few weeks 
of her confinement would have shaken the strength of the least 
fragile of human frames ; but Mary Stuart seemed not to know 
the meaning of the word exhaustion. She had scarcely alighted 
from her horse than couriers were flying east, west, north', and 
south to call the Catholic nobles to her side. She wrote her 
own story to her minister at Paris, bidding the archbishop in a 
postscript to anticipate the false rumors which would be spread 
against her honor. . . . To Elizabeth Mary wrote on this oc- 
casion with her own hand fierce, dauntless, and haughty as in 
the days of her prosperity.* Queen Mary demanded to know 
whether the Queen of England intended to support the traitors 
who had slain her most faithful servant in her presence." f 

In eight days after her flight from Edinburgh the queen re- 
turned to her capital, when the inhabitants, young and old, came 
out to meet her. Lords, chiefs, and knights crowded around 
their sovereign, who was at the head of an army of nearly twelve 
thousand men. The queen's popularity was immense, whilst 
her husband was detested by the people of every party in the 
state. He seemed to have been deserted by the Presbyterians, 
with whom he had sought an alliance. Darnley's father (Lord 
Lennox), who was connected with the conspiracy to murder Riz- 
zio, was ordered by the queen to leave the country. Moray, 
whom Mary had never ceased to trust, was once more pardoned 
and recalled. On the very day he received his sister's letter re- 
storing him to his place he was actually corresponding with Mor- 
ton and Randolph, the deadly enemies of his queen. About this 
time a fresh conspiracy, and one which subsequently proved 
fatal to Mary, was formed. The principal actors in the late plot 
and murder were all united as to what should be the fate of 
Darnley, and his assassination became merely a matter of time. 
In the new conspiracy were Lords Morton, Moray, and Lething- 

* The letter of the Queen of Scots above alluded to is to be seen amongst the State Papers 
of Elizabeth's reign. This letter, viewed in many forms, and considering the circumstances under 
which it was written, is a marvellous document. The strokes are thick and slightly uneven from 
excitement, but strong, firm, and without sign of tremulousness. When the queen wrote this 
note she had just ridden twenty miles without any refreshments save a goblet of water from a 
ditch on the highway. 

t Froude's History of England, vol. viii. 



1885.] COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM REVELATION. 189 

ton. Lord Ruthven, George Douglas, and Andrew Kerr were 
" ready for action when called upon." 

A few words more to my American friends in reference to 
Marie Stuart about the period of her marriage with the French 
Dauphin. " Love, or even poetry," according to Brant6me, were 
powerless to depict Marie at this still progressive period of her 
life ; to paint that beauty which consisted less in her form than 
in her fascinating grace ; youth, heart, genius, passion still shad- 
ed by the deep melancholy of a farewell ; the tall and slender 
shape, the harmonious movement, the round and flexible throat, 
the oval face, the fire of her look, the grace of her lip, her Saxon 
fairness, the pale beauty of her hair, the light she shed around 
her wherever she went ; the night, the void, the desert she left 
behind when no longer present; the attraction, resembling 
witchcraft, which unconsciously emanated from her, and which 
drew towards her, as it were, a current of admiring eyes and 
hearts; and the tone of her voice, which, once heard, resounded 
for ever in the ear of the listener. Such was Marie Stuart when 
the bride of the short-lived and lovable Dauphin of France. 



COMMON SENSE VERSUS SCEPTICISM REVELA- 
TION. 

No historical fact rests on such a body of testimony as that 
which we possess for revelation. By the " fact " of revela- 
tion must be understood only the action, not the ipsissima verba 
of all the Scriptures. Mere quibbles about difficulties as to 
language must be hushed amid the grandeur of the action. 
Language is at its best but an imperfect instrument. Human 
language cannot convey divine mysteries. In a vast number of 
manuscripts, whose history has to be traced through a period 
of not less than three thousand years, it would be wonderful if, 
in a literary sense, there were not apparent discrepancies, and 
expressions of which the force is misunderstood. Even accept- 
ing " inspiration " in that strictly guarded sense which the 
church has ever been careful not to exceed, language is but 
language, and its relations to divine truths must be those of an 
imperfect instrument to sublime measures. As when we listen 
to a piece of music of which the " language " and the " argu- 
ment " are comparatively more suggestive than are words we 



1 90 COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM REVELATION. [May, 

grasp a meaning which was more intended than expressed, so in 
reading revelation we are conscious that its syllables fall short 
even more than do our faculties. It is as a whole that we accept 
the two Testaments ; and common sense tells us that the whole 
is divine. 

Of the New Testament alone let us speak now ; for its truths 
are the developments of that dispensation of law which was 
the framework, the scaffolding, of the perfect temple. Com- 
mon sense tells us that with the Incarnation must have come that 
elevation of soul and body which was inconsistent with the dis- 
pensation of law ; so that domestically and socially, as well as 
interiorly in spiritual sense, there must have been an uplifting of 
the whole human family. And here we meet a first objection of 
the sceptics. The differences of enactment in the Old and New 
Testaments are differences perfectly suited to the two condi- 
tions ; while as to difference in doctrine there is absolutely none 
there is only increase of nearness of communication. There is 
no contradiction, no change of divine purpose; there is growth 
only in dignity of " drawing nearer " to the highest ideal of 
man's sonship with . God. As in nature, so in dispensation, all 
is movement. From chaos to order, from intimation to full 
teaching, growth is consistent and harmonious. There is no 
break in the divine analogy of creatureship. From the infant to 
the complete man, from baptism to canonization, as from the 
promise of redemption made to Adam to the consummation of 
that promise on Calvary, nothing stands still ; everything is 
progressive, till the final crowning of redeemed souls at the last 
day. 

Again, in connection with this divine analogy let us notice 
the Catholic doctrine of "election," since the sceptics are offended 
at what they understand by election in the sense mainly that 
some men are born Christians, some men live and die in pagan 
ignorance. Yet this fact of election, so conspicuous in Christi- 
anity, is harmonious with all that we know of creation; some 
beings, some things, being chosen for pre-eminence in all depart- 
ments of known creatureship in the universe. Thus the prin- 
ciple of choice is universal. Without it we cannot conceive of 
Creation. Nor is injustice done even in purely human esti- 
mate in this gradation of beings, of privileges. The sceptics 
are very bold in their accusation of injustice against the whole 
doctrine of election or selection ; not seeing that this doctrine 
is everywhere paralleled in every department of the visible crea- 
tion. And that we may answer such objections in their newest 



1885.] COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM REVELATION. 191 

phases, let us notice some false assumptions which have been 
published in England by the " philosophical " sceptic, Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer. This gentleman wrote contemptuously in the 
Nineteenth Century of five (supposed) dogmas of the faith, 
four of which he most culpably misstated. Thus he wrote con- 
temptuously of "the damning of all men who did not avail them- 
selves of an alleged mode of obtaining forgiveness which most 
men have never heard of." Needless to say that no such doc- 
trine is Catholic. No man can be damned for his ignorance ; 
that is, for not being a Christian in Christian knowledge. But 
the election of some men to a full knowledge of the truth, while 
other men are not so elected, but are left to the " uncovenanted 
mercies," is a fact which is perfectly harmonious with all that 
we know of the whole mental as well as of the whole material 
creation. Almighty God is not powerless to provide adequate 
rewards for all his faithful creatures of all conditions. But Al- 
mighty God has the right to prefer some creatures before other 
creatures, equally in this world and in a future state. In the 
same spirit Mr. Herbert Spencer wrote contemptuously of 
" the visiting on Adam's descendants, through hundreds of 
generations, dreadful penalties for a small transgression which 
they did not commit." Now, the first answer to such an objec- 
tion is that " heredity " is perfectly consistent with all that we 
know of created life. The river which is poisoned at the source 
(and the imagination will supply numerous parallels in almost 
all the departments of known movement) sends poisoned streams 
through every channel it permeates ; the sole difference, in 
Adam's poisoning, being that the effect was long-continuous so 
long, indeed, as the human family shall last. Yet an antidote 
was supplied to the poison an antidote far more powerful than 
the poison at the very first moment of the fall. Man was suf- 
fered to fall in the present life, but was instantly made to rise in 
the future life. Thus the separation, both in kind and in dura- 
tion, was as the infinite compared with the finite. Where, then, 
is the injustice complained of? The whole mystery of probation 
is, indeed, profound, but common sense can detect its simple 
justice. And the whole scheme of redemption, in connection 
with creation, while it may stagger us with its magnitude, its 
immensity, is yet obviously divine in the fact that the greater fu- 
ture is substituted for the loss of the little present. Just as the 
inheritance of evil, not only morally but physically, is an obvious 
condition of our present being, so the magnificent substitution of 
eternal reward for present heritage is worthy, so to speak, of the 



192 COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM REVELATION. [May, 

Infinite God. Why our first parents were allowed to fall is a 
secret which is known only to their Maker. God does not look 
at things for to-day and -for to-morrow, but for the whole com- 
pass of the eternal relations of all beings. Yet we, with our 
small minds, can detect this truth : that man, being fallen, yet be- 
ing promised eternal happiness, cannot complain of the Infinite 
Friend who now proves him. 

Thirdly, Mr. Herbert Spencer is aggrieved, as he expresses 
it, that " a perfectly innocent Son " should be sacrificed " to sat 
isfy the assumed necessity for a propitiatory victim." This is 
stating a truth in the wrong way. It implies that the " perfectly 
innocent Son " did not offer himself to his Father, but was offered 
by a sort of infinite parental cruelty. No statement could be more 
irrational, more impious. The harmony of the divine Mind 
would, to ever)'' real philosopher, be a postulate which would 
ridicule such an absurdity. The Blessed Trinity is necessarily a 
simple Unity. What nonsense, then, to suggest contrariety ! 
Every child ought to see the truth : that just as nothing in hu- 
man life is esteemed to be so chivalrous, so magnificently heroic 
or above nature, as that a man should give his life for his 
brother, so nothing in our apprehension of the divine life can 
exceed the sublimeness of redemption. That the Son of God 
should " volunteer " (to use a wretched human word which is 
quite incongruous with the eternal harmonies of the Blessed 
Trinity) to give his life for all sins of all men, not only that he 
might obtain man's forgiveness, but that he might uplift men to 
divine union with himself, is " consistent " with our ideas of the 
Most Admirable and of the infinite divine yearnings of divine 
Love. 

Very briefly, again since these objections have been much 
quoted, though in truth they are as " worn out " as they are 
feeble let us notice one more foolish observation. " So, too," 
says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "must die out the belief that a Power 
present in innumerable worlds throughout infinite space, and 
who during millions of years of the earth's earlier existence 
needed no honoring by its inhabitants, should be. seized with a 
craving for praise ; and having created mankind, should be 
angry with them if they do not perpetually tell him how great 
he is." How it was possible for man, who did not exist, to praise 
his Creator for having made him this learned philosopher does 
not tell us. Nor does he tell us how he knows that, before the 
creation of human beings, millions of intelligent creatures may 
not have praised God. Nor, again, does he explain why man, 



1885.] COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM REVELATION. 193 

having- -been redeemed by the most generous act of sacrifice 
known to creatures an act of which we may safely affirm that 
the generosity of God knows nothing higher should not praue 
God for such beneficence, and should not be incapable of grati- 
tude. Nor, once more, does he recognize the fact that philoso- 
phy first reverences essential truths; and since God is infinitely 
worthy of infinite worship, he ought therefore to receive infinite 
worship. In other words, not to praise God as the Alone Perfect, 
as the Alone Source of the " is" and the " ever shall be," would 
be supremely unphilosophical and absurd, since it would be, 
intellectually and morally, to live always in the profession of an 
obvious and ridiculous falsehood. 

Reason, which is the boast of the sceptics, and especially of 
men calling themselves philosophers, becomes irrational when it 
is made, first, to misstate truths, and then to draw wide conclu- 
sions from false assumptions. Common sense knows that in 
accepting divine mysteries it must first know those mysteries 
from divine source, and then remember that divine mysteries are 
above reason. There is all the difference in the world between a 
thing being above reason and contrary to the conclusions of com- 
mon sense ; for that the divine mysteries should be above reason 
is a first requisite for their being accepted, but that they should 
contradict common sense would be impossible. To put this 
truth differently : Common sense has the power to know exactly 
where its own knowledge foils, just as it has the power to re- 
cognize in a divine mystery characteristics which are above 
what is "natural." Take as an example "The Holy Trinity." 
Now, manifestly it is impossible for the human mind to even 
imagine what may be the nature of (as we express it) a divine 
Person. Therefore common sense says at once, " Knowing no- 
thing about it, I know only that the Godhead is above reason." 
But common sense also adds : " There can be no contradiction to 
the conclusions of my own experience in the accepting a mystery 
which is above it; there can be only a just use of my common 
sense in the accepting what is assured to me by revelation." 
This is what we mean by the simple impossibility of divine mys- 
teries contradicting- common sense. Divine mysteries do not 
come within the range of common sense, and therefore cannot 
contradict common sense. Common sense inquires only as to 
the authority ; it makes no inquiry as to the mystery. If com- 
mon sense be satisfied that the authority is divine, it knows that 
the mystery must be divine ; for just as it lies within the com- 
pass of common sense to appreciate the credentials of a divine 
VOL. XLI. 13 



194 COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM REVELATION. [May, 

messenger, so it does not lie within the compass of common sense 
to judge God as to the measure of revelation. The same re- 
marks might be made as to the mystery of the Incarnation, as 
to every Catholic mystery of the faith ; that they cannot contra- 
dict common sense, because they contradict nothing that is known. 
They are divine truths, not human truths ; not " known," in 
natural sense, but revealed. Now, the sceptics witness the phi- 
losopher, Mr. Spencer will not allow Almighty God to reveal 
anything, to teach anything, which tJiey cannot justily by their 
own reason. Hence they are supremely unphilosophical. . They 
argue all unconscious of the absurdity that the Infinite must 
be judged by the finite; that every dogma must be paralleled to 
private judgment ; that even a miracle, though it be worked by 
Almighty God, cannot be true because they " do not see why." 
Yet, since they confess themselves incapable of comprehending 
the first principles on which even the natural life must proceed, 
how can they be judges of such correlative incidents as " fall in " 
with the whole scheme of the divine Mind? Take that " small " 
objection of Mr. Spencer's to which we have already referred 
(an objection which has been made by every shallow-pated sceptic 
who ever uplifted his own reason against God), that " the Inno- 
cent could not be made to suffer for the guilty." Who told the 
sceptics that the divine wisdom and the divine charity, together 
with the divine, infinite holiness, could not, and should not, and 
did not approve and, so to speak, necessitate such sacrifice ? 
What do the sceptics know of the infinite comprehension of all 
the perfections of all truths of all eternity, or of the infinite 
hatred of God for the minutest imperfection, or of his estimate of 
relative values or costs ? What can the creature know of the 
" conditions " of Infinite Holiness (tit more huniano loquar) in their 
relations to the responsible creature ? Or how can the creature 
use his limited reason to measure the reasonableness of his Crea- 
tor, or apply his two-foot rule to gauge the immensity of even 
one of the yearnings of the Infinite ? Reason becomes childish, a 
mere babbling of vanity, when it says it will not accept a divine 
fact because God estimates everything in his own way. Yet the 
sceptics always chatter about the yearnings of the Infinite God, 
as if they were-his creator, not he theirs ; and affect to teach him 
how he should act or should not act, according to their standard 
of " the perfect way." Hence their intolerable vulgarity. It 
may be indecent even to allude to a well-known American 
sceptic whose penny pamphlets now lie on London book-stalls 
and are bought by boys and girls with their Saturday money, 



1885.] COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM REVELATION. 195 

and who, with a brave dash of insolence, talks of the ways of 
Almighty God in the same spirit as he would talk of a vulgar 
stock-broker. To common sense the tone and temper of all such 
writers is quite sufficient demonstration of their character. 
There is, no doubt, such a thing as a modest scepticism, which 
struggles to believe and which will be rewarded ; but the mo- 
ment a man flings over all modesty, and sets himself to rave 
against religion, he shows that he hates truth and adores himself, 
and must be set down as a vulgarian gone mad. A man who 
loves truth will be, above all things, most discreet in never scan- 
dalizing the young or the unwary ; a certain tenderness of dispo- 
sition being an invariable characteristic of every one who loves 
truth for truth's sake. 

Reason, in its first attitude towards truth and therefore to- 
wards the whole of revelation has to be assisted by those 
deeper yearnings of the soul which are beyond language be- 
cause they are beyond reason. The yearnings of the inmost na- 
ture or, spiritually speaking, the soul are every whit as purely 
"rational" or "reasonable" as are the legitimate exercises of 
common sense. What is common sense but the aggregate 
operation of the aggregate experiences of the whole mind ; a 
sort of combined force of all we know, all we apprehend, with- 
out process, mathematical or logical ? And since the mind is 
made up quite as much of desires, of feelings, of affections, of 
instincts, as it is made up of logical processes or Q.E.D.'s, it fol- 
lows that common sense will act on a total, not on a fragmentary, 
experience. The affectation of the sceptics is to separate pure 
reason from all the yearnings, all the instincts of the human 
mind; just as it is also its affectation to ignore all such facts as 
come under the title supernatural. Yet the supernatural,, like 
the natural, has its laws ; or, to express the truth better, its har- 
monies. Now, scepticism does not look for the harmonies of 
revelation, which are in themselves a sublime testimony to its 
truth ; but shuts its eyes wilfully to the fact of such harmonies, 
and asks for evidence which would contradict unities. Thus 
scepticism cannot see that the evidence for the Resurrection is 
in perfect harmony with all the spirit of our Lord's life so per- 
fectly in harmony that the introduction of other evidence would 
be absolutely fatal to .the unities. And the destruction of unities, 
of the perfect harmony of characteristics, would be tlie de- 
struction of the (apparent) divinity of the New Testament. 
Briefly, let us notice this general attitude of the sceptic-mind 
towards the whole narrative of the New Testament, as a proof 



196 COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM REVELATION. [May, 

that it is the sceptic's fault, not the fault of the New Testament, 
that the "evidences " are assumed to be insufficient. 

The criticism of the sceptics is " color-blind." It estimates 
the whole spirit and "animus" of the gospels as it would esti- 
mate a "case" that was tried in a court of justice, where wit- 
nesses are examined and cross-examined. Hence the philosophy 
of Christianity, which is one perfect harmony, reaching back to 
the Garden of Eden and reaching forward to the crowning of 
the redeemed, is, to the sceptics, an unknown " science," of which 
(as in the case of Mr. Herbert Spencer) not even the elements 
have been apprehended. Yet the New Testament is, in itself,- 
its own complete vindication to any one who studies it with 
common sense. 

For the characteristics of the four gospels, taken as " literary 
fragments," and without considering any correlative testimony, 
are such as place them outside, infinitely above, every record 
which has ever been made in this world of events. They pro- 
pose to treat of certain facts largely witnessed, the great ma- 
jority of those facts being supernatural ; .and they do so in a 
spirit, with a candor, with a simplicity, which show that false- 
hood is a moral impossibility. Not only is there no excitement, 
no enthusiasm, no attempt either to enlarge or to keep back, 
but there is a holy heedlessness if we may use such an expres- 
sion as to what the reader may care to think or not to think. 
There are different accounts in the four records of the same 
events, written by intimate friends and brother-witnesses, with 
as we should say in regard to records of ordinary events a 
sort of innocent and, as it were, childlike indifference as to the 
"impressions" which such statements might produce. Now, im- 
posture is always marked by painful effort ; conspiracy is always 
spoiled by its exactness ; even enthusiasm, when it springs from 
" pious delusion," glows too much and then shows reaction. 
But what hint is there of imposture, conspiracy, enthusiasm, in 
any one of the thousand fragments of the gospels ? or who ever 
detected any " reaction," or suffered in himself any reaction, 
after reading the four gospels a hundred times? The gospels 
seem more still, more eternal in their repose every time we read 
them " right through." No criticism can penetrate that divine 
armor of serenity which shields the gospels from rude' attack, 
rude inquiry. As an artless and perfectly holy enumeration of 
some of the events which took place in a Perfect Life, the 
gospels are convincing to common sense of their genuineness of 
both sight and faith; while the perfect harmony of their spirit, 



1885.] ETIENNE. BRULE. 197 

of their " inmost soul," or divine peace shunning all worldly 
testimony or approval marks them off as alone in all literature. 
Thus far we have noticed certain aspects of certain relations 
of common sense to the whole spirit of revelation. If we were 
to go on to speak of " common sense versus scepticism " in re- 
gard to our experiences of divine Providence, in the working in, 
and with, and through the human life, we should find that com- 
mon sense can find more than sufficient answers to the objections 
of the most plausible of the sceptics. 



ETIENNE BRULE. 

IT was the month of April, 1609, and around the great coun- 
cil-fire of the Five Nations, which had been for generations in tie 
special keeping of the Onondagas, sat eighty sachems solemnly 
debating a momentous question. The council had been sum- 
moned at the request of Yonondio, a venerable chief, whose 
head was whitened by the frost of ninety winters ; and among 
the tribes who composed this formidable confederacy no warrior 
had ever excelled him in wisdom and prowess. But his words 
on the present occasion had awakened only astonishment and 
scorn. " We are five powerful tribes," he had spoken : " we 
are Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Senecas, bound 
together as one tribe and called Iroquois. Our sway extends 
from the Great Lakes to the sea, and as far towards the setting 
sun as the Father of Waters. But we are not content ; we are 
for ever making war on the Hurons, who are our kindred by 
race and tongue. O my brethren, this is not wise. I have had 
a dream, my brethren, in which I saw men of another race 
men with pale faces invading our hunting-grounds. They were 
armed with thunderbolts, and one of their canoes was larger 
than all our canoes put together. I now say to you, may the 
rain of Heaven wash away all hatred between Iroquois and 
Hurons, and may. we smoke together in peace/ Let us forma 
league against the pale-faces. Do this before it is too late. Yo- 
nondio has spoken. Who will answer him ? " Two or three 
ventured to agree with the old man ; but no one opposed him 
with so much effect as Nachusa, a young sachem of the Oneidas, 
who reminded them of the many Iroquois scalps which hung in 
Huron lodges. " And, moreover," he said, " 'tis rumored that 



198 ETIENNE BRULE. [May, 

great chief among the pale-faces, named Champlain, has won the 
Hurons to his side. They have promised to lend him their 
tomahawks against us. Only a warrior who has turned squaw 
could propose peace with the Hurons." Here the grave coun- 
tenances of the audience relaxed into a smile, and word passed 
from mouth to mouth, " Yonondio has become a squaw." 

That evening Nachusa was strolling along the bank of the 
beautiful Onondaga River, thinking over what had been said in 
the council, and he half-regretted the scornful words which he 
had used against Yonondio, who no doubt was in his second 
childhood ; and at this very moment Nachusa could hear voices 
jeering and calling him a squaw. " Poor Yonondio! " he mur- 
mured. " Yonder he is, talking with his granddaughter Oreola. 
I do believe she is the only person who is not flinging scoffs at 
him." 

The young woman of whom Nachusa spoke had received 
during the past winter a good many presents from him, and 
Oreola knew that he ranked as the bravest brave among the 
Oneidas : no warrior in his tribe could boast of so many Huron 
scalps, and in her heart was a very tender spot for Nachusa. 
But she at the same time dearly loved her grandfather, whom she 
was now doing her best to console. " Only for you," she said, 
"my father would not have been what lue was. Who could 
count the Huron scalps in my father's wigwam? And if I am 
strong and tall and handsome, 'tis because I am the grandchild 
of Yonondio." "You are very good," replied Yonondio. " You 
are sacrificing much on account of me. But look, Oreola. Un- 
less my dim eyes deceive me I see Nachusa watching us. He 
loves you. He wishes that I were out of the way." 

" I hope you may long be spared to me," said Oreola. 
"Alas! what good can I do now? I am a withered tree," con- 
tinued Yonondio, clapping his hands to his ears, for he again 
heard voices calling him a squaw; and he murmured: " Let me 
wander off into the forest. It is time for Yonondio to die." 

" No, no! Do not die," said Oreola. 

" Well, were I not so old," added her grandfather presently, 
"I should turn* my steps northward to the country of the 
Hurons, and I should seek Garangula, a noted sachem, who is 
almost as old as myself, and I should tell him of my dream about 
the pale-faces. Perhaps Garangula might send a messenger to 
our council-fire bearing a message of peace; and then perhaps 
Hurons and Iroquois might be wise enough to unite against the 
.strange race that has come from the mysterious land beyond the 



1885.] ETIENNE BRULE. 199 

rising- sun." " Well, grandfather," spoke Oreola, " I believe that 
the words you uttered in the council were words of wisdom. 
The red men had better smoke the pipe of peace together. And 
now, old as you are, you are not too old to undertake such a 
journey as you speak of to the Huron nation. I will accom- 
pany you." 

"You inspire me; I will go," exclaimed Yonondio after re- 
flecting a moment. Here he again clapped his hands to his ears, 
for a band of children passing by were calling out, " Ha ! ha ! 
Look at the old man who has turned squaw ! " It did not take 
Nachusa more than a couple of minutes to hasten to the rescue, 
and one of the mocking brats, whom he caught, he rapped severe- 
ly on the head with his knuckles, which were like iron, till the 
youngster howled. But in the meanwhile Yonondio had turned 
away and placed a thicket of hazel-bushes between himself and 
the scoffers. 

Oreola, however, lingered behind in hopes that Nachusa 
might address her ; and he did. " You are displeased with me. 
dear Oreola," he began the moment he looked into her sad. re- 
proachful face. " I am. You have set all the curs in town yelp- 
ing at my grandfather," she replied. " Well, Yonondio is no 
doubt in his second childhood," continued Nachusa ; " other- 
wise he would not have spoken what he did to-day in the council. 
And it was wrong in me to hold him up to ridicule; Nachusa 
is sorry for what he did." "So am I sorry," murmured Oreola, 
letting him steal her hand. " But say not that my grandfather is 
in his dotage because he told the council of his portentous 
dream ; dreams are sent to us from the spirit-land, and his was 
meant to warn us against the pale-faces, who, unless we listen to 
Yonondio's dream and unite against them, may in time conquer 
both Hurons and Iroquois." " Who has the power to effect 
such a union with our deadliest foes?" asked Nachusa, smiling. 

" Could my grandfather end his days better than by striving 
to bring it about?" answered Oreola. "Ah! I understand," 
exclaimed Nachusa after a moment's pause. " But is not Yo- 
nondio too old to travel to the country where the Hurons dwell? 
Would he not perish by the way ?" " Not if I went with him," 
answered Oreola. " I should carry the pounded corn and the 
smoked fish ; I should build a little wigwam for him every night, 
and before the dogwood blossoms were out we should reach 
there." " Well, you do not astonish me," observed Nachusa in 
a tone of admiration. "In your veins flows the bravest blood 
amjng the O.ioadagas. No difficulties, no dangers would dis- 



200 ETIENNE BRULE. [May, 

hearten Oreola. But, dear Oreola, be not so foolhardy. I 
should never see you again : if you escaped the demons of the 
forest your beautiful scalp would adorn the lodge of some vile 
Huron." 

" My beautiful scalp ! " ejaculated Oreola, tossing her long 
raven hair to the breeze. 

" And if they took your scalp, what would Nachusa do ? " he 
added mournfully. 

"Make gifts to some other maiden," replied Oreola. "Be- 
sides, my grandfather is a coward, you know ; and you would not 
wish to woo the grandchild of a coward ? " 

" O Oreola ! 'tis cruel to be always reminding me of my 
thoughtless speech of to-day. I did not mean to say that Yonon- 
dio was not brave." " Well, now I must leave you," said Oreola. 
" I hear Yonondio calling me." But ere she turned away the 
young chief pressed his lips to her cheek ; then he watched her 
as she walked to the other side of the hazel copse, murmuring 
to himself: " She is the tallest maiden in her tribe. And what a 
light step she has! it would scarcely crush a violet. And what 
a noble heart beats in Oreola's breast ! " 

Early the following morning Yonondio and his granddaughter 
turned their backs on the fortified town of the Onondagas ; the 
sun had not yet risen when they set out on their quixotic journey 
to the Hurons, and the old man said to Oreola: "I shall not 
come to the Hurons bearing any message of peace from our' 
council lodge, and, seeing two Iroquois completely in their 
power, they may not be able to resist taking our scalps. Are 
you afraid?" On which Oreola replied: "Although .it may 
require a whole moon to reach the Huron country, I go with 
a glad heart, for I know that I am doing my duty. I am 
not afraid." As the maiden spoke she was bending under 
a pretty heavy load a big bag full of cornmeal and fish, and 
another bag filled with tobacco and a deerskin blanket. Yonon- 
dio, being a man, would have carried nothing except his wea- 
pons and his wampum-belt even had he been in the prime of 
life. When they got to the edge of the forest they were over- 
taken by Nachusa. " Are you really in earnest ? " spoke the 
young Oneida chief, addressing Oreola. "Are you going to 
offer friendship to our bitterest enemies? What would your 
father say to this, could he return from the land of spirits ? " 

" I am doing what my father's father wishes me to do," an- 
swered Oreola, looking up with difficulty. " And I beg you to 
leave me to myself; your presence gives me pain." 



1885.] E TIENNE BRULE. 201 

"Indeed! Are you happier without me?" asked Nachusa. 
For a moment Oreola did not answer; she was overcome with 
emotion. " No/' she said presently. " But you and I may 
never meet again, and it is a great trial for me to bid you good- 
by. Let us say good-by at once. Let us have the parting over." 
"Well, ere we speak the last words I must ask Yonondio to for- 
give me," continued Nachusa. " No," spoke the old chief, wav- 
ing him back. "There is no forgiveness in my heart for him 
who has brought mockery on my gray hairs." " 'Tis not so with 
you, is it? " said Nachusa, laying his hand on Oreola's arm. 

" I forgive you," murmured Oreola. " But now now " 
Here her voice broke down ; and after whispering in her ear a 
passionate farewell, Nachusa turned away, vowing awful ven- 
geance on the Hurons if they touched a hair of her head, and 
saying: "Oh ! why did not old Yonondio die before he got into 
his second childhood?" 

" I have learnt that the Huron chief, Garangula, whom I am 
going to seek, is not at his home on Lake Huron," spoke Yonon- 
dio after they had trudged a couple of miles in silence. " He is 
fishing on the stream which the pale-faces have named the river 
Richelieu. Thither we must direct our course." " Be the 
journey ever so long, I will accompany you," returned Oreola, 
staggering under her load ; "and had you breathed to Nachusa 
even one mild word I do believe he would have come with us." 
"What! would you have had him come with us?" exclaimed 
Yonondio, his deep-sunken eyes darting flashes of anger as he 
spoke. Oreola did not venture to reply, but inwardly mur- 
mured.: " Nachusa is the bravest brave among the Oneidas, and 
I am proud that he loves me." 

" Yes," added Yonondio presently, with a grim smile, " I will 
forgive Nachusa. I will forgive Nachusa when the sun stands 
still in the heavens. Not till then." At this Oreola fetched a 
deep sigh, thj2n leaned against a tree to rest herselt. But her 
grandfather bade her not to lose any time. " Walk on," he said. 
" Night is the time to rest. 'Tis not yet night." Then on the 
poor girl trudged, following close at the old man's heels, who, 
without any compass to guide him, was making as straight as a 
crow might fly for the far-off river which empties into the St. 
Lawrence. 

A whole moon they travelled, fording many a swollen stream, 
crossing many a marsh and mountain ; Oreola never complain- 
ing, albeit she was not so strong as when she had set out, for she 
ate as little as possible in order that her grandfather might have 



202 ETIENNE BRULE. [May, 

enough. But one day Yonondio fell and hurt his knee. It was 
a serious hurt, for he was not able to walk; and when three days 
had elapsed and he was still unable to proceed, Oreola grew un- 
easy, for there was not much corn left in the bag, and there were 
no blueberries to be found at this early season. " Oh ! if Na- 
chusa had only come with us," she often sighed, " he would have 
got us enough to eat." 

Finally, when they had remained in- the same spot a week, 
Oreola, leaving Yonondio in the little wigwam made of ever- 
green boughs, hard by a spring of water, took his bow and 
arrows and went forth in quest of game. 

She had not gone more than a quarter of a mile through the 
dense forest when her ear was startled by the sound of a human 
voice. She instantly paused and listened with beating heart, for 
the words which were uttered were words she could not under- 
stand. Presently stealing forward very cautiously, Oreola dis- 
covered a man whose face seemed well-nigh as white as snow. 
He was kneeling at the foot of a tree ; his hands were clasped ; 
his eyes were turned upward. What was he gazing on so in- 
tently ? Was he striving to catch a glimpse of the blue sky, 
which was scarcely visible through the shadowy pines and hem- 
locks ? 

Oreola's first impulse now was to flee, for. she had never seen 
a human being of this color before ; doubtless he was one of the 
pale-faces whom she had heard her grandfather tell of, whose 
weapons made such a fearful report and who were in league with 
the Hurons against her own nation. But curiosity proved 
stronger than fear, and Oreola stood still and strained her vision 
to discover who it was that the pale-face was addressing among 
the branches overhead. But she could perceive nothing larger 
than a woodpecker, which presently flew away as if scared by 
the voice. 

At length Oreola deemed it wise to retreat, \y,hich she did, 
bending low in hopes that the stranger would not see her. But 
Etienne Brule was a noted coureur des bois ; no white man in 
New France had so keen an ear, so quick an eye ; and in a 
moment, rising to his feet, he was in hot pursuit of the fugitive. 
At the same time, using the Huron-Iroquois tongue, he called on 
her in imploring accents to halt. But, fast as Brule ran, it would 
have been impossible to have overtaken the nimble-footed Oreola 
had he not bethought him of discharging his arquebuse. The 
instant its deafening report echoed through the forest Oreola 
dropped to the earth in a paroxysm of terror 4 and when pre- 



1885.] ETIENNE BRULE. 203 

sently Brul6 reached her she was lying with her face buried 
among the dead leaves, and when he begged her to get up she 
did nothing but moan and tremble. 

" Fear me not," spoke Brule. " Skilful as 1 am in threading 
my way through the woods, I confess now that I am lost ; and I 
was praying God to show me which direction to take, when lo ! 
you appeared.". Still Oreola durst not look up. Nor was it 
until Brule had stroked her arm and most solemnly promised not 
to harm her that she ventured to rise. " You are a mighty 
wizard : you shoot thunderbolts. I pray you to have mercy on 
me," she said with downcast eyes. " Thunderbolts ! " exclaimed 
Brule, laughing merrily. Then taking her hand, he placed it on 
the arquebuse. But Oreola shrank back and averted her face. 
" Well, now, maiden," he continued, "listen quietly and I will 
explain how I am here. Myself and another pale-face but one 
who is much greater than 1 am ; he is a chief among the pale- 
faces left the St. Lawrence River half a moon ago to try and 
find a beautiful lake which the Hurons have told us is hidden 
somewhere in this region." At the word " Hurons " Oreola 
began to tremble anew. 

"What is the matter? Do I frighten you?" said Brule. 
" Are we likely to meet any Hurons?" inquired Oreola. 

" I think not. But if we were to meet a thousand no ill 
would befall you." 

" You look brave," continued Oreola. " But you could not 
protect me. An Iroquois scalp is too precious to a Huron." 

" You are, then, an Iroquois ! " exclaimed Brule, gazing on her 
with greater interest than before. " Well, I repeat, have no fear. 
My chief is a powerful man among the Hurons; they all obey 
Champlain." "Champlain? Oh! I have heard of him," said 
Oreola. 

" Well, day before yesterday I got separated from him," went 
on Brule. " But you will help me to find his tracks, will you 
not? And then great shall be your reward." 

" I will do my best," answered Oreola. " But if you and 
your chief are lost, my grandfather and I are almost starving; 
I must first bring my grandfather some food." " Well, see you 
not this hare tied to my girdle?" spoke Brule. " I give it to 
you." Oreola was deeply moved by his generosity ; she smiled 
and clapped her hands, then made him a sign to follow her. 

" What a pity she is a heathen ! " murmured Brule, as he 
went along. " How I wish one of our Franciscan Fathers were 
here to instruct her in the faith ! " 



204 ETIENNE BRULE. [Ma)*, 

He had seen a good many Indian women since he had come 
to New France, but this Iroquois maiden surpassed them all. 
Oreola was nearly as tall as himself and as straight as an arrow. 
Among the high-born damsels at the court of France none could 
have boasted more beautifully-shaped hands and feet ; and the 
mantle of otter-skin which she had somewhat carelessly flung 
about her revealed the perfect form of a child of nature ; and at 
the same time Oreola was so strong and agile. " She is as fleet 
as a deer," said the enthusiastic Brule. " And so graceful ! Oh ! 
what a pity that she is a heathen." For, like his master, Samuel 
de Champlain, 'Brule was a fervent Catholic and always anxious 
to see the poor red men become Christians. 

Lame as the old chief was, he managed to stand up and 
clutch his tomahawk when he perceived Brule advancing toward 
him. Then upon Oreola he cast a stern, questioning look. 
" Grandfather, lay aside your hatchet," spoke the latter. " Here 
is a fat hare which this pale-face has given me ; and albeit the 
mysterious weapon that he uses makes a noise like thunder, he 
has thus far done me no injury." " Has Oreola forgotten the 
ominous dream which came to me not long ago from the spirit- 
land ? " asked Yonondio reproachfully. " Is not this stranger one 
of the race against whom that dream gave me warning?" 
Oreola did not answer, but motioned Brule to withdraw a few 
steps; after which, picking up two dry sticks, she began rubbing 
them briskly together so as to kindle a fire, when Yonondio, who 
was too hungry to wait, seized the hare, and, without offering her 
ever so small a morsel, ravenously devoured the whole of it 
except the skin. Oreola, of course, did not murmur at th'ts, but 
presently turned and said something to Brule, who immediately 
shouldered his arquebuse. " Whither are you going?" exclaim- 
ed Yonondio. 

" I shall not be long absent," answered Oreola, without stop- 
ping. " Come back and give me another hare," cried the old 
man. But Oreola, who seemed to have quite gotten over her 
awe of Brule, did not obey, and he was left muttering to himself: 
" In my gray hairs I behold marvellous things ; nothing now is 
too strange to come to pass." 

" You are not afraid to trust yourself with me ? " spoke Brul, 
after a short silence. 

" Something in your countenance bids me not to fear," re- 
plied Oreola, who greatly admired his long, black beard, and was 
wondering how Nachusa would look with one. 

At these friendly words Brule took her hand, and, as she did 



1885.] ETIENNE BRULE. 205 

not withdraw it from his clasp, they continued their way hand- 
in-hand until they could no longer hear Yonondio's voice calling 
Oreola back. But Oreola, after they had gone about half a mile, 
ceased to admire his beautiful beard ; her eyes were following an 
invisible trail upon the leaves and moss. At least it was invisi- 
ble to Brule", experienced woodsman though he was. By and by 
Oreola said : " We shall see your chief before long. Look ! " 
And she pointed to the ground. Still Brule could distinguish no 
sign of footprints ; and even when she stooped and put her finger 
on the very spot where Champlain had trodden only an hour 
before, he still could perceive nothing. 

" What will you give me when I find your great chief?" she 
asked, while he was praising her keen vision, which so far sur- 
passed his own. "This," he answered, showing her a small 
ivory crucifix which he always carried about with him. And 
now Brule went on to explain what the crucifix represented, and 
Oreola lent an attentive ear, while her eyes continued to be 
riveted on the ground before her. " I shall repeat what you 
have told me to Nachusa," she said at length, after Brule had 
spoken about our Saviour: how he had appeared on earth as a 
poor little child and finally been put to death upon the cross. 
"Nachusa! Is that the name of your grandfather?" inquired 
Brule. 

" Oh ! no. Nachusa is quite a young sachem. Yet he has 
taken many scalps. There is nobody like Nachusa," she an- 
swered. Here a cloud came over Brule's sunburnt visage. 
" But now do go on and tell me more about Jesus, the Son of the 
great Manitou," she said. " 'Tis such a wonderful story ! I will 
repeat it all to Nachusa." Bruie was about to go on when sud- 
denly Oreola paused and raised her hand to her ear in the atti- 
tude of listening. " We have almost reached your lost chief," 
she said in an undertone. At this moment a voice cried out : 
"Brule! Dear Brule! God be thanked we are together once 
more." And lo ! scarcely forty steps away, and separated from 
them by a fallen tree, was the lost explorer. In another moment 
Brule and Champlain were clasped in each other's arms ; then, 
kneeling down, they offered up a fervent prayer of thanksgiving. 
" Well, we shall be careful not to lose our pocket-compass 
again," spoke Brul6 when they had risen to their feet. " And, 
master, I never should have found you except for this young 
woman." Here he turned to Oreola. " Indeed ! " exclaimed 
Champlain. " She is an Iroquois," added Brul6. " What ! an 
Iroquois?" And Champlain gazed curiously upon Oreola, who 



206 ETIENNE BRULE. 

was the first of this formidable tribe that he had ever seen. 
Then, in a tone of admiration, " Why, she might be taken for 
Diana," he said " Diana with her bow and arrows." 

" She has besides her beauty some very good qualities," pur- 
sued Brule. " She is devoted to her aged grandfather, and to 
please him she has walked many a league on starving rations ; 
and I do believe that if Oreola became a Christian she would 
make an excellent one." 

" Since she put you on my trail so easily," said Champlain, 
" might she not help me to discover the lake which I am in 
search of?" "I shall ask her," said Brule. But Oreola beg- 
ged to be allowed to go back to her grandfather; and to his 
wigwam she accordingly retraced her steps, accompanied by 
Champlain and Brul6. 

" This young woman," spoke the former, whose zeal for re- 
ligion equalled his passion for discovery, " must not part from us 
without being baptized." " I have already told her about our 
Saviour," answered Brul6, " and she listened to me with great 
interest." 

" And you gave her the crucifix which she has about her neck, 
did you not? " 

" Yes; and were she only a Christian, and and would consent 
to live at Quebec, I " "Bah! bah!" interrupted Champlain; 
" when Oreola is baptized let her go back to her own nation. 
There are a good many Catholic Hurons, but not one Iroquois 
has yet entered the fold." At this Brul6 heaved a sigh and 
looked at Oreola, who turned her big, black eyes on him and 
wondered what he was thinking about. " So handsome a maid- 
en," continued Champlain, " must needs have many admirers; 
and by exerting her influence over them she would be of great 
use to Father du Plessis, who is most anxious to visit the Iro- 
quois nation." 

Having rejoined Yonondio, Oreola could not be persuaded to 
leave him again for almost a week, and the old chief, who was 
still unable to walk, was at first exceedingly sullen. But Brule, 
who brought him hares and partridges, and made him a present 
of a small knife, finally won his way into his heart, and one day 
Yonondio asked him how he would like to be adopted by the 
Iroquois. " You would become a potent medicine-man among 
us," he said, "for you would teach us how to shoot thunder- 
bolts." Here he touched Brule's arquebuse. " And I would 
tell Oreola that she must be your squaw : Oreola is very 
obedient." "You tempt me strongly," answered Brute in a 



1885.] ETIENNE .BRULE. 207 

half-whisper. " But my master would not let me leave him. 
But might you not come and live at Quebec? There I would 
give Oreola more beads than she could count and make her 
very happy." " Quebec ! Oh ! no," answered Yonondio. " My 
days are nearly ended ; I must not die among pale-faces. But 
if you love Oreola and I suspect you do become an Iro- 
quois ; teach us how to shoot thunderbolts; and in the five 
nations of our confederacy no medicine-man would be equal to 
you in power." Here Brule shook his head and left him to join 
Oreola, who was seated on a rock mending her grandfather's 
moccasins, while Champlain sat near by instructing her in the 
faith. She no sooner saw Brule place himself opposite to her 
than she made the sign of the cross, which delighted him be- 
yond measure, and the rugged pioneer went so far in his ex- 
pression of delight that Champlain said: "Brule! Brule! If 
you are in quest of a wife why not go back to Normandy for 
one?" " Well, our Norman girls are beautiful, but I never saw 
an Oreola among them," replied Brule, his brown face turning 
red. " Bah ! You speak thus because you happened to meet 
her in the forest. And it was so romantic to meet Oreola all 
alone among the solemn trees, was it not ? " " Well, you know, 
master, how fond I am of roaming through the wilderness," an- 
swered Brule. " Civilization has lost its charm for me; I am 
happier in a wigwam than in a house ; and where could I find 
one better fitted to be my companion in my wild and lonely 
journeys than Oreola? Why, did you not say yourself that she 
looked like the goddess Diana ? " At this speech Champlain 
burst into a hearty laugh, which astonished Oreola, who did not 
understand what they were saying in French. " What will you 
give me," she said presently, " if I go with your chief and show 
him the lake which he has come so far to seek ? " "I will give 
you almost anything you ask for," replied Brule ; " for there is 
nothing too good for Oreola." " Well, promise me this I do 
not fear it any more. Give me this." Here she touched the 
arquebuse with -the tip of her finger. " But you are a woman. 
Twould be of no use to you," said Brule, who wished that 
Champlain were not sitting so near and listening. 

" But Nachusa would be so pleased to have it," continued 
Oreola. " And all my tribe would say, Look at Nachusa, who 
fights with thunderbolts.' ' 

" You asked me yesterday for this," said poor Brule", holding 
up a small mirror and at the same time heaving a sigh, for it 
pained him to hear her mention Nachusa. " I did not give it to 



208 ETIENNE BRULE. [May, 

you yesterday, but now I do. Is not Oreola satisfied? Will she 
not consent to go with my chief and find the lake ?" 

" What ! Do you give me the mirror even before I go?" ex- 
claimed Oreola, seizing it with surprise and delight. " Oh ! you 
are indeed very, very good." And now for several minutes 
Oreola did nothing but look at herself in the glass. Then she 
rose and said : " I am willing to be your master's guide. But be- 
fore I depart I shall say a prayer." With this Oreola said aloud 
a Hail Mary which Brule himself had taught her; and when she 
had finished the prayer Brul6 exclaimed in French : " It was cer- 
tainly God who sent Oreola to us in order that we might make 
her a Christian. But, alas ! in a few days she will be gone and 
I shall never see her again." 

" I will baptize her before she bids you farewell," put in 
Champlain. "And after that, Brule 1 ,. you must be a sensible fel- 
low and forget all about Oreola. She is a redskin ; let her go 
back and become the squaw of this Nachusa of whom she speaks. 
And if Father du Plessis, or some of the other Franciscans, es- 
tablish a mission among the Iroquois, Oreola's husband will no 
doubt prove exceedingly useful." 

" Well, if Oreola gets baptized, if she declares herself a Chris- 
tian, I I" 

" Sh-h ! Don't utter' any more nonsense,'.' interposed Cham- 
plain warmly. " And if the young woman has consented to 
guide me to the lake, let her do so without any further delay." 

41 1 wish 1 were going with you," sighed Brule. " No. You 
must stay here and take care of the old man. Oreola does not 
wish him to be left all alone." Here be it said that Oreola her- 
self had known nothing about the lake in question until her 
grandfather had told her that morning where it lay ; and now, 
after Brule had whispered a^few words in her ear, she motioned 
to Champlain to follow her, and in a few minutes he and she 
were lost to view among the trees. 

As they went along Champlain told her of our Saviour's 
coming on earth and of his ignominious death on the cross. She 
had already heard it all from Brule's lips, but was glad to hear it 
anew; and Champlain was still speaking about Jesus Christ, when 
lo ! the gloomy forest came to an end and they found themselves 
on the summit of a high bluff, while before them lay the wilder- 
ness sea, its rippling waters gleaming in the sunshine, and Cham- 
plain's vision, good as it was, was not able to discern the far end 
of the lake. 

After he had silently admired the scene a moment he went 



1885.] ETIENNE BRULE. 209 

down to the water's edge, and there Oreola was baptized. She 
seemed to be filled with joy at receiving the sacrament, and 
presently in earnest accents she said : " O great chief of the 
pale-faces ! you tell me that Jesus came down from heaven to 
teach men how to be good and to love one another. . Why, then, 
will you not persuade the Hurons to love the Iroquois? My 
grandfather says that you are forming a league with them 
against my nation. I can hardly believe it after listening to the 
words you have spoken." When Oreola paused Champiain's 
eyes fell to the ground, and for several minutes he appeared to be 
meditating deeply. To extend the power of France, as well as 
to spread the holy Catholic faith, were the golden objects which 
Champlain kept ever in view ; and in order to accomplish them 
he had deemed it wise to court the favor of the Hurons, who 
seemed well disposed toward the Franciscan missionaries, and 
who might aid hirn.in conquering the powerful Iroquois, whose 
sway extended over the fairest portion of the land. But was 
this policy the best? .If his trusty scout and hunter, Etienne 
Brule, reallv wished to marry Oreola, might not such a union 
with a maiden of the Five Nations be turned to good account? 
Might it not bring about a friendly league between Hurons, 
Iroquois, and pale-faces, which in the end would be for the 
greater glory of France and religion ? These questions Cham- 
plain was asking himself, and, after he and Oreola had erected a 
cedar cross on the spot where they had caught the first view of 
the lake, he said to her: "Oreola, my friend Brule has a heart 
burning with love for you ; he has already made you a few 
gifts; he would be happy to have you dwell in his wigwam as 
his spouse. Oreola, if you consent the gifts which Brule has 
made you will be trifling compared with my gifts. No young 
squaw among the Iroquois will be a quarter so rich as Brule's 
wife. Take him to your country ; adopt him ; make him an 
Iroquois chief. Being now a Christian yourself, you and he will 
be happy together ; and when Father du Plessis comes among 
you to preach the Gospel you will be there to give him welcome. 
What does Oreola answer to that ? " 

" Well, I sincerely wish that all the red men and all the pale- 
faces might abide in friendship together," replied Oreola. " Yes, 
send Father du Plessis to my nation, and I will do my utmost to 
protect him and make him happy. I hope that he will baptize 
my dear Nachusa, for I must tell you that my heart and Nachu- 
sa's heart are bound together as one." 

Touched by Oreola's words, Champlain did not press the 
VOL. XLT. 14 



210 ETIENNE BRULE. [May, 

subject any further. And now in silence they took their way 
back to Brule and Yonondio. They had gone about three-quar- 
ters of the distance when they heard the report of a gun. In 
less than a minute it was followed by war-whoops, which caused 
them to quicken their steps, and Oreola became at once a prey 
to terrible fears ; for if these war-cries were uttered by Huron 
throats, they portended certain death to her grandfather and 
herself. And while they were running as fast as they could, 
Oreola kept calling on Nachusa. " O my beloved, my be- 
loved ! " she cried, " where are you ? Where is your death-deal- 
ing tomahawk?" 

It was a harrowing sight which greeted them when they 
reached the opening in the forest where Oreola had left her 
grandfather. His eyes had already been torn out, and around 
him danced a circle of Huron warriors, one of whom was flour- 
ishing aloft the old chief's gory scalp ; while beside him lay poor 
Etienne Brule, his life-blood crimsoning the brown leaves. For 
Brule had killed a Huron in trying to defend Yonondio, and had 
afterwards been mortally wounded himself. 

But the instant Champlain appeared the dancing and howl- 
ing ceased. The Hurons revered him as a wonderful medicine- 
man, whom they durst not disobey; and the one who had shot 
Brule immediately hid himself. " I am about to die ; I cannot 
see you, but I know who you are," exclaimed Yonondio, as 
Oreola flung her arms about his neck. " Oreola," murmured the 
dying Brule, lifting himself on his elbow " Oreola, come to 
me ! " " Hark ! " said the old chief. " I hear the voice of the 
brave pale-face. The whole band of Hurons were not able to 
frighten him. Oreola, go to the pale-face who defended me as if 
he had been an Iroquois." 

The young woman turned and knelt down near Brule, one of 
whose cold hands Champlain was wetting with tears. "Oreola," 
spoke Brule in a scarcely audible voice, "press to my lips the 
crucifix which I gave you and say a prayer for my soul." 
Oreola offered up a prayer which Brule himself had taught her, 
and while she prayed Champlain continued to weep. And well 
he might ; for who would fill Etienne Brule's place ? New 
France had no other man so skilled in woodcraft, none who had 
penetrated so far into the unknown continent as he. " Ore- 
ola, why do you mourn ? " exclaimed the sightless Yonondio. 
" Have they scalped the valiant pale-face ? Oreola, why do you 
lament? " 

If Oreola answered her voice was drowned in the unearthly 



1885.] ETIENNE BRULE. 211 

yells which suddenly burst from every quarter of the forest ; and 
while the astounded Hurons who knew too well what it meant 
were lifting up their tomahawks, on rushed the Iroquois. 

But swiftly as they were bounding upon the doomed Hurons, 
Champlain's arquebuse might have ended Nachusa's life had not 
Oreola dashed the gun from his hands by a blow of her grand- 
father's club. The struggle was desperate, but did not last 
many minutes, and when it ceased not one Huron remained 
alive ; and Nachusa's bloody fingers were already twined 
through Champlain's hair. In another moment his scalp would 
have been torn from his living head had not Oreola stayed the 
uplifted arm. " Nachusa," she cried, " if you truly love me 
spare this pale-face's life." "Why, what has come over Oreola? 
She does not speak like an Iroquois maiden ! " answered the 
astonished Nachusa. Oreola made no response, but clung to his 
tomahawk. 

" Well, I will grant you the boon you ask," he said. " But I 
cannot understand such a request. Look! A Huron arrow is 
buried in your grandsire's heart. Does not Oreola love re- 
venge? " 

" The dead pale-face yonder," replied Oreola, pointing to 
poor Brul6, " taught me certain things which have softened my 
heart. I will repeat to you one of these days all the wonderful 
things he taught me. Perhaps Nachusa may then love even 
those who fight against him." 

" Well, if the dead pale-face has been able to soften the 
heart of an Iroquois toward an enemy, I wish that he could 
arise and speak to Nachusa, for he must have been truly a 
mighty wizard," answered the Oneida chief. "Alas! fitienne 
Brule cannot speak any more," continued Oreola. " But his 
heart, when it beat, did not know what fear meant ; he was as 
daring as an Iroquois, and got his death-wound defending my 
old grandfather. If Yonondio could speak he would tell you so.' 
"I do not doubt Oreola's word," answered Nachusa. " And had 
this pale-face lived we should have adopted him. He certainly 
has the mien of a warrior." Oreola now quitted Nachusa's side 
and passed a few minutes on her knees, pressing again to Brule's 
lips the little crucifix. 

Then when she rejoined her lover she coaxed him to send 
Champlain two days' journey toward the St. Lawrence River 
in the care of one of his warriors. " For the pale-face cannot 
see his way in the woods as we can," she said. " His eyes are 
not like our eyes'.' 1 ' " I do not believe that among all the Iro- 



212 ETIENNE BRULE. [May, 

quois maidens you will find another Oreola," interposed Cham- 
plain ; "no bribes could make her unfaithful to you. O Na- 
chusa ! treat her tenderly, and do not chide her when she prays 
to the one true God." 

Nachusa responded by flinging his arms about her neck. 
" The pale-face chief speaks what is true," he said. " There is 
only one Oreola, and I will pray to the same God that she does." 

Within an hour the Indian guide was ready to conduct 
Champlain to a point whence he might find his way alone to 
the St. Lawrence. But ere the latter departed he insisted on 
having Brul6 decently buried. Accordingly a grave was dug, 
and at its head Oreola planted a cross. Then she reminded the. 
father of New France to send to her nation one of the mission- 
aries of whom he had spoken. " Nachusa will make a wigwam 
for him," she said, " and he will teach us all to love one another." 

" If he come alone, if he come without weapons, I will make 
a wigwam for him. I will give him corn and venison," spoke 
Nachusa. 

" And I shall not forget to do this very often," added Oreola, 
making the sign of the cross. " And when I talk about the 
beautiful lake which we found together, I will always call it the 
fresh-water sea of Champlain." 

With a heavy heart Champlain now turned his face north- 
ward. He never saw Oreola again. Nor did the Franciscan, 
Father du Plessis, succeed in founding a mission among the Iro- 
quois, who, as we know, a generation later utterly destroyed 
the Hurons who had become Christians. 

But Oreola to the end of her life said the prayers which 
fitienne Brul6 had taught her. Nachusa, whose wife she be- 
came, shielded her from the ill-will of the medicine-men; and 
when at length she was laid at rest he fulfilled her dying request 
and erected a cross at the head of her lonely grave on the banks 
of the Onondasra. 



1885.] A TALK: WITH CONTRIBUTORS. 213 



A TALK WITH CONTRIBUTORS. 

tf Fungar vice cotis, acutum 
Reddere quae ferrum valet exors ipse secandi ." 

HORACE, Ars Poetic*. 

<l I TRIED to keep this article within the limits you men- 
tioned," writes a valued contributor to the magazine editor, " but 
it grew under my hand. It is quite impossible to treat the sub- 
ject adequately in shorter space." With a sigh the editor places 
this communication on the apex of a pyramid which a grim 
curiosity has prompted him to compile. They are all letters 
from valued contributors, in which, with a difference only of 
phrase, the same announcement is made. He takes up the next 
letter you are to fancy him at his desk going through his daily 
mail : " Dear editor, I fear the enclosed article is too long, but I 
give you full permission to cut it down." (How kind ! comments 
the grateful man.) " I shall also be obliged if you will trim off 
any little roughnesses in the style which your literary eye may 
detect. I wrote the article rather hastily and have not had time 
to revise it carefully." The editor, being a man of unbounded 
leisure, appoints his next off-day which he finds to be the Greek 
kalends to be devoted to the revision omitted by this contribu- 
tor. " Sir," a bold, precise hand portentously begins, " I was 
surprised and pained, on receiving your last number, to behold 
the manner in which my article has been disfigured the ends 
knocked off, paragraphs, words changed, sentences inverted. I 
suppose this is what you style editorial revision ' improving* 
an article. Let me tell you that had I known my contribution 
was to be subjected to such treatment to suit your Procrustean 
rules, I would have elected to forego the pleasure of seeing 
myself in print." Metaphorically the editor cowers, until he 
recalls a letter in the same handwriting of some months back, in 
which the good offices of his Literary Eye were earnestly be- 
sought; so he puts the document in a drawer where it can 
exchange grievances with a whole Limbo of fellow-sufferers. A 
crabbed, sprawling "fist" next assails him. With difficulty he 
spells out: "I hope you have dismissed your proof-reader. If 
not, do so, or let some other fellow read the proofs of my article. 
Last time he had nearly all the Greek accents wrong, making 



214 A TALK WITH CONTRIBUTORS. [May, 

me quote nonsense, and in the statistical table he put a figure 6 
in one place instead of a 9. I wish you yourself would verify the 
references this time. I have not the books handy, but you have 
the Astor Library at your elbow. By the way, I forget whether 
that Greek line is from the Chorus of the Frogs or the Heau- 
tontimoroumenos, but you will know. Also be sure and see if 
I have got it right." " Honored Sir," begins the next commu- 
nication and the editor takes a crumb of comfort from the 
reflection that this one, -at least, addresses him with proper 
reverence " Honored sir, if the accompanying article does 
not suit you I would be obliged if you would kindly write a 
criticism of it, pointing out its weaknesses and where it might be 
improved. You might also give me an idea of the kind of arti- 
cles you like best, with full particulars as to length, style, etc., 
etc." The flattering respectfulness of this gentleman has not 
time to work its spell before it receives a severe antidote. A 
correspondent, who abstains from using " sir " or " yours truly," 
complains that he received a printed form when his article was 
returned. What particularly annoys him is the courteous phrase- 
ology in which the editor has taken pains to concoct this form 
with a view to saving the feelings of the Rejected. " Declining 
' with thanks,' indeed ! " writes this graceless fellow. " Do you 
even read the articles you choose to vote 'not available'? 1 
regard this kind of thing as simply insulting. Do you think 
people who send you articles are fools that they cannot see 
through these attempts to cover up with printed soft-soap the 
real reasons for rejecting their work? Surely self-interest, at 
least, ought to dictate that it would be wiser to treat your 
friends with more courtesy and candor. A blunt, honest reason, 
written out and applicable to the particular case, would be more 
satisfactory than reams of your soothering, sham excuses in 
type." By this time the "shining morning face" which the edi- 
tor buoyantly brought down-town with him has begun to give way 
to that look of yellow melancholy which his mid-day droppers-in- 
for-a-chat consider so uncomplimentary to their powers of enter- 
tainment. And he goes through his pile, which has not yet per- 
ceptibly lessened, reading fawning missives, threatening missives, 
abusive missives, plaintive missives, with a steeled heart : " As 
rny story does not seem to be bad enough to suit your magazine, 
will you please send it back?" " My humble little piece has but 
few merits to recommend it, I know, but you will not deny it a 
place when I tell you that on my pen depends the support of a 
widowed mother and an invalid sister." " I am cognizant of the 



1885.] A TALK WITH CONTRIBUTORS. 215 

personal [thrice underscored] motives which influenced the re- 
jection of my three last MSS. [this one is from a lady, alas !], and 
I shall now consider it a duty to the public to exert all my in- 
fluence in the press and in society (and that is not so slight as you 
imagine) to discourage the circulation of your magazine." So 
runs the daily chorus. Truly, as Mr. James Payn says in his 
charming scrap of autobiography, " until a man becomes an edi- 
tor he can never plumb the depths of literary human nature ! " 
And when the editor has done with his interviews with the 
proof-readers and printers' devils, and the contributors who commu- 
nicate in person, and when he has eaten some way into the moun- 
tains of MSS., he invites a frame of mind suitable to the compo- 
sition of amiable replies to his correspondence of the morning. 
What does it avail, this amiability, this expostulation ? Positively 
not much. Like the old man of the fable, he alternately beats his 
ass, and wheedles it, and carries it on his shoulders, only to meet 
with the same result. He is misunderstood, derided, berated 
to-day the same as yesterday, to-morrow as he is to-day. 

But it is written that the worm will turn if sufficiently trod- 
den on. I believe the old man in the fable ended by dashing 
down his ass in disgust and bidding his criticisers go hang. 
Why should the magazine editor have to spend his time writing 
out replies to the same letters over and over again ? It would 
be interesting to calculate how many thousand miles of the 
earth's surface would be covered by these amiable epistles if 
they were pasted together. How many asons of precious hours 
have been given to their composition ! And all for nothing ! It 
is a sheer waste of amiability. Every day correspondents are 
asking for the same information, and, having got it, are disre- 
garding it in the same way, and having paid the consequences 
of the disregard, are hurling the same contumely. Why should 
this be? Has an editor no feelings? Why should he be ex- 
pected to be a moral and a physical monstrosity, a Briareus 
with a hundred hands, a Juggernaut crushing modest merit be- 
neath his wheels, a nimble Mercury and a Lady Bountiful, all 
in one? If the idea of the editor that exists in parts in the minds 
of his contributors could be gathered together and given living 
shape, Mr. P. T. Barnum would pay highly for it for his show. 
Has he no friends ? Must this most misunderstood of beings go 
on suffering and misunderstood for ever ? Will no generous 
party come forward and lay his case once for all before his pub- 
lic of contributors ? . . . 

Now, if the contributors would only bear properly in mind 



216 A TALK WITH CONTRIBUTORS. [Ma)-, 

that what one of those correspondents objects to is one of the 
great facts of a magazine, what an amount of trouble and disap- 
pointment would be spared all parties ! A magazine is indeed 
a bed of Procrustes. It is of a fixed size ; it has only so many 
pages ; it will hold only a certain quantity of matter. This is 
doubtless an imperfection in the eyes of the average contributor ; 
but it really cannot be helped. A contributor is informed, for 
instance, that there are just eight pages to spare for the article 
he proposes to write. He sends in an article of twelve pages. 
Procrustes takes his axe and off go the feet and scalp, the four 
extra pages. The victim howls, but he should have known 
what was before him. Procrustes is sorry : he has had to 
waste time and trouble. Besides, he has a heart sometimes, and 
hates to mutilate a fair form sometimes, but not often. In this 
kind of work he is a case-hardened savage he does it after read- 
ing his morning mail. There was an undergraduate once, of our 
acquaintance, who was the envy of all his class-fellows because 
he had the intoxicating privilege of contributing occasional 
leaders to a "great daily." How he used to polish those articles 
till they shone like statuettes of Parian marble ! He was read- 
ing his proofs in the office one evening when the editor, drop- 
ping in, said in a cruelly casual voice : " That article of yours 
makes a column and a half, and there's only three-quarters of a 
column open." Pendennis looked up in dismay. " What's to be 
done now?" "A very simple thing," says the savage. "Give 
me that proof." And with two big scrapes of his blue pencil he 
had the article hacked down to half its size. " But it is ruined 
mutilated symmetry destroyed ! " cries out the horrified parent. 
" My dear fellow, you would be astonished," Procrustes says, 
whistling through the speaking-tube for the foreman " you 
would be astonished if you knew the number of people who will 
read that article in the morning and eat their breakfasts with 
good digestions." It was a bitter lesson, but one that the young 
man remembered. 

The difficulty seems to be that contributors to magazines 
(always excepting the divine few) will not distinguish between 
the requirements of monthly magazines and those of quarterly 
reviews. They are quite different things. The monthly and 
the quarterly fill two distinct functions. Both are important. 
Both are portions of the same army the press. But one is siege 
ordnance, the other is flying field artillery. If you load a field- 
piece with the charge of a Krupp gun, what will happen? The 
piece will burst, will it not? Some contributors seem engaged 



1885.] A TALK WITH CONTRIBUTORS. 217 

in a conspiracy to burst up the monthly magazine. They keep 
sending articles only fit for quarterly reviews articles of fifteen 
pages and upwards. In a quarterly article you can exhaust your 
subject; in the monthly, if you write about the same subject, you 
only give the cream of it. A magazine article ought not to ex- 
ceed ten pages; a quarterly can carry articles of twenty, or even 
forty or fifty pages, like the thunderous Edinburgh. A man may 
have to read a hundred special books to make up a subject, and 
is he to boil down that reading into six, eight, or ten pages and 
give it to a magazine ? Exactly. The ideal magazine writer 
must be prepared to make a sacrifice ; he must have in him some- 
thing of the self-denying quality that Fichte demands of the 
" true Literary Man." He must be able to condense a big sub- 
ject into eight or ten graceful pages. Perhaps the subject has 
several sides which are not homogeneous and cannot well be 
treated together in a short space. In that case each side is itself 
a subject. Let the magazinist devote a separate article to each 
side ; but let him take care to make these articles so independent 
each of the other, and each so complete in itself, that they can 
be published with intervals between them, and that a reader 
would never discover from one of them that any other preceded 
it or was to follow. The "series " is to be shunned as if it were 
the plague. To write in this way requires skill. Of course. A 
magazine article is an epicurean dish devised by a chef, who in 
selecting its ingredients knows how to leave out many tempting 
things for the sake of delicacy. After all, why should there be 
this difficulty in getting writers to practise brevity and neatness? 
All their professors of style, from Quintilian to Mr. Matthew 
Arnold, commend these qualities. " The secret of writing well," 
says Lord Lytton, " is to know what to leave in the ink pot." 

And then, above all things, the touch of the magazine writer 
must not be heavy. His articles must be such as a tired man 
will read with pleasure and refreshment after his day's work. 
" He has gained every vote," says the most delightful of all 
critics, old or new, " who has blended the useful with the agree- 
able by delighting and at the same time instructing his reader; 
such a book earns money for the Sosii, such a book even crosses 
the sea and extends to the celebrated author a long duration of 
fame." Even if something or somebody is to be attacked, let it 
be with- the rapier rather than the two-handed sword. Be the 
truth ever told, however unpleasant, but tell it with a smile. 
Life has its labors, and it is not the part of the magazine writer to 
add to them. You may bring your quarterly to the study ; the 



218 A TALK WITH CONTRIBUTORS. [May, 

place for the magazine is the fireside or under the shade of 
boughs. It must bear a sweet for every palate. The grandmo- 
ther, the girl standing " where the streams meet," the young 
man with all his ambitions before him, the man of toil, are of its 
readers as well as the scholar and the priest. But how can all 
tastes be suited with song and story, and essay grave and gay, if 
two or three burly writers insist on taking up the room of 
others ? THE CATHOLIC WORLD contains one hundred and 
forty-four pages ; if all its writers confined their articles to eight 
or ten pages each, fourteen or fifteen items would appear in 
every number besides the reviews of new books. And if they 
tipped their feet with Hermes' winglets! A vision rises before 
the mind's eye of the editor : a dazzling phalanx, the ideal band 
of contributors, a band of lithe ten-page men, no Falstaffian 
wind-bags or eighty-one-ton artillerists among them, and he at 
their head, his trusty falchion (blue pencil) gleaming in the sun, 
exhorting them to lightness of touch : 

" Step together; be your tramp 
Quick and light no plodding stamp ; 
Let its cadence, quick and clear, 
Fall like music on the ear 
Eagles soar on silent feather. 

Tread light, r * : 

Left, right 
Steady, boys, and step together ! 

. . . Each man's single powers combined 
Into one battalioned mind. . . 
Thus prepared we reck not whether 
Foes smite. 
Left, right 
We can think and strike together !" 

No article should be sent to a magazine which has not re- 
ceived its author's final touches which is not, as far as he is con- 
cerned, perfect usque ad unguem. Even then the author must be 
prepared to see it " edited." Every article has to pass through 
this process, and the magazine writer must bear it stoically. It 
is indispensable. There may be something in an article, other- 
wise desirable, which may not suit the particular magazine or 
may give offence in a particular direction. A magazine is not 
merely a vehicle for printing various men's opinions the re- 
sponsibility for which is covered by the writers' names. It is 
edited with a purpose in view, and, while in non-essentials con- 
siderable latitude is allowed, the editor has to see that every 



i885-J A TALK WITH CONTRIBUTORS. 219 

contribution tends in some way towards this purpose and in no 
way against it. Most changes in articles which their writers may 
not quite see the force of may be set down to this cause. This is 
editorial revision. That tampering with a contributor's text for 
the sake of " improving the style/' which Carlyle complained of 
suffering at the hands of Jeffrey, is editorial impertinence. The 
true editor never tampers thus, except in cases where sense or 
taste is violated, or when a careless writer bespeaks his Literary 
Eye. The writer whose page needs this kind of overhauling is 
the person of all others whom the editor would like to " get at " 
when he feels wicked. But editing, properly so called, is the 
editor's right. In this matter he yes, he, this so misunderstood 
personage claims the privileges of an autocrat. If contributors 
don't like how he conducts his magazine ; if, having put an arti- 
cle into his hands, they object to its having been edited ; if they 
complain because an article has been shortened ; if they feel 
aggrieved because, after many days, the bread they cast upon 
the waters comes back with a printed form declining it " with 
thanks " why, then the editor only meets them with the remark 
of M. Geronte in the comedy, " What the deuce brought them 
aboard the galley?" They should have known better than to 
come there. 

Nor let the man complain whose article, having been accepted, 
is a weary time before it sees the light of print. The magazine 
can publish but a hundred and forty-four pages a month. Let 
him visit the editor in his sanctum and see the safesful and 
drawersful of accepted manuscripts that are, with his own, pa- 
tiently awaiting their turn. 

To the correspondents who write that their article " has been 
pronounced the best by far that has appeared in your magazine 
for some time," or that the article which they send is " above the 
usual level of your contributions," the editor extends the assur- 
ance of his most distinguished consideration. 

As for the young men and women who ask for "criticism," 
the magazine editor feels very kindly towards them. But he does 
not aspire to " the critic's noble name." His function is not to 
award merit wherever he sees it, or to pass opinions, but to select 
what he wants for his publication. He may see great things in 
many an article, but not the kind of things that suits him. Dear- 
ly he would like to write and tell the authors all about these excel- 
lences and to tender his poor advice. He even does write some- 
times ! (Oh! it is unknown how much the editor is wronged in 
common opinion.) But generally he finds his legitimate work as 



220 A TALK WITH CONTRIBUTORS. [May, 

much as he can manage with comfort. Some day an improved 
editor may be devised who in 'his leisure can be made to act as 
a bureau of literary advice. But at present he is an imperfect 
creature. Good contributors, bear this in mind and be satisfied 
with the considerately-worded printed form. 



FOUR POINTS RESPECTFULLY RECOMMENDED TO THE ATTENTION 
OF CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS MAGAZINE. 

ist. Never let your article exceed ten pages. (There are five 
hundred [500] words in a page of THE CATHOLIC WORLD.) 
Only the fiction in a magazine is privileged to occupy more 
than ten pages. Keep the article under eight pages, if you can. 
If it did not run beyond four or six pages, and were otherwise' 
acceptable, it would be sure of almost immediate insertion. 

2d. Never allude to a " series." If you cannot treat a subject 
in a single article, devote your article to one aspect of the sub- 
ject. Let that be a complete article which can stand by itself 
without dependence on any other. By and by, if you like, send 
in another article, equally complete* and independent, dealing 
with another aspect. 

3d. Never send in an article which is not as perfect as you can 
make it. Count on no revisions or verifications. 

4th. Prepare your manuscript neatly. Let it all be written on 
the same kind of paper, held together by a fastener. Let the 
handwriting be as clear as print. A clean, legible manuscript 
gives an article a great advantage with an editor whose eyes are 
not of brass, and who has a heart to feel for his compositors and 
proof-readers. 



1 885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 221 

SOLITARY ISLAND. 

PART THIRD. 

CHAPTER IV. 

A CLAYBURG RECEPTION. 

THE train which one summer evening rushed into the Clay- 
burg- depot with the crashing importance of a special express 
carrying the highest dignitaries in the land had Florian and the 
count in one of its coaches. When the old, familiar landmarks 
which he had known and loved as a boy began to appear, and 
when for the first time in eight years he saw the strip of bay 
over which he had sailed so often, and sniffed the fresh-water 
breeze, lily-scented, a scale seemed to fall from his eyes and a 
hard-crusted shell from his body, and all at once he began to 
renew old sensations and to feel light as a boy again. " I can 
tell you it affects me, count," he said, " to come back to these 
old scenes which twenty-odd years of life have made dear 
to me." 

" It always does," the count answered ; "but it's an amiable 
weakness, and should be discouraged in diplomats and states- 
men." 

Florian began to gather his traps together before they had 
reached the depot, and the count was annoyed. 

" What's the need of hurry?" he said pettishly. 

" If I know this place," Florian answered, smiling, " there will 
be a crowd at the station, and one glimpse of me would ruin our 
night's rest. There would be an immediate reception, hand- 
shaking till midnight, speeches and a band till morning " 

" That will do," said the count, seizing his baggage ; "let us 
rather return to New York than endure such a trial. This 
America is awful, awful in its hand-shakings." 

When they arrived at the depot both were standing on the 
last platform, and they jumped off on the opposite side as soon as 
the train stopped. A small boy standing near was about to rush 
away when Florian seized him by the collar and pressed a dime 
into his hand. 

" Where do you live, Tommy ? " said he kindly. 

" Up thar," said Tommy, pointing off into the distance. 

" Well, git thar," said Florian, " and don't get back for ten 
minutes." 



222 SOLITARY ISLAND. [May, 

As the boy disappeared the count said : " I do not understand 
this bribery." 

" He was stationed at this end of the train to notify the 
loungers of our attempt to escape without being seen." 

" Ah ! I see you are up to all the tricks of the natives." 

" I am one of them," said Florian, with a surge of tenderness 
in his voice; " it all comes back to me like swimming. I shall 
give you a sail to-morrow." 

They left the bustle of the depot behind them, and on reach- 
ing the top of the short hill Florian made the count look at the 
twilight beauty of the scene. Vladimir was not an admirer of 
scenery, but he looked and saw the waters covered with long, 
shifting lights from the west where a faint red glow shone, and 
the distant islands, visible only by the lights of dwellings there. 
A feeble moon threw silver flashes where the darkness was 
deepest. The long line of docks was a forest of masts with their 
red and green and white lights showing like stars against the 
sky,- and over the hubbub of the travellers at the depot could be 
heard occasionally the singers in the boats far out on the calm 
river. 

" The stillness is quite oppressive," said the count, with a 
shiver, as they turned into the garden of Wallace's home. 

" It is a place to make you think," said Plorian pointedly. 

" Heaven save me from that ! " laughed the count. " It is the 
one glory of my life, and its joy, that of all men I can think 
least." 

Florian entered the house without any ado, and left his valise 
in the square room which once belonged to him. To the servant 
who came to inspect the intruders he gave the message for his 
mother that Florian had come home. The count was a trifle 
curious when he heard the hurried, timorous step in the hall, and 
he watched Mrs. Winifred closely as she appeared dressed in 
plain black, with her white, pointed cap lying across her smooth 
hair. She was in an exceedingly nervous state and hardly no- 
ticed Vladimir's title, calling him Mr. Countbrenski a moment 
after the introduction.- Preparing two rooms for the gentlemen, 
and seeing them retire to brush off the dust of the journey, gave 
her an opportunity to settle down into her usual placidity, which 
she did in Linda's room, where she sat crying and murmuring to 
the darkness, " O Linda! he has come back again." 

The count was so delighted at not finding in Florian the 
faintest resemblance to his mother that he grew eager to begin 
work at once. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 223 

" I have still less resemblance to my father," said Florian. 
" But it would not do to scare my mother by broaching so 
abruptly an important matter. The idea of trying to prove her 
son the property of another woman! Your object would cer- 
tainly be frustrated by such haste. You would get no informa- 
tion at all." 

When they went down to the parlor Sara had arrived and 
was in ecstasies over the presence of her honorable brother and 
a count. Mrs. Winifred did not know whether he was French or 
Italian, but thought Florian muttered something about an em- 
bassy. 

" Oh ! he's from Washington," said Sara. " How delightful ! " 
And the curtsey she made before Vladimir was a marvel of grace 
and dignity. The count devoted himself to her for the whole 
evening, and left Florian to prepare his mother for the examina- 
tion of the morrow, which he did with great tact and delicacy. 
For Mrs. Winifred, on hearing of the horrors which the count had 
prepared for her, was stupefied by fright and despair, muttered 
" yes " and " no," and " seemingly " and " certainly " to Florian's 
consoling explanations, and altogether behaved so absurdly as to 
leave the impression of success on the great statesman. She was 
quite prepared for the ordeal, laughed in her soft, deprecatory way 
at the notion of losing her son to a Russian prince, and even ex- 
pressed a wish to undergo an examination that evening. But 
Florian demurred and took the count off to smoke a cigar, while 
his mother fled again to Linda's room to cry her eyes out in 
consternation. 

Billy came home at ten o'clock precisely and found two man- 
ly strangers chatting pleasantly on the veranda. One of them 
took his hand and shook it warmly, saying: "Halloo, father! 
Wake up to the dignity of a count and a Congressman on 
your veranda ! " 

It was very sudden, and in the succeeding five minutes Billy 
ejaculated " divil " two hundred times at least, following this 
discharge with a brigade of questions as to the how and when of 
their arrival. He did not at all wish to go to bed that night- 
was bound to wake up the village and have a bonfire, or at least 
get out the squire and have a night of it ; but Florian vetoed 
these resolutions, and quieted him by agreeing to a public recep- 
tion before his departure. 

" Congressmen are scarce in this town," he said to the count 
in explanation of his father's enthusiasm, " and counts, Russian 
ones at least, an equal rarity." 



224 SOLITARY ISLAND. [May, 

" Fortunate town ! " said the count, knocking the ashes off his 
cigar. 

Mrs. Winifred, after the gentlemen had retired, urged Billy 
to go over to the squire and assist in laying plans for a public 
reception the next day. " And stay there to-night," said she, " that 
you may be up the earlier to-morrow." In fear of disturbing 
the guests the deligh-ted old boy stole out on tiptoe. 

The moon was shining clear and full when Florian and Vla- 
dimir reached their rooms, and -the low-lying islands were dis- 
tinctly to be seen. Florian called his attention to them. 

" Not that you may admire their beauty," said he, " for I be- 
gin to perceive that you have other ideas of beauty, but to tell 
you of a certain old fellow who haunts these islands, and whom 
we shall visit to-morrow. He lives there solitary, fishing and 
hunting and reading Izaak Walton, and is full of a homely but 
keen philosophy, half-human, half-barbaric, which is really unique. 
He has an idea that politics will be my ruin." 

" And looks through a man at the first glance, I suppose." 

" No, he is not too acute an observer ; but I think he can draw 
blood even from an elegant attache. One must be thick-skinned 
to avoid a wound. It sounds like truth, too." 

'' If it has the ring it must be the metal," said the count. 

As the count had asked the favor of being made acquainted 
with all the circumstances of Florian's birth as soon as possible, 
the examination was held the next morning after breakfast. Mr. 
and Mrs. Buck were present, and, with Billy, were informed of 
the reasons of the count's visit. Billy was highly amused, and 
Sara felt the inspiriting charm of acting a part in a real romance. 
The count saw in the manner of each member of the family that 
fate was against him. Father and mother might have shown a 
little agitation, and so have given a hope that their astonishment 
was but assumed. Billy, however, chuckled constantly, and Mrs. 
Winifred was as placid as usual. 

"Seemingly," said she, with great composure, "we lived be- 
hind Russel's Camp for a number of years." 

" We might have been there yet but for your tinkering," 
Billy snapped, with a sudden and vivid recollection of damages 
sustained in leaving the camp. 

" Thank Heaven we are out of it, the horrid place ! " said Sara. 
" I would never have met Mr. Buck there nor anybody ; and 
where would you be now, my blessed little Florian ? " 

" The Protestant brat ! " barked the grandfather, patting the 
child's head with secret tenderness. 






1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 225 

" It was there Florian came to us, and Sara, and Linda, and 
one younger child who died before we left the place. Seeming- 
ly, none of the children were baptized in a church." 

" How could they be ? " Billy jerked out. He was in a chronic 
ill-temper before strangers. " There wasn't a church in fifty 
miles." 

" How terrible ! " said Sara for the count's benefit, " to be de- 
prived of the consolations of religion 

One withering look from Billy ended this speecn, and, in fear 
of an outbreak, Mrs. Winifred burst in with " Pere Rivet baptized 
our children and took the records with him to Montreal, I sup- 
pose. I couldn't say where. But, seemingly, it troubled me. 
For if Florian had wished to be a priest we had no certificate 
of baptism." 

" Not much trouble to you now," sneered Billy ; " he's a Con- 
gressman, the divil ! the very opposite of a priest. And your 
grandson, with a certificate handy, is to be a minister. Think of 
that, count think of that, sir." 

" We moved here," said Mrs. Winifred patiently, " when 
Florian was about five years old, and here we have lived 
since." 

" Are you satisfied, count ? " said Florian then ; and the count 
nodded in some hesitation. 

" I must apologize to you," he said, addressing the family, 
" for the trouble I have given you 

"Oh! I assure you, count," Sara broke in, "it has been a 
very great pleasure. Just like a novel, indeed." 

" I must thank you for the kind manner in which you have 
humored me. I am satisfied," laughing gaily, "that your son is 
your own. I shall never again trouble you in this way." 

" But in other ways," said Sara, " we shall be so happy to 
serve you. Some troubles are real pleasures." 

" Not such troubles as you, you divil ! " said Billy. 

" But such troubles as this," she answered good-naturedly, 
holding young Florian close to the wrinkled face ; and the grand- 
father was forced to smile and chuckle in spite of himself. 

The morning conference was broken up by the stentorian 
voice of the squire at the front gate welcoming Florian to the 
arms of his native town. At his back were a half-dozen of the 
democratic fathers of the village, anxious and happy to greet the 
lion of their fold, the standard-bearer of Juda, their David in the 
ranks of the Philistines. Count Vladimir shuddered at the grasp 
which each of the ancients in turn gave to Florian's hand and 
VOL. XLI. 15 



226 SOLITARY ISLAND. [May, 

the pump-handle shake which followed, and kept two books in 
his hands during the ceremony of introduction. 

" Glad to see you, count," said the squire. " You are a rare 
bird in this part of the country, but I met a dozen of you in New 
York when I was there. Boys, this is a real, live Russian 
count, imported from Moscow, and Florian's friend. He's to 
be included in the reception. You'll make a speech, count, of 
course." 

The very decided refusal of the count was drowned in the 
clamor which all present raised in behalf of the speech. 

" The ladies of the whole town will be present," said Sara, 
" and it would be too bad to deny them the pleasure of hearing 
a count talk." 

" Is not this a republican country ? " said the count. 

"Oh! but you are a rarity," Florian replied, "and must be 
heard as well as seen. You are on exhibition like myself." 

" It is the one thing of this country self-exhibition," the 
count muttered in a disgusted undertone, but aloud he said 
blandly, " If the ladies wish it I am their slave." 

"How delightful!" thought Sara. "He talks just like an 
earl." 

The squire, by request of one of the elders, wished to intro- 
duce them singly to the count, but this calamity was prevented 
by Mrs. Winifred. She had been sitting quietly observant of the 
proceedings, and now tumbled into her son's lap in a dead faint ; 
whereupon the elders gathered about her in a close-pressed 
gang, and the count, having been caught between them with his 
protecting books in his hands, got such a democratic squeezing as 
he had never before experienced. The squire, however, hustled 
out his friends, and left the family to attend Mrs. Winifred. 

" This never happened before in her whole life," said Billy, 
with tremulous lips, as she began to show signs of returning life. 
Florian whispered to the count, who followed him into the gar- 
den. 

" It's a good thing to get away," he said. " That deputation 
would keep us till noon, when I wish you to see the islands and 
my hermit friend." 

" Your mother " began the count. 

" She is all right. I knew your mission would make her over- 
nervous, for she is very excitable." 

They went down the street to the dock below the depot, and 
in a few minutes Florian had hired a boat and hoisted the sail 
to a favorable breeze. A few loungers stood on the shore and 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 227 

watched curiously the ordinary human motions of so queer crea- 
tures as a politician and a count. 

" Rustics are the same the world over," said Vladimir. " I 
could fancy myself in a Russian village this morning and not 
draw heavily on imagination." 

" But such colors ! " said Florian, waving his hand to the 
scene and taking a deep, delighted breath. " I feel like an old, 
dust-covered, moth-eaten volume opened for the first time for 
years to the sunlight and fresh air." 

" That is anything but a delightful feeling," said the count. 
" I am chilly. This water-wind is too fresh and heavy for the 
lungs." 

" Not for me," said Florian, putting his hands to his mouth 
and giving a succession of wild whoops a trick learned in his 
schoolboy days. An answer was faintly heard in the distance 
to their right, then to their left, and finally all around came 
shrill, tremulous cries more or less distant. 

" You see the strength of our traditions," said Florian. 
" That was the war-cry of the boys twenty years ago, and the 
new generation has not forgotten it." 

" Was that informal reception of this morning a tradition ? " 
said the count sarcastically. 

" Washington went through it all fifty years ago," Florian 
answered. " It is one of the means by which we advance our 
popularity. The average American rates an honest hand-shake 
highly." 

" I would feel like Coriolanus if I had to ask such suffrages." 

" And you would fare like Coriolanus, no doubt. Now, if 
you have any taste for natural beauty, look at this." 

They had left the river and were entering the curved channel 
which passed into the Bay of Tears. 

" It is a bow," said Florian, " and we are the arrow. See, 
now we shoot heavenward." And like a transformation scene the 
narrow passage, in which the waters mingled their murmurs 
with the sighing of the trees, widened on the instant into a glo- 
rious bay where the waters slept in the sunlight and a silver- 
white mist lingered in the air. Even the indifferent count was 
touched. 

"Your hermit has a royal dwelling," said he, " when such a 
vestibule leads to it." 

" We shall see," Florian replied. A short run up the Cana- 
dian side of the river brought them to the landing-place. " This 
is the royal residence," said he to the count as they anchored. 



228 SOLITARY ISLAND. [May, 

To the disappointment of both, the hermit was not at home, but 
everything was in its old place, even the copy of Izaak Walton ; 
and Florian saw with delight the absence of change, as if he 
had been gone but a day ! 

" This is the nearest approach to eternity that man can make. 
There has been no change here in twenty years, and I suppose 
the furniture of his brain and his heart are in the same placid 
condition. Such a man endures death with philosophy." 

" Nonsense ! " the count said ; " on the contrary, he is always 
unprepared for so violent a change. With me a worldling death 
is one of those incidents which make life charming. There is a 
risk in holding life's jewel. Now, this hermit, as I suppose, is 
wildly virtuous, an ascetic " 

" No, no. He is sedate, stoical, serious, but not a devotee." 

" Then he has taken to this life from a love of it, and not 
because a companion was struck dead by lightning at his side 
or because he had already exhausted the world?" 

" I would like to hear himself answer those insinuations. It 
would take all your cynicism and wit to match him. Above all 
men he despises an indifferentist." 

" What do you call this?" said the count, holding up a deli- 
cate handkerchief between his thumb and finger. " Was it not 
one such that damned poor Desdemona ? " 

" As I live," replied Florian, examining the article, " my her- 
mit has strange visitors occasionally." 

There were no marks by which its owner might be known, 
but the keen eyes of the count detected the letter " W " which 
had been worked with colored silk at one corner, and the color 
had faded. 

" An initial belonging to you," said he, pointing it out. 
Florian looked at it thoughtfully for a few moments. 

" It is just possible," he said, pressing the handkerchief to his 
lips, " that this is a relic of Linda poor Linda ! If so it would 
be a pity to deprive him of what must be dear to him. He 
thought so much of the child." 

He put it between the leaves of Izaak Walton reverently. 

" Then we shall not see him," said Vladimir. 

Shaking his head for answer, Florian led the way to the boat. 
They were getting in the anchor when a curious kind of music 
reached their ears and drew their attention to a distant point 
around which a boat was sailing. 

" It is a stringed instrument," said Florian, "or I would say 
we were to see a relic of the pipes which played before Moses. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 229 

It is the melancholy jew's-harp, and an unskilful hand is playing 
the one string-. Perhaps it may be the hermit." 

The boat coming into sight showed Pere Rougevin's short, 
stately form at the tiller and a farmer's boy, with his feet dan- 
gling in the water, sitting in the bow. The priest was the musi- 
cian, and the tune, which he still continued to play with vigor, 
was " Yankee Doodle." 

" You must know him," said Florian, flinging out a signal to 
the other boat; " he is a leading man in this northern country, 
and can tell you more about Paris than you know." 

" Or he knows," said the count ironically. " Is he the parish 
priest?" 

Before Florian could answer the boats were alongside, and 
Pere Rougevin stepped into theirs and shook Florian's hand 
warmly. 

-"You can return," he said to the boy. " I shall get home in 
this boat that is, if you gentlemen are bound for Clayburg." 

Florian assured him on that point, and introduced him to 
the count immediately. 

" Count Behrenski ? " repeated the pere. " Have I not met 
you before, count ? Are you not the son of the Baroness Lo- 
duski?" 

" You know my mother?" said the count, with a feeble smile. 

" I held the honor of her friendship in Paris when you were a 
mere boy," said the priest. "It pleases me beyond measure to 
meet the son of such a woman, noble in her courage against mis- 
fortune, in her attachment to the faith, in the beauty and the 
purity of her life." 

Florian mercifully looked to his sail while this eulogium was 
delivered, but the count received the flattering yet cutting words 
with well-bred composure and promised the priest a deadlier 
wound in exchange for his Parthian arrow. For there was 
something in Pere Rougevin's averted glance and reserved man- 
ner which would lead one to suspect a sarcasm on the very op- 
posite character of so noble a woman's son. 

" That music which we heard from your boat ' began 
Florian. 

" The jew's-harp," said the pere, showing it with a smile, " the 
stringed instrument of the wanderer. Yes, I was playing pa- 
triotic airs ; but it is out of tune. I want a tuner. You know of 
none, count? " 

" Why, any person given to harping on one string would do," 
said the count ; " they have experience." 



230 SOLITARY ISLAND. [May, 

The pere politely handed it to Florian amid a general laugh. 
As they went along Florian told him of the motive of their visit 
to Clayburg, and, without expressing any emotion save amuse- 
ment, the old gentleman went on to point out to the count va- 
rious objects of interest on their route, and the anecdotes, tragic 
or otherwise, connected with them. 

" You probably visited the greatest curiosity of this region, but 
did not find him at home." 

"You mean the hermit?" said the count. " No, we did not 
see him. This place seems like a domain of chance. You can find 
no one in the places usually allotted to them. All are wanderers." 

" That is its principal charm. But there is some method in the 
chance, after all. As a good old lady remarked to me some time 
ago : ' Do you miss your prayers in the morning ? ' said I. ' No, 
father, I doesn't ; but bein' kind o' busy with hayin' and the fishin', 
I puts 'em off till night, sir.' Work is done, and not fitfully." 

The sound of distant music of a powerful and brassy quality 
reached their ears and drew their attention to the town, which 
from that spot looked very pretty with its white buildings and 
steeples shining in the sun. A crowd had gathered on one of 
the wharves, and a band was playing under the shadow of in- 
numerable flags and banners, while cheering shouts and yells 
were faintly borne over the water. ; * ' 

" You will have the opportunity of seeing a political turn- 
out," said Florian to the count. " There stands the deputation 
awaiting us, and hundreds of gentle hearts are palpitating now 
with the delightful thought of seeing a real Russian count. 
Mrs. Buck has taken the greatest pains to set your charms in 
their brightest light before all the ladies of the town." 

" There is a natural weakness attached to man's fall, it 
seems," the priest said in measured tones, as he brushed some 
dust from his coat with dainty fingers, " which sets him in love 
with titles. No attention is paid to the character of the title- 
bearer. If every one, count, were as nobly borne as yours ! " 

" You are my mother's friend and eulogist," the count replied, 
bowing, "and think of me too highly. I am indeed proud of my 
name, but have done little so far to add to its lustre." 

The boat had now put off from the dock to meet them, with 
the squire's red visage in the bow, and they sailed into port in 
his company amid the most frantic cheers of the multitude. 

" Nothing, this, to Parisian enthusiasm," said the priest as they 
stepped ashore, " but more sincere and lasting, perhaps." 

A carriage was in waiting, and, all having entered, they took 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 231 

the last place in a procession of which the band had the first, and 
did it justice. The ride was short. They were transferred to a 
hotel balcony, which gave them the opportunity of seeing their 
admirers in an agony of exhaustion, sitting on the curbstones of 
the street, on barrels and. boxes and staircases, and leaning out 
of windows in heart-breaking attitudes, while the sun beat down 
on them, and the band blared about and through them, dividing 
with the count the attention of the multitude. Every one was 
red, and every one had a handkerchief with which he mopped 
and reddened the more his perspiring face. Only one cool, shaded 
spot stood in view, on the opposite side of the street, where under 
a protecting canopy sat the well-dressed leading ladies of the 
town, headed by Reverend Mrs. Buck, and levelling opera-glasses 
at the titled victim of one part of this ovation. 

The squire, as chairman and general manager of the reception, 
was in a new place every instant, mopping industriously at his 
blooming face and swearing in secret at the intense heat. His 
exertions to have the affair proceed smoothly were nobly 
seconded by the father of the Honorable Florian, who, while he 
thought himself the very centre of observation, was of no more 
consequence to the crowd than if he had been his son's remotest 
relative. When the brass band had wound up its disturbance 
with one prolonged crash of powdered melody the squire stepp'ed 
forward amid cheers. With his back to Florian and his face to 
the crowd he welcomed to his native town this admirable speci- 
men of the political youth of the time, congratulated him on the 
eminence he had won in the service of his country, prophesied 
his future glories and the glories he would reflect on Clayburg, 
and pledged to him the eternal, the undying, the immortal, solid, 
uninterrupted fidelity and esteem of the citizens of the town. 
Amid a second tremendous round of cheering Florian took his 
place and endeavored to out-adjective the squire in one of his 
most telling stump-and-spread-eagle speeches. There was fre- 
quent applause and sociable cries of " That's so," " 'Rah for our 
boy ! " " Flory knows where his bread an' butter be," " Hay- seed 
for ever ! " until the count writhed like a man taking a whipping. 
When the speaker had ended the count was introduced by the 
chairman as a foreigner who much admired republican institu- 
tions and would tell them what bethought about them plump 
and plain. So the count intended sharpening his weapons of 
sarcasm and wickedly determined to inflict some suffering on 
those who had not spared him. But the mood of the people had 
apparently changed. Their humorous vulgarity disappeared, a 



232 SOLITARY ISLAND. [May, 

polite silence reigned, broken only by very modest applause ; and 
the surprised nobleman spoke pleasantly to these rough people, 
who had tact enough to understand that their free American 
ways might be offensive to a Russian. What gentleman could 
do more? And the ladies were so delicately attentive and sym- 
pathetic, catching the most veiled and diplomatic allusions to 
their beauty and worth, and applauding with such discrimi- 
nation ! 

There was some mixed speaking afterwards on the part of 
noteworthy elders anxious to put their opinions on record ; and 
a very smart youth, whose kind has notably increased in the 
country, disgusted every one by his cheek, his vulgarity, and his 
affectation ; to whom the crowd paid no attention, but, with many 
sharp criticisms on their defects, with many wishes that the din- 
ner might not interfere with their talking powers, and with con- 
siderable laughing, scattered homewards, while the tired and 
heated count was led into the dining-room and placed at his seat 
amid a hubbub too horrible for description. 

These hot, red-faced, perspiring Yankees were still full of 
spirits and appetite. It was dreadful for the count to see what 
hungry looks they cast at the dishes, as if the noise and confusion 
of the procession and the speech-making were incentives to appe- 
tite. Knives, tongues, and dishes clattered in unison ; waiters ran 
hither and thither, in and out, tripped and sprawled, as if their 
reputations depended on the absurdities they were performing ; 
the elders upset gravy-bowls and vinegar-cruets with social 
equanimity ; everything was put on the table at once ; everybod}' 
shouted his thoughts to his neighbor ; a steam rose from every 
dish like a cloud, and around each man's plate was grouped 
an army of smaller dishes, to which his neighbor helped himself 
with genial freedom ! The count groaned helplessly. And there 
sat the Honorable Florian, the cause of all the trouble, calm, 
cool, and elegant, full of good spirits, his pleasant voice rising 
above the din and roaring encouragement at his friend, until 
the band broke loose and sat upon all rivalry with a complete- 
ness of triumph and penetration that made the count feel as if 
he were eating that awe-inspiring music. 

" Down South they call this a barbecue," the squire shouted 
at him across the table, where he struggled with a roast stand- 
ing ; " this is, of course, a leetle milder." 

" Oh ! .considerably milder," said an ancient " considerably, 
squire." 

" Ya'as," drawled another. " I suppose it's only a shadow of 






1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 233 

a real barbecue. The Southerners air apt to dew things with 
a rush, bein' a leetle fiery." 

" That's where you'd see fun," the squire continued. " But 
still this is a pretty good specimen of a high old time. Of course 
with " 

A burst from the band crushed the words back into his mouth ; 
but the squire continued to roar, and the count nodded politely 
while pretending not to see his neighbor carrying off his green 
peas. The gentleman had said, unheard by the count: " Seein' 
as you don't take to them 'ere, /'// try *em." 

After a time Vladimir passed into a dreamy state in which 
he seemed to be the centre of a revolving machine. He rather 
liked it on the whole, and as the motion grew slower and slower 
he began to realize that the table was cleared, the Yankees satis- 
fied, and Florian speaking in the midst of a great and pleasant 
silence. Some comic singing followed, there was a general hand- 
shaking, of which he had a share, and finally he was conducted 
to the quiet of the Wallace home. 

" How did you like it ? " said Florian, when they had changed 
their clothing and sat looking at the sun shedding .his latest 
glories on the river. 

" I feel as if I had been through a campaign. If my greatest 
enemy had done this his revenge could not have been more 
complete. And this is the government of the people ! O Corio- 
lanus, Coriolanus ! And the fellow who ate my peas ! Florian, 
take me away out of this at once and for ever, and never, never, 
never drag me into such a barbecue again. It is well named. 
We have been here but twenty-four hours. I feel as if it had 
been as many years." 

" We go to-morrow," said Florian, with a sigh. " I would like 
it to last for ever." 

" Since it can't," answered the count solemnly, " amen ! " 



CHAPTER V. 
PAUL IS HAUNTED. 

WHEN Florian returned to New York he took with him the 
determination at once to set about his wooing of Frances Lynch, 
and to propose as soon as convenient afterwards. The task 
which he contemplated was not irksome. The courtship would 
be more prosaic than if he were an anxious lover, but a beautiful, 
high-bred, elegant woman was a treasure any man might seek 



234 SOLITARY ISLAND. [May, 

with eagerness and lose with pain. When he had the pleasure of 
next seeing the young lady she was with Peter in the parlor- 
he took occasion to greet her with as much warmth and tender- 
ness as was permissible. Under the restraint of his presence 
Peter grew silent, and, when he did speak, gave broad hints about 
people with gizzards instead of hearts. Florian had never taken 
kindly to the old man, and, having a suspicion that the fault was 
his own, was apt to be inconsiderate and harsh towards him. 
When Frances withdrew he turned upon him severely. 

" You have a habit of making peculiar remarks in my pre- 
sence," said he, " which I cannot but think applicable to myself 

" If the cap fits ye, put it on," Peter answered sullenly ; 
" there's many of 'em seems just made for you." 

" If that is so," said Florian, " I wish it understood that you 
are not to put them on. If I am to endure it again I can find 
from Mrs. Lynch whether you or I am the preferred boarder." 

" Why can't ye let another man's property alone, then," said 
Peter, with a frightened gasp, " and 'tend to yer Protestants an' 
convent girls? " 

" What do you mean, sir ? " 

" What do I mean ! What can I mean but that ye are inter- 
fering where ye have no right? " And jumping up, Peter began 
to walk the floor excitedly. " What business have ye smilin' so 
tenderly on a girl whose heart already belongs to another? " 

" Stop a moment ! " cried Florian sternly. " Do you say that 
Miss Lynch is engaged to any gentleman ? " 

" I say what I say," snorted Peter, " an ye have no business 
courtin' a girl that another has courted, is courting, and will 
marry, please God, if I have anything to do with it." 

" May I ask who the gentleman is ? " soothingly. 

" Oh ! it's well ye know, then," said Peter, with supreme scorn. 
" Who else would it be but Paul? " 

" Paul ! " muttered Florian, feeling the frown which he did not 
permit to appear on his face ; and while Peter tramped the room 
with slowly reddening face and a continuous stream of talk in 
Paul's behalf, he allowed the fountain of his bitterness to open 
and pour out its waters on the memory of his friendship for the 
poet. He had connected Paul in some way with his failure to 
win Ruth the second time. Barbara was always talking of the 
matrimonial fitness of Ruth and the poet for each other, and 
Ruth herself had admired him. It was his advice which had 
brought about her conversion, and Paul himself had acknow- 
ledged his readiness to woo her if Florian had failed, until he 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 235 

had learned of her Protestantism and by his withdrawal from 
the field had shown Florian's inconsistency. And now here he 
was again interfering- with his matured designs. The lawyer 
shut his teeth with the bitter determination to destroy whatever 
affection existed between Paul and Frances. He knew and felt 
his own ungenerous spirit; but generosity of soul was not at pre- 
sent a strong point in his character. Peter meanwhile was walk- 
ing, asserting, and working himself into a comfortable rage. 

" D'ye think I'd see a pretty, decent girl married to a thief of 
the faith like you, an infidel " 

" Stop ! " thundered Florian with his most tremendous frown. 

"That for yer stop," said Peter, snapping his fingers and 
executing a Tipperary leap into the air. " D'ye think for one mo- 
ment I'd stand by and see her give herself to a man that has no 
more Catholicity about him than the coat on his back, that goes 
to Mass only when it pleases him, that's betrayin' his religion for 
the sake of the world's honors an' uses his talents to discredit 
the mother that bore him ? D'ye think I would, sir " coming 
closer to him threateningly " d'ye think I would d'ye think / 

WOULD? " 

By this time he was beside Florian with his hot, sullen face 
and panting lips. For the first time the real fun of the scene 
reached the politician, for he laughed suddenly and heartily in 
Peter's face. 

" Oh ! ah ! " said Peter, withdrawing to a distance, half-afraid 
that he had made a fool of himself. Then Florian said politely : 

" I beg your pardon, Mr. Carter ; I think I have made a mis- 
take, and I am sorry for it." 

" Ye have made a mistake," said Peter doubtfully, " and I 
don't know as apologies cover it, either. Well, I can't be less 
than a gentleman, anyhow ; I never was. But ye'd better make 
up yer mind to leave the field to Paul. No good can come of 
yer interfering." 

Florian bowed with a tolerating smile, which cut Peter so 
smartly that he stepped impressively to the other's side. 

" Believe me," he said in a whisper, and the brogue disap- 
peared from his lips like magic, " you will never marry Frances 
Lynch while I live." 

With another bow, which was but an expression of polite 
scorn, Florian withdrew, leaving Peter to gloomy meditation in 
the parlor. " He thinks I can't do it," he muttered. " Well, let 
us see." 

Florian was deeply annoyed at the manner in which Peter 



236 SOLITARY ISLAND. 

contrived to work himself into his affairs, and tried vainly to put 
an end to it. Wherever he went in Frances' company the old 
man was sure to be present, haunting them like a ghost, breaking 
in on t6te-a-tetes and making himself an unwelcome third. It 
did not take Florian long to discover that if there was any at- 
tachment between Frances and the poet it must have been in 
past time or existed only in Peter's fertile fancy. They were 
often enough together, of course, but there was no sign of affec- 
tionate intimacy, and the moment Florian's attentions became 
marked Paul gracefully disappeared from the scene. Nor did 
there appear to be any heart-breaking on either side. Save, then, 
for the single instance of Peter's impertinence, the course of 
Florian's latest true love could not run more smoothly. 

But Frances was a provoking girl to woo, with all her sincer- 
ity. She made no advances. For other reasons the courtship 
began to lag, and Madame Lynch found it necessary to caution 
her daughter. 

" This is the third time," she said, " in which Mr. Wallace has 
begun to pay you marked attention, my child. He never gets 
beyond the beginning, and I think you treat him with too much 
indulgence. I know that you love him, but it seems to me you 
would have done better to have dismissed him at the outset." 

" How can I tell, mother," said Frances, clasping her hands, 
"but that I may have been in fault? With him I can never be 
frank, as with others, and I have often thought it might be my 
manner that repelled him." 

" Men are not so easily repelled," said madame ; " there must 
have been some influence stronger than you, my love, to draw 
him in another direction." 

Frances by her silence acknowledged that she knew of such 
an influence. 

" It is probable," continued madame, " that these influences 
are now gone, and you may reasonably hope that he is in earnest. 
But it is not a position I would like. Love makes one humble, I 
suppose." 

The tears began to flow down Frances' cheek. 

"I suppose I am weak," she said, with a wan smile, "but O 
mother ! I do love him, and I never can cease to love him. It 
makes one over-indulgent, perhaps ; but then the blame is not on 
my side, and my conduct has never given him reason to think 
that I care for him, has it? any more than that I was willing to 
receive his attentions." 

" You have been most discreet, Frank, I admit." 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 237 

" I do not think he is a male coquette ; he is too serious for 
that" 

" He is something much worse," said madame " he is an am- 
bitious man. If you answer his views of what a wife should be, 
well and good ; if not, Heaven pity you ! I think his religion fits 
his politics badly. One must suffer, and it will not be his poli- 
tics. His library is a great terror to me, for such a collection of 
evil works I have never seen anywhere. He reads everything." 

" Ah ! but it has not affected him," Frances replied with 
warmth. " He tells me of those dreadful books, and speaks 
proudly of their blunders and falsehoods and bad reasoning. 
His faith, I think, is very pure." 

"Well, my dear, I shall say no more on the matter, but I ad- 
vise you to give him his true position at once. His attentions 
ought to mean marriage. If they have not that meaning he 
should be taught to keep his place." 

At four o'clock each afternoon Florian's quick, firm step was 
heard in the hall. Frances at that hour was either in the parlor 
with a visitor or in her mother's rooms ; but wherever she chose 
to be he sought her company, always compelled to suffer the 
chagrin of finding Peter present or seeing him trot in stubbornly 
afterwards. They looked over engravings together, or he turn- 
ed her music while she played and sang, or she accompanied him 
when singing, and Peter also, who had not a bad voice and was 
fond of showing it. Their conversation was chiefly on literary 
matters. Peter had lately read and criticised a novel by a new 
American author, and had cut it to pieces in his slashing way. 

" Full of the new ideas of crime and divorce and socialism," 
said he. " The heroine is a man in woman's clothing, forward, in- 
decent, unblushing, impertinent, crammed with ideas of woman's 
freedom, woman's rights, and woman's nonsense. No model for 
our young women. A piece to be in a lunatic asylum. I tore it 
to shreds." 

" Did you read it ? " said Frances to the politician. 

" Yes," said Florian, " and I thought it very well written, but 
a little exaggerated and improbable. The heroine could find no 
place except in a novel, but she was a very pathetic representa- 
tive of some bitter restraints on women." 

" Yes," grunted Peter " pathetic, indeed ! Moanin' because 
she had a beautiful lover that daren't ask her to marry him, an' 
she not able to do it for him. The writer would remove such 
restraints, and have us dancin* jigs with mile-stones to keep out 
o' women's way when they got the power of askin'." 



238 SOLITARY ISLAND. [May, 

" It was very sad," said Florian, " and very well described. I 
agreed with the author. Women should meet us^ half-way." 

" I do not think so," said Frances, fixing her clear eyes upon 
him. " I am a firm believer in the Christian idea of female 
modesty. It may entail much suffering, but it also cuts off much 
misery. Society has indicated certain signs whereby a man may 
know if his suit is acceptable, and they serve their purpose better 
than going half-way and doing violence to woman's greatest pro- 
tection her modesty. The women among whom you were edu- 
cated held those ideas, did they not ? " 

" Yes, indeed," said Florian, " with one -exception, and she was 
very charming." 

" Indeed, I know the creature," said Peter gruffly, " and so 
do you, Frances. That Mrs. Merrion, a bold" 

" O Mr. Carter ! " Frances broke in with a gesture. 

" All right, if ye'll have it so ; but I know her." 

" You have but one instance," said Frances, " and exceptions 
only prove the rule." 

" There's a tendency among females," Peter went on, " to 
make matrimony the end of life. That was another idea in the 
novel." 

" This going into a convent," said Florian by way of coun- 
ter-charge, " I do not condemn, but neither do I like it. A 
woman's highest sphere and self-completion is in the married 
state, and so we look with pity on an old maid." 

" I do not," said Frances, " and I cannot see why it should 
be so, unless in a community where marriage is the crown of a 
woman's life. If marriage is to be so regarded, then the condi- 
tions of her existence must be changed." 

" Just so," said Florian ; " and she must be permitted to do 
half the wooing in order to prevent unhappy and unnecessary 
blunders." 

" I do not fancy such reconstruction," she answered, smiling. 
" No doubt there are those who wish for it, but they are not 
men. Who desires a woman for his wife should come and sue. 
And a true woman will wait for the suing." 

" And will you ? " he said, with a sidelong look of laughter. 
But she had turned away, and his tender manner was entirely 
lost on her. He became more marked jn his addresses after 
that, however, and Peter became correspondingly sad and noisy. 
He told his story to Paul. 

" I'll die before I see her married to him," he groaned, pacing 
the attic. " I'll kill somebody." 



i885-J SOLITARY ISLAND. 239 

"Kill yourself; you'll do as well as anybody," suggested 
the poet, who lay upon the bed, preoccupied and pale, " or write 
an article on him." 

" If they'd only publish it," said Peter, " what a blast I'd give 
him ! I wouldn't leave even a gizzard in him. But he is too 
big a gun to be shot at except in the surest way. O fiends 
and divils ! but this is too much for me." 

" Have a drink?" said Paul, coming to the rescue by instinct. 

" Where, b'y, where ? " And being shown the repository of the 
bottle, he pounced on it with shouts of joy. " Ah ! the tears of 
Erin ! Distilled in America's fair land of freedom. The only 
stream that can sink the sorrows of an Irishman. Long life to 
ye, Paul ! But ye're lookin' pale, poor lad." 

"I saw something hideous yesterday evening,"* Paul said, but 
Peter did not catch the words and went on drinking and talking. 

The poet seemed feverish and restless after the steady work 
of the day, and the incident to which he alluded as hideous had 
not been without its effect on him. He was returning from a 
tiresome interview with a manager the previous evening, and 
stopped for a moment to look in at a shop-window, when he be- 
came conscious of some one staring at him rudely from within. 
He looked up. The same disagreeable face which had haunted 
Washington and Clayburg so unpleasantly had fastened its in- 
tent, evil gaze on him, and, like the stronger-nerved Florian, he 
shivered under the cruel glance. Although he went on his way 
cheerfully afterwards, he did not know what a power this face 
had of reproducing itself in the memory until it had remorse- 
lessly haunted him twenty-four hours. It came up at every turn 
of thought, luminous and frightful. 

" I wonder what it means ? " said Paul, depressed. Peter had 
been speaking with an energy born of liquor, and had brought 
down his fist several times on the table after asserting that some- 
thing was diabolical. "What does it mean?" cried he. "It 
means that yer no man, or ye wouldn't sit there and see him 
walk off with Frances before yer two eyes, you omadhaun ! " 

" Who? " said the poet in wide-eyed wonder. 

" That gizzard, of course," snarled Peter. 

" On that track again, -hey ? Pshaw, Peter ! I don't care for 
Frances, nor she for me. We couldn't live on the same floor 
without quarrelling." 

" Before marriage, perhaps," said Peter, " but after " 

A knock at the door interrupted him, and he opened it to ad- 
mit the servant bearing a card for Mr. Rossiter. 



240 



SAINT AGNES. 



[May, 



" Read it," said Paul. 
" Peter took up the card and read : 

"'Mr. Wallace's compliments to Mr. Rossiter. Would he 
favor Mr. Wallace by coming down to his room to meet the 
Count Vladimir Behrenski, a noted litterateur anxious to make 
Mr. Rossiter's acquaintance? ' What new trick is this ? " 

" I'm going down," said Paul ; and he went. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



SAINT AGNES. 



HER face was like the face of latter spring, 

Her fresh, cool body's gracious flowering 

With buds of only twelve green summers bloomed ; 

But when the martyrs were to tortures doomed 

They brought her forth unto the pagan shrine 

To offer sacrifice with fire and wine. 

And when they led her to the altar there 

She seemed so small before it, and so fair, 

That many pitied her and would have saved 

And bore her homeward, though the great gods raved 

There in the temple at the impious deed ; 

For she was straight and slender like a reed, 

With long, smooth hair of gold looped up and bound, 

With light lips like the rims of vases round, 

And sloping cheeks and delicate, deep eyes. 

And when the incense smoke began to rise 

Above the swinging urn whose triple chains 

She held, she saw the gathering vapor-veins 

Obscure the altar and the walls. And there 

She saw the face of Christ, and then, soft prayer 

Being in her lips, the censer lost her care : 

Its cup of polished brass, with carven bands 

Of leaves and flowers, fell from her loosened hands 

And spilled its coals across the marble floor. 

Remembering then what she had learned before, 



1885.] SAINT AGNES. 241 

She touched her forehead and her beating breast 

And either shoulder, and herself she blest. 

Then discontented murmurs swelled around, 

And one gave orders that she should be bound. 

O marvellous sweet maiden standing there, 

With thin, close lips and smooth and shining hair, 

Like some mute Dryad, prayer and praise we render: 

Professor of the Faith and its defender, 

More than all learned men from then till now, 

Even more than warrior Charlemagne, wast thou ! 

They bound the bracelets on her arms, but they 

Were far too large, and on her would not stay ; 

Which seeing, some of those around her wept, 

And fain would have her from the torture kept. 

Half-insane with much blood and careless lust, 

The judge gave orders that she should be thrust 

Before the people naked ; and she blushed, 

But kept stern lips, and said, when all was hushed 

And ere they stripped her, " Christ will guard his own." 

And when she to the populace was shown, 

The people, having little love for kings, 

Nursing revolt, and hiding bitter things 

Within their hearts for ever, would not look. 

But one rudfc fellow, from the dung-hills shook 

Perhaps, or by the gutters floated down 

That drain the poisons of the middle town 

One of those craven creatures who have been 

The strength of tyrants always even then 

Did turn his eyes upon her, when a light 

Flamed quickly on him, blasting all his sight. 

Then she was offered many pleasant things, 

Luxurious couches and bright marriage-rings ; 

But she refused them all, and so she died. 

May we behold her yet who here abide ! 



VOL. XLI. 16 



242 A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. [May, 



A RECENT IRISH NOVEL* 

EVEN fiction is an Irish grievance. Where fiction does not 
misrepresent Ireland it leaves it severely alone. We speak, of 
course, of current fiction and that which has become classic. 
The Banims, Gerald Griffin, Kickham, and Maria Edgeworth 
are dead ; besides, with the exception of Miss Edgeworth, these 
writers never became the fashion. What Irish or Irish- American 
ladies not to speak of ladies who have nothing Irish about them 
read Banim or Griffin to-day ? Banim and Griffin are not 
represented in the Franklin Square or the Seaside Libraries ; 
nor is Charles Kickham, nor even Rosa Mulholland. " The 
Duchess " is, and Miss Laffan, and Anthony Trollope (who some- 
times took in Irish jobs with his journey-work), and the authoress 
of The Queen of Connaught. Some of Lever's works, too, main- 
tain their vogue. All of these Lever, Laffan, Trollope, and the 
others are read because there is something either grotesque or 
malicious in their treatment of Irish subjects. The Collegians and 
Crohore of the Bill-Hook dealt with a period^that is past and gone, 
'tis true. So did Harry Lorrequer and Charles O' M alley. But 
The Collegians and Crohore were faithful pictures of Irish life they 
are read no more. Lorrequer and O' M alley are caricatures, and 
they are still popular. " The Duchess " can hardly be accused 
of malevolence, or of anything else, indeed, save of going to Ire- 
land merely for the oddity of the thing ; her characters are not 
Irish people, but English people who live in Ireland. Apart 
from this her books are bright and genial it is possible to see 
why they are read. So much cannot be said for books of the 
type of The Queen of Connaught, which are the work of that 
kind of stupidity that the French call bttise. The Irish, accord- 
ing to these books, are so steeped in whiskey as to be mistakable 
for Scotch, and they are dressed in " the usual blue bobtail 
coat with brass buttons, knee-breeches, and brimless chimney-pot 
hat." In The Land-Leaguers, which death did not permit him to 
finish, Mr. Trollope lost his usually level head, as the most level- 
headed Englishman is likely to do when he gets on an Irish 
topic. As for Miss Laffan, she is an Irish lady, and until now has 
been the ablest living writer who has not gone outside Ireland 

* The Wearing of the Green. By Basil. London : Chatto & Windus ; New York : 
Franklin Square Library. 



1885.] A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. 243 

for material. But she has been beset by some of the vices of the 
worst school of French realism. Her admirable powers of de- 
scription and of social portraiture are hampered by a desire to 
appear cynical thus spoiling the only quality that gives her 
longer works value, since in the attempt to maintain the interest 
of anything longer than a short story she is an acknowledged 
failure. Indeed, her cynicism, whether real or affected, is often 
so overdone as to be repulsive. 

How is it that no novelist has arisen to do for contemporane- 
ous Ireland what, say, Tourgu6nieff has done for contempora- 
neo'us Russia ? Much might have been expected from the author 
of Knocknagow and Sally Kavanagh books which are not at all 
appreciated as they ought to be had not the cowardly sufferings 
to which he was subjected early broken down the physical 
prowess of that gifted and gentle being. Exquisite as some of 
Miss Mulholland's stories are, such as The Wild Birds of Killee vy, 
they will be voted by the taste of the day as romantic and want- 
ing in actuality (though we notice in the Irish Monthly the open- 
ing chapters of a new story that promises to be in a different 
vein). Another writer who has attempted an Irish novel has 
been Mrs. E. O'Shea Dillon, author of Dark Rosaleen (London, 
1884); but she is only semi-sympathetic, and has evidently been 
so long or so far removed from Ireland as to have lost touch of 
its pulse. 

Is it from lack of capable Irish writers, then, that the modern 
Irish novel remains yet to be written ? That can hardly be the 
case, for a novelist of the highest rank is Mr. Justin McCarthy, 
and a novelist of only less popularity in England is Mr. Rich- 
ard Dowling. The simple fact is, the Irish novel does not "pay." 
Ireland has no national centre. The publishers are all in Lon- 
don. It is to London the Irish literary man must go with his 
wares, and his wares must be suitable to the London market or 
they will not be negotiable. Irish goods are a drug in the Eng- 
lish market ; or, if Irish goods are offered at all, they must be 
dressed up so as to please the English taste. English notions are 
fixed about Ireland and the Irish ; and these notions must not be 
done violence to. The novelist who has to consider his bread 
and butter must avoid Ireland and the Irish altogether, or else 
truckle to these notions. Thus in only one book of Mr. Justin 
McCarthy's (his best, by the way) is the hero an Irishman, and 
even this is an Anglo-Irish, not an Irish, novel. Mr. Bowling's 
Mystery of Killard, a story of weird power which Victor Hugo 
might have written, is the least read of his books, though it is 



244 A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. [May, 

easily the best. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that this 
comparative want of success is due to the novel being wholly an 
Irish novel. 

It is therefore that the appearance of a novel of considera- 
tion which may be regarded as a protest against this state of 
things, is a somewhat notable circumstance. Such a novel is 
The Wearing of the Green, by " Basil " the author remaining 
concealed behind a nom-de-guerre. Of course there have been 
other books that may be regarded as protests in a similar sense, 
some written even recently, such as a romance called Ill-Won 
Peerages, by M. L. O'Byrne (Dublin : Gill & Son). But the lite- 
rary quality of such books, excellent though they be in intention 
and even in matter, is generally crude to the verge of barbarism. 
Whatever gold there may be among them is yet in the state of 
ore. But The Wearing of the Green is the work of a singularly 
strong hand ; and it comes from the English market : a fashion- 
able London firm publishes it. It is not by any means a perfect 
novel. Indeed, it has many serious blemishes as a -work of art. 
It "protests too much" for a novel, and it offends good taste 
more than once, for instance. But it is an honest book, and it is 
written with power and with a sympathetic understanding of the 
Irish character. It is, above all, a novel of promise. If the 
author will be so self-sacrificing as to confine himself to Irish 
subjects, and if he will practise literary self-restraint and go 
slowly, there is reason to entertain high expectations of his 
future. He has the power of holding the reader with his narra- 
tive, of making dramatic contrasts and combinations of char- 
acter, and those two most essential qualities in an Irish novelist 
humor and a delicate vein of pathos. He can write a nervous 
and pointed .English style, too, which (when he gets rid of the 
amateurish habit of disjointing it with quotations) is of itself capa- 
ble of attracting attention. " Basil," in short, appears to be a 
well-equipped novelist who understands Ireland and is prepared 
to write about it. What will be the result? 

The plot of The Wearing of the Green is slight. A young 
English tourist in Ireland, Reid Summers by name, finds himself 
benighted, and is hospitably entertained at the house of an Irish 
: gentleman, Mr. Miles Wyndham. Young Summers falls in love 
at first sight with Mr. Wyndham's daughter Norah, one of the 
sweetest and freshest heroines we have met in a novel for many 
a day. Norah and Reid Summers overhear a trio of moon- 
lighters in a ruin plotting the murder of Summers, whom they 
mistake for a Castle official, and by her presence of mind and 



1885.] A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. 245 

courage she saves his life no matter how. Mr. Wyndham and 
Norah accept an invitation to go on a visit to Summers' father's 
place, Springthorpe Towers, in Yorkshire. The incident of this 
invitation and its acceptance is conceived in false taste. So is 
the character of Mrs. Wyndham, Norah's mother a silly shrew 
who serves no purpose in the story, and whose vulgarity, and 
what it exacts from her husband and daughter, jar very unplea- 
santly on the impression made by these two charming' people. 
The adventures of Norah and her father among the Summers 
family make an important portion of the book. Norah, of course, 
has her Irish lover, to whom she is true Maurice Studdert, an 
ardent patriot, a Land-Leaguer, who becomes a member of Parlia- 
ment : a thoroughly wholesome, suggestive, elevated type. We 
are not giving here even an outline of the plot, which is full of 
action, nor of the minor characters, of whom there are plenty. 

The bringing together of such opposites as the Wyndhams, 
father and daughter, and the Summers family makes a very 
strong situation. At first sight it may be thought that, in the 
author's hands, it has been made too strong the contrast too 
violent for art. But this is a novel of protest rather than an 
artistic novel, and reflection will convince that the situation is 
anything but unreal. The author means Miles Wyndham and 
his daughter to be taken as representative Irish people, and the 
Summers family to be taken as representative English people. 
When an author endeavors to express so great a generalization 
as the character of a nation by means of particular individuals, 
he faces a great difficulty. His problem is not, What is an Irish 
or an English type? but, What is the Irish or the English type ? 
The type of a national character should possess in a marked 
way those traits which are found oftenest among the individuals 
of a nation. Do the Summers family make such a type of Eng- 
lish character, and the Wyndhams such a type of Irish char- 
acter? We believe they do. All Englishmen are not like Mr. 
Summers pere. But the traits of Mr. Summers, and of his son, 
and of his wife and daughter are more common among English 
people than any other traits. All Englishmen are not John 
Bulls, nor are all the French bourgeoisie Jacques Prudhommes ; 
nevertheless, John is the most English of Englishmen, and* 
Jacques is the pink of a bourgeois. 

Miles Wyndham is a typical Irish gentleman. You will meet 
a hundred of his kind in a day's journey in any part of southern 
Ireland; though not among the class to which Miles is repre- 
sented as belonging : it was, perhaps, a slip to have made Miles 



246 A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. [May, 

a landlord, for he is anything but a fair representative of Irish 
landlordism. The Grand Monarque is credited with the saying 
that the most captivating manner was that of the Irish gentle- 
man. Miles is no courtier, but he is certainly a captivating per- 
son. His warm-heartedness, his free-handedness, his easy grace, 
his bright wit and genial humor might be said to carry one by 
storm, only that it is impossible to associate his simpleness and 
utter want of self-consciousness with carrying by storm. In 
addition there is his dreamy idealism, which he would be no 
Celt and be without that " something so warm and sublime in 
the core of an Irishman's heart " of which Byron sings. His 
daughter is even more of an idealist than he is himself, for she 
has been coached in her politics by her patriot lover. Her heart 
burns with resentment for the wrong and misconception to 
which her country is a victim, and it glows with dreams for 
Ireland's future. Withal she is the sweetest, womanliest of girls. 
The tenderness of the relations between her and her father is 
very beautifully shown. 

We wonder if the author is conscious of what he has 
achieved in these two characters ? They represent some of the 
highest qualities of the Irish temperament some of those quali- 
ties which make the analogy between the -Celtic and the Greek 
temperaments so striking. It may be deemed scarcely just to 
contrast such a pair with such offensive people as the English 
representatives in the book. But it must be allowed that the traits 
of the Wyndhams are those which are most noticed in the Irish 
race, while those of the Summers family are those most noticed in 
, the Anglo-Saxon. It is a violent contrast between idealism and 
materialism, but that is the contrast between the Irish and the 
English peoples a contrast, by the way, in which lies the secret 
of the great Anglo- Irish difficulty and there are enough disci- 
ples of Matter-of-Fact to occasion a lively difference of opinion 
as to which party suffers by the contrast. At any rate, where 
The Wearing of the Green differs from other Irish novels is in the 
substitution of the aggressive for the whining method. It at- 
tacks the British character openly perhaps inconsiderately and 
it does not apologize for the Irish character. 

Mr. Reid Summers, the young tourist who falls in love with 
Norah, finds it hard to understand the way in which Miles 
Wyndham puts himself out to entertain him while Summers is 
his guest and characteristically interprets it : 

" The hospitality was not English ; no English host would put himself 
out as much for his dearest friend as Miles Wyndham had for a casual 






1885.] A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. 247 

stranger. Yet the English were the most hospitable people in the world. 
Therefore there must have been something besides a mere impulse of hos- 
pitality to account for Miles Wyndham's generous reception of him. This 
something Mr. Summers was at no loss to discover, though he might have 
been at a loss to define it. It was certainly not that his host thought him 
a good match for his daughter, since the father plainly regarded his 
daughter as the merest child. Putting aside this motive altogether, and 
that of hospitality in part, there remained the eagerness to win the good 
opinion of one of a higher civilization and race which Englishmen met with 
in every quarter of the world in France even, even in Germany ; and, & 
fortiori, in Ireland." 

A fuller reading of the contrasted nationalities, as they appear 
to the author, is given in the views of Father MacNamara, the 
parish priest: 

" He [Father MacNamara] had known both races in the rough the Eng- 
lish agricultural laborer and the Irish and on the whole he considered that 
the English peasant, notwithstanding centuries of fair and fostering treat- 
ment, was more akin to the brute than the Irish peasant after centuries of 
such ferocious ill-usage as no other nation had ever suffered from a civilized 
conqueror. The English agricultural laborer in Father Mac's experience was 
almost without a spark of intelligence, religion, morality, or imagination ; 
dull, sullen, selfish, sensual ; accurately represented by the Caliban which 
Punch, with a curious infelicity, considers the most appropriate personifi- 
cation of the Irish peasantry. For the Irish peasantry, in Father Mac's 
experience, was the very reverse of brutal, either in intelligence, morality, 
imagination, or appetite ; was, in truth, less like what Caliban was than 
what Ariel would become after some centuries of subjection to Caliban. 
Irish savagery, horrible as it was and no one held it in deeper horror than 
Father Mac seemed to him less like the savagery of a wild beast broke 
loose than the savagery induced in a generous dog by ' dark keeping,' by 
log and chain, and by cruel and continued ill-usage. 

" On the other hand, Father Mac admitted that though the raw mate- 
rial of the Irish race might be finer than that of the English, the latter, 
with the advantage of centuries of manufacture, had been brought to re- 
semble a silk purse as nearly as the staple would allow." 

It will be seen that there is an accent of almost personal bitterness 
in the author's irony which adds to its pungency if it detracts 
from the artistic effect. " An Englishman can no more get out 
of himself," he remarks, " than off his own shadow ; and because 
he is not thinking of any one but himself he will sometimes say 
the most offensive things unintentionally and unconsciously." 
Such an Englishman is Mr. Summers, senior, a denser person 
than his son ; indeed, the author admits him to be " an unusually 
narrow specimen of an Englishman." 

" His own affairs were of planetary importance ; the affairs of others 
were of importance in proportion to their bearing upon his own. If you 
informed him, on your doctor's authority, that your hacking cough was a 
symptom of a galloping consumption, his first thought would be that he 



248 A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. [May, 

had no hacking cough ; his next, that consumption was supposed to be, in 
some extreme cases, infectious ; and his third, that you would feel an ab- 
sorbing interest in a cough he had last winter for a week or two, to which 
he would at once divert the conversation." 

Mr. Summers has read in one of the papers a sarcastic pro- 
posal to solve the Irish difficulty by letting the Irish fight it out 
till the fittest only survives, and he takes the proposal to have 
been meant in earnest : 

" During lunch Mr. Summers was the chief and almost the sole speaker, 
and his chief and almost sole topic was Ireland. He propounded to Miles 
his ' Kilkenny cats ' plan for the pacification of the country to arm, drill, 
and discipline in England the Protestant minority of the north, and then 
to let them loose, by a separation of the two countries, upon the unarmed 
and undrilled Catholics. 

"'Why, that's Bobadil's plan,' Miles replied, smiling good-humoredly. 

"' Hem ! I believe there was some suggestion of the kind in the news- 
papers,' Mr. Summers admitted, imagining Bobadil to have been the cor- 
respondent of the Pall Mall Gazette. Reid, feeling uncomfortable at the 
turn the conversation had taken, attempted to change it. 

'"You mustn't think, Mr. Wyndham 'he began. But his father was 
not going to allow his guest to imagine that he was indebted for his ideas 
to this newspaper person Miles had mentioned, and he therefore broke in 
with ' It has been an idea of mine as long as I can remember, probably 
before the gentleman Mr. Wyndham has mentioned was born. " Cut 
loose," I've always said " cut loose Ireland, and then let them fight it out 
among themselves." The Ulster men, having English and Scotch blood in 
their veins, would be more than a match for five times their number of 
Celts and Catholics.' 

"'Roman Catholics,' interjected Ann [the eldest Miss Summers] em- 
phatically, though in a low voice. She held Roman Catholics to be dissen- 
ters from the only true Catholic Anglican Church. The correction broke 
from Ann instinctively, for as a Sunday-school teacher she dwelt weekly to 
her class upon the essential difference between Catholic and Roman Catho- 
lic. Hence this presumptuous correction of Mr. Summers slipped from her 
almost mechanically, to her father's stupefaction and her own confusion. 
Mr. Summers, having looked at her for a moment as though he could hard- 
ly believe his ears, and having thus made every one at the table thorough- 
ly uncomfortable, resumed with a composure so perfect that, but for an 
access of pompousness in his manner, you would hardly have supposed 
that anything had happened. 

"'As I was saying, Mr. Wyndham, when I was interrupted, I should 
leave the Protestants to settle with the Catholics in Ireland, and not take 
the country back till it was well weeded.' 

"And watered ; for I suppose you'd have all the Catholics exterminat- 
ed ? ' Miles asked ingenuously, as one awaiting the response of an oracle. 

" ' All the disaffected Catholics certainly, most certainly ; for they can be 
governed only by the lash ; and the lash, sir, is un-English ; it has no place 
in the British Constitution.' 

" ' Except ' began Miles, only to be silenced by his host resuming his 
lecture. 



1885.] A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. 249 

" 'You cannot say, Mr. Wyndham, that we've not given you a fair trial. 
For centuries you've enjoyed all the privileges and blessings of British 
rule, and what is the result ? You've never been quiet for ten years to- 
gether not for ten years together! ' 

" ' I remember,' said Miles, speaking in the easy and measured way of 
one recalling a trivial incident of his own experience ' I remember being 
struck with an extraordinary instance of vitality and viciousness in an eel 
recorded in Boswell's Life of Johnson. As the doctor passed a fish-stall he 
overheard the fishmonger, who was skinning an eel alive, curse the uncon- 
scionable brute because it wouldn't lie still during the operation.' 

"Miles' manner was so much that of a man who was recounting a sim- 
ple incident in natural history, solely because of its intrinsic interest, that 
Mr. Summers, who was an exceedingly dense Boeotian, imagined that his 
guest wished to turn the conversation upon finding he had not an argu- 
mentative leg to stand on. Not ' to load a falling man,' therefore, he al- 
lowed Miles to make good his retreat, and even built a silver bridge to 
facilitate his escape. 

" ' Very interesting,' he said, nodding his head approvingly, 'and quite 
true. I remember when I was in Scotland one of the boatmen caught an 
eel,' etc., etc., etc." 

Maurice Studdert, Norah's lover, makes Miles' description of 
the Summers household the text for a fierce diatribe which sums 
up very well the author's aggressive view of the British charac- 
ter. He denounces the British for 

"their dulness and egotism; their self-complacency whether smug or 
pompous, always impregnable and always offensive; their insensibility to 
the feelings of others ; their incapacity to enter into others' ideas ; their 
Pecksniffian pose before the world as the model of all the virtues ; their 
Tartuffian preaching to all the world principles which they are the first 
themselves to transgress on the very slightest temptation or provocation ; 
their gross animalism and their sordid materialism. He painted England 
as a big, blind, gorbellied giantess trampling down in insolent scorn but 
as much through stupidity as through brutality peoples who were spiri- 
tually as superior to her as they were physically her inferior ; trampling 
down everything that was not good to eat, or that stood between her and 
something good to eat seeing no beauty in any flower that had not a pig- 
nut or potato for its root, and hearing in the lark's song only a suggestion 
of its juiciness in a pie." . 

It will be said that the Summers household is an exaggera- 
tion, a caricature. No doubt it is in one sense, and the reader 
who has had a personal acquaintance with some agreeable Eng- 
lish people will be the first to say so. But it is an exaggeration 
only in the sense that the less pleasant (though most common) 
traits of the British character are emphasized in the Summers 
household. In a well-bred British household the vulgarity of 
the Summers character will not be noticeable. But of " the 
great Middle Class" which is the body of the nation, and in 



250 A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. [May, 

whose praise English writers are never tired exerting themselves, 
the Summers family are only a pronounced type. Of that spirit 
which manifests itself daily in the British press and nightly in 
the debates of the House of Commons, and with which Ameri- 
cans who have met the British tourist on his travels through our 
own country are not wholly unacquainted, Mr. Summers and his 
family are an incarnation. A study of the Summers type throws 
an indispensable light on the English inability to cope with the 
Irish question, which arises from their total inability to under- 
stand the character of the people whom for seven hundred years 
they have been unsuccessfully endeavoring to rule. The other 
day there was a little controversy in the English Catholic press 
which brings an illustration nearer home to the readers of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD. Father Arthur Ryan, Dean of St. Patrick's 
College, Thurles, a cultured and high-minded Irish priest, wrote 
an exquisite little "Hymn to St. Patrick" for the temperance 
confraternity of which he is a zealous promoter. An English 
priest of high repute wrote to the London Tablet denouncing 
this hymn as an incitement to assassination because it contained 
the line, 

" Be near to guide the patriot's^hand," 

which, the English priest contended, could only mean to guide 
the hand of the dynamiter and steady the aim of the shooter of 
landlords ! * 

Nor must we consider Mr. Summers' satisfaction with himself 
over-done. We have Thackeray's authority for it that " there is 
no snob in existence that has such an indomitable belief in him- 
self [as ' the English Snob rampant ' ] ; that sneers you down all 
the rest of the world besides, and has such an insufferable, admi- 
rable, stupid contempt for all people but his own nay, for all 
sets but his own." An amusing illustration of the same spirit is 
to be found in the annotations of a recent English edition of 
Tacitus. In the twenty-fourth chapter of the Agricola Tacitus 
distinctly says that although the soil, climate, and general condi- 
tions of life in Hibernia differ very little from those of Britain, yet 
the ports and harbors of Ireland were better known to commerce 
and merchants.! On this passage the annotator, an Oxford 
scholar (Alfred T. Church, M.A.), remarks that by it Tacitus is 
made responsible for " a strange and unaccountable statement. 

* The hymn has since been issued by the League of the Cross Magazine in leaflet form, 
with the special blessing and approval of the Bishop of Southwark appended to it. 

tThe language of Tacitus is unmistakable : " Solum coelumque et ingenia cultusque homi- 
num haud multum Britannia differunt ; melius aditus portusque per commercia et negociatores 
cogniti." 



1885.] A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. 251 

We understand him to mean that, so far as he could speak on 
the matter, the climate and population of Hibernia resembled 
those of Britain, but that its coasts and harbors were better 
known than the island itself (!)... It would be absurd to suppose 
that it meant that the coasts of Hibernia were better known than those 
of Britain. Perhaps ' melius cogniti ' may rightly be rendered 
' are tolerably well known ' " (! !) If the Archangel Michael were 
to tell Mr. Summers that anything in Ireland compared to advan- 
tage with anything in England, Mr. Summers would smile supe- 
rior at the " absurdity," and charitably explain what the arch- 
angel really meant by his " strange and unaccountable statement." 
In the foregoing remarks we have dwelt only on the internation- 
al and quasi-political aspect of The Wearing of the Green, because 
that aspect has been specially interesting to us. But it would be 
unfair to leave the impression that the interest of the book cen- 
tred in that aspect. It does not by any means. Wit, humor, and 
pathos irradiate these pages in a manner unsurpassed by any 
living English novelist with whose works we are acquainted. 
Nor is the attention of the author given entirely to people of 
the educated classes. The character of the Irish peasantry of 
the peasantry who die of hunger is delineated with a master's 
touch. Indeed, there are two chapters dealing with peasant 
character, and we doubt if, for beauty and pathos, they have their 
superior in modern fiction. " There are two things which it is 
utterly impossible for any Englishman who has never lived in the 
west or south of Ireland to imagine the depth of the wretched- 
ness of the poor and the depth of their family affection." It is 
illustrative of this statement that these two chapters are written. 
Since they cannot be quoted in full, it is doing them an injury to 
make disjointed extracts. But we cannot refrain from giving 
the reader a specimen of their quality. Molly Morony has been 
given a hunch of " white " bread by the priest's housekeeper, and 
she resolves to share it with her playfellow and little brother, 
Mick. Mick is surly and protests he will not eat a bit of it. 

" Mick's surliness proceeded neither from sullenness nor self-sacrifice, 
but from a sense of honor. An implicit agreement, which had never once 
been expressed in words, had somehow of itself grown up between these 
two that each should share with the other any windfall that came in the 
way. Now, it happened sometimes that one, coming in for, in the other's 
absence, an apple, turnip, or similar luxury, was unable to refrain from 
devouring forthwith his or her moiety thereof ; and, in this case, the 
chance of the absentee getting the balance was slight. Sleeping hunger 
once roused would, as it were, in spite of the trustee's resistance, spring 
upon the remaining moiety and eat it with a guilty haste which left it half- 
untasted. t Now, their confession of this breach of compact was as implicit 



252 A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. [May, 

as the compact itself. The transgressor was shamefacedly silent about it 
in words, but made practical confession and reparation by the refusal of 
half the next godsend offered by the other. 

" Moljy knew at once, therefore, that Mick had eaten her half of what 
had last fallen to him, and she was glad very glad for a moment Mick's 
luck, whatever it was, couldn't have been as splendid as hers of this morn- 
ing this great hunch of white bread, the whole of which was now fairly 
hers ! But even while she devoured it greedily with her hungry eyes the 
thought that just because Mick's luck couldn't have been as great as hers 
she was taking an unfair advantage of him, gave her pause. Thrusting 
the bread impulsively behind her back, out of sight, she took to her heels 
[after Mick] to outrun temptation." 

Mick's scruples being overcome by the generous Molly, they 
snuggle together and share the bread. While they are enjoying 
the feast Molly suddenly says : 

" ' Ye niver tashte nothin', Mick, ye ate so fasht.' 

"'Shure I can't help it, whin I'm so hungry,' querulously. 

" 'An' /couldn't help it wansht,' replied Molly, with the air of one who 
had come out of gross darkness. ' But now I says a '' Hail Mary " betune 
aich bite whin it's white bread.' . . . Mick meditated for a moment upon this 
new rosar)', then tried it and gave it up, and of course disparaged what he 
despaired of attaining. 

" ' Shure ye can't think of it that way at all ' meaning by ' it ' the mor- 
sel, not the prayer, '/says 'em in bed whin I can't shleep wid the hunger, 
and they sinds me off almosht always.' " 

Mick's meal so revives his high animal spirits that he must 
climb to the top of a haystack to get a view. The voice of 
Dan Donelly, owner of the haystack, startles him, and the poor 
little man misses his footing, tumbles off the haystack, strikes 
against a jagged wall, and is picked up covered with blood, to 
Molly's frantic grief. Dan Donelly, a tender-hearted fellow car- 
ries him into the house, where his good wife restores him. 

"As she was sponging away the blood, preparatory to bandaging his 
wounds, she said pitifully to Dan, ' He's no shirt, the craythur ! ' 

" ' Shure it's at the wash,' cried Mick, with an Irish zeal for the family 
credit. 

'" Have "you only wan, Mick ?' asked Mrs. Donelly, relieved exceed- 
ingly to find him take notice of a matter in which he would have certainly 
shown no interest if he had been in great pain. 

" ' Arrah, Mrs. Donelly, would ye have a little boy have a tousand 
shirts ? ' cried Mick, in his eagerness (for the family's credit) to persuade 
her that he was sumptuously furnished with that article of dress, when his 
age was considered. Mrs. Donelly, laughing and crying at once, kissed 
him for answer." 

Mrs. Donnelly having spent some time quieting grief-stricken 
Molly turns away for a private talk with her husband : 
" ' He's a fine little_chap.' 



1885.] A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. 253 

"' He is so.' 

" 'Dan, I can't bear to think of his dying of the hunger.' 
'" Shure they'll have the Land League at their back now,' replied Dan, 
knowing well what was coming. 

" ' Yerra, what is it for eight of thim ? Wan male aich a day ? It 'id 
take more nor wan male to keep him out of his coffin now, he so far gone.' 
Dan glanced toward the bed, and his kind heart melted at his eyes. He 
could see only Mick's little wasted arm which was wound round Molly's 
neck for she, her bread and milk untasted, was kissing him in the mo- 
therly way that the children of the poor learn so early. 
" ' Is it to keep him all out ye mane, Mary ? ' 
"'Till he gets a futtin' anyway, Dan.' 

" ' Ach, I know how it 'ill be. He's got his futtin' already, Mary' 
meaning in her,heart. 

" ' Shure the bit he'll ate is nothin', an' he'll be aisy kep' in shirts any- 
how' smiling tearfully, but thankfully, at Dan, knowing that her point 
was gained and that Mick was adopted. 

" In explanation of this impulsive adoption of the boy we must mention 
that Dan, notwithstanding his hayrick, was poor and struggling, and there- 
fore generous ; and that adoption of this kind is nearly as common in Ire- 
land as infanticide in England. 

" While this conference between Dan and his wife was proceeding, 
Mick's mind was a curious study or would have been a curious study to 
any one unfamiliar with Irish ways of thought. He was distressed by 
Molly's distress; he was distressed also by the pitifulness of his own state, 
as reflected in Molly's face as in a mirror; but besides and above these 
disquietudes he was distressed by his emaciation being, as he fancied, 
made a reproach to his father and mother and the family generally. Such, 
at least, was the impression the doctor's jocose remarks upon it to Mrs. 
Donelly left on his mind. When, therefore, Mrs. Donelly and Dan, after 
their conference, approached the bed, he hurriedly hid his weazened little 
arm under his tattered jacket. Mrs. Donelly, not noticing this movement, 
raised his jacket to justify herself to Dan by showing him the child's ema- 
ciation. Poor Mick looked shamefacedly from one pitying face to the 
other and then said earnestly, 'Indeed, Mrs. Donelly, I was always a thin lit- 
tle chap. I'd niver be nothin' if I ate iver so much.' Whereupon Mrs. 
Donelly, with a quickness at once Irish and maternal, read his thoughts, 
and, replacing the jacket, said with much presence of mind, 'And it's just 
the same wid Dan here, Mick,' pointing to her husband, who, in sooth, was 
as thin as a lath. 'He might ate- a whole cow and ye never know it, bar- 
rin' the horns stuck out somewhere.' 

" At this whimsical idea Mick, and eke Molly, laughed heartily, and 
Mick's sensitiveness as to the family credit was soothed." 

The mother of Mick and Molly is dying of famine-fever and 
is about to be evicted. Father Mac visits her. 

" Now, generally speaking, Father Mac scolded his people sharply and 
incessantly, affecting in words a harshness that every thought of his'heart 
and every act of his life belied. He dressed shabbily, lived meagrely, and 
felt remorse if he treated himself sometimes to a book : because his people 



254 A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. [May, 

needed every penny he could scrape together. But, as we say, in words he 
was generally caustic and crabbed. 

" When, however, he stood in Mrs. Morony's hovel and his eyes had 
got used to the darkness and the smoke for the door was the chief win- 
dow and the sole chimney he was in no mood to take the poor woman to 
task for her unreasonable arraignment of the law of the land. Plainly she 
was too ill to be scolded ; and, as Father Mac had no intermediate manner 
between cynicism and tenderness, he dealt very gently with her. Besides, 
the earthen floor, here and there in a puddle through leaks in the thin' 
thatch ; the little children sitting, as though in extreme old age, crouched 
over the fire, still and sad and listless, and their mother looking at them 
from her bed of straw with the haggard fear in her face that death was 
about to take her from them now, as the law had taken from them their 
father this morning and might to-morrow strip them of their home these 
things moved Father Mac, albeit not unused to them. 

"After she had told him her troubles in words, and her fears in that 
look she fastened upon the children, he turned away for a few moments in 
silence to busy himself unpacking the basket he had brought. Plainly the 
first thing to be done was to rouse the children out of their stupor, that 
their mother might no longer read all she feared written already in their 
forlorn little faces. 

" ' Well, children,' he said cheerily, speaking in a strong brogue, as he 
always did when he wished to make humble people or little children feel 
quite at their ease with him ' well, children, did ye say yere prayers this 
mornin' ? ' 

'"We did, yere rivirence,' all cried together in a kind of school chorus. 

" ' That's right. An' ye said, l> Give us this day our daily bread," I'll be 
bound, now ? ' interrogatively, and as though venturing upon an acute and 
daring guess. 

" Chorus, ' We did, yere rivirence.' 

" ' See that, now ! ' he cried triumphantly ; ' I knew ye did. Ay,' he 
added, solemnly pointing upward, ' and Somebody else knew it too, and 
he has sent it. Think of that, children ! He has sent it !' looking impres- 
sively from one wondering little face to another. ' Come here to me, 
Patsey.' Patsey got off a sod of turf and came toddling toward him, rubbing 
the back of his hand shyly across his eyes. 

'' ' There ! ' cried Father Mac, handing him a thick piece of thickly but- 
tered bread. ' What do ye say for it ? ' 

"'Thanks, yere rivirence,' pulling his forelock. Father Mac affected to 
be shocked by shaking his head and by making many times that sucking 
noise of the tongue against the palate. 

"'O Patsey!' he exclaimed reprovingly, 'ye must give it to Peggy, 
and see what she says for it.' 

" Patsey, wofully disappointed to the brink of tears, handed the piece 
over to Peggy, who, uncertain of her own tenure, was discreet enough to 
express her thanks merely by a mute curtsey. 

" ' See now, Patsey, she doesn't thank you for it, because you only 
brought it to her; and so you mustn't thank me for it, but Him that sent it 
to you. Who ? ' he cried, holding up one finger interrogatively. 

" Chorus, with really wonderful quickness, cried together, ' God, yere 
rivirence.' Then Father Mac handed Patsey another piece. 



1885.] A RECENT IRISH NOVEL. 255 

" ' An' now what do ye say, Patsey ? ' 

"'Bless us 'the beginning of the Catholic grace before meat, which 
not Patsey only but the whole chorus finished off glibly. Upon this the 
bread and butter with milk, poured into a bowl out of a wine-bottle, was 
distributed ; Mick and Molly's shares being reserved for them till they re- 
turned home. 

"Then Father Mac turned to their mother to find her crying quietly ; 
for the well-worn channel of tears had become the natural outlet of every 
feeling joy, gratitude, and love, as well as grief. Having poured some 
wine into the cup of a flask, he raised it to her lips, but she, disregarding 
the wine, pressed her chill lips with a kind of timid fervor to his hand. 
After she had drunk the wine the father spoke to her about the love of 
God in so loving a way that his manner helped her more than his words to 
realize his homily. In any lecture a specimen of the thing lectured on is 
more effective than a world of words about it. But the homily was brought 
to a sudden end by its very effectiveness. For poor Mrs. Morony said in 
the middle of it sincerely, and even fervently : 

" ' He has been good to me, yere rivirence. He has so. He's kep' us 
out of the workhouse.' 

" Now, Father Mac, like every clergyman of experience, had found out 
long since that, as a rule, those were least grateful to God to whom he had 
given everything, and those were most grateful to him from whom he had 
taken everything ; that, for example, if one could see the cloud of curses 
rising each moment to heaven, he would find that, as a rule, they proceed- 
ed out of the mouths of those to whom God had given everything the 
young, the strong, the rich, the happy ; and, oh the other hand, if one could 
see the incense cloud of blessings rising each moment to heaven, he would 
find that, as a rule, they proceeded from the mouths of those from whom 
God had taken everything the aged, the sick, the suffering, the poor, and 
him that hath no helper. Though this, we say, was true to triteness in 
Father Mac's experience, yet there was something in the present instance 
of it which silenced him. That this poor woman, with her heart so full of 
foreboding for her children, should yet have room in it for fervent thank- 
fulness that she and hers were still outside the workhouse, made the good 
father feel somehow ashamed of his successful preaching. 

" ' I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 

With coldness still returning : 
Alas ! the gratitude of men 
Hath oftener left me mourning.'" 

From the hand which can give such pictures as these we 
have a right to expect much. It is to be hoped that the author 
of The Wearing of the Green will stick to Irish subjects, even if 
they are not fashionable. He can make them fashionable, if he 
goes on as he has begun. Tourgueniefif was banished to the 
steppes for the Diary of a Sportsman, and his Fathers and Sons 
offended both the fathers and sons and the Nihilists to whom he 
gave their nickname. Yet what novelist for the last dozen years 
has been more fashionable in continental Europe, from Paris to 
St. Petersburg, than Tourgu6niefif? 



256 KATHARINE. [May, 

KATHARINE. 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

ON one bright morning- toward the end of the following 
April Katharine's quiet wedding took place in her mother's lit- 
tle parlor. Few witnesses were present, and Mrs. Danforth's 
minister performed the ceremony. There had been some slight 
discussion as to the propriety of asking Mr. White to undertake 
this task, but the mother's aversion to the plan had proved invin- 
cible. 

" It is bad enough to have him mixed up in the affair in any 
shape or manner," she protested. " If I could get rid of inviting 
him to be present even, I should be heartily glad of it. 'But as 
to having his name go into the papers along with that of your 
father's child, and setting all the church-folks to gossiping about 
it, I simply won't allow it. I can put up with a good deal, but 
there is a limit! " 

" It is a matter of exceedingly slight importance," Mr. Gid- 
dings said afterward to Katharine, with whom this scheme had 
originated. " As a matter of fact, I never expect to feel a more 
effectually married man than I did the day I persuaded your 
mother to relinquish her hold upon you. I think she is quite 
right to please herself about all the rest. White is a very good, 
fellow. He won't mind it much, I fancy ; and as for me, I shall 
not mind it at all." 

" It is I who dislike it," said the girl. " There are so few 
things that I can say yes to with all my heart and mind that, 
when I am able for once to do so, I hate to hear any jarring 
note mingle with it. I never agree with Mr. White when he 
makes positive affirmations on his own side, but he is at least 
our friend, and to all his criticism of the other, as it is repre- 
sented by the minister, I assent entirely. Why should he be 
asked to meddle? What possible relation does he sustain to you 
or me ?" 

" What a thorough-going little Puritan it is ! " smiled Louis. 
" You are your mother's own daughter, my child ! Suppose we 
agree to accept him as the incarnation of her conscience, and of 
our anxiety to soften as much as possible what she is going to 
feel as a heavy deprivation. But for the cordial way in which 



1885.] KA THARINE. 257 

she has taken to Mrs. Kitchener and the -children, and my cer- 
tainty that her liking for them cannot but increase on further ac- 
quaintance, I suspect I might have been tempted to relent at the 
last moment and give up going abroad at present. It may be 
long before you see her again. I won't answer for myself when 
my back is fairly turned." 

" I knew a girl once," said Katharine, " who told me, just be- 
fore her marriage, that one of the things she looked forward to 
with most satisfaction was the liberty of choice she meant to 
claim thereafter between homoeopathic globules and castor-oil in 
case of sickness. Her father was an old-school doctor. I 
laughed ; but I thought then, and I think now, that it was only a 
very cheap and prosaic way of stating a real difficulty. I won- 
der whether I shall ever feel myself a unit able to act directly 
on my own convictions, or to refuse to act at all, if that seem 
good to me?" 

" Whether you will ever escape your own shadow, in short? 
One might, perhaps, in a world without a sun. The most ob- 
vious shape it takes I hope to see you reasonably free from here- 
after ; but the dualism goes deeper. I doubt whether its exter- 
nal form is really its most annoying." 

" I know it is not. Nine times in ten I find myself unable to 
pass a moral judgment, even in trifles, which my reason will not 
cavil at and call in question. I never see a fly entangled in a 
web without setting it free, but I never know just what right I 
had to break up the spider's house and deprive him of his din- 
ner. I could not have brought myself to act as Anna did last 
summer in the matter of her marriage, and yet I could not as- 
sign to myself one really satisfactory reason why she should not 
do so if it pleased her." 

" You choose your examples in a characteristic fashion," said 
Louis, with a laugh. " Given a cold soul, a rapid circulation, and 
a lively curiosity, and you don't know what right you have to 
)bject to their working out their natural results. I don't know 
that I care about trying to .enlighten you. But if you think you 
je dilemmas in matters of such dimensions, I don't wonder that 
zigzag I wonder, rather, why you don't at once stand 
still. You can't escape your heart, you can't escape your con- 
science or your instincts. They go straight to their mark by 
virtue of their nature. But the mind is another thing. It is 
icted on by a thousand influences, it ' looks before and after, and 
)ines for what is not ' ; and the safest way to treat it in certain 
;mergencies is to recognize it for the balky horse it is, put on 
VOL. XLI. 17 



258 KATHARINE. [May, 

blinders, and give common sense and will the reins. The con- 
duct of life, for you and me at least, who start fair, ought not 
to be a problem of very great perplexity." 

" If only," sighed Katharine, " there were guide-posts to di- 
rect the will ! I don't want to close the eyes of my understand- 
ing. I want to harness it to my inclinations and drive them both 
together." 

" Yes, I see. You ' want to be an angel.' That is pure 
modesty, I assure you. Your crown and harp are plainly visi- 
ble to me already. But as to the ceremony which has brought 
about so much metaphysics, marriage, among civilized peoples, 
in its external form is a contract calling for certain formalities. 
Your mother's friend, to Avhom you object, is simply the minis- 
ter of the law in my eyes, and as such inoffensive. To her and to 
you he plainly symbolizes certain religious ideas which she accepts 
and you reject. The emotion you put into your rejection is proof 
positive that an affirmation of some sort underlies your denial. 
But so long as it takes no definite shape I recommend you to 
disregard it wherever it comes into the slightest danger of col- 
lision with the claims of affection and obvious duty. At the 
same time it is only fair to say that my only excuse for that 
piece of advice is my persuasion that it is altogether unneces- 
sary. I should never have been in a position to offer it, other- 
wise." 

Mrs. Danforth had made, at first, some natural objections to a 
plan which involved not alone the breaking up of her household, 
but the severing of all her old associations. Boat, strong as these 
objections were, they yielded to her conviction that she could 
not hope in any other way to be near her daughter for the future. 
It had finally been settled that she should resign her house to an 
incoming tenant as soon as possible after the marriage, and make 
a part of Mrs. Kitchener's family until Katharine's return. An 
acquaintance had been brought about between them during the 
winter which had proved mutually agreeable, though the wish 
was perhaps father to the thought in the mind of Mr. Giddings 
when he spoke of Mrs. Danforth's cordial acceptance of the 
younger woman. They grew to be exceedingly good friends in 
course of time, when each had learned to appreciate the sterling 
qualities of the other ; but, at present, regret over what was pass- 
ing from her was too prominent in Mrs. Danforth's mind to leave 
room for much more than passive acquiescence in what was to 
come. 

" She seems a good woman," she said to her daughter once 



1 885.] KATHARINE. 259 

during- the week preceding the wedding, which Mrs. Kitchener 
and her little ones passed beneath her roof. " And I always 
liked children about me. But I shall be like a cat in a 
strange garret. If only you would give up this foolish plan of 
going to Europe ! The greatest fortune that ever was left 
wouldn't tempt me to cross the Atlantic to get it, and here you 
two are going for nothing at all, so far as I can see. What more 
is there than sky and land and water wherever you go? and 
you have all that here." 

" We will take you with us, if you will go," returned Katha- 
rine. " There is time yet to secure your passage, if you can be 
tempted." 

" Not I, indeed ! " 

" Well, then, the other plan is the best in every way. Louis 
seems to feel in some manner responsible for Mrs. Kitchener's 
welfare. He says he promised to look after the children, but 
whether her husband or himself I could not quite make out. 
And he thinks she will make a home for you where you will be 
far more comfortable than you could be here alone or elsewhere. 
We shall probably come back within the year. What a pretty 
creature the little girl is, and how jealous of me ! She is the first 
child of her age who would not make friends with me at once." 

The mother lifted her eyebrows. 

"It is an old story," she said. " Two of a trade can't agree. 
She seems as much bewitched as you are, but she is younger and 
has more excuse." 

" Isn't one's husband excuse enough?" said the girl playfully. 

" He is not your husband yet, but even if he were it would 
not be. ' The Lord thy God is a jealous God/ remember ! You 
cannot stake everything on one of his creatures, in the way you 
are doing, without losing." 

Then, catching sight of her daughter's face, and a certain ex- 
pression that contracted the lines of her mouth, " You don't like 
to hear that," she went on, " but it is true. You think now that 
you can get along without religion and without God, but, I warn 
you, you will see the day that you will find you cannot. There 
comes to every one of us a time when everything tumbles to 
pieces about us and leaves us face to face with the one reality 
there is. It came to me, and yet I never ran the risk that you 
do, for I never made an idol in my life. I neither denied God 
nor turned my back upon him." 

The girl sighed. The subject lay so near her heart that, ex- 
cept with her lover, it was not easy for her to touch upon it. 



260 KATHARINE.- [May, 

Yet her mother had spoken with the evident effort of a reserved 
nature, forcing itself from its accustomed reticence, and with so 
much feeling that to leave her altogether unanswered seemed 
impossible. 

" I never denied him," she said, in a voice so low that her 
listener barely caught it, " but I am not sure I never turned my 
back upon him." And there her confidences ended. 

When they were taking ship, after having fairly established 
Mrs. Danforth in her new abode, Richard Norton, who had been 
absent from home for several weeks, came on to New York to 
offer his congratulations and to say good-by. 

" It will not be for long," he said, " if all my schemes turn out 
according to my liking. 1 have been laying pipe for an assistant- 
surgeonship in the navy, and have just heard that my chance is 
good, providing I can answer for the result of the examinations ; 
and my doubts are reasonably small on that score. The Medi- 
terranean squadron would suit me to a nicety, and in that case we 
might hope to meet somewhere next fall. But it is quite on the 
cards that I may be sent cruising off into the China Sea or the 
South Pacific. I will let you know whenever the thing comes 
to a head." 

His was the last voice they heard that spoke of home the 
last familiar face they looked on before turning their backs on 
the past to enter the new life together. 

"He warned me once," said Katharine, straining her eyes to 
catch the last glimpse of him as the land receded, "that my lot 
in life would be to set up shrines, and his to bring the hammer 
to demolish them. But he helped lay the foundation-stones for 
the first one." 

Her husband laughed. " You hold out the cheerful prospect 
of a succession of them," he said. " It might be wise not to dis- 
pense with his offered services too soon." 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE American colony in Rome was very full the winter after 
the marriage of this pair of lovers. They arrived there early in 
December, but with a half-formed intention of wintering still 
further south. They had not been very eager sight-seers thus 
far, but from the first had turned somewhat aside from the 
beaten track, making short journeys, resting at discretion wher- 
ever the humor took them, and each finding in the other, not- 
withstanding their many points of sympathy and the perfect 



1885.] KATHARINE. 261 

rapport that existed between them, a terra incognita which pre- 
sented more attractions than any other. Rome grew on them, 
however, and would have chained them until the heats began, 
even had it not offered, in addition to its proper fascinations, the 
charm of agreeable acquaintances, and, in the case of Mr. Gid 
dings, the renewal of one or two old friendships. Katharine's 
health also began to show some traces of over-fatigue, and they 
speedily established themselves in pleasant quarters, giving their 
evenings to much lively social recreation, and dividing their 
days between churches, galleries and museums, and some de- 
sultory, often intermitted, but never quite neglected, study of cer- 
tain subjects in which Louis was interested, and in which his 
wife's intelligent aid had been of special service. 

The artistic coterie was particularly strong that year, at least 
in point of numbers. One of the most prominent members of it, 
distinguished not alone in art, but by a native force of character 
and strongly-marked individuality which made friends and ad- 
mirers for him among men whose sympathies lay for the most 
part outside that region, was George Marlow, a Maine man by 
birth, a figure-painter by profession, and just then occupied with 
a large commission which had fixed his residence for several 
months in the city of the Popes and Caesars. He had been for- 
merly a great ally of Louis Giddings, but they met now for the 
first time after a lapse of years, during which Marlow had taken 
to himself a wife in his native Kennebec, and become the proud 
father of a son whom he regarded in all seriousness as an infant 
prodigy. He was a man whose opportunities for culture in the 
ordinary sense had been more than usually limited, and, though 
he had been an intelligent reader, a close observer, and had a 
picturesque vigor of expression- which made him specially in- 
teresting, yet his sense of deficiency in certain elementary mat- 
ters was almost morbid. It showed itself, among other ways, in 
an ill-concealed pride in what he took to be the superior attain- 
ments of his wife, and a belief in her as an oracle in questions of 
what he called " education," which belonged to the simplicity of 
his artistic temperament and augured well for it, but was rather 
amusing none the less. 

Mrs. Marlow was a pretty woman, who returned her hus- 
band's admiration with great fervor, but, owing to her adoption 
of the same standards, believed in her own intellectual supe- 
riority even more firmly than he did himself. As a matter of 
fact she had taken the color of his opinions in a way that flatter- 
ed his marital pride exceedingly, but she did it by virtue of a 



262 KA THARINE. [May, 

chameleon-like quality of mind which promised less well for the 
permanence of the dye than for its present intensity. She had 
taught school in Augusta for two or three winters, and would 
probably never free herself from that particular variety of in- 
exact pronunciation produced by a long-continued devotion to 
the mild form of dissipation known as spelling-matches. They 
occupied an apartment directly over that which Giddings and 
his wife had taken, and, while the two men renewed their ancient 
intimacy with much satisfaction, Katharine, who for the first few 
days kept rather quiet within doors, found Mrs. Marlow's easy, 
superficial chat agreeably amusing. Her heart was a good deal 
better than her head, for it was genuine and kind, while the lat- 
ter presented a kaleidoscopic variety of ideas and impressions, 
caught up from books and conversation, and retained without 
assimilation. 

" There are two distinct sets here among the English-speak- 
ing people," she said one day. " Pagans and Papists, George 
calls them. Then there is another, not very large, which vibrates 
between the two like the Lindsays, for instance, and Maria Raw- 
son. I wish she were here just now, for she always devotes her- 
self to new people of course with the view of seeing what she can 
do in the matter of conversions, but making herself amazingly 
useful and entertaining at the same time by way of preliminary. 
But she went off on what she calls a pilgrimage last week, and 
won't be back for several days. George told her her pilgrimage 
was a pure humbug ; that she ought to have put peas in her shoes 
and walked, instead of going off by rail. There is no making her 
angry, however. She might better have stayed here and minded 
her work. She will never get her picture done at this rate." 

" Is she a painter ? " 

" After a fashion. She has been working at art for two or 
three years, and came on with us this season to study under 
George's direction. But she is beginning to waver in her alle- 
giance since Lindsay opened his studio." 

" Who is Lindsay ? " 

. " The smartest man in the world, I sometimes think. Your 
husband must know him, for he is an old Bostonian, though he 
has lived a good deal abroad off and on. You never saw such 
polish and such delightful manners. George says there is no 
heart in it that it means nothing at all ; but I am not so sure 
about that. In any case, it is very agreeable to be treated as if 
you were a duchess, or that princess in the fairy tale who never 
opened her mouth without pearls and diamonds falling out." 



1885.] KATHARINE. 263 

" I shouldn't think that sort of treatment could be any great 
novelty to you," said Katharine, laughing. " I am sure Mr. 
Marlovv seems to be of quite the same opinion." 

" Well, it is and it isn't," said Mrs. Marlow, with a toss of her 
pretty head. " That was one of George's great attractions at 
first, I don't deny ; but I begin to find out that he is very set in 
his ways, and does not take kindly to any change of views which 
he does not introduce. He is the dearest fellow in the world, 
and I do believe he is one of the greatest painters. Our State 
legislature gave him the commission he is executing now, you 
know. He told me not to brag too much about that, especially 
before the Lindsays ; but I think it is something to be proud of. 
George was always too sensitive for his own good. But it stands 
to reason that a man as devoted as he is to just one thing must 
be a good deal in the dark about plenty of others that lie beyond 
it. Why, for one book that he. has read outside of art I suppose 
that I must have gone through half a dozen." 

The two men meanwhile were making their way toward the 
rather distant studio of the painter wliom Mrs. Marlow was 
discussing, and with whom both of them had long been on term's 
of friendship. 

" I was very glad, at first, to see Lindsay settle down here for 
the winter," Marlow said as they strolled on together. " I was 
so fond of him so impressed by him might be a better word 
when I first came to Boston ten years ago. He was just back 
then from this side, and I was raw to a degree which even he 
might find incredible nowadays, if his memory were a little less 
tenacious than mine is which of course it isn't. I have been 
making successes of one sort and another since then cheap ones, 
I suppose he would call them, and I shouldn't be ready to deny 
it but at all events sufficient to keep his memory green on that 
score." 

" Why should not he have made them also ? " Giddings 
asked. " I am an outside barbarian, as you have told me a dozen 
times more or less, knowing nothing about art except from what 
you call its literary side. I find that some of the Michael Angelos 
have a good deal to say to me ; but then so has Beethoven in 
the matter of music, which I take it is no gauge of one's general 
sensitiveness. So I have been . told, at any rate, by disgusted 
painters and musicians without number. But I have never 
heard any man of your profession speak of Lindsay otherwise 
than highly," 

" It is impossible to speak of him too highly in certain ways. 



264 KATHARINE. [May, 

His delicious and, so far as I know, unique use of color, and what 
I supposed to be his originality and exuberant fertility in design, 
were a continual delight and inspiration to me when I knew him 
first. He finesses too much, perhaps, to suit the popular taste. 
There is more science than art about him, when you come down 
to the last analysis, and that is fatal. And yet he is a consum- 
mate artist in his way. The trouble is that life is even more of 
an art to him than his pictures are. He schemes and plots, and 
adjusts means to ends, and thinks out combinations there as he 
does on his palette and his canvas. Art is a direct and simple 
thing, as it seems to me, and that is why he comes within one of 
it and stops there. I was beginning to get over my long ap- 
prenticeship to him even before I came abroad. The foxy ele- 
ment in him got a little too prominent at times, and though I 
never expect to question his superiority in what is distinctively 
his own his color, which is as subtle as his brains it gave me 
a certain satisfaction to run him to earth in other directions. I 
used in my innocence to, envy him his early and prolonged ac- 
quaintance with European art, but I never dreamed to what ex- 
tent and in what manner he had actually' profited by it until I 
had grown familiar with the galleries myself." 

" You mean ? " 

" I mean that I have hugely enjoyed dropping in casually 
with him and bringing up with a round turn before a Titian here 
and there. There was even the photograph of a Sir Joshua in 
my portfolio the other day which it did me immense good to 
fling down accidentally before him. There is no need of taking 
a club to Lindsay. It would not have been the slightest addi- 
tional satisfaction to dilate on the reminiscences they called up 
on my first glance at them." 

" I know very little of his work," said Giddings, " and should 
doubtless be no judge of it if I knew more. I remember a little 
Venus which all of you fellows were going into ecstasies over, 
but which to me seemed clumsy. She would never have got an 
apple from me, unless I had had an orchardful on hand and she 
no competitors. But the man himself has always been interest- 
ing to me. The subtlety you speak of was a specially agreeable 
change from the sledge-hammer style of thinking one got in 
most other quarters. It is long since I have seen him, but some 
one told me he had married within a year or two." 

" Yes, and he has got a rich and charming wife. But if his 
marriage and its results have not been at least as "much a tri- 
umph of diplomacy as of inclination, I am much mistaken." 



i8S5-] KATHARINE. 265 

" What ails you, Mario w.? Every man is free to criticise his 
neighbor, as a matter of course, but the particular tone your 
criticism takes is new to me from your lips. What special 
enormity has Lindsay been up to now?" 

Marlow made no direct reply none at all, in fact, for several 
minutes. It was an old habit of his to fall into fits of abstraction 
in the midst of conversation, as his present interlocutor was not 
unaware. 

" That seems a nice little girl you have brought over with 
you," he began at last. " Since I fell in love with my own wife 
when I was fourteen, I haven't seen one that has taken my eye 
as she has. But women are curious cattle ! They are all tarred 
with the same stick, I've a notion. Not one of them that isn't 
fond of change, amenable to flattery, and disgusted with whole- 
some criticism. To go back to Lindsay. He is a Marylander, 
as perhaps you know as poor as Job and as proud as Lucifer. 
He belongs to an old Catholic family there, and has always made 
a pretence of keeping up to his religion. His brains are as good 
as yours or mine are, and I never believed in it as anything 
more than a pretence a part of his general attitude toward the 
crowd, as being a little better, or at any rate a little different 
from the rest. He married Sophia Gary very much against the 
wishes of her people, who were greatly opposed to it, partly on 
account of his poverty, partly on account of his profession, but 
most of all on account of his religion. I heard they compro- 
mised, or tried to, in some way in the end, finding the girl was 
bent upon it tied up the property, I believe, and made him 
promise not to interfere with her belief, and to bring up any 
children that there might be Protestants. That last I know was 
done old Gary, her cotton-broking uncle, told me so himself. 
But she was a rabid convert before the year was out, which 
was nuts to Lindsay, who chuckles over it like the Jesuit he 
is. He can suit himself about his own wife," Marlow broke 
off with a sudden energy, " but if he don't let mine alone there 
will be trouble." 

" Just what do you mean by that, if you don't mind being 
more explicit?" 

" Why, they came here a couple of months ago, and of course 
I was delighted to see and invite them to our rooms. They 
were both new to my wife, and Lindsay fascinated her, of course. 
I had no sort of objection to that in any form I supposed it pos- 
sibly could take. Amanda is a woman of a great deal of educa- 
tion and reading, as you will find out, if you haven't done so al- 



266 KATHARINE. [May, 

ready, and Lindsay's ultra refinement and Spanish grandee man- 
ners took her fancy, as they do that of all other women. She is 
a very level-headed person, too, or I always thought so ; and even 
if it had occurred to me that Lindsay's success with his own 
wife might have spurred him up in the convert business, I would 
have backed her good sense against him every time. After liv- 
ing in the house with that red-hot fanatic, Maria Rawson, for 
six months, and fairly beating her out of the field of discussion, 
as I have watched her do again and again, I had no fears for her 
whatever. But here she was telling me last night that she be- 
gan to believe there was a good deal to say on the other side, 
and meant to look it up. It won't be well for her peace of mind 
if she sticks to that notion." 

" As often as I have observed it," said Giddings after a pause, 
" that attitude of mind never ceases to be incomprehensible to 
me. What difference can it, or at all events ought it, make to 
you what opinions your wife may hold on a matter of that 
sort ? " 

" Would you like your own wife to insinuate that she thought 
you might be all wrong, and that there was a probability that 
some other man might be all right ? " 

" Is that the way she put it ? " 

" No, it isn't. But I was not born yesterday. I knew well 
enough what was at the bottom of it. Do you think you would 
find nothing to say if your wife hinted that there might be cir- 
cumstances under which she might find it agreeable to become a 
Catholic, a Buddhist, a Spiritualist, or a Jew?" 

Giddings laughed. " Why should I," he asked, " unless I am 
first going to deny that she has the same right that I have to 
' life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ' ? 1 think I might find 
it advisable under some of those contingencies, especially if they 
threatened to be successive, to give her the benefit of my advice 
and experience ; but what right, when you come to think of it, 
should I have to do more than that ? " 

" There is no question of right and wrong between man and 
wife. They are one, or they are two. However, I am making 
more ado about it than there is real necessity for. I was out of 
sorts about my picture last night, or my common sense and my 
knowledge of Amanda would have saved -me from making such 
an exhibition as I did of myself. I'll buy her a bracelet to-day 
and make it all up. Her mind is as sound as a dollar, and her 
heart as good as gold. And here is Lindsay's. I won't go in 
this morning; I have a model coming at eleven o'clock." 



1 8 8 5 . ] KA THARINE. 267 

Lindsay, a slight, dark man, apparently midway in his thirties, 
came forward to meet Giddings in the ante-room of his atelier, 
with a characteristic stoop forward, in nowise owing to physical 
delicacy or real lack of erectness, and the look, half-vacant, half- 
intent, that belongs to short-sighted eyes momentarily divested 
of their glasses. He had his hat on, and a pair of gloves was 
lying across his left palm. Recognizing his friend's voice even 
before they reached each other, his face lighted up, and he threw 
aside his hat as they clasped hands. 

" ' You have staid me in a happy hour,' " he said, turning back 
into the studio and picking up his glasses from the ledge of the 
easel. " I was just about starting out to find you, but hadn't yet 
been able to drop my brushes when I heard your knock. I was 
afraid it might be some one else, and went armed. I heard of 
your being here from Ralston not half an hour ago, so you see 
I was not losing much time. Just look at my design before I 
cover it up, will you? You won't know anything about it, of 
course, but a fresh eye is always a good thing, and I have been 
locked up with it for the last three days and am half-blinded." 

The studio was large and unusually well appointed, a strong 
contrast, in fact, to the little Boston eyrie, looking out over the 
bay across a wilderness of roofs and with nothing but its light 
to recommend it, where these two had made their first acquain- 
tance. The picture, moderate in dimensions, was explained by 
the painter to represent Beatrice, " couched in the woodbine 
overture," intent on Ursula and Hero in the sunny orchard. 

" I have had the figures in and out a dozen times already, but 
I think I have got the two in the alley to my liking now, and 
am only waiting for my wife to come back to finish up with this 
one. But what about the honeysuckle? " 

" It looks like it. What is this? Titania on her bank? You 
seem to be running either to Shakspere or to botany." 

" A happy combination of the two, perhaps," said Lindsay, 
with a laugh, and turning from the easel. " Will you have a 
pipe ? A very old friend has mitigated an order for half a dozen 
tries at the ' great Williams' ' by leaving the choice of subjects 
entirely to my discretion. There is no hurry about them, for- 
tunately. I am only feeling my way to the designs at present, 
and shall wait for spring to begin the real work. I can't tell 
rou how glad I am to see you. Ralston says you have been 
joining the benedictine fraternity yourself. I hope you like it as 
rell as I do. My wife went off to Loretto with a friend the 
)ther day, but I expect her back on Friday. But for that I 



268 KATHARINE. [May, 

shouldn't have been locked up here, and so lost the chance of 
securing you before Marlow got you in his clutches. You are 
not positively fixed in your present quarters, I hope ? " 

" Why not ? And vyhat better could one do ? Marlow is an 
exceedingly good fellow, our rooms are all they should be, and 
madame seems disposed to be everything that is amiable. And 
as to the distance, I conclude, from all I hear, that it is not im- 
practicable even for light infantry." 

" Our wives traverse it tolerably often. But it is pleasanter 
out here, I think ; and then it would be good to have you close 
at hand. Marlow is very well a little inclined to be cocky, 
perhaps, or was so until the political job which ended in 'reward- 
ing native merit ' with the commission that brings him out here. 
It was none of his doing, I will say that for him ; but his father- 
in-law had an active finger in the pie. It wasn't in human nature 
to refuse, of course, but he has had the grace to be as much 
ashamed of it as though he were not going to do the work at 
least as well as anybody else, and a great deal better than nine 
in ten." 

" It certainly is pleasant just here," said Giddings, looking 
about him, and ignoring all the rest of Lindsay's speech. " This 
room strikes me as more to be desired than Marlow's workshop, 
though I don't know whether it is any better adapted to its 
special purpose." 

" It isn't ; but my wife domesticates herself here and in the 
two adjoining, and we have rather laid ourselves out to make 
the place all it should or might be. She paints a little, too, as 
you may have heard." She had, in fact, been one of Lindsay's 
pupils. " She is a veritable Sancta Sophia" he added, after an 
almost imperceptible pause, and not looking at his friend. " You 
have hardly been with Marlow two days without learning that, 
in at least one sense, ' all good things came to me together with 
her.'" 

Giddings laughed. " I have heard of painter's colic." he said, 
" but what is the exact nature of the evil influence oil colors 
exert upon the moral character?" 

Lindsay colored slightly and then laughed also. " It is 
absurd, I own," he said, "and on my part quite inexcusable. But 
I happen to know that there is an edge to his tongue also. Both 
of us would be glad to owe a little less to luck and a little more 
to merit, perhaps. That is an amusing, good-hearted little 
woman he has married. My wife has taken to cultivating her 
very assiduously of late. I believe she feels shocked by what 



1885.] KATHARINE. 269 

seems to her the vast extent of Mrs. Marlow's spiritual destitu- 
tion.' ' 

" Is that the way the land lies ? You might hint to her, 
perhaps, not to be too diligent in her labors. Marlow appears to 
have a great objection to amateur gardening of that description. 
If you have been shut up so long, you couldn't do better than 
walk home with me and give us some advice about our itinerary. 
I remember that Rome is one' of your old hunting-grounds." 

" The very oldest. I came here fourteen years ago with my 
twin brother, who was doing his theology then at the Propaganda. 
He is dead now, poor fellow ! wore himself out among the Flat- 
heads. There has not been a generation of us for the last two 
centuries that has not sent one son here. I am the last now 
and likely to be, to all appearance ! There couldn't be a better 
guide, you see." 

" Your peculiar way of looking at things gives you a sense of 
proprietorship here, I take it, which most of us lack," said Gid- 
dings, with a. half-inquiring accent, as they were on the street 
together. " You find yourself more in the general line of things 
than we do." 

" Well, yes. On the lowest conceivable ground, you know, 
there is a continuity between the present and the past which 
gives an agreeable fillip to one's imagination and historic sense. 
You feel yourself a Fifth-Monarchy man in a way which the 
originators of that phrase certainly did not contemplate, but 
which is very real. Of course one does not lack that feeling 
anywhere, but just here it reaches its apogee. There is another 
side to the medal. Fellows like Mario w, for example who per- 
haps might be a little better up than he is on several things 
besides church history, but who answers well enough for a type 
amuse themselves by bemoaning the still more ancient days, 
apostrophizing the old divinities, and going into metaphorical 
hysterics over what they call the irruption of the barbarians." He 
laughed and shrugged his shoulders as he added : " There's a 
phase of that with which I do not lack for sympathy myself, but, 
take it all round, I find it anachronistic, to say the least of it. 
You have not been about much yet, then ? " 

" Not much ; my wife is rather under the weather from a 
cold she took as we crame on from Paris. The winter is before us, 
so that I have counselled her to keep quiet for a little, while I 
qualify as cicerone." 

" You justify my faith in the law of compensations," said 
Lindsay, smiling. " Mrs. Giddings and I will make an exchange 



270 KA THARINE. . ' [May, 

when Sophia comes back I will answer for her side of it being 
without drawbacks ; and as for you and me, perhaps we shall be 
able to lighten each other's miseries for a day or two ? For 
dawdling and doing nothing, and feeling virtuous about it all 
the while, there is no place in the world like Rome." 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

" You don't really mean that I am the first Catholic whom 
you have known ? I wish it had been your luck to fall upon a 
better sample." 

The place was Katharine's sunny morning-room, where she 
still kept her sofa nearly half the day, and the speaker was the 
young lady known to her friends and they were many as 
Maria Rawson. She had returned the night before from her pil- 
grimage, with a perceptible addition to her always overflowing 
high spirits, and had just been amusing her present hostess and 
Mrs. Marlow, who had brought them together, with an essen- 
tially reverent and yet irresistibly droll account of certain of its 
incidents. 

" She pretends to be a Catholic," Mrs. Marlow had said as 
she rose to take little Jack out for his airing. " I am sure that if 
I believed all she says she does I should be in such a serious 
frame of mind that I should, never smile again." 

" Oh ! no, you wouldn't," said Maria; " you would simply feel 
yourself at home and one of the family, and know that you were 
not expected to stand on ceremony all the time. I can't for the 
life of me help feeling gay just now," she went on, turning to 
Katharine as Mrs. Marlow left the room. " Mrs. Lindsay and I 
went off on our pilgrimage just on that poor woman's account 
or, to be quite exact, on the little boy's -and I haven't an iota of 
doubt that we obtained our object. He's a dear little chap, isn't 
he? I saw he had taken to you already." 

" He is a clever little man," said Katharine, who had been 
entertained by his prattle several times ; " he struck me as even 
too precocious. Do you mind telling me what you mean about 
going on a pilgrimage for his sake ? " 

" Well, I don't, though of course, not knowing you at all, I 
can't say just how it will strike you." She gave a quick look at 
Mrs. Giddings. " You will probably decide in your own mind 
that I am a fool but I am pretty well used to that by this time. 
In the first place, he is an unbaptized infant, and, as such, belongs 
to a class which, together with the souls in purgatory, engrosses 



188$.] KATHARINE, 271 

my sympathies to a degree that has made me devote myself 
entirely to their welfare. In the second place, I delight in the 
child solely on his own account ; and in the third, I pity him to 
that extent, when I think of the dangers he runs by reason of the 
opinions of his father and mother, that I am going to shock you 
by saying that if I were only sure to get a chance to baptize him 
in time, I should be heartily pleased to have him brought back 
this morning 1 on a stretcher and see him buried to-morrow." 

"You are very bloody-minded," said Katharine, laughing. 
" I suppose you will let me shock you in return by saying that I 
believe }*ou even less than I comprehend you. And that, if you 
knew it, is a very strong expression of incredulity." 

" I quite understand it," said Maria. " So far as I have ob- 
served, belief and understanding- always keep that relation to 
each other. The more you add to the one the heavier grows 
the other. But I will tell you more precisely what it was that 
sent us off to Loretto for him. You don't know anything about 
Loretto, by the way ? Well, ask me that another time. George 
Mario w is a very good man in his way, but his way, to most peo- 
ple even to you, I fancy, who look too young and innocent to 
have got very far out of the ruts in which most American parents 
place their children is what one might call peculiar. It isn't 
altogether his fault, poor fellow. He was thrown on the tender 
mercies of a hard-fisted and hard-hearted deacon when he was six 
years old, and, according to his own story, was flogged and 
starved and worried into such a hatred for all he knew under the 
name of religion that to this day he abhors the whole Christian 
faith by reason of the misdeeds of Deacon Peleg Smith, who 
neither knew nor practised it any better than he does himself. I 
see your eyes twinkling again," she said, interrupting her oratory 
at full tide ; " but what do you think of a man who absolutely re- 
fuses to let his child be taught one single prayer? I was trying 
to persuade Amanda we were school-girls together to let me 
teach him the ' Our Father,' if she didn't wish to ; but George 
flared up and told me if he caught him with one syllable of it on 
his lips he would shoot me ! Yes, I thought I should make you 
look grave, but that isn't the worst of it, not by half ! Amanda 
well, she's a shallow little thing anyway ; that is why she is al. 
ways running over. She fairly out-Herods Herod ! Before I 
got my warning from George 1 don't mean to say, mind, that I 
should have paid any attention to it, but they have kept the 
child out of my way ever since, except when one of them was 
with him I had him in church with me one day, and told him a 



272 KATHARINE. [May, 

little about the crucifix : just what one would tell a child who 
asks a simple question. To my horror she came into the salon 
one night; the Lindsays were both there, and she had been 
putting Jack to bed. 'Just think, George, 1 she began, 'some- 
body has begun talking folly to Jack already. He asked me, 
as I was covering him up just now, if 

Maria stopped short again. " I can't quite bring myself to 
repeat her words," she went on after a minute. " The little fel- 
low had asked her if our Blessed Lord were not the best man 
that ever lived. 'And what did you tell him?' said George. 
'Why,' she answered quite seriously, ' I said I thought that Mar- 
cus Aurelius was a better one, and then I went on to tell him a 
little about what he thought and did. And when I got through, 
he says, "Mamma, if you'd 'a' told ^me about Marcus Aurelius 
afore, mebbe I'd 'a' been a better boy." ' You never saw such 
a face as Mrs. Lindsay's ; and as for me, I was obliged to leave 
the room." 

Katharine, too, felt a great shudder of mingled disgust and 
horror. 

" I am a very great admirer of Marcus Aurelius myself," she 
said, when at last she spoke, " but I should not care to tell a child 
a thing like that." 

" After all, though," resumed Maria in a tone in which the 
apologetic accent was very perceptible, " that was low-water 
mark for Amanda. She has got more heart than head, and I 
don't believe but what something in herself revolted at her own 
words. And then she admires Lindsay excessively, and she had 
wit enough to see something of what she had done. We two 
planned then to go and visit the Holy House, where neither of 
us had ever been as yet, and pray for all three of them, but espe- 
cially for Jack. It seems so frightful to stand by and see inno- 
cence corrupted and intelligence perverted at that age. For my 
part, an Indian mother laying her baby in the Ganges would be 
an infinitely less frightful spectacle than the one I assist at 
daily." 

It was after this narration that Miss Rawson made the inter- 
rogation first quoted from her. 

" I can hardly count Mr. Lindsay," answered Katharine, 
"knowing him so slightly. We have talked a good deal, too, 
but it has been about books and galleries for the most part. I 
should not have known he was a Catholic but for something 
Mrs. Marlow told me." 

" He has always been one ; it is no new thing with him. And, 



1885.] KATHARINE. 273 

to tell the honest truth, he is the one exception I have seen to 
what I believe to be the general rule, that the Catholic who has 
always been such is a better and safer person than the convert. 
1 don't mean to say he is not everything he should be now, but 
certainly he did promise before his marriage that if there were 
any children they should be brought up Protestants. His wife 
told me that herself. And he need not have done it ; she would 
have married him in any case, though there did at one time seem 
good reason to suppose it would be prevented. Her people 
wanted to keep him to it, too, even after her conversion, and 
tried to insist on his having the one little baby they had baptized 
as she had been. I can't say what he would have done men 
have such notions about giving their word and keeping it but 
she said the promise was made to her and accepted by her un- 
der totally false ideas, and was utterly worthless. Then the 
child died, and the doctor says she will never have another, 
which cuts Lindsay to the quick, for he is the very last of an ex- 
ceedingly good old stock. And serves him right, to my mind. 
He had no business to think of trading away his birthright even 
for such an unexampled mess of pottage as Sophia Gary. How 
you will like her when you know her ! " 

" And are you a convert also ? " 

Miss Ravvson laughed. " I am not only a convert, but what 
my friend Mr. Ralston calls a convert-broker. Would you like 
to hear about it ? If I don't tell you, some one else will be sure 
to." 

" Tell me yourself, then," said Katharine, laughing also. " I 
feel persuaded that no one else would do it half so graphically." 

" I don't think they would myself. Nobody else knows all the 
points, or could naturally be expected to take so much interest 
in it. You see before you, my dear, though perhaps you may in- 
cline to doubt it in the absence of corroborative testimony, the 
very plainest girl that ever graduated out of Portland High 
School." 

Katharine looked at the slight, nervous, wiry figure, the little, 
dark head, tipped on one side like a bird's, the somewhat 
prominent black eyes, the bony forehead, the unclassic nose, the 
wide mouth parting in a smile over a set of dazzling teeth, the 
whole countenance lighted up with an expression of shrewd in- 
telligence and genuine good-temper, and shook her head. 

" Perhaps Portland is famous for its beauties," she said, smil- 
ing. 

" That is very good-natured of you, especially as I believe 
VOL. XLI. 18 



274 KATHARINE. [May, 

that perhaps half of it is sincere. But what I say is true, not- 
withstanding. ' As homely as Maria Rawson ' was what they 
used to say when I was eighteen which was only seven years 
since, perhaps you will allow me to interpolate. I did not want 
for beaux, however, and had at least one persevering and per- 
sistent lover, who, by the usual contrariety which governs such 
things, was called the handsomest man in the city, and was cer- 
tainly the richest and the most highly educated. He had made 
his medical studies in Paris, and got his degree at Oxford, so 
you may estimate his attainments for yourself. I never was 
quite sure I wanted to marry him, but I was very certain that 
there wasn't one of the other girls who would not have jumped 
at the chance ; and as my own parents were delighted with the 
prospect, I finally agreed. Perhaps you think this has not much 
to do with the story you asked for, but, at all events, it won't 
detain us long ; and though it isn't the usual introduction to my 
tale, something moved me to it this morning, and, as a rule, I 
follow my impulses when they are not clearly wrong." 

" How can you tell ? " said Katharine. 

" Partly by the taste, if yew know what that means, and part- 
ly by seeing whether they go clean contrary to anything I posi- 
tively know to be a duty of either commission or omission. 
Well, now to my story proper. I had a great friend I always 
have great women friends. I have a presentiment that you are 
going to be one of them ; and my presentiments are infallible. 
She was the daughter of a clergyman, but not of our church. I 
was born and bred an Episcopalian, and was a really devout one. 
We used to take long morning walks together, getting up at six 
o'clock for the purpose, and trying to be as English as possible 
in the matter of constitutionals, cold water, and all that sort of 
thing, as a sort of decent homage to a man we both admired, and 
who had roused a good deal of ill-feeling one way and another, 
but chiefly by turning his back on Yale and Harvard and the 
New York medical schools, and ' performing,' as one of our 
neighbors put it, 'like a durned Tory ginerally.' I owed him 
that much, you know, as I had promised to marry him, and was 
beginning to be aware that I should never be able to give him 
anything much more substantial. I called for Marion one 
morning, and, finding her indisposed, started off alone. On my 
way I happened to pass a Catholic church, the door of which 
stood wide open, it being summer-time. I looked in. Mass was 
going on, the altar was well lighted. It may have been a feast, 
perhaps; I don't remember. T had never been inside such a 



1 885.] KATHARINE. 275 

place, but the impulse took me, and I entered. Directly after- 
ward the bell rang for the Elevation. J sat looking on until the 
priest lifted the Host, and then, if you will believe me, I was con- 
verted then and there, without the least previous instruction." 

" I don't understand," said Katharine, in whom this tale 
awakened painful recollections. 

" I can't explain. I only know that I -was as convinced then 
as I am now, no more so and no less, that the Catholic Church 
taught the true religion and the only one, and that if I wanted 
to save my soul it behooved me to enter it without unnecessary 
delay. I waited until Mass was over, and then I followed the 
priest into the sacristy, told him who I was and what I wanted, 
took the catechism he gave me, learned it by heart, told my pa- 
rents what I meant to do, was baptized, dismissed my lover, and 
here I am." 

" But your parents were they willing?" 

" Not at all. I was an only daughter, but I had a younger 
brother. They locked me up for one day, and afterwards, when 
my father let me out, he told me he did not intend to interfere 
with my liberty, but if I used it in the manner I proposed I 
must never enter his doors again." 

" But you persevered ? " 

" It was a question of heaven, you know. A house in Port- 
land didn't seem very much to put in the balance against that. I 
was baptized, and then 1 went and stayed for a week or so with 
our Irish washerwoman ; but at the end of that time my father 
and mother came, as I didn't doubt they would, and took me 
home again." 

"And were they reconciled to it afterwards?" 

"My mother became a Catholic within the year. I baptized 
my father myself as he was dying, because his relatives had 
mounted guard below and would not let the priest he asked for 
mount the stairs. My brother is in the Jesuit novitiate now in 
Maryland. And as for my old lover, he is married to my old 
friend, and I am here." 

Katharine sighed and said nothing. After a while her new 
friend began again. " People say to me sometimes, ' I wonder 
you did not go into a convent.' Perhaps you wonder, too ? " 

Katharine was lost in thought, and the question had to be 
repeated before it brought an answer. 

" I know too little about your religion," she said, " to feel any 
intelligent wonder at anything a Catholic may think or do after 
taking the first plunge. The thing that perplexes me, and to 



276 KA THARINE. [May, 

which I should like to go back, if you don't mind, is the answer 
you made me about your impulses. Had you no impulse not to 
give your parents pain ? In your case all turned out according 
to your liking. But suppose it hadn't? Suppose that until the 
very end they had thought you wrong and refused to see you? 
Or take a stronger case. Imagine a child of your own bent on 
reverting to the religion you abandoned ?" 

"You speak with so much feeling," said Maria, <- that I am 
tempted to believe you know something of that struggle from 
experience. Yes ? I thought so. Do you know, I have never 
yet met a person of mature years and intelligence who had not 
had the Catholic Church and its claims brought forcibly in some 
way or other to his attention, and made to feel in a greater or 
less degree the nature of his responsibility with regard to it:" 

" I don't know many people," returned Katharine, " but that 
thought has occurred once or twice to me also." 

" Well, what do you suppose a fact like that means ?" 

" I don't think I should like to dogmatize afoout its meaning 
until I felt surer that it was a fact. I should think it might be 
one of the cases where, as my husband .would say, it would be 
safe to defer your generalization until your induction was wider." 

" Ah ! you are too learned for poor me. I never could re- 
member which was induction and which was deduction. They 
are to my maturity what funnel and tunnel were to my child- 
hood. I never knew whether I was going through a funnel or 
pouring molasses through a tunnel. Wherefore I will go back 
at once to your question about my impulses, which I know more 
about from having it forcibly propounded to me at the time I 
speak of, and feeling bound in some way to justify my action to 
myself. I am greatly tempted, however, to put one to you in 
the first place, and, that being the orthodox Yankee way of an- 
swering, I think I will. I haven't seen your husband, and don't 
in the least know what he is like, but I take it for granted you 
love him extremely. You look as if you did. Well, suppose 
your parents had obstinately refused their permission to your 
marriage, what would you have done ? " 

The color came to Katharine's face. " I don't know what }'ou 
think that has to do with it," she began a little hastily, going on, 
after a brief pause, in a more equable and measured tone. " Still, 
I don't mind answering you. If it had been only their unreason- 
able dislike if there were no good grounds to base such a re- 
fusal on, and no persuasions would have been of any use I should 
have gone on and married him all the same." 



1885.] KATHARINE. 277 

"Because?" 

" Because he was necessary to my happiness." 

" The best reason in the world the only tolerable excuse, in 
fact, it seems to me, for marriage. And if your choice had been 
really a good one no one would ever have blamed you, even if 
your parents had persevered to the very end in their unreason- 
able prejudice. And yet your happiness would have been 
lessened in some ways by the attitude they chose to take. That 
must stand for one part of my answer to your question. I don't 
say it is a complete one, but I do say that if there were no such 
thing as positive truth that might be known, and positive duty 
arising from it, there would be no higher law of action than the 
intelligent pursuit of one's own happiness." 

" Everybody doesn't think so. Some people and most books 
tell you that the highest thing is self-sacrifice a postponing or 
denying of your own self in order to promote the happiness or 
good of others." 

" I don't say it isn't. Mind you, I am talking only on the 
supposition that there is no positive truth and therefore no posi- 
tive rule of duty. There can't be the last, 'so far as I can see, 
unless there is the first. In that case either the people who 
preach self-sacrifice and self-denial, or at all events those who 
practise it under that conviction which is quite another thing, I 
do believe either find a certain sort of happiness in preferring 
others to themselves or they are very great fools." 

" I know what you mean," said Katharine, " and I believe it 
is true. It was true for me, at all events. There are two things 
that I know about myself. One is that I could never have de- 
prived another person of a positive good in order to take it my- 
self, and the other is that if the good in question were essential 
to my happiness, going without it would never be the same 
thing to me as having it. But, after all, that does not seem to me 
to answer my question. One knows what happiness is of the 
sort you instanced just now." She colored again, but was too 
much in earnest not to go on. " But in the case of changing 
one's religion I have never been able to see that there was any- 
thing positive involved at all. There is nothing in what I was 
taught to believe that is not a mere matter of shifting opinion, 
concerning which nine in ten of all the people you know hold 
different views, and about which not one of those who profess to 
teach it can give you any exposition which is not on the face of 
it absurd." 

" And the conclusion you come to? " 



278 KATHARINE. 

" Is that in what I know as Christianity there is absolutely 
nothing that is certain, and, for that reason, to prefer one variety 
of it to another, at the risk of giving what may be actual and 
lasting pain to those who cannot see it in that way, and whose 
feelings you are bound to consider, is a wicked weakness on the 
part of those who are strong enough to resist the temptation. 
The case is utterly different with regard to what one sees and 
knows and feels in this world. That is real and tangible. But 
what do we know about the other? Just one thing, as it seems 
to me. That no revelation that really came from our Creator 
could be so confused and contradictory as what I was taught as 
Christianity, and therefore no such revelation was ever made." 

" Precisely so. You hit the nail on the head with a good 
will that does me good. But I should like to know why you 
always take care to say ' what I know,' or ' what I was taught as 
Christianity.' " 

" Because," said Katharine, dropping into a less animated 
tone, " there was a time when I thought that perhaps I had not 
been taught the real thing. I had a suspicion that your church 
might hold a more consistent faith, and that I ought to convince 
myself on that point before deciding. But when the time for 
action came I found myself at just such a turn in the road as that 
which you describe. I went the opposite way." 

" You ran an awful risk," said Maria. " I don't want to flatter 
you, but a person with an intelligence as clear as yours, who has 
seen the real issue as distinctly as you have, is playing with edged 
tools in acting in that manner. But tell me, if you know, what 
would you have done if you had examined, and felt persuaded, 
in consequence, that the Catholic faith were true? Would any 
consideration have prevented you from embracing it? " 

Katharine turned pale. A passionate longing kindled in her 
eyes, that passed beyond her companion and lost themselves in 
the blue sky that stretched cloudless beyond her windows. 

"Ah!" she said, "I would give my body to be burned, I 
would live in agonies and see all I hold dearest perish in them, 
if by so doing I could reach God and feel myself at union with 
him ! " 

" He will take you at your word one day," said Maria, very 
much moved, and rising to leave the room. 

TO BE CONTNIUED. 



1885.] THE HALF-BREED REVOLT IN CANADA. 279 



THE HALF-BREED REVOLT IN CANADA. 

WHEN Archbishop Tach6 was on his way to Rome to attend 
the (Ecumenical Council in 1869 his flock on the banks of the 
Red River, Manitoba, were on the verge of civil war. The 
year before they had experienced a change of masters, when 
the judicial and administrative government of the country 
passed from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Parliament 
of Canada. For nearly two centuries the Indians, and for 
one century the half-breeds, of the Canadian Northwest lived in 
peace under the administration of their rulers. Mutual inte- 
rests developed friendships between the governors and the gov- 
erned, and for nearly two hundred years only one member of 
the Hudson's Bay Company met, with a violent death at the 
hands of the so-called " savages " of what was then called 
" Prince Rupert's Land." The Hudson's Bay Company wanted 
nothing from the Indians but the furs which were found in their 
rivers and on their plains. Land-grabbing was unknown. It 
was to the interest of the company to preserve the hunting- 
grounds of the Indians from spoliation, and it was to the interest 
of the Indians to exchange their furs for the blankets, cloths, 
arms, and ammunition of the traders. Except to the missionary 
fathers and the Hudson's Bay Company, this great Lone Land 
remained a terra incognita. A few French-Canadian voyagetirs 
occasionally found their way to the vast territory, and, marrying 
Indian girls, a race of half-breeds sprang up around the churches 
which were sparsely scattered over the vast, and in places un- 
explored, land. Carrying with them the customs as well as the 
religion of their fathers, these voyageurs, after settling on the 
banks of the Red River, divided the lands into long and narrow 
strips running back from the. river and giving a water- frontage 
to each farm, as all French-Canadian farmers do along the St. 
Lawrence or the Ottawa. The Red River, like other missions, 
in time became fringed with white-washed cottages, divided 
from its muddy waters by a road, following which, from either 
side, the church at St. Boniface was reached, with its tin-covered 
roof gleaming in the summer sun, or covered with snow during 
the six or seven months of winter they have in those parts of the 
country. Peace and rural competence were the general lot of 



280 THE HALF-BREED REVOLT IN CANADA. [May, 

the people, and the child became the father of the man for many 
decades before the change came. At last, in 1869, the judicial 
and administrative authority of the Hudson's Bay Company was 
extinguished, and the control of Prince Rupert's Land passed 
to the Parliament of Canada. The Canadian government pur- 
chased the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company for the sum of 
$1,500,000, and for this 250,000,000 acres of land became the 
property of the people of Canada. Of all that vast territory the 
Hudson's Bay Company retained only 50,000 acres around its 
posts and one-twentieth of the land in the great fertile belt 
south and north of the Saskatchewan. Neither the Indians 
nor the half-breeds were consulted, and the change of rulers 
caused a flutter of uneasiness to pass along the settlements, 
which for the first time in their history knew agitation and un- 
rest. Nor were the terms under which the transfer was made 
calculated to quiet the people, for they gave the governor in 
council supreme power to enact laws and ordinances without 
the sanction of Parliament. 'The only check on the governor 
was the proviso " that the laws " enacted by the governor of 
Canada in council " shall be laid before Parliament as soon as 
convenient after their passage." The exigencies of state, or 
the law's delay, prevented the governor in council from pro- 
viding for responsible government in the newly-acquired ter- 
ritory, and the unrest of the half-breeds developed into open 
disaffection when they heard that' they were to submit to the 
authorities at Ottawa in all judicial and administrative affairs, 
without having a voice in the council of the country. Louis 
Kiel, then a young man of thirty years of age, was foremost 
among the disaffected spirits, and he pictured many evils which 
were likely to come to his people under the new regime. Above 
all, he and they appeared to think that their religion, their old 
customs, and the language of their fathers, to which they had 
clung, were in danger, and that resistance to the new state of 
affairs became a duty of the hour. Exaggerated as some of these 
opinions were, the Canadian government took no special pains to 
convince the disaffected of their error, and thoughtlessly added 
fuel to the flame by sending surveyors to the Red River with 
instructions to destroy the cherished old frontage system of the 
half-breeds and lay out the country in square blocks of sections 
and quarter-sections. By the proposed change family ties 
would be broken, old associations disturbed, and a rooted cus- 
lom of the people treated with scant consideration. Unluckily 
for the peace of his children, Archbishop Tache about this time 



1885.] THE HALF-BREED REVOLT IN CANADA. 281 

left for Rome, not, however, before he had admonished the half- 
breeds to abstain from overt acts of rebellion and to take peace- 
ful, but if necessary constitutionally active, measures for the re- 
dress of any grievances of which they were justly entitled to com- 
plain. With his departure for Europe the troubles of the half- 
breeds began. Colonel Dennis and his surveyors soon afterwards 
appeared on the scene. They commenced running a base-line 
through the property of a half-breed for the purpose of re- 
arranging the survey, when Riel, with some followers who were 
unarmed, peremptorily ordered the party to stop their work and 
leave. On that day the challenge was thrown down and Riel 
assumed the mastery. A messenger of peace, in the person of 
Gen. Macdougall, was sent to appease the irritated half-breeds, 
but he found the trail, which led from the United States to 
Manitoba, barred against his entrance into the territory ; and 
then, but not till then, did the " Red River Rebellion " assume 
alarming proportions. The great stretch of lakes from Owen 
Sound, across Huron, through Sault Ste. Marie, and across Su- 
perior was closed to navigation for that year, and the Canadian 
government saw a portion of the country in the hands of insur- 
gents whom it knew it was unable to curb until the following 
year. And Riel was not inactive. In November, 1869, he cross- 
ed the Red River, occupied Fort Garry, now Winnipeg, and one 
hundred of his followers mounted guard over its hewn- log sides. 
The stores of the Hudson's Bay Company provided him, on requi- 
sition, with nearly four hundred Enfield rifles, ammunition, and 
provisions ; and a few pieces of artillery, with which the fort was 
provided, were limbered up, and, for the first time in many years, 
they threateningly peeped over the parapets of the works. The 
loyalists were powerless, and when they attempted an incipient 
counter-insurrection against the provisional government which 
Riel established, they fell easy victims to his power. One of 
them, Thomas Scott, was shot under circumstances of excep- 
tional brutality, and Riel's own friends draw a veil over that dark 
spot on his history. (Yet it is hard to believe him callous to the 
sufferings of his enemies, for there is a touch of chivalry in the 
way he pulled off his great fur coat one bitter day in winter, and 
threw it over the shoulders of a lady who was accompanying her 
husband to prison in Fort Garry.) Meanwhile the provisional 
government had issued a " Bill of Rights" which demanded a 
local legislature ; the election of sheriffs ; magistrates and con- 
stables ; a guarantee to connect Winnipeg by rail with the 
nearest railroad; that the military be composed of the people 



282 THE HALF-BREED REVOLT IN CANADA. [May, 

then existing in the territory ; that the French and English 
languages be common in the legislature; that the judge of the 
Superior Court speak French and English ; that all privileges, 
customs, and usages existing at the time of the transfer be re- 
spected ; and that the people should have a full and fair repre- 
sentation in the Dominion government. O'Donohoe, an Irish 
sympathizer, was all this time Kiel's right-hand man, supplied 
him with money, and drafted his " Bill of Rights." The only 
man who could, single-handed, have settled the difficulty was 
in Rome, from which he returned at the urgent appeal of the 
Canadian premier, Sir John A. Macdonald, and Bishop Langevin. 
With his return the clouds began to roll by, and the Canadian 
premier commissioned him to offer a complete amnesty to all en- 
gaged in the insurrection, and to promise a careful consideration 
of the " Bill of Rights." With this assurance Archbishop Tach6 
returned to the Red River the bearer of glad tidings to his 
people. All Manitoba, loyal and rebel, rejoiced when the 
archbishop arrived at St. Boniface, and he alone of the 
throng of people who paid him reverence was astonished 
when he saw the fur-clad half-breed sentinel pace with sloped 
arms before his palace door ! He found not only the half- 
breeds but the Scotch in favor of Riel and yielding a will- 
ing obedience to the authority of the provisional government. 
The situation was more serious than the authorities at Ottawa 
had told him; but, beloved by the somewhat rude but simple 
people of his flock, and respected all over the territory for his 
piety and the kindliness with which he treated those who dif- 
fered from him, he found no difficulty in throwing oil on the 
troubled waters with the promises of amnesty and an inquiry 
into their grievances. That was a golden day at St. Boniface, 
and Scotch Protestants, of whom a few had lately come into the 
settlement, as well as the Catholics, rejoiced, and the disaf- 
fected piled their arms in submission to the episcopal promise 
and will. The difficulty was looked on as being at an end when 
the news came that Gen. Wolseley, at the head of one thousand 
regulars and militia, was en route for Winnipeg, and it re- 
quired all the authority of Archbishop Tache to prevent the 
half-breeds from meeting force with force and taking their 
chances in the field. But his advice prevailed: the. disaffected 
people dispersed ; Riel crossed over to the United States, and 
Gen. Wolseley entered Winnipeg in bloodless triumph. Riel 
was never arrested, and he was afterwards elected to represent 
Provencher an electoral district in Manitoba at Ottawa, while 



1885.] THE HALF-BREED REVOLT IN CANADA, 283 

O'Donohoe was banished .and all his property confiscated. 
Kiel's election excited the friends of the murdered Scott, who 
was an Orangeman. They threatened to shoot Kiel if he took 
his seat in the House. At that time Timothy Warren Anglin, a 
Catholic, was speaker. He introduced the practice of opening the 
prayers by blessing himself aloud. This excited the Orangemen 
more. Riel was in his place. He waited until the prayers were 
over, when he left and never returned. He was afterwards expel- 
led. But he gained something for his people. In order to recon- 
cile them to the change in the survey each settler was given 240 
acres of land. When Manitoba became a province of the Domin- 
ion the people got nearly all the privileges which are enjoyed 
by Ontario or Quebec. They are not yet on an equal footing 
with the other provinces, because the Dominion government say 
that Manitoba and the Northwest belong to the people of the 
older provinces, with whose money the territory was purchased 
from the Hudson's Bay Company. But as disaffection left Mani- 
toba it travelled to the Northwest Territories, where the Indians 
and half-breeds at the present hour are suffering from the same 
causes which drove the men of the Red River to rebel in 1869. 
The law granting the 240 acres of land to the settlers only ap- 
plied to Manitoba. The half-breeds in other parts of the coun- 
try who remained quiet were not considered in the settlement 
of the dispute. They now ask that all the privileges that were 
given to the men living on the Red River during the insurrec- 
tion of 1869 shall be extended to them. They demand 240 acres 
of land each and a voice in the management of their affairs. 
Outside Manitoba, where these men live, the country is practi- 
cally governed from Ottawa. The condition of affairs is in 
most respects similar to what it was when Riel crossed the Red 
River and took possession of Fort Garry. Seeing the benefits 
which followed to his people by his daring fifteen years ago, 
Riel now aspires to achieve similar results for all the half-breeds 
who are scattered over the great Lone Land. 



284 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May., 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

A DESCRIPTIVE ATLAS OF THE CESNOLA COLLECTION OF CYPRIOTE ANTI- 
QUITIES IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK. By 
Louis P. di Cesnola, LL.D., Director of the Museum. In three volumes, 
large folio, with Introduction by Professor Ernst Curtius, of the Ber- 
lin Museum. Volume i., with Introduction by Samuel Birch, LL.D., of 
the British Museum. Boston : James R. Osgood & Co. 

This sumptuous work is one long ago projected by the author, as due 
to the magnificent collection which it illustrates, and as diffusing more 
widely the original authority for the revolutionary ideas which the collec- 
tion has wrought in the history of ancient art and myth. It might be 
added that it was due no less to the discoverer and author, as a fit com- 
memoration of his unexampled enterprise and success in conducting a 
vast series of excavations with his single-handed resources and at his own 
private expense, and ttrus recovering to the world a wealth of the buried 
remains of antiquity, accomplishing a result scarcely surpassed, and in 
sundry respects not even rivalled, by the great works undertaken or exe- 
cuted only under the auspices and at the charge of a powerful govern- 
rnent. Untoward circumstances not the fault of the author, but such as 
elicit for him the sympathy of all right-minded men have delayed the 
progress and appearance of this work to a point which tried somewhat the 
patience of the scholars of Europe and America ; but meanwhile the. collec- 
tion, scarcely understood when first gathered, has been studied by the 
savants everywhere, in reproductions if not at the Museum, and the delay 
has been the occasion of a more technical and competent, if not more accu- 
rate, character in the descriptive matter. 

The work, as its name implies, is a collection of large plates, each ac- 
companied with the necessary descriptions, which occupy one or more 
sheets as occasion demands. Each volume contains one hundred and fifty 
plates, made by the heliotype process; and one-third of the whole number 
are to be in colors. This first volume is confined to the statuary and sculp- 
tures, and contains but two colored plates (Plates 149 and 150, which repre- 
sent the sarcophagus from Amathus). The remaining volumes are to con- 
tain the terra-cottas, the objects in alabaster, glass, gold, silver, and bronze, 
with the inscriptions, and will require a much freer use of color. The size 
and necessary cost of the work ($i 50) put it beyond the reach of most private 
purchasers ; but it will be an ornament to the better public libraries and 
institutions of learning on both sides of the Atlantic. Its value cannot be 
diminished so long as the testimony of the collection itself is to be lis- 
tened to. 

Roughly speaking, the period embraced by the sculptured objects 'ex- 
hibited in this first volume extends from the time of the earliest remains 
found in Cyprus down to the Roman period. When knowledge of the 
collection was scanty it was a fair and open question whether certain 
statues that imitate Egyptian styles and dress of the time of Thothmes III. 
(about 1500 B.C.) did not themselves belong to that early date; and even 
now some savants ascribe to them that great antiquity. But more study 



1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 285 

has made the majority of students incline to a later date, assigning the old- 
est of the statues to an age not much if any earlier than the sixth century 
B.C. In general, the age of the statuary and sculptures may be approximate- 
ly stated ; but there are sundry questions yet to solve. In view of this fact 
the arrangement of objects in this volume has followed similarity of style 
rather than chronology, though the latter, where its marks were plain, has 
not been neglected. The Grseco-Roman steles and cippi, with their (sepa- 
rately found and separately figured) pine-cones the latter, small reminders 
of the Hadrianic " pine-cone of the Vatican " are not put among the Phce- 
nico Egyptian, the Phoenico-Cypriote, the Graeco-Cypriote, or the pure 
Cypriote of an earlier period, nor are these last-mentioned classes con- 
founded. It should be added here that the sculpture and statuary do not 
present examples of art so ancient as are to be found among the terra- 
cotta and smaller objects of the collection. The gold votive armlets of 
Etevander, King of Paphos, still fresh as the day they were made, and 
showing the hammer-marks, are probably as old as any sculptured stone in 
the Museum, if not older. 

It would be unjust to the work to pass in silence the unique charac- 
ter of the collection it represents, or the results thus far derived from their 
study of which, naturally, a great deal occurs in the introductions and the 
descriptive matter. Especially valuable in this respect are the facts of 
the introduction by Dr. Samuel Birch, which traces the history of the 
island as it is revealed (somewhat scantily, to be sure) in the monuments 
of Egypt and Assyria, ^and by the Greek and Roman writers ; the whole by 
itself, irrespective of its worth in its place, being a very respectable and 
necessary supplement to Engel. Not less to be esteemed is the essay by 
the author of the Atlas on "The Cypriote Discoveries," which gives a 
sketch of excavations and explorations made in Cyprus in modern times. 
But this Atlas stands as an original authority, still inviting investigation, 
in a line which has already shown the agency of the Phoenician nation as 
the " middlemen " who carried to Greece ideas and processes heretofore 
thought indigenous among the Hellenes ; and shown that Greek art 
arose as the improver and beautifier of ideas, processes, and motives which 
it received, through the Phoenicians, from the older nations. The Phoeni- 
cian invention of letters is an ancient story ; but the fact that Greek my- 
thology was in large measure of Oriental descent is one that has been for- 
gotten and rediscovered again and again, and well-nigh forgotten by the 
intellectual portion of the present generation, had it not been forced upon 
their attention anew by the discoveries in the valleys of the Euphrates and 
Tigris, and again abundantly confirmed, with amplification, by the discove- 
ries of Cesnola in Cyprus. In respect to all these matters the collection 
in New York is a teacher and exemplifier without a peer. The epoch- 
making work of Perrot and Chipiez, entitled Histoire de I' Art dans I'Anti- 
quite', could never have been written, nor, if written, have been illustrated, 
without the help of the Cesnola collection and the advance-sheets of the 
Atlas. 

Perhaps the chief portion of the larger objects figured in this volume 
show directly the Phoenician influence. An Egyptian style of dress or 
ornament, or a decoration formed principally of Assyrian rosettes, or the 
pointed Persian kittaris, Will be found united with some characteristic 



286 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May, 

Phoenician emblem, like the ball (sun ?) and crescent, while all but the 
last will be so modified as to show that the Phoenician was merely borrow- 
ing, a motif which would never have taken that shape nor received that 
modification at the hands of a native artist. It is not always easy, though 
it is often possible, to determine whether the adopted motif is traceable to 
the time of Assyrian, Egyptian, or Persian rule in Cyprus, or whether it was 
a mere importation. Nor, where we see the head of Hathor taking on a 
shape derived from the head of Medusa, is it easy to say whether the 
Phoenician was flattering a Greek purchaser, or merely exercising his fancy 
with elements that would have been heterogeneous if native. On the 
other hand, where, as on the sarcophagus from Golgoi, we see the fable 
of Perseus and Medusa wrought with decided Oriental modifications, in a 
style whose purity falls scarcely short of the Greek, we feel in doubt 
whether we have lost trace of the Phoenician workman, or are retracing 
an Oriental origin of the myth, or are indebted to the Phoenician artist for 
Orientalizing a fable of Greece. So in the Amathus sarcophagus with its 
high-relief sculptures, where we see the Babylonian Ishtar and the Egyp- 
tian Bes as funebral tutelaries, and a procession of men, horses, and 
chariots with Oriental accompaniments but a Greek style of sculpture, we 
are at a loss to know how exactly to adjust the relation of artist and subject. 
But in both these sarcophagi we see the progress of art from the Orient 
to Greece, through the wandering Phoenicians. And the same is true of 
all the objects which bear clearest marks of their date, whether they belong 
to the early settlement of Cyprus by the Phoenicians, or to the Assyrian, 
the Egyptian, or the Persian supremacy. 

Of the multitude of objects figured in this first volume (nearly 1,200) it 
is impossible in a short space to note even a typical selection, or remark 
upon the several deductions to be drawn from them. But the volume 
contains a typical selection of the collection, as well as all the more im- 
portant of the larger pieces ; and from it many a volume, as hitherto from 
the collection itself, may be filled without exhausting its material for 
elaboration and illustration. 

THE FACT DIVINE: An Historical Study of the Christian Revelation and 
of the Catholic Church. By Joseph Broeckaert, S.J. Translated from 
the French by Edmund J. A. Young. " Unus Dominus, Una Fides, 
Unum Baptisma." Eph. iv. 5. Portland, Me. : McGowan & Young. 
1885. 

We are glad to see works of this kind translated, printed, published, and 
circulated. They are read, and more so than some folks think they are. 
More of this kind of work, too, might be done by us Catholics shall we 
say, and more ought to be done ? It will always pay in one way or another. 
If not in money, it will in what is more important the conversion of 
souls. Let there, then, be translations of good books from foreign lan- 
guages, and original works written, especially adapted to the needs of 
souls in and under present surroundings and in accordance with their ac- 
tual difficulties. Books of this kind will be read, and read with profit. 
One of the best uses of money is to pay for the manufacture of good 
books. 

This volume was written by one who was competent to his work. It is 
published in Portland, Maine. All parts of our country ought to contri- 



1885.] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 287 

bute to so great a work as its conversion. How can the truth be known 
and sway the minds and hearts of men, unless it is brought before them ? 
Let us all be up and doing. This is a good book, and God bless the author 
who thought it out and wrote it, the translator of it, the man who pub- 
lishes it, and the one who will buy and circulate it ! To what better uses 
can thought and time, labor and money, be put ? 

Nota bene: Publish your book on your own hook. That is, pay for 
its manufacture, and do not make the publisher take the risk. Many Ca- 
tholic publishers have died poor ; none that we know of have become rich. 
If you have not the money to pay for the manufacture of your own book, 
then get some one to pay the expenses who has, or keep quiet. 

THE THEATRE AND CHRISTIAN PARENTS. By Maurice Francis Egan. Re- 
printed, with the author's permission, from the Freeman 's Journal. New 
York : Benziger Bros. 1885. 

Mr. Egan deals in this pamphlet with a question which is of the utmost 
practical importance. Public opinion, as he points out, rules the stage 
and its productions, and public opinion has been strong enough to banish 
the openly immodest and immoral. In our own country, too, Catholics are 
sufficiently influential to prevent all insults to their faith and its ministers. 
Unfortunately, powerful as they have proved themselves in this, they have 
not, for some reason or other, succeeded in banishing the subtle sugges- 
tions of evil which are found in many plays produced in what are consid- 
ered good theatres. To form such a public opinion Mr. Egan writes. It is 
needless to say that we fully sympathize with him. His pamphlet will be 
of great service in calling attention to this matter. It is not extravagant : 
it recognizes the legitimacy of the stage ; it seeks only to correct its 
abuses. It is perhaps somewhat too discursive, and we certainly cannot 
agree with all its criticisms on the drama or its present state ; but there 
is no doubt that Mr. Egan has done a good work, and we hope it will meet 
with the success it deserves. 

THE MEMORIAL VOLUME. A History of the Third Plenary Council of 
Baltimore. Baltimore : Baltimore Pub. Co. 1885. 

The publishers have not spared pains or expense upon this handsome 
volume. Most of its numerous illustrations are good, and some are excel- 
lent. The contents, we need not say, are of that importance and value that 
all who take an interest in the Catholic Church in our republic must be 
thankful to the publishers of the Memorial for having undertaken and ful- 
filled their task in such a complete and creditable manner. 

THE LIFE OF ST. THOMAS BECKET. Second enlarged edition. By John 
Morris, SJ. London: Burns and Gates; New York: The Catholic 
Publication Society Co. 1885. 

Our attention is at once attracted, in reading the title-page of the Life of 
the great English archbishop and saint, Thomas of Canterbury, that his 
surname is given simply as Becket, and not, as has been usual, a Becket. 
We have often looked for some explanation of the particle d before this 
name, but have never until now found one. It seems that it was a mere 
colloquialism, meaning nothing, and is therefore very properly dropped by 
Father Morris. 



288 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May, 1885. 

The first edition of Father Morris' Life of St. Thomas was published 
twenty-six years ago, and was soon exhausted. We read it at the time, 
and thought it to be excellent. The present edition has been much im- 
proved and enlarged by using the materials for biography which have 
accumulated during the last quarter of a century, especially six volumes 
published in the Rolls series. It is one of the best and most admirable 
biographies to be found in our English Catholic literature. 

RAVIGNAN'S LAST RETREAT. London: Burns & Gates; New York : The 
Catholic Publication Society Co. 

The title shows what this little book is a series of Meditations on the 
plan of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, arranged for a retreat, by 
the celebrated Jesuit, Father Ravignan. This last retreat preached by 
Father Ravignan was given to Carmelite nuns in a monastery at Paris in 
November, 1857. 

REFLECTIONS ON THE SUFFERINGS OF OUR LORD. Translated from the 
French by Very Rev. S. Byrne, O.P. Boston : Thomas B. Noonan 
& Co. 1885. 

. Fourteen plain and practical discourses, whose chief recommendation 
is that they are extracted from the works of Cardinal de la Luzerne, one of 
the eminent writers of the French church during the last century. 

MEMORIAL WORDS. H. J. Coleridge, S.J. London : Burns & Gates. 1885. 

This short funeral discourse was pronounced at the solemn requiem for 
the late Lady Georgiana Fullerton on the 2pth of last January. It is a 
tribute to her intellectual and moral excellence, very high, very appro- 
priate, and altogether according to truth. She was a writer of very re- 
markable merit, and a noble, Christian woman, one of the choice band of 
converts to the Catholic Church in England during the present genera- 
tion. She has left after her a bright example, and works which will not 
soon be forgotten. 

WONDER TALES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 

THE. YOUNG EXPLORERS, and other Stories: A Book for Girls. Boston: 
Thomas B. Noonan & Co. 1885. 

Each of these prettily-bound little volumes contains stories suited for 
young readers, which are all harmless, and some of which are quite enter- 
taining. They are specimens of two distinct series of juvenile books, the 
"Golden Crown Library " and the "Snowdrop Library." Such little books 
answer a very good purpose, and we wish the publishers success in their 
efforts to provide young boys and girls with innocent and amusing reading. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XLI. JUNE, 1885. No. 243. 



THE SCIENCEVILLE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL 

RESEARCH. 

" The time has come, the Walrus said, 

To talk of many things : 
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax, 

Of cabbages, and kings, 
And why the sea is boiling hot, 
And whether pigs have wings." 

Through the Looking- Glass* 

THE great reputation of the English Society for Psychical 
Research having inspired many of the leading scientific men 
and women of Scienceville to form a similar one, a preliminary 
meeting was recently held. The company that assembled was 
a distinguished one. Among the most prominent we must men- 
tion Prof. Physics, whose reputation is deservedly 
There was Dr. Positive, learned in anthropology- 
covered several new ape-like features in man. H/T 
assiduously to find the soul, and has satisfied hit 
is none to find. He scorns all that is called superr 
lieves in the self-evolution of matter from nothing 
transformation of the inorganic into the organic. There was 
Prof. Dubitans, a teacher of philosophy who inclines to the 
theory that there is a God, but is not convinced. Though a man 
of exemplary behavior and scrupulous in his dealings, he has de- 
cided doubts about the freedom of the will. Mr. Festinans and 
his friend Mr. Diatome came together. They are both recent 
graduates of one of the great universities of New England. The 

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




290 THE SCIENCEVILLE SOCIETY FOR [June, 

former has made some really meritorious researches in natural 
history, but, finding that field too small for his genius, writes 
and lectures on " the origin of life," "the origin of religion," " the 
probable nature of man ten million years hence," etc. He wears 
a portrait of Haeckel in a locket and criticises the Darwinian 
theory as too limited in scope. Mr. Amateur, who is noted for 
his graceful manners and charming hospitality, has skimmed the 
cream from all the sciences. As his fond wife truly says, he 
knows one as well as another. Mr. Soarer is of another t} T pe. 
He is a literary man and frequently called a thinker. He is de- 
voted to spiritism and believes in the immortality of animals. 
He advocates cemeteries for their remains. Perhaps the best 
known of his essays is that entitled " Balaam's Adventure." 
There was present also Mr. Inquirer, a young Catholic lawyer, 
Avhose rising reputation had procured him the compliment of 
an invitation, though he had little in common with the others. 
Among the ladies present we must mention Mrs. Statistics, who 
has published voluminous tables showing the relation of teething 
to the moral sense ; Miss Bustle, who seeks to " elevate " the poor 
by teaching them music ; and Miss Rosa Gush, who belongs to 
everything. 

Prof. Physics was chosen president and MX. Festinans secre- 
tary. On assuming the chair Prof. Physics said that the forma- 
tion of this society marked an epoch in the history of science. 
He felt it no small honor to preside at its deliberations. It was 
a proof of the liberizing effect of scientific studies. While most 
of those around him undoubtedly agreed with him that the le- 
gends of the supernatural which still abound have no rational 
basis, yet they would not condemn them unheard. Let the phe- 
nomena, or rather the alleged phenomena, of apparitions, second 
sight, haunted houses, action of one being on another at a dis- 
tance, etc.; be investigated, be submitted to evidence, and beyond 
question.' it would be shown either that they had no existence or 
could be explained by the action of certain laws. If it should 
appear that these laws were not as yet fully understood it 
would -be necessary to collect a large number of observations, 
from which deductions could be made. He was aware that the 
task was an arduous one, but it afforded him the greatest satisfac- 
tion to see those who stood ready to undertake it. The reason- 
ing powers of most of them had been trained in the best of all 
schools that of physical research and he knew that there was 
no danger that they would be misled by credulity or deterred 
from expressing the logical results of what they found. They had 



1885.] PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 291 

confidence in themselves and in each other, and enjoyed the con- 
fidence of the community. It was for them now to decide how 
they should begin. 

Prof. Dubitans remarked that the society was considered 
more of a novelty than it really was. As we know the external 
world, and even ourselves, only through the senses, and as these 
show us only phenomena, it is impossible for us to know the ob- 
jective reality or the nature of anything. Now, one phenomenon 
is precisely as real as another and as legitimate an object of 
study. They may be correct representations of things, or they 
may not ; but this is a detail of purely speculative interest, as it 
does not admit of verification. 

Dr. Positive was glad to agree with his learned friend. It is 
true that we can perceive only phenomena ; but what gives rise 
to them ? Matter matter in one form or another ; hence we are 
merely a new society to study the only thing worth studying, 
indeed the only thing that can be studied, nay the only thing 
that exists Matter. 

Prof. Dubitans feared he had not made himself understood. 
As we know merely phenomena, we have no certainty of what 
causes them, hence the existence of matter is merely an assump- 
tion. The cogito, ergo sum of Descartes is no argument, for my 
cogitations are nothing but phenomena, and I am very probably 
only the sum of them. 

The President said he was sorry to interrupt so interesting a 
discussion, and one which promised to be so instructive, but it 
was not then in order. 

Mr. Soarer said he must beg leave to say just one word. He 
was anxious that the society should start right. Did any one 
venture to deny the soul ? Why, they were met expressly to 
study spirit. If it could be shown that the spirit appeared after 
death it was clear that it existed. Every one knew, or could 
know, that this occurred. More than this, he had even seen 
materialized spirits in bodies as substantial as those they had 
inhabited during life. This was no new observation. It had 
been seen at his own house nine no, ten years ago. He could 
fix the date, as it occurred shortly before his silver was stolen, 
tt would not do to shut one's eyes to such evidences of the spiri- 
tual. 

Dr. Positive said he would be the last to hurt the feelings of 
any one professing a religious belief, and he understood that 
these alleged appearances were of the nature of a religion to the 
gentleman who had just spoken. Religion was as much above 



292 THE SCIENCEVILLE SOCIETY FOR [June, 

levity as it was beneath science. He could accept only what 
was proved. He bowed only to the voice of science. 

The President remarked that Dr. Positive had struck the 
keynote. Science was the 'one power they all acknowledged, 
and, however disguised by mystical phraseology, it was the 
one power all men adored. But the question before them was, 
how they should go to work. 

Miss Gush said that while the learned men were discuss- 
ing deep questions she would begin by studying the psychical 
states of pet animals. She knew they had souls, as human be- 
ings have ; indeed, it would be well if all men's souls were as 
serene as that of her dog Beau. Why not study them, notice 
their dreams, ascertain definitely their belief in ghosts and the 
basis of their code of morality ? She had no doubt that a volume 
of valuable facts could be collected in six weeks. 

Mr. Festinans thought the idea an excellent one. He would 
venture to remark that it would have been more correct to have 
.said that men have souls no more than animals. They both have 
an aggregation of nerve-cells making a brain and spinal cord. 
The difference between them was merely of degree. It had 
been shown that man had no claim to be called the highest ani- 
mal. Many that are wrongly placed low in the scale have a 
greater specialization and are consequently higher. The wo- 
man's tact of Miss Gush had helped them. 

Mr. Amateur said that Miss Gush's remarks certainly were 
useful. The question of the soul was now before them. He 
would agree with Mr. Festinans that the mind is nothing but a se- 
cretion of the brain, as the gastric juice is of the stomach ; but the 
soul is something higher and believed in on other grounds. We 
accept it on faith, but we work here in science, and between the 
two there can be no conflict. They occupy different planes and 
can have nothing in common. 

Mr. Inquirer suggested that it would be a better comparison 
to represent the planes of faith and science as intersecting one 
another, so that there should be a line common to each. He was 
disposed, however, to object entirely to Mr. Amateur's views. 
There is much above reason, but nothing contrary to it. If we 
admit two entirely distinct systems we seem to imply that there 
may be two truths, which is absurd ; for either they will agree 
or disagree, and then one must be false, as a thing cannot be and 
not be at the same time. 

Dr. Positive said he must protest against wasting time in 
pettifogging metaphysics when there were so many important 



1885.] PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 293 

questions to consider. The line the gentleman referred to cer- 
tainly had no breadth, but it threatened to be an intolerably long 
one. (Laughter and applause.) 

Mrs. Statistics said she was surprised that Mr. Inquirer 
should resort to such a shallow trick as juggling with numbers. 
They were ^reliable only when applied to actual objects. Had 
not Huxley demonstrated that two and two might make five in 
Jupiter? Who could tell that they might not make seventeen in 
Uranus? 

Mr. Diatome begged the society to keep to the matter in 
hand. Let it be assumed that there is some foundation for at 
least a portion of the mysterious occurrences that they wished to 
discuss, the question at issue was clearly, Were they of material 
origin or were they not ? Did they belong to the domain of 
body or soul ? 

Dr. Positive rose to protest against any action that could be 
construed into an admission that the soul was anything distinct 
from the brain. 

Mr. Diatome replied that this was the very question before 
them. He did not affirm, he did not deny ; he wanted to learn. 
He thought the community was most strangely lacking in cour- 
age not to try some of the experiments that were within the 
reach of any one. Why had that grand one, suggested by 
Prof. Tyndall, for testing the efficacy of prayer on the patients 
on one side of a ward, never been carried out ? He hoped 
that when the society was well established there would be a 
special committee to investigate prayer. Similar experiments 
could be devised to test the attributes and powers of so- 
called spirits. Positive results would lead to further researches, 
and negative ones would show that spirit, even if it existed, 
might be safely ignored. 

The President said that it had already been well remarked 
that spirit, if it existed, was probably governed by other laws 
than those known to us ; but before searching for them it was the 
duty of the society to submit any mysterious phenomena they 
might become acquainted with to the closest scrutiny, and try to 
account for them by the laws of matter. When these should 
prove inadequate it was time to look elsewhere. 

Mr. Inquirer said that he fully agreed to the wise remarks of 
the president. He submitted, however, that there was no occa- 
sion to search for mysterious occurrences. We need only turn 
to nature to see the necessity of admitting something besides 
matter. The phenomena of sensation demand the presence of a 



294 THE SCIENCEVILLE SOCIETY FOR [June, 

non-extended principle. Even the smallest cell has parts, and 
each part can feel only the impression made on itself, and must 
be in the dark as to what happens to its neighbors. To receive 
a simple impression from all these parts something- that is not 
matter is needed. Who can watch the wondrous successive 
changes in the growth of a plant or of an animal without seeing 
that there must be some principle of unity which cannot be in 
matter? 

Dr. Positive replied that science had been greatly retarded 
by such dreamy philosophy. Man is nothing more nor less than 
a constantly changing collection of atoms. The comparison to a 
wave or a fountain was a very happy one. As the drops fall in 
spray their place is taken by others- from nature's great store- 
house, and the shape of the whole remains the same. Let there 
be an increase of water, the wave swells ; let there be a diminu- 
tion, it dwindles. So it is with man. The laws of matter, at- 
traction, polarity, etc., determined the outline of the developing 
body. The shape and size of each individual bone and muscle 
rests on the application of the laws of matter. There is no need 
of assuming any higher power, any spirit. All is matter ; there is 
no highest, no lowest, no middle. 

Mr. Festinans said the whole thing lay in a nutshell. It is 
natural to hold the unknown for the wonderful. There are 
many degrees of intelligence in nature. What is obscure to one 
is clear to another. To the dog man is a god, and in old times 
the winds and waves, the sun and moon, were gods to men. 
With advancing science there are fewer and fevVer gods and 
spirits. Soon, it is to be hoped, there will be none at all. He 
must beg to read a beautiful illustration of this from Darwin. It 
is one of those profound but simple observations on which his 
fame as a liberator of the human mind is securely founded. No 
one objecting, he read as follows : 

" The tendency in savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies 
are animated by spiritual or living essences is perhaps illustrated by a lit- 
tle fact which I once noticed. My dog, a full-grown and very sensible 
animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day ; but at a little dis- 
tance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would 
have been wholly disregarded by the dog had any one stood near it. As 
it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved the dog growled fiercely 
and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and 
unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicat- 
ed the presence of some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right 
to be on his territory." * 

* The Descent of Man, part i. ch. ii. 



1885.] PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 295 

As Mr. Festinans read this passage with the impressive man- 
ner of deep conviction, the audience was visibly moved. Miss 
Bustle was heard to whisper that science needed only to be wed- 
ded to music to take the place of effete religions. 

Mr. Soarer exclaimed that he was much gratified by the 
quotation, though he thought it might admit of another applica- 
tion. If we looked more frequently to animals we should be 
wiser. Was it not likely that the dog perceived a spirit which 
his grosser master could not see, and barked to warn him of his 
impending death, which has since occurred? He took this op- 
portunity to hope that the society would enter its protest against 
vivisection. 

The President, who had been growing rather nervous, said 
that he must refuse absolutely to go into this question ; he had as 
lief hear a discussion on religion. 

Mr. Inquirer said that he was unwilling to introduce a sub- 
ject so distasteful to most of the members, but he could not see 
how it was possible for them to discuss what is commonly called 
the supernatural, unless they could agree on a few facts of pri- 
mary importance, such as the existence of God, the freedom of 
the will, and the end of man. 

Mr. Positive exclaimed that really he could not and would 
not go back to Sunday-school. They were there for science ! 

The President arose and said that much time had been spent, 
and, he regretted to add, to little purpose. It was evident that 
the question of the course to pursue should be referred to a com- 
mittee. If no one objected he would appoint one of three mem- 
bers on whose zeal and discretion the society could rely. He 
appointed Prof. Dubitans, Mr. Festinans, and Miss Gush. The 
meeting then adjourned. 

We understand that the society is expected to be soon in 
active work, but that Mr. Inquirer has declined the honor of 
membership. 



296 ' LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. [June, 



LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. 

" FEMMES-AUTEURS," as Louis Veuillot called " authoresses," 
have done a great deal of harm in the world. The sentimen- 
talism of George Sand, the affected cynicism of " Ouida," the 
sensuousness of Rhoda Broughton, and the utter shamelessness 
of some others savor more of Mistress Aphra Behn than of the 
reticence and self-respect of that great English novelist, Miss 
Austen. Happily our century and the vocation of women of 
letters have been redeemed by names which are not inferior to 
the one that slowly arose above the flash and clangor of Sir Wal- 
ter Scott's wonderful mediaeval world. 

Among the brightest of these names we do not hesitate to 
put that of Lady Georgiana Fullerton. A certain delicate 
quality of humor has caused Miss Austen to be named second to 
Shakspere by English critics. This praise might be considered 
over-strained, if we did not remark that Shakspere's humor is 
much less than his wit. In all the qualities that made Jane Aus- 
ten mistress of her craft her consummate art, her careful re- 
ticence, her subtle knowledge of the varying temperature of the 
social atmosphere which her characters breathed Lady Geor- 
giana Fullerton was Miss Austen's equal, and more than her 
equal in strength and intensity of feeling. 

Miss Austen is likely to remind the average reader more of 
Cowper than of Shakspere. Her books seem redolent of the 
aroma of mixed tea in just the right proportion. They are com- 
fortable steeped in comfort. If there is no word in them that 
can bring a blush to the cheek of a young girl, there is likewise 
no word in them to " catch us by the throat " and to force us to 
acknowledge there are better things in the world than a com- 
,fortable income, a bright grate, and pleasant acquaintances. 
Nevertheless she was an artist of the highest type. Mr. T. E. 
Kebbel, in the February Fortnightly Review, expresses that sense 
of the limitations of her art which is one of the necessary re- 
quirements of true art : " To have steered exactly between 
the two extremes of undue severity and undue license ; to have 
caused us an uninterrupted amusement without ever descending 
to the grotesque ; to have been comic without being vulgar, and 
to have avoided extremes of every kind without ever being dull 
or commonplace, is the praise of which Jane Austen is almost 



1885.] LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. 297 

entitled to a monopoly, . . . and only add another to the many 
proofs which we possess that nothing- is too mean for genius to 
convert into gold." 

In writing of Lady Georgiana Fullerton we can add the 
higher praise that she, without violating the principles of art, 
led us through this world to the gate of one to which this is a 
phantom of unreality. Miss Austen would have regarded Emma, 
or any other of her heroines who might have sold their goods 
and given the proceeds to the poor, as monstrous changelings 
with whom she could not possibly have any acquaintance or 
sympathy. She is always decorous ; the appearance of a Con- 
stance Sherwood or her friend Mistress Ward, with aspirations 
beyond the visible world, in the little circle of her characters 
would have filled her with uneasy amazement. 

Lady Georgiana Fullerton knew Miss Austen's world of 
English gentlemen and gentlewomen. She, too, could bring 
around the atmosphere of toast and tea, of drawn curtains and 
glowing grates, of the comfortable interiors so dear to Miss Aus- 
ten's greatest living successor, Mrs. Oliphant ; but she had 
powers, and exerted them, which take her nearer to Thackeray 
the Thackeray of Esmond than any critic has so far been willing 
to admit. 

The purely literary works of Lady Georgiana Fullerton can 
be safely quoted against that class of dilettanti who assert that 
the Christian religion, when it permeates and directs literary 
work, enfeebles its artistic qualities. One of the latest of English 
" femmes-auteurs," Miss Vernon Lee, a positivist by profession, 
has written a novel to show to what depths devotion to art for 
art's sake, and to material beauty for the sake of material beauty, 
leads. She shows, with the air of a prophet, that the false aesthet- 
icism of Dante Rossetti, Pater, and the rest leads to a degrada- 
tion so great as to be beyond the reach of human speech. Her 
heroine, Miss Brown, seeks refuge in the barren abstractions in 
which George Eliot found only despondency. These Miss Ver- 
non Lee calls religion ; she offers a degraded world Comte for 
our Lord, an impossible altruism for charity. She speaks for 
positivism. It is evident that the axiom that art is defective 
when it is not united to something higher has ceased to be re- 
ceived by the " cultured " as infallible. But with the school of 
aesthetes, now growing small and unpopular, it is still held that 
the Christian must hamper the artist in his higher efforts, as it is 
held by certain classes in France that a devotion to freedom is 
always united to a denial of God. 



298 LADY GEORGIAN A FULLERTON. [June, 

Villon, the poet of these aesthetes, asked, " Ou sont les neiges 
d'antan?" The snows of last year are forgotten, as the preten- 
tious "art," the mock paganism, and. the equally mock " blessed 
damozels " and Christian virgins of this school without faith, 
will soon be forgotten. 

The artistic quality of the novels of Lady Georgiana Fuller- 
ton deepened with her faith, and her faith ran deeper as she 
neared her end. Many of us can long for the intense devotion 
which impelled her to say, " How few Holy Weeks are left me ! 
Even if I live to be very old I cannot have more than twenty " ; 
but how few really have that utter union with the visible life of 
the church it expresses ! 

Lady Georgiana Fullerton was essentially religious; in 1844, 
prior to her conversion to the church, she wrote Ellen Middleton, 
of which a new edition has recently appeared in London. Ellen 
Middleton shows the struggles of a devout soul. It has some- 
what too much of the sentiment and sentimentalism of the out- 
pourings of a heart that had kept its treasures of imagination 
and thought close until the pen unlocked them. The story is 
serious but interesting. Its style is vigorous, but without that 
perfect equality of handling and clearness of tone which make 
Constance Sherwood and A Will and a Way models of good Eng- 
lish. At this time Lady Georgiana did not disdain what later 
she might have considered " sensationalism " ; but both the senti- 
mentalism and the sensationalism disappear as she gets nearer 
and nearer to the heart of the church. Her art grows stronger 
and purer as her faith and charity increase. When she wrote 
Ellen Middleton she believed in that chimera, Tractarianism. A 
future Anglican Church seemed possible to her. There are in 
the book lines which tell of her clinging to the fallacy of the 
validity of Anglican Orders. In the last edition, printed early 
in the present year, these lines have been permitted to remain, 
very wisely, as without them the novel would not be so perfect 
an index of the mind that created it. 

After her conversion she was received into the church in 
1 846, four years after the conversion of her husband she gave 
Grantley Manor to the world. It is a novel of character, an ad- 
vance on Ellen Middleton. The Old Highlander came next. In 
1852 her success had been so great that she published Lady Bird. 
Of the trio of earlier novels this is by far the most powerful. It 
is intensely human and intensely real. Reading it, one cannot 
help being impressed by the strength of purpose, the great de- 
sire for truth, which the soul of the author must have possessed ; 



1885.] LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. 299 

for it is very plain that Lady Bird, Grant ley Manor, and Ellen 
Middleton are partly autobiographical, not as to the incidents, 
but as to the feelings of which the incidents are expressions. It 
is not strange that these novels, better known on this side of the 
Atlantic than her other works, are beloved of young people. 
The author was not young when she published them, but they 
are books that only one young and ardent in heart and mind 
could have written. Unchastened by Christianity, such a heart 
and mind might have run into extravagances of which we find 
indications in Ellen Middleton, and still fainter in Lady Bird. 

Too Strange not to be True and Mrs. Gerald's Niece are also 
very well known here, having been published by the Appletons. 
The latter is a book of religious controversy, edifying and in 
good taste, with the thread of a story to keep it together. The 
former is a novel of romantic and absorbing interest, in which 
the author made one of those few errors which reviewers love to 
discover in order to give liveliness to their criticisms. It was in 
this book .she described, if we do not mistake, the gambols of 
monkeys on the banks of the Mississippi. Later, in her transla- 
tion of Mrs. Craven's Eliane, the sapient reviewers found "cana- 
pe " translated " canopy," and they exploited the mistake with 
double eagerness because Lady Georgiana Fullerton was so 
careful and so rarely fell into those slight errors which pep- 
per the pages of writers of fiction. In one of her short stories, 
Ad Major em Dei Gloriam, she tries to teach the awfulness of a 
writer's responsibility. She felt it deeply. As she grew older 
the dreadful weight of her vocation would have made her over- 
scrupulous had not it been made so evident to her that one of 
her duties to God was to write. She turned her attention to 
more serious work, as she doubtless thought it, than the writing 
of novels. She trembled for the value of the little seeds she 
scattered abroad on their tiny wings from her full hands. Alas ! 
if there should be one weed planted even unconsciously by her 
hand ! She trembled at the thought ; and throughout the whole 
twenty volumes of her works one may see between the lines an 
undercurrent of watchfulness that cleansed every word as peb- 
bles are whitened in a clear stream. We have always regretted 
that Too Strange not to be True is disfigured by woodcuts incon- 
gruous to the text singular monstrosities which, when a new 
and uniform edition of her novels is issued by some enterprising 
Catholic publisher in America, we hope to see removed. 

Lady Georgiana Fullerton was of the famous Leveson-Gower 
family. Her father was in 1833 created Lord Granville. The 



3oo LADY GEORGIAN A FULLERTON. [June, 

present Lord Granville is her brother. She was born on Sep- 
tember 23, 1812. The fact that she wrote French as fluently 
and elegantly as she wrote English, and that she knew France 
as thoroughly as she knew England, and that one country was 
almost as dear to her as the other, is accounted for by her long 
residence in France in the household of her father, who was am- 
bassador in Paris. Her life was very happy there. Her brother, 
the present Lord Granville, oppressed with cares of state, differ- 
ing from her in religion, and often separated from her by his 
duties, has never lost that love and reverence for her which 
sprang up in the kindly, domestic warmth of the exiled yet 
happy family. It was one of the fortunate attributes of this 
lady, as eminent for her womanly virtues as for her womanly 
genius, that she was tenacious in her love. No relative ever had 
reason to complain of her coldness, no friend of a change in her. 
To be loved by her once was to be loved by her, in spite of all 
shortcomings, for ever. Her charity in the truest sense of the 
word was what St. Paul describes charity to be: "Charity is 
patient, is kind ; charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is 
not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not pro- 
voked to anger, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
rejoiceth with the truth : beareth all things, believeth all things, 
hopeth all things, endureth all things." This expresses her 
charity. The love and friendship, the trust and belief, she once 
gave she never took back. 

In 1833 she married Alexander George Fullerton, whose 
family seats were in Ireland and England. Although her love 
for Ireland is manifest in many of her books, and her kindness 
to the Irish poor of London was unvarying and thoughtful, she 
never entered Ireland. But she knew Ireland and the Irish 
through the happy intuition of sympathy. She looked on them 
as a race of martyrs, as a race ennobled by the sword of persecu- 
tion, whom she, the daughter of a peer and the niece of a duke, 
was honored in serving. Had they not suffered for Christ's sake ? 
In her " Verses " she cries : 

"Yes, you can die as martyrs die, 

Sons of the saints of yore 
Who fell when Erin's fields were stained 
With her own children's gore." 

She loved the poor. Above all, she loved the Catholic Irish 
poor. She begged for them, she worked for them, she econo- 
mized for them. She deprived herself of luxuries constantly for 



1885.] LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. 301 

their sake. A friend tells how she walked long distances rather 
than hire a cab, that she might add to her insatiable purse for 
the poor. She was not unmindful of the duties of her state in 
life. She played her part as hostess in her husband's house with 
grace and elegance. She wrote for the poor, not for the public. 
The money paid her by the publishers found its way to the poor. 
Literally, she was a slave for Christ's sake ; and, in the eyes of 
the world, a fool for Christ's sake. 

She founded the " Poor Servants of God Incarnate," that the 
wretched might be helped. She gave all her energy and pecu- 
liar earnestness to the getting of the Sisters of St. Vincent de 
Paul into England, and she succeeded. 

In 1842 Mr. Fullerton became a Catholic. The conflict that 
tore the heart of his wife is described in the often-quoted lines of 
hers, " Mother Church " : 

" Oh ! that thy creed was sound, I cried, 

Until I felt its power, 
And almost prayed to find it false 

In the decisive hour. 
Great was the struggle, fierce the strife, 

But wonderful the gain, 
For not one trial or one pang 

Was sent or felt in vain. 
And every link of that long chain 

That led my soul to thee 
Remains a monument of all 

Thy mercy sent to me." 

The heaviest sorrow of Lady Georgiana Fullerton's life was 
the death of her son by a sudden accident. She was not with 
him when he died. If she could have seen him before his young 
life took flight the blow would perhaps have not left that con- 
stantly re-opening wound which gave her anguish until the day 
of her death. Her dearest friends dropped from her one by one, 
each loss seeming to tear away a portion of her heart. Her sis- 
ter, Lady Rivers, the Marchioness of Lothian, and Lady London- 
derry were taken by death. Each vacancy in 'her heart seemed 
to be at once filled with new love for her Lord. 

She knew to its utmost the sweetness of Christian friendship. 
In Constance Sherwood, the greatest of her works of fiction, she 
gives us a charming picture of that between her heroine and 
Mistress Ann Dacre, afterwards Lady Surrey. The account of 
the first meeting of these young girls is a delightful bit of descrip- 
tion. We see the rustic but gentle Constance, a little shy from 



302 LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. [June, 

having seen few people, forgetting to put down the posies of old- 
fashioned flowers she had gathered for the rooms. The dahlias, 
the marigolds, the late daisies, and the honeysuckle of her garden 
filled her arms as the courtly party her parents expected rode 
up to their house. Constance was the child of " recusants," who 
clung to the faith of their fathers in spite of the ostracism of 
their neighbors. Her heart had ached when she saw the village 
children joyously dancing around the May-pole ; but her father, 
finding her in tears, led her into the woods where carpets of wild 
flowers had been laid, and turned her tears to smiles by his plea- 
sant tales. At Easter, when the village children rolled pasch 
eggs down the smooth sides of the green hills, her mother would 
paint her some herself and adorn them with such bright colors 
and rare sentences that she " feared to break them with rude 
handling," and kept them by her throughout the year, rather as 
pictures to be gazed on than toys to be played with in a wanton 
fashion. Children would cry out sometimes, but half in play, 
" Down with the papists ! " although the papists were not looked^ 
on unkindly by the commoner sort of folk, to whom their 
charity endeared them. On the eve of Martinmas d,ay the 
Lady Monteagle came to the Sherwood house with her son and 
her three granddaughters. " Her son," writes Constance, to 
whose personality Lady Georgiana Fullerton has given the diffi- 
cult quality of reality, " had somewhat of the same nobility of 
mien, and was tall and graceful in his movements : but behind 
her, on her pillion, sat a small counterpart of herself, inasmuch 
as childhood can resemble old age, and youthful loveliness 
matronly dignity. This was the eldest of her ladyship's grand- 
daughters, my sweet Mistress Ann Dacre. This was my first 
sight of her who was hereafter to hold so great a place in my 
heart and in my life. As she was lifted from the saddle, and 
stood in her riding-habit and plumed hat at our door, making a 
graceful and modest obeisance to my parents, one step retired 
behind her grandam, with a lovely color tingeing her cheeks and 
her long lashes veiling her sweet eyes, I thought I had never 
seen so fair a creature as this high-born maiden of my own age ; 
and even now that time, as it has gone by, has shown me all that 
a court can display to charm the eyes and enrapture the fancy, I 
do not gainsay that same childish thought of mine. And then 
Lady Monteagle commanded Mistress Ann to salute ; and 1 felt 
my cheeks flush and my heart beat with joy as the sweet little 
lady put her arms round my neck and pressed her lips on my 
cheek." 



1885.] LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. 303 

The progress of this friendship is the story of the book. 
Mistress Ann Dacre becomes Lady Surrey. She is at heart a 
Catholic and would willingly practise her religion, although all 
around her have " conformed." Her husband is lured from her 
by that expert coquette, Queen Elizabeth. Through all her 
trials and her weakness the friendship between Constance and 
her remains unchanged. Constance never upbraids her " sweet 
friend." Her friendship is savored with divine charity and pa- 
tience. The strength of this exquisite novel lies in the purity 
and truth of its author's own idea of friendship. Through all her 
life Lady Georgiana Fullerton knew what it meant ; he who would 
read how deeply one woman may love another in Christ should 
ponder the story of Constance Sherwood. One chapter of it, 
like a cool, clear day, fresh and refreshing, is worth all the rap- 
tures and the false, self-conscious, over-strained analysis of affect- 
ed sentiments in which the femmes-auteurs delight to indulge. 

Love-making is a very important matter in modern novels, 
and in some modern novels much read it is a long-drawn- 
out and nauseating matter. There are few novelists who know 
how to have their heroes and heroines make love with suffi- 
cient delicacy. Of fewer novelists can it be said that one 
would ask them for more love-making. In reading Thacke- 
ray we laugh at or pity the lovers ; Trollope's love-scenes are 
exceedingly matter-of-fact; Mrs. Oliphant's love-making is what 
may be called nice, and William Black is too much engaged 
with the changes of his scenes, his moonlight and sunrise ef- 
fects, to give the necessary attention to the billing and cooing 
of his characters. There is no love-making in Mr. Henry James' 
books worth attention. His people, who are Americans, are 'so 
constantly absorbed in analyzing their petty emotions as to 
leave no room for great ones. Miss Austen's people make love 
like human beings, but human beings to whom "settlements" 
are more important than hearts. In most novelists' work we 
miss the quality of reticence in love-making. Their lovers have 
either no reserve or no feeling. It is a fine thing to think of 
a man's heart as of a good violin. It is full of rich music ; its 
strings are drawn to their utmost tension. The master-hand 
touches it with his bow ; it does not give forth all its rich harmo- 
nies at once. There is a prelude which suggests the wealth of 
noble music stored in the tense chords. Finally it comes forth 
in a grand, increasing harmony of melodious sounds. But the 
strings do not loosen ; they are held tight ; there is no abandon- 
ment ; when they relax and forget that music comes only by sac- 



304 LADY GEORGIAN A FULLERTON. [June, 

rifice, there are no more noble sounds. A man's heart, like the 
violin, must not relax its strings in that abandonment which the 
femmes-auteurs like to depict. Passion is discord ; love is a dif- 
ferent thing. 

Lady Georgiana Fullerton's love-scenes are very tender and 
delicate, full of reserve, yet showing bursts of the tenderest feel- 
ing. She makes us feel the qualities of her heroes without 
throwing a glare of light upon them ; all the high lights in her 
pictures are in her heroines. Basil Rookwood is sketched by 
Lady Georgiana Fullerton rather than fully painted ; but the 
reader gets a lofty idea of his consummate manliness. The 
author is true to the character of the sweet, strong, maidenly 
Constance in having her artlessly, yet with reserve, describe her 
love for Basil. She met him in a great crowd of people at 
" Mistress Wells'." They talk of the sincere and clever wid- 
ower, Mr. Roper, the husband of Sir Thomas More's Margaret. 

" I felt in my soul an unusual liking for his conversation, and 
the more so when, leaving off jesting, he said, ' The last fault Mr. 
Roper did charge you with was lack of prudence wherein pru- 
dence is most needed in these days.'- 

"'Alas!' I exclaimed, 'for that also do I cry mercy; but 
indeed, Master Rookwood, there is in these days so much coward- 
ice and time-serving which doth style itself prudence that me- 
thinks it might sometimes happen that a right boldness should 
be called rashness.' . . * Then some persons moving nearer to 
where we were sitting, some general conversation ensued, in 
which several took part ; and none so much to my liking as 
Basil, albeit others might possess more ready tongues and a 
more sparkling wit. In all the years since I had left my home I 
had not found so much contentment in any one's society. His 
mind and mine were like two instruments with various chords 
but one key-note, which maintained them in admirable harmony. 
The measure of our agreement stood rather in the drift of our 
desires and the scope of our approval than in any parity of 
tastes or resemblance of disposition. Acquaintanceship soon 
gave way to intimacy, which bred a mutual friendship that in its 
turn was not slow to change into a warmer feeling. We met 
very often. It seemed so natural to him to affection me, and me 
to reciprocate his affection, that if our love began not, which 
methinks it did, on that first day of meeting, I know not when it 
had birth.' " 

Shakspere, in " As You Like It," says : 



1885.] LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. 305 

"But, mistress, know yourself : down on your knees, 
And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love." 

" For I pray you," writes Lady Georgiana Fullerton, in the 
person of Constance Sherwood, after Basil Rookwood has pro- 
posed, "after the gift of faith and of grace for to know and love 
God, is there aught on earth to be jewelled by a woman like to 
the affection of a good man ; or a more secure haven for her to 
anchor in amid the billows of present life, except that of religion, 
to which all be not called, than an honorable contract of mar- 
riage, wherein reason, passion, and duty do bind the soul in a 
triple cord of love ? ' ' 

Later Constance says to Basil : 

"'But truly, sir, if your thinking is just that easy virtue is 
little or no virtue, I shall be the least virtuous wife in the world. 
Why, Basil, what, I pray you, should be the duty of a virtuous 
wife but to love her husband? ' ' 

Lady Surrey, who loves her husband in spite of his imitation 
of the Earl of Leicester in dangling after Anne Boleyn's daugh- 
ter, makes Constance indignant when she asks whether Con- 
stance would change if Basil changed. 

" ' If he did much alter,' I answered, ' as no longer to care 
for me, methinks I should at once cast him out of my heart; for 
then it would not have been Basil, but a fancied being coined by 
mine own imaginings, I should have doted on.' 

" ' Tut ! ' she cried, ' thou art too proud. If thou dost speak 
truly, I misdoubt that to be love which could so easily discard 
its object.' 

"'-For my part,' I replied, somewhat nettled, 'I think the 
highest sort of passion should be above suspecting change in 
him which doth inspire it, or resenting a change which should 
procure it freedom from an unworthy thrall.' 

" ' I ween,' she answered, ' we do somewhat misconceive each 
one the other's meaning ; and, moreover, no parallel can exist be- 
tween a wife's affection and a maiden s liking! ' 

In all Lady Georgiana Fullerton's novels we find the passion 
of love depicted as it should be, with tenderness, with keen in- 
sight into human hearts, with Christian reserve. Her characters 
are not mere creatures of impulse tossed powerless, seemingly 
without will or self-respect, on a rude sea bearing them to chaos. 
Even in love they preserve their faith and reason. The mar- 
riages in her novels and there are many marriages are mar- 
riages of reason as well as affection. In the novel with a pur- 
pose the reader is usually in the mental condition of the child 

VOL. XLI. 20 



306 LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. [June, 

forced to take medicine disguised in syrup. He will drink the 
syrup, if he can, and leave the bitter stuff ; or, if they have been 
well mixed, he will make a wry face and be thankful that the 
decoction is no worse. Lady Georgiana Fullerton's books all 
have a purpose ; but her careful art and her intense earnestness 
save us from the fear that the " purpose " will pop out suddenly 
and deprive us of interest in our story. It is of few moral 
writers that this can be said. We read Miss Austen for amuse- 
ment, for the enjoyment of spending an hour in a past social 
atmosphere which she reconstructs for us, but not for instruction 
or elevation. 

In A Will and a Way Lady Georgiana Fullerton similarly 
reconstructs for us social France as it was immediately before 
and during the Revolution. Nothing could be better done than 
the graphic picture of the old Voltairean chatelaine in her castle, 
untouched as yet by the storm. It is an unique tableau, teach- 
ing us even more than De Tocqueville of the means by which 
the ancient regime undermined their own foundations. A Will 
and a Way, like Constance Sherwood, has never yet received the 
critical consideration it deserves. Constance Sherwood is the 
more perfect work of art. In the quality of vraisemblance, in that 
of reproducing the manner of speech of a past time, in the mas- 
terly reserve of power which is the highest attribute of good art, 
Constance Sherwood approaches nearer to Thackeray's incompar- 
able Esmond than to any other novel of our time. 

A Will and a Way has the moving elements of a great his- 
torical tragedy. It gives us truer glimpses of that time of tra- 
gedies than we get anywhere outside the more honest parts of 
Carlyle. Lady Georgiana Fullerton fills each inch of her great 
canvas so carefully, giving no hasty blotches of crimson merely 
for effect, that she interprets even the philosophy of the Revolu- 
tion by means of her social sketches better 'than many preten- 
tious writers. The reader who has not the time to collate the 
memoirs of the period may yield himself to the guidance of 
Lady Georgiana Fullerton for a knowledge of France in the 
throes of the Terror. She does not exaggerate even the smallest 
incident for her purpose. Each touch, as we said before, has 
the true color of truth. There is enough matter in this book to 
fill a dozen novels and make them absorbingly interesting, and 
enough suggestion for many months of high thinking. 

The test of the value of a novel is the impression it leaves. 
Having read Fabiola or Ben-Hur, we arise with the triumphant 
exclamation, " I, too, am a Christian." This is the cry which 
Lady Georgiana Fullerton would move us to utter. This is her 



1885.] ST. COLUMBKILLE AND THE MOWER. 307 

purpose. She lived for the greater glory of God. Her works in- 
terpreted her life. Each was the reflex of the other. The good 
she has done lives after her. While there are young hearts 
ready to glow with the records of Christian heroism or healthy 
romance, and old ones capable of loving aspirations towards 
great deeds and daily sacrifices, Lady Georgiana Fullerton's 
novels will never lack admirers. 

Let us hope that the everlasting flood of literary trash will 
soon become so tiresome to the indefatigable readers of fiction 
that a purer taste may arise and the novels of this Christian ar- 
tist in letters be given their rightful place. As it is, the young 
woman who from her course of reading has omitted Constance 
Sherwood and A Will and a Way should at once repair a serious 
defect in her literary education. 



ST. COLUMBKILLE AND THE MOWER. 

ONE Sunday morn by Gowna's glittering strand 
The man of God, Columba, held his way 
To lonely Inch, 'mong the saints' tombs to pray, 
As in the visions of the night command 
Came from his Master. Walking as he prayed, 
Seemed all glad nature, land and lake and sky, 
To lift up voice and hands to God on high : 
The curling mists, by morning breezes swayed, 
Were incense ; and the full-voiced woodland choirs 
Sent up to heaven a sweeter matin hymn 
Than ere in abbey-stalls, in dawnings dim, 
From fervent hearts through vocal lips aspires. 
Deep in his raptured soul the saint-seer felt 
The beauty and the splendor and the calm, 
As when a zephyr freighted full with balm 
Delights the sick at heart, and seems to melt 
In bliss made palpable through soul and limbs. 
, Then was he grateful for the morning's glow, 

And Sabbath rest to toil-worn sons of woe, 
And flowers, and mists, and waves, and matin hymns 
Of prayerful birds. But hark ! what jarring hiss, 
As noise of twining serpents 'neath a wall, 
Fell harsh upon his hearing, as doth fall 
Shattering in shreds the momentary bliss 
A stone on a blue heaven in a clear pond, 



308 ST. COLUMBKILLE AND THE MOWER. ["June, 

Dispelling sky and dream ? So on his ear, 

That Sunday morn, most hateful sound to hear, 
A mower's scythe in grassy swaths beyond. 
The man of God felt rising in his breast 

A tide of indignation, as one feels 

When on his master's sleep a servant steals 
With murd'rous knife ; with no slight ease repressed 
His wrath ; and then, in accents calm but stern : 

" Ungrateful hind ! and canst thou thus reward 
. For all His gifts thy Master, God and Lord ? 
For all His good is this thy ill return ? " 
Then spoke the man, with sideway-glancing words : 

" High saint of God, shall this be unforgiven 

Which need doth prompt, when he of sin is shriven 
Whose pride mowed men as grass with kinsmen's swords? " 
Then smote the saint a keen remorse once more, 

As when a well-aimed dart strikes through a shield 

And pours a hero's life-blood in the field ; 
So pierced him, rankling in his inmost core, 
The peasant's gird. He only stooped and drew 

From 'neath the leaves a workman's daily fee, 

And gave the kirn with " Benedicite ! " 
No more that day his impious task renew 
Enjoining him. Right onward passed the seer 

To fast and pray till twilight held the west ; 

For night or day he took no joy or rest 
From penance for his sin, and anxious fear. 
Once more o'er Gowna's waves the tingeing light 

Of the low sun shed moving, flashing fire, 

And half the heavens was rosy-bright, a pyre 
For the departing king, and wondrous night 
With silent footsteps from her mystic bower 

Came stealing o'er the hills, with stars and dew ; 

And o'er the hills the mighty sage anew 
Resumed his path at eve's delicious hour. 
For fresh offence again his heart doth burn 

The morning's crime renewed ! The culprit pleads 

Want's stern command, his own, his children's needs, 
And vows in eld for sin a due return. 
Then spoke the man of God : " In world's wealth poor, 

Poor in obedience, poor in faith and truth, 
Poor be thou ever, all life's course unsmooth ! " 
" Poor as a mower ! " still the words endure. 



1885.] PENETANGUISHENE. ' 309 



PENETANGUISHENE. 

i. 

COLD. Positively, actively cold. Forty degrees below zero. 
Everything- stiff and stark as if petrified. There is no sign, even 
the slightest, of the motion which withal exists under the hard 
white bosom of Huron ; and you know by faith, not by sense, 
that you are traversing the surface of a bay sixty to one hun- 
dred feet deep. All around is snow, pure and chaste, cover- 
ing up all unsightly objects, effacing boundaries, almost entirely 
concealing the houses of the village on the slope, and relieved 
of its monotony only by the windows struggling to keep above 
it and looking like the eyes of a Moslem woman peering over 
her veil, and by the bolder outline of the church with its tall 
spire and gilded cross, and by the trees, bare of foliage but 
clothed in heavy white robes, that stand in striking stillness on 
the hills around. 

What is that dark object there ahead of us ? Wait ! Can it 
be a seal in this region ? If so, how did it get out ? There are 
no air-holes, and the lake is frozen full twenty miles from the 
shore. No. It does not move. An Indian, you say. Is it pos- 
sible ? What on earth (or on ice, rather) can he be doing? 
Fishing? Yes; that man, wrapped in one of the unpoetical 
blankets which the government gives him annually in part pay- 
ment of the broad acres he and his fellows made over to it for 
ever, is one of the owners of the soil. He lies on his breast, a 
spear in his hand, and his attention so absorbed that he looks 
not up as we approach, but gazes fixedly through a hole in the 
ice. What a beautiful sight lies before him ! a vast amphithea- 
tre, lightsome and clear and still, its pavement of light-colored 
sand, and no bounds to its extent on any side. And the solitary 
gazer at the opening in the roof what attracts him ? Do you 
see those shining, speckled swimmers, moving, now fast, now 
slow, near the top and along the floor and round the sides? 
Anon they peer into the shell of some of the conchylia, anon 
rouse up the flounder from his prostrate position, anon nibble at 
the water-plants or pursue the schools of small-fry that rise in 
terror at their approach. Ah ! why does not curiosity or some 
chance bring them within spear's length of him who watches 



3io PENETANGUISHENE. [June, 

them so intently? Does their instinct keep them off? See how 
he holds the lance fixed, its point just in the water ! How his 
eye is strained and his muscles stretched as he notices the agita- 
tion amongst his finny prey caused by the rumble of our sled ! 
Here, quick ! The fish flies past the mouth of the opening, but 
the spear is ready and the thrust sure, and the lone fisherman 
raises his arm at last with a ten-pound lake-trout struggling 
transfixed on the point of his weapon. " What luck ? " we 
asked. He had been out since the morning ; it was now about 
four in the afternoon, and this was the first catch. But the 
stoical American showed neither impatience at his long watch 
nor joy at its close ; he simply rose, folded his blanket about 
him, and, putting his feet into his .show-shoes, silently strode 
away. 

II. 

Next morning, it being Saturday, and Father N due for 

Mass at Mannahatta the succeeding Sunday, we gladly availed 
ourselves of his permission to accompany him thither, and at 
nine o'clock everything was ready for our start. 

In the summer season the missionary's outfit consists of a 
pack containing the sacred vestments and books, a small chalice 
that can be folded into the size of a tea-cup, and a small altar- 
stone about half a pound in weight. This, with a blanket, is 
strapped on his shoulders, a canteen and a wallet with some food 
hangs at his belt, and, with a stout stick in his hand and a broad 
straw hat on his head, he trudges along. If his journey is to be 
by water he has a canoe, made very light so that it can be car- 
ried without much trouble around cascades and rocky or rapid 
points in the river ; it will serve also as a protection from the 
rain as well as take the place of a tent at night. Sometimes, 
however, an Indian accompanies the priest and carries, besides 
the canoe, a tent, a pot, and an axe, or the priest may take on 
board all these things when he sets forth alone. At noon the 
pleasant shade of the forest is welcome after the fatigue of 
swinging the paddle, and the soft turf offers an agreeable couch ; 
but when evening comes a shelter is usually erected for the 
night. This is speedily done. A few stakes are cut and fixed 
in the ground, the tent is spread on these, the lopped-off 
branches or dried leaves make a bed, and the habitation is com- 
plete. Near by a tripod is erected on which the pot is hung, a 
fire built, and soup is made or coffee prepared, or else a fish just 
caught is fried on the embers. The fire also serves to keep off 



1885.] PENE TA NG UISHENE. 3 1 1 

the catamounts or bears that might otherwise disturb the rest 
of the travellers. In the morning the stakes are easily formed 
into a table, on which the altar-linens are spread, and in a few 
minutes all is ready for the Holy Sacrifice, the trees making the 
columns of this temple without walls, the sweet perfume of the 
flowers supplying the place of incense, and the early birds and 
many-voiced insects singing and chirping and whistling and 
humming, each in its own divinely-taught way, the praises of 
God. If there are wood-choppers or berry-pickers or buffalo- 
hunters or fishermen in the place, these reverentially kneel about 
the altar, and all, or most of them, having confessed, receive the 
Body of the Lord ; and their rational acts of thanksgiving and 
hymns of praise unite in sweet harmony with the unconscious 
homage paid by the animal world to the Creator of all. The 
priest reads a portion of the Gospel and instructs the little con- 
gregation both before and during the Mass; and as his visits 
are made only at intervals of a month or quarter, the most pro- 
found attention is paid to what he says. He speaks to every 
one ; inquires about their distant, or visits their present, families ; 
blesses the work in which they are engaged, and, bidding them 
good-by, starts forward again on his missionary tour. 

On this bright wintry day, however, the travelling accoutre- 
ments were very different. Two large,, intelligent, and powerfu-l 
Newfoundland dogs were harnessed in the simplest manner by 
thongs of deer-skin to a toboggan a substitute for our sleigh or 
sled, and resembling a cutter without runners ; its under-surface 
being thus as extensive as its length and breadth, it can carry a 
great weight without sinking in the crusted snow. The requi- 
sites for Mass, blankets, axe, tent, and provisions for a couple of 
days were securely packed in the vehicle ; for though the in- 
tended journey was a short one, only twenty miles or so, one 
knew not but he might be overtaken by a blizzard and detained 
maybe a day or two, within short distance, perhaps, of a settle- 
ment, but absolutely unable to reach it on account of the thickly 
falling snow, which shuts off the view as completely as a fog, 
and in which one might wander for hours without finding his 
way anywhither. 

Father N was well wrapped up in his usual garments, but 

under a black slouch hat wore a skull-cap of felt that covered his 
head and ears. As for ourselves, we wore the long Canadian 
blanket-coat, but of dark- colored flannel, with a cowl or hood 
hanging down the back and intended to be thrown forward as 
head-covering when required. A sash fastened around the waist, 



3 1 2 PENE TANG UISHENE. [June, 

and a tuqite, or conical cap with a tassel at its end, on our head, 
our feet encased in moccasins and our legs in heavy stock- 
ings and leggings with straps encircling them, completed the 
national winter costume. As we came out of the house we tied 
on our snow-shoes. Those who are not acquainted with this 
article of attire may form an idea of it by looking at one of those 
bats used in the game of racket. In fact, it is merely a raquette 
attached flat to the feet with thongs, the handle sticking out 
behind the heel. Why is it that the Indian has been able to 
invent such a light, neat, and perfect aid to locomotion, which the 
science of the nineteenth century has not been able to improve 
upon, while the civilized Scandinavians have devised nothing 
better than a rude, clumsy board for travelling over the snow ? 
As well ask why the Australian savage discovered or invented 
that scientific paxadox, the boomerang, or why the American, as 
well as the South Sea Islander, has always been accustomed to 
produce fire by friction something, we are assured, no civilized 
man has ever succeeded in doing under like circumstances. 

But our eager steeds are longing to start, and we, too, are in 
humor for the road. Of all animals there is none whose labor 
is so honestly granted to his master as our friend the dog's. 
Honestly, do we say ? Generously, joyfully does he tug at his 
load, ever trying to trot, and looking with loving eyes and joy- 
ous barks at his human friend the while, as if unable to repress 
the delight he feels at making a sacrifice for him. The chief 
trouble with dog-teams is to keep them from going too fast and 
exhausting themselves in the fore-part of the journey; but when 
seated in the toboggan and flying along over the crisp snow, in 
which their soft, broad paws scarce sink, with the rich, sweet air 
full of ozone, starting the blood through one's veins, then the 
feeling of companionship in the team, which seems to enjoy the 
excursion as much as yourself and for your very sake, makes a 
very pleasant experience indeed. And then, when you halt and 
camp, how nice to have the dogs about watching wistfully but 
respectfully for their share of the supper, which they themselves, 
perhaps, have helped to catch ! And, too, when camping-out in 
the snow, how comfortable to have their thick, warm fur between 
you and the biting north wind ! Sleep in peace, O weary travel- 
ler, if such be your coursers ; their own life's blood will flow ere 
harm come to you from savage brute or still more savage man ! 

O sweet, delicious air ! Man cannot live on thee, it is true, 
just as he cannot on any other element alone ; but surely thou 
hast as great a part as any other in building up and sustaining his 



1885.] PENE TANG UISHENE. 3 1 3 

life and strength. It is one of the pleasures incident to snow 
and ice that we know thee and taste thee in all thine own purity. 
Sweet art thou in the springtime, but the bursting waters, and the 
budding trees, and the opening earth lend their parts to thy mak- 
ing up. Sweet art thou in summer, but the odor of a thousand 
flowers and the smell of the new-mown hay is mingled with thy 
savor. Sweet art thou in autumn, but the ruddy grape, and the 
golden apple, and the nodding corn all unite the richness of their 
incense to thine own. In winter thou art thyself, and thou art 
exquisite. O blessed privilege of our northern clime, to enjoy 
thee in thy purity and strength for so long a space ! How the 
blood rushes red through the veins, and the soul rejoices, and 
the body leaps up in unison, as we speed along with the joyously- 
barking, swift dogs, that exult to run their way along the smooth, 
bright snow ! Now we climb the gradual slope ; now we fix our 
feet and slide like the wind adown the hill ; now we scour along 
the plain, the snow beneath us sometimes two, sometimes four, 
sometimes twenty feet deep. But our snow-shoes carry us as 
safely over the deepest drifts as on the level bosom of Huron. 
Woe to the novice, however, who flounders and falls in the deep, 
soft snow with the raquettes on ! Like a swimmer whose life-belt 
has slipped down on his feet down goes his head, and his legs he 
cannot bring under for their buoyancy so the new traveller on 
snow-shoes cannot drag his encumbered extremities beneath, and 
may have great trouble, indeed, and fail entirely, in rising again 
and resuming his journey. 

III. 

The greatest part of our trackless route was over the flat, un- 
broken surface of the lake, and, stopping only once or twice to 
share our refreshments with our good-natured four-footed com- 
panions, we came at length in sight of the little fishing-station of 
Mannahatta. This was very favorably situated for its purpose, 
and during the open season struck visitors favorably by its 
gentle beauty. The village consisted of about twoscore houses 
of boards and logs, lying along the shore of the lake. Between 
it and an island opposite, about half a mile long, ran a deep strait, 
navigable in summer for all vessels and about ten rods wide, but 
now it was not to be distinguished from the land, unless by its 
greater flatness. It is curious in the berry season to see on the 
island, and up and down on the mainland beyond the boundaries 
of the village, the bark wigwams of the Indians perched on the 



PENETANGUISHENE. [June, 

naked rocks, while their boats are fastened to the trunk of a tree, 
and they themselves are fishing, or cooking, or playing, or taking 
their ease around about, according to their sex and age, just as 
if they were settled beneath their own respective vines and fig- 
trees. It is winter now, however, and these human birds of pas- 
sage are not to be seen. 

Five hours have brought us the distance from Penetang, and, 
notwithstanding our lunch on the way, we are quite ready to 
honor Mrs. McCaura's hospitable board. Her husband met us 
near his house and gave us an Irish-Canadian welcome. Enter- 
ing, we were quietly received by a dark-looking lady and her 
shy little family of three boys and a girl, the former recalling the 
Celt in their lineaments and behavior, the latter being already in 
her second year a profoundly stoical Mohawk. The lady spoke 
French and English as well as her own tongue. She had been 
educated at the Ursuline convent in Montreal, and was the 
daughter of Tananahenda, the existing chief of a remnant of the 
"Wise Race of the Mohicans." Her quiet, timid manner could 
not fail to strike one ; but she was evidently glad to see the 
Blackrobes, and, while not joining in the conversation unless 
when spoken to, made us feel perfectly at ease in her neat and 
simple home. 

McCaura himself, as he told us, was the son of an Irish gen- 
tleman whose father had been out in '98, and, being forced to flee 
from the " most distressful country," made his way to Canada, 
where he was well received on account of his ability as a teacher, 
and especially as a mathematician and surveyor. The son was 
educated by his father and succeeded to his place and emolument, 
and, marrying a French lady, lived in peace and honor to the age 
of fourscore. Our host was the eldest born of this couple, and, 
having inherited the tastes, ability, and consideration enjoyed by 
his father and grandfather, was now one of the principal citizens 
in the province in which he resided. Here was a mingling of 
race indeed. No wonder we were interested in the little ones 
when we reflected that in their veins ran the blood of America, 
France, and Ireland. What made this family singularly attrac- 
tive to us, however, was the fact that not only Catholic, chival- 
rous France and the glorious Ireland of a hundred years ago, 
but the red heroes of our boyhood days, even the noble, gentle 
warrior Uncas himself, might recognize kindred in the little ones 
before us. What we learned further but confirmed our favor- 
able impressions, and we could not but think with contempt of 
the adventurers of another race in our own country that igno- 



1885.] PENETANGUISHENE. 315 

rantly look down on the descendants of men who, like this 
scion of the Desmonds, left their own land under ban for hav- 
ing maintained her independence, or of men who, like the Mo- 
hican chief, held swa}^ in America centuries before the ances- 
tors of these colonists arrived at the Battery with all their 
worldly goods at the end of a stick slung over their shoulder. 
Thinking such thoughts, we held the alliance very honorable ; 

and allowing Father N to attend to his ministerial duties, 

we gladly accompanied McCaura to' the plain but comfortable 
dwelling of his father-in-law. Here we met the wife of the latter 
and two of her daughters ; the sons were at work in an adjoining 
building cutting moccasins, making snow-shoes and other articles, 
which, with birch-bark canoes, bring quite a good income to 
supplement the produce of their farm. The house was very 
simply furnished. The carpet, sofa, prints on the walls, and 
other furniture and garniture seemed somehow or other not to 
fit the occupants, or else we could not help imagining that these 
were not at home in such surroundings: the shade of the forest, 
and the wigwam in the grassy clearing, and the free, simple 
dress of their ancestors had better far become them. 

Our Indian hostess spoke French. She showed us the great 
treasure of the house a case filled with relics of saints. This 
was about six inches long by four broad, and was of heavy silver, 
the upper and lower parts being in-the shape of a deacon's vest- 
ment, or " dalmatic." On it were carved the galloons and tas- 
sels usual on such a robe, and the centre of the cover was filled 
with an inscription in Latin telling how in the year 1670 the 
chapter of the cathedral of Chartres had sent this gift to Gara- 
conta, chief of the Mohicans, on occasion of his conversion to the 
faith of the Son of God. The under-side of the box had a very 
artistic and beautiful engraving of the Annunciation ; in fact, it 
was the most unique and handsome reliquary of its kind we had 
ever seen.* While the religious and historical interest raised 
by this beautiful heirloom of the head of the tribe was carrying 
us back in thought to the times and deeds of the seventeenth 
century, Tananahenda himself came in, a grave and impene- 
trable-looking man, like most of his race. He received us quietly, 

* The account of the conversion of this noble native of New York, a refugee in Canada from 
English persecution, is very interesting and may be found condensed in the Excelsior Fifth 
Reader. He was baptized at Quebec by Bishop Laval in 1670. He died on Christmas day, 
1675, having received the sacraments with sentiments of extraordinary faith and piety. The 
noble man then exhorted all his friends and kindred, and the chiefs and sachems of the tribes 
around who were assembled for the death-banquet, to live as became Christians and to banish 
from their tribes.the deadly fire-water. His last words were : " Behold, I die." 



3 1 6 PENE TA NG UISHENE. [June, 

and at the suggestion of McCaura brought out his official dress 
of colored blanketing, furs, feathers, leggings, and moccasins. 

How much more beautiful and becoming is the dress which 
nature teaches people to wear than the artificial contrivances of 
fashion ! Indeed, there is no comparison between them, and for 
our part we regretted very much that the chief and his people 
could not accept civilization without abandoning taste and grace 
in attire. 

What interested us most, however, after the reliquary, was a 
belt of wampum,* another heirloom of his house, and which he 
told us was gathered at the mouth of the Mohican River (now 
the Hudson), that grand and beautiful stream along whose banks 
his forefathers had dwelt before the baneful arrival of the heretic, 
pale-face. These things made us sad. We could not but sym- 
pathize with this man and his people, driven out from their own 
lovely valleys of the Hudson and the Mohawk, robbed of their 
country first and their young men afterwards by the intrigues 
and wars of the stranger. At last the invaders would take their 
priests from them the apostolic guides with whose ministry then, 
as now, France blesses the heathen world ; they who had taught 
them the Prayer of the Great Spirit and give them other spirit- 
ual advisers. Some of the Indians abandoned Christianity en- 
tirely at this ; others, including a remnant of the Mohicans, re- 
tired to Canada, where the knightly, honorable, Catholic French 
always kept peace and treaty and friendship with the Ameri- 
cans, f 

Here we cannot forbear remarking how it is the glory of Ca- 

* Wampum, or seaivant, was beads made out of the shell of the quahaug or wilk. a shell-fish 
that formerly abounded about the coasts of New York. It was black or white ; the former was 
twice as valuable as the latter six white beads and three black for an English penny, making 
the value of the white beads, perhaps, about half a cent, and the black one cent. The Indians 
were very much taken with the various colored-glass beads of the Dutch, and sold the lovely 
island of Mannahatta (New York) for such coin. But the Dutch themselves were badly sold by 
the Yankees liter on, these sharp pedlars manufacturing vast quantities of wampum and pay- 
ing it to the New-Amsterdamers for whatever stock and garden-produce they bought of these 
phlegmatic traders, who thought to pass off the currency on the savages for furs. The furs soon 
began to become scarce, however, and the New-Yorkers found themselves with a large quantity 
of worthless tokens on hand, no longer currency because no longer current. This wampum- 
money may seem strange and unreasonable to us, but, after all, there is almost as much unac- 
countable in the value all other nations set on diamonds and pearls, while even gold and silver 
are for all mechanical purposes worth less than the twentieth part of their nominal value. 

t At last in 1700 " the legislature of New York made a law for hanging every popish priest 
that should come voluntarily into the province " (Documentary History of Neiv York, vol. i. 
pp. 41, 154). Then " the solemn services of the Roman Church, which were sung in the heart 
of the State of New York as securely as in any part of Christendom" (Bancroft, ii. 835), lapsed 
into silence ; the Onondagas refused ever after to receive any Christian teachers ; many of the 
families of the Six Nations retired to Canada for " freedom to worship God," and the ruins of 
their churches are found to this day on the crooked shores of beautiful Cayuga.- 



I88 5 .] 



PENE TA NG UISHENE. 



317 



tholic nations that their attempts to colonize, though partaking 
of the murder and rapine incidental to the beginnings of such 
enterprises, have nevertheless been uniformly different in their 
progress and results from those of heretical ones. This arises in 
the first place from the fact that the doctrine of the brotherhood 
of all men is not merely a theory with the children of the true 
church, but a practical sentiment ; experience shows that it is not 
those who prate loudest of human equality that are most re- 
markable for their fraternal love and readiness to acknowledge 
as such their red and black and yellow cousins. The English, 
moreover, carry their exclusive insular character into everything 
they undertake ; this, added to the false and warping spirit of 
heresy, made them unable to recognize the rights, even the man- 
hood, of the Americans, much less to fraternize, least of all to in- 
termarry, with them. At the present day it is the same. The 
aborigines still fly before the English-speaking peoples, and it is 
only the French and Spanish who assimilate them more or less 
in their colonies, or at least form one people with them ; whilst for 
missionary work among the heathen, of what color soever, it is 
almost exclusively reserved to those nations and the Italians 
and Belgians. Even the faithful Irish, since they lost their inde- 
pendence and began to speak the tongue of the stranger, seem 
to have lost their ancient characteristic of apostolicity. As one 
might say : 

" Where are, O Eire ! thy Columbkilles to-day ? 
Thy Fridians, Galls, and Brendans, where are they ? 
Has conquest damped the apostolic fire ? 
Did holiness with liberty expire ? " 

We know, of course, that they follow their own people all 
over the globe, but this is not the quality of the apostle. God 
grant that with her liberty Erin may soon recover that spirit 
which made her in former days send forth many leaders and 
founders of churches, not only into Gaul and Germany and 
beyond the ocean, but into Italy itself, where their name and 
memory are still venerated in cathedral churches wherein they 
once held the pastoral staff ! Already to-day, when the chains 
of centuries seem to be loosening, the soul of Ireland puts forth 
her power, and though yet she has no missionary orders of her 
own, yet many of her sons are found in those of French or other 
foreign foundation with houses on her own soil, so fertile in voca- 
tions to the priesthood ; and when in the near future she " takes 
her place among the nations of the earth," the spirit of manhood 



3i8 PENETANGUISHENE. [June, 

and freedom will flower into that of holiness and apostolicity, 
and successors be found, after so long an interval, to Lawrence 
and Columba. Thoughts such as these, religious and historic, 
filled our minds long after we bade good-by to the Mohican 
chief and his family, and our visit to them will ever be cherished 
as realizing for us the captivating romances of boyhood, and 
bringing us, as it were, into actual contact with the men and 
things of the early period of our country. 

IV. 

The following day, Sunday, Father N said Mass and 

gave an instruction in the dialect of. his dusky children, as well 
as in French ; for the congregation was of mixed blood, and the 
American is proud, and, while he may understand the language 
of the pale-face, does not acknowledge the superiority of the lat- 
ter as a man, and will have his religious pabulum served up in his 
own style. We were to have remained the whole day and had 
Vespers which can always be gotten up wherever you have a 
French or Catholic Indian settlement as well as catechism of the 
children, but that a messenger arrived bringing word of a sick- 
call thirty miles across the lake. The man's wife was sick, and, 
as he passed by Penetang on his way, he was accompanied by 
his brother, the " lone fisherman " whom we had met on Friday. 
They arrived on snow-shoes and had travelled all night ; but the 
Indians seem to be tireless pedestrians. One of Father N 's 
dogs showing some signs of unfitness for travel, he availed him- 
self of the loan of a fine horse from McCaura, to whom and to 
whose gentle wife and family we bade adieu, and started on our 
new trip in a light but trustworthy sleigh. The sky was murky, 
the sun completely hidden, and very soon after leaving Manna- 
hatta we found ourselves, as it were, on the open sea, the monoto- 
nous waste of snow reflecting the dirty color of the clouds and 
making it impossible to distinguish the mountains or headlands, 
so that we stood in as much need of a compass as in like weather 
in mid-ocean. The senses of the Americans, however, were 
sharpened by use and by need until they almost took the place 
of brute instinct, and our companions had no hesitancy in direct- 
ing the course right for our destination. Running along on their 
snow-shoes, now ahead, now beside, now behind our vehicle, 
they kept an unvarying loping stride, as if they were not men 
but tireless machines. It was a dreary journey. The snow 
began falling soon after we set out, and we white men were as 



1885.] PENETANGUISHENE. 319 

helpless as if in a dense fog, while the task of the horse became 
harder as the snow deepened. It was about eleven in the 
morning when we started, and at length about eight at night we 
reached the little forest-bound cove on the shore of which the 

sick woman lived. Father N at once betook himself to her 

wigwam and attended to his patient, while we tried to provide 
for the poor tired horse. There were two wigwams in the place, 
a little natural clearing near the beach, but no shelter of any 
kind for our noble four-footed friend. What was to be done ? 
At least get some corn or hay for him. There was literally none 
to be had. 

" Poor fellow ! Poor brother-horse ! " as St. Francis would 
address you. " I pity you, indeed ; but at least you shall have this 
bear-skin for a blanket. You are hot and weak, but you will be 
soon chill and still more hungry. I'll tie you to this tree, at any 
rate, lest you might wander off and die in the forest or on the 
lake. Indeed, if there's anything eatable in these woebegone 
huts, you shall have your share. Poor horse ! How you look 
and plead, dumb but eloquent, for your warm stall and welcome 
manger! Poor fellow ! Stay there awhile now." 

Reluctantly, but under pressure of sheer necessity, we left the 
noble brute under the falling snow and betook ourselves to the 
hut of the sick woman. She lay on branches on. the ground, a 
man's old overcoat on her and an old government blanket for a 
coverlet, very near the fire, over which hung a black pot contain- 
ing a variety of herbs that were stewing into some native remedy 
for her ailment. A little cup made of birch-bark near her head 
held some- of this liquid, and a piece of roasted fish with a couple 
of potatoes on a dish of the same material were the only deli- 
cacies to tempt her sensitive palate. In the hut was an elderly 
woman with a face like an old alligator-skin pocket-book; her 
eyes were blinking from the fire and smoke, and she squatted 
in silence, while two small children with sore eyes lay together 
under some rags or old skins. These occupants filled up most 
of the available space, for the diameter of the wigwam did not 
exceed seven feet ; and as for its height, if one were where the 
fire was, right in the middle, he might stand erect, although if 
he wore a high hat this would protrude through the chimney or 

hole at the top. Father N , having administered the same 

divine sacraments which the pope himself receives on his death- 
bed, spoke a quieting word or two to the patient who was, alas ! 
very still indeed said something to comfort the old mother-in- 
law, and we retired to look for supper and some place to lie 



320 PENETANGUISHENE. [June, 

down. There was nothing in the second wigwam near by except 
a few potatoes which had been roasted and were now cold the 
fish we saw by the sick woman's couch being the last morsel of 
animal food left and we were obliged to settle down to what 
was, without doubt, the shortest commons and most comfortless 
shift for a night's rest it has ever been our lot to put up withal. 

Before fatigue at last overcame the repugnance which we 
personally felt for sleeping in such a hostelrie (Father N 
seemed not to mind it) we went to see our poor horse again. He 
neighed loud and shrill with recognition and nervously pushed 
his nose into our hands in quest of something to eat. Alas ! we 
could give him nothing except the skins of half a dozen potatoes 
saved from the supper, and of which the dogs (of them more 
anon) had been cheated in his favor. 

Here we are in our hotel. Let us take a particular survey of 
it and of our companions. And, first, the wigwam. This is the 
Chippewa word for house. Six young tree-poles about eight 
feet long and three feet apart, standing in a circle and leaning 
towards each other, and meeting and bunching across at the top, 
make the frame. This is overlaid with birch-bark a material 
that is more capable of splitting into thin strips than the peel of 
an onion, and which is of infinite use to the Indians, as it holds 
water and is flexible and tough. An old piece of moose-hide 
hung at one point in the side of the dwelling, and, being lifted up, 
gave ingress and egress to the occupants ; but the smoke of the 
fire, that was in the middle, went out by the opening where the 
poles crossed at the top. This aperture is usually closed when 
the weather is very cold or wet or snowy; but we prevented 
this, preferring to lie under the chance snowflakes that would 
escape the fire than to stand the smoke. This was, indeed, bad 
enough already, and in a few minutes our eyes were filled with 
painful tears. What made it worse was that the draught was 
very poor on account of the snowy weather, and we were forced 
to place our breathing-organs on the very ground in order to 
escape suffocation. Nay, we pushed our faces at times under 
the border of the bark that covered the tent, and endeavored to 
catch a few mouth fuls of air in this manner. The smoke and the 
cold thus encountered caused us to cough as well as to weep, 
and our whole company was more or less similarly affected. 

Three Indians, Father N , and ourselves lay doubled up 

around the fire, our backs turned towards it. We filled the 
wigwam so nearly that none of us dared stretch his legs to the 
full for fear of bursting through the thin partition that shielded 



1885.] PENE TA NG UISHENE. 3 2 1 

us from the weather, or placing them on his neighbor's person, 
or thrusting them into the fire. Moreover, our backs were 
roasting while our chest and knees were freezing, and we were 
obliged to reverse our posture every now and then, and turn in 
very scanty room. To add to our annoyance, three or four 
mongrel dogs (for these Indians were exceedingly poor), find- 
ing themselves either too cold when near the outside of the 
circle or too hot when between us and the fire, were continually 
shifting their resting-places and walking across and over us, so 
that we had to cover our faces with our arms as best we might. 
The wretched brutes were also busied in exploring the place 
for some fish-bone or potato skin that might possibly have es- 
caped, and growled occasionally at encountering each other in 
the search. Even when lying down in apparent repose they 
would suddenly become agitated from causes to which we will 
be pardoned more particular allusion, and beat a regular tat- 
too on our back or limbs. This was our manner of reposing 
we never slept during what might be called the second watch 
of the night. After about three long hours of this existence 
one of the dogs, which had lain for some time in comparative 
quiet along our spinal column, started his tattoo once more with 
great suddenness and vigor. This excited our latent wrath and 
we struck at the brute, but disturbed one of our aboriginal 
neighbors instead, who inquired "what* might be the matter." 
At least we suppose his brief speech was to this effect, because 
we were totally unacquainted with the guttural idiom. We 
turned and were about to apologize in our gentlest Anglo-Saxon 
when at the moment the door-flap of moose-skin was suddenly 
torn from its place and several cubic feet (all it could hold) of 
fresh, cold air inundated the wigwam. This had the effect of 
making Father N and ourselves give up at once our fruit- 
less attempts at sleep ; and while the Indian whom we had unin- 
tentionally roused ran to catch the canine thieves and would-be 
devourers of our door a task which he essayed in vain, for they 
got off safely in the darkness and the snow we rose to a sitting 
or squatting posture around the fire, which we human beings 
now had to ourselves, the remaining dogs escaping with their 
comrades, either because they wished to share the banquet of 
ancient moose-hide or feared to be massacred on account of the 
misdeeds of their kindred. 

Meanwhile Father N , having sent ahead the husband of 

the sick woman, went in to see how she fared, and we visited 
the poor horse. He was covered with snow, and yet looked 
VOL. XLI. 21 



322 ' PENETANGUISHENE. [June, 

pretty well, as his back was protected by our sleigh-robes, and 
he had tried to satisfy his hunger by eating the bark of the tree 
under which he stood. All we could do was to brush off the 
snow that had accumulated, speak a few kind words to our fel- 
low-creature, and leave him to his fate. If the wolves or bears 
did not come he might survive this hard experience. 

The rest of the night was, perhaps, less intolerable for us, 
because we gave up our show of lying down to sleep along with 
restless dogs and crowding neighbors, and strove to beguile the 
drowsy god with head bent on chest, the while a good fire 
counteracted to some extent the consequences of the loss of the 
door. At length the gray dawn began to overcome the dark- 
ness, and, as it was desirable to quit our present quarters as soon 
as possible, we rose and prepared to move. The husband came 

out of his wife's wigwam and spoke a word to Father N , 

who quietly invited us to accompany him. We entered the 
wretched hut, the bare destitution of which was rapidly losing 
all the fanciful appearance lent it by the darkness and the fire- 
light of a few hours previous. The children still slept at one 
side. The aged woman sat holding her daughter's head pil- 
lowed in her lap, her body rocking easily and her head shaking 
slowly, while tears rolled down her withered cheeks and a low 
murmur of sorrow issued from her lips. When she saw Father 

N she cried : " O father ! my daughter is going from me, 

my daughter is going from me." The dying woman opened 
her eyes once more at the sound, and turned them on the 
priest, and, recognizing him, tried to say something, of which the 
word " Blackrobe " could alone be distinguished the Indian tra- 
ditional term of respect, confidence, and love for the -messenger 
of Christ. Then she closed them for ever, and while yet the 
body of departed youth rested in the lap of surviving age we 
priests, kneeling, said the De Profundis for the repose of the 
soul. 



1885.] A MODERN CRUSADER. 323 



A MODERN CRUSADER. 

IN a peaceful Westphalian valley, on the edge of a forest, 
stands a small Gothic chapel dedicated to St. Meinulph. Ancient 
beeches and linden-trees surround it, and under their spreading 
branches is a grave. A hermit tends the chapel and the quiet 
grave with the knight couchant, lance in rest. There on summer 
days the wild bees hum and wood-scented airs bend the tall 
grasses. Now and then a solitary pilgrim may be seen coming 
through the forest glades to lay a tribute of love and gratitude 
on the last resting-place of this hero. For a hero he is who lies 
there sleeping in death, and they place laurels and palm-branches 
on his sepulchre, for all that he won no battles and knew but to 
fail nobly in a noble cause. Ten years ago all Catholic Germany 
laid Hermann von Mallinckrodt, another Daniel O'Connell, to 
rest under St. Meinulph's linden, and no word was spoken but 
in his honor by friend or foe, so powerfully had he moved the 
hearts of men. The Ktilturkampf has been fought by many 
true and devoted champions of the Catholic Church, but since 
the days of Gorres all looked to Mallinckrodt as their chief, and 
wherever the voice of tyranny and oppression was raised his 
strong voice might have been heard pleading above all others for 
"truth, freedom, and right." It is a voice that still speaks from 
his forest grave ; and now that a decade of years has passed away 
and his life has become history, we may well trace some faint, 
shadowy outline, indeed, but still a true likeness, of one whom 
even his enemies allow to have been a great and good man. 

Hermann von Mallinckrodt was born on the 5th of February, 
1821, of an old Westphalian race. His father, Detmar von Mal- 
linckrodt, was a Protestant, but even after the death of his Catho- 
lic wife, about the year 1830, he was carefirl to fulfil the obli- 
gation he had contracted of having his children brought up in 
the Catholic faith. Hermann was educated at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
studied at the universities of Berlin and Bonn, and subsequently 
practised law at Faderborn, Minister, and Erfurt, at Stralsund 
and Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In the revolutionary crisis of 1848 
he entered the lists publicly for throne and altar. His political 
profession of faith was the outcome of serious study and re- 
flection, the whole bent of his mind having led him up to it ; but 
a book that caused some sensation at the* time, Contemporary Con- 



324 A MODERN CRUSADER. [June, 

vtrsations on Church and State, by General Radowitz, finally in- 
fluenced him in putting himself forward on the side of conserva- 
tive interests. 

From the following year till 1859 ne to k part in various 
judicial and administrative functions of the state ; was mayor of 
Erfurt in 1851, and in this capacity won such golden opinions 
from its burghers that they conferred upon him, in the most 
flattering terms, the freedom of their city. His openly-declared 
Catholic-conservative principles would seem to have debarred 
him from any participation in the ministry as it was then con- 
stituted ; but Count Schwerin, at that time a member of the 
Hohenzollern cabinet, called him in 1859 to occupy a prominent 
position in the Ministry of the Interior an almost unprecedented 
mark of confidence, of which Mallinckrodt always remained sen- 
sible. Promoted to be a councillor of the administration (Re- 
gierungsrath) in 1860, he was, by his own request, appointed to 
Diisseldorf in October of the same year, and filled this post till 
he was removed to Merseburg in 1867. Here he remained for 
five years, when, on coming into the possession of a patrimonial 
domain Nordborchen, in Westphalia he applied for and ob- 
tained his retiring pension. 

Mallinckrodt's course, hitherto so successful from a worldly 
point of view, would probably under other conditions have been 
the beginning of a brilliant diplomatic career. It was destined 
by divine Providence to be a preparation for a short but magni- 
ficent apostleship in the service of the King of kings. In the 
meantime he had belonged to the Prussian House of Representa- 
tives at two distinct periods from 1852 to 1863, and again from 
1868 onwards while in 1867 he had also been elected member of 
the German Reichstag. On retiring from public service in 1872, 
and thus freeing himself from all obligations towards the govern- 
ment, Mallinckrodt was able to devote his energies to the strug- 
gle, daily increasing in importance, that was being carried on in 
both chambers. This was war to the knife. The Centre fraction 
of the Reichstag, with its eighty members, Reichensperger, Wind- 
thorst, and Mallinckrodt at their head, was no match for the 
time-serving and overwhelming majority for the government. 
Mallinckrodt alone could hold his own against Bismarck. At 
that time it had begun to rain persecution in the new German 
Empire.- First came the education question, then the expulsion 
of the Jesuits and. the other religious orders, then the raid against 
the freedom of the pulpit, then the successful attempt to tie the 
hands of the bishops. Mallinckrodt stood fast and firm, parrying 



1885.] A MODERN CRUSADER. 325 

all the blows before they fell on the heads of their victims. He 
was again and again reproached with want of patriotism because, 
in his clear, logical mind, the church with her divine mission 
stood far above the state with its temporal rule ; but for all that 
his heart beat warm and generously for the German fatherland. 
He was a Prussian among Prussians, and had hailed with en- 
thusiasm the promising dawn of the new German Empire. Far 
from being a fanatic and a pessimist, he was slow to accredit the 
government with tyranny and oppression, persisting in the belief 
that as Protestantism rejoiced in the greatest freedom in Ca- 
tholic Bavaria, so Prussia, at the head of the North German Con- 
federation, would respect more and more the independence of 
the church. " On this score," said Mallinckrodt in a speech 
delivered in the Reichstag the 28th of March, 1867 " on this 
score I am troubled by no doubts." In how little the sequel jus- 
tified his confidence we have seen in the dreary annals of the 
Kulturkampf. 

Mallinckrodt was the type and perfection of a true, honest, 
devoted Catholic. His faith was the fundamental principle from 
which all his thoughts, words, and deeds proceeded, as it was 
also the lofty eminence from which he viewed all questions of 
science and politics. To his faith he owed his unswerving fideli- 
ty to king and country in face of the revolutionary movement 
which agitated all Europe in 1848, and his faith prescribed the 
lawful boundaries to which even patriotism may go. " Render 
unto Csesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things 
that are God's," and that other law, " Thou shalt obey God 
rather than man," were written on the very tables of his heart. 

In person Mallinckrodt resembled what we may consider the 
ideal portrait of a Spanish nobleman of the sixteenth century. 
Tall, spare, ascetic-looking, yet dressed with extreme care and 
even elegance, there was something in his expression that re- 
minded one alternately of the humility of a monk and the ease 
and self-possession of a cavalier. His small, classically-shaped 
head, close-cropped beard, and dark, sparkling eyes rendered 
his appearance striking and remarkable everywhere; while in 
his courteous, high-bred manner lay more of Christian kindliness 
than the mere polish of a man of the world. 

The Catholic people were not wanting in grateful recogni- 
tion of all they owed to their leaders in the German Parliament ; 
but Mallinckrodt they considered the real animus of the Centre 
fraction, and his colleagues regarded him in the same light. It 
has been remarked of him that his eloquence did not possess 



326 A MODERN CRUSADER. [June, 

the acrimony of Reichensperger's, nor had it the versatility of 
Windthorst's, nor the resources of Dr. Joerg's, but that he spoke 
with a simple conviction and in a tone of authority that never 
failed to insure attention and respect. His thoughts were 
clothed in well-chosen and distinguished language, at the same 
time austere, concise, and animated. He was never known to 
take refuge in personalities. His conservatism was, therefore, 
infinitely more agreeable to many among the " National-Liberal " 
party than the uncompromising home-thrusts they received from 
other members of the Opposition. Mallinckrodt would sit silent 
during the attack from the other side of the house motionless, 
except that from time to time he would take short notes or 
refer to those already made ; his countenance, set like a rock, 
revealed not the slightest emotion. But as soon as the adversa- 
ry left the tribune he would rise and calmly and magnificently 
beat him out of the field, following point for point his own argu- 
ment, but leaving not a shred of it whole. It sounded as if the 
enemy had let him into the secret of the plan of attack before- 
hand, so complete in all its bearings was his reply. He never 
allowed himself to digress in the least degree from the sub- 
ject actually under discussion, however tempting the prospect 
might appear. Had it not been for the vivacity with which he 
spoke he might have been giving circumstantial evidence in a 
court of law, or a report of the financial returns for the current 
year. He seldom appealed to the feelings of his audience, but 
his logic was severe, sharp, and incisive. With the utmost pre- 
cision he would compare promises with performances, words 
with words, deeds with deeds, and bring out, without one epi- 
thet of abuse, all the hypocrisy, treachery, and inconsistency 
with which the church had been treated. 

He was indisputably the greatest orator and one of the most 
profound thinkers of his time in Germany. True as steel, a 
modern crusader in the noblest sense of the word, he was pos- 
sessed of the rarest of all qualities the gift of making himself 
sincerely respected by his enemies. His speech in the Reichs- 
tag in defence of the Jesuits, of which the following is a frag- 
ment, is a masterpiece of earnestness and dignity : 

" I beg you to observe," he said, " whether, after twenty-five years that 
the Jesuits have labored on German soil, one single transgression, one sin- 
gle breach of the law, in any one member of the society, has been laid to 
their charge. The very member of this honorable house who has spoken 
with the greatest vehemence against the order has felt himself obliged to 
do justice to the thorough honesty and uprightness of each individual 



i8S5-] A MODERN CRUSADER. 327 

among them. And you have heard another testimony, brought by one 
hundred thousand witnesses of high and low estate, from town and coun- 
try, inhabitants of those parts in which the Jesuits have labored most 
continuously. There is but one voice among them, and that is the voice 
of gratitude and praise. And you heard another testimony some years 
ago, when the Prussian government gave the Jesuits the assurance that 
the state had no cause to be dissatisfied with their labors. And you were 
yourselves witnesses of the devotion, the self-sacrificing devotion, of the 
society in the voluntary nursing of the sick and wounded in the recent 
campaigns. But all this has weighed for nothing in j^our eyes. You have 
made up your minds that these things are not to be considered, that every 
educated and enlightened man must form his own independent opinion in 
spite of facts, whether he will be for or against them. Let us decide, 
then but, gentlemen, this is no verdict ; this is the tyranny of party 
spirit." 

On the 9th of May, 1873, he uttered the following memorable 
words on true and false liberalism : 

" Virchow [a member of the majority] admits the principle of religious 
freedom, but only so far as the freedom of the individual is Concerned, in 
complete isolation from every other creature. The individual thus placed 
may think, believe, or teach anything he pleases, so long as he does not 
believe in a divinely-instituted church, does not submit of his own free 
will to her authority, and does not claim the like privilege for the whole 
community of the faithful. That, gentlemen, is a thesis which plainly 
denies the independent rights of the church, while it refuses to the indi- 
vidual the freedom of submitting to an authority which he freely acknow- 
ledges. . . . The powers united against the freedom of the church bear 
aloft a banner with the inscription, State Omnipotence, with its old heathen- 
ish traditions, and they are marching not merely against the Centre frac- 
tion and its supporters, but against the Christian state also. And we, 
gentlemen, we are no battering-rams ; we are rather men, standing in the 
breaches, defending the principle of a Christian state against heathendom, 
defending Christian freedom against the inroads of the powers of this 
world, defending historical right against revolutionary -wrong, and I do 
not exaggerate, gentlemen we are defending the crown against those 
who call themselves its protectors." 

And further on in the same debate : 

" We are well aware that heavy days are in store for us ; our bishoprics 
may be laid waste, our people may call in vain for spiritual guides, but the 
die is cast. We cannot deny what in our conscience we believe, we cannot 
give up that which is our holiest, and we have the conviction that the God 
of hosts is on our side. Moreover, we are comforted, knowing that man's 
extreme necessity is God's best opportunity. . . . The peculiarity of suffer- 
ing is that it begets the willingness to suffer. When you see that our 
bishops are in prison, in bonds, or in exile, do you believe that the willing- 
ness to suffer these thi.ngs is wanting ? And when the clergy are following 
their example, do you think the laity will refuse to do their part also? 
You will not obtain your end by fines, imprisonment, and exile ; you will 



328 A MODERN CRUSADER. [June, 

have to forge other weapons. But while you are considering what different 
modes of persecution you can inflict we are strengthening ourselves with 
our motto, ' Per crucem ad lucem.' " 

On the 29th of January, 1874, the government had brought 
forward for discussion the grant of sixteen thousand thalers for a 
new " Catholic bishop," the Old-Catholic Reinkens. The Old- 
Catholic deputy, Dr. Petri, made a remarkable speech in- which 
he had been forced to show his hand and to declare openly : 

" Our struggle is against Rome ; the end we have in view, a German 
national church. I hope to see at last, side by side with the Christian 
faith, Christian charity and that invisible church in which all noble- 
minded men may have a place." 

Immediately after Dr. Petri rose the Minister of Public Wor- 
ship, Dr. Falk, and in the course of his speech remarked : 

" There is at least one point at which the Old-Catholic movement and 
the government meet and agree. I do not know how it may be in the 
.future, but at present this one point is war with Rome ; and if you say the 
government has in this motion [in favor of Reinkens] wished to forge a 
weapon for itself against Rome, I do not deny that you are right." 

Then Dr. Hermann von Mallinckrodt rose, exceptionally agi- 
tated, " all his Catholic blood boiling," says a spectator, and 
spoke as follows : 

" Who are they who have empowered themselves to elect a bishop ? 
Who, I say, are they ? A few scattered individuals. If these persons will 
assemble and form a corporation, a society, and say : ' We will choose a 
superior V-a la bonne heure. In that case I should have no objection to 
make. But the case is this : A comparatively small number of persons, 
maintaining that they have not separated themselves from the church, but 
that they still belong to the one great universal society, come forward and 
declare that they will no longer recognize the existing order of things, 
but intend to choose a new authority after a fashion of five hundred or a 
thousand years ago. Might we not as logically bring together a few hun- 
dreds of persons in any part of Prussia and allow them to declare that the 
present government no longer contents them, that it issues laws which do 
not suit them and interferes with things outside its province, and that they 
claim the right to choose, after the fashion of a thousand years ago, a 
different kind of government altogether? 

" This is a complete analogy to what has been done in the Old-Catholic 
movement, but that such an analogy is not pleasing to the gentlemen of 
the majority I am quite willing to agree. What the revolutionary prin- 
ciple regarding the sovereignty of the people is in the state, such is the 
rising up of the Old Catholics in the bosom of the Catholic Church. . . . 
The State Commissioner has assured us that the position of the govern- 
ment is a completely neutral one. I do not know whether any one in the 
house still believes in this assurance after having heard the speech of the 
Minister of Public Worship, but it is well that things should be daily more 



1885.] A MODERN CRUSADER. 329 

clearly defined. Years ago we expressed our conviction as to the tendency 
of this movement, and then a much more innocent mien was affected than 
is the case to-day. Now the mask is lifted rather more, and we hear a 
declaration of war against Rome such as the Minister of Public Worship 
has just made known. . . . The tendency declares itself openly in the 
whole mass of legislation we have before us in the May laws. The secret 
motive underlying all is solely the infiltration of a different spirit into the 
church by means of interference with her in all her organs and all her 
movements. It is a question of changing her very essence until she is 
turned into that desirable thing described by the deputy Petri into a 
national church, and, further, into an invisible church for all. And when 
they have got thus far, when they have reached the goal of an invisible 
church for all, who will henceforth maintain that they still mean the Catho- 
lic Church ? Neither you nor I have read in any book on canon law that 
the Catholic Church is defined as invisible. But I now declare the Min- 
ister of Public Worship, he who is so constantly referring to the fact that 
the laws of the state must be obeyed I declare him to be guilty of a breach 
of the law, and herein I am aware that I make a very grave accusation 
against the government." 

This accusation Mallinckrodt supported by referring to the vio- 
lation of the bull De 'Salute animarum. It was a most agitated 
sitting, but, astounding to relate, to the grave imputation laid to 
his charge Dr. Falk answered never a word. 

On another occasion, when the question concerning the con- 
tradiction existing between the Prussian laws and Catholic dogma 
was being discussed, Mallinckrodt in a few terse sentences laid 
bare the whole state of the case, and justified the conduct of the 
German bishops in a manner patent to all honest minds. 

" We do not at all claim," he said, " that it would be dogmatically impos- 
sible for a bishop to notify to the government that he had appointed such 
and such an ecclesiastic to such and such a post ; we do not, moreover, 
maintain that it would be impossible under certain circumstances that a 
bishop should even make a certain appointment dependent on the good 
pleasure of the state. To prove this I need only appeal to the decrees of 
the bull De salute animarum, wherein it is solemnly agreed that no bishop 
shall be created who is a persona ingrata^ or even minus grata, to the state. 
But what we maintain is that all such decrees are unlawful when they are 
made by unauthorized persons and treated as if they were the laws of the 
church, for from the moment that such is the case the freedom of the 
church is denied ; and the freedom of the church is a dogmatic fact. The 
church as a divine institution is independent and sovereign, requiring no 
other credentials than the credentials of her divine Founder. All who 
deny this power and sovereignty are in opposition to the dogma of the 
church." 

The space at our command allows us but one more quota- 
tion, and, in the embarras de richesses before us, we incline to the 
closing words of Mallinckrodt's speech of the igth of May, 1874. 



330 A MODERN CRUSADER. [June, 

They were unconsciously the last he was to utter in the Reichs- 
tag. Eight days later he was lying still and cold in death. A 
parish priest had been illegally arrested and imprisoned ; and, 
as our hero had given his life in defence of " truth, freedom, and 
rig/it" its closing scene was to be another valiant protest against 
injustice and crying wrong. 

" To such means," he cried contemptuously, " you have recourse at a 
moment when you have the power of making and carrying any laws you 
choose, provided you entitle them ' Church Laws.' You have nothing to 
fear they will all pass ; but, with such omnipotence, can you not wait till 
you have created a legal manner of proceeding, but in your haste you 
must throw yourselves on the first illegal one that comes to hand ? Gen- 
tlemen, what a pitiable effect such acts must produce on the minds of the 
public at large, when a man placed high in authority is the victim of such 
blind passion in the choice of his measures that one would be justified in 
saying, ' This man knows not how to govern himself; how, then, shall he be 
able to govern others ' ! " 

This speech, of which the above fragment is the conclusion, 
made such a favorable impression in the chamber that even the 
Jewish deputy, Herr Lasker, one of Mallinckrodt's most bitter 
enemies, applauded loudly. 

Dr. Falk having declared that Mallinckrodt had taken words 
he had spoken, and, separating them from the context, had mis- 
represented his meaning, Mallinckrodt proved the utter false- 
ness of this allegation so clearly and with such dignit^v of bear- 
ing that the Minister of Public Worship had nothing further to 
say. " I have the consciousness," said Mallinckrodt in his clear, 
firm voice, " never to have fought with disloyal weapons." And 
with these words he ended worthily his parliamentary career. 

The faith that Mallinckrodt defended so valiantly in the pub- 
lic arena he practised in the retirement of his own inner life. It 
has been said of him truly that he was, before the world, a man; 
before God, as a little child. The members of the Reichstag 
saw his boldness, heard his fearlessness of speech, his hatred of 
iniquity, but it was known to few how at early dawn he would 
be kneeling at the altar of his parish church at Berlin to receive 
the Bread of the strong. But in this way he would arm himself 
for the fight. When a friend congratulated him, after a debate, 
on the brilliant force of his arguments, he would escape from all 
praise behind his favorite words of St. Paul's, " Gratia sum id 
quod sum," or he would descend from the tribune amidst a storm 
of applause, and, grasping the hand of an ecclesiastic among his 
friends, he would say : " You have prayed well for me to-day." 

And yet we began by saying that he won no battles, and only 



1885.] A MODERN CRUSADER. 331 

knew how to fail nobly in a noble cause. The battle for truth, 
freedom, and right has, indeed, little chance of being entirely won 
in this world : on the 2/th of May the iniquitous Falk laws were 
published, and he who had fought so bravely for faith and fa- 
therland had fallen in the struggle. 

Mallinckrodt was twice married, first in 1860 to Baroness 
Elisabeth von Bernhard, who died in 1872, and again in February, 
1874, to the step-sister of his first wife, chosen to be a tender mo- 
ther to his five motherless children. That in three months they 
would be utterly unprotected but for this second mother neither 
had any cause to foresee. From the altar he had hastened to his 
post in the front rank of the fray. And then, at the end of the 
session, he fell. Weary, longing for his Westphalian home, he 
was preparing for his departure thence, and had taken leave of 
all his friends in Berlin, when a sudden chill laid him on a bed 
of suffering from which he was never to rise. When it became 
evident that another journey than the one he had so eagerly 
looked forward to was before him, his young wife, waiting to 
greet him in his beloved Nordborchen, was hastily summoned to 
his bedside. He lingered a few days, passing from one feverish 
dream into another. Generally, in his wanderings, he imagined 
he was in the Reichstag and a debate on the church laws was 
going on. In the midst of much that was unintelligible the sad 
watchers round his bed heard him say clearly and distinctly, as 
if he were addressing the house : " I have desired to be at peace 
with all, but justice must be upheld." And again towards the 
end another ray of his wonted energy and earnestness seemed to 
pierce the clouds of fancy and feverish illusion. Raising- himself 
on one arm, he said with peculiar emphasis : " This question has 
surely been discussed sufficiently ; among Christians there can be 
but one opinion regarding it. I earnestly entreat that the de- 
bate may be closed. Good-night ! " And with the last words he 
turned to his wife, laid one hand in hers, and, with the other 
grasping, a crucifix, he breathed out his faithful soul. Over-work 
and over-tension had broken his strength ; during the last session 
his hair had grown completely white and deep furrows had im- 
printed themselves on his brow. As his life had been, so was his 
death ; he was, without exaggeration, a defensor and confessor fidei. 
Like a wail the news spread. " Mallinckrodt is dead ! " they 
cried, and Catholics all over Germany and far beyond its fron- 
tiers looked blankly into each other's faces, so great and over- 
whelming was the blow, so heartfelt the grief of all. At the re- 
quiem sung for him at St. Hedwig's, in Berlin, some of his most 



332 JOHN IN PA TMOS. ' [June, 

bitter enemies of the Reichstag met and grasped the hands of his 
dearest friends. 

The correspondent of a Berlin Liberal newspaper relates that 
when Prince Bismarck was informed of Mallinckrodt's decease, 
he expressed himself in terms of the warmest admiration of his 
personal character, and ended by saying: "The race between 
the Ultramontanes and the National party is about equal now. 
Hitherto the Centre fraction has been in advance by just about 
the length of. Mallinckrodt." 



JOHN IN PATMOS. 

WE sailed the Grecian Archipelago, 

And, casting anchor in that classic sea, 
We wandered over Patmos, to and fro, 

Deeming the ground too good for such as we. 

Northward Romania stretched, Natolia east ; 

The isle of Candia to the southward lay ; 
While Macedonia (what a visual feast ! ) 

And sister countries westward sloped away. 

John's convent in the island's midst we found ; 

Upon a mount it stood, and was not hidden ; 
And, inly deeming Patmos holy ground, 

We enter'd softly, free and unforbidden. 

The Abbot hospitality dispensed 

(Like white-wing'd angels seemed the distant ships) ; 
Eternity seemed into Time condensed, 

And to us came a new Apocalypse. 

We saw (or seem'd to see) John as he wrote 

Unto the Asiatic churches seven, 
Till, half in swoon, our spirits seem'd to float 

From earth, thro' space, in ecstasy towards Heaven. 



John is beatified ; the Abbot's dead ; 

Patmos still glorifies that Hellic sea ; 
She, our co-pilgrim, unto Death is wed : 

And back to Patmos John seems beck'ning me. 



1885.] IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. 333 



IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. 

ABOUT that Keltic literature which they possess in common 
Scotch and Irish antiquarians and scholars have cherished 
toward one another feelings the reverse of gentle. The Irish 
have assumed for the last hundred years that the Scotch filched 
from them the honor of having produced the ballads called of 
Ossian, feloniously and by malice aforethought, and assumed 
that the Homer of the misty Iliad of the north was a Scottish 
Highlander. Finding it most difficult to place the spots alluded 
to by the English Ossian of Macpherson, apologists and com- 
mentators have sought to compromise by identifying certain 
islands intermediate between Ireland and Scotland with the 
places mentioned in several Ossianic poems. But the Irish find- 
ing on their own soil ballads of the same general nature, but 
much more fragmentary and at the same time sharper-cut and 
more realistic, less magnificently vague, less filled with landscape 
painted in words, less morbid, more manly have insisted that 
Ossian is only Oisin of Ireland at second-hand. Macpherson's 
epoch-making poems are thus assailed from both sides nowadays 
by claimants of an Irish origin to his characters and to such plot 
as can be detected under the clouds of wonderful talk;. formerly 
by "brutal Saxons" like Dr. Samuel Johnson, sceptics like 
Hume, incisive Scots like Alexander Laing. The attitude of 
the Scotch toward the Irish is not without interest and may be 
worth a few words ; it will, at any rate, lead one to wider conside- 
rations affecting matters of the largest scope in the present and 
the future of the British Empire. Though so long ignored by 
other people, and in truth neglected by the Irish themselves, yet 
is it scarcely necessary to mention the practical identity of the 
Keltic spoken in Connaught and the Highlands of Scotland. The 
difference between the two was not greater than that between 
widely-separated counties in Saxon England, although different 
methods of transcribing the living tongue made the similarity 
appear less. Certainly when Macpherson at last agreed to 
pocket the affronts he had received from the great literary bully 
Johnson, and others of less weight, and undertake to print the 
originals from which his Ossian was translated and paraphrased, 
the differences were slight. The older the manuscript the nearer 
is the identity ; and but little before Macpherson's day we have 



334 IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. [June, 

records that show Scottish bards crossing- to Ireland to perfect 
themselves in their profession among the descendants of the old 
Irish filedka. A very interesting- work published in 1876, The 
Language and Literature of the Scottish Highlands, by Professor 
J. Stuart Blackie, tells the same story, but by inference ; for the 
professor is too loyal to his own Highlands to run after Irish 
gods, as we shall see. Considering the kinship in tongue, it is 
perhaps natural that the name of the shire rendered famous by 
Robert Burns should be Ayr. It has a curious likeness in its 
mixed Kelto-Saxon origin to the word Ireland. The Angles and 
Saxons, the Danes and other Norsemen, would hear of Ireland 
from the Kelts as the island of the West (tar), and add there- 
to the common- termination "land," as they formed Scotland, 
Iceland, and Greenland. The Irish who crossed St. Patrick's 
Channel to colonize the north of Britain would call some promi- 
nent part of the shore to which they sailed the East shore (air), 
whereto in later times the Teutons would add the Saxon scire, or 
shire, making Ayrshire. Thus Ire is thought to come from iar, 
west, and Ayr (perhaps Arran, too) from air, east. This deriva- 
tion of Ireland's name was mentioned in THE CATHOLIC WORLD 
for April in " The Old Files of Ireland " ; but it must be re- 
membered that there are fierce differences on the subject. Eire, 
genitive Eireann, is what the Irish call it now ; in ancient times 
it was Eriu, genitive Erenn, dative and accusative Erinn. The 
Latin writers who mention it say Hibernia, which led some to 
suggest a Spanish derivation the river Iberus, or Ebro ; the 
Greeks wrote it louernia, louernis, and lerne. Keating quotes 
an early believer in the iar, or " west," explanation as " the holy 
Cormac Mac Culinain, of opinion that it received the name from 
the word'iber' i.e. western." It has been suggested, on the 
analogy of England, Scotland, Greenland, and other names of 
countries, that " Ire" is Teutonic, as well as " land," and means 
iron Ironland. It is further true that though we spell i-ron we 
pronounce i-urn, showing mutability in the word; and it is fur- 
thermore a fact that enough iron is found in parts of Ireland to 
make such a thing just possible. Yet in Irish iron is iaran, and 
it seems nearly impossible that so obvious a meaning should 
ever have been lost in a country where civilization has at times 
been high and wide-spread, and where Keltic literature has 
always maintained itself. The Romans twisted the word to 
agree with hibernus, as a place to the north, and cold compared 
with Italy. Recent craftsmen in words, word-burglars, word- 
dissectors, have found in Ire the " noble word " Arya, which is 



1885.] IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. 335 

taken now to represent that primitive Asiatic race whence Hin- 
doos, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs in 
common descend. This may argue a very straight and unmixed 
ascent from the early Irish to the hypothetical Aryan father 
stock an ascent which is not contradicted by the drift of the 
legends concerning their arrival in Ireland, nor by their my- 
thology, nor by their religion, by their customs nor manners. 
Yet the etymology is doubtful, though it would be interesting, 
and perhaps fair, to consider the primitive arrivals as part of 
the first Keltic wave which ran with comparatively unimportant 
stoppages from the plateaus north of Persia, by Asia Minor, 
Algiers, and Spain, to the farthest westward part of Europe. 
Two of the best Keltic scholars of to-day, Windisch and Rhys, 
give the weight of their authority to another theory. They 
believe that an initial, the letter P, has fallen away from the 
word, and that the Greek pion, rich, abundant, wealthy, the 
Latin pingids, fat, represent the original meaning, while a similar 
name in Greece is Pieria, the home of Orpheus and the Muses. 
In accepting this definition for the origin of the word as used by 
the early Irish it is not necessary to refuse zVzr-land, or westland. 
Such a partly Keltic word might be used among Saxons and 
between Irish and Saxons, while there was-used between Irish and 
Irish a slightly similar word with a radically different ancestry. 
We have digressed far ; but Ayrshire began it, and Ayrshire 
belongs to Robert Burns. 

How much Burns knew of the old tongue, whether he ever 
came personally in contact with Gaelic minstrels, whether his 
genius was purely influenced by locality or derived its vigor 
from that Keltic ancestry which we recognize in his Keltic touch, 
are questions of the highest moment to the right study and esti- 
mate of Burns, but those which literary undertakers avoid under- 
taking. Vergil, Lucan, Seneca, Oisin (who was undoubtedly a 
person of great attainments in poetry, though perhaps not the 
maker of half of that which is attributed to him), possibly Swift 
(who, born under peculiar circumstances in Ireland, appears not to 
have been the child of the lady whose name he bore), Goldsmith, 
Sheridan, Scott, and Byron had in their blood Keltic strains 
more or less clear, more or less acknowledged, but enough to re- 
flect back glory on the race. Vergil's place in the list is proved 
by the evidence of his name, as Zeuss has pointed out, and is 
corroborated by his birth in Gallia Cisalpina. Burns belongs 
to the same great race quite as much as to the Saxon, and is in- 
tellectually more closely akin to Kelt than to the latter. It is 



336 IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. [June, 

known that more than once Alba,* as the ancients called Scot- 
land, was settled by swarms from Ireland. From the Irish poeti- 
cal remains it is clear that invasions in the other direction were 
not uncommon, but in old times they seem to have been made by 
single chiefs with small bands of adventurers, exactly like the 
men who fared a-wicking about the Baltic. Hence the Homeric 
tendency to single combats in Ossian. In a later period, when 
Danes and Norsemen came with great fleets, doubtless they had 
in many cases Scotch allies ; these armies made permanent con- 
quests, and, though beaten at times, managed to stay and mingled 
with the people. The Irish were great slave-owners, and " for- 
eign women " are as regular objects as cows in the lists of tri- 
bute paid by one chief to another, one king to a greater, which 
have come down to us in the Leabhar na g-Ceart. When the 
Irish settled Scotland, about the time Christianity was estab- 
lished throughout Ireland, the zealous did not stop there ; for 
when the Norwegians who could not brook the oppression of a 
king aiming at complete sovereignty sailed to far-away Iceland 
and " took land," they found Irish monks already on the spot. 
Would that the books of the anchorites which they mention had 
been preserved ! What. light might not these manuscripts of the 
ninth century throw on the early Christian churches in Ireland 
before and -after St. Patrick's mission ! It is probable, because it 
is in the nature of things at that period, that the first churches in 
Greenland were governed by Irish priests ; but the assertion is 
not yet provable by documents. We can see that, owing to the 
harrying of the Continent and of England by the heathen, there 
was a concentration in Ireland of bookmen ; the peaceable re- 
establishment of Christianity by St. Patrick made the island the 
refuge of. monks and literary men. 

Eugene O'Curry has translated a curious definition of the 
'graduation of a file in the informal college of his Order : 

" Question. In what form are degrees conferred upon a poet ? 

"Answer. He exhibits his compositions to him that is, to an Ollamh 
(Ollave, a master of the arts of poetry, etc.) and he has the qualifications 
of each of the seven orders (of poets) ; and the king confirms him in his 
full degree, and in what the Ollamh reports of him as to his compositions 
and as to his innocence and purity ; that is to say, purity of learning and 
purity of mouth (from abuse and satire), and purity of hand (from blood- 
shedding), and purity of union (marriage), and purity of honesty (from theft 
and robbery and unlawfulness), and purity of body that he have but one 
wife ; for he dies (in dignity) through impure cohabitation." 

It is notable how easily in Ireland the Christian teacher took 

* The White, derived from the Old Keltic albis, akin to the Old Irish dlaib, fair. 



E885-] IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. 337 

the place of the heathen, how the occasionally anti-clerical filedJia, 
or Literary Order, took, together with the priests, the place of 
the Druid beside the king. While these two orders defended 
their own, they also greatly raised the power of the king above 
his subjects ; for all three, king, priest, and file, were interested 
alike in getting and keeping control. Gradually diminishing the 
number of petty chiefs, they seem to have paved the way again 
and again for an ard-righ, or chief-king a king of kings, as the 
Orientals express it some such monarch as that Brian to whom 
patriots look longingly back when with Tom Moore they sing, 

" Remember the glories of Brian the Brave." 

Ireland we must think of as the home-hive into which Kelts of 
many lands fled in early Christian centuries, and whence return 
swarms issued, when occasion served, filling pretty much every 
European land with teachers, and even, as we have seen, pro- 
bably reaching Greenland and the American continent before 
Columbus. Though it was known that as lately as the last cen- 
tury it was necessary for a Scotch [poet to live in Ireland awhile 
to gain mastery in music and poetry, it was not generally ac- 
cepted that Ireland was the motherland. Far from the currents 
of commerce and agricultural wealth, the Highlands could never 
foster a large body of literature, and without continual recruiting 
from outside it would necessarily die out, even if there were no 
other literature than the memorized ballads of the minstrels at- 
tached to chiefs and clans. In Ireland there was a sufficient 
number of colleges and schools, cities and courts, kings, chiefs 
and nobles, bishops and clericals, to encourage and, after a 
fashion, support the national arts of music and song. Irish writers 
complain of the devastations of Danes and Cromwellians, but 
perhaps the infusions of Spanish, Gaulish, Norse, Danish, Anglo- 
Saxon, Welsh, and Norman and Puritan settlers, in some such 
chronological order as here given, did the Irish people more 
good, by enriching, strengthening and developing the stock, than 
the invaders did harm. While the Highlands were stagnant, 
Keltic Ireland was forced to move, to agonize, to combine for 
defence of the old tongue against the malice of some and the in- 
difference of others. To-day the difference shows. While the 
Highlanders have made no popular effort to keep the language 
alive, the Irish at home and in the United States have organized 
schools after the system of a Society for the Preservatioa of the 
Irish Language. Those schools have much to contend with ; 
they can hardly be called successful yet ; but it is the spirit, not 
VOL. XLI. 22 



338 IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. [June, 

the success, that is noteworthy. At all times, as far back as we 
can see, Ireland was the mother, the Highlands of Scotland the 
offspring, numerically and commercially, intellectually and artis- 
tically. 

Indeed, Keltic Scotland appears to have always been political- 
ly and intellectually subordinate to Ireland. The Scotch Kelts 
stand to Ireland as the Bretons to Wales; for it is now ascer- 
tained that the Bretons are not the primitive settlers of Armorica, 
but recolonized Gaul, if the term be permitted, after Angl'es and 
Saxons had made permanent conquest of England. They took 
with them from Wales the old language and legends, just as the 
Highlanders brought from Ireland the old Gaelic (Gaedilig, pro- 
nounced Gaylig or Gaylick), and the legends too, of which we 
find the shadows in Macpherson's Ossian, enlarged and wavering, 
each one thrown upward, gigantic and imposing, as the figures of 
men are thrown upon the fog when standing on mountain-tops in 
the driving mists. But obligations like these appear to have em- 
bittered Scotchmen instead of drawing them toward the Irish. 

That wonderful " impressionist," Thomas Carlyle, showed 
toward the Irish a disposition thoroughly Scotch. In My Irish 
Journey in 1849 he has this powerful sketch, which shows the 
state of things in Ireland and the singular mixture of hardness 
and sympathy, of intuitive understanding, of wrong-headed sus- 
picion, which summed him up : " Flat, flat, waste, of moor ; 
patches of wretched oats ; then peat-bogs, black pools, the roof- 
less cottages (of the evicted) not far off at any time. Potatoes 
poor cottier digging his little plot of them, three or four little 
children eagerly 'gathering' for him; pathetic to look upon. 
From one cottage on the wayside issue two children naked to 
beg; boy about thirteen, girl about twelve ; naked literally, some 
sash of rags round middle, oblique sash over shoulder to support 
that; stark naked would have been as decent (if you had to jump 
and run as these creatures did) and much cleanlier. Dramatic, I 
take it, or partly so, this form of begging; ' strip for your parts- 
there is the car coming.' Gave them nothing." This was cold 
enough, brutal enough, from a man whose kindred were peasants 
and his name Keltic. Yet he saw. under the miserable people 
the remains of former dignity and possibilities of future excel- 
lence, though he knew next to nothing of their past, and what 
little of their literature and antiquities he met with only stirred 
his contempt. " Ah me ! These faces are still very clear to me. 
and were I a painter I could draw them ; others, one or two, 
not thought of again till now, have got erased. I was struck in 



1885.] IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. 339 

general with the air of faculty misbred and gone to waste, or 
more or less ' excellent possibility much marred,' in almost all 
the faces. The man had found himself so enveloped in condi- 
tions which he deemed unfair, which he had revolted against, 
but had not been able to conquer, that he had, so to speak, lost his 
way. A sorry sight, the tragedy of each of these poor men, but 
here too surely a ' possibility ' ; if the Irish faculty be good you 
can breed it, put it among conditions which are fair, or at least 
fairer." 

How came a mighty wrestler after truth like Carlyle to stand 
so helpless before the problem of what to do for the Irish? 
His word was very important, for he was a Crusader against 
Sham. From his letters lately published it is seen how cold he 
was toward the Irish, how completely he was baffled by their 
problem, because he felt no kindness for them. But even toward 
his own peasant-fellows of Scotland he did not show true sym- 
pathy ; not for him to be the literary Millet of an oppressed class ! 
He admired their sturdy manliness, their decorum, and patience 
under privation ; and contrasted these traits with the shiftless- 
ness of Irish hordes coming to the Lowlands for work in the 
harvest-fields. Yet in Carlyle there was much the same propor- 
tion of Kelt to Saxon as in the people he saw ; beyond a few mis- 
pronounced words caught from their nurses, the greater part 
of the harvesters he disdains were doubtless innocent of Keltic 
speech. Nay, that tendency which underlay all Carlyle's vocifer- 
ous abuse of his superiors, and cropped out when he began to 
frequent lords and ladies of high degree ; that tendency toward 
aristocracy, and away from the people that trait is one of the 
commonest among the Irish. The Irish nature, subtle and rest- 
less, prone to meddle and quarrel, is open to all the faults of 
men whose wits are somewhat nimbler than is good for them. 
Though the democratic blast comes strong from 'America, and is 
reinforced by the money of democratic Irishmen earned abroad, 
the home-stayer, at least, is at heart an aristocrat. Give him but 
the chance, he becomes a rackrenting, evicting landlord ! But 
circumstances are such that Irishmen who are really patriotic 
believe honestly in their own democratic principles. A curious 
spectacle this little nation restive under Anglo-Scottish rule, 
forced by events in America and at home to embrace democracy, 
when, individually, it loves to boast descent from kings, and boasts 
it often truly ; \?hen it delights in handles to names, military 
glory, grades and ranks, and all the pomps and vanities of a by- 
gone feudal state. Neither ancestry, inclination,, education, nor 



340 IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. [June, 

the example of others have prepared the Irish for that democracy 
about which their talkers wax eloquent. This contradiction in- 
herent in the situation may account for the jerkiness if the term 
be permitted to so grave a matter of the progress of democracy 
in Ireland, the evictions and shootings, the assassinations, rows in 
Parliament, and dynamite outrages. More than any other part 
of the Empire this one suffers from the anomalies, the anachron- 
isms of the social and political fabric. 

From the Scotch the Irish might have expected greater sym- 
pathy than from the English. But such has not been often the 
case. Speaking of the attacks on Macpherson, one of the latest 
writers on that once burning topic, Professor Blackie, alludes to 
his persecution as coming from " the natural jealousy of the Teu- 
tonic toward the Keltic race that was working secretly, and like- 
wise the traditional ignorance and insolence of Englishmen with 
regard to the extra-Anglican world generally, and especially to all 
that concerns Scotland." The Scotch have in this been only too 
apt scholars of the English. The professor does not give so much 
credit to Ireland as would be always due to her, even supposing 
that the Highlands were the only nurseries of Ossianic ballads. 
The question of the right to the great poetic literature attached 
to that name, and to the names of heroes mentioned in such songs, 
is settled offhand. Scotland and Ireland were in those times 
one Keltic country ; therefore there is no need to bother on 
which side of the Channel the ballads belong ! This is a well- 
known historical fact which " puts an end to the famous dispute 
whether Ossian was an Irishman or a Scotchman ; he was both, 
just as Homer was as a worker at once an Asiatic and an Euro- 
pean Greek." 

Looking at the matter through such fixed Scottish spec- 
tacles, Professor Blackie misses the main point in the Macpher- 
son persecution.' There was no excuse for Hume's exceeding 
scepticism, none for Dr. Johnson's insults. But Macpherson, 
we can now see, was handicapped when it came to publishing 
his Keltic texts, as he wanted to, but could not, owing to lack 
of means. It was awkward for him, not merely because, a 
wretched Keltic scholar himself, he had taken more than a 
paraphraser's liberty with the original, but because he had dove- 
tailed together parts of ballads to form wholes, filled up gaps, 
and otherwise " restored " Ossian as vigorously as a Cypriote 
statue in New York. Another reason for his hesitation also ap- 
pears, and the most moving, in the necessity which he was 
under of revealing a fact, probably unsuspected at first namely, 



1885.] IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. 341 

that Ireland, not the Highlands, was the true centre of Keltic 
oral literature and minstrelsy. 

Music is, indeed, one of the boasts of Ireland, as one may 
imagine from the harp that is displayed on her banner. The 
popular tunes of the late phase of " English " opera-bouffe are 
still heard in the streets. Flimsy, say the devotees to high 
classical music ; but that is a matter of taste. It is Irish music 
by an Irish Sullivan ; the Hibernian nucleus of melody is what 
makes the music of Sullivan. The drawing-room resounds with 
the spirited songs of Molloy, as when our mothers and grand- 
mothers were singing Moore's Melodies and Scotch part-songs. 
At the same time in literature the phenomenon called Ossian 
was running and perhaps finishing its course. It is not gene- 
rally remembered how the words of Macpherson's English were 
translated into other tongues and how his curious style was 
imitated by foreigners. More than one German writer took his 
style from Macpherson's Ossian. A learned university man trans- 
lated and published Darthula in the finest Oxford Greek ; Ossian 
was quickly turned into Italian, French, and German. On the 
fine arts it made a profound impression : it is more than proba- 
ble that here the British school of landscape-painting took its 
rise ; for if one trace that school by way of Constable and Lou- 
therbourg back to the writer Jean Jacques Rousseau, as may 
be done, one finds behind Rousseau the shadow of Ossian ; and 
behind Ossian the Irish Oisin and the half-Christian filedha, with 
a further vista into the pagan and mythologic past. But as to 
music proper: in the sixteenth century Tassoni says that Ge- 
sualdus, a great Italian composer, whose work is now belittled 
while the French and German composers have their vogue, 
studied the Scottish (that is, the Irish) ancient music. Oliver 
Goldsmith wrote that Geminiani, a close student of Gesualdus, 
was of the opinion "that we have in. the dominions of Great 
Britain no original music except the Irish." The musical ear 
must have existed among the Irish from early times, if we can 
judge from the language, than which there is scarcely another 
that shows greater nicety of ear in its speakers. The Welsh 
have a similar sensitiveness to roughness of consonants and a 
like love for music. A quatrain given in the Cambro-Briton 
holds somewhat like the distich Germans attribute to Martin 
Luther, which runs, 



1 Wer liebt nicht Wein, Weib, und Gesang, 
Der bleibt ein Narr sein lebenlang" 



342 IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. [June, 

that " he who loves the cruith and harp, the ring of the consonants, 
song and epigram, loves most lovable things which are found 
in heaven in midst the angels. He only who loves not melody 
and song loves not the nobleness of love in itself. So long as 
he lives, such an one will appear hateful to man and hateful to 
God." 

But in Welsh writing one great guide is absent which the 
Irish retains. With the disuse of the old alphabet in favor of 
the newer alphabet of Italy the Welsh cleared away the com- 
plicated system of consonant-changes which makes Irish so hard 
to learn. It simplified in one sense, but was a great loss in 
another. One reason why Irish is so important to the stu- 
.dent of languages is that it retains in its spelling a vast number 
of old changes. Words written with three syllables are now 
pronounced as one ; initial letters, when pronounced, have quite 
another sound ; diphthongs and triphthongs now uttered short 
reveal the former history of the word, as if in English we should 
still spell certain Saxon words as they were spelled by the An- 
gles and Saxons. The changes of consonants are multiform and 
infect nearly every word, especially the initial consonant when 
it follows another word. Thus bard becomes ward, bean be- 
comes wan, dilis becomes hellish, duine" becomes ghuine', atJiair 
becomes a air. Irish, which is far from harsh in the mouths of 
peasants, must be a beautiful language when spoken by culti- 
vated people not, perhaps, so sonorous as Spanish, but with a 
good deal of the snap and spirit of Castilian. It is surprising 
how it has lasted through the centuries of neglect and persecu- 
tion as regards its literary or grammarian side. The Catholic 
Church, having first attacked the national legends and the na- 
tional speech, became their protector as soon as h'er sway was 
established ; and doubtless it is owing to her that we still have 
the treasures in old Irish literature, the magazine for philolo- 
gists in the old language. Priests have seldom either the 
leisure or the appliances to become great scholars, but they 
often have literary instincts, and are by education and prac- 
tice conservative of what is venerable ; so that in Ireland, as in 
other countries which might be mentioned, they have in unpre- 
tending ways done more for posterity than boastful gramma- 
rians and others, ridden by the spirit of their several epoch.s, 
who are bound at all odds to be original. This should be re- 
membered when one is disposed to be severe with the memory 
of some Bishop Landa for having made bonfires of the pagan 
literature of the Maya Indians of Yucatan. 



1885.] IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. 343 

If the chameleon-changes of initial consonants and conso- 
nants between syllables surprise one in Irish, the vowels are 
not less curious, until we discover that like things are traceable 
in English speech. Vowel-sounds that in cultivated mouths are 
uttered short will be found in some places, such as Yorkshire 
and Surrey in England, to be drawled in a most singular fashion 
and practically broken up into a number of vowels. Tennyson's 
dialect poems in the Yorkshire, or, better, the charming poems 
by Matthew Barnes, will give some hint of this. But it is not 
necessary to cross the Atlantic. In New England, North Caro- 
lina, or Tennessee we have drawls that recall the vowel-forms 
in the written Anglo-Saxon and Irish. The framing of the 
Irish sentence is also peculiar. To take the simplest example : 
" The day is long" is put this way : " It is the day long" Ta an 
Id f ada. How queer, how inverted, is it not? But wait a mo- 
ment. What part of a simple sentence is the most important ? 
The verb, that gives the sentence life and movement, like the 
blood. And then? The noun. And after? The adjective 
that qualifies the noun. Well, the above sentence follows that 
logic : first comes the verb, to be ; then the noun ; then the 
qualifying adjective. The French are thought a logical nation 
too logical to have many great poets, it has been said. French 
people often use this form of the sentence ; for example, C'est-que 
le jour est long " It is that the day is long." Such redundant 
forms as the familiar Mot, je suis of French children, peasants, 
workmen, are common in Irish, sometimes awkwardly intro- 
duced, but often very tellingly. In common German speech 
the singular changes of initial consonants are not unknown, 
though never so far pushed as in Irish, never systematized, never 
showing great keenness of ear. German is supposed to be pro- 
nounced as written. But that this is false is soon apparent, 
especially in words beginning with st, which are uttered like slit 
by all but cultivated persons in some parts of the country. The 
people, the street-boy, gooseherd, the rank and file, have no 
fear of pronouncing contrary to what is written. Remember 
how the Irish turn g into y. In Berlin initial g becomes y so 
much that a sentence of derision has been concocted against 
Berliners, who are said to say, instead of Eine giitgebratene Gans 
ist eine gate Gabe Gottes, this softer-sounding phrase : Eene yutye- 
bratene Vans is eene yute Yabe Yottes. Irish is famous for " tele- 
scoping " the syllables of a word ; but in Saxony one hears in 
common talk Leem for Leben, and a thousand such obliterations of 
consonants. 

To produce euphony the popular ear' has wrought such 



344 IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. [June, 

havoc in Irish that grammarians have been put to their trumps 
to define the laws of mutation and indicate the changes in writ- 
ing without losing, as the Welsh have, sight of the original 
roots and stems of words. What they call " aspiration " is the 
change of a consonant at the beginning of a word through 
the influence of the last consonant of the word before. It is 
found to some degree in Sanskrit, but the grammarians seem 
to have limited it in that highly-perfected literary language. 
There are traces of it in Greek, and in Latin poetry it produces 
the irregular rules that bother school-boys so much. " Eclipsis " 
indicates the absolute disappearance of the sound of an initial 
and the use of another consonant. In Welsh and Manx, still 
spoken on the Isle of Man, the eclipsed letter is dropped and 
the intruder takes its place. In Irish the initial is kept and the 
intruder put before it ; thus the Book of Rights is called Lea- 
bhar na g-Ceart, and pronounced Lakwer-na-gart* This gram- 
matical trait may be used as a symbol for a thousand things 
that make the study of Ireland, her people and language, fasci- 
nating. She seems to keep side by side the most varied im- 
pressions, receiving new ideas, but never quite losing memory 
of the old. The extraordinary profit to be got in the field of 
linguistics, a vista upon which has been opened above, has only 
lately been recognized. It makes the labor of the lexicographer 
far greater and indicates that our dictionaries will have to be 
rewritten. The new dispensation will have to take Irish into 
account for examples of the laws of speech for all Aryan 
tongues, found in the Keltic tongues, but registered best in the 
Irish branch. English etymology will have to be remade and a 
far larger factor in the genealogy of English words assigned to 
the influence of Britons, Welsh, Irish, and Highlanders. 

It may be forgiven Americans, whose ancestry is so inter- 
national that they can feel no more partiality for one European 
stock than another, if they fancy their verdict is free from the 
prejudices that seem born in the men of the old country, and 
that certainly are bred in them from the dame's school onward 
to the professorial chair. Such a reflection aids one in ventur- 
ing on topics peculiarly the battle-grounds for antiquarians and 
historians wedded to patriotic but local theories, but perhaps 
otherwise better fitted for the task. The clash of theories on 
Irish topics' is common to the history of most nations ; only it is 
part of the Irish character to make things lively wherever they 
go, and the noise that Irishmen excite in English politics and 
American is only another phase of an ardent and too often shal- 
low temperament which is found in abundance among the wear- 



1885.] IRISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. 345 

ers of the green. The error we all make and Irishmen make it 
too is to think that such temperaments are always and necessa- 
rily shallow or insincere or useless, and, further, to demand that 
besides his own good qualities the Irishman should have those 
of slower-witted nations. This is demanding the impossible. It 
is not comfortable for the well-to-do Englishman, the canny Scot, 
the steady Welshman, to have a picturesque brother across the 
Irish Sea making a spectacle of himself and calling the world to 
witness that he has been shamefully robbed and abused. On the 
one hand there is far too much truth in his complaint ; on the 
other, there are so many complications in the problem, so many 
ifs and buts, so many views to take of the whole present situation, 
so many historical perspectives to examine and allow for, that 
even an Irishman must confess to himself, human nature being 
selfish, that it is only to be expected poor Ireland should have 
little sympathy. Ireland does not suffer merely from the ancient 
feud between those who boast themselves Kelts and those who 
prefer to dream over their " Saxon " ancestry. She is not only 
torn by the un-Christian hatred between Protestant and Catholic. 
She is paralyzed by the social system common to Great Britain, 
which continually tends to array the wealthy and the learned in 
all professions on the side of the landlords against the tenants 
and the peasantry. It is doubtful whether in the past anybody 
could have removed the roots of disease ; but while the situation 
might have been enormously improved by large-hearted, unself- 
ish, wise legislators in London, it was enormously worsened by 
legislators quite the reverse. Rank and caste are not abstrac- 
tions in Europe, as with us, but powerful agents for happiness 
and unhappiness, right and wrong ; Europeans can no more 
escape them by saying all men are equal than make themselves 
angels by agreeing to .vow they have wings. In gossiping 
about the United States lately Mr. Matthew Arnold has shown 
insight on this point. The bitterness raised by social inequalities 
put gall in the pen of Thackeray, and in truth accounts for half 
the uncomfortableness one discovers in intercourse with English 
people. Whether one sees at a Queen's Drawing- Room the sour 
face of some woman who has been placed below a simple Lady, 
though she belongs above by virtue of the right to call herself 
the Lady So-and-so ; or, at a rich Londoner's house, the wife 
fidgeting about some preposterous question of precedence ; or, 
at a nobleman's club, peers, with excellent motives, but not with- 
out self-consciousness and offence, trying to forget their coronets ; 
or, in a Scotch or Irish town, the strict and separate lines to 
which comrades of school and playground keep their families in 



346 IN THE GARDEN. [June, 

each case one may put it down to the rusty fetters of caste. Do 
not believe them when they try to prove that people in the 
British Empire are as free as they are here. We have much to 
regret, much to alter for the better; and even of this thing we 
have the shadows. Women, conservatives who hold men in 
check by a law not unwise, together with a handful of drones 
without power or following whose names often figure in the 
newspapers, are the only members of American commonwealths 
who take such matters seriously. This relic of the past chafes 
everywhere, but hurts Ireland more than any other portion of 
the great British Empire ; it baffles and bewilders the man full 
of natural ambition, and makes him at odds with his past and 
present. Perhaps the events that are forcing Irishmen to be- 
come democrats in name, if not yet at heart, are for the best. 
Political and social equality, rather than the panacea offered in 
the picturesque but unpractical books of Mr. Henry George, 
will touch the root of Ireland's disease. The social and reli- 
gious problems must be solved in a broad and large-hearted spirit, 
before real reform, real prosperity can come to Ireland. The 
Scotch as well as the English have dealt unfairly with Ireland, 
but not these alone ; ather and perhaps deadlier foes have been 
hers, mention of whom must await another opportunity. 



IN THE GARDEN. 

THE wind blew over the lea; 
The message it carried to me 
Was : Cast away fear ; there's happiness near, 
And joyous thy life shall be. 

The roses looked up in alarm ! 
(The zer/hyr intended no harm 
In blowing apart a rose-scented heart, 
Enhancing each beautiful charm.) 

The lily-buds caught the refrain, 
And echoed the murmur again : 
Ah ! cast away fear ; there's happiness near : 
No longer advert to thy pain. 

My heart wakened up from its dream, 
Entranced with the soft summer gleam. 
No more will I moan for the happiness flown, 
For sorrow but sorrow doth seem. 



1885.] THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. 347 



THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. 

NEAR the junction of the Ouse and the Nidd there stood in 
the seventeenth century a quaint and rambling old house, built 
of fine red brick in the Elizabethan style, and hidden away from 
the surrounding country by a stately park that stretched from 
the river on one side to the little churchyard of Newton on the 
other. Here dwelt for many generations a Yorkshire family 
named Earle, of good blood and ample wealth, whose known 
integrity and liberality made amends for the shy reserve that 
clung about every member of the race, and which might have 
meant either pride or a sheer inability to find pleasure in the 
companionship of their neighbors. They were Catholics, and it 
was whispered about from time to time that different scions of 
the family had been concerned in the ceaseless plots and counter- 
plots rife throughout the kingdom. Certain it is that in 1669 
Jasper Earle, then in the prime of life, was living quietly in 
London under the ban of suspicion, and that Beningbrough 
Hall was left to the care of servants, controlled only by the 
housekeeper and a steward named Philip Laurie. 

Mr. Baring-Gould, whose valuable researches into Yorkshire 
antiquities has brought to light this true scrap of family history, 
tells us that Marian, the housekeeper, was " a comely woman, 
just passing into middle age." She had lived in the Hall since 
early youth, and had gained her responsible position not only 
because she was of the same faith as her master and mistress, 
but because her clear head and even temper, her reticence and 
utter loyalty, made her an invaluable adjunct to their home. In 
her hands lay all the real authority ; and if Laurie suspected as 
much he kept his suspicions to himself, being anxious to retain 
her good graces and knowing too well the strength of her 
position. 

It was in the late summer, and already a faint red tint began 
to show itself here and there amid the deep green of the beeches 
that lined the avenue and threw their branches far over the quiet 
waters of the Ouse. Marian dearly loved this secluded walk. 
Here she came every evening to tell her rosary, pacing up and 
down the lonely path, while the little river ran smoothly by her 
side and the rooks cawed drearily in the darkening trees. It 
had been her habit for years, and she very seldom met with any 



348 THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. [June, 

interruption ; but to-day, as she turned back for the third time 
towards the house, she became aware that a man was watching 
her from the water-side and that he now came forward to greet 
her. Quick to suppress all manifestation of impatience, she 
slipped her rosary into her hanging pocket and coldly acknow- 
ledged his salutation. " Did you wish to speak to me, William 
Vasy ? " she said. 

The man, who was young and dark and rather handsome, 
glanced at her with some perturbation. There was nothing very 
alarming in the tall, pliant figure, with a kerchief drawn smoothly 
over her bosom and her fair hair hidden away beneath a snowy 
cap ; but, in his desire to conciliate, Vasy forgot for the moment 
his customary boldness. " I do want to speak to you," he said 
hesitatingly. " It is about about Eunice." 

Marian's face hardened into immobility. " And what about 
Eunice ? " she asked. 

Her companion struck his heel angrily into the soft ground. 
" You know well what it is I would say," he answered. " I 
want her to marry me. Am I not able to support a wife as well 
as another? All I ask for is your consent." 

There was a moment's silence, during which the pair walked 
side by side. " Eunice is too young to marry," Marian said at 
last. 

" She was sixteen in the springtime," retorted Vasy. 

" But she is childish for her years. She has never given 
thought to such a subject. And even were she older and better 
fitted to be a wife, you are not the husband I would choose." 

The dark face by her side grew darker still with suppressed 
wrath. " And may I ask, Mistress Marian, why you will not 
have me for your sister's husband ? My father, as you know, 
owns the Valley Farm, and I and my lame brother are his only 
children. It is to me the farm must come. I am neither old 
nor ailing nor ill-looking that you should reject me so abruptly ; 
and if Eunice loves me " 

" Eunice love you ! Have you dared to speak to her of this 
matter? " 

The young man laughed. " Well, no," he admitted. " She 
is a witch and not easy to approach. But if she loves me, or 
will learn to love me, why should I not have her to wife ? " 

Marian's face clouded over and she looked steadily before 
her. " If you are neither old nor ailing nor ill-looking," she 
said distinctly, " neither are you honest nor gentle nor God- 
fearing. There are evil stories told of you, William Vasy. 









1885.] THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. 349 

That you are a poacher all know ; that you are worse many 
affirm and it is not to such a one that I would entrust my 
sister's happiness." She paused a moment, and then added 
more quietly : " You have forced me to speak out plainly and 
to say more than I intended. But it will be wiser for you to 
dismiss Eunice from your thoughts." 

As she stepped swiftly on, the man made no attempt to fol- 
low her. He stood repeating to himself her words, " neither 
honest nor gentle nor God-fearing " ; and then, with a short, 
hard laugh, he turned around and was lost in the shadows of 
the park. 

But Marian, as she walked homeward, felt oppressed with 
a vague sense of trouble and alarm. Why had Vasy chosen 
Eunice of all other girls, and what if his fancy were returned ? 
She was so engrossed in these thoughts that she failed to no- 
tice a singular rustling in the thick branches overhead, until sud- 
denly a shower of leaves came fluttering down upon her, and, 
with an elfish laugh, a young girl swung herself lightly from 
bough to bough, and stood, flushed and panting, by her side 
a girl brown as a berry, and who might at first glance have 
been aptly taken for some forest nymph or hamadryad escaped 
that moment from the imprisoning bark. Her eyes were brown, 
the color of running water ; her brown hair, with a touch of red 
in it, lay in thick curls over a perilously low brow. Her gown 
of brown camelot was simply, even severely, made, and the dis- 
ordered kerchief at her neck showed more than was seemly of 
the soft, brown throat within. 

" Eunice ! " cried Marian in a voice sharp with mingled an- 
noyance and apprehension. " I left you stitching your seam in 
my room." 

" And you find me falling from the trees in your path," echoed 
the girl mockingly, " like a ripe beechnut ready for the pluck- 
ing." 

" I find you as I always do where you ought not to be. 
God grant me patience, for words are of no avail, and I weary 
sadly of your follies." 

" And did you think that I could mope indoors, blinding my 
eyes with your endless seams, when every leaf on the trees and 
every grass-blade in the common calls me forth? Besides, Ma- 
rian, your prayers were over- long and I have news to tell. The 
Hall has strange company to-night." 

" To-night ! Company at the Hall ! " repeated Marian in as- 
tonishment. " But who has come ? " 



35,o THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. [June, 

" Ah ! who, indeed ? Since you are so displeased with your 
messenger, you can e'en find that out yourself." 

" Eunice ! " cried her sister, seizing her by the arm, " cease 
your childishness for once and answer me plainly ! Who is at 
the Hall ? " 

The girl's short upper lip grew shorter still with a very mani- 
fest pout ; then, suddenly changing her mood, she broke into a 
low, ringing laugh. " One is a stranger," she whispered myste- 
riously, " and the other the other is a stranger, too. How could 
I tell you who he is ? Or how know myself, save that I have eyes 
to see ? Truly, 'tis a pity, Marian, we were not born blind." 
And, breaking away, she fled towards the house, only stopping 
once to wave her hand defiantly as she vanished in the doorway. 

Marian gave a heavy sigh and hastened her footsteps, know- 
ing that whoever had arrived would probably require her pre- 
sence. The events of the evening had jarred upon her sorely, 
and she felt wearied and depressed. Her own youth had been a 
sad one, and her life darkened with heavy responsibilities and 
the constant presence of impending danger. She had borne 
her burdens bravely, but the desire to shelter her young sister 
from any knowledge of such cares, to secure for her an uncloud- 
ed childhood, and to hide from her both the wildness and the 
wickedoess of the times had been the motive power that ruled 
her actions. And what was the result ? At sixteen Eunice was 
as irresponsible as at six. With her rare beauty and her uncan- 
ny wit, she presented a singular case of arrested development ; 
and, unsobered by the shadow of approaching womanhood, she 
followed the law of her own impulses as blindly as any irrational 
creature of the woods. 

Marian could read and write like a gentlewoman ; Eunice knew 
not one letter from another. Marian's skilful fingers wrought 
all she wore and fashioned clothes for many a poor child in the 
neighborhood ; Eunice could only run the needle into her little 
brown fingers and fling away in disgust the blood-stained seam. 
Marian was learned in -the arts of housewifery, and to the deft- 
ness of a woman added the practical judgment of a man ; Eunice 
fled from the mysteries of the still-room away to the freedom of 
the woods to make friends with every living creature in its dim 
recesses. There were some who said her mind was unhinged ; 
others, that she was a changeling and under an evil spell ; and 
others again, the more sober and practical portion of the com- 
munity, that Marian had merely spared the rod to spoil the 
child, and must now reap as she had sown. And, perhaps mind- 



1885.] THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. 351 

ful of this, Marian merely sighed as she hurried to the Hall, anx- 
iety for her sister swallowed up for once in a new anxiety as to 
the identity of the unexpected guests. 

In answer to her first inquiries a servant informed her that 
two gentlemen, friends of Mr. Earle's, had arrived an hour ago ; 
that one of them, being over-wearied with travel, had retired to 
rest, and that the other was waiting in the library and desired to 
see Mistress Marian as soon as she returned. Presenting herself 
at the library door, it was opened by a stranger of somewhat 
distinguished appearance, who, inquiring briefly if she were the 
housekeeper, led the way at once to a small bedroom adjoining, 
where, standing by the fireplace, without his disguising wraps, 
she beheld the master of the house. He smiled at her evident 
amazement, but she saw that he was sadly travel-stained and 
looked haggard and worn in the dull evening light. 

" This is a sorry home-coming, Marian," he said ; " but it is 
much to have accomplished it in safety. Of late every ste.p has 
been dogged, or I should have been here weeks before. Bring 
us a little good wine to refresh our spirits, and then you and Sir 
John and I will discuss some matters of importance." 

Marian brought the wine herself, and Mr. Earle informed her 
in few words that he had great reason to fear confiscation of his 
property, and had accordingly risked this journey with a view to 
saving such valuables as might be removed without suspicion. 
He desired her to pack up the plate and whatever jewels had 
been left in her keeping, together with a few costly paintings, 
some ancient and well-preserved tapestries, and the lighter por- 
tions of the furniture. " It will be necessary to have the assist- 
ance of the servants for the work," he said ; " but none of them 
need know where the things are to be concealed, unless, indeed, 
Laurie is at the Hall." 

Marian shook her head. Laurie had gone to his sister's wed- 
ding at Rawcliffe, and was not expected back within the week. 

" Perhaps," said Mr. Earle thoughtfully, " it is as well that he 
is absent." 

" It is far better," answered the housekeeper, with a quiet 
significance not lost upon her master, who merely shrugged his 
shoulders and sighed. Suspicion on one side and treachery on 
the other were but a natural consequence of the times, when part 
of the spoils wrenched from the betrayed were given as a reward 
to the betrayer. 

" No one knows of my presence here," Mr. Earle continued, 
" and no one must find out. Sir John is armed with a written 



352 THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. [June, 

authority from me to carry out my plans. You and he will in- 
terview 'the servants and direct the packing. The only question 
is, Where shall the things be taken? They must not be left in 
the Hall, and they cannot be carried far. You know the re- 
sources of the place better than I do ; what shall be done with 
them?" 

Marian had listened to these words with a sudden throb of 
terror. What if the .secret were already known! If Eunice had 
not discovered who the stranger was, why had she boasted so 
tauntingly in the avenue ? And Eunice, of all other people, was 
the least desirable repository for such knowledge. She raised her 
troubled eyes, but could not bear to tell her fears. It was easier, 
on the whole, to try and answer the last question. " Whom 
could we trust with such valuables," she said, " unless " and 
here a faint color dyed her pale cheeks " unless, indeed, Martin 
Giles can hide them in his cottage? " 

Mr. Earle smiled at her evident hesitation. " You are true to 
your lover, Marian," he said gravely. " I had hoped long before 
this to see you married, with such merry-making as the old Hall 
could show. You have wasted your best years in my service, 
and, beset as I am with dangers and difficulties, I cannot even 
give you a marriage portion and set you free." 

The housekeeper's quiet eyes filled with unwonted tears. 
" All things have their time," she answered. " You and yours 
have been faithful friends to me and mine, and my first duty is 
to you. Martin and I bide our day, and if it is long coming it 
will be all the brighter when it dawns." 

She curtsied with modest dignity, and left the room to call 
the servants together and set them at their task. If they won- 
dered much and suspected more they were content, like good 
Yorkshiremen, to keep their surmises to themselves, and went 
to work in hearty earnest. Within a few hours the PJ'all had 
been stripped of all that was most costly, and by the time night 
fell the cases were ready to be carried away under cover of the 
friendly darkness. 

Martin Giles, the gamekeeper, had been Marian's playmate 
in childhood, her constant companion and friend in youth, and 
her betrothed for the past eight years. He was a fair, silent, 
sweet-tempered young giant, and, being about the housekeeper's 
age, looked ten years her junior. Faithful to his early love, he 
had no eyes for any other woman ; but there was a comfortable 
lack of intensity about his passion which made their prolonged 
betrothal no especial evil in his eyes. He was ready to wed 



1885.] THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH PI ALL. 353 

Marian at any moment and to take her portionless to his humble 
home ; but he was also willing to " bide his day," satisfied always 
that her decisions were right, and less conscious of the lapse of 
time than the woman who sighed now and then over the gray 
hairs hidden beneath her cap. Of his fidelity there could be no 
doubt ; and to his cottage the cases, few in number but precious 
in contents, were carried quietly at midnight. No one assisted 
in the work save Giles himself, Marian, and the two gentlemen. 
All the servants were asleep, and only one pair of alert brown 
eyes watched them from a turret'window and saw the little pro- 
cession, with shaded lanterns and noiseless feet, move silently 
down the avenue and disappear in the shadows of the night. By 
daybreak the next morning the visitors were on their way back 
to London, whence Mr. Earle hoped to set sail in a few weeks 
for France. 

When Philip Laurie returned and found the old Hall stripped 
of its treasures his fury and disappointment were too great to be 
concealed. He had lain in wait like a spider, only to see his prey 
snatched at the last moment from his grasp. Forgetful for once 
of prudence or restraint-, he charged the housekeeper in turn 
with having vilified him to his master, with having been acces- 
sory to a robbery, and with having betrayed her trust. And he 
swore with a great oath that he would discover where the things 
were hidden. Marian coolly replied that what had been done 
was not without authority ; that she was not responsible for Mr. 
Earle's decisions, either in regard to his property or to his ser- 
vants, and that she had no information to give. Laurie protested 
bitterly against the insult to his honesty and the ingratitude for 
his long fidelity; whereupon his opponent, who was but a woman 
after all, could not refrain from letting him know her opinion ot 
both qualities, backing her assertion with a few plain facts which 
made the steward wince under such open and fearless accusation. 
It was an unhappy impulse on Marian's part, for Laurie was not 
the man to hear such words and bear them unrevenged. To his 
deep-rooted jealousy and dislike was now added the sense of fear 
a motive which of all others, leads most rapidly to crime. He 
brooded over the wrongs he had received at this woman's hands, 
and over her contemptuous exposure of his dishonesty, while 
he set his keen wits to work to discover the whereabouts of the 
valuables he coveted. 

As for Marian, though she regretted her outburst the moment 
she had given it utterance, it was not through any apprehension 
of danger to herself, but merely from her conviction that high 
VOL. XLL 23 



354 THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. [June, 

words were ill-suited to such stormy times. After Mr. Earle's 
departure her anxious thoughts strayed back to their usual 
channel Eunice and her future. Her mistress had promised 
years before to take the little girl to be her own maid as soon 
as she grew old enough to fill the position ; but, in view of her 
utter incapacity for any useful occupation, Marian felt that this 
could hardly be. Eunice as a waiting-maid was almost as pre- 
posterous as Eunice as a wife and mother ; and that any man 
should desire to wed such a will-o'-the-wisp was, in the house- 
keeper's sober eyes, equally extraordinary and undesirable. 
Once or twice she encountered Vasy in her sister's company, 
and, fearful lest his black eyes and daring tongue should work 
their way into her childish fancy, she determined reluctantly to 
speak to her on the subject and warn her of his dangerous 
character. 

It was unnecessary. Eunice laughingly admitted that Vasy 
had spoken to her of love ; had talked a great deal about her 
eyes and hair, and his own interest in the Valley Farm ; and had 
brought her back from Rawcliffe Fair an agate locket on a fine 
blue watered ribbon, " fit for the queen to wear." 

"And what have you done with it, dear?" asked Marian 
with a sinking heart, and auguring ill from the non-appearance 
of the trinket on her sister's throat. 

"You must ask the cat that question," returned Eunice, shrug- 
ging her shoulders. " I tied it around her neck, and the careless 
thing lost it during the night. The next locket I get shall go 
to old Wolf. He will take better care of his finery." 

Marian laughed outright. It was plain her sister was no 
love-sick maiden, and, in the relief that this discovery gave her, 
she ventured on a further question. " You do not care for this 
man, do you, Eunice ? " she said. " You would not like to marry 
him?" 

The girl drew back as if she had been struck. There was no 
trace of childishness about her now. " I marry William Vasy ! " 
she repeated slowly. " Not if every tree in the Valley Farm 
were solid gold and every leaf an emerald. You do not know 
him as I do ; but he is cruel, cruel ! Only last week in the west 
woods I found a leveret caught in one of his snares. I know 
well it was his : no one else can make a thing so small and yet so 
devilish ; and he boasts much of his skill. The poor little beast 
had been entrapped for days for days, Marian ; only think of it ! 
It was worn to a skeleton, and the fine wire had cut its leg to 
the very bone. It had struggled and panted and bled there 



1885.] THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. 355 

hour after hour, and now at last it was dying when I found it. I 
released the torn foot and took the little creature to my breast ; 
but it tried feebly to get away, and I knew why. It was the 
desire of a wild thing to die in freedom. I laid it on the grass 
and watched it. For a minute or two it breathed slower and 
slower, then gave a shudder and died. Vasy had tortured it to 
death; and you ask me if I love him ! If I saw him caught in 
one of his own traps I would pass by and leave him to die of 
hunger and thirst, just as he leaves the helpless beasts to perish." 

" Eunice ! Eunice ! " remonstrated Marian in a low voice. 
" Now you are saying wicked words words that you do not 
mean." 

The girl stopped short in her wrath and looked into her sis- 
ter's troubled face. Something she saw there touched her heart, 
for the angry brown eyes melted into sudden tears. "Marian," 
she whispered, throwing her arms around her neck, " I love you 
dearly, and nobody else in the world. Who would be good to 
me but you ? " 

That night beneath the beech-trees two men walked up and 
down in earnest conversation. They were Philip Laurie and 
William Vasy, and they had met together under the innocent 
stars to plan a deliberate murder. One woman stood in both 
their paths, and she must die ! Vasy believed that, Marian's in- 
fluence removed, Eunice could easily be brought to listen to his 
suit ; Laurie felt that she, and she alone, stood between him and 
the wealth that he had sworn to gain. He had discovered who 
shall say how ? where Mr. Earle's valuables lay concealed, and 
with the knowledge of their whereabouts came a sudden and 
daring plan of robbery. It was an opportunity never to be re- 
peated ; for if stolen now, neither Martin Giles nor their owner 
himself would dare to take any open steps for their recovery. 
The gamekeeper could not even prove that they had been in his 
possession, save by implicating his master a risk which Mr. 
Earle would hardly care to run. And if search were made there 
was, after all, no possible clue to trace the guilt to him, except the 
foolish words he had uttered in Marian's hearing. She alone 
suspected him, she alone knew aught in his disfavor. Not only 
was she the sole obstacle he had to fear, but he was already in a 
great measure in her power. 

If a glance or a word might kill, if melting a waxen image 
could really consume with hidden fire the life it represented, 
then Marian's earthly race would have 5een quickly run. But 
Laurie, though he cherished blood-guiltiness within his soul, was 



356 THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. [June, 

not the man who could perform the actual labor of killing. He 
had neither the nerve nor the brutality requisite for such a task ; 
while Vasy, although in many respects the lesser villain of the 
two, possessed both these qualities to perfection. Familiarity 
with the sufferings of dumb creatures had bred in him indiffer- 
ence to others' pain. The sight of blood could not affect him as 
it did Laurie ; the knowledge that he risked the gallows failed to 
trouble him, as it would have troubled the more calculating 
sinner. He loved Eunice after his own brutish fashion, and he 
hated Marian for her steady opposition to his wishes. If she 
were dead, and the robbery consummated, he would marry the 
girl and live freely with his share of the spoils. He even made 
up his mind to give his sweetheart a pair of pearl ear-drops ; and, 
after indulging in this fancy for a moment, turned his thoughts 
deliberately to her sister's murder and settled the details of that 
undertaking with just as much unconcern. When the two men 
parted at daybreak all was arranged between them, and it was 
agreed that they had better not be seen in each other's company 
again. 

Three evenings later Marian was pacing up and down her 
accustomed walk, telling her beads. The setting sun crimsoned 
the west, and the open common lay bathed in amber light ; but 
under the beech-trees the shadows of dusk were creeping quietly, 
and only here and there the sunset brightness penetrated through 
their gloom. Mr. Baring-Gould has given us a sad and pretty 
picture of the scene the quiet avenue, with the rooks wheeling 
and cawing overhead ; the red sky reflected in the smooth water, 
giving it an ominous tint of blood ; a white owl flitting ghostlike 
through the darkening trees, and the unconscious woman walk- 
ing slowly up and down with her rosary in her hands. 

A strange sense of peace and security filled Marian's soul, 
and all her cares seemed fading into nothingness. A few lines 
received that morning from her mistress conveyed indirectly 
the intelligence that Mr. Earle had made good his escape to 
France. Vasy had been invisible for days, and her sister's angry 
words had quieted her mind upon that score ; she even fancied 
in her contentment that Eunice had grown more earnest and 
less elfish than of old. She thought, too, of her lover, and of the 
last kind word he had whispered in her ear, and smiled softly 
at her own happiness. If the anxieties of her life had been many 
her last hour was one of unbroken tranquillity and peace. When 
she began her rosary she felt glad it was the turn for the Glorious 
Mysteries, they seemed so much more in keeping with her mood. 



1885.] THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. 357 

She reached the end of the avenue, and, turning, faced the west. 
A few rods off one of the beech-trees had been blown over in 
a recent storm, and through the gap the dying sunlight streamed 
with a faint brilliancy like a martyr's aureole, leaving the path 
beyond in deeper gloom. Her eyes unconsciously sought the 
light, while her lips moved in prayer: " Now and at the hour of 
our death " crash ! came a heavy blow upon her upturned head. 
She reeled, staggered, and, throwing up her hands as though in 
accusation of her murderer, fell forward into the water and sank 
without a struggle from his sight. 

The next day her body was recovered half a mile from the 
park, and a portion of the rosary was found still clasped in 
her stiffened fingers. A minute examination of the bank showed 
the spot where the crime had been committed. There were the 
prints of a man's footstep in the soft ground ; there were the 
broken twigs and water-reeds, showing where the murdered 
woman had fallen into the river ; and there, caught on one of 
the branches of the overturned beech, was the other fragment 
of the broken rosary. With tender reverence and pity the 
corpse was carried back to the Hall, while the startling news 
spread like wildfire over the country. Suspicions wild and aim- 
less floated about on every side, and then gradually concentrat- 
ed themselves in one direction that of Martin Giles, the dead 
woman's lover. In the absence of any tangible motive for the 
murder strange rumors found hearing everywhere. The sud- 
den disappearance of the family plate and pictures, to which 
mystery the housekeeper alone held the key ; the persistent 
reticence of Giles when questioned on the subject ; the fact that 
they, had been seen last in each other's company, and that the 
beech avenue was the spot where they oftenest met all these 
things told against the gamekeeper with crushing force. 

As yet, indeed, no open step had been taken to accuse him 
of the crime, but he read suspicion and distrust in every face. 
Dazed with the sudden blow which had befallen him, heart-sore 
at his loss, and with the blind passions of his slumbering nature 
calling on him furiously for revenge, he was sobered into reason 
by the growing consciousness that it was at his doors the guilt 
was laid. He, who would have defended his betrothed with the 
last drop of his blood, and thought it no great matter to do so, 
was now believed to have struck that cruel and dastardly blow. 
He was palsied by the greatness of the shock, and his blue eyes, 
once so merry and kind, grew fiercely bright, like those of a 
wild beast driven into its lair. Injustice and sheer suffering had 



358 THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. [June, 

goaded him hard, and now that he could bear no more he stood 
at bay. 

Mr. Earle was by this time in France, but his wife, who had 
been left in London, hastened to Beningbrough Hall as soon as 
the tidings of the murder reached her ears. When Marian's 
obsequies were over, and she was laid to rest in the churchyard 
of Newton, the disordered household quieted down somewhat 
from its first terror and confusion, and Mrs. Earle turned her 
attention to the young girl so suddenly deprived of her one 
friend and protector. It could not be said that Eunice was 
altered for the better by her. grief : the sorrow which chastens 
and sobers one soul merely perverts another. She had lost her 
old impishness, it is true, but with it had fled all that was inno- 
cent and childlike in her nature. The roving impulses which 
had so sorely tried Marian's spirit had been the safety-valves 
of her sister's passionate soul ; the sweet, wild freedom of the 
woods had saved her from herself. Now this healthy influ- 
ence was over. She no longer sought their friendly shade, 
no longer found companionship in their dumb inhabitants; but, 
shut up within herself in a strange, frozen silence, brooded over 
the tragedy that had darkened her life. It was her first close 
contact with sin, and the taint of corruption poisoned all the 
well-springs of her being. " Will nothing comfort you, my 
child ? " said Mrs. Earle pityingly, taking the small, cold hand 
in hers ; and Eunice had answered impassively : " Only to see 
her murderer on his gibbet. That is all the comfort I desire." 

Day after day she crept noiselessly about with a furtive 
gleam in her brown eyes, as though she were always seeking 
the guilty man and would spring like a tigress at his throat. 
The only times she seemed to soften were when she encoun- 
tered the gamekeeper's white, set face, as changed now as her 
own. " Eunice," he said once in a voice that was almost a 
whisper, " you at least know that I would have died thrice over 
rather than have harmed a hair of her dear head ? " 

She nodded silently and turned away, then came swiftly back 
and seized his arm. " We will find him yet," she said, " and he 
shall dance in the air with a necklace around his throat. Only 
be patient, and we will find him yet." 

During all this time Vasy had not ventured to approach her. 
Perhaps some touch of remorse, perhaps some pity even for her 
grief, perhaps the sight of her hard young face kept him from 
her side. The first crime had been successful, and no suspicion 
pointed his way ; it now only remained to carry out the robbery 



1885.] THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. 359 

while the feeling against Giles was at its height. Here, too, the 
work was to be unequally divided. It was arranged that Vasy 
alone should enter the gamekeeper's cottage, while Laurie kept 
watch outside. If the booty could be removed without violence, 
well and good ! If not, let Giles look to it ! They had not 
risked so much to be balked of their prize at last. 

It was on a heavy, moonless night that the attempt was finally 
made. Tl^e sheltering darkness hung like a pall over the woods, 
and only now and then a fitful gust of wind told of the coming 
storm. Martin Giles, lying sleepless upon his bed, absorbed in 
the bitter thoughts that had now become his hourly companions, 
heard the little diamond panes rattle in their sockets as the case- 
ment swung to and fro, and the sound was fraught with a dismal 
meaning in his ears. Turning restlessly on his pillows, he saw, 
or fancied he saw, a dark shadow standing by the door, and 
sprang to his feet, only to be struck heavily to the ground. 
Stunned and dizzy, he strove again to rise, when a second blow 
from 'his unseen antagonist brought him to his knees ; and, grop- 
ing blindly for a weapon of some kind, his fingers clutched a 
sheep-net which had been flung in a careless heap upon the floor. 

Quick-witted in danger as he was slow in the ordinary duties 
of life, the young giant struggled to his feet once more, and with 
all his ebbing strength flung the great net over the robber's head. 
For a minute there followed a mad, breathless struggle as the 
two powerful men, wrapped in the dead darkness, strove silently 
for their lives ; the one covered with blood and blind with pain, 
the other pinioned by the clinging meshes and fighting fiercely 
and vainly to be free. But Giles, to whose superb strength com- 
petition in the Cotswold games had added skill and daring, was 
more than a match for his antagonist. One heavy blow from 
the great brown fist stretched him on the ground, and, stagger- 
ing to his feet, the gamekeeper reached down his gun from the 
wall, and fired it out of the open window as a signal of alarm 
to the Hall. The report rang sharply through the silence of the 
park, and in five minutes the cottage was filled with a wondering, 
gaping crowd of servants, while Vasy lay sullen and still where 
he had fallen, and Giles tried vainly to stanch the blood which 
streamed from his own broken head. 

With the others came Laurie, wrapped in a heavy cloak and 
turning a white, anxious face towards his prostrate confederate. 
What he saw there satisfied him that he stood in no immediate 
danger. Poacher, robber, murderer though he were, Vasy had 
no mind to betray his whilom friend and associate ; and the 



360 THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. [June, 

steward was quite ready to turn this dumb fidelity to account. 
Amid the confusion that ensued he stood a little apart, escaping 
from any especial notice, while half a dozen stout servant-men 
disentangled Vasy from the heavy net and bound him hand and 
foot. By this time Mrs. Earle, a woman of much nerve and 
courage, had reached the cottage, and gave orders that both the 
robber and the wounded man should be taken to the Hall, and a 
messenger despatched at once to York to summon ths officers of 
the law. A short delay ensued, however, for the rain was now 
falling so heavily that the torches were extinguished as soon 
as lit, and the voices of the storm, gathering strength and fury 
every moment, filled the hearts of the listeners with supersti- 
tious terror. 

Suddenly there was a rustling at the door, a parting of the 
thickly-gathered group, and Eunice, dripping wet, stood in their 
midst, her rain-soaked garments clinging about her feet, her 
dark curls matted on her forehead, her eyes burning like twin 
coals of fire set in the ashen pallor of her face. She looked like 
one who, stretched long years ago upon the agonizing tripod, felt 
her young limbs convulsed with pain unutterable and shrieked 
forth into the night words of prophetic madness that nations 
paused to hear. What wonder that there was silence as the 
white face turned slowly from the dark figure on the floor to the 
wondering crowd around? Then her eye fell upon the game- 
keeper, and with a short, ringing laugh she glided to his side. 

" You have found him at last," she said, " and without my 
help. But he is found ! Marian's murderer is found ! " 

She screamed out the last words with terrible force, and the 
prostrate man at her feet shivered and looked once into her un- 
relenting eyes. As though he read in them his death-sentence, 
he closed his own and strove to turn his head away. " She 
is a witch," he muttered, " and knows all. Angel or devil, she 
knows all." 

There was a low cry, full of strained horror, from those around, 
then a dead silence, and Vasy spoke again. " I loved you," he 
said simply, and strove with pinioned hands to touch her dress. 

She shrank back, contemptuous and unpitying, as though his 
touch were fire. " You loved me ! " she echoed slowly, " and 
you killed my sister, whom I loved all that I had to love ! " 
Her voice broke, the tears rushed to her eyes, and, sinking on her 
knees, she hid her face in Mrs. Earle's gown. " Marian ! Ma- 
rian ! " she sobbed piteously, " forgive me, dear, for all ! It was 
I who told your secret ungrateful, wicked girl that I am ! I 



1885.] THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. 361 

watched and saw the boxes brought here, and I told not Vasy ; 
no but Philip Laurie. He flattered and coaxed me until I told 
him all." She crouched lower and lower on the floor in an 
agony of self-abasement. " I, too, have helped to kill her ! " she 
cried. " Marian ! Marian ! Marian ! " and fell forward senseless 
on her face. 

There was a smothered oath from Vasy, a sudden rush of 
wind-blown rain extinguishing half the torches, a frightened cry 
from some women thrust hastily from the door, and Laurie had 
vanished into the stormy night. 

Thus was the tragedy of Beningbrough Hall made clear in 
all its brutal hideousness. Vasy, who was carried to York Castle 
to await his trial, refused at first to give any information on the 
subject beyond a simple admission of his guilt. But three 
weeks later Philip Laurie, bafBed in his hopes of escape, shot 
himself on the eve of capture; and then, and not till then, his 
wretched tool made a full confession and gave the whole history 
of the crime. He wasjianged at the Tyburn outside Micklegate 
Bar, in York, on the i8th of August, 1670, acknowledging his sin 
upon the scaffold and entreating forgiveness " of God, of his 
victim, and of one other." Mrs. Earle remained quietly at the 
Hall through the winter, and in the following spring, having an 
opportunity to join her husband in France, she offered to carry 
Eunice with her, feeling that the deserted house, with its weight 
of saddening memories, was no place for the lonely girl. 

But from the thought of leaving Eunice shrank with terror. 
The whole wide world held out for her no one attractive page. 
Such ties as she was capable of forming were centred in her 
home and in her sister's grave ; beyond these all seemed a 
second chaos to her eyes. Anxiety in her regard delayed Mrs. 
Earle's departure for some weeks longer, when a most unexpect- 
ed turn of affairs lifted the responsibility from her hands. Mar- 
tin Giles declared his intention of marrying Eunice, and request- 
ed that the wedding should take place at once. 

" It is all I can do for Marian now," he said with grave sim- 
plicity ; " and I fancy she will rest happier in heaven if she sees 
the child protected from all harm. Stay here alone she cannot, 
and foreign air breathes ill through Yorkshire lungs." 

"But, Giles," remonstrated Mrs. Earle, "you know as well as 
I can tell you what a heavy trust you are taking on your shoul- 
ders. Eunice is nearly young enough to be your daughter, and 
she is hardly fitted for the duties of a wife. You will have to be 



362 THE TRAGEDY OF BENINGBROUGH HALL. fJ une > 

very patient and to forego many comforts, if you hope even to 
make her happy." 

" I will do the best I can," was the quiet answer ; " and the 
little lass shall have none but kind words from me, were it only 
for her sister's sake. A warm fireside, a husband's care, and a 
life full of daily duties have made good women yet, out of many 
a wayward slip." 

Mrs. Earle smiled. These homely recipes for domestic hap- 
piness were not without their value, but what would Eunice say 
to them ? To all her questions, however, the girl returned an- 
swers as simple and straightforward as the gamekeeper's. What 
there was lacking either of passion or of romance in this stfange 
courtship was atoned for by unselfish devotion on the one side 
and docile acquiescence on the other. There was something, in- 
deed, indescribably pathetic in the wistful gratitude with which 
Eunice clung to her protector. He seemed all that was left to 
her from out the old happy past, and in her bitter self-distrust 
she strove to divine his very thoughts and follow them. A 
subtle consciousness of her own deficiency was with her the first 
sad step to a fuller and higher life ; and while she seemed dully 
impassive to her surroundings, she was in reality seeking to as- 
similate herself in some degree to the sober despotism of estab- 
lished rules " to be good for Marian's sake." 

" Do you know, Giles," said Mrs. Earle curiously one day, 
" that you are going to marry a very beautiful woman ? " 

The gamekeeper glanced down the path where stood Eunice 
trying to coax a shy young pigeon to her bosom, her slender 
figure outlined against the clear blue sky, her lovely head bent 
over the fluttering prize. It was a picture seductive enough to 
beguile the heart of every polished and profligate courtier in 
London ; but the young Yorkshireman gazed at it stolidly, and 
then turned his honest eyes upon his questioner. 

" She is small and dark for an English girl," he said with un- 
flattering directness. " Marian was a handsome lass, but the 
little one never looked like her. Perhaps, though, she may take 
to growing yet." 

More than two hundred years have passed away since Martin 
Giles led his young wife to the thatched and vine-covered cot- 
tage which was to be her home. Long ago its sturdy walls were 
levelled to the dust. Beningbrough Hall, with its hanging eaves 
and multitudinous chimneys, has been replaced by a fine modern 
mansion, whose big stone tower lords it grandly over the fat 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 363 

Yorkshire pastures. But tradition is stronger than bricks and 
'mortar, and still along- the quiet border of the Ouse a white 
figure is believed to glide nightly, its rosary in its hand, and dis- 
appear in the little churchyard of Newton, where, under her 
moss-grown tablet, Marian lies asleep. 



FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 

RELIGIOUS liberty is a priceless and inalienable right. It 
rests upon a great principle of the moral law, sustained and ex- 
pounded by the moral theology of the Catholic Church. That 
great moral principle may be stated thus : Faith is a free act of 
the human will, enlightened and guided by the grace of God, 
and admonished by a pure and upright conscience. It follows 
as an inevitable result from this that men cannot rightfully be 
coerced to profess what they do not believe. It is a moral im- 
possibility to generate faith by force. The doctrine of the Ca- 
tholic Church is that man by his own free-will fell from grace, 
and by his own free-will must return to grace. Conversion, 
whether it be of the sinner in the order of grace or of the unbe- 
liever in the order of faith, is something utterly irreconcilable 
with force. The very terms conversion and coercion are an- 
tagonistic. 

Religious liberty may be defined as the right to worship God 
according to the convictions of the conscience. This right car- 
ries with it the right of outwardly practising such form of reli- 
gion as most accords with one's duties to his sovereign Lord and 
Creator. 

Religious toleration is the practical recognition of these rights 
of religious liberty by those who might possess the power or 
physical force sufficient to restrain their free exercise. The 
very term toleration presupposes the possession by the tolerant 
party of the dynamic force sufficient to restrain or prevent the 
exercise of religious liberty. Religious intolerance is every act 
or force employed in restraint of freedom of conscience and of 
religion. Examples of religious toleration may at this time be 
found in the Protestant government of Great Britain tolerating 
the Catholic religion ; and in the Catholic countries of Spain, 
France, Italy, and Austria tolerating the various Protestant sects. 



364 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [June, 

An illustration of religious intolerance, the most conspicuous one 
in our day, is to be found in the Protestant government of 
Prussia persecuting 'the Catholic Church and people in that 
country. 

Where there is equality of power or strength, either in point 
of numbers or in the eye of the law, among the citizens of a coun- 
try, there can be, properly speaking, neither toleration nor in- 
tolerance. There all are equally free in conscience, in faith, and 
in religion before the nation, as all are free by the law of nature 
and before the throne of God. All men are accountable to the 
supreme Lord of the universe, and to him only, .for the purity 
of their motives and the rectitude of their conduct. A sublime 
example of this religious equality and liberty is to be found, I 
am proud to say, in this our own favored land. Well has the 
poet addressed America : 

"There is no other land like thee, 

No dearer shore ; 
Thou art the shelter of the free, 
The home, the port of liberty." 

P 

Religious liberty seems to flow from the very nature and con- 
stitution of the Catholic Church. This is especially illustrated 
by the tests of her membership. Baptism is the door or entrance 
to the church and to membership therein. Upon the authority 
of the Sacred Scriptures baptism is a prerequisite to salvation. 
All who have been baptized are claimed as members of the Ca- 
tholic Church until that membership is abandoned or forfeited 
by some voluntary act of the baptized Christian. Some of the 
Protestant sects construe and enforce this prerequisite of bap- 
tism as necessary to salvation in a literal and absolute sense. 
The Catholic Church, however, construes and applies this doc- 
trine so as to conform to our belief in the mercy, goodness, and 
justice of God as revealed by God himself. Sacramental bap- 
tism, by which the recipient is born again of water, is the stand- 
ard form ordained by the Scriptures. The Catholic Church de- 
duces from this Scriptural ordinance, as the only view consistent 
with the revealed attributes of God, two other kinds or forms of 
baptism which are equally efficacious for salvation. These are 
the baptism of blood and the baptism of desire. Now, the baptism 
of blood takes effect when a believer in Christ, though unbaptized 
by water, lays down his life for Christ. This sacrifice is even 
more acceptable than ordinary baptism ; for such a person not 
only dies sanctified by such heroic virtue, but he will also wear 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 365 

in heaven the crown of martyrdom. Such a person is regarded 
as having been " baptized in his own blood." 

Now, again, it is held as Catholic doctrine that a person truly 
repentant for his sins, loving God with his whole heart, desirous 
of complying with all the ordinances of God (baptism included), 
but having no opportunity of receiving it or not sufficiently in- 
structed as to its necessity, thus making the offering of his good- 
will, which we believe God accepts for the deed itself /in case of 
death in such dispositions such a person is baptized by " the bap- 
tism of desire " 

Even in respect to unbaptized infants the Catholic Church 
puts a most merciful interpretation on the ordinances of God. 
These souls, though excluded from the kingdom of heaven, are 
not consigned .to the place of the reprobate. They are deprived 
of the beatific vision and possession of God, and to these they 
have no vested right or estate either by the law of nature or of 
grace. But there is a vast difference between the blissful enjoy- 
ment of God's presence in heaven and the torments of the 
damned. Some Catholic writers even contend that the souls of 
unbaptized infants, after death, enjoy a certain degree of natural 
beatitude. 

Now, holding such doctrines and claiming so wide a standard 
of membership, it would be impossible for the Catholic Church, 
even if it were right to do so on any other ground, to sanction or 
practise persecution or coercion for the purpose either of obtain- 
ing external professions of faith or external conformity to its 
forms of worship. For by doing so she would be possibly or 
probably persecuting or coercing many whom she claimed, under 
the foregoing principles, as already members of her organization. 
Though they might not belong to the external body of the church, 
they would belong to the soul of the church. There are many 
persons who externally and to all appearances are members of 
the sects not in communion with the Catholic Church, thus born 
and educated, and not doubting the correctness of their faith, 
who are, in fact, under the principles above stated, members of 
the Catholic Church by the baptism of desire, repentance for 
their sins, and by their entire willingness to conform to all the 
ordinances of God as far as they have had opportunities of know- 
ing them. To coerce or persecute such would be suicidal, un- 
wise, and contrary to the organic constitution of the church. 

But independently of this argument the argumentum ab incon- 
venientia religious persecution or coercion, as I have already 
tated, is contrary to the teachings of the moral theology of the 



366 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [June, 

Catholic Church, and was so before any of the Protestant sects 
came into existence. Thus we find that Tertullian, in the third 
century of the Christian era, proclaimed religious liberty as an 
inherent right of man, having its foundation in the very nature 
of religion. " It is," said he, " a right and a natural privilege 
that each one should worship as he thinks proper; nor can the 
religion of another injure or profit him. Neither is it a part of 
religion to compel its adoption, since this should be spontaneous, 
not forced, as even sacrifices are asked only of the cheerful 
giver." * 

The Venerable Bede, the earliest of English historians, relates 
in his Ecclesiastical History, written in the seventh century, that 
the missionaries of Pope Gregory I. to England instructed Ethel- 
bert, the Saxon king, to abstain from all compulsion and limit his 
zeal to the inducing of his subjects by persuasion to follow his 
example in embracing Christianity, observing that the service of 
Christ should be voluntary, not forced. Also Pope Nicholas I. 
enjoined upon King Michael of Bulgaria not to use violence for 
the conversion of his idolatrous subjects. It is also of record 
among the proceedings of the Fourth Council of Toledo that 
this early Catholic council forbade violence to be used towards 
any one in order to force a profession of the faith and a reception 
of baptism. So also in the military expeditions which were under- 
taken in the middle ages to extend civilization and religion over 
the northern provinces of Europe, Pope Innocent IV. declared 
that the discipline of the church does not allow compulsion to be 
used for the propagation of the faith. Almost innumerable other 
authorities and historical incidents could be cited to show what 
were the teachings and discipline of the earliest centuries of the 
Christian Church on the important subject of religious liberty. 
Historically considered, the foregoing citations show the methods 
adopted towards the heathen in the triumphs of the church over 
paganism peaceful, and for that reason more glorious, triumphs, 
in which the rights of conscience were respected and main- 
tained, thus realizing those beautiful words of the psalm, " I will 
freely sacrifice to Thee." 

In respect to the Jews the same principles were always main- 
tained and practised by the Catholic Church and by her Supreme 
Pontiffs. The illustrious name of Pope Gregory the Great heads 
the honored list of Roman Pontiffs who were champions of reli- 
gious liberty and were defenders of this sacred right in respect 
to that unfortunate race. I will merely add the name of the 

* Ad Scafulam, c. ii. ' 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 367 

great and good St. Bernard, who not only advocated their rights 
of conscience, but also enjoined the exercise of humanity towards 
them. It was he who wrote in one of his celebrated letters, 
" The Jews must not be persecuted, or put to death, or even ban- 
ished." The popes of Rome opened the gates of the Eternal 
City as a refuge for the persecuted Jews. They even received 
and sheltered them from the persecutions and punishments of the 
Spanish Inquisition. Even while the popes resided at Avignon 
the Jews fled thither for shelter from the wrongs they were suf- 
fering in other parts of Europe. To so great an extent was the 
city of Rome their refuge from persecution that they became a 
prominent part of its population, and Rome was familiarly called 
"the Jews' heaven." Driven from Jerusalem and from many 
European countries, they, like the pilgrims of other nations, turn- 
ed their eyes, their steps, and their hearts towards Rome. Well 
might the oppressed of every race, the heart-afflicted pilgrims of 
every nation, exclaim, in the touching words of a poet of our lan- 
guage, though not of our faith : 

" O Rome ! my country, city of the soul ! 
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee !" 

So also the same principles have stood good and the same 
measures of justice practised to our own day and in our own 
country. I will merely quote from two distinguished prelates 
of the American Catholic Church, both archbishops of Baltimore 
and occupants of the oldest see in the church of this country. 
Archbishop Kenrick, in his work on The Primacy of the Apostolic 
See, writes : " It is an axiom universally admitted that the wor* 
ship of God must be voluntary in order to be acceptable." And 
again he says : 

"The duty of worshipping God according to his revealed will being 
manifest, every interference with its discharge is a violation of the natural 
right which man possesses to fulfil so solemn an obligation. The use of 
force to compel compliance with this duty is likely to result in mere exter- 
nal conformity, which, without the homage of the heart, is of no value 
whatever." 

Archbishop Gibbons, the present Archbishop of Baltimore, in 
lis work entitled The Faith of our Fathers, writes : 

"A man enjoys religious liberty when he enjoys a free right of worship 
)ing God according to the dictates of a right conscience and of practising 
form of religion most in accordance with his duties to God. Every act 
infringing on his freedom of conscience is justly ^styled religious intole- 



368 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. . [June, 

ranee. This religious liberty is the true right of every man, because it cor- 
responds with a most certain duty which God has put upon him." 

The same distinguished ecclesiastic, after alluding to the con- 
spicuous and valuable part taken by Catholics in our Revolution 
of 1776, uniting in the war of independence by giving their man- 
hood, their fortunes, and their lives in battle, and giving their 
services, their learning, and their wisdom at the council-board in 
proclaiming the Declaration of Independence and establishing 
the Constitution of the United States events which secured civil 
and religious liberty to all men within our realm goes on further 
and says : 

'' But, thank God ! we live in a country where liberty of conscience is 
respected and where the civil constitution holds over us the aegis of her 
protection without intermeddling with ecclesiastical affairs. From my heart 
I say, ' America, with all thy faults I love thee stjll.' And perjiaps at this 
moment there is no nation on the face of the earth where the church is less 
tramm'elled, and where she has more liberty to carry out her sublime des- 
tiny, than in these United States. . . . For my part, I much prefer the sys- 
tem which prevails in this country. . . . May the happy condition of things 
now existing among us long continue!" 

The same writer says in another place : 

" Our Catholic ancestors for the last three hundred years have suffered 
so much for freedom of conscience that they would rise up in judgment 
against us were we to become the advocates and defenders of religious per- 
secution. We would be a disgrace to our sires were we to trample upon 
the principle of liberty which they held dearer than life." 

Let us conclude by citing the sentiments of one of the most 
illustrious laymen of the Catholic Church in any age, one of the 
most learned, truthful, and guileless men that ever lived, one 
who died a martyr among t>he very first martyrs for the Catholic 
faith under the persecutions that followed the religious cataclysm 
of the sixteenth century Sir Thomas More. To him, who suf- 
fered unto death for conscience' sake, the hope for the realization 
of religious liberty became an aspiration of his noble soul, dream 
of human bliss. In the quaint but earnest English of his day he 
thus expresses his convictions in his celebrated Utopia : 

"They [the inhabitants of Utopia] received the Christian faith with 
gladness, but they would not allow unreasonable disputations concerning 
it. ... They also, which do not agree to Christis religion, feare no man 
frome it, nor speake against any man that hath received it. ... For this is 
one of the ancientest lawes amongst them, that no man shall be blamed for 
reasoninge in the maintenance of his own religion. For Kinge Utopus, 
even at the first beginning, hearing that the inhabitants of the land were, 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 369 

before his coming thither, at continual dissention and strife among them- 
selves for their religions ; perceiving also that this common dissention 
(whiles every several secte took several parties in fighting for their coun- 
tery) was the only occasion of his conquest over them al, as soon as he had 
gotten the victory. Firste of all he made a decree that it should be lawful 
for everie man to favoure and followe what religion he would, and that he 
might do the best he could to bring other to his opinion, so that he did it 
peaceablie, gentelie, quietly, and soberlie, without hastie and contentious 
rebuking and inveheing against other. ... If he could not by faire and 
gentle speach induce them unto his opinion, yet he should use no kinde of 
violence, and refraine from displeasante and seditious wordes. . . . Further- 
more, thoughe there be one religion, which alone is trew and al other 
vaine and superstitious, yet did he well foresee (so that the matter were 
handled with reason and sober modestie) that the trueth of the owne powre 
would at last issue out and come to lyghte," * 

But some of our esteemed and respected Protestant friends 
may feel surprised at the recital of this uniform current of the 
highest, noblest, and best sentiments of illustrious Catholic divines 
and statesmen in various ages on the subject of religious liberty. 
We have always, they might say, been taught differently from 
that ; from our infancy we have learned that the Catholic Church 
has been a persecuting church, cruel, remorseless, sanguinary, 
and despotic ; her dogmas and principles, as well as her practice, 
wage war on the freedom of the human conscience, showing no 
mercy to heretics and unbelievers, sending their souls to hell 
and torturing their bodies even unto death. Was not this the 
church to which Bloody Mary, Queen of England, belonged? 
Was it not this church that created and promoted the Spanish 
Inquisition ? Was it not this wicked church that perpetrated 
the horrible massacre of the Huguenots in France on St. Bartho- 
lomew's day ? 

Surely these extreme views present a strange contrast. There 
must be an egregious mistake somewhere, either in the Catholic 
view or in the Protestant view. Can it be possible, some frank 
and candid Protestant friend will ask, that a church which has 
taught such merciful doctrines to her children in their homes 
and in Sunday-schools in relation to the salvation of souls, such 
charitable and godlike doctrines as we have just heard cited 
from authentic sources, from the time of Tertullian in the third 
century to this our own day can such a church be cruel, re- 
morseless, sanguinary, and despotic? If our Saviour established 
a church at all on earth as he says he did when he tells us that 

* Utopia, book ii. cliap. " On the Religions of Utopia," pp. 145, 146. Arber's reprint, 
Loudon, 1869. 

VOL. XLI. 24 



3yO FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [June, 

he built his church upon a rock and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against it if, we say, our Saviour established a church 
at all on earth, this same old Catholic Church must be that 
historic church, for she has iome down to our time through 
eighteen centuries, from the very presence of that same Saviour, 
with his pledge against error. Was it not this church that over- 
came Grecian and Roman paganism and carried Christianity 
triumphantly throughout the world, bearing in her bosom the 
written and traditional word of God, the seven sacraments, and 
the papal constitution as the chief instruments of Christian 
triumph ? Is it not this church whose children in all ages have 
laid down their lives for the faith of Christ ? Was it not this 
church whose influence abolished human slavery throughout 
the nations of Europe ? Has she not inspired such heroic charity 
that her sons went into slavery and captivity in order, by taking 
their places, to liberate the slaves and captives ? Has not this 
church adorned the earth we inhabit with her hospitals, asylums, 
refuges, and homes of relief for every form of human suffering ; 
with grand cathedrals, baptisteries, and abbeys in which the wor- 
shipping throng have been electrified by her magnificent ritual ? 
Has she not, through the Crusades, opened the territories of na- 
tions to a Christian common law and made Christianity cosmo- 
politan? Has she not, in those same enthusiastic demonstrations 
of the middle ages, shown a sublime devotion to the person of 
our Redeemer and to all his earthly and local associations? 
Has she not embellished Christian civilization with Christian 
art, and thrown around both the halo of aesthetic beauty ? Has 
she not given birth to the religious orders, the regulars of the 
church militant, and sent forth with her blessing the Jesuits, 
those maligned champions of the name of Jesus, to carry the 
Christian faith to China, Japan, India, America, overcoming all 
the obstacles of elements and distance before steam and telegraph 
became the servants of man ; and, when her cause seemed wan- 
ing from defection, renewed her youth in the very struggle for 
life, and replaced, in those distant lands, in her ranks as many 
Catholics as she had lost in Europe under the leadership of 
Luther and Calvin and Henry VIII. ? Has she not in every age, 
and in our own, resisted the cruelty and humbled the pride of 
despots, and supported the cause of humanity and of the poor? 
Are not the canon law and the entire body of Christian theo- 
logy among the many inestimable gifts she bestowed upon the 
human race? Have we not seen her children battling in Eng- 
land) in France, in Germany, in Italy, and in America for liberty ? 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 371 

Of all the priceless bulwarks of liberty Magna Chart a is the 
greatest, because it was the earliest and the fountain source from 
which has flowed, and is now flowing, many a stream of human 
liberty and blessing in many and divers lands. Has not her re- 
cord in our country been that of a champion of human rights 
from the day. when Lord Baltimore founded a state upon the 
rock of religious liberty to this our own day, when we have seen 
a society of Catholic laymen, the Catholic Union of New York, 
knocking at the door of the Legislature with a bill of religious 
liberty to all the poor confined in State institutions, but encoun- 
tering there the opposition of organized Protestantism under the 
name of The Evangelical Alliance ? While this measure of liberty 
arid justice was meeting with the unrelenting opposition of the 
House of Refuge, where many Catholic children were confined 
and deprived of the right of worshipping God according to their 
consciences, and still are, the present writer, as a manager and 
secretary of the New York Catholic Protectory, in the presence 
of the Executive Committee, inquired of the Christian Brother 
who was then rector of the male department whether there 
were any Protestant boys inmates of the institution. The Chris- 
tian Brother replied that there were several, perhaps six or more. 
The writer then inquired whether they were permitted to ob- 
serve such religious worship as their consciences demanded of 
them, and he was answered that they were so permitted. The 
writer then inquired what aid or facilities were afforded them 
for that purpose, and he was answered by the Brother Rector 
that they were permitted every Sunday to attend the Protestant 
service held in the neighborhood of the Protectory, and that a 
Christian Brother was sent to accompany them to and from the 
Protestant church for their protection. 

" Can it be possible," I seem to hear the illustrious and learned 
Leibnitz, in his longings for Christian union, say from- his grave, 
"that such a church is a persecutor of the human conscience? 
There must be some mistake or error in the sources through 
which we Protestants have derived our information. Is history 
infallible? No. We cannot claim for history an infallibility 
which we Protestants have resolutely denied to the oldest church 
in Christendom. Has not Queen Mary's reign been described 
to us by her enemies, and do we read any but Protestant his- 
tories? Are not our accounts of the massacre of St. Bartho- 
lomew's day derived exclusively from Huguenot or Calvinist 
sources ? Was not Llorente, the most popular historian of the 
Spanish Inquisition, known to be unworthy of belief? Historians 



372 



FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 



[June, 



in our day, as we know from experience, are^ far from infallible. 
Has not Father Burke detected and exposed in Mr. Froude, 
the English historian, 'a thumping English lie' ? Has not Dr. 
Clarke exposed in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD Mr. Ban- 
croft's contradictions and unjust depreciation of the character and 
acts of Lord Baltimore and the Catholic founders of Maryland ? 
Has not history for the last three hundred years in England been 
' a conspiracy against truth ' ? Have not we Protestants been 
wholly educated in this partisan historical school, and conse- 
quently laboring under a moral and intellectual color-blindness, 
by which, to our vision, black has appeared white and white re- 
sembled black? Can the Catholic Church be justly held respon- 
sible for the atrocities committed in the name of religion ? " 

We have already seen, according to the highest Catholic authori- 
ties, from the third to the nineteenth centuries, that Catholic 
theology and the teachings of the Church uphold the rights 
of conscience and support man's claim to religious liberty ; 
that the Catholic Church does not send to hell the souls of 
all heretics and non-believers, nor the souls of unbaptized 
infants ; and that pagans, Jews, heretics, and even such as 
were fleeing from the penalties of the Spanish Inquisition, found 
shelter and safety under the powerful and benevolent shield 
of the Sovereign Pontiffs at Rome. Now, proper investigation 
shows that Queen Mary of England has been most unscrupulously 
misrepresented by modern English history ; that she acted on 
the defensive, and was not the aggressor. It also shows that 
the Spanish Inquisition was not an institution of the Catholic 
Church, and that its cruelties have been greatly exaggerated ; 
and yet further, that the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day 
was not the act of the Catholic Church, and has never been ap- 
proved by her. 

Let us avoid the weapon of recrimination ; and pass over 
the writings of the so-called Reformers establishing religious 
persecution as a principle of the Reformation. Let us pass 
over the beginnings of persecution under the heresiarchs of 
the sixteenth century. Let us pass over the persecutions 
and confiscations under Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth, 
James, and Charles, most of them long reigns, and contrast- 
ing favorably to our cause, in numbers and duration, with 
the solitary and short reign of Mar}'. Let us refrain from 
contrasting the Star Chamber under Elizabeth with the Span- 
ish Inquisition. Recrimination is no argument. There is a 
great difference in the circumstances, motives, and historical 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 373 

surroundings of the persecutions which took place in the single 
reign of Mary and of those which took place in the five reigns 
of Protestant sovereigns above named. The former were self- 
defensive ; the latter were aggressive. The aggressive character 
of the persecutions under the above-named five Protestant sov- 
ereigns is acknowledged by Protestant historians. We will show 
by non-Catholic and impartial authority that those under Mary 
were in self-defence. Christendom, united for sixteen centuries 
and in the acknowledged possession of the religious interests and 
guidance of the world, is in a very different position, when at- 
tacked by sects going out from the ancient organization, from 
the position of those sects in first raising the standard of seces- 
sion and then drawing the sword against their ancient mother. 
The early. personal history of Mary, and the first year of her 
short reign, such is the testimony of history, show that she was 
herself humane and disposed to be tolerant. When she first came 
to the throne she assured the lord mayor and aldermen of Lon- 
don that she. I am using her own language " meant graciously 
not to compel or strain other people's 'consciences." Her na- 
tural mildness and avowed toleration did not appease the spirit 
of her enemies ; her forbearance was soon abused, and she was 
driven to adopt a strong policy of self-defence. All kinds of 
disorders and conspiracies were inaugurated by the sectaries. I 
will instance only a few. The queen herself was publicly styled 
from the pulpits a Jezabel. A priest of the ancient faith, cele- 
brating Mass in the church of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, 
was insulted. Another priest, as related by Stripe, a Protes- 
tant minister and historian, at St. Peter's Cross, was hooted at 
and narrowly escaped with his life, a dagger being thrown at his 
head. Another priest, whilst administering the Holy Eucharist, 
says another Protestant author, at St. Margaret's Church, West- 
minster, was attacked by a man, who drew a hanger and wounded 
him upon the head, hand, and other parts of his body. A con- 
spiracy, of which Sir Thomas Wyatt was leader, and of which 
Poinet, Protestant Bishop of Westminster, was a member, was 
formed with the object of dethroning the queen and restoring the 
Protestant ascendency in place of the ancient regime. This was 
followed by another conspiracy with the same purpose in view. 
Lawless and treasonable proceedings were carried on in almost 
every part of the kingdom. These aggressions and many others 
forced the queen to abandon her avowed policy of leniency 
and toleration, and to adopt repressive measures in self-defence. 
These measures, in order to be of the least effect, had to be made 



374 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [June, 

terrible and sanguinary ; for the reigns preceding and following 
were terrible and sanguinary to Catholics, and under Mary's 
reign terrible and sanguinary designs could only be suppressed 
by measures of like nature. Dr. Lingard, by a careful examination 
of the records, succeeds in reducing the two hundred and eighty- 
eight cases of executions of sectaries, reported to have taken 
place during the last four years of her reign, to two hundred ; 
and these latter cases he regarded as cases of treason. And yet 
fewer victims fell in each of the five years of Mary's reign than 
in each of the forty years of the reign of Elizabeth; for during 
the latter reign, as Hallam, a Protestant historian, says, the rack 
seldom stood idle in the Tower. The execution of Lady Jane 
Grey, the most offensive act of Mary's reign, was not for religious 
opinions, but for high treason, as Lady Jane actually seized on 
the throne of England for nine days. Macaulay and other Pro- 
testant historians acknowledge that Mary was sincere in her re- 
ligion, which is more than they dare avow for Henry VIII., 
Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. Mary was, moreover, de- 
fending the ancient faith and ecclesiastical institutions and pos- 
sessions of her ancestors and of the ancestors of the English ; she 
was struggling to maintain the old and established order of 
things, and that, too, against a new and aggressive system which 
had already deluged the land with blood and suffering. For we 
are told by Hallam, pre-eminent among Protestant historians, 
that " persecution is the deadly original sin of the Reformed 
churches ; that which cools every honest man's zeal for their 
cause in proportion as his reading becomes more extensive."* 

I will now quote an important and profound passage from Mr. 
Lecky, a rationalist, and therefore no friend of the Catholic 
Church, but by his position and writings an impartial judge as be- 
tween the Catholic Church and the sects, and yet in this very pas- 
sage taking an unjust view of acts imputed to the church. This 
passage shows that Queen Mary, and indeed the whole Catholic 
world, then stood upon the defensive. It will enable us to judge 
of the feelings with which Catholics of that day saw such shrines 
as Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Church, and other monu- 
ments of learning, sanctity, and faith of the ancient and tra- 
ditional faith seized by a new and aggressive sect. The same 
passage will enable us to judge what might be the feelings and 
conduct of the English Protestants of this day, though with less 
cause in respect to the revival of the ancient than the origin of the 
new creeds, if Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, and other ancient 

* Hal'.am's Constitutional History, v. i. c. 2 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 375 

Catholic shrines and abbeys were now attempted to be recov- 
ered by the Catholics, to whom they belong, or to be seized by 
some new sect ; or what would be the feelings of the Episco- 
palians of New York City in our day if Trinity Church were to 
be seized by the evolutionists or by the Latter-Day Saints. 

I ask a careful perusal of the following remarkable passage 
from Lecky's Rationalism in Europe : 

"Catholicism," he writes, "was an ancient church. She had gained 
a great part of her influence by vast services to mankind. She rest- 
ed avowedly upon the principle of authority. She was defending her- 
self against aggression and innovation. That a church so circumstanced 
should endeavor to stifle in blood every aspiration towards a purer system 
was indeed a fearful crime, but it was a crime not altogether unnatural. 
She might point to the priceless blessings she had bestowed upon human- 
ity, to the slavery she had destroyed, to the civilization she had founded, 
to the many generations she had led with honor to the grave. She might 
show how completely her doctrines were interwoven with the whole so- 
cial system, how fearful would be the convulsion if they were destroyed, 
and how absolutely incompatible they were with the acknowledgment of 
private judgment. These considerations would not make her blameless, but 
they would at least palliate her guilt. But what shall we say of a church 
that was but a thing of yesterday ; a church that had as yet no services to 
show, no claims upon the gratitude of mankind ; a church that was by pro- 
fession the creature of private judgment, and was in reality generated 
by the intrigues of a corrupt court, which nevertheless suppressed by 
force a worship that multitudes deemed necessary to their salvation, and 
by all her organs, and with all her energies, persecuted those who clung 
to the religion of their fathers ? What shall we say of a religion which 
composed at most but a fourth part of the Christian world, and which the 
first explosion of private judgment had shivered into countless sects, which 
was nevertheless so pervaded by the spirit of dogmatism that each of these 
sects asserted its distinctives with the same' confidence, and persecuted 
with the same unhesitating violence, as a church that was venerable with 
the homage of more than twelve centuries ? What shall we say of men who, 
in the name of religious liberty, deluged their land with blood, trampled 
on the very first principles of patriotism, calling in strangers to their as- 
sistance and openly rejoicing in the disasters of their country, and who, 
when they at last attained their object, immediately established a religious 
tyranny as absolute as that which they subverted ? These were the at- 
titudes which, for more than a century, Protestantism uniformly presented; 
and so strong and so general was its intolerance that for some time it 
may, I believe, be truly said that there were more instances of partial tole- 
ration being advocated by Roman Catholics than by orthodox Protestants. 
. . . H6pital and Lord Baltimore, the Catholic founder of Maryland, were 
the two first legislators who uniformly upheld religious liberty when in 
power; and Maryland continued the solitary refuge for the oppressed of 
every Christian sect till the Puritans succeeded in subverting the Catholic 
rule, when they basely enacted the whole penal code against those who 



3/6 ST. CECILIA" s BRIDAL. [June, 

had so nobly and so generously received them. But among the Protes- 
tants it may, I believe, be safely affirmed that there was no example of the 
consistent advocacy or practice of toleration in the sixteenth century that 
was not virulently and generally denounced by all sections of the clergy, and 
scarcely any till the middle of the seventeenth century. . . . Nothing can 
be more erroneous than to represent it [persecution] as merely a weapon 
which was employed in a moment of conflict, or as an outburst of natural 
indignation, or as the unreasoning observance of an old tradition. Perse- 
cution among the early Protestants was a distinct and definite doctrine 
digested into elaborate treatises, indissolubly connected with a large por- 
tion of the received theology, developed by the most enlightened and far- 
seeing theologians, and enforced against the most inoffensive as against 
the most formidable sects. It was the doctrine of the palmiest days of 
Protestantism. It was taught by those who are justly esteemed the great- 
est of its leaders. It was manifested most clearly in those classes which 
were most deeply imbued with its dogmatic teaching." 



ST. CECILIA'S BRIDAL. 

" SHOW me the angel, thy unseen defender, 

If such in very truth is by thy side ; 

I ask no more! " Cecilia's bridegroom cried. 

But softly she, with glance severely tender : 

" Thine eyes, Valerian, cannot bear his splendor. 

Go : seek our priests that in Rome's caverns hide ; 

When thou returnest, changed and sanctified, 

Perchance that awful glory he will render." 

He comes again, and lo 1 no vision chilling 

Stands, sword in hand, to greet the neophyte. 

Strange, subtle fragrance all the room is filling, 

A gracious spirit waits with garlands bright, 

And fair Cecilia kneels, no more unwilling, 

To pledge with him a mystic heavenly plight. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 377 



SOLITARY ISLAND. 
PART THIRD. 

CHAPTER V. Continued. 

THE resemblance between Paul and Florian has been spoken 
of rarely during the course of the story, although it was a 
notable circumstance with their acquaintances. At first sight 
the more delicate physique and lighter complexion of the poet 
did not make the likeness striking or impressive, but on acquaint- 
ance it increased forcibly, and the invariable question was, Are 
they brothers or relatives? When Florian saw for the first time 
the features of his supposed father, the prince in the count's por- 
traits, he was struck by their remarkable likeness to Paul Ros- 
siter. Of this fact he said nothing to the count until that gentle- 
man had been satisfied as to his identity with the son of Mr. and 
Mrs. Wallace. When they had returned to New York, and he 
was one day at the count's residence, he asked to see the portrait 
of the Russian prince once more. " There is a young gentleman 
at Madame Lynch's," said he, " who looks more like this picture 
than I do. He has the prince's eyes and hair, which I have not." 

" But you have the soul of the prince in your face," said the 
count shrewdly, " which he has not." 

" Then you know of his existence?" said Florian. 

" I heard of it yesterday," the count replied indifferently, 
" and I was about to ask you for an introduction. I have a pre- 
sentiment that the son of the exiled prince will be found in either 
of you." 

" What! have you not gotten over your infatuation in my 
regard? Were you not satisfied with the Wallace credentials? " 

" Highly satisfied ! But I spoke only of a presentiment." 

" When I first saw this portrait," said Florian, " I said to 
myself, This is the poet for he is a poet, you know. But I 
thought it best to settle my own claims first, as I had a secret 
hope that I might be the princely child you sought." 

" Ah ! " said the count, " you are eager for assassination." 

" Pshaw ! " said Florian, 4< wouldn't the Prince of Moscow 
prefer buying me off to running the risk of having a crime laid 
to his charge ? " 



378 SOLITARY ISLAND. [June, 

" Yes," said Vladimir ; "but he has an idea you could not be 
bought. You Americans have such a greed for titles." 

" For our own," said Florian, " not for yours. I would sell 
my princeship for a reasonable sum, and buy a governorship here, 
which would be more to me than' anything- beneath a European 
kingdom. Will you call on the poet? And if so, what will be 
your plan of action." 

" I shall call on him and frankly state the reason of the visit." 

And so it happened that Paul received Florian's card the 
same evening- and was introduced to the count. After some de- 
sultory conversation Vladimir broached the object of his visit 
and 'showed the portraits to Paul. 

" It is a very good picture of me," said the poet coolly, " but 
it can be no more than an accidental resemblance." 

" Would you have any objections," the count politely asked, 
"to give me means of satisfying my employer by documentary 
evidence that you are not the man he seeks ? " 

" I have been through the mill," said Florian, " and I can do 
the count the justice of saying that his conduct has been that of a 
gentleman. For him your word is sufficient, but the Prince Louis 
must have something more." 

" I am afraid," said Paul gravely, " that the prince as well as 
the count must be content with my simple word. There is no- 
thing in my history which justifies the slightest hope that I can 
be the man. The past I prefer to leave undisturbed. I am sorry 
that I cannot oblige you." 

There was some agitation in his manner, but his determina- 
tion was evident and the count could only express his regrets. 
Florian did not dare to hint in the count's presence that a corps 
of detectives would probably be soon at work to lay bare the 
story of his life, and the conversation drifted in other channels 
until the poet took his leave. While his footsteps echoed in the 
hall there was a short silence and Florian looked curiously at the 
count. 

" Rossiter's conduct," said he, " strengthens your case con- 
siderably." 

" I don't know," the count answered dubiously. " It may one 
way, and it may not another. He is sincere, and yet apprehends 
trouble from discovering himself. It does not matter for the 
present. Are you bound for Mrs. Merrion's parlors to-night?" 

" Of course. What could keep me away from that charming 
woman ? " 

" Nothing save the dread of having to marry her. She is 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 379 

happily situated in having so conservative a husband as Merrion. 
He can support with equanimity the rival attentions of a count 
and a Congressman." 

" What a face you put on these matters ! " said Florian in dis- 
pleasure. " It is not in America as in France. Here there are 
no lovers of married women, only admirers." 

" Only admirers ! " mimicked the count. " Is a husband any 
more? But stop ! I will meet you there to-night. A change 
has come over petite madame ; we shall discuss it. You seem to 
have gone far ahead of me in her esteem I use an American 
word." 

" You have no sincerity," said Florian, " and she is beyond 
you." 

" I have sincere admiration and esteem, and I am a sincere 
count. Is not that enough for you? But. I see I am angering 
you. Au revoir. When you can come to the little games of 
chance let me know ; and there is a great regret in my heart that 
you will not let me introduce to you some lady friends of mine." 

" Nonsense ! " Florian said airily. " I have too much to do 
now, and I shall not add any acquaintances to my long list." 

" Once more au revoir. You will soon come to your senses. 
Life is a bed of flowers, and we are the bees. What shall the bees 
do but sip the sweets? Eat, drink, and be merry." 

He went out while he was reciting his favorite maxim of 
human philosophy with a smiling face and a gay air, and betook 
himself to his favorite haunts of pleasure. Going through the 
hall, Frances happened to meet him, and he bowed as he stood 
aside to let her pass, thinking, with sudden interest, that the 
young woman had a very beautiful face. 

" And of course she is in love with Florian," he said ; " they 
all are. Lucky man ! And he does not know how to value his 
own luck or to use it." 

The face haunted him somewhat, as a fresh a-nd innocent face 
is apt to haunt men of his kind, and he carried back to his rooms 
a determination to know more of Frances. The gentleman whose 
peculiar features had already caused so much disturbance in 
many places was waiting for him, and began to speak in a slow, 
sullen, dull way before greeting him. The conversation was in 
Russian. 

" Have you found out something new about this young man ? " 

"Nothing," said the count; "he is what he is and no more." 

" He is the son of the Prince Paul," said the other angrily ; 
" no one can deceive me. His name is Paul, is it not? " 



380 SOLITARY ISLAND. [June, 

" Yes, but he is not the man, I think. You were so certain 
about Wallace ; why have you changed ?" 

" Give me his native place. We are delaying too much. 
Give me his native place, and I will do it all in a day. Give me 
whatever you have found out about him, and hasten." 

The count silently and contemptuously lit a cigar and sat 
down comfortably under a most malignant glare from the man's 
eyes. 

" My dear Nicholas," said he blandly, "you are too quick and 
too impertinent. I found out nothing concerning this prince- 
ling, save that he had nothing to tell. You will have to be- 
gin from the beginning " Nicholas made a gesture of despair 
" but you are sharp, you are unwearied, you are devoted, and 
you will find it all soon enough." 

" What do you think of him?" said Nicholas. 

"I think nothing," said the count; "it lies between these 
two" 

" Then this Paul is the man," he interrupted. " I knew the fa- 
ther I knew them all, father and son. There is a quick way to 
settle the matter." And he made a murderous gesture with his 
arm and looked inquiringly to the count. 

" Too fast," the count replied, shaking his head ; " that trick is 
too new in this country to be played safely, although if any 
one could do it cunningly you are that one. No, my Nicholas, 
you must be more careful of your master's character. He relies 
on you chiefly. There must be no blood cast on his honorable 
name." 

" There are ways of killing without shedding blood," said 
Nicholas " without steel or rope if I might try." 

The count pretended not to hear him and went off into an 
inner room, while with an evil smile the man departed to execute 
his mission. He was very well fitted to perform the task of fer- 
reting out Paul's antecedents, and still better adapted for such 
delicate work as assassination ; but the count's word was law to 
him, and he dared not act against his wishes. His hint about de- 
stroying life without bloodshed the count did not actually reject. 
Vladimir satisfied his sense of honor with the reflection that in 
turning his back on the man he had turned his back on the pro- 
position, but had he sincerely questioned his own heart he would 
be compelled to denounce himself as an associate of a murderer. 
Florian and he met at Mrs. Merrion's that evening, where a 
great crowd was assembled to enjoy the opening services in the 
religion of fashionable life. The first incense to the goddess of 



i88 5 .] 



SOLITARY ISLAND. 



fashion usually ascended from Barbara's altars, and the worship- 
pers were legion. The lady herself, in a more subdued costume 
and with a less pronounced manner than usual, received her as- 
tonished admirers with none of the old sauciness. A gentle self- 
control was visible in her manner and sat very sweetly upon 
her. 

" What do you think of it ? " said the count moodily, as he met 
Florian examining her appearance from a distance. 

" It will do for a time," Florian answered carelessly ; " it has 
made a sensation already, which is sufficient for madame. And I 
must say it becomes her, and pleases her husband much." 

" That is the worst of it," said the count: " when he is delight- 
ed it will surely last. I thought it might be a freak, and 1 tried 
to break down the reserve behind which she is entrenched. All 
in vain. Her armor is perfect, and I begin to fear she is in 
earnest about something. Has she caught it from you ? " 

" I think not," said Florian. " If she has, it certainly will not 
last. But it takes very well to-night, doesn't it ? " 

" With the crowd." And the count groaned as he moved 
away. Florian came up to Barbara presently and engaged her 
in conversation. She was very cheerful, if not gay. 

" You look charming," he began, but she interrupted him 
with a look of pain. 

" Pray do not," she said, and her lips quivered. " You ought 
to understand me better. Do you not remember your last visit 
to the sea-shore ?" 

" Then you are near conversion," he said ; meaning to say, 
" You were in earnest," but fearing to anger her. 

" I am converted," she answered softly, and her fan went up 
to hide a few happy tears that fell suddenly from her eyes. 

" And is conversion to take from us what we so loved before? " 
he said reprovingly. " Why so serious when your position 
demands all the old chic ? The count is in despair, and so am I. 
But I know our faith better than to suppose it demands from 
you so utter a renunciation of self. What will your guests think, 
what will society say ?" 

"They seem to like it to-night," she said, " and I can make 
the new manner as taking as the old. It is a more womanly 
manner, and such as your mother and sisters practised, I be- 
lieve." 

He could not deny that, and cast about for another argument. 
" In a short time I shall have need to consult you about my en- 
trance into the church," she went on. " I would have mentioned 



382 SOLITARY ISLAND. [June, 

it to the count but that he is not a very good Catholic. I shall 
take him for my sponsor, perhaps, so that he may not utterly 
despair, and then, having a sort of responsibility concerning my 
spiritual welfare " 

" Oh ! " said Florian, when she finished the sentence with an 
arch smile, " there is a glimpse of the good time when you were 
not spiritual. Do not lose it altogether." 

" What advice from a Catholic ! " she cried with spirit. " It is 
shameful, as my conduct was before to all the world." 

" And .you mean to do penance now? " 

" Perhaps ; but you shall advise me. And tell me, how does 
your suit progress with Miss Lynch? Are you following 
whither your heart leads?" 

Overcome by a great and sudden wave of feeling, which 
seemed to be a compound of regret and longing, he answered 
tremblingly : 

" No, I am not following whither my heart leads ; but we shall 
soon be married, I trust, when I have asked her." 

And he rose abruptly, having already too long occupied her 
time. The count took his place, and when he saw them again 
she was laughing with something like the old vivacity, while the 
count looked happy and pleased. What made the place so sud- 
denly hateful, and his heart so heavy ? Sickness of soul was a 
feeling he rarely suffered, and it acted on him like a stimulant. 
When he met the count again he said : " I am tired out. Let us 
off and spend a few hours at your friend's entertaining resi- 
dence." 

The count smiled wickedly. It was to a gambling institu- 
tion Florian alluded, and he must have been in a peculiar mood 
to feel the need of such excitement. They went off without 
making their adieux to Barbara, as it was still the height of the 
evening, and for a time Florian forgot his pain in the pleasure 
of a game of cards. He lost a little money and won a little, and 
they drank considerably enough to put a blush on the count's 
face, while Florian's, to the envy of his friend, still retained its 
natural color. After midnight he rose to go. He had come to 
himself and was not inclined to take further risks in so dangerous 
a place. 

" Let us go down and enjoy a cigar in the smoking-room," 
said the count, " and try a little more Medoc." 

" No," said Florian coldly, " it is too near the parlor, and I 
have no anxiety to be drawn into the company of your friends. 
If you are not coming I must go alone." 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 383 

" Good-night, then," said the count as Florian went out. 

" A cool hand," remarked an acquaintance at his elbow. " You 
will find it hard to get him into your way of doing things. That 
man is the future president of the United States." 

" A thoroughly good fellow," replied the count, " but a little 
prudish as yet. He is getting over it, though. It was hard, in- 
deed, to get him here at all, harder still to get him playing, hard- 
est of all to get him drinking. But you see it has all been done, and 
the next step will be to the parlor. I have seen his kind before." 
And the count might have added that he was one of the kind, 
and had fallen into hell just as he intended Florian should fall, by 
little and little. 



CHAPTER VI. 
THE EBBING TIDE. 

BUSINESS matters began of a sadden to go very poorly with 
Paul. From the night on which his first comedy had been pre- 
sented in the boarding-house parlors he had met with fair suc- 
cess in the dramatic world, but at that time fair success meant 
only steady employment for one or two or three theatres at the 
rate of twenty dollars a week during the season. On that sum 
he lived in his attic with comfort, but, for reasons which will pre- 
sently appear, did not save anything. His was a hand-to-mouth 
existence. He made nothing by his poetry. He could not 
produce it by the yard, and disdained to apprentice his muse to 
verse-carpentering. His chief annoyance was this want of re- 
serve money. What if he fell sick suddenly ? He would be 
entirely dependent on the charity of strangers. 

He had lately finished a drama after the old fashion which 
popular taste had demanded. For some weeks before he brought 
it to the manager that gentleman had been hinting obscurely at 
a coming change in the character of the plays produced at his 
theatre, but he had talked of such a change so often that Paul 
paid no attention to him. When he brought his new play for 
official inspection Mr. Aubrey read a few lines in a hasty way 
and with much clearing of his throat. 

" It will never do, Mr. Rossiter," said he, tossing the manu- 
script back to him. " The new system requires an entirely 
different style of play less extravagant, more sentimental ; less 
of fancy, more of poetry. It will never do, as you can easily 
understand." 



384 SOLITARY ISLAND. [June, 

" Then your talk of change meant something," said the poet, 
aghast at this rude blow of fortune. 

" Well, when a man talks," said the manager stiffly, " I sup- 
pose he talks to a purpose." 

" Except managers," said Paul, with indignation. " Don't 
attempt the professional rigmarole with me, Aubrey. Why 
didn't you let me know at the beginning what kind of a play 
you needed? I could have written it as easily as this." 

" I did let you know many times, and you just admitted I 
did." 

" See here" began the angry poet, and then he stopped, for 
a sudden suspicion flashed on his mind. 

" Your tones " began the manager frigidly. 

" My tones are all right," said Paul calmly ; " but what are you 
to do? The pla}' now on cannot hold the boards much longer. 
Have you another of the sentimental-poetical stripe ready ? " 

" We have a very fine one, or rather three or four, to be pro- 
duced on alternate nights for the rest of the season." 

" Which means, then, that you have no further need of my 
services." 

" Precisely," said Manager Aubrey smilingly. 

" Confound you!" thought Paul, as he left the office with his 
play under his arm to seek another manager. " This is not likely 
to be the end of the trouble. All the theatres will be affected by 
this change. ^ What a fool I was not to have seen it coming ! " 

He conjectured very fairly as to the condition of the 
dramatic market. The change was universal, and his play was 
not in demand. Disgusted, he sold it to a Bowery manager for 
a trifle, and vowed that he would never write a drama again; 
but he returned home sick at heart and with a melancholy con- 
viction that the managers had conspired against him. His one 
profitable source of revenue was effectually cut off, and he knew 
it would be a task to find such another. Still, there was no need 
of starving, as had been the case with him formerly. The news- 
papers were available, and Peter would stand his friend in case 
of need. And Peter did so to an extraordinary degree, finding 
some hack-work that brought in an occasional dollar, and giv- 
ing the theatres such a lashing of criticism on the new style of 
plays as cost them heavily to counteract. Peter interviewed 
them separately in his vigorous cut-and-dash manner, doing Paul 
more harm than good, but annoying managers considerably. 
With these services he ceased to benefit Paul, and the poet, after 
some years of moderate prosperity, descended again into the 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 385 

depths from which a fortunate chance had raised him. But for 
one circumstance no one would have had reason to suspect the 
change of fortune. A number of poor families in the city were 
his clients. He had assisted them generously in many ways to 
eke out a living. Some enterprising boys he had helped in 
getting an education ; perpetual invalids were dependent on his 
kindness for little necessaries; large families looked to him to 
keep their members decently clad and fed. They were not 
many, of course, but more than one individual with a moderate 
income is supposed to patronize. All these must share in his 
misfortune. He had to tell them of the change, and was com- 
forted by the tears and sympathy of the poor people, who 
thought more of his sufferings than of their own. 

It worried him so much for their sake, and he worked so hard 
in many ways and endured so much personal privation to make 
up to them what they had lost, that his physical powers soon 
began to lag under the strain. He grew pale, worn, and ner- 
vous, was seized with fits of despondency, and was more than 
usually startled by the sight of Nicholas' face leering at him at 
all hours in many places. He was not more than two weeks in 
his new position when for some trivial reason he was discharg- 
ed. Peter stormed, of course, and got him another, which 
was as speedily lost in the same manner. Then Paul remained 
quietly within-doors and looked no more for places. Some 
malignant devil seemed to be pursuing him, and his fancy threw 
about the face of Nicholas a tragic glow which added much to 
his nervousness. Peter's anxiety and mutterings drew madame's 
attention to the matter. She took a kindly interest in the lonely 
poet, and was happy to be of service to him. One day she asked 
Peter the cause of the young man's depression and ill-health. 
" Money, ma'am, or the want of it. Money, the root of all 
evil and all good ye might as well say wan as the other, 
for the truth of either is wild. He has no work an' can't get 
any. Some villain's belying him, but if ever I lay my hands on 
him I'll give him work to do in Hades instead of here, 
him three places, and they had him put out of '( 
wonder he'd be pale. They'll murder him next, 
tible scoundrels ! " 

" Does he write no more plays, Mr. Carter?" 
" They won't take his plays. ' We are about 
mimicking the manager " ' we do not require any morJTof-tliat 
kind ; we wish a more sentimental, more poetical' oh ! may all 
the" 

VOL. XLI. 25 




386 SOLITARY ISLAND. [June, 

" It looks queerly," madame interrupted. " Could not Mr. 
Rossiter write the style of play they demanded? " 

" Ay, an' something ten times better than the trash they're 
giving now. Oh ! I've exposed them ; I've shook them to the 
foundations. I'd like to tear them limb from limb." 

Madame took the first opportunity of calling on Paul to as- 
sure him of her sympathy and to promise him that she would use 
her influence in getting him a position ; and Frances came up 
often with Peter and was very witty and quarrelsome for the 
purpose of raising his spirits. From these kindly visits Peter 
evolved a bright syllogism whose conclusion struck him with the 
force of a tornado. Madame and her daughter were about to 
take advantage of Paul's weakness and arrange the long-deferred 
marriage of the young people. Paul's noble sacrifices in behalf 
of the poor, his patient endurance of misfortune, his piety and 
beauty, had at length become irresistible in their influence over 
the girl's heart. Now was the time to strike a telling blow in 
favor of his pet project. He waited a few days until madame 
had made herself conspicuous in Paul's interest, until Frances 
had ministered his sad soul into cheerfulness, and then Peter's 
diplomacy began to move about like the bull in the china-shop. 

" How's the b'y, girl ? " said he to Frances as she came from 
the attic carrying a bowl. 

" You were there this morning," said Frances shortly, " and 
ought to know." 

" I thought he might have had a change," Peter answered in 
confusion. " Ye can't tell what might happen in a minute. He 
might be dead since ye left him " 

" What a thought ! " cried Frances, shivering. " Mr. Rossiter 
is not ill, sir ; only low-spirited." 

" Just so heart-sick." And Peter tapped his breast patheti- 
cally. " I've seen b'ys like him, strong enough, hearty eaters, 
go off like a shot from heart-sickness. Ye mind young Seymour. 
His father had a fine house in the country, stoves blazing in every 
room oh ! so warm an' comfortable an' home-like (an' a mighty 
cold house it was ; I slept there one winter) an' he died of heart- 
sickness " 

" I beg your pardon," said she ; " I thought it was a fever or 
congestion." -i^ft 

" Mere expressions of the heart's pain," answered Peter loftily. 
" It's a dangerous thing to have any foolin' wid the heart. But 
that's what the b'y has been doin', an' I'm afraid he'll never do 
any good wan way or another unless he follows my advice. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 387 

His heart must be put on a solid basis of fragility." Frances 
laughed. 

" Now I know that you are ridiculing me," said she. 

" 'Deed I'm not. I mean what I say. Frailty, thy name is 
woman, isn't it ? It was a solid basis of frailty I meant. The 
b'y's in love, to make a short story shorter, an' in love wid a wo- 
man. D'ye see now what I mean by a solid basis ? " 

" Yes," murmured Frances, beginning to tremble at a turn of 
the conversation which always resulted hurtfully to her. 

" I think, too, the girl's in love with him," continued Peter. 
" Why don't you speak to her at wanst ? ' says I. ' I can't, 
Peter,' says he ; ' I'm afraid o' rejection.' ' Pshaw ! man,' says I, 
' what do you care about all the females that ever lived ? Is a 
word of the English language to stay ye like a bullet ? Non- 
sense ! Dress in your best, drop on yer knees in front of her, an' 
if she says no ' ' That's what's killin' me,' says he ; 'if she said 
no, where would I be?' 'I'll get her answer for ye,' says I. 
' Let me do the askin'.' ' If ye'd be so kind, Peter,' says he. 
' Never fear,' says I. An' I think it's the best thing to do, don't 
you, Frank ? " 

" I have nothing to do with the matter." 

" Just so. Ye're not goin' ? Well, see here," said Peter, 
drawing his breath for a long plunge into the inevitable : " ye're 
the lady he's in love with, an' he's anxious to know if ye'd marry 
him, me dear. I'm sure a sweeter b'y never lived " 

"Stand aside, sir!" cried Frances with flushed face and quiv- 
ering lips and she passed haughtily out of sight. Peter stood 
riveted with amazement. This was not the game which he ex- 
pected his diplomatic bullet would bring down, and he was con- 
fused with terror and dismay. When this reached madame's 
ears there would be no end of trouble. Better far that she should 
hear it from his own lips than from indignant and hysterical 
Frances. He hurried at once into madame's presence and burst 
out with 

" He's dyin', that b'y is dyin', an' ye have only yerselves to 
blame for it." 

" Do you mean Mr. Rossiter ? " said madame, terribly fright- 
ened. 

" Don't get excited, ma'am. There's no immediate harm done, 
but between ye ye are killin' the b'y." 

" Oh ! " said madame, " one of your freaks, I suppose." 

" A woman of your years an' experience," said Peter, looking 
at her with uneasy glances, " ought to be better able to get at 



388 SOLITARY ISLAND. [June, 

the bottom o' things than ye are, instead o' leavin' such work to 
be done by yer boarders. There's no use breakin' yer neck run- 
nin' over the city to find out the cause o' Paul's illness, when it's 
here in the house, as large as a young lady can be." 

Madame sat provokingly quiet awaiting the point of his elo- 
quence. 

" Can't ye see that he's in love with yer daughter ? " said 
Peter angrily. 

" No," said madame composedly ; " is he ?" 

" Nothin' less than marryin' her will cure him ; an' it's a shame 
to have her waitin' for the good pleasure of the man without a 
heart, with a real live poet wastin' away in a garret because of 
her. He'd write beautiful verses for her all her life, while from 
the Congressman divil a thing else she'll hear but dhry speeches 
an' the like." . 

" Did Mr. Rossiter tell you he was in love with Frances, and 
commission you to plead his cause for him ? " 

" Ay, that he did, ma'am ; for no one ever stood his friend as 
well as Peter. When he was feelin' bad over his own weakness 
who else would he choose ? ' Never mind,' says I, ' I'll let out the 
cause of it' ; an' he thanked me wid two tears in his eyes as big as 
potatiz. If there's a heart in ye at all ye'll see that he's rescued 
from the grave by givin' him Frances. She's crazy after him, 
the poor girl." 

" Have you spoken of this to others ? " said madame icily. 

" No ; I think not. I might have, but " 

" If you ever do," said madame, " it will be your ruin. My 
interest in Mr. Rossiter ceases from this instant, and he must de- 
part at once from this house. Such an insult to my daughter 
such a poor, ungentlemanly return for all my kindness ! It is 
shameful ! " 

Peter walked out stupid from humiliation. He could not see 
what there was in a proposal of marriage to raise the ire of any 
woman, and he could account for the ill-success of his diplomacy 
only by the strength of madame's ambition to obtain a grand 
son-in-law. What was he to say to Paul, and how was he to say 
it ? for the poet must know of the matter at once. He had drawn 
heavily on his imagination in supposing that Paul had ever said 
a word about marrying Frances or any other girl. Although he 
racked his brains carefully, he could not discover a peg on which 
to hang a defence of his own conduct. When some hours had 
been spent in the vain attempt he stole silently from the house 
and was neither seen nor heard in its precincts for a full week. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 389 

In the meantime the effects of his interference were direful. 
Madame and her daughter ceased to visit the attic, and Paul re- 
ceived the intimation that as soon as convenient madame would 
let the attic to a more desirable lodger. There was, of course, 
an instant demand for explanation. Paul, looking wofully pale 
and wretched, came down from his room and begged to know if 
this was of a piece with his other misfortunes. Madame ex- 
plained in a distant way, which set Paul laughing as he pictured 
to himself the manner in which Peter must have executed his 
self-imposed task. He declared earnestly that 'he had never 
spoken of such a thing even in jest, and had no deeper regard for 
Frances than he had for herself. It pained him to see that, while 
madame accepted his declaration, she did not withdraw her note 
nor drop the unusual coldness of her manner, while his request to 
apologize to Frances was politely ignored. 

He returned to his room weighed down with sadness, but 
outwardly cheerful. One must carry his cross with a good 
heart. His possessions were few and his wardrobe limited. He 
packed up a few articles that evening, locked the door and gave 
the key to the servant, with instructions to have the furniture 
sold and the money given to madame. He had tried vainly to 
see Peter. On a chilly but clear night in early spring he went 
out into the streets of New York almost a beggar, as he had once 
entered the city, having no place to lay his head, entirely bereft 
of friends save among the poor, sad and downcast, but still full 
of the hope which had always been his chief capital. He had 
enough money to assist him in carrying out his designs. He 
needed change of scene and rest, and he had decided that a few 
months spent in the country districts, travelling as only the im- 
pecunious know how to travel, out in the open air, among the 
mountains and lakes of the north, would once more set him in 
trim for the battle of life. He was not altogether cast down, 
and had no fashionable suicidal tendencies, nor even a very 
natural longing for death. There were many pleasant incidents 
ahead of him which, with the bracing air of night, gave his blood 
a new energy of flow and his pulse a gentle acceleration. 

Such a wail as rent the air when Peter ventured to return and 
learned the story of his friend's departure was never before heard 
in the silence of the boarding-house. When the servant had 
informed the ladies of Paul's queer manner and mysterious de- 
parture they fell into an excessive trouble of mind. Suicides 
were not rare, and a young man weak from illness, bowed to the 
ground by a series of misfortunes, was apt to be unsettled in his 



390 SOLITARY ISLAND. [June, 

mind and to find a dangerous fascination in the water. There 
was some hope in recalling Paul's strength of character and re- 
ligious instincts, but still the ladies wept secretly over their un- 
intentional harshness. The effect on Peter of the poet's depar- 
ture was marvellous. He confessed to his own fictions, and thus 
established Paul's innocence of even a thought derogatory to 
Frances ; he accused himself with tears of being the destroyer of 
his " b'y " ; he swore that he would never rest until he had found 
him, alive or dead ; and he added a secret oath that Florian Wal- 
lace would never claim Frances as his bride. Nothing less than 
a threat to cut down his allowance could put an end to his public 
lamentations. Thenceforward during all that spring and summer 
Peter was like a monomaniac in his search after the poet. He 
went about with that one idea uppermost in his mind. He made 
it a point to call at stated times on those who had discharged 
Paul from their service, and on the managers who had treated 
him so managerially, and to abuse them. Nevertheless there 
was no trace of the young man, nor did Peter cease to inquire 
after him. 

Paul took a northward train, after he had stepped into the 
Bowery theatre and spent an hour witnessing a representation 
of his own rejected play, and near morning was landed at a 
pretty village half-way up the Hudson. It was not a pleasant 
hour for entering a town, the air being chilly and the sun still 
in bed along with the villagers. Officials were sleepy and im- 
polfte, and the silent, echoing streets, the ghostly spires and 
eminences, had a heavy influence on a heavy heart. The bells of 
a distant ^convent were ringing, and, smiting softly on his ear, 
brought a flush to his pale cheek. He turned his steps towards 
the sound, knowing that by the time he had walked the two miles 
of distance leisurely the morning Mass would be celebrating and 
he could enter the chapel unnoticed with other worshippers. 
His thoughts went back to that happier time when Ruth's face 
had first stirred in him those aspirations and fancies so sweet in 
their passing. It had been many months since she stood in the 
world. She was hiding in the convent whose bells brought 
the blood to his cheek and quickened his unconscious step. 
What she was doing there he had never heard ; why he was visit- 
ing the place he had not asked himself, but a vague longing to 
see her again and to learn something definite of one who had 
unconsciously filled a large space in his life urged him on. He 
knew that she thought of him with gratitude. He had been 
the first to open her eyes to her real position, and she felt that 



I885-J SOLITARY ISLAND. 391 

whatever of happiness her new life had given her was owing in 
fair measure to him. 

He was very weak when he arrived at the chapel. The priest 
saying Mass was the only person visible in the sanctuary, on 
each side of which were Seep recesses where the nuns sat unseen 
during the sacrifice, and only the voices of the singers told of 
their presence. He was sad as well as weak, and, as any man 
will do in God's single presence when bowed down with sickness 
and affliction, he wept a little. Life seemed so utterly cheerless 
at that moment, he was so lonely in the wide world, and one of 
its best and dearest and most desired was so near and yet so far 
from him! 

It was a very interesting face which presented itself at the 
convent before noon and inquired for the mother-superior; so 
the lay sister thought as she ushered Paul into the parlor, his 
face was so pale, so sorrowful, so chastened. Mother-superior 
was also impressed by it as her visitor, in a nervous but gentle- 
manly way, began to speak. 

" Some years ago," he said, " a lady friend of mine came here 
to reside. She was a Miss Pendleton, a Protestant, who had 
leanings towards the faith. I have heard so little of her since 
that time that I am anxious to know what has become of her." 

" Miss Pendleton," said the mother-superior, smiling, " is now 
Sister St. Clare, a novice in our order. She has been a Catholic 
almost since her arrival, but until a year ago did not consider that 
she had a vocation for the religious life." 

" She is well, I trust, and happy ? " 

" Very well indeed, and apparently content and cheerful." 

He was longing to ask permission to see her, but knew that it 
was against the rules. 

" Will you oblige me " handing her his card " by giving 
Sister St. Clare my kind regards and best wishes, and asking her 
prayers for one who has great need of them. I am glad to know 
she has found rest. Some day when she is professed I may be 
able to call on her." 

He went away sadder but pleased at the good-fortune which 
had come to a noble soul. All day long he haunted the grounds, 
sketching the buildings and looking with moist eyes towards that 
part where the novices spent their leisure hours. Insensibly his 
thoughts strayed away into dreamland, and he began to draw on 
a bit of bristol-board the outlines of Ruth's face as he had seen 
it last, very troubled, yet shining with the light of a new-born 
grace. He looked at his finished work, grief-stricken yet patient. 



39 2 SOLITARY ISLAND. [June, 

Was he never to whisper into her ears the secret of his heart? 
Never. For Another more noble than he had claimed her, and he 
could but write around the chill outline his name and hers inter- 
twined, with the words, " I love you," twisted about in every 
fashion. The sun rose hot and red in the noon-day sky, and hun- 
ger drove him to the village. He left the bit of bristol-board in 
the convent grounds, nor did he miss it until the next morning 
when he was many a mile from the place. He would have re- 
turned for it on the instant but that he remembered the rain- 
storm of the preceding night. The sketch lying six hours in the 
rain would now be a mass of unsightly pulp. 

What a dreary heart he carried away with him ! He had no 
fixed plans for his journey. He went wherever fancy and cir- 
cumstances led him, and wandered for months by the Hudson, on 
the shores of Lake George and Lake Champlain, along the St. 
Lawrence, and among the Thousand Islands places little fre- 
quented in those days. His arrival at Clayburg was pure acci- 
dent, but once there he woke to sudden interest in Ruth's home. 
He had not improved much in his open-air trampings. Whether 
his heavy heart retarded recovery,' neutralizing the effect of 
change of scene, fresh air and exercise, or his carelessness led 
him into fresh disorders, the day at least which found him look- 
ing on Clayburg from the top of the island described in the 
opening chapter was a day of special physical misery to him. 
He was still pale and thin, and his movements slow and uncertain, 
and any emotion sent the tears to his eyes and sobs to his throat 
like a child. 

And this was the village where she had lived and grown to 
a sweet womanhood ! How pretty its spires looked in the morn- 
ing sun, and how fresh the wind which blew from it to him ! 
The thoughts which the scene aroused troubled him like pain. 
He sat under the shade of the stunted tree with his eyes fixed 
gloomily on the water, and wondered when his present self was 
to end. He was depressed enough to wish that it would find its 
conclusion here. She was lost to him for ever, and he would rest 
among the scenes which she had loved. How very unpoetic and 
undesirable death is when actually present the poet discovered 
after that last reflection ; for as he sat a man silently rose from the 
opposite side of the rock and walked unheard to Paul's side, where 
he stood for one moment looking about him to see that no one 
was near. He carried a short stick, which he laid skilfully and 
murderously on Paul's head. The poet looked in a dazed way 
and recognized with a shiver the' evil face which had so often 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 393 

haunted him. Was he dreaming again ? He saw it through a 
thick haze which gathered suddenly over his senses, and his 
feeble effort to save himself resulted in a misstep which sent him 
headlong into the water. The shock of falling twenty feet into 
the cold water sharply awoke his senses, and all at once he was 
conscious that life was a precious thing, and that to lose it in this 
way was most ignoble and horrible. When he came to the 
surface he struck out for the rock and found a kindly 
hand outstretched to him. Scott stood there, all sympathy 
and wonder. 

" You were sleepin', I reckon," said he. " Tumbled clean from 
the top ? " 

" No," said Paul ; " I was knocked off by a man with a heavy 
stick. I must have a mark on my head." 

There certainly was a mark, but the hermit decided it had 
been obtained in the fall.- 

" I han't seen no one about here, an' the spot's too small to 
hide any one. 'Twas a dear dream, anyhow." 

Paul ran up the steps to the summit and excitedly called the 
hermit to his side. Both saw a man pulling rapidly behind a 
distant island, and Scott made out a face which puzzled him. 

" Light hair," said Paul, " and queer face." 

" The very same," Scott replied with a growl ; " an' he's been 
here afore. You had a close shave. Has he anything agin 
you ? " 

" I suppose so," said Paul gloomily, " although I do not know 
him or why he should wish my death. I am not rich. I have no 
relatives. I stand in nobody's way. But the world gets a spite 
against a man sometimes, and no misfortune but takes a whack 
at him." 

The sigh which followed the words told the poet's story very 
plainly, and Scott studied his pale face with attentive interest. 
He somewhat resembled Florian. Usually the hermit left stran- 
gers to themselves as speedily as possible. 

" I don't think misfortin' is always to blame," said he. " When 
sorrows begin to knock a man down it's part of his nature that he 
should knock down in turn. If he doesn't he must expect a 
kickin' as well. I dunno but he deserves it." 

Paul looked up in surprise, and for the first time surveyed his 
companion. He saw nothing, however, to astonish him, but the 
words of the hermit rang in his ear pleasantly. 

" Easy to talk," said he, " but cleverly said. It is like meet- 
ing a friend to hear such words ; and I have no friends." 



394 SOLITARY ISLAND. [June, 

" None ? " said the other, distrustfully. " A man must have 
done some pretty mean things to git like that." 

" Perhaps the meanest thing I did was to run away from mis- 
fortune instead of facing it and letting it do its worst. The 
friends I had God took from me for a good purpose which -I 
have been slow to acknowledge. Never mind. I will go back 
to New York soon. I thought I was dying ; that my tide of 
fortune, not taken at the full, was ebbing. It was a mistake. I 
shall return, no doubt." 

"A man sometimes runs too far," was drily said, "to make 
gittin' back safe or necessary. Find a good battle-ground here, 
an' wait for your enemies." 

Paul looked at him a long time in silent thought, and then at 
the scene around him. 

" What do you do for a living? " 

" Fish, hunt, plough for myself an' no other. I live alone 
among these islands, an' when I've done prayin' for myself I 
give some time to thinkin' of my brothers in the world. I never 
tolerate company. It doesn't pay ; it brings misfortun'." 

He had seen a purpose in Paul's eye and question, and thus 
attempted to destroy it, starting down the steps to his canoe ; but 
the poet caught him and held him, looking into his face with a 
fixed, earnest look not without a suspicion of wildness. 

" I must go with you," he said, "for I know you now. Flo- 
rian often spoke of you. In old times those sick of the world 
came to men like you for help and consolation. I am sick of it. 
You must take me with you. You will bear half my troubles." 

" You're a little crazy," said Scott. " I have nothing to do 
with your kind." And he laughed at the man's feeble grip. 

"Nothing?" repeated Paul, following him to the canoe. 
"You have nothing to do with such as I ? Why, it was just 
such a sorrow as mine, perhaps, which drove you to this soli- 
tude. Let me be your disciple. We are alike in many ways." 

The hermit looked at him again sharply. 

"Are you in earnest?" he said coldly. "If so, come. Put 
in practice the first rule of this place silence." 

Wordless the poet entered the canoe, and the prow was 
turned towards Eel Bay. Paul hardly knew what he was doing 
or saying. Since he had been knocked from the rock ideas and 
scenes had removed themselves from him into a golden mist, 
and his own voice sounded to him like one speaking afar off. 
He saw the glowing skies and the green shores as if they were 
a vision, and thought of fluth as the great princess of the region, 



1885.] THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. 395 

whom he dared not approach except as a slave. And all 
through the silent journey under the hot sun these rich fancies 
and unreal splendors grew in gorgeousness, until they were sud- 
denly swallowed up in darkness and oblivion. 

The hermit was not surprised but annoyed when his strange 
guest toppled backwards in the canoe and almost upset it ; but 
he was surprised when, after an hour's effort to restore him to 
consciousness, the young man began to work in a convulsion : 
the cold sweat gathered on his forehead, and his blue eyes 
opened and fixed themselves on nothing. An involuntary sob 
escaped the hermit. 

" Dyin'," he muttered, as he hastened ashore with him, and 
then returned to the town for a doctor. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. 

IT is not more than half a dozen decades since the curse ac- 
companying the useful invention of distilling alcohol from fruits 
and grains first manifested alarming magnitude. We have now 
fairly entered an era in which the evils arising from the abuse 
of the invention of printing promise to assume proportions be- 
side which the evils of drink will appear insignificant. 

The church of God on earth is the Church Militant. From 
the beginning unto the end her mission is to fight : to wage un- 
ceasing war against the powers of evil. She hopes to go on 
adding victory to victory, and she knows that at the last the 
Enemy shall not prevail against her. But to the very last the 
battle must be kept up an unresting battle, in which there can 
be no slumbering in tents, in which no truces may be held. If 
for a moment vigilance be relaxed the watchful Enemy ad- 
vances. 

To maintain this warfare the Church Militant must have 
weapons. With every age new weapons are invented and new 
methods of levying war. The Fighting Church must be the 
first to seize on the new arms and equip her troops with them ; 
must be ever planning to invent them herself and to devise new 
systems of attack and defence. 

On the fairest field on which she ever fought a battle the 
church finds herself to-day in a terrible predicament. A new 



396 THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. [June, 

weapon of tremendous power has been invented. The enemy 
has possessed himself of it; to a man he has armed his forces 
with the latest developments and improvements of it ; his am- 
munition is piled behind him mountain-high, and with the new 
weapon he is blazing away into the ranks of the faithful. The 
church is not armed with the new weapon. A gun or two of the 
new kind, perhaps ; a few antiquated and rusty pieces of ord- 
nance ; a lean band of skilled gunners to man them; and a woe- 
ful scarcity of ammunition in the chest that is all the church 
has to meet this latest onset of the foe. 

The new weapon is the periodical and newspaper Press. The 
fair field of battle is America. The most powerful disseminator 
of truth or falsehood ever known is almost altogether in hands by 
Which it will be used to disseminate only falsehood. Every day 
we repeat it, every day the press of the enemy has been 
multiplying at a rate and in a volume that take the breath away 
to contemplate. But the press of the church in America stands 
almost where it was twenty years ago. 

The evil that has been already wrought by this disproportion 
is incalculable. The evil that will be done if this disproportion 
increases, as it is bound to do unless checked, will be greater 
than ,the evil arising from any one artificial cause of evil with 
which the church has ever had to deal. 



In the United States to-day there is not one Catholic news- 
paper or periodical supported as it might and ought to be. 
There are not half a dozen receiving more support than suffices 
to keep their editors from starving. But we boast nine million 
Catholics in the United States. Are those nine millions wise 
students who look upon periodical literature as a distraction to 
graver studies? . . . Well, then, are they all illiterate? No; 
there is hardly a man or woman or child above ten years of them 
who cannot read, and who does not read with more or less avid- 
ity. What do they read? Here is the question for which we 
would bespeak consideration. 

They do not read Catholic books. The reports of the Ca- 
tholic publishers as to the amount of books sold to the Catho- 
lic laity tell a painful story. They do not read healthy lite- 
rature of any kind. It is needless to prove the point ; we all 
know it. But what we do not realize is the nature of the sub- 
stitute that has taken the place of good literature, and the ex- 
tent to which it is had recourse to. 



1885.] THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. 397 

People now read more than ever they did, and more peo- 
ple read. Every man every day reads something. The amount 
of reading done by a single individual in twelve months is 
enormous. Night and day the presses are working, turning 
out cataracts of " reading-matter " (a happy phrase): books on 
all subjects, pamphlets, reviews, magazines, weekly and daily 
newspapers. It is all devoured, and the maw of the public 
hungrily gasps for more : each week a greater quantity of read- 
ing-matter is printed than the week previous. Whether this 
universal habit of reading is intrinsically a blessing or not is a 
question we may waive for discussion in a sunnier hour. There 
are many things to be said in its favor, no doubt ; but it is 
with the evil it does we are now concerned. Here it is, a great, 
evil-causing fact ; let us look at it on the dark side. 

For one thing, it multiplies incalculably the difficulties of the 
church's mission to save souls. 

To begin with the highest plane on which the evil operates, 
it is harder now than ever it was for the truths of reason and 
faith to get a hearing. Every sophist is publishing his sophis- 
tries. A din of commentators, speculators, investigators con- 
founds the seeker after light. For every utterance of the voice 
of Truth he hears a hundred shoutings from the Babel of Error. 
No wonder the moderner, overwhelmed by the tide of sound, 
in final disgust rejects all spiritual thinking, and, living only for 
the moment, becomes a Care-nothing the contribution of the 
latter quarter of the nineteenth century to epochal types. It is 
nearly thirty years since John Henry Newman, with his almost 
prophetic insight, pointed out the tendency of the epoch which 
had begun twenty years before his writing. " What the steam- 
engine does with matter the printing-press is to do with mind," 
he said in his Idea of a University ; "it is to act mechanically, 
and the population is to be enlightened by the mere multiplica- 
tion and dissemination of volumes." "I will tell you what has 
been the error of the past twenty years : not to load the student 
with a mass of undigested knowledge, but to force upon him so 
much that he has rejected all" The student of forty or fifty 
years ago is the full-aged man of the present generation. It is 
his son or his grandson who is the student of to-day ; and the 
error that Dr. Newman deplored the danger to the student 
has been growing bigger and bigger. 

Behold our own country. Even a casual observer must 
notice the decay of spiritual earnestness, that has reached its 
most advanced stage here. In Calvin, John Knox, Anacharsis 



398 THE CURSE OF PRINT A LA Y-SERMON. [June, 

Clootz, John Brown of Ossawatomie ; in the eccentric creeds 
which used to summon followers about them in this new coun- 
try ; in even most of the isms that have gone out of fashion, 
there was a spiritual earnestness which those whom they most 
offended or diverted were bound to acknowledge. They show- 
ed the recognition by man of a spiritual nature in him that had 
needs. What a spectacle is the man of the present hour who 
gives no more thought to his spiritual nature than if he were a 
quadruped ! He goes about his " business," with his paltry am- 
bitions and his unlovely passions, seeking for dollars and the de- 
lights they bring, with no more ideas beyond them than the 
dog that prowls for bones and lays them up for future enjoy- 
ment. We have steadily descended until we have ceased to in- 
vent isms with a positive prefix. Agnosticism, "not to know," is 
the religion of England ; but here we have reached even a lower 
stage. The agnostic is a man who has at least tried to know, 
but who confesses failure. In America, we do not even try to 
know ; we don't care. We are eaten up with the pride of life. 
We think our country and our age and ourselves the finest pro- 
ducts of creation (if there be such a thing as creation), and we do 
not want to know anything about any other place, people, or age. 
We live for the day and for our bodies ; but it is not with the 
philosophic elegance of Epicurus, but with the rude appetite and 
glorious conceit of the hobbledehoy released from school with 
spending-money enough in his pocket to carry him to the bad. Re- 
ligion is "effete" here, as we used to regard the' monarchies of 
Europe. People who talk of God are old fogies whom we toler- 
ate with a kindly smile, as we do that benighted " old man," our 
parent. 

From this, the uppermost plane on which we can view the 
operation of the evil, to the lowermost, the mental and moral 
debauchment of the population by the printing-press is startling. 
The reading of even the best class of daily newspapers, as it is 
now in vogue, is a harm. Every member of the average Ameri- 
can family who can read reads the daily paper. It is no longer 
a dissipation indulged in by the head of the family alone ; his 
wife and his unfortunate little boys and girls read it. We take 
up the Sunday edition of one of the foremost New York dailies. 
Among the headings occur the following : " A Pennsylvania 
sensation Arrest of a mountaineer for criminal intimacy with 
his daughter " ; " Eloping with an heiress " ; " Queer courtship 
and marriage of a millionaire and a milliner " ; " An indignant 
husband murders his wife and paramour on their bed of sin " ; 



1885.] THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. 399 

" How a bankers' clerk managed to enjoy the gay capitals of 
Europe at his employers' expense" ; " Some of Brooklyn's boy- 
burglars " ; " Two couples marry for fun a roller-rink romance " ; 
" A fastidious Chicago beauty, or three divorces in three 
months"; "A romance of crime secret history of the Wilkes- 
Burns-Bixio gang of forgers schemes by which banks were 
robbed and cheated millions of booty." The last item is con- 
sidered the most attractive in the whole paper, for four and a 
half columns of small type are given up to it, and special attention 
is called, to its enticements in an editorial article. What a lit- 
any for the Lord's day ! Incest, adultery, prostitution, divorce, 
marriage-for-fun, successful embezzlement, " romantic " and bril- 
liant thievery, sensational crime in which it is even permitted to 
boys to distinguish themselves, murder, suicide ! Fagin, the Jew, 
in Oliver Twist, in. order to harden his young pupils in crime and 
excite their professional ambitions, used to give them the New- 
gate Calendar to read. .The Christian father in America acts the 
part of Fagin, the Jew, to his own children when he puts into their 
hands the daily newspaper. 

How many Christian fathers in America do this? Practically 
speaking, every one of them ! The paper whose headings we 
quote from is one of the most reputable in New York. We 
have compared its news with that of all the reputable papers in 
the city of the same Sunday's issue the Sunday nearest to the 
date of our writing. All have the same news. The same cata- 
logue of moral horror is perused in every home in the city in 
every home in the United States, we may say, for it is only in 
the purely local items that the news of the San Francisco paper 
differs from that of the New York paper. Not to speak of the 
boys, the independent, parent-tolerating boys, imagine the tender 
girl, just conscious of her womanhood, reading some of those 
items in her Sunday paper ! Oh ! will pristine innocence ever 
again be possible while the American newspaper flourishes as it 
does for the young? 

But these are the " respectable " journals which the most 
straight-backed of our Christians welcome to their homes. There 
are depths in the press lower and lower, as there are deeper and 
deeper pits in hell. There are papers and those have the big- 
gest circulations whose design it is to take such news-items as 
the above, and such others as are too strong for the " respect- 
able " papers to stomach (!), and to dress them up in such a fashion 
that every feature calculated to rouse sensation is given exagge- 
rated prominence. If an occurrence offers a theme for lascivious 



'400 THE CURSE OF PRINT A LA Y-SERMON. [June, 

and suggestive description it is so described by hands which have 
the devil's cunning for such work. Crime is made fascinating, 
thrilling. No device is forgotten. Recently the artist's pencil 
has reinforced the reporter's, and voluptuous or ghastly sketches 
crown the descriptions in the letter-press ; and, lest the actual 
news should not furnish themes enough, a sensational serial story 
is kept running. It is a veritable witches' hell -broth, concocted 
in handsomely-furnished editorial rooms over-night : 

" Finger of birth-strangled babe 
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab, 
Make the gruel thick and slab ; 
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron 
For the ingredients of our cauldron ! " 

Day after day not one but all of the worst passions of youths 
and adults of our population are thus excited, are kept in per- 
petual ferment, are never permitted to rest. Sure it will be a 
miracle if the poor souls in such harried bodies ever stand re- 
splendent before their Maker's throne ! A paper of this class 
has the largest circulation of any daily paper in New York. It 
claims to circulate 190,000; it probably circulates 150,000. At 
least two people read each copy 300,000 people per day for one 
such paper ! This paper has only sprung into being within the 
last two years ; already numerous rivals vie with it both in New 
York and other cities. Another year may see a new " phenome- 
nal success " marking a grade lower in the descent of morals and 
taste. 

So far these are still daily newspapers. They would probably 
answer, if accused, that they merely tell the Truth (with a big T) 
spicily, recording the good that is done as well as the evil. But 
there are weekly papers that make no such pretence, that openly 
avow that they exist but to emblazon infamy. They call them- 
selves " police " papers. They are profusely illustrated, and their 
illustrations only profess to be there because they are immodest. 
The circulation of this class of papers is amazing. There is 
scarcely a barber's shop in the city whose owner does not con- 
sider it to his interest to keep one or two of these papers to be- 
guile his customers withal while they are waiting to be served. 
Boys may be seen gazing wide-eyed on these obscene prints. 

And as yet we have not spoken of the " story-papers." The 
story-papers are read more widely than any one class of papers in 
the United States. There are three story-papers in New York 
which boast a circulation of between 300,000 and 400,000 apiece. 



1 885.] THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. 401 

This estimate hardly overshoots the mark : their proprietors are 
millionaires. There are dozens of such story-papers, only less 
opulent, in New York ; and every large city in the Union pub- 
lishes its own story-papers. Almost everybody who reads the 
daily papers, and an immense class of people country people 
who do not read the daily papers, read the story-papers. What 
are the story -papers ? They are simply budgets of the horrors 
which the newspapers delight to exploit manufactured into fic- 
tion. They constitute an appalling testimony to the debased 
tone of our population. Their themes are elopements, abduc- 
tions, seductions, concubinage, adultery, divorce the sentiment 
of " love " contorted to suit a sentimentalism the most dangerous 
into which the female mind has yet fallen ; burglary, piracy, 
murder ; wealth suddenly won by beauty ; the brilliant achieve- 
ments of forgers ; dazzling detective work ; the derring-do of boy- 
criminals and of the gangs of hoodlums who make our cities at 
night as perilous to the wayfarer as the lampless burgs of the 
middle ages. They are a wilderness of moral chaos and riot. 
Every class of their readers is specially catered to : " Maud the Mil- 
liner, or from Counter to Coronet " ; " Chris the Car-Conductor " ; 
" The Fay of the Factory " ; " The Bloods of the Boulevard " ; 
"Old Sleuth, King of the Detectives"; " The Boy-Detective " ; 
" Indian-Slayer, the Terror of the Territory " ; " Six-Shooter 
Dick"; "The Cowboy King"; "The Boy-Buccaneer"; "The 
River Thieves of Boston." Even the ragged little newsboys are 
riven a place of their own in this lurid pantheon. We saw the 
)ther day, prominently displayed on a Broadway news-stand, a 
lime novel whose front page had a picture (drawn by a skilled 
tist, too) of a newsboy in the act of announcing that he was 
Cool Kit, the King of Kids, of Philarnadelphia, Pa., and don't 
rou forget it." Besides what appear in the weeklies, millions of 
such stories as these are circulated by " dime " and " half-dime " 
" libraries " an output entirely independent of the story-papers. 
Not to refer to the steady depravemeht of the mass who 
read this literature, its direct effect in producing overt delin. 
juency is attested to every day of the week. " Upon three 
ids arrested for highway robbery in Schuylkill County, this 
Jtate," says an earnest little pamphlet entitled Printed Poison, 
ssued by Mr. Josiab W. Leeds, of Philadelphia, " there were 
found four revolvers, a number of photographs of actresses, and 
;veral dime-novels. In one of our Philadelphia public-schools 
seven pistols were found in the possession of as many lads, whilst 
their stock of literature was made up of considerably over one 
VOL. XLI. 26 



4O2 THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. [June, 

hundred pernicious publications. The public were some months 
ago made acquainted with a Buffalo Bill organization among the 
lads of Milwaukee a revelation which was stated to have 
alarmed the whole town and necessitated an increase of the 
police force. And only yesterday came a telegram from Read- 
ing telling of the arrest of several little law-breakers eight to 
ten years of age, and the further discovery of a gang of thirteen 
who had been systematically robbing stores, factories, and 
dwellings. On the east side of the city of New York similar 
bands of youthful desperadoes are a constant menace to the 
holders of movable property within the circuit of their depre- 
dations. The current report of the Pennsylvania Society to 
Protect Children from Cruelty, referring to the evil effect of 
'flash' literature upon the -young, says that 'the officers of the 
society, in the prosecution of their work, have frequent occa- 
sion to notice the dreadful and pernicious influence of the cheap 
novels which abound in our midst.' " About eight years ago, 
when Pomeroy, the boy-murderer, confessed that his vicious 
career was largely due to the influence of the sensational stories 
he had read, the statement produced a sensation all over the 
country. But such testimonies have now grown so common 
that they fall unnoticed on our dulled ears. In the very Sunday 
papers from which we quoted the headings a little while ago 
appear two paragraphs. One is jocularly headed "An Indian 
Massacre Averted " ; it tells how two school-boys of fourteen, 
Harry Becker and Willie Weston, of Philadelphia, were found 
by a policeman on Brooklyn Bridge at half-past three in the 
morning; they had run away from home "to see the world"; 
in their pockets were found a revolver, pipes, tobacco, and eight 
dollars. It is significant in its own way that this episode is 
related by the newspaper in a facetious spirit. The other para- 
graph concerns " An interesting gang of boy-burglars who have 
been operating in the neighborhood of Red Hook Point," 
Brooklyn. It recounts some of their exploits, and tells of the 
capture of some of the leading members, whose names are (mark 
the names) Peter Farrell, Richard Cooly, John Denny, John 
Walsh, and Albert Herwood. It was stated some time ago, on 
the authority of the chaplain of Indiana State Prison, that " of 
the one hundred and twenty convicts lately in the prison en- 
closure seventy-six per cent, attributed their downfall in great 
measure to the corrupting influence of vile and otherwise perni. 
cious literature which they had read." 

Of the extent to which this literature is read it is positively 



1885.] THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. 403 

impossible to form an adequate conception. Numbers of daily 
newspapers and between the newspaper which allows stories 
about every crime from incest to sodomy to appear in its col- 
umns, and the dime- novel, we scarcely see a difference of de- 
gree have circulations of a hundred thousand, which means 
nearly twice that number of readers. No preacher, if he had 
lungs of iron, could make himself heard by two hundred thou- 
sand people. But the paper is not only read but re-read, and it 
tells its horrible stories Sunday and week-day three hundred 
and sixty-five times a year ! And there are the hordes of story- 
papers circulating millions after millions. And there are the 
dime " libraries." And there are the twenty-cent novels and 
the fifty-cent novels. The imagination fails to grasp the mea- 
sure of this deluge of poison. What headway can an occasional 
viva voce mission in a parish make against this never-pausing, 
ever-increasing onpour ? You cannot make a turn without 
seeing the poison at work. Enter a street-car going down-town 
in the morning : like snow-flakes are the papers before the eyes 
of the passengers. This "saleslady" is reading the Morning 
Journal. That well-dressed young man is blase of newspapers ; 
a flaring story-paper is in his hand. A telegraph-boy boards the 
car, not raising his head, as he slowly sinks into his seat, from 
the dime-novel which he carries folded small so as to be handily 
lugged out of his pocket on all occasions. See the factory-girl 
coming home from work with a group of her companions. She 
has read in her story-paper how Irene McCurdy was elevated 
from Macy's counter to a mansion in Filth Avenue through a 
" broker " falling .in love with her. Already is she ashamed of 
her honest labor ; when she leaves the factory-door she displays 
a bundle of books as if she were coming from school ! She 
wears a stylish bonnet which three weeks' wages would scarcely 
pay for. In her pocket is a ticket for the ball of the Martin J. 
Maloney Association in Pythagoras Hall, where she will go to- 
night in a splendid costume hired for the occasion, and look 
about for the possible broker whom she calculates on bringing 
to her feet by her ravishing waltz-step. She looks on divorce as 
rather fashionable ; she knows how to avoid having children ; 
and, if ever it becomes necessary, she will regard fceticide with 
an unruffled conscience. Hapless girl ! if, weathering the dan- 
gers that beset her, she ever reaches the port of matrimony, 
what a future is before her, before her husband, but, above all,, 
before her children ! Her mother had a warm faith and (if she 
could read) read only her prayer-book : she made her daughter 



404 THE CURSE OF PRINT A LA Y-SERMON. [June, 

go to Mass. But in what manner will she bring up her child 
whose only prayer-book is the story-paper ? And consider the 
brother of such a girl. If not a hoodlum who beats his father 
and mother when they refuse him money for " the growler," 
if he belong to a higher grade than the hoodlum, he is neverthe- 
less lost to the faith to all intents and purposes. Yet, to please 
the " old man," he may be still good enough to go to Mass on 
Sundays, even though he gets there late and, the minute Mass is 
over, is off to Coney Island with his chowder-club, perusing the 
Morning Journal on the way. But when he has a son growing 
up what is to become of him, and how is mother-church to reach 
him ? 

There are some classes of the community of which it may 
safely be said as classes that they are exempt from the cu'rse of 
drink. But there is no class of which it can be predicated that 
it is safe from the attacks of pernicious literature. There is no 
class nowadays but reads the news in the newspapers. Which 
evil does the greater harm drink or print ? Print, we answer. 
Drink slays individuals ; its responsibility is at once apparent 
between cause and effect there is hardly any distance ; it affords 
visible examples of its sinister power ; many a child has grown 
up a teetotaler for life from witnessing the effects of drink in his 
home. Print is accompanied by no such qualifications. Its in- 
fluence is subtile, elusive ; goes everywhere ; cannot be grasped 
and throttled. It is a slayer in disguise. This insidious foe is 
sapping the very foundations on which we are striving to build. 

If there is one sodality more than another that the church has 
special need of now, it is a sodality which would pledge its mem- 
bers to abstain from noxious reading. 



II. 

Whence is to come the remedy for this state of things ? Who 
is to blame for the church being at this late hour unarmed 
for the new strife ? All parties are to blame, and yet no one is 
to blame. None of us has as yet awakened to the magnitude 
and the urgency of the danger that besets us. Each can do 
something to avert it. The schools can do a great deal, parents 
may do much, and .the Catholic press itself has much to amend. 
But neither one nor all of these can do what is needed to be 
done. It will take the whole forces of the church, alarmed into 
strenuous action, to crush this new evil. 

Already there are signs of the awakening. First come the 



I 

' 








1885.] THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. 405 

words of the pastoral of the Plenary Council calling attention to 
the force and frequency with which the providential mission of 
the Catholic press has been dwelt upon by " popes and prelates 
and distinguished Catholic writers." Bishop Cosgrove preaches 
a sermon on the Catholic press and the class of reading which 
should be furnished for -the Christian home, saying that "it de- 
pended upon the associates and the class of literature read what 
the child will be, and that he would blush with shame to have in 
his house the class of papers which he had seen in the parlors of 
Catholics." At the Xavier Union dinner says the Rev. P. F. 
Dealy, S.J., in his speech : " We are eight or ten millions of 
Catholics in the United States, and if you consult our Catholic 
publishers their disclosures in regard to their efforts to encour- 
age Catholic literature will startle you." 

There is one phenomenon to which the publishers of Catho- 
lic newspapers and periodicals are becoming case-hardened. A 
young man in deep mourning, with clothes of fashionable cut, 
presents himself. " Is this," he asks, " the office of [let us say] 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD ? " Being informed that it is, he asks : 
" How much, pray, does John O'Donovan, of So-and-so, owe?" 
The bookkeeper finds that John O'Donovan is an old subscriber. 
The young man pays what is due, folds up his receipt, and says : 
" You are to stop the magazine, you know ; father is dead." 

Is it that the Catholic magazine or paper was only suited to 
the father and is not worthy of the son ? This can hardly be. 
The pabulum of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, for instance, is such 
as might attract any healthy-minded young man. His scholar- 
ship cannot be high enough to find it worthy of his disdain. It 
can hardly be so meagre but that he will find in THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD that which he can understand, which will interest and 
refresh him, and allure him to the appreciation of higher things. 
If the testimony of the Holy Father, who has blessed the work 
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD ; of the cardinal, the bishops and 
clergy of the United States, who not only bless it but give it 
their active co-operation ; of the Catholic press, which is unani- 
mous in its praise ; of the secular press, and even the press of its 
adversaries, which do not withhold their admiration if such 
testimony be worth anything, then THE CATHOLIC WORLD does 
not merit the young man's contempt. Scarce a number is issued 
that does not call from the non-Catholic and anti-Catholic press a 
sheaf of critical tributes ; a paper like the Independent, in a re- 
view of a recent number, declaring some of its articles to be 
among " the best of all the magazines of the month." If the 



406 THE CURSE OF PRINT A LA Y-SERMON. [June, 

young man reads a sufficiently respectable daily paper he will be 
likely to find quotations from THE CATHOLIC WORLD among 
its literary reading. This is not said in an access of egotism, we 
pray it to be understood, but to emphasize the phenomenon of 
the young man who stops the Catholic periodical when his father 
dies. 

We can picture the father. He was a subscriber from the 
starting of the magazine. Twenty years ago he hailed its com- 
ing with delight as a brightener of his home and a guide and ally 
in the controversies that were forced upon him in his daily in- 
tercourse. He found his religion and his nationality looked upon 
with wonder in this new country. But the contests he had to 
face only did him good ; they made his faith the livelier, and 
they reacted on his adversaries. This Irish Catholic, forced into 
a defence of his religion, even found himself making converts. 
The American people then regarded religion as ah earnest con- 
cern ; this plain, straightforward man with such unfaltering, 
militant faith set them a-thinking. With him is passing away 
one of the noblest types in the fabric of our Catholic-Ameri- 
can society. He brought the Catholic periodical into his family, 
fondly hoping his sons and daughters, when it came to their turn 
to be heads of families, would do likewise. But his sons and 
daughters probably never read the Catholic periodical. The 
word " Catholic " in the title frightened them off. The magazine 
is discontinued when he dies, and the young people are free to 
drift, degenerate, into the whirlpools of Print. 

Now, the father received no education beyond an elementary 
grounding in the three R's. The son has just passed through a 
Catholic college ; he can still repeat by heart the greater part of 
his valedictory oration. If he practised any kind of Catholic 
reading there would be nothing to complain of. But he does 
not. He becomes a mere reader of newspapers or story-papers. 

It may be possible for our schools to adjust their curriculum 
so as to take cognizance of the fact that their pupils, when they 
leave their walls, are bound to become habitual readers of some- 
thing. It ma}^ be possible to form in them a healthy taste for 
reading which would reject with nausea the pernicious stuff with 
which they will be assailed when they are released to the world. 
Literature may be taught in other ways than by catechism, ac- 
cording to which a pupil answers what he " thinks " of an au- 
thor he has never read ; and English authors may be analyzed 
in other ways besides according to the principles of rhetoric. 
Pupils might be prepared to be supporters of the Catholic press 



1885.] THE CURSE OF PRINT A LAY-SERMON. 407 

and shown how their duty and advantage lay in supporting it. 
It should not be a common thing for publishers of Catholic peri- 
odicals to receive letters like the following : " Dear Sir : I am 
preparing an oration on ' The Catholic Church and Civil Liberty ' 
for our commencement. I understand THE CATHOLIC WORLD 
from time to time had articles on this subject by Brownson, 
Hewit, Meline, and others. As THE CATHOLIC WORLD is not 
taken in the college nor by any of the students, I will thank you 
to send me the copies of the magazine containing such articles. 
Send bill, etc." 

These remarks apply equally to the female academies. What 
does the pure young plant reared in the exotic atmosphere of the 
convent take for literary nourishment when she gets her freedom ? 
She is too refined, perhaps, to relish the story-papers. But the 
novels she enjoys to her heart's content. The cheap reprints of 
the English novels afford her a perpetual supply. Take a batch 
of the latest of these. The first, by a celebrated authoress, is a 
story showing that to be idle and aristocratic are the only things 
worth living for. In the second a girl falls in love with a mar- 
ried man. The heroine of the third confesses that under certain 
circumstances she would set love above the Ten Commandments ; 
the book is full of scoffs at religion and religious people. The 
fourth is a story of a secret murder and a forged will. The 
fifth is vulgar and inane. The sixth is full of sensuous descrip- 
tions ; the heroine is a princess who does not love her husband, 
and who calls her children by him brats; an exquisite hero falls 
in love with her in a most refined way ; a divorce is agreed on, 
but is rendered unnecessary by the husband being shot in a duel 
by another hero who is also in love with the heroine. Another 
novel, which is very fashionable, and which we saw recently in the 
hands of a Catholic lady, is a tirade against " the brutalizing in- 
fluence of marriage." * Is the wealthy girl educated in a convent 
any better off as to the print she reads than the saleslady with 
her story-paper ? 

Catholic parents are much appealed to. But we fear a mis- 
take will be made if too much is expected from them. We have 
watched praiseworthy efforts to stimulate their Catholic pride, 
in the hope that that might impel them to place Catholic books 
on their tables and Catholic works of art on their drawing-room 
walls. But that Catholic pride does not exist. This country, 

* This kind of literature comes to us from England. But we return the compliment. Ac- 
cording to a speaker at the recent English Conference on Public Morality, " the worst literature 
for boys sold in England consists of reprints of American stories and of magazines imported 
from America." 



408 THE CURSE OF PRINT A LA Y-SERMON. [June, 

barren of tradition, is not like France or Italy, where evidences 
of the greatness and glory of the church overpower one at 
every "turn, where a man cannot walk the streets without having 
a Catholic pride aroused in his breast, if none existed there be- 
fore. If our people were really educated up to the idea that 
Madonnas of Raphael were something to be proud of, you might 
pique them with not displaying engravings or copies of Ma- 
donnas of Raphael. As' it is, pictures on sacred subjects are 
associated in their minds with the daubs they see over the beds 
in tenement-houses. The idea of introducing these to brown- 
stone-front drawing-rooms ! In their eyes Catholic books mean 
"pious" books. They only see in the display of such things a 
means of hurting the susceptibilities of their affable non-Catho- 
lic friends who never offend them with evidences of their religion. 
At best, all a majority of our well-to-do Catholics are sure of is 
that their church is the true church ; that it is not idolatry ; but 
that it is nevertheless not fashionable. And the motives of 
many a one in not obtruding his religion are similar to those of 
the nouveau riche who avoids allusion to the plebeian calling by 
which he made his money. American-born parents read the 
newspapers and the story-papers as well as their children. It 
is a case of " Quis custodiet custodes ? " And the guardians, be- 
sides, cannot inspire respect for their authority. Respect for 
parents, or for elders, is a lost virtue in this country. When the 
young people grow up the old people are relegated to the back- 
parlors. The daughter has her own circle of friends, whom she 
receives alone. The son has a latch-key ; he feels that he is in- 
finitely smarter than the " old man," who belongs to a by-gone 
age ; and he knows quite as much, for does not he, too, read the 
newspapers ? 

On the Catholic press, of course, will devolve the most im- 
portant portion of the work. It finds the people with an insati- 
able thirst for something to read. Its main task will be to take 
the place of the poisonous stuff that the people are now swal- 
lowing in such quantities. To do this it must make an effort to 
capture the sympathies of the people, who must be brought to 
read the Catholic press in preference to the flash-press for the 
pleasure it gives, and not as a duty. The poison is a sweet dose : 
the antidote must take care not to taste too much like medicine. 
But the Catholic Press is in a deplorable dilemma. Since but 
one Catholic in forty subscribes to a Catholic publication, it is a 
miracle how Catholic publications keep out of the bankruptcy 
court. To meet the crisis the Catholic Press needs both money 
and men, and money and men are just the things it lacks. 



1885.] KA THARINE. 409' 



KATHARINE. 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

Louis GIDDINGS and his wife were one night descending the 
Street of the Four Fountains after a day spent with the Lindsays. 
The great basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore was at their backs, 
its front bathed in pale light. They had lunched early in the 
studio, and then, after a visit paid in common to the not distant 
ruins of the Coliseum, the party had as usual divided into cou- 
ples, the men going off to Via Margutta, with the intention of 
dropping in upon a compatriot or two painting away for dear 
life in that ancient and shabby region, while their wives turned 
toward the cathedral of St. John of Lateran, where the prepara- 
tions for the approaching feast were fast nearing their comple- 
tion. They all met again at a dinner somewhat delayed by the 
late arrival of the gentlemen, and waited afterward for the moon 
to rise before separating. 

" There is the signal for pur rendezvous with the Marlows 
and Miss Rawson," said Katharine, getting up as its bosses shoul- 
dered into sight between the curtains. " Mr. Marlow said they 
would start from home at nine precisely, but Miss Rawson is 
more poetical, and told me to time myself by the arrival of the 
moon in Mrs. Lindsay's southeast window." 

" Their differences of opinion seem to be radical and chronic," 
said her husband, glancing up at a clock on his right. 

" Not altogether," said Lindsay, with a shrug. " Her faith in 
him as a painter is touchingly childish and implicit." 

Mrs. Lindsay broke in rather harshly for her, who spoke 
usually in a soft and rather measured tone almost before he 
finished speaking. 

" Oh ! that clock. It is one of our costly antiquities not 
good for much except to look venerable and artistic. As a time- 
keeper it is mendacious to the last degree. I have a hideous 
little American black- walnut octagon in the next room which 
ticks in a distressing monotone, and which I hide away behind 
a screen, but which is of great service as a regulator for the rest 
of my timepieces. Maria's guide is a safer one if you want to 
watch the effect of mingled moonlight and lamplight in the river, 
and yet reach home in time for Mrs. Giddings. She looks a little 



4io KATHARINE. [June, 

tired already. Maria spent last evening with us," she went on, 
arranging Katharine's wraps about her with deft, kindly hands 
as she continued speaking, " and we accompanied her to your 
door, but I thought it was too late to enter. In fact, we drove 
back. Strolling about at night here is too apt to be a dangerous 
pastime for one to feel as free to indulge in it as one would at 
home. I have the greatest dread of Roman fever. They say it 
never gets out of your System when once it gets in." 

" Is that all ? " asked Giddings, coming up to say good-night 
" A brigand or two, with stilettos, was the least our inexperience 
waited for after that preamble." 

" Malaria is bad enough quite as dangerous and a good deal 
more probable ; isn't it, John ? " 

" At this hour it is too late for one and too early for the other. 
And I have spent a good deal of time here, off and on, without 
falling a prey to either." 

" Yes ; but your brother Frank carried the seeds of the fever 
to Montana with him, and died there of it in the end." 

" That is beyond peradventure, I believe. My wife is a tho- 
roughly patriotic Roman, you see, Giddings. She will grant 
you anything you like as, to malaria, but she puts no faith at all 
in the festive brigand, and is twice as enthusiastic as I am on the 
picturesque values of dirt." 

" I was born in Rome, you know," Mrs. Lindsay said, smiling 
into Katharine's eyes as she kissed her at parting. 

" Was that intended as a statement of fact ?" Giddings asked 
his wife as they were descending the hill. " I thought Mrs. Lind- 
say was a Bostonian." 

Katharine came out of a little reverie. 

" So she was, but yet it represents a fact to her, I think. She 
told me this afternoon that what had finally decided them to take 
a studio in this quarter, where hardly any foreigners come, was 
that they would be conveniently near to St. John of Lateran's 
church. She was baptized in it nearly three years ago, and said 
it seemed to her that she had never really begun to live until 
then." 

" Rather a cheerful sentiment that for Lindsay, isn't it ? " 

" It belongs to such a different order of things, you know. If 
she was born in Boston she was married there also. And then 
Mr. Lindsay is a Catholic himself, and that she is thoroughly 
devoted to him must be plain to everybody. Don't you like her 
very much ? " 

" I find her charming, especially when one takes her in close 



1 885.] KATHARINE. 411 

succession to Mrs. Marlow, or that pellet of animated quicksilver, 
your friend Miss Rawson. What has she been showing you this 
afternoon ? " 

" Herself chiefly. Not directly and intentionally, of course, but 
I asked her a good many questions, because she interests me 
greatly, and is very direct and open, though she volunteers so. 
little. But her face when she was in the church was like a mir- 
ror. One saw all that it meant to her. And there are some 
things that it is easier to understand in that way than when one 
tries to look at them directly." 

" For example ? " 

" Well, the relics, for one thing. And then the way in which 
Christ is made the centre of a worship which is certainly divine 
adoration, but which keeps the fact that he was a real, veritable 
man constantly before the mind. We were watching the people 
go up the Scala Sancta on their knees, once this afternoon, and 
I felt certain that, if she had not hesitated about leaving me alone, 
she would have done as the others did. She explained it to me 
afterward." 

"And with what result?" 

" I hardly know yet. One gets a realizing sense here of the 
doctrine of the Incarnation, don't you think? I told her that I 
had been always taught that Christ was God, but that here the 
whole burden of the story seemed to be that God became man. 
She answered that it was that which had made a Catholic of her. 
Christ had faded into a half-historical, half-mythical personage, 
in her mind, about whom there were a few apparently conflict- 
ing records, but who, for any special, lasting effect that he had 
wrought, seemed to be not vitally necessary to the religion which 
bore his name. She believed in God and in the immortality of 
her own soul, but said that, though she was an Episcopalian in 
outward fact, she was a Unitarian in reality. She had known 
no Catholics but Mr. Lindsay, and was never in one of their 
churches until she came here directly after they were married. 
What struck her most was what has struck me also that here 
Christ lives, he is adored as God, he reigns as King, he is loved 
as man. She did not add this, but it touches me very nearly to 
see how he is surrounded in everybody's mind by an ever-liv- 
ing, ever-growing throng of men and women, who have simply 
dropped their bodies like worn-out garments, and gone to live 
with him in a very near heaven, where they are not out of reach 
nor out of hearing. I find the invocation of saints, and the re- 
lics, the most natural things in the world ; don't you ? " 



412 KATHARINE. [June, 

" Well, as to the latter, I haven't had the advantage yet of 
examining them with you and Mrs. Lindsay. Don't put on 
such a disappointed air. I am ready to admit at once that no- 
thing seems plainer to me than that genuine belief in historical 
Christianity, shared by a whole community, would necessarily 
embody itself in much such a shape as that of the Roman Church. 
Compromises in matters of fact are at least as unintelligible to 
me as they are to you. Mrs. Lindsay seems to have made a great 
impression on you." 

" Yes ; and yet it is not so much herself, I think, as what she 
says. She has a reason and an explanation for everything in her 
faith, and what seem to me good ones. I found myself thinking, 
when she left me alone in the church for a few minutes, that for 
the first time in my life my mind seemed to be like soft wax 
read}' to take a mould and keep it. One thing she said partiu- 
larly struck me. I had been telling her that the supernatural 
element in religion seemed borne in and pressed home upon me 
here in a way which made me sensible of how greatly I had al- 
ways felt the absence of it elsewhere. ' Yes,' she said, ' our na- 
tural life is like a great, empty cup good for nothing and useless 
until it is filled with the supernatural, which completes and ex- 
plains and gives it value.' You can't know how empty I felt, 
and yet what a great hope came to me that I should not always 
remain so." 

They were crossing the square, where the fountains were 
shining in the moonlight, and where they made a momentary 
pause near one -of the recumbent marble figures. 

" Yes," her husband answered, a shade of regret in his voice 
and in the eyes which regarded her, " I have a rather definite 
sense of your capacity for emptiness, as well as a very vivid re- 
collection of what you thought, not so very long ago, would 
suffice to fill it." 

" Should I long so for immortality," she rejoined quickly, " if 
this life had not been made so sweet to me that I tremble at every 
wind that blows, lest it should bring death on it to one of us ? " 

" That speech was not made in quite serious earnest," he an- 
swered, smiling, his hand closing over hers, which had slipped 
down into it from his arm. " There are people yonder by the 
further fountain. That speech was not made in quite serious 
earnest, but you do take one with a delicious simplicity which 
makes you capable of great things occasionally in the way of pro- 
vocation. We ought to walk on, I think. Marlow was to meet 
us here, but he is late. By the way, in speaking of her own bap- 



1885.] KATHARINE. 413 

tism Mrs. Lindsay did not mention, perhaps, the Jew baby that 
His Holiness refuses to give back to its parents, although it was 
baptized without their knowledge and consent?" 

" What do you mean ? " 

" Only a little affair that has been making a good deal of 
noise here and elsewhere while you and I have been burying 
ourselves in remote and ludicrous localities where newspapers 
are not. Marlow was freeing his mind to me about it after you 
went down last night. He gloats over it as certain to be the 
opening wedge which will split the temporal power to pieces, 
and the spiritual with it." And he went on to give her the out- 
lines of the case. " How does that strike you ? " he asked as he 
finished. They were just turning into the Via Ripetta, but had 
not yet come upon their friends. 

" What else could either of them do? " she asked after a little 
pause. " What did you say to* Mr. Marlow ? " 

" Come/' he answered, laughing, " that is a leading and un- 
fair question. Do you want me to do your thinking for you ? 
You know very well that when a man is so cocksure about un- 
certainties as Marlow sometimes is, and so bent on establish- 
ing self-evident truths by formal proofs before he will accept 
them, he provokes opposition from the unregenerate heart of the 
meekest and most thoroughly convinced bystander. Did I tell 
you that he undertook to maintain the other day that all ' so- 
called axioms' were susceptible of exact demonstration, and im- 
mediately got out a pair of compasses to put it for ever beyond 
doubt that the sum of the angles of a right-angled triangle must 
always and everywhere be equal to two right angles? " 

. " But what did you say to him about the little Mortara? " 

" You are not Marlow ; one's arguments with you would na- 
turally take another view of things. However, I asked your 
question in the first place. The thing is wider than Mortara 
ptre versus the Pope. It is the whole matter of the natural and 
the supernatural or, in strictness, of Christianity against the 
world. Clearly, neither the parents nor the pope are to blame 
for the state of affairs in this special instance ; but since the thing 
has occurred, without the volition of either, I do not see that the 
latter could be reasonably expected to stultify himself, or to 
commit moral suicide by yielding to the pressure that is brought 
to bear upon him. Granting even that he could preserve the 
temporal power in that way, he would certainly give the death- 
blow to what his refusal must make it plain that he holds in- 
finitely above it. The temporal power ! In his place, and with 



4H KA THARINE. [June, 

his faith, I would see not merely every state but every other 
soul fall away from me before I would give in to anything but 
physical compulsion ! " 

He had begun in a half-jesting tone, but he was speaking now 
in quite another. 

" I told Marlow that if I had been on the point of making my 
submission to the church, which I have sometimes thought of 
within the last months, concession here would have put an end 
to all such thoughts so far as I am concerned." 

" Is it true, Louis?" she asked in a soft, moved, eager voice, 
standing still again in her surprise. " Why have you never told 
me so before? " 

"True enough, but not more true than that I think of many 
things which never take form in action. I did not mean to tell 
you now. There are some roads where every one is called to 
walk alone, and this is one of them. Why should I have told you, 
moreover, when all along the possibility, the probability even, 
that I shall rest as I am has been perfectly plain before my mind ? 
I had no wish either to hinder or to help you, especially as the 
end of your journey, if one let you entirely alone, has been grow- 
ing more evident to me with every day that we have spent to- 
gether." 

A little farther on they came upon George Marlow. He was 
alone, and had a disturbed look which his first words sufficiently 
accounted for. 

" We could not leave the boy," he said, turning at once to re- 
trace his steps. " He began to show symptoms of croup almost 
as soon as he was fairly asleep, and my wife and I are very 
anxious about him. He used to be troubled with it now and 
then at home, but we thought he had outgrown it. Fortunately 
she had the usual remedies with her, and he has fallen asleep 
again, and was breathing quietly when I came down to look for 
you. It is a frightfully wearing anxiety. I have no faith in these 
Italian doctors, and if the paroxysms come on again I shall not 
know what to do." 

" A doctor on his vacation is a dubious quantity to deal 
with, I believe," said Giddings, his interest and sympathy at once 
awakened ; " but I spent an hour or so in a cafe this afternoon 
with an English surgeon, an old friend of Lindsay's, and a very 
capable fellow, according to his account. He gave me his card 
his hotel is in the Piazza, del Popolo, not far from here. If I can 
be of any service in the night, don't hesitate to call on me. I 
have a notion he would come if he were asked." 



1885.] KA THARINE. 4 1 5 

Mario w looked relieved. " I hope there will be no occasion," 
he said ; "the boy's trouble has not usually recurred the same 
night when it has been mastered early, but 1 shall feel safer 
knowing there is a doctor within reach whom I can understand. 
It is early yet. Come up, won't you, Mrs. Giddings, and have a 
look at him ? My wife is all alone just now. I sent Maria 
Rawson out of the room when he was getting pretty sick. I 
don't propose to have any Mortara business going on in my 
family." 

Katharine ascended the stairs a little in advance of the two 
men, who entered her own apartment for a moment. As she 
was nearly at the top she saw a figure that she recognized glide 
along the corridor and enter the room to which she was bound, 
perhaps half a minute before she herself could reach it ; but 
when she entered Mrs. Marlow was sitting alone beside the bed 
on which Jack was lying in an apparently healthy slumber. 

" Never wish for a child," the mother said, looking up at her 
with a piteous smile which drew her ordinarily pretty face into 
absolute plainness. " I have suffered martyrdom beside this one 
half a dozen times already since he was born, and, though I for- 
get all about it in the intervals, each new attack seems to revive 
all the others when it comes. I hope it is over for this night, 
but my heart is just like lead. Is George coming up? " 

" He went into our rooms with my husband." 

" To smoke, I suppose. He has had no chance since dinner. 
Tell me," she went on with some trepidation, and glancing at 
the door as if she feared his immediate advent, " do you believe 
in baptism ? Do you think it is necessary, as Maria does ? She 
talks to me until my head is in a perfect whirl, and I don't know 
what to think or what to do. If Jack were yours, and you 
thought he was in danger, would you let her baptize him ? " 

" Yes, I would," Katharine began ; but before she could go 
further Marlow was on the threshold, and his wife laid her fin- 
ger on her lips with an entreating gesture. 

" What a slavery life is for women ! " Katharine ended indig- 
nantly, as she recounted this brief dialogue to her husband later 
on. He laughed a little. 

" If you go about inciting to rebellion in this way I may be 
obliged, in the interest of my own- sex, to furbish up a set of 
gyves even for you. Hasn't your penetration yet discovered 
that my enthusiasm for the rights of women is only one of the 
ingredients in that delicate incense I have fallen into the habit 
of burning in your honor? I always bear in mind that if you 



KA THARINE. [June, 

threaten to get the upper hand entirely I have a certain reserve 
of physical strength to fall back on." 

" But don't you think " 

" I think all that you think, but it is all a muddle, in which I 
sometimes have more than I can do to keep my own feet out of 
the quagmire. Our right to criticise each other's actions is, at 
all events, a mutual one, to which Marlow has as strong a claim 
as you or I. Meantime I am going to exercise for once my too- 
much-abused authority, and send you to bed while I walk up 
and down the balcony with my cigar." 

Katharine put her head through the opening of the window 
two or three minutes later. The moon lit up the amused sparkle 
in her eyes. 

" My lord," she said, " don't you think it might be well to go 
up and caution Mr. Marlow to look under the bed, behind the 
hangings, and in the wardrobes ? I saw Maria Rawson slip into 
their room just before I did, but she was nowhere visible after- 
wards. I take it for granted that she means to pass the night in 
hiding." 

"'Love laughs at locksmiths'!" he answered, smiling. "I 
hardly feel called upon to interfere with Miss Rawson's choice 
of sleeping-quarters. She is not likely to have a chance to do 
much besides making herself supremely uncomfortable." 

" I hope she won't,'' said his wife, growing grave again. 
" She would not dare, she told me, unless death were apparently 
inevitable. But I should like to let Mrs. Marlow know that she 
is there in case of real trouble. The poor woman looked almost 
agonized with anxiety and fear." 

Shortly after midnight Giddings, who was still sitting by the 
table with a book, heard the half-anticipated summons at his 
door. George Marlow stood there with a candle in his hand, 
which lighted up the disorder of his dress and the haggard an- 
guish of his face. 

" It has come," he said, as his friend stepped into the corri- 
dor and closed the door behind him, " and worse than I have 
ever seen it. Make what haste you can. Will you ask your 
wife to come up ? Amanda is alone and half-beside herself." 

" She is asleep, and the day has been tiring for her. Besides, 
I should be glad, if I could, to avoid all danger of any nervous 
shock just now. Where is Miss Rawson? " 

Marlow broke into an execration. 

" Miss Rawson ! I have her behind lock and key in her 

own room, and there I mean to keep her. I found the skulk- 



1885.] KATHARINE. 417 

ing in a press not half an hour ago, and chased her up-stairs be- 
fore me in a way she won't forget in a hurry. But you are 
right about your wife. I will go back myself. But be quick, 
for God's sake ! " 

As good-fortune would have it, Dr. Bolton was returning late 
from an evening passed with friends. Giddings met him near 
the entrance of his hotel, explained his errand briefly, and found 
a ready acquiescence. 

" Come in with me a moment," the doctor said ; " my instru- 
ments are still in my trunk, where I hoped they might remain 
until I got back home. I don't suppose I shall have occasion for 
them, but it is as well to be prepared." 

Dr. Bolton was a man of middle age, with a scholarly, pre- 
possessing face, his hair already thinning at the temples, and his 
mutton-chop whiskers leaving uncovered a mouth as amiable in 
expression as it was determined. As the two men hastened along 
the street together he put a few rapid questions concerning the 
nationality of the parents, the age of the child, and sundry other 
particulars, on some of which his companion could afford no in- 
formation. They ran lightly up the several flights of stairs con- 
ducting to the studio, and as the doctor opened the door his ear 
cauofht from the room in which the suite terminated that fright- 

o o 

ful sound which heralds and accompanies the most terrible of 
childish maladies, and which no one who has heard it ever for- 
gets. His examination was brief but thorough. The mother 
seemed altogether incapable of answering questions, but the 
father, standing dry and hollow-eyed at the head of the bed, 
whither he had retreated to give his place to Dr. Bolton, recog- 
nized with relief, in the direct, pertinent interrogations which de- 
manded little more than yes or no in return, the presence of a 
man who knew his business and might be trusted to perform it. 

The little fellow himself was a heartrending spectacle, from 
which one could not wonder that the mother veiled her eyes. 
>he was half-kneeling, half-lying on the bed at the side opposite 
the doctor, and her sobs were almost as painful to listen to as the 
:hoking gasps of her dying child. The fair, plump, baby chest 
ras exposed in the struggle for breath, and the wide-open, blue 
syes, in which consciousness was evidently perfect, rolled from 
me face to another in a mute appeal for assistance. 

" Membranous croup," the doctor said, rising and drawing 
nit his case of instruments. He turned to Giddings, who stood, 
)ainfully moved, beside him. 

" Get me a glass of clear water, will you ? " Then, addressing 
VOL. XLI. 27 



4i 8 KATHARINE. [June, 

the father, " There is just one chance for life," he said in a curt, 
business-like tone which Marlow instinctively found reassuring, 
" but I must advise you that it is a very slender one. I can 
make an incision in the trachea. It may save him. If it does 
not it will give him a painless death directly it is over. In the 
other case he may drag out a little longer in this way, growing 
worse constantly, and dying in the end. I leave you to decide." 
Mrs. Marlow suddenly lifted her head and put her hands out 
toward her husband. 

" George ! George ! " she cried with a shrill, miserable ap- 
peal which brought even the eyes of the little lad upon her 
white, drawn face, "for God's sake call. Maria! Let him be bap- 
tized first ! " 

Her husband went around beside her and put his face to hers. 
" Don't add to my distress just now, dear," he said in a tone 
infinitely tender yet utterly inflexible. " You are not yourself 
just now. Jack is going to live, and you yourself will thank 
me some day for not letting your weakness master you like 
this." 

Then, as she threw herself on his neck and repeated her en- 
treaty, he began to soothe her as if she were a little child. 

" Don't give way so, love ! Think how many times we have 
despaired about the boy already and no such folly entered either 
of our minds. Quiet yourself, and don't disturb the doctor. He 
needs a steady hand. And don't make it harder for Jack himself. 
He understands all that we are saying, and I must tell him first 
before I let the doctor perform the operation." 

Mrs. Marlow had been learning lately to understand some 
hitherto unfamiliar intonations in her husband's voice. She drew 
away from him with a gesture of aversion and threw herself 
down again upon the bed without a word. Marlow followed her 
with his eyes. Honest, kindly eyes they were, and filled just now 
with an inexpressible anguish, in which tenderness for her, grief 
for the child, and an unbending stubbornness which seemed al- 
most automatic struggled painfully with each other. He stooped 
down and made yet one more effort, but she put up her hand and 
pushed him from her. He rose, sighing heavily, and approached 
the doctor, upon whom this scene had not been lost, though dur- 
ing the latter part of it he had been bending over the child. He 
straightened himself as Marlow came to his side, and returned to 
Giddings the glass which he had asked for. 
" Do you wish me to operate ? " he asked. 
" Yes ; but I must speak to the little fellow first." 



1 885.] KATHARINE. 419 

His deep voice trembled as, kneeling' down and passing his 
arm beneath the pillow, he turned the fair, pretty head toward 
him. 

" You hear me, my baby ? " he said. " Father wants his little 
Jack to get better, but first the doctor must hurt him very much. 
My boy is willing ? " 

A look of acquiescence came into the eyes, which seemed to 
have grown less agonized and restless. Then Marlow spoke to 
his wife again. 

"Dear," he said, "in a moment it will be over. Will you 
speak to Jack first ? " 

She made no answer, made not even any motion, and the fa- 
ther, embracing his boy, gave him over to the doctor and turned 
away. 

" Will you hold his hands, Mr. Giddings ? " Dr. Bolton asked, 
himself much moved. " Steady now, my little man. I shall not 
hurt you." 

The operation was over in a moment. The next, Jack's baby 
treble, so long silent, brought Marlow quickly to his side. 

" Now will I get well, papa ? " said the little voice. And then 
it passed into eternal silence. 

The mother, too, had risen as the child began to speak, and 
the two wretched parents lifted their eyes from his, from which 
consciousness and life faded beneath their gaze, and rested them 
upon each other. Marlow held out his hand. 

" You killed my boy, George Marlow ! " she cried out, repuls- 
ing him with a sort of horror. " You killed him, soul and body ! 
I might forgive you for that, but I will never forgive you for 
your cruelty to me while I have breath ! " 

" Calm yourself, madam." It was Dr. Bolton who addressed 
icr. " Your boy's soul is out of danger. I never perform that 
)peration on a child whom I do not first know to have been bap- 
zed. In this case I administered the sacrament myself." 

Even Marlow looked relieved, though he made no further 
>peal to his wife, who had buried her face again beside her 
lild. Standing over the gulf which he felt opening between 
icm, and which gave him already a sense of desolation keener 
lan that caused by the death of the boy, he grasped at the 
)ctor's assurance as a bridge which might hereafter span it. 



420 KA THARINE. [June, 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

To Katharine life seemed at once to widen and to concen- 
trate that winter, like a stream hurrying to the sea, swelled by 
new affluents, as well as pressed deeper in its channel by the 
ever-increasing- burden of its proper mass. Looking back at this 
period afterward, it seemed to her that she could find in it al- 
most no traces of her own volition, and that she had done no- 
thing at every step but yield passively to the strong attraction 
which drew her onward. Freed for the first time from all ex- 
ternal pressure, and urged by the imperious longing which, from 
the moment when it reawakened in her soul, seemed to dominate 
it and admit no rival, the marks graven by it in her memory re- 
mained indelible and nearly obliterated those of her contempo- 
raneous struggle. The struggle was, nevertheless, a very real 
one, and at every stage of it victory was bought only at the cost 
of one of those acts of the will which are the true surrender of the 
heart to the solicitations of the Eternal Love, as those of faith are 
the homage of the intellect to the Perfect Reason. Strongest 
and weakest both, by virtue of her heart, that was the natural 
battle-ground chosen by Him who demands all from his creatures, 
only because it is the essential condition of his giving all in re- 
turn. 

The very nature of the aid her husband was disposed to lend 
her was in itself a hindrance. He abandoned his non-committal 
attitude almost immediately after the occurrence just related, 
and began to make an exhaustive study, not merely of the his- 
torical claims of the Christian Church, but of its philosophy and 
its doctrine. Left to herself, Katharine would not have plunged 
into so many intricacies. The Light which enlightens all men 
seemed to have shone upon her so directly, when at last she de- 
liberately unveiled her eyes, that it gave her an impulse like that 
of Saul on the road to Damascus, when, "trembling and astonish- 
ed," he asked only, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" The 
first book that Maria Rawson put into her hands was Challoner's 
Catholic Christian Instructed, and it was the only one that was 
ever necessary. She wished then to receive baptism without 
further delay, and the/step was strongly urged by both Mrs. 
Lindsay and Miss Rawson. But her husband counselled a de- 
lay, and gained his point. 

" Reflect," he said to her, " that you propose to take a very 
serious step, of which neither of us can foresee all the conse- 
quences. The nearer I approach the church the more conscious I 



1885.] KA THARINE. 42 1 

become of a stream of tendency which makes that supreme effort 
of the will by which one enters it the very last of which it will 
be capable. It becomes as much the *slave of a rigid code of 
spiritual laws as the intellect already is of the proposition that 
two and two make four." 

" They call us idiots when we doubt that in matters of the 
mind." 

" Granted and thieves, I suppose you would like to add, 
when we forget it in the realm of morals. I admit that also. 
But do you find nothing chilling in the thought that you will 
be no longer even theoretically master of yourself no longer all 
mine nor I all yours if I follow your example ? I don't say 
that we might not both of us be gainers. I see very distinctly 
that, granting it all to be true, we might be infinitely so. But I 
am not nearly as prepared to grant that as I have sometimes 
supposed myself to be. The very wish to believe, of which I 
find myself increasingly conscious, makes me doubt the wisdom 
of yielding to it." 

" Did you have any such scruples when you wished for 
me?" 

" You touch the very bottom of my difficulty. You are real 
or, if you are not, you are sufficiently so for all practical pur- 
poses. I had no doubt of your actuality, nor of your being ex- 
actly what I have found you. But you are very simple and 
straightforward. You say, I have intelligence and volition ; the 
Power that made me must have them in an infinitely greater 
measure. You feel the great vacuum of which every one of us 
is more or less sensible, and you say, Nothing but the Infinite 
can satisfy me wholly, and hence the Infinite must be somehow 
attainable. You examine the Christian doctrine, and you add, 
This is admirable ; it involves no contradiction, it wounds neither 
my reason nor my conscience, and therefore it is true, and I ac- 
cept it. That is common sense, I suppose, and it may be common 
sense also which makes you disposed to regard the church as a 
living entity which carries its own credentials so unmistakably in 
its continued existence as to make close historical research into 
matters which touch only the acts of men, and not the working 
out of fundamental principles, useless, or at least unnecessary. 
That is all very well. I would not have you other than you are ; 
but I was not made just in that way, or, if I were, I have overlaid 
myself with a thousand wrappings that I cannot easily lay aside. 
And, honestly, much as I desire your happiness, and firmly as I 
am convinced that you have no doubt that you will find it here, 



422 THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN QUESTION AND [June, 

I dread to let go my hold upon you. Suppose the current car- 
ries you away, while I am never able to leave the shore ! Wait, 
at all events. You will only know your religion so much the 
more thoroughly when once you begin to practise it." 

TO BE CONTINUED. 



THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN QUESTION AND THE TESTA- 
MENT OF PETER THE GREAT. 

THE Afghan difficulty between England and Russia has again 
directed public attention to the so-called Oriental or Eastern 
question. What are the Russians really aiming at ? The answer to 
this question may be contained in a certain remarkable document, 
which seems to be far less generally known than it deserves to 
be on account of its great political importance. The document 
referred to is the so-called Testament of Peter the Great, the 
founder of modern Russia. It is claimed that this document 
" was brought from Russia by Eon de Beaumont, diplomatic 
agent of Louis XV. at the court of Empress Catherine. Pecu- 
liar circumstances . . . opened to this distinguished person the 
most secret archives of the palace of Peterhoff. . . . This docu- 
ment, of which all the world was already speaking, whose ex- 
istence was known, but which nobody (outside of the imperial 
family of Russia) possessed, and which nobody could produce, 
was confidentially sent, with a particular work on Russia, by 
Eon to Abbe de Bernis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and to Louis 
XV. himself, in 1757." 

But the ministers at Versailles attached no importance to the 
document; they considered the execution of the plans indicated 
therein " impossible " and the designs " chimerical " (les plans 
impossibles et les vues chimdriques). Hence the document was 
quietly deposited in the Archives du Ministere des Affaires 
fitrangeres; and after Chevalier d'Eon died, in 1810, it seems to 
have been generally forgotten. 

Finally it was brought to public notice after the plans of 
Peter the Great had been carried out to such an extent as to 
make one inclined to look upon Peter the Great provided the 
document is authentic as not only the founder of modern Russia, 
but also as a prophet inspired by an Intelligence superior to 






1885.] THE TESTAMENT OF PETER THE GREAT. 423 

that of man. Were it impossible that the Spirit who inspired 
Balaam (Numbers xxiv. 17-24), and who revealed to King Nabu- 
chodonosor what was " to come to pass in the latter times " 
(Daniel ii. 28), should have shown also to Peter the Great the 
mission his empire was to fulfil under the guidance of that 
Providence which determines " appointed times and the limits " 
of kingdoms and empires (Acts xvii. 26) ? Certainly not. 

The circumstances under which the remarkable document 
was again brought to light were the following : The valuable 
memoirs of Chevalier d'Eon were to be collected and published. 
For a long time the French government refused the editor of 
the Mtmoires access to the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs. But when the Duke de Broglie became minister, from 
October^ i, 1832, till April 4, 1834, he permitted the editor to 
make use of the documents preserved in the Archives, and it 
was then the so-called Testament of Peter the Great was dis- 
covered. In 1876 the well-known and learned Mgr. Gaum6 
published a little volume under the title Le Testament de Pierre 
Le Grand, ou la Clef de F Avenir ; and it is from this work the 
following quotations have been translated, in order to give the 
reader an idea of the document : 

" In the name of the Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity, we, Peter, Em- 
peror and Autocrat of all the Russias, to all our descendants and succes- 
sors on the throne and in the government of the Russian nation : The 
great God from whom we have our existence and our crown, having con- 
stantly enlightened us with his lights and upheld us with his divine sup- 
port, permits us, according to our views, which we believe to be those of 
Providence, to look upon the Russian people as called in the future to the 
general dominion of Europe, I base this thought on this : that the Euro- 
pean nations, for the greater part, have arrived at an old age bordering on 
dotage, and that they march on fast. From this it follows that they are 
to be easily and undoubtedly conquered by a young and new people, when 
this last shall have attained its full strength and full growth. I regard 
this future invasion of the Occidental countries by the North as a periodi- 
cal movement ordained in the designs of Providence, that thus regenerated 
the Roman people by the invasion of the barbarians. 

" I have found Russia a Stream I leave it a River ; my successors will 
make it a Great Sea which is destined to fertilize impoverished Europe ; 
and its surges will overflow despite all dams which feeble hands can make 
to oppose them. It is for this reason I leave to my successors the instruc- 
tions the tenor of which follows, and which I recommend to their atten- 
tion and to their constant observation, just as Moses recommended the tables 
of the law to the Jewish people." 

After this general introduction Peter the Great gives his sue- 



424 THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN QUESTION AND [June, 

cessors detailed instructions, of which we will mention the follow- 
ing: 

"To keep the Russian nation in a state of continual warfare, in order to 
keep the soldier inured to hardships and always in exercise; not to let him 
rest, except in order to better the finances of the state, to reorganize the 
armies, and to choose opportune moments for attack. 

"To take part on every occasion in the affairs and quarrels, of all kinds, 
of Europe. 

" To divide Poland. 

"To take as much as possible from Sweden. 

"To take always the wives of Russian princes from the princesses of 
Germany, in order to multiply the family alliances . . . and to unite 
Germany itself to our cause. 

"To extend (Russia) without interruption towards the north along the 
Baltic Sea, as also towards the south along the Black Sea. 

"To approach as near as possible to Constantinople and the Indies; he 
that will rule there will be the true sovereign of the world." 

Here we have the Russian programme laid down by Peter 
the Great, and thus far faithfully carried out by his successors 
with a uniform energy paralleled only, perhaps, by that of the 
Romans in the days of the Carthaginian wars. To appreciate 
this fact the better it will be well to compare Russia of the time 
of Peter the Great with Russia of our days. 



II. 

At the death of Peter, in 1725, the population of all Russia 
was probably less than 20,000,000 ; to-day it is more than 80,000,- 
ooo. At the time of Peter the Great, Russia was yet a good dis- 
tance from Constantinople, the Dnieper being about its south- 
western boundary. In 1878 the Russian army was 'near the 
gates of Constantinople, and was prevented from entering only 
by the decided attitude of other European powers, especially 
England. But on that occasion Russia made an immense stride 
'in the direction of Constantinople. The Balkan Mountains are 
virtually the present boundary between Russia and Turkey. 
Bulgaria is nominally tributary to Turkey, but it is a self-govern- 
ing principality, united by mutual sympathies with Russia; for the 
Russians have not forgotten the instruction of Peter the Great : 
" to endeavor to reunite with themselves all schismatic Greeks." 

As to India, Russia, in Peter's days, was yet far from it, ex- 
tending then only to the northwestern coast of the Caspian Sea. 
But nowadays the Russians have already reached the Hindoo- 
Koosh Mountains. The only power between them and India is 






1885.] THE TESTAMENT OF PETER THE GREAT. 425 

the Ameer of Afghanistan, a puppet in the hands of the English. 
We may, therefore, say that Russia and England have already 
virtually met in Central Asia. It is there especially the irrepres- 
sible conflict between the British Lion and the Russian Polar 
Bear will sooner or later have to be fought out. What will be the 
result ? Will the continually advancing Russians be definitively 
driven back ? Or will they inundate India with countless hordes 
of Cossacks and Tartars, and wrest this grand and rich country 
from England ? Who can foretell ? What seems probable under 
the circumstances ? 

III. 

The central points of the Eastern question are at present, 
according to the Testament of Peter, Constantinople and India; 
for, as he remarks, " he that shall rule there is the true sovereign 
of the world." To become this seems to be the great aim of the 
czars ; and to attain their end the well-known shrewd, deceitful, 
and unscrupulous Russian diplomacy is continually on the look- 
out to take every advantage possible of the embarrassments of 
other powers. The great power which is particularly compelled 
by its own interests to oppose the continually advancing tide of 
Russian encroachments is England. 

England being the greatest commercial and Russia the great- 
est military power of our times, we find that on several impor- 
tant points they bear a great resemblance to Carthage and Rome 
about the time of the Punic wars. A good deal of what Montes- 
quieu, in the fourth chapter of his Grandeur et Decadence des Ro- 
mains, says of the Carthaginians and Romans about the time 
of the Punic wars may, mutato nomine, be said of England and 
Russia of nowadays. 

Carthage, being a commercial power, could afford to spend a 
good deal of money in hiring foreigners to fight her battles ; the 
same is the case with England at present. The poorer Romans, 
on the other hand, like our Russians at present, fought their own 
battles. When they conquered peoples they made them first Ro- 
man citizens and then Roiiian warriors. Similarly do the Rus- 
sians, who present a striking contrast to the English in the fa- 
cility with which they assimilate the races they subdue.* 

* Many of the Russian leaders in the East are naturalized Turcomans, like Alikhanoff, the 
present governor of Merv, whose real name is Ali Khan, with the Russian affix " off" " son 
of " added. Russia in one year transforms enemies into loyal Russians by placing them on aji 
equality with her own subjects and throwing every avenue of distinction open to them. Eng- 
land, though over a century in India, has failed to make cordial friends of the natives. 



426 THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN QUESTION AND [June, 

Like our modern English, the Carthaginians were powerful 
on water ; but the Romans, like our Russians, were powerful on 
land. 

The Carthaginians, like our English, carried on wars without 
loving warfare ; they always carefully calculated the probable 
profits and expenses of the wars. Carthage was alternately ruled 
by a peace-at-any-price and by a war party, just like England of 
our days. The motive which induced Carthage to engage in 
wars was usually, as it is with our modern English, commercial 
interest. 

The Romans, on the other hand, were prompted by ambition ; 
they carried on war in order to conquer and rule over other na- 
tions. Likewise the Russians carry on war from ambition, to 
make their czar " the true sovereign of the world " ; and what 
enhances the warlike enthusiasm of the Russians is that they are 
convinced of fulfilling thereby " a holy mission." It is, therefore, 
not coolly calculating self-interest, but the religious sentiment of 
crusaders, "God wills it," that animates the Russian soldiers; 
for, as the historian J. Bumueller observes, " the Russians be- 
lieve themselves to be destined by Providence to free the Chris- 
tians from the power of the Turks, and to achieve in Europe and 
Asia the victory of Christianity over Mohammedanism." This 
explains the self-sacrificing enthusiasm of the Russian people in 
times of war. 

In the long struggle between Carthage and Rome the former 
finally succumbed. Will this be the case also with England in 
her struggle against Russia ? Is the day near when England can 
say in the words of her greatest poet : 

" I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, 
And from that full meridian of my glory 
I haste now to my setting" ? 

/ 

Who knows? Empires, like human individuals, have their 
days of growth, of maturity, and of decline ; and the decline is 
often rapid. A long procession of powerful empires have already 
succeeded each other Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Mace- 
donia, Rome, the Roman-German Empire, the French Empire, 
and others. 

The Romans were convinced their empire would last for ever, 
but it disappeared. The English have no God-given promise 
that Britannia shall always " rule the waves," no more than the 
Venetians, Portuguese, and Spaniards before them had. 

The British is, indeed, usually looked upon as the most power- 



1885.] THE TESTAMENT OF PETER THE GREAT. 427 

ful empire on earth ; but the fact is often overlooked that the 
very sources of its greatness its scattered colonies are also 
the sources of its weakness. In 1878, when the Afghan question 
was also causing 1 a good deal of bad feeling between England 
and Russia, a British statesman reminded the Russian chancellor, 
Gortchakoff, that her majesty the queen ruled over 200,000,000 
subjects. The Russian promptly replied : " Yes ; but these sub- 
jects are scattered and separated from each other, whereas the 
Russian Empire is a consolidated whole and a unit." 

The British Empire has at present several very sore spots. 
There is the Mahdi in Soudan, who boldly defies all England. 
There is Ireland, in the very capital of which the Mahdi is said 
to be " immensely more popular than any member of the ' royal 
family.' ' There are the warlike and rebellious Mohammedans 
of India, who sympathize with Arabi Bey, whom England has 
crushed, and with the Mahdi, who is at war with England. 
Can these Mohammedans be trusted in case of a war with Russia, 
especially if this power should succeed in forming an alliance 
with the sultan, who has been repeatedly badly snubbed by Eng- 
land in the Egyptian question ? 

The outlook for England is far from being cheerful ; and 
Russia, England's greatest foe, is only too glad to take advan- 
tage of England's embarrassments to carry out its political plans, 
which are no longer any secret. 

Indeed, already Napoleon I., probably without being ac- 
quainted with the Testament of Peter the Great, foresaw at what 
Russian diplomacy was aiming. In 1817, while prisoner on the 
island of St. Helena, he remarked to Dr. O'Meara : " After some 
years Russia will take Constantinople, the greater part of Tur- 
key, and all Greece. I regard this as certain as if it had already 
happened. . . . Once in possession of Constantinople, Russia will 
become a great maritime power ; and God knows what will be 
the result. It will seek to quarrel with you [Englishmen] ; it 
will send to India an army of seventy thousand good soldiers 
what is nothing to Russia and add to them a rabble of one hun- 
dred thousand Cossacks and other barbarians ; and England will 
lose India." 

That Russia is determined to fulfil these prophecies of Na- 
poleon no one can doubt who has carefully studied the history 
of Russia's encroachments towards Constantinople and India 
within the present century. To what extent Russia will accom- 
plish her designs must be left to the future to reveal. 



428 NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. [June, 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

THE NATURE AND REALITY OF RELIGION : A Controversy between Fred- 
eric Harrison and Herbert Spencer. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 
1885. 

Dr. Youmans has collected in this volume the half-dozen articles 
which appeared last year in the Nineteenth Century and the Popular Science 
Monthly, and which received a good deal of attention at the time. He has 
added an article by a professor in the University of Brussels on the " Re- 
ligious Value of the Unknowable." We are sorry that Sir Fitzjames Ste- 
phen's contribution to this controversy has not been included, as it was in 
some respects the best of all. We notice, too we cannot say with sur- 
prise that Mr. Wilfrid Ward's article, and his castigation of Mr. Har- 
rison's marvellous exhibition of insolence (we cannot use a milder word) 
and bigotry, have also been omitted. So that this book cannot be looked 
upon as a complete exhibition of the controversy. In one point of view, 
however, this publication is something at which to rejoice. St. Thomas 
found fault with his opponents because he could not get them to commit 
themselves' to anything definite, could not find out what they meant ; 
and much the same has been the case up to the present with Mr. Spencer 
on the subject of religion. His views have been expressed so hazily that 
it has been hard to ascertain what they really are ; and as it is impossible to 
deal with that which is not ascertained, if this publication accomplishes 
this all-essential end we shall have reason to be thankful. Whether and 
how far it has done this we hope to inquire into on some future occasion. 

PARADISE FOUND : The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole. A 
study of the prehistoric world. By William F. Warfen, S.T.D., LL.D. 
Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. 

The theory advanced in this work, as indicated in the title, is that the 
North Pole was the site of the Garden of Eden, or terrestrial paradise. 
This supposition, preposterous, of course, at first sight, will become much 
less so as the book is read. The author is no mere visionary, but a man 
of remarkable learning and research ; and the arguments which he brings 
in support of his view are very striking and plausible, especially those de- 
rived from the traditions of various races. 

The climatic conditions which suggest themselves at once as an in- 
superable objection to the hypothesis have not, of course, always existed at 
the pole, as is evident both from theory and from observed facts. The 
difficulty, however, is that the space of time required, according to the com- 
mon view, to have elapsed from the period when the pole was habitable to 
the present day is far too long to be reconciled with Biblical chronology; 
and this difficulty the author does not seem to squarely meet, so far as we 
have observed. 

It may be remarked here, however, that, at least from an a priori point 
of view, there is no reason why very great changes in climate may not 
have occurred on the earth in very short spaces of time. In treating of 
this subject it seems to have been always assumed that the sun's intrinsic 






1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 429 

light and heat is and has been for ages a constant quantity, or very nearly 
so ; and that all climatic changes on the earth must be due to various dis- 
tributions of its land and water, varying inclination of its axis to the eclip- 
tic, or the varying eccentricity of its orbit. In point of fact, however, we 
have no assurance of the sun's constancy of light or heat ; on the contrary, 
we have great reason to believe that it is subject now to a variation corre- 
sponding to the spot-period, and there is no reason why it may not, even 
in historic times, have experienced changes like those undergone by the 
more conspicuous variable stars. A change of even a single magnitude, 
as it is called a small one for a variable star would produce far greater 
changes of the earth's climate than all the other causes mentioned above. 

Be this matter of climatic change as it may, the book is well worth read- 
ing. There are few theories with which some fault may not be found ; and 
any one who is interested in the much-vexed question of the location of 
Eden will do well to examine that presented here. 

SANCTI ANSELMI CANTUARIENSIS ARCHIEPISCOPI MARIALE ; seu Liber Pre- 
cum Metricarum ad Beatam Virginem Mariam quotidie dicendarum. Stu- 
dio et cura P. Ragey, Societatis Mariae. Londini : Burns et Gates. 1^5. 

This Mariale has already been published in 1684 by Father Hommey > 
an Augustinian, and in 1866 by Count Przezdziecki. These editions, how- 
ever, are not without faults, and Father Ragey, wishing to see this opus vere 
aurtum, as Cardinal Manning calls it, issued in a form worthy of its excel- 
lence, has devoted himself and much loving labor and research to the task. 
He has carefully collated the eight manuscripts of the poem which are found 
in the National Library in Paris and in the British Museum, and by this 
means has formed a text based, not upon any one of them exclusively (for 
all contain errors), but upon the whole. In his notes he has given all the 
various readings that are of any importance, wisely leaving out obvious 
errors, thus enabling the reader to form his own judgment. The question 
of the authorship he does not enter into here, having written in the May 
and July numbers of the Annales de la Philosophic Chrdtienne for 1883 two 
articles on this question. He does not, however, lose sight of his thesis, for 
each strophe is elucidated by quotations from the other writings of St. 
Anselm, thus showing how it harmonizes with them. Here and there an- 
notations have been made in explanation of what might sound exaggerated 
in the necessarily poetic diction of the work. And finally, at the end, there 
are five indexes having for their object the practical purpose of enabling 
the reader to use it for different purposes of devotion the month of May, 
the feasts of the Blessed Virgin, and other pious uses. Preachers will find 
the fifth index of use in the preparation of their sermons, not so much in 
giving them matter, but in nourishing sentiments of piety and devotion to 
the Blessed Mother of God. Of the poem itself we need not speak. Those 
stanzas from it which go by the name of St. Casimir's hymn have made it 
well known, and yet they give only a faint idea of the beauty of the com- 
plete poem. Only those who have read it in its entirety can form a judg- 
ment; and we hope that the love for the Blessed Virgin which it will be 
the means of fostering in the hearts of many will be Father Ragey's reward 
for his labor. It would not be fair to pass over the printer without recog- 
nition ; he has done his part exceedingly well. 



430 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June, 

CUNEIFORM TEXT OF A RECENTLY DISCOVERED CYLINDER OF NEBUCHAD- 
NEZZAR, KING OF BABYLON. From the original in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York. Copied, translated, and published by J. F. 
X. O'Conor, S.J., Woodstock College. 1885. 

The success of Mr. O'Conor in copying and translating the cuneiform 
inscription on the cylinder found by Mr. Bernard Maimou at Aboo Habba 
has already been noticed in the daily papers. This pamphlet gives a com- 
plete account and description of this cylinder, and of tke way in which 
Mr. O'Conor came to give his attention to the work. It contains, besides 
the introduction, the cuneiform text of the inscription in three forms : 
first, the archaic Babylonian, the original text ; second, the Babylonian of 
the sixth century B.C. ; third, the Assyrian of the seventh century B.C. 
The autographed text of these transcriptions is the work of the Rev. J. N. 
Strassmeyer, S.J., London. Then follow a transcription into English char- 
acters and a translation, the work of Mr. O'Conor himself. He has already 
prepared and will shortly publish a commentary on this inscription, to- 
gether with parallel passages from other known cylinders of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, to which will be added a collation with the texts of Erech, Naboni- 
dus, and the Babylonian inscriptions at Liverpool. As we do not belong 
to the very select band of students who have mastered the difficulties of 
the cuneiform characters, we are unable to criticise Mr. O'Conor's work. 
We have, however, great pleasure in congratulating him on this publication 
as a laudable effort to call attention to a study which has already been the 
means of throwing so much light on sacred -history and of affording so 
many striking confirmations of its truth. It is, too, a matter of pride that 
the first known example of these inscriptions which has come to this 
country should have found its first translator in a member of that society 
to which Mr. O'Conor belongs. The introduction concludes with an ap- 
peal for indulgence on the ground that his work has been done in the in- 
tervals of serious study. If this is a specimen of the recreations of the 
present generation of Woodstock students, what may we not look for when 
their real work begins ? 

THE PREPARATION OF THE INCARNATION. By H. J. Coleridge, S.J. Lon- 
don : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society 
Co. 1885. 

This is a new volume in the series of volumes which Father Coleridge 
is bringing out, by degrees, on the Life of our Lord. Although it has been 
preceded by several volumes treating of the central portion of the history 
of our Lord, it is, in order, the first of the series. It begins with " The 
World before the Gospel," and ends with the eve of the Annunciation. 
Another volume, announced as nearly ready for publication, will complete 
the First Part of the series, leaving still to be published several others 
embracing the latter part of our Lord's public life and the whole history of 
the Passion. 

The present one treats of the general state of the world before the time 
of Christ, of prophecy in general, of particular prophecies, and of the in- 
troductory part of the narrative of the three synoptical gospels, as well as 
the doctrinal preface of St. John's gospel. We find the same admirable 
manner of treatment in this which we have already noted in other parts 
of Father Coleridge's great work as they have successively appeared. One 






1885.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 43 l 

feature of it we observe with especial pleasure, viz., the exposition of the 
place and office of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the economy of the Incar- 
nation. 

Divus THOMAS. Commentarium Inserviens Academiis et Lycaeis Scho- 
. lasticam Sectantibus. Placentiae. Vol. ii. 1884. 

This publication appears in monthly numbers, each containing sixteen 
large quarto pages, the second volume beginning from March, 1883. 

The first volume and the first twelve numbers of the second have not 
been sent to this magazine. The commentary in the part of the second 
volume which we have received extends from part iii. q. 3, a. i of the 
Sitmma TheoL " de Incarnatione " to q. 4, art. 2. The numbers contain other 
commentaries, expositions, and discussions upon topics in the works of St. 
Thomas and of other authors, notices of books, and miscellaneous matters 
which have some relation to philosophy. 

The writers are men of the first class in learning and ability, and their 
productions are up to the mark of our best theological and philosophical 
treatises. 

One piece of extraordinary carelessness in printing stares the reader in 
the face on the title-pages of the numbers we have received. These num- 
bers run from the I3th to the 25th of vol. ii. They are printed on the 
cover as follows : 13, 14, 15, 18, 17, 18, 22, 15, 14, 22, 23, 24, 25. 

Such blunders as these, allowed to run on uncorrected for seven 
months, necessarily awaken a suspicion of frequent and serious typogra- 
phical errors in the text. We have not, however, as yet found such errors, 
and therefore hope that the proofs of the text are carefully corrected. 
Thirty-six numbers make a volume, and sixty-one numbers had already 
been issued in March last. Divus Thomas is published at Piacenza, but 
can be most easily obtained by American subscribers from Victor Lecoffre, 
Paris, Rue Buonaparte, 90. 

TRIBUTES OF PROTESTANT WRITERS TO THE TRUTH AND BEAUTY OF 
CATHOLICITY. By James P. Treacy. New York : Fr. Pustet & Co. 1885. 

Apropos to the above volume we are glad to recognize the fact that 
most if not all of the best passages of non-Catholic writers who are noted 
for their literary, poetical, philosophical, and historic genius and taste, and 
as being for the most part freest from bigotry, might have been written 
freely by sound Catholics. Shall we who have preserved the ancient au- 
thors, recognized their value, and made use of the productions of the classic 
poets and the great pagan philosophers, not appreciate the merit of our 
contemporaries? This would be a disgrace and a real shame ! But such is 
not the effect of the Catholic faith. One among the direct and earliest ef- 
fects of the Catholic religion upon the soul is to make a man catholic in 
his intellect, judgments, feelings, tastes, instincts, and life. It elevates the 
mind at once beyond the cloudy regions of doubt and the sectarian opin- 
ions of heresy to what is divine, universal, and guilelessly natural. Catho- 
lics may it ever be said of them ! know what to praise and what to blame, 
what to applaud and what to rebuke. They cannot be made to deviate or 
go astray from the first principles of reason or of religious faith and morals, 
whether natural or divinely revealed. When a Catholic thinks wrong, 
gives a wrong judgment, or goes wrong, he knows it. This seems to be 
saying little to their credit, but, as things now are, it is saying much. 



432 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June, 1885 

The idea of this volume is, in our opinion, a good one. It might be 
enlarged and made to great advantage into a cyclopaedia of several vol- 
umes. Perhaps it will be. God grant it ! As far as it goes the volume is 
creditable to the author. The printer, too, has done in a worthy manner 
his part. It should find its place in every scholar's and reader's library. 

THE PULPIT ORATOR. By the Rev. J. E. Zollner. Translated from the 
German by the Rev. A. Wirth, O.S.B. Third edition. New York and 
Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. 1885. 6 vols. 

This collection consists of sketches of sermons t.e., elaborate skeletons, 
seven for each Sunday in the year: viz., two homiletic, on the Epistle 
and tne Gospel, one dogmatical, one liturgical, one symbolical, and two 
moral. One edition of a thousand copies was soon exhausted. This is the 
third, wherefore we suppose that the second has likewise been entirely dis- 
posed of. Thrs sale, extensive for a work of this nature used almost ex- 
clusively by priests, and the call for a third edition, show how very useful 
and satisfactory it has been found to be. It is, indeed, a work of great 
practical utility, and deserving the praise bestowed on it by the learned 
writer of the preface, the Rev. A. Lambing. 

Louis PASTEUR: His Life and Labors. By his Son-in-law. Translated 
from the French by Lady Claud Hamilton. New York : D. Appleton 
& Co. 1885. 

There is little need of commending a work of this kind. The eminence 
of its subject, and the value of his labors to science, make it sufficiently 
interesting. It is also written by one having, as will be seen, an intimate 
personal acquaintance with his life and work, and is well translated. No 
one who knows anything about Pasteur can fail to be attracted by it, and 
those who do not know anything about him ought to take this opportunity 
to extend their knowledge. 

A SHORT AND PRACTICAL MAY DEVOTION. Compiled by Clementinus 
Deymann, O.S.F. New York : Fr. Pustet & Co. 1885. 

Priests will find this a useful book for the daily May devotions. There 
is a short meditation for each day in the month on the principal truths of 
religion, and a scheme of exercises in which this meditation will find its 
place. The meditations are solid in their character, and have been in 
general use. 

WE have received from Messrs. Pustet the Ritus Celebrandi Matrimonit, 
together with the Bsnedictto Annuli and the Benedictio Nuptialis, printed on 
four pages, or rather on the two covers, and an intervening card. It will 
be found a very convenient substitute for the Ritual and Missal. 

BOOKKEEPING BY SINGLE AND DOUBLE ENTRY. A Business Manual 
specially adapted to the wants of the Catholic clergy. By Francis A. 
Harkins, A.M., Professor at Boston College. Baltimore : Foley Bros. 
1885. 

A very practical and valuable book, prepared by one who thoroughly 
understands his business. It is specially adapted for the sort of accounts 
that clergymen have to keep, and there are few to whom it will not be of 
more or less service. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XLI. JULY, 1885. No. 244. 



A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. 

AFTER the close of the Franco-German war of 1870 a clever 
French writer, who had travelled much, and written much on 
art in Italy and the Netherlands, bethought himself that, per- 
haps, in the by-ways of his own war-stricken land he might 
find as much to interest him as a Frenchman in art and his- 
tory as in the more famous and oftener-trodden routes of that 
world outside that had looked on with careless or rejoicing eyes 
when France was struggling for her national life. And so in 
what time, and the ruthlessness of hate of more than one age, 
had left of ancient monuments to the France of the provin- 
ces, in time-stained church, and Hotel de Ville, and picturesque 
chateau, he found wherewithal to write charmingly of an older 
France the gray old towers of the past lit by the sunshine of 
to-day ; the unchanging blue of the heavens shining as fair be- 
hind the quaint turrets of the legend-bearing house of local 
eigneur, and the stone angels folding their hands as meekly in 
)rayer above the sculptured tomb of some Dame Marguerite 
)f the seigneurie, as if cathedral spires sought the upper air or 
a Grand Monarque slept beneath the stone. Was the writer 
guilty of "provincialism"? If so, the present writer must 
plead guilty to a similar, and perhaps even more serious, 
charge in an endeavor to find the glamour of a St. Francis 
Xavier or a Pere Marquette transfiguring the shining white 
walls and bright-green Venetian shutters of a New England 
mountain-town where the little wooden, cross-crowned boxes 

Copyright. Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1883. 



434 ' A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. [July. 

are at once monuments of the past though seemingly dating 
but from to-day, records of the present and prophecies of the 
future earnest witnesses to Him who, at the right hand of 
the Father or as the helpless Babe of Bethlehem, is yet the 
same to-day, yesterday, and for ever. 

Sunday, to the Catholic summerer in the wilder and lovelier 
far-away mountain-places of New England, wears there an aspect 
so different from its home-look in the populous towns, where 
Wisdom has hewn itself a house out of the hearts of the faithful, 
that the holy day of rest is hard to recognize, as it surely takes 
its place among the seven, unsanctified by the one supreme act 
of worship, even while kept holy by prayer and happy remem- 
brance. Gaining, after a while, a positive look of its own amid 
the common likeness of all the week, its chief secular feature 
grows to be the perfectness of its rest ; no great mountain excur- 
sion is undertaken on that day, its afternoon being devoted to 
some walk not trying one's strength while filling one's soul with 
the riches of the forest roads, or the afternoon lights on mountain 
ridges and high pastures, or green intervale meadows hemmed 
in among the shadows of the hills. We do not walk then under 
the merciless whip of Time: we loiter and gaze, and plan for the 
days when our rest shall be set by the minute-hand of the watch 
and our home-turning fixed for an inexorably early hour ; when 
we make of our mountain pleasure an exacting labor, delight- 
ful, indeed, but giving to the rest thereafter the character of a 
necessary reward, a guerdon laboriously won, not a privilege 
graciously conferred. Gentle reader, do you know the eager, 
painful joy of mountain-exploration the treading of forests 
where presumably no lover of the picturesque has been before ; 
the crashing and crawling through the thickets of stunted firs and 
spruces where the rebounding and retaining boughs imperil the 
eyes and claw the clothing of the alpine aspirant ; the ascending 
of the beds of mountain-brooks to find some waterfall worthy of 
renown, not unlovely even in drought, hidden in deep mountain- 
basin and visited only, and not reported on, by logger and trap- 
per? Do you know the continuous ascent of precipitous masses 
of broken rock, of the slimy footing of the cataract when, short 
of breath and limb, some less expert climber gazes at the work 
and those gone before, and wonders just how far her step will 
reach, just how securely an overhanging bough will hold her 
weight, just how long it will be before she quite loses sight of 
her more physically-gifted companions ? After days of such 
enterprise, sweet is the Sunday rest : the high peaks have a peace- 



1885.] A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. 435 

ful air, as if conscious of being left to their own communings for 
one day ; the grind of the ice-cream freezer has a grateful sound 
in the ears of the lunch-fed and oft lip-parched travellers of many 
days ; while the short afternoon walk, especially if the air ha\ e 
that brisk quality that is the summer's premonition of the frost- 
touched autumn, is the very luxury of restful activity, the holi- 
day play of the muscles rejoicing in their strength. Or there is 
the deeper rest of those calm Sunday afternoons too soft in their 
warm sunshine to tempt the eager-footed pedestrian, but calling 
one out into the woods, away from wooden walls and high-roads, 
to rest in some quiet corner with a pleasant companion, a com- 
rade of the week's work on the hills, with a book for further 
companionship, but the written page soon growing to be a dead 
letter, and the living speech of two in ready sympathy making a 
deeper music than the poet or the murmuring stream near by ; 
the heart's charity widened by the life-thoughts of two whom the 
hills had strengthened in truth and high desires and a mutual 
honor, not to perish even though the pathways of the two lives 
never again run side by side in the soft summer weather. 

And so Sunday seems to walk surpliced, not stoled, among 
these far-away hills of New England, preaching sermons and 
giving good thoughts and softly praying, but not lifting up the 
hand in sacrifice or administering the higher outward gifts of the 
eternal priesthood. But days come even in these mountain-ways 
when the holy day dons full canonicals and through some mission 
church, grown up by advancing railroad, calls in the scattered 
Catholics to keep together the ordinance of the Old and the New 
Law. My gentle friend, do you know these same mission churches 
of northern New Hampshire, set among the hills and betokening, 
for the most part, the advent of Celt and Canadian seeking to 
share with the descendants of their ancient foes the blessings of 
liberty and labor? Architectural beauty they have not, nor even 
a rude grace; no faded fresco to set one dreaming as to what 
master wrought it for faith's sake ; no pomp of perfect ceremonial 
with its hidden soul of meaning and fitness, nor sympathetic cus- 
toms handed down from generation to generation, as we may find 
among our Gaelic neighbors across the line. Our New Hamp- 
shire chapel tells of the rudeness of the invaded wilderness, the 
edge of the clearing where the fire-blackened trees mar the green 
border of forest, the stump-filled field before the grain has fully 
grown to spread its golden harvest for the reaper. 

Perhaps to the imagination of the American, who has never 
suffered that death the after-life of which is Paris, there is a 



436 A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. [July. 

stronger appeal in the mission ways of the church of Christ in 
the United States than in the more dazzling struggles and vic- 
tories in the midst of the older civilizations, even though his zeal 
and sympathy be wide-minded like St. Paul's: "Who is scan- 
dalized and I am not on fire?" The flavor of the wilder- 
ness, against which his ancestors combated, still clings, but half- 
realized, to his life on the wide hills he craves no feudal towers 
while deep in his heart lies that strong affection for his own that 
is the gift of each country to its own, and from the true and faith- 
ful use of which it looks for all that is to be great in its history, 
that is to keep its place with honor among the nations. Legends 
of the faith may not give a holy mystery to the hills, nor the 
footsteps of canonized saints have left holy prints on our wide 
plains though names of town and river bear witness to the re- 
membrance and reverence of the saints but heroic enterprise has 
filled our land with associations as picturesque as cling to the 
Crusades, while our sunny skies are not ignorant of the smoke 
of the fires of martyrdom, the Iroquois by his council-fire shar- 
ing with Caesar in the Coliseum the royal prerogative of sowing 
the seed of the church. As one nears the northern border of 
New Hampshire, as one treads the forests of , Maine, as one is 
borne over the clear green waters of Lake Cham plain, one is 
subtly reminded of the old romance and heroism attending the 
first steps of the old faith in the New World : along the rivers and 
lakes rise the same cross-boughed trees that, with the golden 
domes of the sunset clouds, build now, as then, the fabled city of 
the wilderness, the Norembega so firmly believed in by the early 
French pioneers, so nobly sung by a New England poet of to- 
day. Is one not carried back in spirit to the days of Marie de 
1'Incarnation, the beloved mother of the Indians, when, from the 
church altar of a little New England village surrounded by miles 
of wilderness, the Sunday's homily is preached in French, and the 
marriage is published of Jean Baptiste and Marie Madeleine, with 
the added names of the parents of the contracting parties, as if 
to give greater solidity to the announcement? while one may 
fancy the Indian ancestry of the dark skins and piercing eyes of 
some of the child-faces that look down so demurely or gaze so 
frankly at all about them. No foreign faith does the foreign 
tongue suggest " each hearing in his own tongue the wonderful 
works of God " the one Sacrifice denationalizing all as they kneel 
in worship of the one God, the Father of all, by whose heavenly 
hearth each soul has its child's-place, each one offering his own 
petition as child and remembering in his heart the wants of his 



1885.] A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. 437 

own people before the Giver of all, all bound together in the faith 
and the dependence on God's love, no matter how wide apart 
home and nation and circumstance of life. 

Do you think, kind reader, you can find with me, in a Sunday 
morning's walk among mountain-ways in the midst of what is 
held to be our bald, unpoetic, modern life, that poetry of faith 
and humanity that can clothe the unsightly stucco of a village 
church with the celestial dreams of a Fra Angelico, and can 
frame saints for God as surely in the colorless, unpictured win- 
dow-panes through which gazes the graciousness of green hills 
and blue skies as in the sculptured niches of Old- World cathe- 
dral-door? In the great cathedrals we seem to worship as all the 
world may ; in these by-ways there seems a feeling of wider 
brotherhood in the bond of a love that waits not till it is sought, 
but seeketh first and maketh itself a home in the remotest place 
and most isolated heart. 

One summer the holiday home of a little party of mountain- 
lovers had been fixed on the northern side of the White Moun- 
tains, where toward the north the wilderness hills stretch away 
to the lumber-forests and fishing-lakes of Maine, the outposts 
of the greater hills all about, and the mightiest mountain of them 
all a daily companion of the eyes that would watch 

" The sunshine weave 
Its golden network in the belting woods, 

Smile down in rainbows from the falling floods, 
And on the kingly brows at morn and eve 
Set crowns of fire ! " 

To the centre of the settlement or " the village," par excellence, 
distant between one and two miles from our summer quarters 
occasional visits were paid by the members of our household, to 
whom the scantily-supplied shops offered but little inducement 
for the spending of money : " jaw-breakers," " bull's-eyes," and 
lozenges tempted very insufficiently dainty palates accustomed 
to Arnaud's and Whitman's confections. For the gratifying of 
irger desires recourse was had to the next town, which was a 
;entre of industry in the region owing to its being one of the 
stations for a deeper plunge into the heart of the White Moun- 
tains, and the terminus of one section of the trunk line that 
through the hills wound its way to the north. In this thriving 
village of pretty dwellings, summer boarding-houses, -and shops 
one never failed to find Sydney Smith's golden epitome of civil- 
ization a lemon and here the would-be camper-out could sup- 



438 A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. [J u b T 

ply himself with all the necessary appurtenances, from the " King 
of the Forest " axe, bearing the brand of Bethel, Maine, to 
the Italian sardines packed on the coast of that same maritime 
State. Here on week-days one could watch at the station the 
arrival and departure of troubled tourists, and in the street the 
whirl of business or pleasure-bent buggies that, with the irregu- 
lar line of vehicles drawn up under the sheds of the principal 
hotels or before the chief " store," or gathered round the scattered 
hitching-posts, made the town populous with horse-flesh. One 
marked with enthusiasm the line of grace made by the great 
Concord coach as, with its six milk-white steeds guided by some 
veteran of the stage-route, it whirled round the corner by the 
post-office to wait for its proper mail-bags to be added to its load 
of passengers and baggage ; the travellers on top jubilant in the 
possession of their wide horizon and given to chaffing the re- 
signed occupants of the body of the coach resignation apt to be- 
come defiance when the tormentors on top proved too merry. 
On the street the summer-boarder, in delicate costume of white 
robe and picturesque shade-hat, sauntering in "search of a skein of 
worsted or a spool of silk perhaps not to be found in the posses- 
sion of any merchant or milliner of the town, mingled with the 
leisurely farmer and wonder-seeking urchin 

" Barefoot boy with cheek of tan " 

and ragged straw hat, round the brim of which might have taken 
place the race known to Dr. Holmes' boyhood. One could 
sympathize with some gentle driver from the city, unused to the 
reins, but left in temporary charge of her " team," and trusting 
that during her brief authority all men and beasts would prove 
as gentle as herself and none'call on her for any guiding of her 
charge. Glorious country gardens made bright and sweet the 
wayside of the long and dusty main street, old-fashioned flowers 
in luxuriant bloom giving gorgeousness of color in the unshaded 
.garden- ways and scattering wealth of exquisite perfume over the 
fences against which the city straggler would lean to enjoy the 
perfection of bloom denied him in his brick-walled home, his sense 
of humor taking especial satisfaction in the broad-leaved castor- 
oil plant that presided, as it were professionally, over the gay- 
hooded poppies and other beneficent or thoughtless members of 
the flower-patch of one of the doctors of the town. 

Near the machine-shops, and up the slope of the foot-hills 
above the railroad-track, stood the neat white houses and the 
low, unpainted shanties, with their cabbage and potato patches, 






1885.] A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. 439 

occupied by the railroad employees and chief members of the 
little pioneer Catholic church fitly dedicated to St. Joseph, the 
patron of North America and the bearer of his Lord into the 
strange land of Egypt. Still unfinished, the simple building 
made no pretence of beauty, though pointed windows and the 
apse for the altar gave it, with its lesser size and soft color, more 
picturesqueness of aspect than the Puritan architecture of the 
Protestant places of worship that stood at peaceful distances 
from one another, and the bells of which could be heard at times 
at our summer home five miles down the valley, all jangling notes 
modulated to sweetness in their journey through the gentle 
summer air. 

Three gentlewomen of the little summer party mentioned 
above will not soon forget their first visit to this little house of 
the Good Shepherd standing in the midst of the little flock, 
when, taking advantage of one perfect Sunday morning, they 
walked along the country ways to assist at the Holy Sacrifice, 
fearless of tramps or any other untoward circumstance among 
the hills of New Hampshire. An early start was needed, that 
we might accomplish in time the five miles of our pilgrimage, 
and we were already on the road when the rising-bell of the 
"Cottage " summoned our. fellow-boarders from their beds. 

Briskly we walked along the open road, where the dew still 
lay on the grassy borders, and where the firm soil had been 
made the pleasanter to walk on by the rain of the day before, 
while the air about us was of that delicious coolness and clear- 
ness born of mountain-storms and seeming always the inalienable 
birthright of the hills that sometimes they lend the lowlands, 
as it were, to lift tired hearts to the hills the eyes may not 
see. The long morning shadows *on the mountain-slopes and 
in the woods were broken by the clear sunlight that sparkled 
through the air like the dancing bubbles of champagne. Who 
does not know that exhilaration of the peculiar beauty of the 
early morning that makes one wonder how one is willing to fore- 
go so much life and loveliness day after day ? And this July 
morning had all the freshness of the poets' June, the hills wear- 
ing still the summer's early green untouched by the drought 
that had desolated the lower countries. Two miles of our walk 
brought us to a famous bridge renowned in the note-book of the 
tourist for its much-praised view of the lofty northern peaks of 
the Mount Washington range seen over the rushing waters of the 
Androscoggin River. Clear-cut the peaks rose before us, no 
drifting cloud obscuring any of their outlines, though the west 



440 A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. [July, 

wind was already wafting the noon clouds across the sparkling 
blue of the sky. Not dream-inspiring were the hills that morn- 
ing, as on late afternoons when the earth's day has spun its gold- 
en veil over the sunlit heights and shadowy ravines : the clear 
atmosphere and firm lines seemed the emblem of the earnest pur- 
pose of life, the direct achievement, the straightforward march, 
the " truth within and God o'erhead " ; the aim of life so sure, 
our strength so strong. We do not need to dream, because the 
reality cannot fail us. 

A few steps from the bridge we struck the railroad-track, 
taking it in preference to the more beautiful but more winding 
high-road, on account of the directness with which it would 
bring us to our destination, and sure that along its single line of 
rails no Western Express would sweep us out of life down the 
low embankment above the intervale through which lay the 
circumscribed path of the monster. Freshly the wind blew 
down the track as the valley opened out more widely to the 
westward, giving us the vision of the comparatively low line of 
dark mountains where the winter's ice lingers through all the 
summer, and where in deep ravine, for the alpine growth, it is 
still springtime in July. With the widening western, horizon 
we lost sight of the truly alpine summits of the great mountains, 
to be revealed again in tiny portions as the road crept closer to 
the foot-hills. Purple vetches climbed up to the very rails, while 
in the meadows below, where the grass was still unmowed, 
swung the orange-colored bells, the golden censers, of the 
Canada lilies lilies of St. Mary Magdalene, as they seemed to 
the present writer, with their flame-colored garments and lowly- 
bent heads. 

Poets have sung the simple perfectness of nature when 'tis 
enough " not to be doing, but to be." It seemed our full pos- 
session as we drank the bumpers of the intoxicating air and felt 
the exhilaration that comes of pure physical strength " the pul- 
sations of mere joyous might " the untiring feet leaving their 
miles behind them without need or desire to stop for rest along 
the level ways, even the monotony of the railroad-track failing 
to fatigue. And above the intoxication of the air, and the ex- 
hilaration of physical strength, and the fitness of the outside as- 
pect of the day for its place in the week was the thought of the 
consecrating act that was the purpose of our walk. 

It was still early when we reached the little church, the doors 
not yet unlocked, but already a few men and boys gathered 
about waiting service-time and the advent of fellow- worshippers 



1885.] A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. 441 

with whom to exchange the news of the week, from the latest 
reduction of the church debt to the lack of skill shown by the 
pitcher of Saturday's game. But it was not long before we were 
admitted to wait within the hour of Mass, leaving the unshaded 
glare of the village by-road for no " dim, religious light," since 
on the bare, undecorated walls the broad white light poured in 
through unglorified window-glass. It was no especial feast-day, 
but the white wooden altar, with its simple Gothic rood-screen 
and tabernacle, was beautified with trailing evergreen-vines and 
spruce-boughs from the forests, with golden-rod and meadow- 
sweet from the fields, and June roses and bright geraniums from 
the gardens; the work of decoration being the loving tribute of 
some lowland strangers summering in the little mountain-town. 
The vestments of the priest were many-colored, like the coat of 
Joseph, since they had to serve for festa and feria and penitential 
season ; but the alb showed the tender care of the laundress, whose 
flat-iron had plaited it in fine folds. The costume of the altar- 
boys who were wonderfully sedate, as if within the narrow walls 
sober thought had no space to lose itself between earth and 
heaven was as if temporary until better could be done; while 
the robes of the surpliced choir seemed even more temporary. 
The singing was a charming surprise to one accustomed to the 
indevotion of choir music in general. A perfectly plain chant 
was rendered by a quintette of voices, whose owners were hard- 
featured men, Irish and Canadian, whom it must have cost the 
good priest a world of labor to train to sing the simple choral in 
the painstaking and religious manner in which it was given, each 
word clearly enunciated, no vain repetitions, yet a vast amount 
of time absorbed from the deliberate conscientiousness of each 
individual singer. The voices were hardly musical, but they 
sounded wholly in earnest, and it was with great regret that 
some Sundays later, on another visit, we found that the church 
had acquired a melodeon, a soprano, and figured music that had 
not yet learned to peacefully unite in time and tune with the male 
sanctuary choir, whose plain chant seemed to have suffered ship- 
wreck amid the conflicting tides of harmony. The notices were 
read in both French and English, a predominance of Celtic names 
appearing in the list of monthly contributors to the church 
debt, while the homily was wholly in French, our American ears 
noticing certain peculiarities of pronunciation that we determined 
were Canadian, as we felt quite sure they were not Parisian nor 
American. We learned afterwards that the English instruction 
of the day was given at Vespers, when strangers to the faith were 



442 A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. [July. 

apt to visit the little church, the pastor of which had wrought so 
good a work among his people, he being a zealous apostle of 
temperance a subject about which the towns-people had been 
much excited, and they honored the bon fere for his effectual 
assistance to their cause. An enthusiastic Irishman, with whom 
one of our party talked after Mass, told of the good deeds 
wrought by the father, holding little less than miraculous the 
recovery of the dead body of a child carried away by the rapid 
river a log sent adrift, by the counsel of the priest, being stopped 
in its course by an eddy, where was found also the little lost one. 
With pride, too, the loquacious parishioner told of a Fourth of 
July when the Catholic pastor had opened the public celebration 
of the day and had marshalled the Irish and Canadians of his 
mission they bearing their national colors with the broad banner 
of their adopted country to honor the holiday and impress their 
fellow-citizens with their order and patriotism. 

Here, indeed, were no footprints of the martyrs, but here was 
the sowing of the mustard-seed in peaceful furrows, the old 
church seeking to build up the new nation, the cross taking 
under its shadow, into the brightness of its eternal light, the blue 
field of stars, and consecrating to the Author of all liberty the 
dear-prized liberty of the Republic. Yet even here rose visions 
of wilder times as one saw the " black-gown " wearing his robe 
freely in the streets of the mountain-town and held an honored 
citizen by possible descendants of the old enemies of the Abe- 
nakis. And might not the imaginative patriot have visions of a 
nobler time when the " Beauty ever ancient and ever new " 
should have moulded the people of the republic so that they 
should, indeed, be " serious and temperate," and having " such a 
concern for the public good that each one would prefer the public 
interest to his own," and so in truth most worthy their privilege 
of choosing " their own authorities for the administration of their 
affairs," as St. Augustine wrote of old? At least we wayfarers 
felt, as we left the dusty streets and bald unpicturesqueness of 
the village, that there had entered into our Sunday an element 
not often associated in thought with the outposts of railroad 
and lumbering interests. 

Our way home was to be by a different route from that by which 
we had come a new road that came to an abrupt end at the edge 
of a gully, from the other side of which ran on the foot-path we 
were to follow. As the footing of the road was much like that 
of a ploughed field, it was pleasant to exchange it for that of the 
narrower way, even though the path soon became somewhat 



1885.] A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. 443 

overgrown, leading where fire had been, and where the conse- 
quent thickets of wild cherry, covering the charred and fallen 
timber, did not prove desirable companions as the day waxed 
warm and the interlacing boughs administered castigation rather 
than shade as we pressed on. Now and then we would come to 
a larger forest growth, where, between the delicate leafage and 
slender trunks of the tall paper-birches, would be let in charm- 
ing glimpses of the great mountains. At times, too, we would 
be refreshed by descent into some deep dell the fire had spared, 
where the trees grew tall and green, and the air was cool with 
the shadow and the damp of the woods. At last, where the in- 
tervale broadened below the foot-hills, the path widened once 
more into a road, a grassy haying track, by which we descend- 
ed to the low meadows bordering the river, where we pressed 
through the long grass that covered road and field alike, past 
deep ditches where bloomed the tall, fringed orchis and Canada 
lilies, and the white tassels of the rue-anemone, and where lin- 
gered still some late elder bloom, while twining over the alder- 
bushes, and dwarf trees growth of the lowland, hung the green 
sprays of the clematis, soon to spread its bridal blow along the 
meadow borders. On a little knoll at the end of a long meadow 
we saw a farm-house, the furthest outpost of the scattered village 
to which we were now bound, and as we neared the solitary 
habitation we saw, bent down in a potato-field, absorbed in some 
important 'occupation, a sun-bonneted figure that started with 
surprise when one of our party spoke, after we had watched for 
a while the old lady's active warfare with the black-and-yellow- 
barred beetles that were making havoc among her plants. It 
was the Colorado beetle's that model tourist first summer in 
the neighborhood, and he was still to be fought in little, the old 
lady's weapons being two sticks between which she crushed 
the offenders. After she had recovered from the suddenness of 
our appearance from so unusual a direction, we explained how we 
came to be there, where we had started from, and what had been 
our Sunday errand; and then followed, from her, that ready hos- 
pitality of the hills : We must stop a bit at the .house and rest, and 
have a glass of milk, since of course, after such a walk, we must 
needs be tired out and needing refreshment. We declined her 
hospitality for the trouble it would give her, and, bidding her 
good-afternoon, walked rapidly on ; but we soon heard quick 
steps behind us, and turned to see our would-be hostess following 
us and growing short of breath in her effort not to be baffled in 
her intent to serve the strangers. So we yielded to her desire 
and went with her to her home, where all was so still within in 



444 A NEW ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE. [July* 

the quiet, sunny Sunday afternoon. Her son and daughter-in- 
law, she told us, had gone down to the lower village to church, 
so she was quite alone to welcome us. And then she visited her 
pantry and descended into the depths of her cellar, from which 
she brought up a pitcher of milk, placing it, with three great 
goblets, on a table, adding to the feast three saucers of fresh, red 
raspberries gathered that morning by her son. And the rasp- 
berries were enriched with cream that clung so lovingly to the 
spoon that our feast seemed the very royal one of the little lady 
of the nursery rhyme who was to fare so daintily at her lover's 
hands. And how strengthened we wayfarers felt for the three 
miles and the warm summer afternoon that yet lay between us 
and our supper! As we feasted our hostess told us that she had 
come from Boston, had been born there, and, on her marriage, 
had come into this mountain region, where she had grown old, 
and lived now with her only son and his wife. Strangers she 
knew we must be; were we from Boston? Bostonnais we were 
indeed, in the old Canadian and modern Indian sense of the word, 
but we were obliged to confess humbly that we claimed not the 
aegis of Pallas Athenae ; yet, with a modest pride, we announced 
ourselves as from New Jersey the Pomona of the confederacy, 
her brows crowned with peach-blossoms and her horn of plenty 
showering down melons and sweet-potatoes ! The good lady 
thought we had come a far way to look at the mountains for 
which, those long years ago, she had exchanged the narrow 
streets and chill sea-winds of her native town. Had she grown 
in all these years to feel less lonesome in the silence of the hills 
than amid the jangle and confusion of the unresting town? A 
dweller on a broad hill-top once told us that he found the town, 
that was shut in among low hills, too " lonesome," although the 
town had been the home of his boyhood. 

Bidding our hostess a cordial good-by, after having pressed 
on her unwilling acceptance a silver trifle she had served us 
for love, obeying more literally, as mountain people are wont to, 
than we of the town the apostle's precept, " using hospitality one 
toward another without murmuring" we passed out from the 
cool parlor of the little house into the warm afternoon sunshine, 
and before the late shadows were very deep in the hollows of the 
hills we had ended our pilgrimage and were ready to tell our 
travellers' tales of all we had seen and done : memories more vivid 
then than now, as the blossom we gather by the wayside and 
bring home still undrooping excels in its freshness the faded 
petals that have long lain between the leaves of some favorite 
poem. 



1885.] THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. 445 



THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. 

" Time antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things." SIR THOMAS 
BROWNE. 

ONE of the sure signs that a people is advancing towards a 
higher state in which letters, arts, and sciences may ultimately 
flourish is when a feeling is born among them to perpetuate 
the memory of former days and to interpret the origin and 
meaning of ancient things. Then history begins ; and the spirit 
of history will associate men of similar and conservative tastes 
men of patriotism and religion to preserve the records of 
the past, to confer upon present occurrences, and to form a rally- 
ing-point for future generations. This is the beginning of his- 
torical societies ; and whatever truth there may once have been 
in the melancholy words of the old antiquary who has sug- 
gested to me the motto of this essay, the enlarged views at 
present entertained about the benefits of association and the 
division of labor, and the universal diffusion and almost abso- 
lute perfection of the art preservative of all arts (printing), 
allow us to combat Time itself and dispute the assertion of the 
urn burial : " There is no antidote against the opium of time, 
which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their 
graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be 
buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty 
years." 

Probably the first example of an historical association was 
the society of the Argonauts. Some writers of an original turn 
of mind believe that this famous expedition, which was under- 
taken about one thousand years B.C., consisted of a number of 
young knights under one celebrated leader, banded together to 
explore the Euxine with the mingled objects of curiosity and 
traffic ; and that upon their return to Greece they continued 
their companionship, in order to combine their common experi- 
ence, sift their various impressions, expose to view the many 
strange curiosities they had brought back with them, and by 
the public recital, in the midst of a hall (or be it temple) filled 
with trophies, of their wonderful adventures promote among 
their countrymen the spirit of geographical discovery and his- 
torical research. Their corporate seal can no longer be found, 
but Shakspere has preserved for us the legend which it bore : 

"We are the Jasons ; we have won the fleece." 



446 THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. [July, 

At such a period of a people's existence the loss of any au- 
thentic record of earlier times and the destruction of old monu- 
ments is always keenly felt, and when expressed -whether in 
prose or verse is generally coupled with at least an implied 
regret that no means had been found to preserve them. Thus 
the inspired writer, three hundred years before the Christian 
era, after having praised men of renown and his fathers in their 
generation, mournfully concludes : " And there are some of whom 
there is no memorial ; who are perished, as if they had never 
been ; and are become as if they had never been born, and their 
children with them " (Ecclesiasticus xliv. 9) ; and thus also the 
Augustan poet sang: 

" Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona 
Multi; sed omnes illachrimabiles 
Urgentur ignotique longa 
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro." 

HORACE, Od. iv. 9. 

A house and garden in one of the suburbs of Athens, enclosed 
by a wall and having the grounds laid out in walks shaded by 
trees in which the nightingales made music this was the origi- 
nal Academy. It is thought to have been so called from the 
name of its first owner, Academus. When his groves were 
bought by Cimon, the Athenian general, he adorned the place 
with statues and fountains and works of art, so as to convert it 
into a retreat for study and meditation amidst the charms of 
natural scenery and the luxuries of Hellenic refinement. At his 
death he left this garden to the public, and it immediately be- 
came a favorite resort of philosophers. Hither Socrates was 
wont to repair to converse with his more intimate disciples ; and 
here his most illustrious pupil, Plato, established that school of 
divine philosophy which took its distinctive name from the sur- 
rounding associations, and over which he presided for half a 
century. Although the speculative sciences were the principal 
objects of the Platonic Academy, yet the abundant erudition of 
its founder, the variety of topics treated in his writings, and the 
special pursuits of so many of his followers, who insisted that 
history was but philosophy teaching by example, would seem 
to justify us in claiming it as the first historical society ever 
established outside of the mythological cycle of the Argonauts 
and order of the Golden Fleece. 

The Itinerary of Pausanias, which mainly refers to objects of 
antiquity in Greece, such as buildings, temples, statues, and 



1885.] THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. 447 

pictures, and to mountains, rivers, and fountains with the popu- 
lar stories connected with them, may be considered as a gift of 
the Academy to future societies, and entitles the author to be 
called prince of antiquarians. . 

Passing over into Italy, we find that the study of history and 
antiquity is cultivated with eagerness in the atmosphere of free- 
dom. There Varro and there also Tully surrounded themselves 
with friends imbued with their own zeal for the memorials of 
past ages and the rational interpretation of the remains of other 
epochs. Both were founders of historical societies ; and both, 
either by their published writings or their oral discussions on a 
very wide range of practical subjects, gave a mighty impulse 
to -the study of history and antiquities among the Romans. 
Marcus Terentius Varro, whose accumulated wisdom in every 
department of knowledge distinguished him as the most learned 
man of his age, wrote, among other things, one work which com- 
mends him in a special manner to our esteem. It is his Treatise 
on Ancient Things, which is divided into two sections : the Hu- 
man Antiquities and the Divine Antiquities. From this source 
St. Augustine drew largely for his own admirable treatise On 
the City of God. Marcus Tullius Cicero is too well known from 
his Tusculan Disputations and his Academic Questions the fruit of 
the conversazioni (as we might now say) held in his villas at Fras- 
cati, near Rome, and at Pozzuoli, in the vicinity of Naples to 
need any further mention ; but I would still observe that he is 
most strongly stamped as a genuine antiquarian by his remark 
that the Laws of the Twelve Tables whose language in his time 
was archaic, and most of whose provisions had long been, obso- 
lete was of greater value than all the libraries of the philoso- 
phers (De Oratore, i. 44). The Archeology of Rome, by Denis of 
Halicarnassus, in which he treats of everything relating to the 
constitution, the religion, the history, the laws, the public and 
private life of the Romans; the Acts and Sayings of the Ancient 
Romans, by Valerius Maximus, in which a miscellaneous amount 
of curious matter of historical interest is collected in nine books ; 
the Natttral History of the elder Pliny, in which, attributing a 
wider sense than moderns would to such a title, he furnishes a 
great variety of information on human inventions and institu- 
tions, and on the history of the fine arts ; the Attic Evenings of 
Aulus Gellius, in which he throws a flaming light upon the his- 
tory and antiquities of the Greeks and Romans are some only of 
those classical works of that period which have been saved from 
the well-nigh universal destruction of ancient literature. 



448 THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. [July, 

We know little of the Gymnosophists of India, of the Magi of 
Persia, of the Star-gazers of Babylon and Chaldea, of the Celtic 
Druids, and of the Egyptian Hierarchs, except that all seem to 
have formed in their several countries so many associations of 
learning- and to have been so many members of historical socie- 
ties. A celebrated association of individuals for the cultivation 
of history and science was formed by the first Ptolemy, King of 
Egypt, in the city of Alexandria. Like the Athenian garden 
which has given the word academy to our language, the Alexan- 
drian establishment etymological ly survives in the word muse- 
um. A place dedicated to the Muses, in which poetry, history, 
and kindred subjects should be studied, and later any place 
where learning was pursued or which was set apart as a reposi- 
tory for things having some immediate relation to the arts and 
sciences, was anciently called a museum, from the Greek Mou- 
seion. The earliest institution which received this appellation 
was that one founded, as we have said, by Ptolemy Philadelphus 
about two hundred and eighty years B.C. The buildings of 
this famous institution were afterwards enlarged by the Empe- 
ror Claudius. It was so perfectly adapted for the pursuit of 
knowledge, and for the comfort, dignity, and cultivated leisure 
of learned men under monarchical government, that the same 
plan, only with less magnificence, was adopted by other sove- 
eigns in after-ages. Strabo has left us a good description of 
the Alexandrian Museum (Geogr., xviii. p. 794). It formed part 
of the royal palace, and contained cloisters, porticos, a public 
theatre or lecture-room for the more elaborate discussion of ap- 
pointed subjects, and a large hall where the professors supped 
together and enjoyed their symposiums unmolested by the pre- 
sence, and perhaps the criticisms, of the vulgar. The Museum 
was supported by a common fund supplied from the public 
treasury, and the whole was under the direction of an arch- 
priest, who was appointed by the king, and, when Egypt became 
a province of the Roman Empire, by the Caesar. Botanical and 
zoological gardens and an aquarium were attached to this splen- 
did establishment. The sciences of mathematics, astronomy, 
and geography were especially cultivated ; but literary criticism, 
philology, history, and antiquities were also much studied. The 
Museum was subsequently transferred to the Serapeion, or tem- 
ple of Serapis, in another quarter of the city, and continued to 
flourish until the end of the fourth century of our era, having 
existed altogether for upwards of six hundred and fifty years. 
In the city of Pergamus, in Asia Minor, a similar academy of 



1885.] THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. 449 

learning was established by its wealthy kings, who raised it to 
prosperity and fame throughout the East. A jealousy having 
sprung up between Ptolemy Epiphanes and Eumenes, King of 
Pergamus, about the libraries attached to their respective aca- 
demies, produced a singular revolution, the effects of which 
are still perceived after the lapse of two thousand years. The 
Egyptian king, fearing or pretending to fear that the supply of 
papyrus would diminish on account of the large demand for 
that article to furnish additional volumes to the rival library of 
papyrus, which is a reed or water-plant growing on the banks of 
the Nile, upon the thin leaves of which, when cut in strips and 
glued together transversely, the ancients wrote, and whence we 
derive our modern word paper forbade the exportation -of it from 
his dominions. Thereupon the Historical Society of Pergamus, 
equal to the occasion, invented a new and better material for 
writing upon namely, the skin of an animal, generally a sheep 
or a lamb, and prepared in a certain manner. It was called 
charta Pergamena in compliment to the society. From it we de- 
rive our word parchment. When its use became general the 
whole perishable papyraceous manuscripts were transcribed 
anew upon this more durable substance, without which the 
works of ancient authors would have perished totally. Vellum 
is only a finer, smoother, and whiter sort of parchment, made of 
the skin of the calf vitulus, " veal." 

With the restoration of letters and classical learning in the 
fifteenth century the term Academy was revived in Italy, 
whence it spread into other countries, but with a somewhat dif- 
ferent signification from that which it had borne in former times. 
Then all the seven sciences of antiquity viz., grammar, logic, 
rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music were com- 
prehended within the range of encyclopaedic knowledge affected 
by a member of one of the ancient academies, although even these 
lad their specialists. At the Renaissance, however, learned men 
jparated according to their particular tastes or bent of genius, to 
mite again with others of similar attractions and form together 
in academy. There were at one time no fewer than six hundred 
icademies in Italy. Almost at the very beginning of this sur- 
>rising ferment of scholars in the fifteenth century the learned, 
rhile united in one common and often exaggerated devotion to 
mtiquity, divided themselves into two great schools those who 
tudied the philosophy and languages (Greek and Latin) of the 
incients, and those who sought after and explained their monu- 
icnts and literary remains, being less interested in the style than 
VOL. XLI. 29 



450 THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. [July, 

in the facts which these contained. Thus rose up on the one side 
the school of philosophers and humanists of which the Platonic 
Academy at Florence was the first in point of time and the chief 
in regard to merit ; and on the other side the school of historians 
and archaeologists of whom the Roman Academy was the proud 
exponent. At a later period, and at first almost exclusively 
among the English-speaking races, a distinction was drawn be- 
tween an academy and a society : the former being a place where 
the belles-lettres or fine arts music, painting, sculpture, architec- 
ture, or poetry were cultivated, and the latter one devoted to 
history, archaeology, or the sciences. In this division a society 
ranks higher than an academy, insomuch as the pursuit of that 
which can instruct mankind in useful knowledge and add to the 
conveniences and comforts of life is always nobler than that which, 
however pleasing to our sense of the beautiful or however 
strongly appealing to the pleasures of the imagination, can serve 
but for the entertainment of a leisure hour. Compare, for in- 
stance, in general usefulness and elevated aim the Royal Society 
of England, chartered in 1662, for the promotion of mathematical 
and physical science, of natural and experimental philosophy, 
with the Royal Academy, incorporated in the year 1768, for the 
purpose of cultivating and improving the arts of painting, sculp- 
ture, and architecture. There is no comparison. 

The oldest society in Europe devoted to historical studies and 
antiquarian researches is the Pontifical Society of Archaeology 
at Rome. It was naturally in the " Eternal City " that at the 
dawn of the Renaissance the study of antiquities and ancient 
history was first taken up. Two Italians were particularly en- 
gaged in this resuscitation of the past Petrarch and Poggio 
Bracciolini. The former was often moved to tears by the sight 
of the crumbling ruins of Rome, and, wandering alone by moon- 
light in the chaotic Forum, or sitting by day beneath the shade 
of some tree growing in soil which ages and neglect had accumu- 
lated upon the palace of the Caesars, he brought back to. life in 
his excited imagination the presence of a mighty people and 
formed intentions of restoring, at his own expense, some of the 
monuments around him. It is chiefly as a poet and Latinist that 
Petrarch is known ; yet his familiar epistles and innumerable 
passages of his Latin poems reveal how much more deeply he 
was moved by the spirit of history than touched by the grace 
and beauty of a sonnet ; and although the title of poet-laureate 
and the ceremony of coronation were revived for him on the 
Capitol on the 8th of April, 1341, it was rather an occasion, by 



1885.] THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. 451 

recalling the deeds of the past, 'to kindle hope for the future and 
enthusiasm for the Seven Hills and the majestic ruins of Rome 
than to confer upon any individual, however renowned, the re- 
ward even of an intellectual triumph. 

Poggio Bracciolini went to Rome about the year 1402, when 
Boniface IX. employed him in the papal chancery as one of the 
apostolic secretaries a position which he held for fifty years and 
under eight successive popes. The Sovereign Pontiffs were in 
sympathy with the great revival of studies in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, as is shown, to mention one only of many proofs, by the 
high and sometimes eminent honors, important and always lucra- 
tive offices conferred by them on account of scholarship and 
literary merit. Poggio, turning his thoughts 

l< To Latium's wide champaign, forlorn and waste, 
Where yellow Tiber his neglected wave 
Mournfully rolls," 

DYER, Ruins of Rome. 

made excavations at Ostia and in the Campagna around Rome, 
and in one of his letters describes his country-house as adorned 
with statues and other antiques which he had collected in various 
places. His merit as an historian and archaeologist rests mainly 
on his treatise one of his best works De Varietate Fortunes, in 
which he indulges at the very beginning in a vision of the past 
and sadly contrasts the miserable remains of fallen empire with 
the Roman magnificence of a thousand years before. It was in 
the last days of Pope Martin V. that is, about the year 1430 that 
this discourse was composed. It was then, as Gibbon has de. 
scribed it, that " the learned Poggius and a friend ascended the 
Capitoline Hill, reposed themselves among the ruins of columns 
and temples, and viewed from that commanding spot the wide 
and various prospect of desolation. The place and the object gave 
ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which 
spares neither man nor the proudest of his works^ which buries 
empires and cities in a common grave ; and it was agreed that, in 
proportion to her former greatness, the fall of Rome was the 
more awful and deplorable " (Decline and Fall, vol. viii. p. 267). 

The Roman Academy, which still exists in usefulness and 
splendor, was subject at its birth to some mishaps which delayed 
its growth and withdrew from it the favor of the reigning pope. 
About the middle of the fifteenth century a learned professor in 
the Roman university, Pomponius Lsetus, a bastard of the ducal 



452 THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. 

house of San Severino at Naples, gathered around him a number 
of young men, admirers, like himself, of the ancients and collectors 
of their remains. With these he formed an historical association 
called the Roman Academy, which met regularly in his dwelling 
on the Quirinal. The Academy was soon accused of being a 
centre of licentiousness, treason, and impiety, and when the rumors 
culminated in a specific charge of conspiring to dethrone the 
pope and restore the pagan religion strong measures were taken 
against it. During the carnival of 1468 twenty academicians 
were arrested and imprisoned in Castle San Angelo, the rest sav- 
ing themselves by a precipitate and (as some argued) a guilty 
flight. Leto, however, who was then absent from the city, volun- 
tarily returned to Rome and stood his trial. He and his com- 
panions were finally set free and the graver charges against them 
were declared not proven; but it can hardly be said that they 
received an absolute and honorable acquittal. This episode is 
sometimes yet spoken of among the erudite as a brutal example 
of antagonism between the papacy, upholding ignorance and 
barbarism, and the Renaissance, the representative of learning 
and civilization, the very title of one of Hallam's chapters, 
"Paul II. persecutes the Learned" (Lit. Hist., vol. i. p. 165), 
showing the hold such an unjust opinion has still upon men 
otherwise worthy of respect. Hallam has the boldness to say 
of the Roman Academy: " Paul II. thought fit to arrest all this 
society on charges of conspiracy against his life, for which there 
was certainly no foundation, and of setting up pagan supersti- 
tions against Christianity, of which, in this instance, there seems 
to have been no proof." As regards the charge of treason the 
reader is referred to the great work of Tiraboschi, where it is 
amply discussed ; but concerning the other and more serious 
charge of impiety, in which even the infidel Gibbon must have 
believed when he wrote, while treating of the use and abuse of 
ancient learning, that " some pagan votaries professed a secret 
devotion to the gods of Homer and Plato," and referred in a note' 
to this very Academy, additional testimony was brought to light 
a few years ago quite unexpectedly from the gloom of the Ro- 
man catacombs. The excavations among these underground and 
early Christian cemeteries, carried on so successfully by the cele- 
brated archaeologist De Rossi under the patronage of the late 
Pope Pius IX., led to the reopening, and as it were the redis- 
covery, of some parts which had been visited in the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries by a few, but the precise location of and en- 
trances to which had since been choked up and concealed by the 



1885.] THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. 453 

debris of the Roman Campagna and forgotten even by the pea- 
sants. 

"The names of Pomponio Leto and other litterati, his associates in the 
famous Roman Academy, may still be read in several places of various 
catacombs, written there by themselves, with the addition of their title as 
Unanimes antiquttatis Amatores or Perscrutatores. . . . Platina also says 
that the motive which induced his friends and himself to visit these sub- 
terranean places *vas a religious one; but it is unfortunate that the in- 
scriptions which they left behind them do not confirm this statement. 
On the contrary, when taken in conjunction with what is known of the 
history of the writers, they suggest or strengthen suspicions of another 
kind. Those who are familiar with the literary history of that time will 
remember how the Roman Academy fell into disgrace with the Sovereign 
Pontiff Paul II. on suspicion both of being affected with heresy and of con- 
spiring against the government. One of the grounds for the first of these 
charges was their pedantic conceit of taking old pagan classical names in 
place of their Christian ones ; but it has always been a matter of controversy 
how far the charge of conspiracy was really supported by evidence, and 
Tiraboschi hardly mentions any appreciable ground for it at all. We are 
not here concerned with the religious or political integrity of the Academy ; 
yet, in elucidation of an obscure point in history, it is worth while to men- 
tion that the name of Pomponio Leto is found in these newly-discovered 
memorials of him, with the title of Pontifex Maxtmus, and even Pont. 
Max. regnans ; that another member, calling himself by the name of 
Pantagathus, is described as Sacerdos Achademice Rom. ; a third is jEmilius 
vatum princeps, and to some of the names other titles are added which 
show the dissolute habits of the Academicians, and that they were not 
ashamed to perpetuate their own memories, as lovers not only of pagan 
names, but of pagan morals. Another circumstance, too, ought not to be 
overlooked viz., that whereas the names of the friars and others who 
'came to visit this holy place' are found in the chambers and galleries 
nearest to the staircase, these 'lovers and investigators of antiquity' 
uniformly left records of their visits in the most distant and inaccessible 
parts of the cemetery. But whatever may have been the moral and 
religious character of this association, it must at least always remain a 
matter of profound regret and surprise that men whose lives were devoted 
to the revival of learning, and of whose chief it is particularly recorded 
that he applied himself to the elucidation of Roman antiquities 'which were 
then being disinterred ' should have been familiar with these earliest 
monuments of the heroic age of Christianity, and yet never have felt 
sufficient interest to excite them to investigate their history or to publish 
anything at all about them. Whatever they may really have believed, we 
cannot wonder at the charge brought against them by their contempora- 
ries, and which we find addressed to one of them by a bishop even after 
their acquittal that they were more pagans than Christians " (Northcote 
and Brownlow, Roma Sotteranea, Hist. p. 28). 

The Academy, purged of evil members and corrected in its 
chief, rose up again during the pontificate of Paul's successor, 



454 THE ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES. [July, 

Sixtus IV. The Emperor Frederick III., visiting Rome, 
granted many privileges to the Academy by a diploma which 
was read amidst great enthusiasm on occasion of the first cele- 
bration of the foundation of Rome (B.C. 753), which took place 
on the Capitol on April 21, 1483, and ended with an imperial 
banquet. This historic fete still sometimes called, with a lin- 
gering trace of pagan thought, the birthday of Rome has con- 
tinued to be kept ever since ; and I would refer %ny one asking 
for the rationale of such a celebration to the eloquent discourse 
entitled Roma ALterna pronounced on one of these occasions by 
Cardinal Manning, and published in a volume of his Miscellanies. 
Outside of Italy, and particularly in France and Germany, 
the study of antiquities was eagerly pursued ; but the earliest 
society for historical studies and the preservation of ancient 
monuments, founded north of the Alps, was the Society of Anti- 
quaries in England. It was begun in the year 1572 by a few 
eminent scholars, and continues to be one of the very best socie- 
ties of its kind in Europe, for the rank and erudition of its mem- 
bers, for the number and costliness of its publications, and for 
the zeal with which it has suggested and furthered the study of 
native history and the preservation of antiquities in all coun- 
tries throughout the world to which the power of Great Britain 
has extended. In France the oldest society for the study of his- 
tory and antiquities is the Academic Royale des Inscriptions et 
Belles-Lettres, established in 1663 in the reign of Louis XIV. 
In 1701 this Academy was placed upon a new and more extended 
foundation and its title changed to Academy of Inscriptions and 
Medals. From this date it published every year a volume of 
memoirs, many of great value, until it was suppressed in the 
year 1793. After the Revolution it was reorganized and now 
forms part of the French Institute. The Royal Academy of 
Spanish History was commenced as a private association at 
Madrid in 1730, but was incorporated by Philip V. in 1738, and 
has published some interesting transactions. An Academy of 
Portuguese History was established at Lisbon in 1720 by King 
John V. Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden have all 
some distinguished academies, which, although later in the field 
of historical and antiquarian research, have done good service 
to archaeology. 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 455 



AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES.* 

PERHAPS none of the social institutions of the United States 
strike an English new-comer so strongly as the system of 
boarding. There is a great difference between it and the old- 
fashioned English lodging, and as great a difference between 
it and the system of French, Swiss, and German pensions. It in- 
volves no loss of caste in the boarding-house keeper, if she 
happen to have once lived in easier circumstances, and it does 
not necessarily argue poverty in the boarcfer. Boarding, on the 
whole, is more expensive than keeping house, unless perhaps in 
the large cities, and in cases where keeping house involves, in 
the fancy of the person concerned, the renting of a whole house 
in a fashionable, or even respectable, neighborhood. What the 
chief advantage of boarding is, in the eyes of the majority of 
boarders, is the absence of trouble. In reality there is a great 
deal of idle time on the boarder's hands, unless he or she has a 
profession to attend to or a large family to provide for. Several 
years' experience of it through necessities much chafed against, 
and two years' contrast of it with housekeeping, have made me 
an advocate for home-life of any kind, however humble a luxury, 
however, studiously made unattainable by circumstances as well 
as prejudices in most of the Atlantic cities. Philadelphia is a 
striking exception. There every one who is not almost a pauper 
owns, or can own, his own little, cheap, neat, and well-built home, 
rather box-like or toy-like, it is true, but still a work upon which 
he can experiment to his heart's content and where he can find 
the chief blessing which boarding-house life denies him freedom. 
In New York the system of flats and apartments recently in- 
troduced has been a change in the right direction, but it is too 
foreign an arrangement to suit the Anglo-Saxon nature per- 
fectly. There are thousands to whom such comparative inde- 
pendence as it affords still wears the disguised look of a better 
kind of model lodging-house or refined tenement-house words 
associated with anything but a " nice " meaning to New York ears. 
Far preferable to flats which, by the way, have none of the 
French prettiness at which they aim, though by way of com- 

*This is a posthumous papsr by the late Lady Blanche Murphy, which we are enabled to 
publish through the kindness of the lamented writer's sister, Lady Constance Bellingham. 
ED. C. W. 



45 6 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [July, 

pensation they possess all the " modern improvements " which 
somehow are so dismal of appearance and so suggestive of the 
workhouse are the suburban cottages on both sides of the city, 
on the Hudson banks and the Long Island shore, accessible by 
boat and rail in ten, twenty, thirty, fifty minutes, generally rea- 
sonable as regards rent or taxes, and, though far from real coun- 
try abodes, still commanding as fair a portion of country views 
as such situations lead one to expect. Of boarding-houses in 
New York there are as many varieties as there are classes of 
people. Some are hardly distinguishable from hotels in the num- 
ber of their " guests," the hurry always apparent in their halls, 
the colored waiters running to and fro, the fashion-plate figures 
going in and out. Still, the style of the house generally tells 
you where you are. There is no " office " and no " clerk." It 
is mostly a large, dark, wide-staircased house, of a respectable 
age, with three parlors or drawing-rooms en suite, the centre 
one being that peculiarity of New York domestic architecture 
known as a " dark room," and the third, and smallest, possi- 
bly the sanctum of the mistress of the house. In this case it is 
generally the only pleasant, habitable room in the dwelling; has 
muslin curtains and chintz-covered furniture, cosey chairs, em- 
broidered or carved brackets, a few plants, books, photographs, 
and such things. The oppressive parlors with their wide stretch 
of French Brussels carpet, islanded with hard crimson damask 
chairs, one sofa, and the inevitable marble-topped table, and re- 
flected in the pier-glass between the front windows, which makes 
an unpleasant confusion of angles with those of a chimney-piece 
mirror, itself reflecting a portrait opposite, in a massive gold frame 
and the best bed-rooms above are dreary dens enough, but what 
shall we say of the basement dining-room, where excellent food is 
placed before you, but where the adjuncts of any but animal feed- 
ing are utterly ignored? The depressing feeling excited by these 
basement rooms an entresol below the level of the street ; not 
quite an " area," but too like it to be pleasant is such as to coun- 
teract any wholesome effect of the food. It is not every board- 
ing-house which condemns you to the basement for meals ; many 
have pleasant dining-rooms on the ground-floor, with " lifts " 
communicating with the kitchen, and windows opening on little 
back-yards where an attempt to combine garden and bleaching- 
ground is the only sore to the eye. There are large, grim 
houses constantly changing hands, and where sales are adver- 
tised every other season ; houses in Fifth Avenue that aim at 
looking like the " palaces " of merchant-princes ; houses kept 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 457 

more modestly on cross-streets by decayed gentlewomen ; houses 
of middle-class reputation and no pretension, where, if you do not 
mind a little "jumble-down " in the service, a little scrambling at 
meals, and a little loudness in conversation, you get a very good, 
plain dinner. Then there are showy, "fast" houses, where 
Western politicians and other well-to-do persons of precarious 
social position congregate, chiefly about election times ; of these 
the owners are generally widows fully able to " hold their own " ; 
houses of mercantile reputation where small tradesmen and their 
assistants board in closets scarcely big enough to hold a single 
bed, but dignified with the name of " hall bed-room " ; houses 
where workmen and inferior mechanics mingle with commercial 
travellers who give themselves fine-gentleman airs, and houses 
where all affectation is at last dropped and forms give way to 
rather uncouth realities. The latter are terra incognita to the 
passenger from the last Cunard steamer who has paid an extra 
five pounds for his passage on board one of the boats advertised 
not to carry steerage-passengers ; and in a review of American 
boarding-houses these dens would find no place, any more than 
the dismal tenement-houses and rookeries of Oak and Baxter and 
Leonard Streets would be compared to the elegant suites of 
apartments to be had at Stevens' Building, Broadway. Imagine 
a comparison between chambers in the Albany and a hired room 
in Whitechapel ; yet the difference between the two is less than 
that between the " down-town " abodes and the houses I have 
named above. They are very curious, uninviting holes ; a 
" liquor-saloon " at the corner, and a filthy basement dining- 
room, so dark that the gas has to be turned on an hour earlier 
than elsewhere ; irregular bed-rooms, none larger than ten feet 
square, without closets or shelves, wardrobes, or even hooks ; a 
washstand, two chairs, and a tiny, fly-specked glass is all the fur- 
niture besides the bed. The mistress seems unconscious that 
better accommodation exists, and serenely asks six dollars a week 
for this " bunk " ; yes, you may have something at five dollars, 
but not so good as this a three-cornered room : it is all she has ; 
she does not even add that she is sorry. If you discover the bed 
to have been preoccupied by uninvited and most unpleasant 
neighbors, which is almost invariably the case, she will first deny 
it, then sulkily come and look, exclaim in astonishment t the 
occurrence, and take the mattress down to the yard for a quarter 
)f an hour, after which she expects " you will have no more 
trouble." The parlor for even here there is such a room, 
though it is more a private smoking-room than anything else 



458 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [July* 

boasts a horse-hair sofa and a vase of dirty artificial flowers ; the 
wall-paper is patched and damp ; the window looks on an inner 
courtyard full of refuse, which, however, you can scarcely see 
through the dusty panes ; the dining-room has more attractions, 
were it not for the sight of the servant a slatternly, bold girl, 
barefooted, and with long, uncombed, dusty hair hanging down 
her back. The tables are long and narrow, the centre laden 
with alternate cruet-stands, plates of plain cake or fancy bread, 
and open dishes full of pickles. The food is generally good, 
abundant, and varied ; indeed, some of the superfine private es- 
tablishments " up-town " would do well to take a lesson in that 
respect from this unsavory kitchen. There are more men than 
women, and more table-boarders than inmates of the house. 
A great proportion of them are drivers of .carts, express- 
wagons, etc., and they swear about as heartily as they eat. 
This is rather habitual than significative of any particular emo- 
tion or excitement, and the forms of oath are as monotonous as^ 
they are blasphemous. Dinner, like all noonday meals in busi- 
ness places, is a very short ceremony ; and this, which to some 
Englishmen is a grievance, is in my opinion an advantage. It 
may be unwholesome and unsocial, but, having experienced the 
reverse in other boarding-houses, I can safely say that there is 
nothing more irritating than the loss of time, compensated by no 
intellectual gain, consequent on an attempt to follow the customs 
of society as regards "courses." The peculiarly American plan 
of setting all the dishes on at once (pursued in hotels and other 
public places that do not care to play at privacy) is a very ex- 
peditious and convenient one, but there are Englishmen so far 
slaves to prejudice that they object to running down to meals at 
their boarding-house, eating quickly and silently through fifteen 
minutes, and rising, irrespective of their neighbors, when they 
have done. Wherever I have listened to an attempt at conver- 
sation in a private house where "a few boarders" were taken, it 
was almost invariably a failure. 

The Fifth Avenue boarding-houses and kindred establish- 
ments in ultra-fashionable neighborhoods are often filled with 
business men in good situations and of good social standing. 
Widows with marriageable daughters or small grandchildren 
also affect them, and maiden ladies of almost any kind of 
"means." Fashionable women deficient in the home instincts 
are a great staple, and spend their leisure time in visiting their 
fellow-boarders in their rooms a habit tending to gossip, mis- 
understandings, and quarrels. Women whom circumstances 



1 885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 459 

have forced for a time into such a current will generally bewail 
the discomfort of " living in one's boxes " and the moral dis- 
advantage of having nothing to do; but the mass of boarders 
do not dislike this life, and would be quite lost without its petty 
intrigues and excitements. Some of these houses at mid-day 
seem like nunneries, as far as the absence of men is concerned, 
and the consequence is that you often find the women carelessly 
arrayed and generally apathetic ; they reserve their finery and 
their sprightliness for the six-o'clock dinner. Another draw- 
back to this style of house is the " scrappy " nature of the lunch- 
eon, as it is in every house where the male boarders only eat two 
substantial meals at home the heavy seven-o'clock breakfast of 
beefsteak, buckwheat-cakes, ham and eggs, coffee and hominy, 
and the regular six-o'clock dinner. So far we have only seen 
a glimpse of the decorous, if gossiping, households kept by for- 
lorn ladies who have seen better days, or by active middle- class 
women better adapted for the rdte ; for the former hostess can 
never forget her antecedents, and treats her boarders too much 
as guests. Indeed, though to keep boarders is as infallible and 
almost as unique a resource to the American lady in reduced 
circumstances as to go out as a governess is to her English sis- 
ter, it is on the whole rather a deplorable affair. Sometimes the 
poor gentlewoman is too sensitive, and you feel complaint to be 
impossible ; on the other hand, the coarse natures she encounters 
wound her on every side, the servants snub her, and the trades- 
men are often uncivil. Sometimes she has an aged mother to 
support; and the old lady cannot give up her traditions of ancient 
courtliness, and endeavors to entertain the inmates, or advises 
the much-badgered daughter to get such and such delicacies, all 
the nicest, earliest, unseasonable, extravagant things, which most 
of the boarders appreciate about as much as Chinese dainties or 
the "refection" which a Spanish nun prettily offers to a burly 
Anglo-Saxon pedestrian who has lost his way after a twenty- 
mile walk. Altogether, bustling, hard, practical women are 
much less embarrassing and more efficient landladies than gentle- 
women, although, of course, there are exceptions to this as to 
every other rule. 

The type of houses kept by more questionable females is a 
curious one. Wives of fraudulent bankrupts, or easy-conscienced 
widows of free manners with a fast daughter or niece, or, again, 
mothers of gambling, spendthrift sons of doubtful social station, 
are common specimens of the mistress of such establishments. 
The boarders are mostly transient, which, in such houses, pays 



460 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [July, 

decidedly best. Races and elections fill the house, and the dif- 
ference between the manners of these men and the carters of 
profane tendency is only that which the wearing' of a white 
shirt with diamond studs, and an enormous diamond " solitaire " 
on the little finger, the broadcloth coat saturated with perfume, 
and the oiled hair, naturally brings about between two men 
essentially of the same stamp. Diamonds, in America, have a 
special significance in costume ; in fact, they are a pretty correct 
standard of the social and intellectual status of the individual, 
male or female, who wears them. Boarding-house and hotel 
dinners, street-cars, certain kind of shops, and all kinds of " bars " 
are the places and circumstances that seem to suit them best. 
On the occasion of the last* presidential election, when party spirit 
ran so high in New York that rioting was expected, a Western 
senator and a business man of the Jay Gould sort did not scruple 
to come to blows over a political discussion in which material 
stakes had likewise a share. The " ladies " had left the din- 
ing-room and were sitting above in the parlor; the noise and 
scuffling betrayed what was going on, which, from previous 
" high words" uttered during the meal, had not seemed unlikely ; 
but no attempt was made to interfere and the quarrel settled 
itself, while the recollection of it, and the description given by 
eye-witnesses to the mistress, only proved good material for that 
sprightly matron to turn into a piquant anecdote. 

Boarding in the country has its peculiarities, too, and of this the 
English traveller naturally sees even less than of the system as it 
works in New York, Philadelphia, or Washington. I remember one 
house in Stamford, Connecticut, which will serve as a type of a 
well-kept domestic establishment. It stood fronting an irregular 
" square," or green, and was, though architecturally defective, a 
picturesque and attractive house. The centre with its porch of 
Ionian columns, its wide hall running through the breadth of the 
house, and its easy staircase, so different from the ladder-like 
ascents of modern cottages, showed its pre-Revolutionary age ; 
indeed, it was close upon a hundred years old a fact of which 
the rats were also witnesses. It had belonged to various fami- 
lies since its building, when its gardens stretched down to the 
Sound, and its drawing-rooms were bright with British uniforms 
and the hoops of Tory dames, and it was still the property of an 
old family, now much reduced in means, who lived in a " box " 
by the water-side and let the old mansion for its present pur- 
pose. The mistress was brisk, hard, obliging, and a capital raana- 

* That of 1880. ED. C. W. 






1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 461 

ger ; the master, who had once " run " a hotel and failed, was a 
convenient cipher, whose authority was only alluded to when his 
wife had any disagreeable communication to make to an impecu- 
nious boarder ; there were two maids and a negro cook, and 
about a dozen resident boarders, as it was winter and the house 
had been open only a few months. There was plenty of individ- 
uality among the dozen ; for instance, a prim and inquisitive 
female of the comfortable middle class, angular in face and figure, 
who fished for her neighbor's name for a fortnight in the most 
persevering and open manner, and whose conversation mostly 
turned on the new Congregational or " orthodox " ministers 
who Sunday after Sunday underwent trial at the meeting-house. 
I had read about such persons, but this was my first live speci- 
men, and, to all appearances, a perfect one. Opposite her sat at 
dinner the only time the boarders met a small, gentle, lady- 
like woman with eyes so weak as to be nearly blind : one of those 
frail creatures whom you always long to protect, while you 
admire their almost invariable fortitude ; for on such women the 
mark of self-support is plain. They battle with penury and lone- 
liness till they die of the struggle, and prosperous people look on 
approvingly and wonder how Miss So-and-so does manage so 
satisfactorily, to all appearances. This lady had a small school 
of a dozen pupils which she kept in a little room in the wing 
adjoining the dining-room, and that was her only means of sup- 
port besides the care of a little boy of three years old, whom she 
tended as only a certain kind of " old maid " can tend children. 
His parents were alive, and what the circumstances were which 
made them entrust him to one who was not even a distant rela- 
tion I never knew. Whenever her eyesight should fail entirely 
this poor lady would lose her school and her support together ; 
yet she was always cheerful, gentle, and obliging. At the other 
end of this table sat a family of successful and rather vulgar 
people, father and mother and a grown-up son and daughter. 
The women were always over-dressed, and the men never 
opened their lips without joking. Between the two ends the 
space was devoted to transient boarders, of whom a mild variety 
succeeded each other by driblets at this dead season of the year. 
Every Saturday came from New York a bass-singer engaged for 
the Episcopal church choir a professional man, but remarkably 
quiet, with whom the Congregational spinster kept up a deco- 
rous conversation which you could not call a flirtation, yet was 
evidently more of a pleasure to her than a chat with one of her 
own sex. The ministers " on trial " occasionally dined here, too, 



462 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [July, 

and on one occasion we were treated to a rather hot theological 
argument between one of them and a stray Episcopalian clergy- 
man, who certainly was not the aggressive party in the dispute. 
But the most stirring of our "casuals " was a female book-agent, 
who wore an unmistakable shirt-front, with stand-up collar, and 
a dress made in the upper parts like a coat, while she wore her 
hair cut short and parted at the side. Her manners were abrupt 
and unpleasant somewhat imperative, too and she once startled 
the waiting-maid and broke the dull monotony of the regular 
boarders' meal by exploding in something not unlike an oath as 
she sharply requested, for the third time, to be given some mus- 
tard. At a separate table by a window were established a silent 
trio, father, mother, and son, of a different style from the rest, the 
old gentleman a good specimen of the English squire polished 
and Americanized, and his wife of the cheerful type, dashed with 
a taste of stiffness which wears off as acquaintance goes on, and 
which distinguishes many American gentlewomen. There was 
only one flaw in the cuisine, and tltat was the white bread, which 
was home-made and heavy ; the brown (called " Graham " and 
made- of wheat flour) was good, and everything else, quantity, 
quality, and variety, unexceptionable, but this deficiency was 
keenly felt by people in whose homes, as a rule, the perfection 
of baking is a nine qua non. So the son sometimes smuggled 
in a loaf from the baker's, and his blushing, and dexterous 
seizure of the minute the maid was out of the room, and the des- 
perate rush across the dining-room to his place with his back to 
the kitchen-door, was a source of interest and amusement look- 
ed forward, to by the rest, who were less daring in slighting 
the home cuisine. Besides these there was a recently-married 
couple, silent and not unpleasing, who left soon after I entered 
the " family," as the household is technically called, and a few 
single men who kept shops or worked in them, whose appetite 
was enormous and their hurry no less. They were always seat- 
ed before the bell rang, and gulped down their food in ten min- 
utes, giving each other enigmatical scraps of business informa- 
tion between the mouthfuls. One was old, wiry, and white- 
haired, and kept a tobacco-stall of tiny dimensions a thorough 
specimen of the New England " merchant," as it is still the fash- 
ion to call retail shop-keepers ; another, of rougher mould and 
larger build, evidently had not remotely foreign blood in his 
veins. The presence of the old couple with the grown-up son 
was accounted for by the reason I have alluded to the difficul- 
ties and trouble attending housekeeping with bad or untrained 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 463 

servants. The old gentleman, however, never ceased to com- 
plain of the substitute ; he evidently could not reconcile himself 
to having his food pitched upon the table before him in portions, 
however abundant, and all amenities banished from the cere- 
mony of dinner, while it was also a source of discontent that he 
could never comfortably entertain a friend. But his wife had 
been driven to bay by domestic imbroglios and really needed a 
little recruiting, which only boarding-house life seemed to pro- 
mise at the moment. This couple had charming rooms, some of 
the old salons of the Tory mansion, and had overlaid the contents 
of them with so many belongings of their own mementos of 
European travel, pretty womanish knickknacks, photographs, 
ornamental stands, bronzes, etc. that the place looked like a 
ghost of home. Stamford is one of the pleasantest little towns 
possible to a lover of society and a searcher of antiquities com- 
bined. It is nearly pure New England, with a slight cross of 
New York, from which centre it is only an hour and a half by 
rail. Its two nice streets are shaded by beautiful trees and lined 
with detached houses standing back in their gardens, with an air 
of solid, old-fashioned, undisturbed gentility, very few of them 
new or showy, and all embodying the type described by Oliver 
Wendell Holmes and Mrs. Whitney. The newer portion of the 
town has excellent shops and showy houses, some of stone a 
rarity here as elsewhere, North or East and some belonging to 
new millionaires whose offices are in New York. There is the 
average population of unpleasant and forward individuals of the 
semi-political class, and the pushing population of the " stores," 
and the pompous and small element of the " military " school 
whose pretensions to that title rest on the uniform and the af- 
fectation of soldierly phraseology for common actions or divi- 
sions of time and the quiet, scholarly society that gathers in the 
houses I have mentioned. Relics of old colonial days family 
plate with crests on it, tea-sets dating from the days when tea 
was " unpatriotic " and Tories were known by their ostentatious 
indulgence in it, old books brought over from England, portraits 
)f soldiers distinguished on both sides of the struggle of the 

Levolution such are the treasures of these pleasant households. 
Even the young girls of such families are not so giddy as their 
:ity-bred sisters ; there is an air of repose and age, of remoteness 
from vulgar " jars," of indifference to public and current affairs, 
that impresses the mind both sleepily and pleasantly in these old 
houses or representatives of old houses. Only the loftiest parts 

>f current progress find entrance here ; in knowledge and appre- 



THE CHRIST-CHILD. [July* 

ciation of books, science, discoveries, the inmates are beyond 
most of their class out of New England, but of the scandal of 
clubs, the gossip of politics, the wrangle of even local affairs, 
they are ignorant. I fancy every one in town knew of a robbery 
in a grocery by night, and of the summary and rather murder- 
ous means taken to discover and track the burglars, who had 
carried off and hidden barrels of flour and sugar in a lonely 
wood well drifted with snow, before these secluded and happy 
inhabitants had any idea of the disturbance. Though my stay 
in Stamford was short and purely the result of an accident, I 
found I was almost sorry to leave the old-fashioned house and 
capital fare, the formal garden an acre in extent, with straight 
walks and box hedges cut down to six or eight inch borders, and 
the old green-house, where a gardener who had served " the 
family " in their days of prosperity now made a tolerable trade 
of his own as a florist. * 



THE CHRIST-CHILD. 

" And Jesus advanced in wisdom and grace and virtue with God and men." ST. LUKE. 

O GOLDEN Youth, life's fragrance yet 
Is flower-like bound about Thy brow ; 

Its buds against Thy cheeks are set ; 
Within Thy lips its honey now 

Lieth, wherein the bitter gall 

With drippings from the thorns shall be, 

When wearily the shade shall fall 
Of thy dark Passion over Thee. 

Still in Thee lies Thy blood unshed 

Like virgin wine within an urn ; 
Its splendors in Thy lips are red ; 

Its savors round Thy tresses burn. 

Fair Son of God ! sweet Youth divine ! 

From all men's hearts love's vine hath grown 
Its tendrils round that heart of Thine, 

With leaves and blossoms overblown. 

* To be concluded next month. 



1885.] A REVELATION OF THE CENSUS. 465 



A REVELATION OF THE CENSUS. 

I. 

LONGMAN said and that famous publisher ought to have 
known that " it was the title that sold a book." I was 
reminded of this saying- when I chanced to glance at a book, 
with the un winning and uncanny title of Figures of Hell, that 
somehow had strayed into my library often seen there, but 
never opened once because of its title. For the first time I 
recognized in the name of the author one of the most celebrated 
women of this country, and, wondering what she had to say about 
intemperance, I read a few pages and then I read the book to 
the end. 

Since Helper's Impending Crisis no unprofessional writer has 
shown a greater power of massing facts and hurling them with 
Grant-like force on the enemy than Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson. 
They first repel, then attract, then astound the reader; for, the 
first repugnance to statistics overcome, the story they tell amazes 
by its revelations and arouses the moral sense to aggressiveness 
by its lessons. 

Without quoting more than one figure in a hundred, and 
arranging them in a new order for a swift review referring to 
the book itself for the amplest statistical proofs let me present 
some of the startling facts that this writer has marshalled in 
war-like, stern array. 

II. 

The year selected ended June 30, 1881 the last year of au- 
thenticated Federal returns available at the time the book was 
written. The totals would be at least ten per cent, higher for 
the year that ends in June, 1885.* 

THE QUESTION OF QUANTITY. 

In 1 88 1 these facts were undisputable : 

Gallons. 

. We imported of different liquors ...... 7,556,603 

We manufactured of distilled spirits 69,127,206 

We manufactured of fermented liquors ..... 443,641,868 

Making in all 520,325,677 

gallons of intoxicating liquors that were imported, manufactured, 

* See note on next page. 
VOL. XLl. 30 



466 A REVELATION OF THE CENSUS. [July, 

and sold in the United States in a single year! In round num- 
bers as we were then fifty millions we consumed ten gallons 
and two-fifths of a gallon for every man, woman, and child ; or, 
reckoning families as groups of five, one gallon each and every 
week for each and every family, making three drinks a day for 
each and every family. This estimate leaves out of account 
all secretly-made or "moonlight" whiskeys and other liquors. 
Every day we drink 1,425,550 gallons 28,511,000 glasses; or 
every second we drink 330 glasses, never stopping a single 
second, night nor day, from the new year's birth to the old 
year's death. So much for quantity ; now for the cash cost of it. 

III. 

Our imported liquors retailed for $67,274,032 

Our home-made spirits retailed for 207,381,618 

Our home-made fermented liquors retailed for . . . 443,641,868 

Showing that we paid in one year for intoxicating liquors the 

vast sum of '.. .. $718,297,518 

Striking off, to make round numbers, the eighteen odd mil- 
lions, and estimating the population at fifty millions, these figures 
show that we spend for drink no less than $14 for each and every 
person in the United States, $70 for each and every family, 
$1,967,938 daily, and every second " every time the clock 
ticks, 1 ' as Mrs. Thompson puts it $22 76!* 

These figures, striking as they are, do not tell the whole 
story : they show the money-cost only of the liquor-traffic to the 
people. There are other and almost as serious consequential 
damages to be estimated in considering the gross expenses of the 
drinking habit. 

IV. 

There is an army of no less than 909,980 persons adult males 
for the greater part employed in the manufacture and sale of 
liquors in the United States. This is one to every sixty of the 
entire population one adult person to every group of twelve 
families. These men (and necessarily they are mostly able-bodied 

* The report of the United States Commissioner of Internal Revenue shows a continual in- 
crease of these figures. For example, according to the latest, that for the fiscal year ending 
June 30, 1884, the total revenue from distilled spirits amounted to $76,905,385 26, an increase 
over 1883 of $2,536,610 06. From fermented liquors the receipts for 1884 were $18,084,954 u, 
an increase over 1883 of $1,184,338 30. The total production of distilled spirits the last fiscal 
year was 75,435, 739 gallons, an increase over the production of 1883 of 1,422,431 gallons. The 
total production of fermented liquors for the fiscal year 1884 was 18,998,619 barrels, an increase 
over 1883 of 1,240,727 barrels. The number of distilleries operated during 1884 was 4,738 ; the 
number of brewers, 2,240. 



1885.] A REVELATION OF THE CENSUS. 467 

men) are taken from productive that is to say, wealth-produc- 
ing employments ; they are a tax on the workers, adding no one 
element of prosperity to the common wealth of the nation. At 
the low wage which all of them could earn they would receive 
every year of 300 days (thus allowing a large percentage for 
holidays and sick-days) the great sum of $272,994,000. Who can 
estimate the annual loss of permanent wealth that this aggregate 
of wages implies and suggests ? 

V. 

Supposing that every man employed in making and dis- 
tributing intoxicating liquors should remain a good citizen, as 
many of them are apart from their traffic, yet we cannot re- 
gard their withdrawal from the normal and wealth-producing 
industries as the most serious consequential damage done to the 
nation by the -drinking habit. There remain the more direct 
damages of crime and its cost, which include the grievous 
burden of the expensive machinery demanded for its repression 
and punishment. 

The Federal statistics show that there are in the United States 
" 600,000 persons daily incapacitated for labor by reason of liquor." 
This number includes the drunkards, the criminals, the insane, 
and the paupers who have been dragged down into the ranks of 
these classes by the direct and recognized influence of using in- 
toxicating drinks. 

At one dollar a day, in a year of 300 days, this army of 600,- 
ooo persons placed hors du travail by the drinking habit could 
have earned $180,000,000, which, added to the other totals of 
money-cost and the loss of services of the army of makers and 
sellers estimating these services on the wage-basis only 
amount to the stupendous aggregate of $1,171,291,518 per an- 
num ! 

VI. 

" This vast sum," writes Mrs. Thompson, " is $23 per capita 
for every man, woman, and child in the country. It is nearly 
equal to our entire gold, silver, and paper circulation combined. 
It would build and equip 30,000 miles of railroad nearly one- 
third as many as are'now in operation ; pay the cost of the public- 
schools for fifteen years ; erect and maintain twelve thousand 
colleges; send out and support 1,200,000 missionaries; pay the 
entire national debt in two years ; pay the entire debt of the 
country, national, State, and municipal, in less than four years ; 



468 A REVELATION OF THE CENSUS. 

construct 600 first-class ocean-steamers ; erect and maintain 3,750 
hospitals, libraries, or homes for the aged ; provide one-third of 
the people in the United States with homesteads of 160 acres 
each ; run the Post-Office Department for 34 years ; support the 
navy for 75 years; pay our foreign consular service for 1,725 
years; purchase, at seven dollars a barrel, 167,327,359 barrels 
of flour, and pay the salary of the President of the United States 
for 23,425 years ! " 

VII. 

More than two-fifths of the arrests in New York City are of 
persons " intoxicated " or persons " drunk and disorderly." Unit- 
ing the figures of these two legally-separated offences yet coming 
from the same source the total number of arrests of liquor crimi- 
nals was 28,669. (The total number of arrests for all offences 
was 69,632.) Who pays the expense of supporting two-fifths of 
the police force thus employed, and for two-fifths of the prison, 
accommodations thus rendered necessary, and for two-fifths of the 
costly machinery of justice, otherwise unneeded, that the liquor- 
traffic forces us to maintain ? The liquor manufacturers or im- 
porters, or wholesale dealers or retailers? No; the laboring 
classes and the law-abiding directors of industry. 

VIII. 

The maudlin or noisy drunkards were not the only persons 
in New York who were thus lodged in public institutions at the 
public expense because of the traffic in intoxicating drinks. No 
less than 120,683 "indigent persons " were forced to ask for lodg- 
ings at the station-house. That is to say, a number, during the 
year, that represents one-twelfth of the entire population ! 
About 58,000 were men, over 62,000 were women ! Eighty -five per 
cent, of them admitted that their poverty had come from drink. 
Who paid for the lodgings of these victims of drink ? You and I, 
reader, and the rest of the workers of New York. And how 
much? The cost of keeping up the police is $3,280,053. Two- 
fifths of it must be charged directly to the liquor-traffic. 

" The cost of the various courts," also writes Mrs. Thompson, 
" made necessary by reason of the traffic in liquors in New York 
City alone, reached the sum of two million dollars! " 

The cost of maintaining the Department of Public Charities 
and Correction is $1,262,616. " Over 90 per cent, of it was made 
necessary by reason of the traffic in liquors." 



1885.] A REVELATION OF THE CENSUS. 469 

IX. 

These figures do not tell the whole truth of the cost of the 
liquor-traffic, but such portion of the truth only as is 'forced on 
official recognition. Not every person " intoxicated " or " drunk 
and disorderly " is arrested ; not every person made homeless by 
intoxicating liquors seeks a lodging in station-houses. Nor, in 
these estimates, is any account taken of the loss to society of the 
productive services of the men and women thus lodged or im- 
prisoned. For tens of thousands of drunkards who do not seek 
the retirement that a prison grants are supported in a demoraliz- 
ing idleness by honest workers who are thus robbed of the fruits 
of their weary toil. 

x. 

Did you ever try to guess how many liquor-stores there are 
in New York City ? If they were built side by side in one street, 
and on both sides of it, that double-lined, death-dealing street would 
stretch all the way from Kingsbridge to the Battery ! There 
are fewer liquor-shops in the Sixth Avenue than in any other 
business avenue in New York ; and yet in five consecutive blocks, 
in the most respectable part of it, you can count twenty-nine 
different places where intoxicating drinks are publicly sold! 
There are over 8,000 of them in New York City. 

The statistics of character of the keepers of these shops are al- 
most as startling as the other " figures of hell " that we have quot- 
ed. No one can get a license to sell liquor unless he can " certify " 
that he has a " good moral character." If you try to find out 
what the word " sacred " means as applied to the kings of Eng- 
land from a study of their records, you are apt to believe that 
it means a person who wears a crown and has broken all the 
Commandments. A similar deductive study would lead to a 
similar result in investigating the legal meaning of " a good 
moral character " in the certificate of a New York liquor- 
seller. 

There are in New York of liquor-shops . . .. . . . 8,034 

Of their proprietors who have "served their" time \nState pri- 
sons there are . . . . ... . . 2,004 

Of their proprietors who have been confined in county prisons 

there are . ."'.' . . ~\ '' V '; . . 2,665 

Of their proprietors who have been confined in city prisons 

there are 1.769 

6,438 

Leaving only I >596 



470 A REVELATION OF THE CENSUS. [July, 

licensed dealers in intoxicating liquors who have never been in 
jail ! Yet they have each and all, these 8,034, certificates of 
" good moral character " ! " They are all honorable men ! " 

XI. 

Judge Noah Davis, who for a full quarter of a century sat on 
the bench of New York, declares as the result of his judicial ex- 
perience that he had " found three-fifths of all cases of violence to 
be directly traceable to strong drink." 

Ninety-three per cent, of the persons confined in the House of 
Industry w*ere sent there for liquor-crimes. 

In the New York hospitals for the insane, out of 286 patients 
139 were habitual drunkards, 95 moderate drinkers, and only 
three were total abstainers. 

It is sometimes argued that we should leave the liquor-traffic 
alone ; that education will cure all the evils that may come from 
its unlicensed sale. But the statistics of education and crime do 
not warrant this hope or bslief; for, as Mrs. Thompson has shown, 
" within the last 25 years our teachers have increased from 25 to 
30 per cent., and pupils attending school more than 50 per cent, 
yet crime has increased 60 per cent, about keeping pace with the 
increase of the traffic in liquors." That's what the French call a 
reply " sans replique." 

XII. 

A wider range gives the same or similar results. Federal 
statistics show that 20 per cent, of the insane in all the insane 
asylums of the United States went mad as the direct result of the 
use of intoxicating drinks, and that 35 per cent, of the remaining 
number were made insane indirectly by the use of liquors. 

The Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane tabulated its re- 
cords for 28 years. With what result ? It was shown that 
I 3Tir f the inmates had been made insane directly from the use 
of intoxicating drinks. Judge Allison estimates that four-fifths 
of the crimes committed in the United States are directly attri- 
butable " to the influence of rum. There is not one case in twen- 
ty," he says, " where a man is tried for his life, in which rum is 
not the direct or indirect cause of the murder." 
/ 

XIII. 

Foreign countries tell the same story. Two insane asylums in 
Liverpool report the first, that out of 83 cases admitted 50 



i885-l JEANNE UARC. 47 1 

were made insane by liquor ; the second, that out of 495 patients 
" 257 were known to have been made insane by drinking." In 
the Middlesex Lunatic Asylum exactly one-half were 'made in- 
sane by drinking. The tabulated reports of all the asylums of 
England and Scotland showed that " more than 20 per cent, of 
the patients were made insane by intemperance." 

Dublin found that 115 out of the 286 patients in her lunatic asy- 
lum were made insane by the use of liquor. 

St. Petersburg, where brandy is the popular liquor, gives a 
terrible report. There is one brandy-shop in the Russian capi- 
tal for every 293 persons. During five years the five chief hospi- 
tals in that city treated no less than 3,241 cases of delirium tre- 
mens ! 

Canada repeats the mournful story. " Out of 28,289 commit- 
ments to the jails for the three previous years," says an official 
report, "21,236 were committed either for drunkenness or for 
crimes perpetrated under the influence of drink." 

I objected to the title before I read Mrs. Thompson's little 
book from which I have selected my statistics, but a study of 
it shows that she was not far astray in naming it as she did. 



JEANNE D'ARC. 

FULL many a time in earth's eventful day 

A virgin's strength hath made the people free, 
A virgin's hand the tyrant dared to slay, 

A virgin's soul hath bowed'to fate's decree. 
Saved by a virgin ! runs the Jewish tale'; 

Homeric echoes chant the monody ; 
The Roman sibyl's wild, prophetic wail 

Sang of The Virgin that was yet to be. 

So in that sunny land beyond the sea, 
When savage warfare bade the folk despair, 
A maiden, dauntless as her fame is fair 

A virgin clad in heaven's panoply 
Drove the oppressor to the further shore 
And freed th' ungrateful people evermore. 



472 THE FUTURE OF FRENCH CANADA. [July, 



THE FUTURE OF FRENCH CANADA. 

" WE are Englishmen speaking the French language," said 
the late Sir George Cartier, the colleague and close personal 
friend of Sir John A. Macdonald. Sir George used this epi- 
grammatic sentence in a post-prandial speech he delivered in 
London in 1870, in which he pretended to speak for himself and 
his compatriots, the French-Canadians. It appeared afterwards 
he had made a mistake a mistake all the more surprising in a 
statesman who from his position should have been well acquaint- 
ed with the feelings and aspirations of his countrymen from 
Sarnia to Gaspe. Sir George was engaged in the Papineau re- 
bellion of 1837. He was then a young man strongly imbued with 
patriotism. When the French-Canadians obtained the rights 
for which the insurgents of 1837 had fought, Sir George grew 
more than 1'oyal to England and the British connection. He 
grew enthusiastic and struck at the independence or the annexa- 
tion idea w.herever either showed its head. It is easy to. realize, 
therefore, how, heated with champagne and breathing in an at- 
mosphere pervaded with loyalty and imperialism, he was led 'to 
make a statement which was imprudent as it was inaccurate. 
Before this he was the undisputed leader of the French-Canadian 
element in Canada ; three years later he was unmercifully beaten 
at the polls for Montreal East by an obscure young lawyer of 
the name of Jette. The crushing defeat was the French-Cana- 
dian way of punishing Sir George for his ultra-loyal speech 
and the misrepresentation it embodied. Not that French-Cana- 
dians are not well affected to the empire as things go ; only it 
must be understood they are well affected as French-Canadians. 
They look upon England* as a country which has dealt justly by 
them and fulfilled its treaty obligations to a very great extent, as 
much, however, because of their contiguity to the United States 
and fear of France as because of any distressing eagerness Eng- 
land has for carrying out the spirit of treaties generally. What 
they are really loyal to is Canada. They call themselves Cana- 
dians, and they call the English-speaking folk " old-country peo- 
ple," though they may be, as some of them have been, settled 
in the country for generations. Strangely enough, the British 
accept the title with pleasure, and it is not uncommon to hear 
an English-speaking member complain in the federal Parliament 



1885.] THE FUTURE OF FRENCH CANADA. 473 

at Ottawa of the preference shown " Canadians " over " old- 
country people " in the matter of appointments. The distinction 
between the two elements composing Canada's population is thus 
recognized, and is as broad as a difference in race, religion, and 
language can make it. 

The question which, owing to recent events and the growth 
of certain circumstances, must soon be considered is, How long 
can such a state of things continue before a collision shall take 
place or a political separation ? No intelligent person who has 
given the subject any thought commensurate with its importance 
can imagine for a moment that two races, so equal in pride and 
worth, who do not intermarry can go on ever without a rupture. 
Hopes were at one period entertained by British statesmen that 
if what they were pleased to think the aggressive and superior 
Anglo-Saxon did not in time absorb or annihilate the French 
settlers of Canada until lately not considered formidable in their 
numbers the climate would do the work almost as effectively. 
For how, they asked, could a race of men from sunny France 
prosper and multiply in a region remarkable for its long and 
severe winter? Vain hopes! The French of Canada have, in a 
century and a quarter, increased from 60,000 to 2,000,000 without 
aid from emigration ; they are still increasing, and, if they con 
tinue to increase in a like ratio, will in the year 1899 have reached 
the figure of 5,000,000. It is a fact no longer questioned that 
the French are driving the British from Canada and extending 
themselves south and east. They were invading the Northwest 
when the Canada Pacific Railroad project was launched all too' 
suddenly to allow of them to seize a firm hold of the soil. It is this 
project, in fact, which alarmed the French half-breeds and caused 
two insurrections. Every screech of the railroad-engine sent 
terror to their souls. The company's cars brought settlers in 
thousands to the country they had looked upon as their own. 
They read their doom in every pamphlet scattered broadcast by 
the company's agents praising the very lands upon which they 
were settled, with a view to enhancing their value. They saw 
the establishment of Orange lodges with dismay, for they had 
heard of the terrible order and knew the system that fostered 
it never spared half-breeds or native races. The French from 
Quebec ceased coming amongst them and left them to their fate, 
which of course meant annihilation, as the British never absorb. 
Were it not for the railroad the French would have settled and 
occupied the Northwest so silently as not to create alarm, and a 
future French nation would grow up on this continent bounded 



474 THE FUTURE OF FRENCH CANADA. [July, 

on the west by the Rocky Mountains, on the east by the Atlantic 
Ocean, and on the south by Ontario, as a state in the American 
Republic. Singularly enough, it was the strong Canadian ele- 
ment in the Ottawa Parliament enabled Sir John A. Macdonald, 
the astute Conservative leader, to carry out his Pacific Railroad 
policy a policy that will circumscribe the bounds of the Franco- 
American nation now growing under the eyes of politicians who 
cannot see. 

In order to realize the extraordinary growth of the French 
in Canada it is necessary to go somewhat into figures. When 
Louisburg fell into the hands of the British in 1758 their num- 
bers were but 60,000 : they are now little short of a million and a 
half in Canada alone. This great natural increase in population 
in so short a period will cease to excite astonishment when it 
is borne in mind that the average French-Canadian family is 
composed of nine and that families of from twelve to eighteen 
are not uncommon. There has been no French immigration to 
Lower Canada worth speaking of since the conquest by England, 
but there has, on the other hand, been a steady stream of emigra- 
tion to the United States, and such distinguished French-Cana- 
dian advocates of repatriation as Charles Thibault, Senator Tru- 
del, and J. A. Chapleau assert there are in the Eastern States alone 
six hundred thousand French-Canadians or their immediate de- 
scendants. The scarcity of French names may tend to throw 
discredit on this statement, but when we remember how names 
are Anglicized or modified among us every day French, Irish, 
and German how Schmidt is changed to Smith, Mahoney and 
Callahan to Mahone and Calhoun, by a slight alteration, while 
Lenoir and Leblanc become Black and White by translation, we 
shall have to treat it with more respect. In several of the 
States are settlements whose residents have French features 
and characteristics to this day, though all trace of the French 
language is lost. It is, therefore, pretty safe to assume that the 
60,000 Frenchmen of 1758 have left descendants who number 
2,000,000, and that the 1,500,000 of them in Canada, if nothing 
extraordinary happens and if they transmit to their children the 
grand moral qualities and physical characteristics received from 
their ancestors, will in the year of our Lord 2000 have reached 
25,000,000. When in 1758 the French-Canadians numbered 60,000, 
the British colonies which a few years later christened themselves 
the United States had a population of about 2,500,000 Cauca- 
sians. Now, if this number increased in the same proportion as 
the French, and if there had been no immigration from Europe, 



1 885.] THE FUTURE OF FRENCH CANADA. 475 

our population at the present time would be 85,000,000. If, on 
the other hand, the French-Canadians had been more American 
and therefore more " progressive," their population would not 
up to this have reached more than half a million. 

That the French-Canadians are increasing more rapidly in 
proportion than their fellow-subjects of British or Irish descent 
is manifest from the census returns of 1881. They are crowd- 
ing the English-speaking people out in all directions. They are 
spreading themselves through all the Provinces of the Confedera- 
tion, and the result is seen in their parliamentary and municipal 
representation. Thus the corporation of Montreal twenty years 
ago was composed of twenty-seven members, of whom twelve 
were French and fifteen British, while to-day the former have a 
representation of eighteen out of a membership of thirty. They 
return three members to the Ottawa Parliament from the mari- 
time provinces, and expect to return four at the next general 
election, though in 1878 they sent only one. It was Lord 
Sydenham, I think, who, as governor-general of Canada, origi- 
nally set apart what are known as the Eastern Townships in the 
Province of Quebec to be settled exclusively by British, or those 
of British blood and language. And settled by them they were 
in the counties of Brome, Huntingdon, and Shefford. But they 
have lately been crowded out by the prolific French ; they have 
gone either to the United States or Ontario, and the Eastern 
Townships know them no more. The Irish-Catholic element of 
Montreal was enumerated as 35,000 in 1871 ; in 1881 it had 
dwindled to 27,000, and the British had decreased in a like ratio. 
They are invading and settling the Ontario counties bordering 
on Quebec, such as Essex, Carlton, Renfrew, Prescott, Cornwall, 
and Glengarry. The island of Prince Edward contained about 
two hundred and fifty French at the conquest; they are now 
between eleven and twelve thousand. In Ontario there are at 
this time (April, 1885) 150,000 French ; in Nova Scotia, home of 
the Acadians, 45,000 ; in New Brunswick, 60,000 ; and in other 
provinces and territories, 25,000 which, added to the 1,200,000 in 
Quebec, make 1,490,000, or a million and a half in round num- 
bers. The fact is, the Dominion of Canada is silently but surely 
undergoing a process of Gallicizing which is only now beginning 
to attract attention. The municipalities are changing the names 
of streets and localities from English to French and taking such 
action generally as indicates to the British that they must go. 
The note of alarm at this spread of French power and influ- 
ence is sounded now and then by such able journals as the To- 



476 THE FUTURE OF FRENCH CANADA. [July, 

ronto Globe and Hamilton Times, but what can be done to pre- 
vent it? A law cannot very well be enacted prohibiting the 
French from having large families or increasing those of the 
British. And in the matter of legislation the French can hold 
their own. They have three representatives in the Ottawa 
cabinet of their race and two others under their immediate con- 
trol, and in Parliament they hold the balance of power. While 
the pro-British and ultra- Protestant journals grind their teeth 
at the treaty which allowed the French " their language, their 
religion, and their laws," the French themselves move serenely 
on in the expectation that in the near future they will form an 
independent nation, as free from the control of the pagans of 
Paris as from the imperialists of London. 

The growing power and importance of the French in Canada 
is the cause of the annexation feeling now taking root in Ontario 
and Nova Scotia. It is felt by all sections of Canadians that the 
connection with England must be severed, but the dread the 
French entertain towards annexation and the English towards 
independence prevents the sundering of the fragile tie. The 
French feel that annexation would make of their province an- 
other Louisiana, and the British that independence would place 
them at the mercy of the ever-increasing French, strengthened 
perhaps by an immigration from France. The French can afford 
to wait. Their present condition is almost as favorable to* their 
development as independence. The enemies of the French- 
Canadians and their bitterest enemies are in Ontario pretend 
to regard them as an illiterate people speaking a barbarous 
patois, living from hand to mouth, led and kept in ignorance by 
their priests. If these things were true of them, and if one who 
admired them could still say they were, after all, the happiest 
people on the earth's surface, what would it matter how little 
they knew, what they ate and drank, or how they were led ? 
While knowing these things are not true, I believe they are at 
least among the happiest people in the world, as they are un- 
doubtedly the most moral. Except the changes effected by their 
environments and that they are better educated, they are the 
same as were their Norman and Breton ancestors of three cen- 
turies ago as brave, as religious, as simple, as industrious, and as 
trusting in God. In such cities as Montreal and Quebec they 
have the vices inherent to cities, but in the rural districts, on the 
banks of the St. Lawrence, the Gatineau, St. Maurice, and the 
Richelieu, vice is unknown. As for work, no mortal works lon- 
ger or harder than the French-Canadian. Few of their farms 



1885.] THE FUTURE OF FRENCH CANADA. 477 

are mortgaged ; their diet is frugal but wholesome ; and they 
have handsome churches all over the country, which they have 
erected themselves to the glory of God. I boarded with a 
wealthy farmer near St. Mark's, on the Richelieu River, some 
few years ago, who is a good type of the race. He had nine 
children, mostly grown up, all of whom worked, in one way or 
the other, in the house or around his two- hundred-acre farm. 
They were the most joyous creatures living and the most pious. 
The old Breton songs were sung in that house in season, and the 
Rosary was said by the assembled family, including servants, in 
season. The daughters spoke the pure French they had learned 
in old Villa Marie, Montreal, and played old Norman airs on 
the piano. They all went to Mass in the huge family wagon 
on Sundays and holy days, and all belonged to the Sodality of 
the Blessed Virgin. It is possible the young men might have 
spent their time to more advantage attending philosophical 
lectures on evolution, or the young women at . sewing-circles 
at which woman's-rights matters are intelligently discussed ; but 
as they believed in a future life with its rewards and punish- 
ments, their conduct was at least rational and was certainly 
consistent. Men of observation like Joaquin Miller, who have 
taken some trouble to study the French-Canadians, are enchant- 
ed with them and their country. The morals of a people, say 
the scientists, have a good deal to do with their personal appear- 
ance ; and if this be so, seeing the young women of Quebec are 
admitted to be the most beautiful on this continent, and that 
Quebec is the most purely French city on the continent, their 
morals cannot be bad. As regards the patois they speak, it is 
only called so by those who take their French from Ollendorff 
and pronounce it a r Anglais. Visitors from France admit that 
their beautiful language has lost nothing on the banks of the St. 
Lawrence ; nay, that it has even grown in literary vigor, as is 
proved by the writings of Garneau, Bourinot, Frechette, Benja- 
min Sultz, and a dozen others writings given to the world by 
French-Canadians, while British-America has not yet furnished a 
single author of eminence. The French of La Minerve, of Le 
Canadien, and of La Patrie is just as pure as the French of La 
Rtpublique Fran$aise, while the denizens of the stately mansions 
on St. Denis Street, Montreal, speak the language of Corneille 
and Racine as correctly and as musically as the dwellers in 
the Faubourg St. Germain themselves. The brightest poet in 
Canada is the French-Canadian Frechette, the greatest orator 
the French-Canadian J. A. Chapleau. The French-Canadians 



478 THE FUTURE OF FRENCH CANADA. [July, 

have a chartered university of their own, and numerous schools 
and colleges where the higher branches are taught ; and, though 
in some respects they are behind, in others they are far in ad- 
vance of their fellow-subjects of British origin. They undoubt- 
edly surpass them in literature and arts, though behind them in 
technical education. The French priests of Quebec, especially 
in the rural districts, are what the French priests of Brittany 
were two hundred years ago, and are to-day the fathers of their 
people. Most of them belong to the old families of the province. 
There are few among them who cannot speak three or more lan- 
guages well. They are all gentlemen of refinement and educa- 
tion. It must be confessed they are not " fashionable " clergy- 
men, as well as that their clothes have a provincial, perhaps a 
rustic, cut ; but they seem to satisfy their people, who love and 
honor them. It is also true some of them do now and then take 
a stand in politics. When this is the case, however, it is Vol- 
taire and Rousseau they are fighting in the shape of young 
sprigs of politicians from Montreal who have visited France 
and brought back with them the scepticism of Paris. Naturally 
enough the priests do not like this. It would be strange if they 
did, and stranger still if, as Catholic clergymen, they neglected to 
oppose the men who mix religion with politics. The life of the 
French-Canadian priest is not an easy one. It does not admit of 
anything like prolonged rest. The parishes are often a hundred 
square miles in extent, and they have to celebrate Mass in places 
thirty miles apart in one day. They have to work like the people, 
from whom, in the jargon of the philosophers, they are evolved. 
The close commercial relations that have sprung up between 
France and Canada within the past decade are significant and 
may bear political fruit in the near future. The Hon. Mr. Chap- 
leau, Minister of the Interior, and Louis Senecal, an enterprising 
Montreal merchant and speculator, are to be credited for their 
exertions in this direction. They, with the aid of French capi- 
. talists, have established a branch of the Credit Foncier in Canada 
from which farmers and small merchants may borrow money on 
easier terms than they previously obtained. It is also through 
the efforts of those two gentlemen a line of steamers to run be- 
tween Montreal and Havre has been subsidized by both the 
French and Canadian governments. When Quebec Province 
requires a loan in these days it is to Paris her financiers apply, and 
not, as formerly, to London. In fact, many millions of French 
money have been invested in Quebec since the rapprochement be- 
tween mother and daughter took place a dozen years ago. 






1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 479 

French-Canadian society is, on the whole, in a healthy con- 
dition. Its leaders have the wit and culture of their ancestors 
before the dry rot of a profligate court and the teachings of the 
Encyclopedists corrupted them and brought about that revolu- 
tion in which France is still struggling. All the signs of the 
times point to an independent French state in the near future 
having the noble St. Lawrence Rjver for its largest commercial 
artery and Montreal for its capital. 



FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 

IN the article under this head in the June number of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD it was shown that true liberty is founded upon 
religion and the Gospel ; that the Catholic Church has from the 
beginning of her great and exalted career, by her fathers, doc- 
tors, theologians, and prelates, maintained the rights of con- 
science, and has been the champion of religious and civil liber- 
ty ; and that the reign of Mary, Queen of England, called by 
Protestants " Bloody Mary," when correctly and fairly viewed, 
contrasts favorably with the reigns of Protestant sovereigns of 
England, such as Henry VIII., Elizabeth, James I., and Charles 
I. We will now proceed to show that there is nothing in the 
true history of the Spanish Inquisition and of the massacre of 
St. Bartholomew's Day to refute or weaken the claim of that 
church as the champion of human liberty, and that the history of 
the church in this country sustains the claim. 

As to the Spanish Inquisition, we have no hesitation in say- 
ing that all Catholics unite in condemning it. Catholic historians, 
theologians, and commentators have denounced it. Popes have 
struggled against it, have mitigated its severities, and extended 
refuge to those flying from its penalties. 

It must be acknowledged that intense prejudice is arrayed 
against the very word inquisition, owing to the biassed history of 
Llorente- and to the zeal and hatred engendered by sectarian 
controversy. And yet there is nothing odious in the word itself. 
In its proper signification inquisition means inquiry, and nothing 
more. By overcoming traditional and sectarian prejudice one 
great obstacle to a proper understanding of the subject is re- 
moved. Johnson's definition of inquisition is, " a judicial inquiry." 
There never has been, and is not now, a well-regulated civil gov- 



480 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [July, 

ernment in the world without an inquisition, or rather a multi- 
tude of inquisitions. It exists in all countries, including England 
and America, the two which are most founded on constitutional 
liberty. It exists in all the Protestant churches of the past and 
present day. There is not a government in which there does 
not exist an inquisition or judicial inquiry into offences against 
the laws of the land, against good morals and religion, and 
against the safety of the nation. There is not a church without 
its inquisition to inquire into and punish offences against the laws 
and safety of the church. Every Protestant church has, as a 
part of its organization, a tribunal or inquisition to inquire into 
not merely misconduct generally by its ministers and members, 
but heresy itself (which was the leading subject inquired into 
and punished by the Spanish Inquisition) is the most common 
offence inquired into, and for which its ministers are tried and 
punished by the Protestant inquisitions of- our day. Heresy was 
also an offence against the civil laws of Spain, and the Spanish 
Inquisition was the court that had jurisdiction over it. Other 
offences over which the Spanish Inquisition had jurisdiction were 
the practice of magic, sorcery, soothsaying, blasphemy, poly- 
gamy, sodomy, disturbing religious congregations in church or 
at service, insulting the clergy, and non-observance of the Lord's 
day. There is scarcely one of these that is not now punishable 
under the laws of civilized nations, including our own. Trials and 
punishments for witchcraft were common among the Puritans of 
New England, and might take place to-day in any of our States or 
cities under the head of fraud. There are special statutes against 
most of these offences in every State. The grand jury is not only 
the judicial tribunal charged with the duty of inquiring into these 
offences, but this body also bears the very name, " the grand in- 
quest" or grand inquisition, of each county. The oath administered 
to grand jurors requires them to make inquisition into all offences 
committed against the laws. Nothing is more common in our 
day than prosecutions for bigamy, and almost the entire popula- 
tion of one of our national Territories are under the ban of the 
laws against polygamy ; and this offence is about to be provided 
against by an amendment to the Constitution. Prosecutions and 
punishments for breaking the Sabbath day are of familiar occur- 
rence amongst us. But, further, our statutes have created special 
corporate bodies which are nothing more nor less than special 
inquisitions to make inquiry into and bring to punishment of- 
fences against morals and religion. Of these I will only mention 
a few in our boasted metropolis of wealth, enlightenment, and 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 481 

liberty, the city of New York, such, for instance, as the Society 
for the Prevention of Crime, under the leadership of Mr. Corn- 
stock ; the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 
under the presidency of Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry ; and the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, under the direction of 
Mr. Bergh. Any citizen is liable to arrest on the spot, without 
notice or warrant, by a member or officer of these societies. We 
must approve of their objects. But still they possess and exer- 
cise inquisitorial powers. The inquisitions now existing in our 
model republic differ from the Spanish Inquisition only in the 
details, the different offences punished (many, however, being the 
same), and in the modes of procedure and the nature of the pun- 
ishments. 

The Spanish Inquisition owes its origin to King Ferdinand, of 
Spain, and to the supposed necessities of the country and the 
throne after the conquest of Granada and the Moors. He was 
actuated more by human and political policy than by zeal for 
religion. Queen Isabella, a far more zealous Catholic than her 
husband, was reluctantly induced to sanction it, and all histo- 
rians concur in according to her the highest and purest mo- 
tives. In order to understand the .circumstances and motives 
which led to its creation, it is necessary to glance at the position 
of affairs in Spain at that time. Under the united reign of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella a struggle of eight centuries by the Spanish 
nation to rescue their country from the Mahometans became 
finally successful and the empire was consolidated. People of all 
nationalities and of all creeds sympathize with the brave strug- 
gles of the Spanish natioa through so many centuries for the 
accomplishment of this glorious result a result intimately con- 
nected with the ensuing still more glorious event the discovery 
of America. Still, the Moorish population to a great extent 
remained. For centuries, too, the Jews had been accumulating 
in numbers and in wealth. The country was divided in popu- 
lation between Spaniards, Moors, and Jews. The country was 
still more divided politically and religiously by the hostility 
of the Moors and the Jews against the Spanish rule and faith. 
Forbearance and mildness were inapplicable to such a case : 
such a policy would only have weakened the Spanish power, 
now for the first time united and cemented ; it would have 
strengthened the enemies of Spain, and thus dissipated the fruits 
of that long struggle for national existence and union which 
had just been crowned with success. The position of things 
was somewhat similar to the position of the American Union 
VOL. XLI. 31 



482 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [July, 

towards the close of the late civil war, when the American 
government thought it necessary, in order to preserve and main- 
tain the Union and preserve the fruits of successful warfare, to 
adopt measures savoring of cruelty measures of confiscation* 
disfranchisement, iron-clad oaths, and death even, against even 
our own countrymen, for political opinions maintained by overt 
acts or words ; and the courts-martial were then the inquisitions 
of our day and country. The Catholic faith was the strongest 
bond of union among Spaniards ; it also united the Spanish 
population to their sovereigns. It was traditionally and practi- 
cally interwoven with the whole framework of the Spanish so- 
cial and political system. It was the most potent and at the 
same time the dearest interest of the Spanish nation and people. 
That the political and religious interests of Spain were fearfully 
threatened by the disaffection and machinations of the Moors 
and the Jews cannot be denied or doubted. These two races 
were justly suspected of desiring to transfer their allegiance 
from the king of Spain to the king of Barbary or the Grand 
Turk. Had their plottings been solely directed against the 
political state it might seem that political measures alone should 
have been resorted to. But their hostility was equally aimed 
against the Spanish religion and in favor of securing a triumph 
of Mahometanism over Christianity and a reversal of the result 
of that protracted and glorious struggle just accomplished in the 
ascendency of the Spanish polity and Christianity. The design 
of the Spanish Inquisition was conceived in the fertile brain of 
Ferdinand as a means of preserving the Catholic faith in Spain, 
and perpetuating the integrity of his kingdom, by excluding 
every influence and element not Catholic and Spanish. It was 
not originated by pope, bishop, or priest. In this sense it cer- 
tainly was a measure of self-preservation, or we might call it 
a measure of defensive aggression. It was an agency of the 
Spanish government, not of the church. It was a royal and 
political institution, not an ecclesiastical one. The king nomi- 
nated the inquisitors, both lay and clerical. He dismissed them 
at; his pleasure. They derived jurisdiction as a court over his 
subjects from the king alone, and all the results flowing from 
fines, penalties, and confiscations went into the royal treasury. 
It is true that when Isabella importuned Pope Sixtus IV., repre- 
senting to him and no doubt she was convinced that such was 
the case that its erection was necessary for the preservation 
of order in her kingdom, that pontiff consented to its establish- 
ment. It might have been established in Spain without his 

' 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 483 

sanction but for the fact that ecclesiastics were needed as 
judges of ecclesiastical and religious and moral questions, and 
especially to define what constituted heresy, which was then an 
offence against the laws of Spain ; and though the ecclesiastics 
selected were Spanish subjects, it was necessary to obtain the 
sanction of the pope, their spiritual superior, before they could 
act in that capacity. The pope, believing the apprehensions of 
Isabella to be well founded, gave his consent. At that time the 
Inquisition had not been tested in Spain, and the pope could 
not foresee the abuses to which it might be carried nor the un- 
due severities which it afterwards practised. From his subse- 
quent course against the Inquisition it is evident that had he 
foreseen these abuses and cruelties, he would have condemned 
the proposition. It is true that one of the effects of the Inqui- 
sition was to secure to a great extent the objects aimed at by 
Ferdinand the repression of Mahometanism and Judaism in 
Spain and the consolidation of the united empire of Castile and 
Aragon. But neither this end nor any other, however just and 
commendable, could, in the judgment of that very pope and of 
his successors, nor upon general principles of Catholic moral law, 
justify the use of such unjust means. . 

That cruelties were practised by the Spanish Inquisition can- 
not be denied ; but the number and character of them have been 
greatly exaggerated and misrepresented by Llorente, the most 
>opular historian of the Inquisition. This man was a degraded 
>riest, dismissed from the Board of the Inquisition, of which he 
lad been secretary. Joseph Bonaparte, the then newly-imposed 
ring of Spain, desired to blacken the character of the dynasty 
h he had, by the usurpations and conquests of his brother, 
iisplaced, and for this purpose selected the Spanish Inquisition 
is the institution or policy in respect to which that dynasty was 
lost vulnerable. This was done for his own selfish and political 
mrposes. He found a willing instrument in the fallen priest 
..lorente, who performed the task assigned him by his new 
laster with alacrity and zeal from motives of revenge and 
self-interest. His account is utterly untrustworthy. One clear 
instance of deliberate untruthfulness is sufficient to discredit 
lis whole book. For instance, he quotes the historian Mariana 
is his authority for the assertion that two thousand per- 
ms were put to death in one year in the dioceses alone of 
Seville and Cadiz. This is a deliberate falsification of history. 
Mariana makes no such statement. What he states is that the 
number of victims in all Spain during the entire administration 



484 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [July, 

of Torquemada, a period of fifteen years, was two thousand. 
This is quite a different story from two thousand in one year. 
To Llorente may be applied the maxim of law relating to the 
credibility of witnesses, Falsum in uno, fatsum in otnnibus. If the 
same proportionate reduction or correction is made in his work, 
then the Spanish Inquisition, though bad enough, will have far 
less to answer for to history and to posterity. 

The royal and political character of the Spanish Inquisition 
is affirmed by Voltaire, De Maistre, and Ranke. It was also 
worked in the interests of the political state. Not only Ma- 
hometans and Jews were subjected to its rigors, but also Ca- 
tholics, even priests and bishops, were amongst its victims. We 
will cite one illustrious instance of this. After the convening 
of the Council of Trent Bartholomew Caranza, Archbishop of 
Toledo, was arrested by the Inquisition on a charge of heresy ; 
neither the intervention of the 'pope, Pius IV., nor the remon- 
strance of the council itself, of which the archbishop was a mem- 
ber, could secure his release from prison. The pope who gave 
his consent to Isabella for the erection of the Spanish Inquisition, 
Sixtus IV., the very next year afterwards condemned and re- 
buked its cruelties. Prescott himself informs us that the pope 
issued a bull against the inquisitors, rebuking their intemperate 
zeal and threatening them with deprivation. Archbishop Gib- 
bons quotes from a letter of the same pope, addressed to Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella, these words : that " mercy towards the guilty 
was more pleasing to God than the severity they were using." 
The same pope struggled to eradicate the evil : he offered an 
asylum at Rome for refugees from the Inquisition, to the num- 
ber of four hundred and fifty in two years ; in other cases he 
censured and excommunicated the inquisitor whom he could 
not reach in any other way ; he protected the children of those 
whose property was confiscated to the crown ; he struggled 
against the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition into Naples 
and Milan, which then belonged to Spain ; encouraged the peo- 
ple there to resist its introduction, and succeeded in preventing 
it. All Catholic writers condemn the Spanish Inquisition. One 
example out of many we take from the pages of Archbishop 
Gibbons' Faith of our Fathers, one of the most popular Catholic 
books published in our day. " To sum up," writes the arch- 
bishop, " I have endeavored to show that the church disavows 
all responsibility for the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition, be- 
cause oppression forms no part of her creed ; that these atrocities 
have been grossly exaggerated ; that the Inquisition was a politi- 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 485 

cal tribunal ; that Catholic prelates were amenable to its sentence 
as well as Moors and Jews ; and that the pope denounced and 
labored hard to abolish its sanguinary features." 

Another instance of the opinion entertained of the Spanish 
Inquisition in the best Catholic circles now occurs to the me- 
mory of the writer. It is an interesting incident in the history of 
Lord Baltimore and the Maryland colony. While conferring with 
King Charles as to the selection of a name for his colony, and 
when it was suggested to select a name in compliment to Queen 
Henrietta Maria, the king suggested the name Mariana. " No," 
said Lord Baltimore, " I object to that name, because it was the 
name of an historian who wrote a book in favor of the Spanish 
Inquisition.". Lord Baltimore then suggested the name of Mary- 
land. 

From Ranke, an eminent Protestant writer, a standard au- 
thority among Protestants on ecclesiastical history, we quote the 
following passages taken from his work, The Ottoman and Spanish 
Empires. 

"In the first place," Ranke writes, "the inquisitors were royal officers. 
The king had the right of appointing and dismissing them. . . . The 
courts of the Inquisition were subject, like other magistracies, to royal 
visitors. 'Do you not know,' said the king (to Ximenes), ' that if this 
tribunal possesses jurisdiction, it is from the king it derives it ? ' 

" In the second place, all the profit of the confiscations by this court 
accrued to the king. These were carried out in a very unsparing man- 
ner. Though the fueros (privileges) of Aragon forbade the king to con- 
fiscate the property of his convicted subjects, he seemed himself exalted 
above the law in matters -pertaining to this court. . . . The proceeds of 
these confiscations formed a sort of regular income for the royal exchequer. 
It was even believed, and asserted from the beginning, that the kings had 
been moved to establish this tribunal more by their hankering after the 
wealth it confiscated than by motives of piety. 

" In the t*hird place, it was the Inquisition, and the Inquisition alone, 
that completely shut out extraneous interference with the state. The 
sovereign had now at his disposal a tribunal from which no grandee, no 
archbishop, could withdraw himself. As Charles knew no other means 
of bringing certain punishment on the bishops who had taken part in the 
insurrection of the communidades (or communes who were struggling for 
their rights and liberties), he chose to have them judged by the Inquisi- 
tion. 

"It was in spirit and tendency a political institution. The pope had an 
interest in thwarting it, and did so ; but the king had an interest in con- 
stantly upholding it." 

So much for the testimony of Ranke. 

Thus it is clearly seen that the voice of Catholic and Protes- 



486 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [July, 

tant historians of rank unite in exculpating the Catholic Church. 
Furthermore, they give her the credit of finally destroying the 
Spanish Inquisition. 

The next subject we deal with is the Massacre of St. Bartho- 
lomew's Day, August 24, 1 572, in Paris and other cities of France, 
by which the French Protestants, or Huguenots, were destroyed 
on an order issued by the king. Undoubtedly in this bloody 
tragedy a great crime was committed. This, too, was not the 
act of the Catholic Church, as generally alleged by Protestants, 
but the act of a French king, done suddenly and without the 
knowledge of the pope or of his legate at Paris. While the church 
has been accused of sanctioning it and of rejoicing over it, a 
proper investigation will show that she did nothing of this kind. 
Even viewed as a political or secular measure, many historians of 
various nations and different creeds mention numerous circum- 
stances palliating the deed. There are not wanting strong his- 
torical grounds for the view that, although it was cruel, san- 
guinary, and unjust, it was, in part at least, a measure of self- 
defence on the part of the king, who prevented his own assassina- 
tion and the massacre of his family by ordering the massacre of 
his intended assassins. 

The Calvinists of France, not content with the peaceful and 
free exercise of their religious worship in a Catholic land, or- 
ganized themselves into a great and aggressive political party. 
They found a powerful leader in the Prince of Conde, the cele- 
brated Admiral Coligni d'Andelot. They became so powerful as 
to form an imperium in imperio, and waged open war on the 
Catholic faith and Church and on the government of France. 
For years they destroyed the Catholic churches and raised sedi- 
tions throughout France ; but Languedoc, Guyenne, Poitou, and 
Saintonge were the principal theatres of their excesses. Not 
only were churches destroyed, but abbeys, hospitals, and seats of 
learning, piety, and charity, and the religious inmates sometimes 
massacred. They resorted to plunder, to fire, to the sword, and 
to massacre. They seized whole cities and districts, destroying 
churches, breaking images and sacred relics, and killing priests, 
nuns, and citizens. In some instances they collected the public 
revenue in the districts they had seized. More than two thou- 
sand Catholics were destroyed at one time. They treasonably 
plotted the ruin of their country by appealing to the aid of 
foreign and hostile princes. In 1562, ten years before the Mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, the Huguenots made a treaty 
with Queen Elizabeth, of England, and, in consequence of it, 






1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTJCE. 487 

delivered up to her the town of Havre, the key of the v kingdom 
of France. It was with difficulty that a Catholic king could 
retain the throne. In 1572 Charles IX. was King of France. 
But he was a feeble man ; he was king only in name ; his mother, 
Catherine de Medicis, was the real ruler of France. At this time 
the disturbances took the form of a conflict between the houses 
of Guise and Conde. It was a part of the Huguenot scheme to 
dethrone Charles IX., of the family of Guise, and elevate the 
Prince of Conde to the throne. It is an unquestioned historical 
fact that the Huguenots were uttering violent threats. Catherine 
de Medicis went to her son, the king, on the night of the 23d of 
August, 1572, and announced to him that a plot of the Huguenots 
had been discovered to massacre the Catholics, and that the plot 
was on the point of being executed. Appealing to his fears and 
his instinct of self-defence, she persuaded him to issue an order at 
once for the immediate massacre of the Huguenots. The fatal 
order was given, the Matin bell of St. Germain tolled the signal, 
and the order was executed on the 24th, which happened to 
be St. Bartholomew's day. 

It has always been claimed by the Catholics that in the mas- 
sacre of the Huguenots their own massacre, plotted by the 
Huguenots and on the point of execution, was anticipated and 
prevented, and that the measure was one of self-defence. Neither 
Charles nor Catherine had ever shown any great zeal for the 
Catholic faith. The Huguenots, to them, were not only a sect 
of religionists, but also a political party plotting the king's de- 
struction. 

The king's mother, an unscrupulous woman, sent envoys 
immediately in the king's name to the several courts of Europe 
(no such deception could be practised in our day of the electric 
telegraph and the marine cable) with a distorted message that 
the king and royal family had barely escaped from- a horrible 
plot to assassinate them and the leading Catholics of France. No 
allusion was made to the indiscriminate massacre of the Hugue- 
nots ; but the message was that on that memorable night, by the 
destruction of a few seditious men, the king had been delivered 
from immediate danger of death and the realm from the per- 
petual danger of civil war. 

The pope, Gregory XIII., had for years been aware of the 
distracted condition of France, and fears for the safety of the 
reigning Catholic prince (though himself not a St. Louis) were 
constantly entertained. A hurried message was also sent to the 
pope that a murderous attempt had been made on the lives of 



488 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [July, 

the king and of his family, and that they had been delivered from 
the hands of the Huguenots, and that the intended assassins had 
been punished. On receiving the deceptive message, having 
before his mind only the information of the preservation of the 
life of a Catholic king of France from the hands of his enemies, 
the pope went immediately to St. Peter's and returned public 
thanks to God by a solemn Te Deum. All historians of fairness, 
without distinction of creed, accord to Gregory XIII. entire 
exculpation. We will quote but one Protestant authority on this 
point, among many. 

In the North British Review of June, 1863, will be found this 
passage : " The See of Rome was imperatively called upon for 
immediate action before the true facts of the case could by any 
possibility have been known, if, indeed, they were not designedly 
concealed." 

We are also informed by the Protestant historian Sismondi 
that the pfope's nuncio at Paris was purposely kept in ignorance 
of the designs of the king and his mother. Ranke, the Protes- 
tant historian already quoted, informs us that the pope, on 
learning the real facts, sent a legate to Paris, but that Catherine 
and Charles suddenly left Paris, rib doubt to avoid the rebuke of 
the messenger of the Vicar of Christ. No author has ever ac- 
cused the bishops or clergy of France of complicity in this 
heinous crime. But in the midst of the massacre the bishops 
and priests exerted their best efforts to arrest the carnage and 
in protecting the lives of the fugitives. The house of the Arch- 
bishop of Lyons became an asylum for the Calvinists, three hun- 
dred Huguenots having taken refuge under his roof. The epis- 
copal palaces of the bishops of Lisieux, Bordeaux, Toulouse, and 
of other places became also asylums for the refugees. We 
Catholics unite with the common voice of humanity in condemn- 
ing the crime, but at the same time we are unwilling to have 
its odium thrown upon the shoulders of the innocent. 

We regret that so small a space remains for unfolding- the 
historical evidence of the services rendered by the Catholic 
Church and her children to civil and religious liberty. We have 
given passages from the most eminent divines, from the third to 
the nineteenth century, in favor of liberty of conscience. Her 
earliest struggles were against arbitrary power under the Roman 
Empire. A similar struggle was bravely entered upon and con- 
tinued through the middle ages in her contests with arbitrary 
kings of England, France, and Germany, down to the present day, 
when she is struggling with a German emperor for liberty of 



1 88 5-] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. % 489 

conscience and of religion for her bishops, priests, and people in 
Prussia. We need not refer to her struggles against human 
slavery in the early and middle ages and in all ages and coun- 
tries of the world a struggle conducted always with ardor and 
zeal on the one hand and with justice and moderation on' the 
other. Lecky, the rationalist, no friend of the Catholic Church, 
mentions this as among the priceless blessings she had bestowed 
upon humanity, saying : " She might point ... to the slavery 
she had destroyed." We need not mention the famous Magna 
Charta, guaranteeing both civil and religious liberty, trial by . 
jury, the right of habeas corpus, and exemption of the people 
from taxation unless they themselves through their representa- 
tives vote the taxes (a great, fundamental principle of constitu- 
tional government incorporated from Magna Charta into our con- 
stitution). Nor need we tell our readers that the leading spirit 
in wresting this great bulwark of liberty from an unwilling des- 
pot was a Catholic archbishop. Nor need we mention the hon- 
ored name of Michel de I'Hdpital, the real author of the Edict 
of Nantes, who, in 1562, by this edict granted .liberty of con- 
science to Protestants in Catholic France. Nor need we detail 
the Four Liberties of Belgium granted to Protestants by a Catho- 
lic majority in that Catholic country. Nor need we recount the 
history of that most glorious example of religious toleration in 
our own country which has made the name of the Calverts, the 
Lords of Baltimore, illustrious among the most just, benevolent, 
and tolerant law-givers of the world ; nor how a Catholic colony, 
planted in an age of religious persecution and surrounded by 
persecuting neighbors, opened her bosom as a sanctuary for the 
oppressed and for those that bore persecution for justice' sake ; 
nor how religious liberty from the first foundation of that Catho- 
lic colony became at first the injunction of an English Catholic 
nobleman, then the practice of the colony, then the traditional 
and common law, and finally the statute law of the land ; nor 
how Presbyterians and Quakers fleeing from persecution in the 
Episcopalian colony of Virginia, and Episcopalians fleeing from 
the Presbyterian and Puritan colonies of New England, all found 
equally a home and an asylum in Catholic Maryland. We need 
not give in detail the provisions of that famous Bill of Religious 
Liberty passed by the Maryland colonial legislature in 1649 by 
a Catholic majority, just before, and in anticipation of, the pas- 
sage of power from their hands into the hands of a Protestant 
majority a statute which realized the brightest and happiest 
dreams of the author of Utopia, Sir Thomas More, who was 



490 , FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [July, 

himself a martyr to religious liberty. Nor need we prove again 
that the author of this great charter of religious liberty was an 
English Jesuit ; nor that an English Jesuit introduced and set up 
the first printing-press in the English colonies now forming the 
United States ; nor that the first printing-press in America, con- 
secrated to the education of the Indians, was destroyed by Pro- 
testants and Puritans. We need not recount the prominent part 
taken by the descendants of the Catholic colonists of Maryland, 
and by all the Catholic people of the old thirteen colonies, in the 
cause of American Independence; how their zeal and wisdom in 
council were represented by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who 
signed the Declaration of Independence, and in doing so was not 
content with signing his name, but added the title of his resi- 
dence and estates in defiance of threatened Tory persecutions 
and confiscations ; nor need we mention that other patriot priest 
and prelate, Archbishop Carroll, of Baltimore, the Langton of 
America, who journeyed to Canada in the dead of winter with 
his cousin, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Benjamin Franklin, 
to secure the alliance and co-operation, or at least the neutrality, 
of that province in the struggle for freedom. We need not give 
the history of the achievements in battle of the old Maryland 
Line in the Revolutionary War ; nor of the gallant deeds at sea 
of Commodore Barry, who has been styled the founder of the 
American navy. Nor need we relate here the co-operation of 
Catholic France under the reign of a Catholic king, nor of her 
gallant army under La Fayette, nor of the achievements of Kos- 
ciusko and Pulaski, in that same glorious cause. All these noble 
records are inscribed in the grateful heart of America. Among 
the Catholics of that day there was not a Tory nor a traitor. 
Washington recognized all these services ; for, after peace was 
established and independence secured, he addressed a letter to 
the Catholics of the country in answer to a patriotic address 
they had presented to him, in which he used these words : " I 
presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic 
part which you took in the accomplishment of their revolution 
and the establishment of their government, or the important 
assistance they received from a nation in which the Roman 
Catholic faith is professed." 

Happily we may now congratulate ourselves that the days of 
religious intolerance have mostly passed away, and, we hope, for 
ever. It is true we now see coercion and persecution carried on 
in two of the leading countries in Europe against the Catholic 
Church. In France we have seen the expulsion and exile of the 



1885.] FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. 491 

members of the religious orders, teachers of the Catholic schools 
and shining lights of piety, learning, and humility. In Prussia 
we have seen the Catholic hierarchy deprived of the liberty of 
exercising the essential functions of their sacred offices. These 
atrocities are perpetrated by two opposite extremes of despot- 
ism extreme imperialism or Caesarism in Prussia, and extreme 
radical and infidel democracy in France. These extremes are 
tending to a meeting or union in revolution. They are hostile to 
each other, though colleagued together in robbing Catholics of 
their rights ; and when they do fall out we hope that honest men 
will get their dues. 

It is a matter of surprise that such instances of oppression for 
conscience' sake in the nineteenth century a century that boasts 
of its enlightenment, its civilization, its love of order and liberty 
have not awakened an indignant public opinion that could make 
such despots quail at the bar of human justice. But a century 
that witnessed with calm indifference the seizure of the very 
capital of Christendom, in violation of every principle of right, 
both human and divine, cannot boast much of its sense of re- 
ligion or justice or heroism. With all its advantages and glories 
the nineteenth century is a mercenary, not a heroic, century. It 
is a century in which a certain species of despotism, which we 
might call nationalism, has usurped the natural liberties of the 
people and of the real nations. Not only has Rome, the capital 
of Christendom, been seized ruthlessly by an armed rabble led 
by a robber-king, but the tomb of our Saviour and the Sacred 
Places still remain in the hands of the Mahometan, while 
united Europe by raising its finger could restore them to Chris- 
tian custody and veneration. No crusades are necessary now to 
recover them. There is not sufficient chivalry in Christian 
diplomacy (it were proper to unite those two words !) to wrest 
them from unholy grasp. But if commerce is impeded any- 
where in the Orient or in India, if the Suez Canal is obstructed, 
fleets and armies are immediately set in motion, and the com- 
merce of Christendom (two other words illy mated !) vindicates 
its own amid slaughter and inhumanity. The nations and peo- 
ples of the world are held down by immense standing armies, 
and the peace of the world is precariously preserved at the point 
of the bayonet. The most heinous public crimes and outrages 
might be perpetrated in any quarter of the globe (just as the 
seizure of Rome was committed at the very centre of the Chris- 
tian world) ; but if they do not injure commerce, or interfere 
with or hurt the pockets of the great nations, a selfish neutrality 



492 FREEDOM OF WORSHIP IN PRACTICE. [July, 

is observed all around. No amount of injustice in our day can 
arouse the peoples of the earth to arrest, avenge, or punish, be- 
cause each people is held down and bound hand and foot by vast 
standing armies. No call can now be made upon the justice, the 
humanity, or the -chivalry of mankind. The policy of cabinets 
controls all things in the nineteenth century. A crusade in 
answer to the call of wrong and woe is impossible. There is 
neither a common humanity nor a common liberty to appeal to ; 
nor is there a judge or arbiter to whom oppressed nations and 
people can apply for justice. Public opinion is public policy. 
Such an abstract notion cannot supply the place which the Vicar 
of Christ once held on earth as chancellor, so to speak, or chief 
justice of Christendom. All this is owing, in a great measure, to 
the sixteenth century, which was the century that rent the seam- 
less garment of the Saviour. These evils are greatly owing to 
the religious dissensions of Christian peoples and nations, and to 
the want of a recognized head of Christendom, an united Chris- 
tendom. This appalling necessity is acknowledged by the 
abortive efforts made in our day to erect peace- congresses and 
international .courts of arbitration. But these have failed for 
want of a common faith, a common recognized jurisdiction, and 
a consequent want of confidence. The world has coldly seen the 
sects divide themselves into an indefinite horde of jarring and dis- 
puting schools, and has indifferently permitted a godless and 
lustful revolution (miscalled Reformation) to wrest from the 
traditional head of the Christian society the spiritual and moral 
sceptre of right and truth and justice. It has witnessed and per- 
mitted the reduction of such a recognized international arbiter, 
once acknowledged for a thousand years, to the ignoble position 
of a prisoner in the Vatican. 

Well does the inspired penman demand : " Was Christ divid- 
ed?'' Then why should his following on earth be divided? Is 
there no common ground of faith and truth and charity upon 
which the Christian peoples of the earth can be united ? What 
Christian is there, guided by the light and freedom of the Gos- 
pel and by the experience of our modern military civilization, 
that would not rather recognize the arbitrament of an impartial 
father, Vicar of the Christ we all adore, in matters of faith, of 
morals, and of public justice, than to see the nations bound down 
by sword and by the dynamic logic of brute force? Until the 
world is emancipated from this brutal power there can never be 
realized true liberty, civil or religious. There is nothing de- 
spotic in truth nor in the unity which truth generates. Truth 



1885.] 



IDLENESS. 



493 



and unity do not enslave the human intellect and will, but give 
them true liberty. How, then, can the organized and practical 
union that results from truth enslave the human intellect or 
result otherwise than in liberating it ? We have the divine as- 
surance : " You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you 
free" This is the road that leads to true liberty that legitimate 
liberty which enlightens the human conscience and elevates and 
emancipates the human intellect. With the achievement of such 
results as these, the world and the nations thereof would then 
truly rejoice in the possession of true liberty, both civil and 
religious. 



IDLENESS. 

THE caterpillar swings his airy thread 
From off a leaf of this far-spreading oak 

That towers in solemn grandeur o'er my head; 
Upon the leaves of my neglected book 

A tiny spider, green and brown, doth weave 
His shining gossamer ; the black ant hies 
Across the rustic bench, his insect prize 

With effort huge amid his store to leave ; 

From tawny speck to gorgeous butterfly, 

The insect world before my gaze doth lie ; 

And so e'en Plutarch's self how can I choose 

When Nature in her festive garment wooes ? 

A flutter 'mid the branches, and my heart 

Leaps with the life in that full chirp that breathes ; 
The brown, full-breasted sparrow with a dart 

Is at my feet amid the swaying wreaths 
Of grass and clover ; trooping blackbirds come 
With haughty step ; the oriole, wren, and jay 
Revel amid the cool, green moss in play, 
Then off in clouds of music ; while the drum 
Of scarlet-crested woodpecker from yon 
Old Druid-haunting oak sends toppling down 



494 IDLENESS. 

A ruined memory of ages past : 

O life and death how blended to the last ! 



Far up, the sailing wing of hawk or crow 

Allures me, while a voice within my soul 
Is whispering marvellous things ; a hidden woe, 

As if I heard an inner funeral toll 
O'er hopes and aspirations quite as dead 

As this poor branch, conflicts with hope as high, 
Which mounts beyond that atom in the sky, 
Beyond the blue, and must with sun be fed. 
A squirrel leaps from bough to spray, now skims 
The gray old fence with acorns laden ; chimes 
The distant cow-bell, mingling with the call 
Of laughing children as the apples fall. 



So Plutarch's witcheries have been left to-day 
The lives and hopes and woes of men who pressed 

To honor's summit, for the thought's sweet play, 
And peace on music-throbbing Nature's breast. 

Borne inward o'er the soul's mysterious chord, 
The melodies of other worlds respond 
Her anthems, sealing that far-circling bond 

Which clasps creation to creative Word. 

I close my book ; my tangled spider free, 

Musing on that unuttered unity ; 

And walk the homeward path, with daisies pied, 

In vague, sweet yearnings for the "other side." 



1885.] 



KA THARINE. 



495 



KATHARINE. 
CHAPTER XXXVI. Continued. 

"I DON'T believe that he is right," Maria Rawson said when 
Katharine told her the determination at which she had arrived. 
" You will know all the Fathers, and all the doctors, and all the 
history from the year one down, I suppose, but what better off 
will you be in the end ? Can't you see that if Christianity is 
true it must be absolutely necessary that there should be some 
way to apprehend it which would not involve all that trouble ? " 

" I see it plainly, but if you knew how much I wish to have 
my husband go along with me at every step ! We have been one 
thus far, and I don't want to leave him, even to go to the altar, 
if I can avoid it by a mere delay." 

" Delays are dangerous, young woman. One prayer made 
after you have fairly given in would be worth more to your 
husband than all the philosophy you could discuss together be- 
tween now and Easter. I know what he is. Once you say to 
him that you can stand it no longer and that you must make 
your submission, he will relinquish you at once. He is not like 
George Marlow. Poor fellow ! My heart aches for him, I will 
say. I used to fancy that Amanda was the better of the two, 
because she had a sort of surface amiability. I begin to believe 
that there is no such thing as a good heart which does not rest 
on a solid, hard substratum of common sense. If she does not 
make him heartily repent that he did not let her go with me and 
put herself under instruction, as she wanted to the week before 
poor little Jack died, I shall be much surprised. She would go 
now, if she took it in her head, for she defies him at every turn ; 
but she seems utterly impervious to anything that I can say on 
that or any other subject." 

*" No," said Katharine, " Louis is not like that. He is good- 
ness itself to me and that is what makes it so hard not to do 
exactly what he wishes. A heavy yoke would be no yoke at all 
to me ; I should break from under it by sheer force of living." 

" Now, you listen ! " returned Maria. " Anything which keeps 
the soul one minute away from God, when once it has clearly 
seen him and knows perfectly what is his will with regard to it, 
is the very heaviest yoke that Satan can lay upon it. Do you 



496 KA THARINE. [July, 

suppose he has not fathomed your nature just as accurately as 
he did Amanda's ? She told me she did not dare to disobey her 
husband when he suddenly altered his old ways, and, from letting 
her do exactly as she pleased in all directions, put his foot dowYi 
that toward the Catholic Church she should not go. I think it 
rather flattered her a little when he first took that attitude she 
found it so unusual ; and there are some women who seem to 
get tired of too much complaisance, and relish even a little bru- 
tality by way of change. It is the change, though, and not the 
brutality, that pleases them. Not that George was ever brutal 
though I confess I thought he verged on it where I was con- 
cerned the night he drove me up-stairs before him and turned 
the key on me before I knew what he was about. I might have 
perished there from starvation, like Ginevra in her chest, if he 
had not needed me the next evening and remembered that he 
had my door-key in his pocket." 

" And did you have nothing to eat all that time? " 

" Only some Huntley & Palmer's biscuits which happened 
to be in my closet. But it was a Friday in Advent, so what did 
it matter? I was as happy as a king the whole time." 

" I have often meant to ask you about that," said Katharine. 
" How could you be happy when you had set your heart so on 
the child's baptism, and yet saw that you were not going to be 
able to bring it about? You seemed to me to have staked so 
much on that to have been so certain that your prayers were 
heard, as you wanted them to be that I should have thought you 
would have passed some very bitter hours up there. I feel sure 
that I should." 

" We are made so differently, you see. My faith is gigantic, 
and that is all right, for it is entirely supernatural. But my 
conceit of myself, my natural obstinacy, are rank overgrowths 
also, and that is all wrong ; and whenever either of them gets a 
good hard knock I take a positive pleasure in it. If you will 
believe me, I laughed until I cried when I heard the click of the 
lock that night, and knew that I was going to have no part nor 
lot in the affair of Jack's salvation but that of praying for it. 
' It serves you just right,' I said to myself. But as to doubting 
that it would be brought about all the same, I never doubted it 
one instant. But, of course, I settled it at once in my own offi- 
cious little mind . that either you or Mr. Giddings would be the 
instrument selected, and had laid out a whole programme of the 
effects of it on whichever one of you it was. Failing you, I had 
some faint notion that Amanda herself might pluck up courage 



1885.] KATHARINE. 497 

and do it. I had taken good care to teach her the formula. You 
see, I deluded myself all round." 

Up to this time neither Katharine nor her husband had spoken 
with a priest, and, but for a seeming accident which took place 
about the middle of Lent, neither might have done so for some 
weeks to come. Louis himself had placed a limit beyond which 
he would not in any case prolong his wife's delay, and meantime 
such books as he required were easily accessible through Lind- 
say's intervention. But, being one day with the latter in the 
library of the Jesuit College, he came with mingled surprise and 
pleasure upon his Montreal acquaintance, Father Baptist. They 
recognized each other with mutual cordiality. 

"The world is very narrow," said Giddings, making a trite 
remark. " I was thinking of you as I entered, and here you are." 

" And here I shall be until after Easter, when, instead of 
going back to Montreal, I believe that I am to be sent to Bos- 
ton." 

" Better still," said Giddings, moved by a sudden impulse. 
" I have a piece of congenial work for you on hand, if you are at 
liberty to undertake it." 

They began to pace up and down the room together, and 
Lindsay, approaching from a distant table and seeing them thus 
occupied, came up to excuse himself on the plea of an engage- 
ment and take his leave. 

Father Baptist listened with interest to what his companion 
had to tell him. 

" Yes," he said when he had finished, " one is always at liberty 
and at leisure for what is, after all, one's only business. More- 
over, the affairs which caused my summons here are nearly 
transacted, and I have all the time that you can ask for at your 
disposal. I shall be glad to make your wife's acquaintance 
whenever you and she are ready. But are you going to permit 
her to take this step'alone?" 

" I do not know, and every day I find myself still farther off 
from knowing. The more I examine the structure of your reli- 
gion the more perfect and compact I find it .in every part, and 
the more thoroughly I understand the attraction that it has for a 
mind like hers, which is not merely upright and simple, but has 
a clear perspicacity and natural logic which have never been 
spoiled by any manner of sophistication. But the initial diffi- 
culty is what daunts me. Postulate a Creative Intelligence, and 
all the rest follows, as it seems to me, by an easy if not a neces- 
sary sequence." 
VOL. XLI. 32 



498 KATHARINE. [July, 

" And you find yourself unable to admit that postulate ? 
What have you been reading on the affirmative side? " 

Giddings named a book or two. " But they are useless," he 
went on. " They supply no arguments which every man who 
thinks has not adduced to himself a hundred times already." 

" Well, I have nothing newer to offer you than the old ques- 
tion : Canst thou by searching find out God ? If you could look 
directly at him, weigh and measure him and define his exact 
value, he would not be God. Even the sun, which lends itself 
to those operations, blinds you if you try to regard it in mid- 
heaven. Tell me one thing, though : do you ever pray ? " 

" What to? And how? Would you have me say, 'O God, 
if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul ' ? " 

" Well, yes, if you can find no better formula. Are you sure 
that you really wish to believe? " 

Giddings stopped to reflect a little. They had entered the 
embrasure of a window and were resting there. He lifted his 
eyes at last and looked directly at the elder man. 

" Yes," he said with great deliberation, " I can honestly say I 
wish it. But I fear it is a barren wish." 

The priest held out his hand. 

" Come," he said, " for you there is but one way to make it 
fruitful. You need no further instruction, and you have already 
been baptized. If I put you, to the test at once it is because I 
am convinced that you are honest and that the time is ripe. 
Come into the church with me and let me receive your confession. 
I will give you .half an hour for preparation, if you like." 

" Very well. I hardly need so much time, I think. The pos- 
sibility of that transaction has been tolerably plain before my 
mind for some weeks past." 

Then, as they emerged from the recess of the window, " You 
understand the art of striking while the iron is hot, I see." 

"That is only the commonest kind of prudence. Sometimes, 
though, one fails to see when it is hot. But nothing has become 
plainer to me, as a result of a good many years of dealing with 
men's souls, than that what they mistake for intellectual difficul- 
ties are, nine times in ten, simple disorders of the will. I want 
you to find out for yourself how true was that saying of our 
Master: My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me. If any 
man will do the will of him, he shall know of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God." 

" Ah ! " sighed Katharine, her eyes lighting with a soft, 



1885.] KATHARINE. 499 

tremulous joy, " then you went before me, after all ! Oh ! T am 
glad ! I like to follow you, to be your shadow, your echo, even 
here. I could not bear to be alone. Then I need not wait any 
longer? " 

" No ; he will give you conditional baptism early to-morrow 
morning, and aft'erwards we shall make our Communion to- 
gether." 

But that night Katharine's child came prematurely into this 
world, and, having been made the citizen of another, went out of 
it again while the mother lay unconscious. 

Four days later the first gray streaks of a young March 
morning showed Louis, who had been keeping a solitary vigil at 
her side, that she was regarding him intently, and with eyes that 
were clear from all traces of the horror and anguish that had 
torn his heart so many times already. He knelt down beside the 
bed and looked at her in silence, fearing to chase back by a too 
hasty word the soul whose reappearance all but himself had 
ceased to hope for. Presently she put up her arms and closed 
them about his neck. 

" Is it you, Louis ? " she said. " And are we alive ? " 

"Did you think we were not, dear? " 

" I thought I must be dead," she answered, speaking with 
some effort, and in a tone that made him dread that conscious- 
ness was slipping away from her again, " for I have been in hell. 
But I did not see you there." 

Her hold upon him loosened as she spoke, her eyes closed, 
and she fell into a natural sleep, from which she wakened fully 
mistress of herself. This time Maria Rawson was beside her, 
and a white-capped nurse hovered about the foot of the bed. 
Her husband, from whom the doctor's early visit had lifted the 
long burden of anxiety, had dropped at once into the sleep of 
profound exhaustion. 

" For three days and nights he never left you for a moment," 
Maria said, replying to her inquiry for him, " and now I think 
that we must let him rest. He is not far off only on the sofa 
in the next room." 

" Have I been so ill, then ? " 

" So ill that it seemed to me at last that nothing but your 
husband's will held you from following your baby into heaven. 
Father Baptist wanted more than once to baptize you, but he 
kept putting it off. Last night I tried to persuade him, but at 
last he told me that you would not die ; that he had bought you 
with a price and knew that he should keep you." 



5oo KATHARINE. [July* 

The nurse came up and touched Miss Lawson on the shoul- 
der. She spoke in Italian the only tongue she understood but 
her quick eye had read on the sick woman's face that her 
strength was being tried too far. 

" You must go away, miss, or you must be quiet. Don't you 
see what you are doing? " 

Maria was instantly all penitence and promises; but the 
mischief had been done, and Katharine's recovery was again re- 
tarded. 

" It is a curious thing about women," the doctor said when 
he had received the nurse's report, listened to Maria's self-accu- 
sation, and set himself to the task of reassuring the husband. 
" The best of them can't be trusted to hold their tongues until 
they have been under special training. Fortunately there is no 
great harm done this time. It will take her a little longer to 
pull around, but she will do it." 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

FAIRLY started on her road to convalescence for the second 
time, Katharine's recovery was rapid. Toward the close, of it 
Father Baptist came to pay her one or two friendly visits, and, 
finding her well disposed and tranquil, availed himself of the 
opportunity to give her such final instructions as he deemed 
necessary. Her formal reception into the church took place the 
first day she was pronounced able to leave the house with safety. 

" I am by no means certain that I am about to baptize you," 
said the priest, who had listened with much interest to such 
account as it occurred to her to give him of her innocent life. 
" Of course," he went on, seeing the mute inquiry in her eyes, 
" I shall do so conditionally, which, in such cases as yours, is all 
that is allowable. But I have so often received young people 
like you, brought up in honest and religious homes, where there 
seems to have been no wilful error and no darkness not purely 
intellectual and hereditary, and I have .not infrequently found 
them so free from mortal or deliberate sin, that I could account 
for it satisfactorily to myself only on the theory that they had 
really received the baptismal grace and never lost it. However," 
he added, smiling, " there is something still to be done for you. 
Your enemy's attacks seem to have been made on your heart 
thus far, and really, now that he is worsted, I feel rather inclined 
to congratulate him on the skill and subtlety with which he 
planned them. But . he is likely to change his tactics hencefor- 



1885.] KATHARINE. 501 

ward, and I shall be glad of the chance to circumvent him and 
safeguard that good little head of yours, which he appears to 
have neglected thus far, by the exorcisms and other ceremonies 
which ordinarily precede the rite itself." 

A few days later they started on their homeward journey, 
accompanied by Father Baptist and Miss Rawson. 

" I am not getting tired of Rome far from it," said that mer- 
curial little lady in proposing to become a member of the party, 
" but I can't live here alone ; it don't quite suit the Lindsays to 
take me in and do for me ; and as to staying on with the Marlows 
under present circumstances, I am obliged to confess that I am 
not quite equal to it. I thought I had spunk and obstinacy 
enough for anything, but " she stopped and shook her head. 
" Well, there's no use talking ; least said is soonest mended al- 
ways. I may as well give up at once and own myself for 
beaten. At present I am a mere bone of contention, and the 
quicker I take myself out of the way the better for the pair I 
serve in that capacity. I was in hopes you were going to stay 
abroad longer and would give me shelter beneath your conjugal 
wings ; but, since you cannot, I will betake myself with you to that 
happy land where the unmarried woman may abide secure, both 
in fact and reputation, without any need of a sheep-dog in the 
way of a chaperon." 

She walked to a mirror as she finished speaking, and regarded 
her reflection with an amused and comical smile. 

" In America every woman is safe," she went on, " who 
chooses to conduct herself discreetly ; but wouldn't you suppose 
that even Italian common sense would accept that face as abun- 
dant security for my good intentions ? " 

"Yes, I should," said Katharine, laughing; "but far be it 
from me to flatter that egregious vanity of yours by telling you 
why I think so. On the whole, I am rather grateful to Italian 
stupidity this time, because I shall be more than glad to have 
you go back with us. Until yesterday I had somehow taken it 
for granted that we should stay in Europe until the autumn ; but 
now that Louis has shown me the letter that came from 
Mrs. Kitchener while I was ill, I feel that I cannot get away too 
soon." 

Mrs. Kitchener had written, late in February, to say that 
Mrs. Danforth seemed to be failing rapidly, both in health and 
spirits. A heavy cold, contracted in the fall, had left her with a 
teasing cough. Then rheumatism set in, and for a month she had 
been a prisoner in her chair, where she pined visibly for the pre- 



502 KATHARINE. [July* 

sence of her daughter. The news added one more to the list of 
self-accusations with which Louis Giddings had tormented him- 
self at Katharine's bedside, and he was now not less eager than 
she to turn their faces homeward. But it was mid-April before 
they were able to take ship at Liverpool. 

They were walking- up and down the deck one starry night, 
Louis and Katharine and Father Baptist, when she, reminded of 
it by the aspect of the heavens, began recounting to the priest 
the impression made upon her mind on the first Christmas of 
which she retained a definite recollection. 

" Those graces which are granted us in childhood are very 
rare and very precious things," he said when she had finished. 
" I owe the gown I wear to one which dates even farther back in 
mine than the one you speak of does in yours." 

" Tell us about it, won't you, father?" she begged in an en- 
treating little voice that he found pleasant. 

" Why not?" he answered. " It is very simple. I was a lit- 
tle Swiss boy, living in the diocese of which St. Francis de Sales 
was formerly prince-bishop. I was six years old, perhaps cer- 
tainly not more than that when a band of Jesuits came into 
our neighborhood to preach a mission. The mission itself I do 
not remember, for I was too young to be permitted to attend. 
But I recollect very well the last Sunday of it, when I went to 
Vespers with my father. One of the priests came out upon the 
altar, to make the final exhortation, I suppose. He carried a 
great crucifix, taller than himself, and as he talked he rested it 
on the floor beside him and clasped his hand about the cross. I 
don't know what he said something very moving, doubtless, 
but probably beyond my small comprehension. What I do 
know is that he set all the people crying and lamenting, and, 
looking up into my father's face, I was terrified to see the tears 
streaming down his face also. That was an entirely new expe- 
rience for me, and of course I began to cry as loud as anybody, 
partly out of fear, partly out of sympathy. And suddenly a 
great light seemed to shine all about me as I recall it, I see that 
it was within and not without me, but I was too much of a child 
then to have any idea of that distinction and a Voice said to me : 
' You shall be one of them, hereafter.' I remember looking all 
about me to see who had spoken, and wondering that my father 
took no notice of what seemed to me to have been uttered in a 
tone so loud, and so in the niidst of what the priest was saying, 
that I expected him to rebuke the speaker. But nothing hap- 
pened, and for some reason I could not bring myself to men- 






1885.] KATHARINE. 503 

tion it, and after a while the impression faded. I grew up, went 
through my course at college, and the time had come for me to 
choose my profession before I thought of it again. I had never 
yet entertained any notion even of taking orders, much less of 
entering the religious life. In fact, I was a rather wild lad, I am 
afraid. And then, as it happened, another mission was preached 
in my native village just after I had settled in my mind that I 
would devote myself to the study of the law. This time I made 
the mission. And on the last day of it the same phenomenon 
was repeated, in the same way and in the same place. The first 
one had faded completely from my memory until it was renewed 
and graven there indelibly by the repetition." 

" The light and the sounds ? " asked Giddings. 

" Everything, and in each of its details." 

"And then?" 

" Then I entered the novitiate, and here I am, a Jesuit priest, 
crossing the Atlantic for now the third time. The first was 
after the Sonderbund war, when they sent all of ours out of my 
native country. I have never been in it since. Yet I have an 
old mother living there," he ended with a sigh, " and a sister 
whom I have not seen since she was twenty. Ah! well, 'there 
will be time enough hereafter." 

They were" passing the bridge as he ended, and Miss Rawson, 
who was up there with some other ladies, called to Katharine as 
she went by. 

" Do come up here, Mrs. Giddings," she cried out, " and 
look at Orion backing down into the water." 

"Why backing down, Miss Rawson?" asked the captain's 
wife, who happened to be crossing with him. " That seems to 
me a terribly unpoetic way of describing anything so beautiful." 

" Isn't that his hammer up in front? I supposed it was, at 
all events, and so I thought it must be his hind foot which he has 
just dipped in the sea." 

She slipped her arm into Katharine's as she spoke, and, after 
looking at the sky for a minute or two in silence, they descend- 
ed to the deck again and began pacing it in company. The two 
men meanwhile had gone on together. 

" Tell me," asked Giddings, after they had .walked awhile in 
silence, " do you think it wise to lay much stress on experiences 
such as you and my wife have just been recounting? " 

" I am not sure I understand your question. What degree 
of stress do you suppose me to lay on it ? " 

" It remains in your mind, I observe, as the not dissimilar one 



5 04 KA THA RINE. [ J u 1 y , 

has done in hers, and apparently you both date from them as 
the beginning of a long- series of mental or spiritual changes 
which have resulted in bringing you to your present condition. 
Does not that seem to be giving the marvellous, the purely 
supernatural, too great a play in what is, after all, a rational pro- 
cess for the most of us, at least ? " 

" I don't think so. After ail, what is the raw material of all 
rational processes ? A fact or a collection of facts, isn't it ? 
Why should I ignore those special facts in my internal histo- 
ry, any more than the not less positive one that I was born in 
Switzerland fifty-five years ago come next Michaelmas ? " 

" If you put it that way, none. Only the last fact has the 
advantage of being certifiable by witnesses, and of not running 
counter, even in appearance, to several hundred millions of 
similar ones, of a goodly number of which every one of us is 
directly cognizant. Personally I have as little doubt of one 
order of facts, where you and she are concerned, as I have of the 
other. But it has often seemed to me that Catholics I speak 
now under correction and ready to receive any light you are 
ready to shed on the subject lay themselves somewhat injudi- 
ciously open to criticism by being apparently ready to attach too 
much weight to the miraculous side of our religion. It is so 
strong logically, it can bear so well the test of close historical 
investigation, that I have a suspicion that it might be wise not to 
weaken its force on that side by flinging these other things in 
the face of such an incredulous age as ours. A sort of pearls be- 
fore swine, isn't it ? " 

" Well, there are several things to be said about it. The 
most obvious one that occurs to me at this moment is 'that I 
don't quite see on what grounds you conclude that I, for ex- 
ample, would be likely to throw a purely personal bit of history 
like that ' before swine.' >: 

" That is a fair hit," said Giddings, laughing. " You return 
me to my trough very neatly. Perhaps you will permit me to 
drop the personal question and repeat the more general one in 
which it is included." 

" To that I answer that I think you are mistaken. Histori- 
cally, you cannot but remember that our religion is miraculous 
in its conception, miraculous in its propagation and its preserva- 
tion. And what do you mean when you say it is strong ration- 
ally and logically, except that it is impossible to deny or to dis- 
prove it without at the same time denying not only the weight 
of human testimony but the data furnished by consciousness? 



1885.] KATHARINE. 505 

The fact is, the sceptical virus has infected a good deal that still 
presents the outward appearance of sound health. The whole 
warp and woof of our modern mental habit is saturated with it. 
I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but yet I pre- 
dict to you that science itself will one day break loose from the 
fetters that the rationalists of the last century laid on all of us, 
more or less, and, in the interests of sound knowledge and com- 
mon sense, will refuse any longer to collar and turn out of court, 
discredited and uninvestigated, a whole order of facts as positive, 
as easily ascertainable, as well supported by testimony as any 
of those which rest in the last resort on special and personal ex- 
perience. And what facts are there which don't rest on it, if 
you come to that ? " 

He paused for a little, but, his companion offering no remark, 
he finally went on again. 

"To .return to my own stray pearls and those of your wife, 
it is quite conceivable to me that He who made the heart, and 
who desires it to the point of asking for it, should sometimes 
make his appeal to it directly, and in advance of that appeal to 
the reason which, as 'belonging to another order of things, he 
leaves in general to the action of other causes. ' Give me thy 
heart,' he says, but never, ' Give me thy mind.' Why, except 
because the heart has been corrupted even more than the head, 
and needs to be lured by love and hope, or swayed at least by 
fear, while the right reason has only to keep its eyes unclosed 
and deal with the facts of revelation as it deals with all those by 
which it lives from day to day, in order to escape that condem- 
nation uttered by St. Paul when he declares that men are inex- 
cusable for not having clearly seen and understood the invisible 
things of God by virtue of their knowledge of what is open and 
visible before their eyes ? " 

" You may be right; I think you are. But it is not easy to 
throw off one's life-long habit of regarding men and things, even 
with the best intentions in the world. However, and by way of 
apology about the pearls, my compunction suggests to me that 
I cannot make it more effectively than by telling you a bit of my 
own recent experience which I had intended to guard for myself 
only. The night my wife came out of her long stupor I had it 
impressed on my consciousness, not by any sound or sight, but 
as if it were wrought into the very substance of my soul, not 
merely that the cry of my heart for her life was granted, but 
that she would have died and been lost, and through my fault, if 
I had not previously made my prayer efficacious in the way that 



KATHARINE. [J u ly> 

you remember. More than that, that she would live to face with 
me some trial we should both find bitterer than death." 

" It may be so," said the priest. " The balances of God are 
not like ours, nor is his justice blind. It is a more dangerous 
thing than we are apt to think it to turn a deaf ear to his special 
calls." 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

EARLY in January, 1861, a young- American of the reader's 
acquaintance, who had then spent between two and three 
years in the service of his country, discharging to the best of 
an exceptional ability the not very arduous duties of an assist- 
ant surgeon on one of the vessels belonging to the China Squad- 
ron, received news from home which rendered further continu- 
ance in the service both unnecessary and unwise. Necessary 
it had never been, in point of fact, except to allay a certain, boyish 
thirst for adventure and an impatience begotten by the plod- 
ding routine of a professional life begun a thought too early, and 
pursued with unremitting diligence, but not preceded by the 
four years of irresponsible, half-industrious idleness which make 
up the scholastic career of the average collegian. The relative to 
whom he owed his training and his start in life had urged upon 
him, with much affectionate insistence, the folly of absenting 
himself for an unnamed period from' the place where a successful 
career lay all planned out before him, as well as the wisdom of 
familiarizing himself, while yet he could profit by the experience 
of his elder, with a run of practice and a clientele of well-paying 
patients such as seldom fall ready made into the hands of the 
most fortunate of young doctors. But he had been unpersuad- 
able, and, the means for travel on a more liberal scale not having 
been provided, he attained that "end in a manner less suited to 
his inclinations, but more congenial, on the whole, to the well- 
marked independence of his character. He had gained by this 
time a certain amount of not very diversified experience, had gra- 
tified his passion for blue water and strange horizons, and found 
opportunity, while his ship was riding at anchor in the last port 
where she had been stationed, to perform on shore, in the family 
of one of the European residents, a delicate and dangerous opera- 
tion which had gained him a good deal of local reputation and 
some offers for the future which many men of his age and posi- 
tion would have -found irresistible. But, though he was growing 
as distinctly tired of the present routine as of that which had 
preceded it, these offers presented no attractions to him. 



1885.] KATHARINE.. 507 

"Did you never hear that fifty years of Europe are better 
than a cycle of Cathay?" he aid to one of those who pressed 
them on his acceptance. " Besides, what can one do with money 
in China after he earns it ? " 

It was about this period that letters from home apprised him, 
first of the serious illness, and then of the death, of his uncle. 
The blow, which was a severe one, was nevertheless not a little 
mitigated by the news that he had become, in consequence of it, 
master of a fortune sufficiently, large to put all reasonable objects 
of desire within his reach. He was not long in forwarding his 
resignation to headquarters. His vessel, however, was lying at 
Shanghai, while the flagship, with the commodore on board, had 
been for some weeks in harbor at Hong Kong. He was a gene- 
ral favorite with his brother-officers, and a party of them from 
various ships volunteered to accompany him on the steamer 
plying between the two ports, when he should go to ask leave 
of absence. A day or two spent in taking his farewells add- 
ed one or two recruits to the party from among the foreign 
residents, between whom and the line and staff of the war-ships 
lying in harbor had sprung up the comradery usually induced by 
the use of a common tongue under alien skies. 

One of these, a lawyer attached to the little group of English 
government officials, was a man whose acquaintance with the 
young surgeon, though of the slightest, did not date from yes- 
terday. He was in the neighborhood of fifty, a man of shrewd 
yet benevolent aspect, not thoroughly pleased with his present 
surroundings, and with well-marked symptoms that his aversion 
to them was likely to become chronic. He had a growing 
family about him, to whom he was tenderly attached, and whose 
future appeared to cause him some uneasiness. Opportunities 
for materially benefiting them were numerous in the present, 
while those that were in prospect were decidedly attractive. 
But he was a widower with young daughters from whom he 
hated the thought of separation, and a son whose abilities he 
believed above the average, and for .whom he desired one of 
those home prizes which an Englishman rates above all other 
earthly goods. His early exile from his native^ land had put 
them out of his own reach, and in doing. so had rendered them 
so much the more alluring to his imagination. The last evening 
of Richard Norton's stay in Shanghai was spent in his house, 
ajid when they parted Mr. Crawford, learning .of the proposed 
excursion, declared his intention of accompanying it. 

" The fact is," he said, " that I have business with his ex- 



508 XA THARINE. 

celleacy of Hong- Kong which will not bear putting off much 
longer, and, as the trip is one I don't particularly care for, the 
chance to go and come in cheerful company is too good to be 
neglected. I suppose you don't mean to come back here?" 

" No," said Norton ; " the matter of asking leave in my case 
is so much a matter of pure form that I shall go prepared to 
take an outgoing steamer from the island." 

" You will point straight for home, of course? " 

" Well, I don't know. I shall certainly not take ship for New 
York or Boston, if that is what you mean. I have written to 
my lawyer to have an account opened for me in London. How 
long I may stay there I can't say, but long enough, at all events, 
to provide myself with the best set of instruments that money 
can buy. I have been aching for a long time to act on Emer- 
son's advice and 'spend for my specialty,' and now that I have 
the chance I shall not let much grass grow under my feet before 
availing myself of it." 

" Happy youth ! " said Crawford. " What would I not give 
to have your years, your prospects, and your trip home before 
me ! It is a mistake, this wandering about the world and leaving 
the home-nest empty. I was younger than you when I was 
obliged to turn out of it, but I never had your luck in being 
called back and set on my feet in the spot where they first began 
to toddle. Go the world over, and there's no place like it." 

" Perhaps not," the young man answered; "but I am tole- 
rably cosmopolitan in my tastes, I fancy. America is such a big 
thing, you see. One's pride may compass it, and it certainly 
gives play enough to one's aspirations after freedom and inde- 
pendence, but it is a trifle clumsy for one's heart to put tendrils 
over. That tight little island of yours just lends itself to that 
sort of thing. I never yet ran across one of your countrymen 
who did not call it home, no matter how long he had been away 
from it, or however small desire he really had to go back." 

" That is Yankee all over," said Crawford, laughing, " even 
to the admission that youj heads are larger than your hearts. 
Your country has not cost you dear enough as yet ; and then I 
suppose that what is every man's land is no man's land. For 
your spiritual growth it would probably have been a good thing 
for you to have remained colonists still. That would have cul- 
tivated your affections at the same time that it -clipped the 
wings of your spread-eagle, and made you a little more like 
ordinary mortals. Well, good-night ; I'll meet you at the boat 
to-morrow." 



1885.] KATHARINE. 509 

"Sorry to lose you, of course, doctor," the commodore said 
in granting the required permission, " but at the same time, if 
things keep on at home in the way they threaten at present, I 
don't know how soon I may be ready to follow your example. 
Under strong temptation I might even take French leave for my 
ship into the bargain. If it comes to war and it looks decidedly 
that way just now the question of allegiance will be a ticklish 
one for a good many of us to settle." 

" There won't be any war," said Norton slowly. " But if 
there should, honest men would know well enough to what and 
to whom they pledged their services." 

" Ah ! yes. I forgot where you hail from. The difficulty 
would lie just there, you see. The first shot fired on either side 
in war between North and South would be mortal for the 
' whom,' and make the 'what ' at once a matter for discussion. 
However, the first shot has not been fired as yet. Since you are 
leaving us, I don't mind telling you that I learn through private 
advices that things are looking decidedly squally. Well, there is 
a P. and O. steamer starting for Southampton at three to-day. If 
you are ready you can't do better than take it and avoid the Cape. 
Before you reach New York you may see reason to congratulate 
yourself that your resignation was handed in at a less embarrass- 
ing moment than I think is reserved for some of the rest of us." 

"If I thought that," said Norton,"! should certainly with- 
draw it. But war, to my mind, is as far off as the millennium, 
and about as likely." 

Before sailing, however, it was his luck to hear not a little 
talk of the same description, and to become aware, as he did so, 
of certain emotions that were novel enough to make him remark 
on them to his friend Crawford, who had gone on board the out- 
going steamer with him, in company with several of his old 
associates. At the moment they were standing apart from the 
others, who had gathered near the gangway to look at a group 
who were about crossing it. 

" You heard what Lieutenant Jones was saying," he began, 
his face a little flushed, and his voice stirred out of its usual 
careless composure. " On our ship more of the officers than 
usual are Northerners, like myself most of them, in fact and 
to us the idea seems too absurd to be taken into serious consid- 
eration. But if I had to listen to many more remarks like that, 
civil war would break out over a certain very limited area with- 
out delay. I find I have more patriotism and more pugnacity 
than I thought for." 



5 1 o KA THA KINE. [July, 

/ 

"I told you so the other night," Crawford answered, with a 
smile. " Like you, I don't believe in the possibility of civil war 
in the United States, but if there should be one I can fancy that 
it might bring some compensations with it. What are those 
fellows looking at? By Jove! that can't be " 

He left Norton's side as he spoke and went hastily to meet 
the group the naval officers had been regarding. The most 
prominent member of it, a young lady in a dark travelling dress, 
close-fitting, and without the customary crinoline, who was on 
the arm of an elderly gentleman of distinguished aspect, turned 
her eyes on him, as he approached her, with a smile of recogni- 
tion in which there was some evident surprise but none of the 
half-stupefied astonishment plainly visible in Crawford's face. 
Following him with his eyes, in some amazement at his sudden 
start forward, Norton caught this expression with perfect dis- 
tinctness. But the next moment two or three of the crew passed 
across his field of vision, and when they left the space clear the 
lady had her back' to him, and Crawford was exchanging what 
were clearly the salutations of an introduction with her com- 
panion. But he turned at once to her when they were over, and 
began an animated conversation which, after a phrase or two, 
ended in her separating herself from her escort and walking 
slowly along the forward deck with the lawyer. The hour of 
sailing was close at hand, and in another moment Norton was 
again surrounded by his friends. 

" You are in luck," said one of them, a member of the com- 
modore's staff. " To be shut up on shipboard for six or seven 
weeks with the handsomest woman in Hong Kong in the world, 
so far as I am able to speak for it would make me pray for 
rough weather, a shipwreck, or anything else that might prolong 
the pleasure indefinitely. Your friend seems to know her well 
enough to give you the chance of a presentation in due form, 
but he is so deep in his parley with her that it is doubtful 
whether he will leave himself time enough to make it. How 
disgusted M. Blondel looked at being left in the lurch in that 
way ! " 

" I did not see her face," said Norton, turning again to look 
at the pair, who had stopped near the bow and were plunged in 
hurried talk in which Crawford was evidently the chief speaker. 
" Who is she ? " 

"A Mrs. Lloyd, who has been the belle of Hong Kong for 
some years past. I have not seen her often, for she has been a 
widow for the last twelvemonth and has not sfone about much. 



1885.] KA THARINE. 5 1 1 

But one hears of her on all sides. That was the French consul 
who came on board with her." 

" There goes the bell," said another, " and here comes Craw- 
ford with the lady. Jove ! she is a stunner ! Well, good-by, 
Norton. May we never meet under less friendly auspices than 
we part ! " 

In the midst of the hearty but hurried farewells Crawford 
came up to make his own, and to disengage Norton from the 
group in order to lead him toward Mrs. Lloyd, who had now 
rejoined her own friends, all of whom were preparing to go 
ashore. 

" There isn't half a minute," he said, " but I want to put a 
lady under your charge for the voyage. She is going back 
alone, with not even a maid. I never was so surprised in my 
life as to meet her here. I hope you will excuse ceremony, Mrs. 
Lloyd, and allow me to present a young friend who may be of 
service to you both here and after your return. By the way, he 
knows one of your old Canadian acquaintances, who, like my- 
self, supposed " 

The last bell rang before he could finish his sentence. 

" Crawford ! Crawford ! " shouted half a dozen voices from 
the foot of the gang-plank. He wrung Norton's hand hastily 
and was gone without mentioning his name. 

" He is a dear, forgetful old man," said Mrs. Lloyd, smiling 
and waving her handkerchief to the group in which Crawford 
stood. " It is quite like him to leave me in ignorance how to 
address you." 

"Is he old?" Norton asked as he remedied the omission. 
" I have been rather in the habit of considering him in a different 
light." 

As he ended he made a final gesture of salute and a last 
hearty response to the shouts of farewell from the shore, and 
turned upon her his first really attentive glance. He met a 
pair of large, well-opened brown eyes, in which the expression 
blinded him for the moment to the exceeding beauty of their 
form and color, and the curling fringe of night-black lashes 
which deepened their brilliancy. Her beauty, in fact, perfect 
as it was in all physical details, and insensible as he speedily 
grew to anything except it, came, after all, only second in the 
earliest impression she made upon him. Something in her 
unabashed and easy gaze reminded him of the unshamed li- 
cense of an animal. But this impression was momentary and 
instinctive. In Mrs. Lloyd's voice and manner there was the 



5 1 2 KA THARINE. [ J u ly , 

accent of a person better versed in the world and its ways than 
her present companion. 

" Perhaps not," she said in answer to his last remark ; " but 
when one has known a man from childhood, and played pranks 
with his children, one gets to thinking- of him as an old man. 
At all events, that is what I had grown to do with Papa Craw- 
ford. He was so busy in talking to me about my own affairs 
that I had no chance to ask him how he came here, of all places 
in the world. Fate, I suppose. That is the best solution I have 
ever found for all my riddles." 

" It is as good a one as any, and better than most." 

" Then you are a Canadian ? " she went on. " I should not 
have guessed it from your looks." 

" Not at all," he answered, somewhat perplexed. Crawford's 
remark, to which he had paid small attention, had already 
slipped his memory. " Why should you think so, if appearances 
do not suggest it ? I was never in Canada but once, and that 
was the time when I met Mr. Crawford first." 

" Because he said you knew a friend of mine there, and I was 
wondering who it could be." 

" Well, as I know one family only, the clue to the mystery 
cannot be far to seek. It must be Reuben Jennings, or perhaps 
one of his sons." 

Mrs. Lloyd looked puzzled. 

" The name is familiar," she said. " I have heard my mother 
mention Reuben Jennings, but I have no personal acquaintance 
with either him or his sons. They left Canada for the United 
States when I was little." 

" But they went back some half-dozen years ago. It must 
be they of whom he was thinking, for I assure you I don't know 
another soul belonging to that region but himself." 

" I am sorry for that. Mr. Crawford knew that I should need 
some powerful friends when I got home, but he had so little 
time to talk that he omitted half the details I am dying to know. 
In what position is Mr. Jennings? Would he be able to give 
me real assistance in a matter demanding both influence and 
money ? " 

" I am not competent to judge. He has money enough, no 
doubt, but what influence he possesses I don't know at all." 

" You see," she said, turning as if to promenade the deck a 
movement wMch at once made it incumbent on Norton to offer 
her his arm '" I suddenly find myself in a most embarrassing 
position. Thank you ! I am the best of sailors, but, even so, the 



1 885 .] KA THARINE. 5 1 3 

motion of the ship makes a support agreeable. Mr. Crawford 
told me just now that I have been supposed dead for several 
years, and that in consequence of that supposition a good deal 
of property which ought to be mine was bequeathed by my 
mother to various institutions. Of course they will not be at all 
willing to resign it. I have a little money, but not enough to 
contest it with them unaided, and Mr. Crawford seemed to think 
that, even if I had, it might be difficult to do so successfully. 
The terms of the will, according to him, were very peremptory, 
and made so. by my mother's express desire." Her teeth closed 
with a slight but audible click as she said this. " But I shall try 
it all the same," she went on after an almost imperceptible pause. 
" The fact is, I don't suppose my mother believed me to be dead. 
She had no reason to think so, for she was entirely responsible 
for the cessation of all correspondence between us. That is the 
theory on which I shall go to work, at all events. Mr. Crawford 
says the money was absolutely hers to dispose of as she pleased; 
but still, if to do so in the manner she adopted she found it con- 
venient to deny the existence of her natural heirs, the proof that 
she might have known the truth, and probably did so, ought to 
go far toward setting her will aside. Don't you think so ? " 

" You have me at a disadvantage," said Norton, who found 
the situation* embarrassing. " You seem to ask for advice, which 
is a difficult thing to give when one does not know all the cir- 
cumstances of a case, and yet you speak with so much apparent 
candor that you tempt one to inquire further into what does not 
really concern him. Except," he added, half-involuntarily, and 
smiling at the upturned face, which exercised a momently in- 
creasing fascination over him, " as anything which interests you 
must concern any one who looks at you." 

" Thanks ! " she said, smiling also. " I forgive you your 
remark about my ' apparent candor ' for the sake of that which 
followed it. The fact is that I displeased my mother beyond her 
power of forgiveness by my marriage. Yet she was really to 
blame for it, as she was for the harshness and cruelty that drove 
my brother into evil courses and made him an outcast and vaga- 
bond on the face of the earth. How such a nature as hers ever 
came to attract one like my father's, which both his children 
inherited, with perhaps a dash of our mother's obstinacy thrown 
in, used to puzzle me a good deal when I was a growing girl at 
home ; but I understand it better now that I have seen what 
curious ties draw men and women together. However it came 
about, it made his misery and ours, and now it seems, it has 
VOL. XLI. 33 



5 1 4 KA THA RINE. [J U ly , 

made my poverty. It has, that is, unless I succeed in persuading 
judges and juries that I was not only not dead when she made 
her will, but that she knew it. Now do you see? " 

" I see what you have in your mind, of course. But if, as 
you said just now, she was free to dispose of her property with- 
out reference to her natural heirs, it seems to me that to prove 
that she knew of their existence would only lay so much the 
greater stress on the validity of what she actually did. It would 
be more to the purpose to show that she was in error than to 
insist that she was lying on a point which, after all, interfered in 
no way with her right to do as she pleased. Would it not be 
more natural, and I beg your pardon more filial too, to take 
that view ? I am still in so much darkness that, as you see, I am 
not a competent adviser." 

" True," she said thoughtfully, " that did not occur to me 
before. I was so confused at first by the unexpected news that 
my mind went straight to the scenes that preceded my depar- 
ture from home, and to others that lay still farther back. Well, 
I will think more about it. In any case, you must admit that it 
is, on the face of it, unjust and unnatural that children should be 
deprived of what ought to be theirs by every law of common 
sense." 

" So unjust and so unnatural that the course you first pro- 
posed might put a very ugly weapon into the hands of whoever 
was concerned in contesting the case against you. That sounds 
unpardonably rude, I am afraid, but remember what you just 
said about your brother and try to forgive me. Where is he?" 

Mrs. Lloyd frowned a little. 

" He is out of the question entirely, poor fellow ! He is in 
Australia, and if I say he cannot come back you will divine that 
something stronger than his inclination keeps him there. I can 
understand that she should desire to forget or deny his existence. 
But she had no excuse for doing the same thing by me. She 
did not choose that I should marry as I did, and yet she knew 
the man was honorable and his position unexceptionable. I 
don't know why I should take you into my confidence in this 
way," she went on after a pause, during which Norton had also 
been pondering the same question, " but I suppose I feel so irri- 
tated and outraged that, failing a listener, I might have apos- 
trophized one of these masts, if I had found myself leaning 
against it. There was no reason why I should have left Hong 
Kong at all, and I should probably not have done so if I had not 
accidentally learned last week that this property had been left 



1 885.] KATHARINE. 515 

my mother. I thought she was living still, and that it would not 
be difficult to bring about a reconciliation between us. And, in 
any case, I did not suppose the money could be diverted from 
me in the way it has been. And then to meet Mr. Crawford at 
the last minute and have the cup dashed from my lips in this 
way ! It is too bad ! " 

She looked up at Norton as she ended, with eyes filled with 
tears that in nowise dimmed their lustre. One or two great 
drops rolled down her cheeks, in fact, before she found it neces- 
sary to brush them off, but her glowing face was not distorted 
by her emotion. 

" You will pardon my babyishness, I am sure," she said, smil- 
ing through them, and holding out her ungloved hand as they 
reached the companion-way, " and the unnecessary candor with 
which I have been boring you with my affairs. But it is so 
vexatious not to know what to do, and to have no one to advise 
with ! " 

"Pardon you ! and for your candor!" he said, retaining her 
hand a moment. " I wish I might dare to hope you would 
honor me with it often." 

On shore, meanwhile, Crawford, after leaving the naval offi- 
cers, turned in the direction of the government buildings, and 
was soon joined by the French consul, whose acquaintance he 
had just made. They walked along the Praya together, and the 
lawyer, whose thoughts were still full of this unexpected meet- 
ing, was not sorry to find his companion disposed to be com- 
municative. 

" Who is your young friend ? " the consul asked after a little 
general talk. " I saw you had no scruple about running his head 
into the noose. Mrs. Lloyd is a lady whom, of course, I admire 
excessively, and for whom I naturally entertain the profound 
respect which your fair countrywomen universally inspire. At 
the same time I think she is perhaps a safer companion for men 
of the world like you and me than for young fellows of that 
age." 

" He is a clever Yankee, who will be able to take care of 
himself, I imagine. What are you driving at ? I have known 
Mrs. Lloyd since she was so high and a handsome, saucy bag- 
gage she always was ! She couldn't have been more than seven- 
teen or eighteen when she came out here with Lloyd. She told 
me he died suddenly about a year ago." 

"Suddenly is a good word for it," said M. Blondel. "His 
speculauons in opium turned out badly, and he shot himself." 



516 KATHARINE. [July, 

"What did he do that for?" 

" I tell you he had heavy losses. If you have known his 
wife so long-, you can probably figure to yourself also that she 
might not be the most consolatory companion in the world to a 
man in misfortune. I have a theory of my own, into the bar- 
gain, that he was beginning to tire of playing sheep-dog to her." 

" Don't be so oracular. Remember that I have not seen her 
since she was a girl, when she differed from other girls chiefly 
by being handsomer and inclined to presume upon the fact. My 
poor wife didn't use to like her much, I admit, but she was very 
High-Church in her notions, and used to lay all her pranks to 
original sin, because she came of a dissenting family of I don't 
know what variety. But I have seen too many people swept 
and garnished, and entered into afterward by devils, to take much 
stock in that explanation. There was really no great harm in 
her that I could ever see. She was older a -good deal than my 
girls, but my boy who died and she were friendly enough to 
bring her often under my observation. What did she do out 
here to call for criticism of that sort? " 

" Nothing that I know of. I never heard a breath of scandal 
touch her. But your wife's feeling about her is a specimen of 
what I mean. She is of the sort whom other men's wives have 
an instinctive dread of, and whom their own husbands stand 
guard over in a manner infinitely suggestive. Lloyd used to 
watch her as a cat does a mouse. Perhaps he found it wearing. 
At all events, he threw up the job, and his life with it. She 
might have married twenty times over since then, if she had 
been so inclined, but she has shut herself up and behaved with 
perfect circumspection. She is going back now, she tells me, 
to take possession of some family property. That will suit her 
better than marriage, or I mistake her greatly." 

" She was under an error on that head which I have just 
been under the necessity of clearing up. There was some pro- 
perty, but her mother, besides being incensecj against her for 
some unknown reason, was under the impression she was dead, 
or said so at all events. She willed it all away so hard and fast 
that Mary's chances to undo the knot are of the slimmest. I had 
the tying of it, and though I tried my best to leave a loop-hole, 
lest there should be some mistake, the old lady was inflexible. 
I am sorry for her daughter one can't help having a friendly 
feeling for a pretty creature like that, whom one has dandled 
on one's knees." 

" Of course he can't," said M. Blondel, with a laugh. " But 



1885.] THE NOSOLOG Y OF REGICIDE. 5 1 7 

she don't call for over-much sympathy. She may be trusted to 
look out for herself. I am only theorizing about her, you under- 
stand. Women of her sort, in her position, naturally give food 
for thought to men of mine." 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



THE NOSOLOGY OF REGICIDE. 

THERE never was a more inoffensive ruler than Louis 
Philippe, King of the French, first of the house of Orleans. 
Nature had not designed him as avag avdp&v. The grocer- 
king the wits called him. A head like unto a pear the carica- 
turists gave him. He would have been much more at home with 
the umbrella of a bourgeois under his arm than with the sceptre 
of Charlemagne in his hand ; and he felt and freely acknow- 
ledged it. In the luxurious imprisonment of the Tuileries he 
often sighed for the happy days when he could potter about the 
streets inspecting the buildings in construction, as middle-aged 
fldneurs will, and feasting his gaze cheaply on the latest engrav- 
ings in the windows of the print-shops. Yet this unambitious, 
unpretentious, amiable mediocrity of domestic virtues, common- 
place gifts, and simple tastes was made the target of many vile 
conspiracies. His life was attempted as often as if he were the 
most ferocious inheritor of a relentless absolutism instead of a kind- 
ly sovereign, elect of the people, and hedged in by the barriers of 
constitutionalism. In the eyes of persons of a certain tempera- 
ment, to be a king is crime sufficient to merit death. It matters 
not if the king be good or bad, sound or foolish, brilliant adventu- 
rer or cruel conqueror, monarch of usurpation or by heritage ; his 
position, for them, is equivalent to treason against the " sovereign 
people " and deserving the capital sentence. They reason on 
the same lines as that Communist who shot a priest, and, when 
asked why he had committed the deed and what harm his vic- 
tim had done him, answered : " Harm ! He never did me any. 
I shot him because he was a priest that was his offence ! " 
These persons often shoot down kings for no other apparent 
cause than that they are kings. With them it is a monomania. 
And an ample illustration of what I venture to advance is 
afforded by the experiences of the reign of Louis Philippe, the 



5i8 THE NOSOLOGY OF REGICIDE. [July, 

clement, comfortable, paternal, elderly potentate, who was pur- 
sued with as rabid a hate as any White Czar of the house of 
Romanoff. 

It was my habit, during a residence in Paris, to stroll, like 
Miirger's Gustave Colline, on the line of quays between the Pont 
Neuf and the Pont des Arts, rummaging in the book-stalls. I 
was a veritable piocheur at that epoch. I picked up a rare volume 
there once, entitled The Prison of the Luxembourg under the Reign 
of Louis Philippe. It made a deep impression on me, and contain- 
ed so many facts bearing on the nosology of regicide that I deter- 
mined some day to epitomize its contents for the benefit of an 
English-speaking community. This volume was written by the 
Abbe Grivel, a canon and vicar-general of Bordeaux, guardian of 
the tombs of the Imperial Chapter of St. Denis, and chaplain to 
the Chamber of Peers. He was also ordinary to the state-prison 
of the Luxembourg, better known to the tourist as a palace and a 
picture-gallery. His gleanings in the latter capacity make up his 
book, which is one of the most instructive and profitable of its 
kind ever penned. This good, self-sacrificing ecclesiastic attend- 
ed some of the most conspicuous lunatics inscribed on the pseudo- 
martyrology of regicide, in the dungeon and on the guillotine ; 
and the sum of his reflections on their mental structure and 
motives resolves itself into the conviction that a false idea, once 
it has been entertained and encouraged, can produce every 
species of fanaticism and turn a man into a monster. That false 
idea te as a demon that possesses him, and it is only religion 
that can exorcise it. 

On the 28th of July, 1835, Fieschi's famous, or rather in- 
famous, plot against the life of Louis Philippe was brought to a 
head. As the monarch was passing along the grand boulevards 
towards the Bastille, reviewing his troops, an infernal machine 
was discharged at him from a third-floor window. Eighteen in- 
dividuals, including a marshal of France and several generals, 
were killed outright, and two-and-twenty wounded ; but the king 
escaped with a black powder-streak across his forehead. The 
author of this wholesale butchery was captured red-handed ; he 
had been " hoist with his own petar," and had been unable to 
secure safety in flight. He was recognized as a Corsican who 
had served in the army, Giuseppe-Marie Fieschi ; he was aged 
about forty and had signalized himself by his vagabond dispo- 
sition and unruly temper. He was dishonest, immoral, and 
addicted to vicious company. Nevertheless he was an ingenious 
mechanician, had some education and a prodigious memory. 



1885.] THE NOSOLOGY OF REGICIDE. 519 

His force of character, too, was great. But all these qualities, 
which, properly trained and disciplined, might have led him to a 
position of competence and respectability, were counterbalanced 
by an overweening sense of his own importance. He was an 
exaltL One could not be two minutes in his company without 
perceiving that this supercilious and loquacious creature, who 
fancied he resembled his countryman, Bonaparte, was eaten up 
with vanity. He thought the eyes of Europe were fixed upon 
him. 

I have a theory (if I may be permitted to intrude it) that all 
French conspirators against the ruling powers are mainly urged 
on by vanity. They wish to advertise themselves ; they are 
essentially poseurs desirous to attitudinize on a pedestal ; and, 
failing to gratify their restless ambition by the slow and sober 
exercise of industry and perseverance, they try to clutch at it by 
some daring act, in the prostituted name of patriotism, which 
will bring them into the glare of publicity with a startling sud- 
denness. Fieschi, with his exaggerated pride, his sensitiveness 
to a false point of honor he had sworn to compass assassination : 
he would be a coward, forsooth ! if he did not keep his oath 
was undoubtedly of this class. His brain had been crammed 
with the pestilent stuff foisted as the messages of wisdom by 
speculative revolutionists, and he had linked himself to a secret 
society with the sounding title of " The Rights of Man." The 
lazy and discontented rascals who engineer these occult confede- 
racies prate of despotism and are jealous of property because 
they have neither the ability nor the patience to acquire it, in 
nine cases out of ten. If property were to fall to them by acci- 
dent, in nine cases out of ten, they would become rank conser- 
vatives. Liberty, to them, is but too often the convenient sign- 
board under which they trade. They would be nobody in the 
open world ; they are somebody in their own hole-and-corner 
organizations. There are exceptions: in every secret society 
there, are the ardent dupes who pay in money and are ready to 
pay in blood, and there are those, with more enthusiasm than 
judgment, who have worked themselves up into a frenzy of 
belief. But how do those societies finish? Voltaire has sup- 
plied the answer ; fas est ab hoste doceri. " Speak of liberty," he 
said, "declaim against law and authority: you will win over the 
boobies ; and when you have boobies enough at your beck some 
clever fellows will turn up who" will bridle and saddle them, 
and ride upon their backs to the overthrow of thrones and 
empires." Fieschi was one of the boobies, the instrument of 



520 THE NOSOLOGY OF REGICIDE. [July, 

shrewder scoundrels in the background ; and be sure, if he had 
succeeded in his nefarious crime, the richest sheaves in the har- 
vest of profit would not have been carried off by his hands. In 
spite of his vaunted fidelity, the Corsican made avowals which 
led to the arrest of three associates, Morey, Pepin, and Boireau. 
These self-constituted champions of the rights of man sometimes 
" peach " upon one another. All were members of the secret 
society. Morey, an old soldier like Fieschi, was deaf, decrepit, 
and rheumatic. He had a diseased antipathy to royalty, and was 
oppressed with the hallucination that he had been a much-mal- 
treated man. The unhappy fool babbled of his conscience, which 
told him he was right that warped conscience which would 
seek to restore a fictitious peace and prosperity to France (which 
had never been more peaceful or prosperous) by foul and cow- 
ardly murder ! This wretched gray-beard had cast the bullets 
for the infernal machine and paid the hire of the room in which 
it had been placed. Pepin was a grocer and had very lax notions 
in matters of religion. He had joined a sect which called itself 
the French Church, and had given himself up to the reading of 
the silly and wicked " philosophy " of Saint-Just, whose tracts 
had been discovered in his domicile. He was weak of fibre, a 
passive rather than an active participator in the scheme, and had 
furnished Fieschi with funds to buy gun-barrels and wood for 
his machine. Boireali was a young lamp-maker, frank and 
honest, but cursed with the sin of vanity, impulsive and carried 
away by the wild conversation of more mature associates and by 
the reading of bad books. He had ridden along the boulevard 
the evening before the explosion, in order that Fieschi might be 
able to take correct aim. Boireau, having made a clean breast 
of it, was let off with twenty years' detention. The three others 
were sentenced to death. Grace to the assiduity of the chap- 
lains, particularly the Abbe Grivel, they turned to the stool of 
penitence. Fieschi, whose hardihood was equal to his conceit, 
became very docile under the sweet and skilled persuasiveness 
of the pastor as soon as he realized that he was, indeed, no hero, 
but a misguided idiot who had confounded civic virtue with base 
brutality. He thanked God that he had not taken the king's 
life, and explained that his majesty owed his preservation to the 
chance of a M. Ladvocat, a former benefactor of his, having 
crossed the line of fire, which so overcame him that he involun- 
tarily lowered his infernal machine a few inches. Providence 
works in curious channels. 

Fieschi had great difficulty in ridding himself of his pompous, 



1885.] THE NOSOLOGY OF REGICIDE. 521 

almost childish self-sufficiency. It was riot his nature to be meek 
and humble ; that vanity to which 1 have already alluded was 
his besetting weakness. At one time, after he had confessed the 
error of his ways, he grew almost presumptuous in his confi- 
dence in the divine mercy. He occupied himself much with 
writing and reading. As clue to his temperament it may be 
told that one of the studies to which he had devoted himself 
was an annotation of the satires of Salvator Rosa, between whom 
and himself he had the arrogance to establish a parallel. This 
he preceded with a quotation from one of the painter's stanzas : 

"Quando eri penso il capo mi traballa, 
La feccia che dovreble andare abasso 
In qu'est' acque per Dio va sempre a galla." * 

The last morning for the trio of murderers broke drearily. 
The dramatic narrative of how they met their fate will be 
edifying. In a hall on the ground-floor the preparations for the 
final act were to be made. The Abbe Grivel placed himself 
beside the Catiline of the conspiracy. The condemned was in a 
state of extreme nervous irritability, spoke quickly and volubly, 
and addressed his remarks to all with whom he had the slight- 
est acquaintance. 

His thoughts reverted to home and the scenes of early life, 
and in a softened tone he lamented having quitted his father's 
roof, never more to see it, only to arrive at the foot of the 
scaffold by the path of misery, vice, and crime. Suddenly he 
burst loudly into the apostrophe : " My God ! why didn't I leave 
my bones at Moscow instead of returning to have my head 
chopped off in my own country? Nevertheless I declare to you, 
messieurs, you who are here, that I have rendered a service to 
society. I have told the truth and I don't regret it. My death 
should be an example." 

The toilet was over. 

" Now," he said with an ironical grin " now I am ready. 
The others may bfe fetched ; I am anxious to see them. C'est 
mon banquet, a moi // is my treat ! " 

The abbe", shocked at this grim pleasantry, approached and 
bent over him. Fieschi presented his face for an embrace, and 
ic good chaplain kissed him several times and gave way to 
lis emotion. " What !" cried the criminal, " you are weeping? 

* " When I think my head turns, the dregs which should seek the depths in those waters 
always rise to the surface." . 



522 THE NOSOLOGY OF REGICIDE. [J u b% 

'Tis I, then, that shall have to give you encouragement ! Non- 
sense ! I'm happy, because I am about to expiate my crime, and 
I shall die without fear." 

The priest admonished him and put the crucifix to his lips. 
Fieschi kissed it reverently. 

Morey was led in. He was calm, resigned, silent. He sank 
on the form and submitted to the manipulations of M. de Paris 
deputies without' uttering a word. Now and again he cast a 
careless glance on those around. This taciturnity made striking 
contrast with the petulance of Fieschi, who never ceased babbling. 

Morey did not seem to affront his fate so much as to have 
forgotten it. His countenance bore the imprint of suffering 
rather than of fear. The while he mutely underwent the terri- 
ble toilet one might have noticed leaning carelessly against 
a pillar a man with a seasoned pipe in his mouth. This man 
looked on at the scene like an indifferent spectator, occasionally 
addressing a few quiet observations on the details of the lugu- 
brious ceremony to his neighbors. 

It was P6pin. At a sign from the executioners he went over 
and sat by the side of Morey. While they were attaching his 
hands he calmly smoked his pipe. There was no emotion on 
his expressionless face ; his voice was unaltered, but he seldom 
spoke. He turned towards Morey and remarked : " Well, 
Morey, old chum, it appears we're about to take the journey 
into the other world in company." 

" A trifle sooner or a trifle later what's the odds ? " replied 
Morey. 

" M. Ladvocat ! M. Ladvocat ! " bawled Fieschi from his 
side of the room. "What! he doesn't answer to the call? Not 
here, and at such a time as this ! Ah ! when there was need to 
defend him I never failed. Where can he be ? May be they 
never told him I wished to see him. I wish him to come!" 
Then, with an accent and a look to make one shudder, he added : 
" If M. Ladvocat does not come I die damned ! " 

The abb6 clapped his hand quickly on the .criminal's mouth, 
and in pleading accents urged : " O my friend, what lan- 
guage ! Hold your tongue, I entreat you. I have written to M. 
Ladvocat. Put yourself in his place ; if you had a friend in this 
position you would surely spare both such a cruel interview. ' 

"I understand you, chaplain," said Fieschi; "your comment 
is just. I submit." 

Pepin, having exchanged a few words with Morey, turned 
towards Fieschi. " Well, Fieschi," he said, sjniling with acidity, 



1885.] THE NOSOLOGY OF REGICIDE. 523 

" thou art content, now that thou art face to face with thy 
friend thy victim ! " 

Fieschi was on the point of exploding with rage, but the chap- 
lain intervened, and the criminal satisfied himself with a move of 
the head, a shrug of the shoulders, and a contemptuous " Bah ! 
bah ! " Then, turning to the Abbe" Grivel, he said : " I hardly 
believe it is daylight yet ! January the nineteenth ! Dismal 
day and long, long night ! " 

At half-past seven the condemned were ready to leave. 

" Messieurs," said P6pin, his pipe still in his mouth, " Fieschi's 
crime is Fieschi's own contriving. There is no other culprit 
here but he." 

" I have done but my duty," answered Fieschi ; " all I regret 
is not to have forty more days to live, that I might write many 
things." 

The signal was given and the sombre procession was formed, 
Fieschi and his confessor going first, and made its slow progress 
to the garden of the Petit Luxembourg. Before mounting the 
vehicles which were to carry them on the last stage of all, they 
passed in front of Colonel Posac, commander of the palace. 
Fieschi saluted him with respect, and the colonel returned the 
salute with evident feeling, saying : " Fieschi, remember God 
and the soldier of Gaeta." 

" Yes, yes ! " answered Fieschi. " Make your mind easy." 

On their way to the scaffold Fieschi told the abb6 what this 
reference to Gaeta meant. There were two regiments at the 
siege there between which there was a fierce emulation one 
French, the other Corsican. A soldier of the French regi- 
ment stood on the ramparts, a glass of wine in his hands, and 
drained it to the health of the emperor whilst the balls whistled 
around. A Corsican, not to be outdone, stood on the same spot 
and finished an entire bottle to the same toast. Fieschi also 
confided to his spiritual adviser the story of a singular prophecy 
which had been pronounced concerning his fortune by a soi-di- 
sant sorceress whom he and a comrade had visited in Calabria 
several years before. The horoscope she drew was in these 
words : 

"Tu iras en France ; 
Tu seras guillotine en France ; 
Et tu mourras avec plaisir." 

The morning was chill and foggy. The gruesome, repulsive 
scene was lent new- wofulness by the bleak weather, the unkind 



524 THE NOSOLOGY OF REGICIDE. [July, 

look of the dull skies, and the black crowd and shadowy houses, 
portentous-looking in the mist. Just as the execution was about 
to be begun Fieschi whispered to the chaplain : " Let us turn 
aside, lest it should be thought I had the air of mocking their fate." 

Pepin first ascended the fatal steps ; he kissed the crucifix, 
embraced the priest who attended him, raised his eyes towards 
heaven, and faltered wailingly: "I ask pardon of God a thou- 
sand times pardon! Adieu, messieurs! I die a victim. . . . 
Adieu!" . . . 

It was Morey's turn. He, too, embraced his confessor, 
kissed the crucifix, and cried : " My God ! at last this is going to 
end. Ah ! it is not my courage that fails, but my illness that 
hinders me from standing up." . . . 

Fieschi bore it well. Not even his eyebrows had quivered. 

" It's my turn now. I wish to speak; I have Commissary 
Vassal's permission." The executioner touched him on the 
shoulder; he shook, and, in spite of the encumbrances to feet and 
hands, almost precipitated himself on the steps of the scaffold. 
The chaplain counselled him to moderation. " I obey," he said ; 
" but accompany me close as you can to eternity." And the 
good man pressed after him. Fieschi faced the people and in a 
sonorous, re-echoing voice exclaimed : " I am about to appear be- 
fore God ! . . . I have told the truth ; I die easy. I have done 
service to my country in denouncing my accomplices. I have 
told the truth, no falsehood I take Heaven to witness. ... I 
am .happy and satisfied. ' I ask pardon of God and men, above all 
of God. I regret my victims more than my life." 

He embraced the Abbe Grivel and said hurriedly : " What 
shall become of me? What shall be my fate? Would that I 
could give you tidings of myself five minutes after my death ! 
Pray to God for me ! " 

The abbe murmured a few syllables of consolation. Fieschi 
passionately kissed the crucifix and delivered himself to the 
executioner. An instant afterwards the tragedy was finished. 

It will have been remarked that Morey and Pepin talked of 
themselves as if they were innocent and had been betrayed by 
Fieschi. He had disclosed their names to justice, it is true let 
us give him the benefit of the merciful doubt that this was less 
to curry favor from his judges than to make reparation to an 
outraged society but if he had not done so they would have 
seen him march to the scaffold with equanimity. In the school 
of conspirators there is always a lurking selfishness; each wishes 
to keep his own head on his shoulders. One must not expect 



1885.] THE NOSOLOGY OF REGICIDE. 525 

chivalry among these self-styled illuminati. With their imper- 
fect training and their dulled moral appreciation, they fail to 
recognize that he who manufactures the powder and moulds the 
bullet is as guilty as he who pulls the trigger ; they have a vague 
idea, based on the instinct of personal safety, that they are not 
murderers unless they take actual, active share in murder, and 
imagine that it is wrong to exact* punishment for a crime which 
has been deliberately conceived and prepared for, but which has 
not been carried to its issue through circumstances beyond their 
ordering. Morey was a being whose feeble intelligence had 
been twisted by pernicious reading. In politics he was a stupid 
visionary ; he was opinionated over whatever store of indigested 
information he had picked up, and he had absolutely none of that 
self-respecting responsibility imparted by religion to moderate 
his views and restrain him to the path of honorable industry. 
P6pin was without firmness ; had neglected his duties to his 
church, had even abandoned it for an accommodating heresy, 
and his narrow brain was heated by that furious rhetorical fuel 
which has such a charm for susceptible Frenchmen. Fieschi had 
more force of will than his fellow-miscreants ; but at best he was 
a commonplace, melodramatic ruffian, superstitious, expansive, 
dissolute, with that little learning which is so dangerous, and an 
insatiable passion to make a figure in history. Provided his 
figure was brought out in bold relief, it recked not who suffered. 
But the other attempts on the life of Louis Philippe afford 
clearer evidence still that vanity is the chief motive of those pests 
of society, and that this social disease, regicide, is nourished only 
in soil that has not been cultivated by religion, but that has, 
contrariwise, been poisoned by pernicious reading and the keep- 
ing of evil company. 



526 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [July, 



A FARMING EXPERIiMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 

" IT is very sensible in H to be interested in farming. 

Our boys and young men will be compelled by necessity, at 
some time, to go back to farming and the mechanical trades in 
order to make a living. We are already crowded in the profes- 
sions and in business, and are the most expensive people ever 
known in history. In twenty-five years, at the present rate of 
increase, our population will be doubled and the crowding 
greater. There must be more work done with the hands, and 
more economy and self-denial, or there will be nothing to live on. 
The neglected soil of the New England States even will have to 
be cultivated, every inch of it which can be made moderately 
productive, to say nothing of the more fertile regions. It re- 
quires practical skill and great industry to carry on any particu- 
lar undertaking, such as the one talked of in West Virginia. I 
cannot judge of that particular scheme, but, in general, I ap- 
prove of young men, who have not a way open into a profes- 
sion or business, going into farming with proper discretion and 
prudence." 

This was written by a relative of a young New-Englander 
who had purchased land in West Virginia for the purpose of 
farming and sheep-raising, and intended, in company with a friend 
and partner, to settle in that country. The two young men, both 
sons of officers of rank in the army of the United States during 
the Civil War, were accompanied in their journey thither by an 
elderly gentleman, the father of one, and a Yankee farmer whose 
practical knowledge and skill were expected to prove invaluable 
aids to them, as their studies at school or college and their 
bringing-up in comfortable New England homes had not particu- 
larly adapted them to the mode of life they had chosen. 

After a journey of about four days by railroad to Grafton, 
and about seventy miles across the State, over bad roads, by 
wagon, they arrived at Blue Spring, Randolph County, West 
Virginia, the nearest town to their future home. At this place 
they found themselves within two or three miles of a post-office 
with one mail a week ; and to this place, until further develop- 
ments, their letters were to be addressed. 

The following extracts from the letters of these young men 



1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 527 

will give an idea of this country and of life in this " vast wil- 
derness." 

April, 1883. We have fortunately secured a temporary home 
with a family named Fretvvell in a comfortable log house. 
Many of these houses are miserable shanties, having cracks large 
enough to put your foot through. We are in excellent health 
and find plenty to eat though fresh meat is scarce : we have 
only tasted it once since we left Grafton. Our diet consists 
of pies, corn-bread, maple-sugar, milk, butter, eggs, buckwheat- 
cakes, coffee, salt meat, etc. The people are kind and hospitable. 
One man was even offended because we did not take up our 
abode with him, which we could not do, as he could not accom- 
modate our party in his small house. There is a deplorable lack 
of education among " the natives," the queen's English being 
literally murdered. Schools are few in number, and school- 
teachers are incompetent; but they have the traditions of a better 
state of things, and a desire to give their children advantages 
that were enjoyed, strange to say, to a greater degree by their 
grandparents. 

There is not a telegraph nor a railroad within many miles. 
The country is full of valuable timber maple, beech, cherry, 
hemlock, chestnut, oak, ash, and so forth growing up to the tops 
of the mountains. A part of the land is stony, but the soil 
is mostly good, and fine for grazing. Yesterday, following the 
stream on our land for some distance, we picked up several 
specimens of coal, some soft one piece like cannel coal, as large 
as your two fists. This will pay better than sheep by and by. 
The earth is filled with particles of coal, and I have been inform- 
ed that there is on our land a large bed of stone-coal so-called 
from which the whole valley was formerly supplied. But later 
they found a bed nearer, and, as transportation is difficult, our 
coal-field was abandoned. There is land near us that would sell, 
if we had a railroad, for $2,000 per acre, it is so filled with coal- 
beds, and could now be bought for $5 or $10. I suppose you 
saw in the papers a notice of the sale in Pennsylvania of fifteen 
hundred acres of coal-fields for half a million dollars where 
some of our prominent men have made fortunes. I would prefer 
a coal to a silver mine. 

The country is also rich in iron and salt ; the latter often 
appears in wells. These were filled up during the war, as they 
supplied a portion of the South with this commodity. 

June. We have selected a site for our house near the road, 
on a level plain, high up on Point Mountain I should say twenty- 



528 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [July, 

five hundred feet above the level of the sea and when the trees 
are cut down we shall have a fine view of the surrounding country. 
We have commenced clearing- away trees and underbrush, and 
cutting logs for the house. These logs are mostly of beech, with 
one or two of maple and chestnut, seventy-two in number, cut 
eight inches by six, hewed on all sides and made to fit. The "na- 
tives" consider a log house warmer than a " box house," as they 
call a frame house. We have cut down some trees that obstruct 
our view, or that might, in some storm, fall down upon us. We 
blew up the stumps near the house with powder, leaving the 
others to rot, which will take from three to twenty years. 

July. Our house has progressed slowly, being delayed by an 
occasional accident one day our hewer of wood cut his foot 
with the broad-axe yet our roof is on and we have moved in, 
as we only lack floors and windows and doors. We slept for a 
few nights on planks laid across the beams up-stairs, but, as Mr. 

M was anxious lest we should tumble off, we have moved 

our beds to the first floor. We have two rooms above and t\vo 
below stairs, with five windows in all, besides a window in each 
door. We have purchased a stove with all its appurtenances for 
twenty-three dollars, and ordered furniture which consists of 
two bedsteads, six chairs, and a table of cherry-wood, because 
the man was out of black walnut for seven dollars,, and we 
have commenced housekeeping in a very primitive fashion. We 
have a cow and calf, for which we paid thirty-five dollars. Hav- 
ing plenty of wood and a stove, we have every convenience for 
cooking ; but we have nothing to cook. Like old Mother Hub- 
bard's, " our cupboard is bare," our supplies not having arrived. 
We have neighbors living two miles distant, and they kindly fur- 
nish us with bacon, bread, eggs, and whatever else is needful. . . . 

At last our stores have come butter, eggs, maple-sugar, and 
honey for ten cents a pound. Hams and other things seem to 
us, in otir ignorance of prices, rather high. We get along first- 
rate with our cooking, improving our bacon by boiling it, and 
acquiring skill each day, so that, with good appetites, we greatly 
enjoy our frugal board. We get up at five or half-past in the 
morning. Bert gets breakfast while I milk the cow. We work 
until noon, making fence or burning rubbish or hacking trees. 
At twelve we get dinner, and continue our work until supper- 
time. About half-past eight we go to bed. We set our watches 
by the sun. 

August. Our floors are laid they are of poplar and our 
house is as comfortable as possible. Mr. M left for home 






1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 529 

last month, Bert going as far as Beverly with him ; but the heavy 
rains of the last few days have swollen the streams, so that he 
feared to be delayed if he went farther. Before the war bridges 
were built over these streams, but they were all burned, and, 
with two exceptions, have not been rebuilt. Many trees have 
fallen with a loud crash in the last few days in consequence of 
the rain and wind. Our summer weather is delightful cool 
nights, and days not too hot. Our health is perfect. How 
could it be otherwise in this pure mountain air? We have no 
mosquitoes and few flies. Gnats are troublesome in the woods, 
but not near the house. 

Field-berries grow in the meadows. Why do they spring up 
from no apparent cause? The forests may be cleared, and a 
wood, if left alone, will come up entirely different from any for- 
mer growth in the vicinity. Can the roots or seeds have lain 
here dormant for centuries, or where do they come from? Our 
grass is like the finest lawn-grass. In the woods you see only a 
wild grass, which, however, furnishes pasturage for large numbers 
of cattle. Very few sow grass-seed ; when they do it is only to 
hasten its growth. About two hundred acres of our land are 
level, which will be sufficient to raise feed for all the stock we 
can keep. Many of the "natives" leave their cattle out all win- 
ter, so I am told. 

There is little or no underbrush in the woods, and one can 
ride for miles on horseback ; the lowest limbs being sixty or 
seventy feet from the ground, lack of sunlight having killed 
the lower limbs. The trunks are as straight as a gun-barrel, 
and many of the trees one hundred and fifty feet in height. 
The practical farmer who accompanied us to West Virginia, 
and whose skill and knowledge were to have been of such in- 
estimable value to us, deserted us and returned home soon 
after our arrival, leaving us to gain experience for ourselves, 
and strength from hard-handed toil. We were disappointed, 
but we decided that the best New England farmer is not 
necessarily a first-rate hand in the woods, and that a native 
could do as much in one month as he could in three. While 
he can handle machinery and all modern implements of farm- 
ing, a native could do better for us, as we count that man most 
valuable who can make the biggest hole in a piece of woods 
in a short space of time. 

September. If you could have seen our place yesterday 
morning, and suddenly been brought back last evening, you 

would hardly know it, it is so changed. In the morning we 
VOL. XLI. 34 



530 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [July, 

were hedged in with trees and could not see beyond them ; but 
by afternoon about fifty trees had been cut down by two men 
and a boy, and now our view extends many miles and is sim- 
ply grand equal, it seems to me, to any in the world. We 
had contemplated doing this for some time, and the result ex- 
ceeds our expectations. Opposite us is Elk Mountain. Beyond 
is Gauley, its summit nearly always capped with clouds. To 
the left we see Cheat Mountain with its several ranges, and 
Mingo at its foot, eight miles distant. Every slope is covered 
with lofty trees from the foot to the summit, with here and there 
a clearing. I wish I could send a photograph of it. This morn- 
ing we were above the clouds. The valley is only half a mile 
distant, but we are six or eight hundred feet higher. We shall 
enjoy our view these beautiful moonlight evenings, after our 
day's work is oven 

On Thursday a gentleman from Washington passed by, en 
route for Addison Sulphur Springs. He thought it a shame 
to destroy the forests as we are doing. .He was travelling in a 
canvas-top wagon, on a pleasure trip " roughing it," to use his 
own expression. He was delighted with these hills, and said 
our view is the grandest he had seen, and that he would like to 
spend the rest of his days here. He was about sixty years old ; 
had his gun and was looking for game. When told that he 
would find bears on these mountains he asked if they would 
attack you. I told him they would always run, unless they had 
cubs or were cornered. 

A bear was seen last week on this mountain, about two miles 
away, by a stranger^ who described it as about the size of the 
largest black bear he had ever seen in a show, weighing about 
four hundred pounds. He looked at the bear, and the bear 
looked at him, and each passed on his own way. Not far from 
us is a bear-trap, which is a pen with very heavy logs placed on 
the top, so that when the bear enters it he runs against a pin 
which lets the logs fall on him, and there he must remain until 
the owner of the trap comes which may be days or weeks 
when, if the bear be alive, he is shot. The trap is baited with 
some kind of partly-cooked meat, and after a trap is set the 
natives seldom bother themselves about it. Yesterday we saw 
three wild turkeys, each weighing about twenty pounds ; but, 
having left our guns, we lost several good meals. I am told that 
the pheasant is the finest bird in these parts. They live on 
beech-mast, which when plentiful, as it is this year, attracts them 
in great numbers. They make a peculiar drumming sound on 



1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 531 

the trunks of trees, which I heard for a long time before discov- 
ering the cause. Wild pigeons also come here in large flocks, so 
that you can hit them with a stick. The people here and else- 
where make frequent trips to Addison and bring back the water 
in casks, which they put into cisterns. The only practicable 
route between the eastern part of the State and Addison is the 
road on which we live ; and this will become quite a thorough- 
fare, as the Sulphur Springs are a favorite resort in summer. 
Many prefer these to the White Sulphur Springs, which are 
sixty miles from us. Addison is twenty miles distant, and thirty 
or forty miles from the Ohio and Chesapeake Railroad. 

October. The leaves are beginning to fall, but only here and 
there a tree is bare. The foliage does not change color, as at 
home; some few trees only show a variety of tints. We have 
burned nearly all our brush and rubbish, keeping what is good 
for the stove. Last week we split two cords. Our turnips are 
growing nicely. We planted radishes with them, which have 
grown to an enormous size, but are tender and nice. Next year 
we hope to have a good garden, but it will be hard to work, as 
the roots of trees are in the way. Our cow and calf are thriv- 
ing. We keep the cow in at night, turning the calf out, and 
reverse it in the day-time. On Friday nights the calf must stay 
at home, because on Saturday we go to the post-office, and she 
does' not return early enough in the morning. They get all the 
feed they want in the woods. We have a bell tied to her neck, 
and can hear her when two miles off, unless she gets into a hol- 
low. This morning the clouds in the valley were very beautiful 
soft, white, and fleecy, as we often see them in the sky ; but look- 
ing down upon them the valley had the appearance of a vast sea, 
with here and there an island. A little later these clouds 
began to move, and then it looked like the ocean rolling and the 
spray dashing high against the mountain-sides. If there had 
been a high wind to make the roar and moaning of the sea, 
it would have been perfect. It is very warm like summer 
weather. The shower yesterday did not cool the air, though it 
is never sultry, there being always a breeze. 

We were troubled for a while with wood-rats, but they have 
disappeared. They are of a grayish color, a little larger than a 
mouse. We have also owls to visit us ; we tried to shoot a 
couple, but only wounded one. At this point the cat, which has 
been watching me, seizes my pen with both paws and will not 
let me write. 

We are going to nail strips of roofing-paper all over our 



532 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [July, 

ceiling, wall, etc., to keep out the cold air this winter. We have 
everything comfortable in the way of clothing, etc., and plenty of 
wood and water. If we get out of provisions our neighbors 
would make a sacrifice to supply us with anything we could not 
get from the store. We have ordered our potatoes. The man 
would only sell us five bushels, as he said it was all we would 
need. He is honest as the day, and all seem to be so in this 
part of the world. This man has some conversational powers, 
but his brother, a very industrious man, will only reply with a 
grunt. He is quite a character. His wife smokes and his daugh- 
ter chews tobacco. They are honest and respectable, and very 
hospitable people, but, having always led an isolated life, they 
know nothing of the ways of the outside world. I am informed 
that there are some good schools in this State, one at Huttons- 
ville, taught by a college graduate. 

There are no ponds or lakes in this country, but streams of 
considerable length. There is no trout-fishing now, as the law 
is on, but plenty of game deer, partridge, etc. 

There is a tree growing here called the cucumber-tree, hav- 
ing large, fan-shaped leaves. The bark has an aromatic odor, 
and the fruit resembles a cucumber in appearance. We came 
across several of these trees to-day in our hacking, and when 
we cut into the bark the air was filled with a pleasant perfume. 
November. We have had three or four snow-storms this 
month, and the ground has frozen hard once or twice. We 
dug our turnips and have several bushels. The woods will no 
longer afford pasture for our cattle, and we have taken them 
where they can get feed. We shall miss the milk, but must 
get on without it. Fortunately our boundary-lines cross two 
streams running nearly at right angles, which will give us plenty 
of water. In locating our boundaries we ran our lines with per- 
fect accuracy, which I consider remarkable, as we had never be- 
fore attempted such a thing. Going down the mountain one 
day, we saw a man butchering, and bought seventy-six pounds of 
beef of him at five cents a pound. Roast beef is quite a treat 

when you have had none in seven months. Mrs. S sent us a 

box for Thanksgiving, and we had a good dinner. Though very 
comfortable here and in perfect health, we accept your invitation 
to go home for Christmas, and will start on December 10. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 533 



SOLITARY ISLAND. 

PART THIRD. 

CHAPTER VII. 

A PROPOSAL. 

COUNT VLADIMIR met Florian opposite a restaurant one day 
at noon and hurried him unceremoniously into its cool shade. 

" From your elegant make-up," said he, " I judge that you are 
about to call on the charming Barbara. But pardon me if I 
think you are acting rashly in paying this visit on an empty 
stomach. Fasting does not favor the divine flame, so permit me 
to put you in better condition." 

The politician did not feel amused at the count's raillery. 
There was an indefinable something about it which hurt him. 

" You have not chosen a good place," said Florian, surveying 
the restaurant. " It is a second-rate establishment." 

" Wait and see. This is an obscure gem, but when it becomes 
known all the city will bow to its superiority. You shall have a 
soup and a dessert whose flavors no other can equal, and you will 
talk to Merrion as if on air. What a lucky fellow to stand so 
high in her favor, and at the same time to be adored by De 
Ponsonby's fair daughter! I wish you would choose between 
them quickly, and give me an opportunity in either place." 

" Your special line of action," said Florian, flushing in spite of 
himself, " is not apt to be encouraged in those quarters. You are 
not in Paris." 

" I know that, but women are women the world over. While 
you stand in my light I acknowledge I can do nothing ; but give 
me a clear field, remove your Jupitership to one side or the 
other, and see if Mercury is 'not as good a thief as ever. Why 
do you dally so much ? If you are in doubt take my advice and 
choose Barbara. The divorce court is not pleasant, but it will 
do if you work quickly and quietly." 

" The divorce court ! " cried Florian. " That sounds queerly 
from you, who are a Catholic, by tradition at least." 

" I am speaking to a politician," the count answered, " in 
whose path no difficulties are allowed to stand where his ambi- 



534 SOLITARY ISLAND. [July* 

tions are concerned. All your good genii urge you to choose 
Barbara. You have thought of divorce yourself many a time." 

Florian did not attempt to deny the assertion, only saying: 
" You are taking too much for granted, count. I cannot see any 
weighty reasons for such a step." 

" No ? " The tone was slightly ironical. " First of all, this 
charming woman appreciates you. Secondly, she has become a 
Catholic. Do you desire the thirdly, etc. ? for it exists, although 
you cannot see it." 

" Thank you, no," said Florian, hardly able to conceal his 
agitation. " You have a Parisian fancy, count. You will not be 
understood or appreciated in this country for many a year." 

" These are the days of primeval innocence," sneered the 
count, " and the republic has usurped the virtue of the world. 
Well, wear your mask, Florian, but when you choose to throw it 
off let me know. I can lose no time where I have already lost so 
much." 

As soon as possible Florian escaped from his friend, and, with 
feelings too mixed for thought, went on his way to Brooklyn. 
Mrs. Merrion was just preparing for a drive when he arrived. She 
stood in the hall fitting on her gloves, her graceful form arrayed 
in a dark green carriage dress. He apologized for his intrusion. 

" No, no," said she ; " you have come in good time. You 
shall go with me, and I shall tell you something to surprise you. 
Or can you be surprised at anything?" 

" I was surprised once to-day," he said. " I do not think I 
could bear another of the same kind with equanimity." 

She averted her eyes, half-conscious of his meaning. 

" Your training has not done much for you. I thought you 
were proof against surprises. I suppose you are surprised that 
you could be surprised." 

" Don't laugh at me, or I may take revenge by turning your 
mirth into tears. By the way, I have never seen you weep." 

" When you do it will be the moment of your greatest 
humiliation. Do not ask me to explain, but assist me to the 
carriage." 

They went down the steps and into the carriage silently, nor 
did they speak for some time. Florian was unnerved and dis- 
contented, and hardly knew why he was there at all. It was 
something less, something more, than an ordinary drive, and it 
vexed him because he could not feel as commonplace as usual. 

" How do you like my new mood of utter despondency?" he 
said, when the silence had grown oppressive. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 535 

" I did not know you were a man of moods." 

" Because they are not visible to all the world you think I 
have none. Even the gods can grow sad, and why not I ? I am 
on the eve of matrimony." 

She started at the severe emphasis of the words, threw up 
her hands in feigned amazement, and gasped. 

" At last ! " she murmured. " Ah ! you are* mortal. Death 
could not have proved you more human! When am I to con- 
gratulate. Miss Lynch?" 

" I did not say it was Miss Lynch." 

" Not to-day, but last summer. You could not off with the 
old love so quickly, unless your moods were equal to a woman's." 

" Let it be granted that it is Miss Lynch. I hope you can 
congratulate her next week." 

Another start from Barbara followed this remark, and an 
other gesture of mock-alarm concealed it very poorly from his 
gaze. 

" You look sad," said she. " I was sad on my wedding morn- 
ing. But. there is less excuse for men in those things." 

"Why?" 

" Oh ! they are binding themselves to so little. They are do- 
ing the thing to ' better ' themselves, and the ' worse ' need never 
trouble them. It never does. Madame is usually supposed to 
look after that." 

He laughed at her earnest manner and agreed with her. 

" Well, mine is a venture where love is only present by 
deputy, or accompanied by an ' if.' You remember our talk by 
the seaside?" 

" Hardly," pretending to recollect, " I had so many there." 

" It does not matter. I asked your advice about marrying 
Miss Lynch." 

" I remember," she interrupted, laughing " long before you 
asked about her inclination to marry you." 

" My way," he replied, " but not intended to exalt rffe^t any 
good woman's expense. I think, I hope, that Frances will marry 
me if I ask -her. I have a high regard for her, an^of^g^^ so 
easily turns to love." /y '^ 

" Oh ! so easily," Barbara said, with a sigh. " But if J^QU afrfc j 
gloomy there is no need of imparting your gloom to me. I am 
sure I wish you all happiness. You will come through x the 
ordeal unscathed, and you are getting such a woman ! one out 
of a city-full." 

" Might she not be the one woman of the world ? " 



53 6 ' SOLITARY ISLAND. [July, 

"For you, yes, poetically speaking. But in these practical 
days, when you sit on a law-stool instead of a plunging steed, and 
there are no tournaments except those of the tongue, that fiction 
is only tolerated. But now you .have not asked me to surprise 
you." 

" Your tone implies that I have surprised you." 

" You have, but it was not unlocked for. I shall be sorry to 
lose you from my bachelor circle so very sorry ! And I feel a 
kind of regret for your change of life. People change, so much 
with marriage." 

" Do they ? You certainly ought to know. But in my case 
the change will not be radical. We shall rise to a statelier and 
better footing, like people of the same profession." 

" Do you know," she said abruptly, " that I have completed 
my arrangements for entering the church? " 

" I had an idea you were already in it. You have been so 
near it in costume and manner this last year that I trembled 
every day to hear you say you were a. Catholic. At the present 
rate of progress you will fight shy of it for many a day to 
come." 

"Two weeks from to-day I shall be a Catholic." 

" Fourteen days are a long time passing," he said lightly. 
" I shall hope for a reprieve. The church will ruin you." 

" You are bound never to consider me serious in anything I 
say or do," she complained, with a gentleness that touched him. 
" It is my punishment, I suppose. Never having been serious 
till now, my seriousness is taken as a joke. Is there anything 
preposterous or funny in a butterfly's attempt to save its own 
life?" 

" You are too humble, Mrs. Merrion, and I too careless and 
selfish. I am glad of your conversion. I hope it will content 
you. There are many trials for a convert. Do you suffer no 
opposition ? " 

" None. If I chose to be a fire-worshipper Mr. Merrion 
would say not a word. I find the only opposition from Catho- 
lics." 

" Do not construe my actions so, because I cannot encourage 
you cheerfully. I prefer to think of you as I knew you first, not 
under the shadow of this change. Here is a reason why I am 
gloomy. We both change, and the old selves are dying. I shall 
propose this very day," he added. " To-night I shall know my 
fate." 

" Then }^ou must have been gently paving the way to this," 



I885-J SOLITARY ISLAND. 537 

she suggested. " Your mine is ready ; the match needs but to be 
applied." 

" It has been ready these many years. When two persons 
have lived in the same house a long time they must know each 
other exceedingly well." 

" Yes," she said, sighing again, " they must. If many others 
had the same opportunity there would be so little bitter talk and 
thought of the ' might have been.' ' 

They came back to the house in a sombre mood. They had 
been talking enigmas during the ride and fencing delicately 
while suspicious of each other's meaning. There was some evi- 
dence of the truth in Barbara's manner, but nothing definite ; yet 
Florian felt one point of the position very keenly, and it was that 
if he wished to save himself from things which even to his cool 
fancy looked criminal, the sooner he came back to common sense 
the better. 

During the next few days he loitered long in Frances' com- 
pany, eager yet dreading to. pluck the flower which grew so near 
his hand. He had not proposed to her that day, as he had said 
he would ; he could not bring himself to do it. What if circum- 
stances should change the state of affairs ? What if some one should 
die ? He shuddered at the direction his thoughts were taking, 
and determined to end the uncertainty by an immediate proposal. 

Frances was passing his room one afternoon, and, hearing her 
light step, he called to her cheerfully to enter. He had fought 
his last battle with self a few minutes previous, standing before 
the pure, pensive face which hung over the bookcase, and he 
had turned it to the wall with the intention of removing it for 
ever from his aching gaze when he had won from his new love 
her promise to share life's joys and trials with him. 

" I wished to show you this picture," he said, as Frances 
came timidly to him. " I am going to put it away for ever." 

She smiled inquiringly and trembled in secret. 

"You know its story," he went on ; " every one knows it since 
Mr. Carter first heard it from Squire Pendleton." 

" I have heard it," replied Frances, scarcely trusting herself 
to speak. " Mr. Carter was very earnest about it, and persisted 
in telling it more than once." 

" Precisely. I know the gentleman, and am certain that he 
told much more than was strictly true. But no harm was done. 
You did not know Ruth Pendleton?" 

" I just met her for a moment. She seemed to be a very 
sweet girl, and I was glad to hear she became a Catholic." 



538 SOLITARY ISLAND. [July* 

" Yes." assented Florian ; " I suppose it was for her good." 

" Will you excuse me ? " said she, with a blush which betray- 
ed her fears. " Mamma expects me 

" I shall detain you so short a time," he interrupted boldly. 
" I wish you to know the truth of this affair it was such a gar- 
bled story which you heard. Do you not think her face a very 
strong as well as handsome one? Would you blame a man for 
loving its owner very deeply ? " 

" She was so good ! " Frances answered nervously. " I 
thought more of that than of her face." 

" She was good, poor Ruth ! We grew up together from 
childhood, and I knew her goodness of heart so well, and had 
loved her even as a boy. It was no surprise that when we had 
grown up I should have asked her to marry me. She accepted 
me, and but for the difference of religion we would have been 
married these many years." 

" And now that she is a Catholic ? " 

" Now that she is a Catholic," he said sadly, " we are farther 
apart than ever. The old love is dead ; but we are very good 
friends," he added, without a trace of bitterness. " I must marry 
some time," he continued. 

" Not necessarily," she said archly ; " there can be old bache- 
lors as well as old maids, and of the two I prefer the former." 

" Peter Carter, for instance." 

" Well, he is good-humored, and then we do not know that 
he is a bachelor. I like him very much." 

" I don't understand your likings," he said frankly, " but he 
has never shown me more than the rough side of his character. 
He seems to fear that I am going to marry in quarters he re- 
gards as his own. So I shall, if I can. Ruth is so much my 
friend yet that she wishes I would get a good woman for my 
wife. I am trying to do so. Tell me, Miss Frances, am I de- 
serving of a good one ? " 

" If you are not," she replied, trembling, " who can be? " 

"That is your natural kindliness of heart speaking. But 
how many women would- care fora man whose heart was once 
given to another ? " 

" You have it back again," she said with unconscious irony. 

" But not sound and whole. The first love broke it, and 
the second love may find it hard to accept second-hand furni- 
ture." 

" Your comparison is too literal," she replied, becoming more 
nervous and frightened. He was growing nervous himself, but 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 539 

his determination came to the rescue. He turned the picture 
once more to the wall. 

" It shall never look this way again," said he, " until my wife 
turns it with her own hands. Ruth could tell you, Miss Frances, 
that I am a very faithful, tenacious lover. I could not forget her 
for many a year after our parting. When I love again it will 
be as tenaciously and purely." 

The conversation narrowed down to a monologue. Frances 
was ready to cry and looked helplessly towards the door. 

" I am in love once more," he said, dropping his voice to a 
gentler key, " and the woman I love is you." 

The hot blood surged to her face and back again to her heart. 
He took her hand in his with tender respect. 

" I have hopes," he continued, " that my love is returned. 
May I hope ?" 

She burst into tears and sobs and hid her face in her hands. 
He let the storm wear itself out before he spoke again, and a 
very sweet face she turned to him when he began to assure her 
of his love. 

" J know it," she said faintly. " Do not tell me. I return it 
all." 

Can there be any moment more deliciously awkward than 
just after so tender an avowal? Emotion has reached its limits, 
hope is dead in realization, love has exhausted expression, and 
down to the commonplace come manner and thought. Florian 
knew not what to do, but he kissed her hand respectfully and 
told her over and over again how little she would regret con- 
fiding herself to his care. He remembered long afterward how 
calm and sweet a feeling filled his soul as he thought that all 
the doubt and temptation was laid aside. 

" I need not tell you," he said, " what a responsible position 
you are taking. You have now on your hands an ambitious, 
hard-working man. How will so gentle a being manage me?" 

" You are so willing to be managed ; and that is the secret of 
every woman's control over a man." 

" Ah !" said he, with a smile and a sigh, " but not always." 

" You can manage yourself during the ' not always/ " she 
replied ; and seeing that she was on the point of weeping again 
for the excitement was too much for her he led her to the door 
to dismiss her. He had forgotten that it was open, and he now 
saw Peter standing there open-mouthed and transfixed with 
rage and horror. The expression of his face pleased Florian 
very much, for it was an involuntary confession of defeat. 



54Q SOLITARY. ISLAND. [July* 

" How is this," stuttered Peter as he blocked the doorway, 
hardly able to speak from passion " how is this, sir ? Is it the 
custom of your profession to be kissing the daughters of their 
boarding-mistresses ? " . 

Frances turned red and shrank as Peter entered the room 
with a warlike/ demonstration. 

" For two cents, sir," continued Mr. Carter, " I'd pitch ye 
headlong from the window." 

" Before you proceed further," said Florian stiffly, " allow the 
lady to retire. Then we can settle matters quietly." 

Frances slipped away, and the two men stood facing each 
other for a full half-minute, Florian provokingly cool and Peter 
purple with restrained fury. 

" I see through it all," said the journalist. " You've suc- 
ceeded, ye gizzard, in deceivin' a poor, innocent girl with your 
fine speeches. Ye're a traitor to your friend and a traitor to 
her. You don't care for her no more than a stick, but since you 
can't get Mrs. Merrion " 

"Stop, sir!" thundered Florian, with a step forward that 
startled Peter, " and leave the room, or I shall " , 

" No, you won't," said Peter sturdily ; " no man ever did yet. 
But I'll go. Only, mark my words, you will never rriarry that 
girl until I am in my grave." 

He rushed out and nearly overturned the servant entering 
with a note for Florian, who stood smiling at the absurdity of the 
scene just ended. The note was from Mrs. Merrion, and read : 

" Ruth has just arrived in a state of mental excitement. You 
are not to know that she is here, but must discover her by acci- 
dent. Come, by all means come. Her presence has a meaning 
for you." 

The note dropped from his palsied hands. What bitter irony 
of fate was this? Sinking into a chair, he almost wept from dis- 
appointment and rage. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
BACK TO THE WORLD. 

FAR away from the clatter of the town, in a deep enclosure of 
trees over whose tops the river could be seen, stood the convent 
where Ruth was passing the quiet days of her novitiate. The 
doubt and distress had long been ended. The blessed certainty 
of the faith had found a resting-place in her soul. The mournful 





1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 541 

past lay behind her, a picture with faded outline, and all those 
incidents and personages which had made up the circumstances 
of her life seemed no more than the remembrances of a troubled 
sleep. Everything about the convent life was so real. Where 
passions lay dead or asleep there were no heart-breakings. The 
daily exercises, so little in themselves and seemingly trivial, filled 
up the day with a pleasant routine and made sleep a sweet need 
at night. Every voice was so soft and low, every sound was 
music ; the recreation-grounds were so neat and orderly, and the 
cheerful stillness which hung over the place consecrated anew 
the sacred dwelling. It was a spot where a soul came to know 
itself quickly. She had not been there six months when the 
grace of faith was given to her. So far away now seemed the 
world, and so indifferent seemed she to its people, that she took 
with ease the resolution to retire from its turmoil for ever. Oh ! 
the pleasantness of those days. It was the nearest approach 
earth could make to heaven and immortality, for the heart beat 
like a clock, and the head was never clouded, and regret and 
superabundant joy alike were strangers. A calm rested on the 
soul which, without paralyzing its faculties, took away the wear 
and tear of the machine. 

One person Ruth could not forget. Paul Rossiter had so 
closely identified himself with her conversion that every prayer 
of thanksgiving for the grace besought a benediction for him, 
and no face looked out more strongly than his from the misty 
past. She saw him always as she had seen him in their walk 
from the cathedral, with his eyes uplifted and the moonlight 
shining in their clear depths. She spoke of him often to the 
lady-superior, perhaps with more enthusiasm than was necessary, 
for her confidences were received with smiling reserve. As the 
months passed Ruth found her gratitude to the poet taking a 
deeper hold on her heart. Self began to fall away by degrees 
under the friction of daily prayer and mortification. Her en- 
thusiasms began to diminish in number and intensity. The first 
hot fervors of the convert died away into the healthier and more 
sustained regularity of the established Catholic, and with this 
new feeling came the first intimations of the fact that God had 
not called her to the spiritual life of a convent. How such a 
thought fastened in her Tnind she could not tell, nor when it 
began, nor why she should continue to entertain it. She was in 
love with her convent, there was no attraction in the world for 
her, marriage she never thought of, her literary tastes could be 
more easily gratified where she was ; yet into her spirit, day by 



542 SOLITARY ISLAND. [July, 

day, farther and farther intruded itself the conviction that she 
was not appointed to this life. It cost her many tears before she 
opened her mind on the subject to her confessor. He listened 
to her story with interest, and was a long time in coming to his 
decision. When he did give one it was imperative and final. 
She must go home and find her vocation there. Very sadly, and 
yet with some relief, she laid the case before the superior. 

" I am not surprised," said that lady, to Ruth's great as- 
tonishment, " not so much as you were. Have you ever heard 
anything about your friend Mr. Rossiter? You spoke to me of 
him often." 

Ruth did not see the connection between the first and second 
half of the lady's remark. 

" No, I have not. I shall meet him some time probably, if he 
is living. I can never forget him." 

" And are you absolutely determined to go into the world ? 
Remember it is quite possible that after you are outside your 
spirit may change as powerfully as it has on this occasion." 

" I must take the risk. I am not going to a bed of roses, and 
I am leaving one. But what can I do ? Some restless spirit has' 
taken possession and will not be exorcised until I am gone 
hence." 

" Why not go off as a novice with permission, remain in the 
world until your mind is settled, and then return if it seems 
wise?" 

" It is kind of you to suggest that," said Ruth slowly, " and 
I will think of it." 

" I may as well tell you," began the superior suavely, in or.der 
to conceal her own sense of awkwardness, " that I had a visit 
from Mr. Rossiter during the spring to inquire about you." 

" Oh ! " cried Ruth with parted lips and amazed eyes, as if 
she feared something more from the announcement than the 
words contained. 

" He sent you his regards. I was very glad to meet him, 
after all you had told me concerning him. He seemed to be ill, 
or going into an illness." 

Ruth grew pale and nervous for no reason which she could 
understand. 

" I think Mr. Rossiter must have a high respect for you. He 
loitered a long time about the grounds after his visit here, and 
indulged in some drawing and writing. One of the sisters found 
a specimen of his work and brought it to me. I have preserved 
it for this occasion. I would have told you of this long since had 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 543 

I thought it would have been for your good. It is for your 
good to know it now." 

She handed a package to speechless Ruth and dismissed her. 
The novice took it to her room and opened it in feverish haste. 
What connection could she have with Paul Rossiter's writings 
and sketches ? It was the bit of bristol-board on which he had 
scribbled the day of his visit to the convent. Ruth read and 
studied it with flushed face and moistened eye, and into her 
heart slipped the first spark of love to light anew the flame 
which gratitude had once lighted there. As much as her voca 
tion had been a matter of doubt before, so much of a certainty it 
now became. She left the religious life absolutely and for ever, 
though with many tears, and presented herself one sunny after- 
noon before Barbara Merrion in Brooklyn. 

" Why, what in the name of everything uncommon and 
wonderful," cried Barbara, " brings you here, Ruth Pendleton? " 
And an angry light shot into her eyes. 

" I am too tired to say anything now," said Ruth ; " but 
when I have rested you can give me your opinion on that." And 
she handed her the bit of bristol-board. Barbara examined it 
critically, and a happy smile touched her face when she caught 
its full import. 

" What a happy destiny which threw this in your way," said 
she, " before you were bound to the nun's life irrevocably ! " 

" I had resolved long before to leave the convent," Ruth re- 
plied, but Barbara did not believe the assertion. 

" We had arranged a match for you and Paul long ago," 
Barbara said, laughing, " and I assure you we were bitterly dis- 
appointed when our plans failed. The poet is not here now, and 
no one can tell where he is." 

" Florian must know," said Ruth confidently. 

" Oh ! dear, no. They had a quarrel of some kind after you 
left, and have never since been intimate. Early in the spring Mr. 
Rossiter left his quarters and has not since been heard of." 

" Not been heard of ? " Ruth murmured tremulously. 

" Oh ! we can find him, no doubt. That odious Peter Carter 
was a friend of his, and will be likely to know what has become 
of him. I must "be the go-between. I shall take up my old 
office of match-maker." 

" You shall do nothing of the kind," said Ruth, setting 
her lips. 

" What! " cried Barbara maliciously, "are you to do it your- 
self, then?" 



544 SOLITARY ISLAND. [July. 

" You are extremely rude," Ruth began, with a red face. " I 
came to New York to see if Mr. Rossiter was well and 

" If he meant what he wrote on this paper, and is going to 
stand by the consequences. Ruth, it is as clear to me as day, and, 
if you do these things less boldly than a poor butterfly like me, 
you are none the less sure. I know you would go away after 
saying, ' How do, Mr. Rossiter?' and pine away in Clay burg for 
the rest of your days. I do not mean that you shall. I shall 
make the match in spite of you. I always felt it would come 
off, and that I would be special manager. First we must find 
Paul." 

" If he is not in town I shall return at once to Clayburg." 

"And have him seek you there? Love has a sure instinct, 
you know. You cannot escape so easily, however. Were you 
aware that about the poet's departure there was a mystery, that 
he was ill and poor and wretched when he went away, that 
Madame Lynch dismissed him because of a false story of Peter 
Carter's, that he left the house secretly, and that there is a suspi- 
cion of shall I say it?" 

" Suicide," said Ruth calmly, though her face was pale. 
" You may say it, but I do not, could not, believe it of him." 

" Nor I," Barbara added with emphasis; " but the poor fellow 
left in a sad plight, and where he went no man knows." 

" He was at my convent in the spring, and went northward, 
but how far or in what direction was not known." 

" A little money and the assistance of Peter Carter will dis- 
cover him ; and when you have found him you may run home to 
Clayburg, and I shall send him after you." 

" Barbara !" protested Ruth hotly. 

" That will do," said Mrs. Merrion sharply. " You know me, 
Ruth Pendleton, by this time, and, whether you like it or not, the 
thing shall be done. You had no right to drag me into the affair, 
if you did not wish me to interfere with it. Now go to bed for 
a few hours, and when you come down I shall acquaint you with 
the news of two hemispheres some of it interesting, I assure 
you." 

Ruth obeyed in silence and shame. She had not mentioned 
to herself her object in visiting New York ; she had only said : " ] 
will go and see him once more, be satisfied that he is well, and 
then return to Clayburg." In making Barbara her confidant she 
did not seek more than that lady's advice, and was consequently 
much troubled in heart about Barbara's interference. 

When she sought Mrs. Merrion later in the day the vivacious 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 547 

really lost to us for ever. Ah ! believe me, no one regrets it 
more than I." 

It was when she returned that Ruth spoke to her of her 
behavior. 

" If you wait and see the continuation of my behavior," said 
Mrs. Merrion sweetly, " you will have reason to lecture me. 
Now, to-morrow we go to see Miss Lynch, and you must look 
your best. Not a few know that you are the female who won 
the youthful heart of Florian Wallace and did not know enough 
to keep it." 

" I could not go to a place where they knew me so. I shall 
go home as soon as possible." 

" But what of Paul Rossiter?" 

" He will come in good time. Until he does I can wait. 
Meanwhile I shall not call on Miss Lynch." 

" And Florian expecting it ! My dear Ruth, you do not 
realize the gravity of the situation. What would people say to 
know that Florian's best friend left town without calling on his 
affianced ? Again, you are the only friend that Paul Rossiter has. 
It will require skill and prompt action to find the erratic poet and 
restore him to favor. What has become of him, what will be- 
come of him ? O Ruth ! do you really care for him ? " 

" I owe him a debt," said Ruth. 

" And you can pay it only by marrying him, he thinks. He is 
deeply religious indeed, or he would have taken you bodily from 
the convent. If he knew that you were free he would not hesi- 
tate an instant to bind you to his allegiance. To find him we 
must get the services of Mr. Carter, an old flame of mine and a 
great chum of your father's. He lives at Mrs. Lynch's, though 
why that extraordinary woman should keep him is a mystery. 
For a small sum of money and a little encouragement he will do 
anything. He is our man." 

Barbara had her way about it, and they called on Frances the 
next afternoon. 

" It will be such a coincidence," whispered Barbara as they en- 
tered the hall, " to see* together three great admirers of Florian." 

They were a distinguished-looking trio indeed as they sat 
in the parlor talking formally ; with Florian among them. The 
sober stateliness of Ruth and the florid elegance of Barbara found 
an admirable mean in the soft, warm coloring of Frances. She 
was composed but timid, and quite unable to keep back the 
blushes aroused by Mrs. Merrion's unsparing innuendoes. Florian 
watched them with mingled feelings of pleasure and pain. How 



548 SOLITARY ISLAND. [July, 

closely they had entwined themselves in the story of his life ! 
He recalled how three women in his younger days had caused 
him his most bitter sorrows. In striving to retain all he had lost 
all at one blow. Would fate treat him so hardly again? His 
eyes turned longingly towards Ruth, as they had turned to dying 
Linda, hopelessly. She was removed from him by an infinite 
distance, and Barbara was still farther away. 

" I am so pleased," Ruth whispered to Frances at the first 
opportunity, " to know of your happiness. He needs you." 

" Not as much as I need him," replied Frances, with quick 
comprehension of Ruth's generous sympathy. 

" What! whispering ? " said Barbara, raising a warning finger. 
" Contraband goods, and they are declared confiscated." 

" I was going to say " said Ruth deftly. 

" What did you say ? is the question," Barbara interrupted. 
" Come, confess ! " 

" I appeal. There is no court here to give judgment." 

" I am a married woman," said Barbara " a supereminent 
claim to jurisdiction. You can appeal to Mr. Wallace, who, 
being a bachelor still, is in duty bound to tell what he hears to 
me." 

Florian was in no mood for bantering, and, moreover, he was 
wanted in town ; so, after changing the conversation, he made his 
excuses. His departure brought Peter to the room with the 
intention of upbraiding Frances for her engagement. He was in 
a sorrowful mood during those days, and went about with down- 
cast head and gloomy eyes, unconquered still and breathing the 
direst threats against Florian and madame. He sought often 
and more anxiously for tidings of Paul, in a vain hope to stem the 
torrent of failure by the old intriguing ; but no Paul was' to be 
found, and in consequence he was lavish of abuse towards those 
concerned in Paul's departure. When he saw the other ladies 
with Frances he began to withdraw, but Barbara, ever auda- 
cious, called him pleasantly. 

"Can it be possible? Mr. Carter! Why, I have not seen 
him in an age." And, in spite of the fresh and bitter remem- 
brance of her faithlessness, Peter thawed under that witching 
smile. 

" Ah ! my," said he, " time has no effect on ye, me girl. Just 
as sweet an' pretty as the day I saw ye last, an' as ready to 
deceive a poor ould gran'father, I suppose." 

" Not at all," said Barbara. " Do you not know Squire Pen- 
dleton's daughter, Mr. Carter ? " 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 545 

sprite was carrying in both hands a large manual of prayer as she 
walked tirelessly through the long hall. 

"You are piously engaged," said Ruth, smiling at the un- 
usual sight. 

" I must be, having an ex-nun here," replied Barbara smartly ; 
" and then I am making preparations for my baptism." 

" For your baptism ? " repressing an inclination to laugh. 
"Are you going over to the Baptists?" 

" No, to the Catholics," and her eyes fell. 'Ruth stood for a 
moment transfixed and actually suspicious. 

" I congratulate you," she said at length, but there was little 
warmth in her good wishes. " When did this happiness come to 
you?" 

" So long ago that I scarcely remember. It was not sudden. 
It grew within me. But let us talk of something more to your 
taste. Converts are suspicious of one another. You have heard, 
perhaps, that Florian is soon to be married." 

" I have heard none of these things, but I supposed it would 
take place some time. Who is the happy lady ? " 

" You remember that Frances Lynch who " 

" What a good choice he has made ! " Ruth exclaimed in de- 
light. " I hardly expected it from Florian. It will save him 
surely it will save him." 

" Save him from what ? " said Barbara sharply, and crossly 
too. 

" From himself and the temptations which surround him in 
his position. Florian needs a check of some kind. I think him 
apt to fly beyond limits." 

" You would make a Puritan of him. I think he was fortu- 
nate in missing you." 

" It was fortunate for us both," Ruth answered, and dismissed 
the subject with a sigh. Barbara sat watching her secretly. 
She had improved very much during her absence, and the pale, 
spiritual light which shone about her face rendered its natural 
beauty more remarkable. The old aggressive firmness seemed 
gone from her manner, the old determination had found a differ- 
ent way of expressing itself ; and, sweet and gentle as Ruth had 
ever been, these qualities were now intensified. 

" If she beckoned Florian to her now," thought Barbara, with 
some bitterness, " an army of mes and Franceses would not keep 
him from her." 

She was waiting impatiently for an answer to the note which 
she had sent to Florian. It pleased her malicious spirit to re- 
VOL. XLI. 35 



546 SOLITARY ISLAND. [July, 

fleet on the storm its dubious suggestiveness would raise in his 
heart. He came that afternoon by accident, as she had recom- 
mended, and was intensely surprised to meet with Ruth. There 
was no trace of agitation or painful feeling in his manner as he 
welcomed her to the world again. 

" We are so accustomed to your coming and going," said he 
not unkindly, " that we treat it as men treat the visits of angels 
with respect and surprise, of course, but with resignation. If 
it is not too out of the way to ask, shall we see you here any 
length of time ? " 

" For a few days, and then I return to Clayburg. I am so 
glad to meet you, Florian, and to hear of the honors which the 
world is heaping on you. Are you spoiled by Fortune's fa- 
vors?" 

" Hardly yet. What I received from Fortune has made her 
the debtor, not me. I had to pull her gifts from her hands." 

" And he prides himself," Barbara put in, " on the strength 
of his pull, as if Fortune could not have resisted him. There is 
an evidence of the rank disease of self-made men. And they 
tell me," she continued, " that we are soon to give you over to 
the majority that you are to join the happy matrimonial circle. 
I wondered how true it was, and so did Ruth, she is so inter- 
ested in you." 

He looked from one to the other in perplexity. Was this 
a mere bit of Barbara's usual impertinence, or was she testing 
the strength of old relationships ? He put himself down men- 
tally as a fool, and looked at Ruth's calm face as he answered. 

" I have never wondered, Barbara " Ruth began. 

" I beg your pardon," said Florian, " but it is true. I have 
had the honor of obtaining Miss Lynch's hand." 

" You are a fortunate man," said Ruth. " Everything suc- 
ceeds with you." 

" Most fortunate," said Barbara, with an irony he alone could 
feel. " If your engagement is publicly known we shall do our- 
selves the pleasure of calling on Miss Lynch to-morrow." 

" It is publicly known," he answered. " Frances, I am sure, 
will be happy to receive your congratulations." 

Ruth thought that Barbara spoke and acted a little queerly, 
and told her so when Florian had gone away down-hearted. 
Barbara had accompanied him to the door and apologized for 
nothing. 

"Do not think me harsh," said she, "but I fear you were 
too hasty," with a glance towards Ruth. " And so you are 



1885.] Two EDUCATION REPORTS. 551 

government like ours. The sooner it is swept away, root and 
branch, the better. The spirit of the American people is not to 
show ho.w much political authority and government they will 
bear, but how little is needed to promote their general welfare. 
L,2t such schemes and work be done by political cobblers. " The 
world is governed too much " is a good democratic maxim and 
expressive of the true American spirit. Let us shape our politi- 
cal institutions in accordance with the evident truths of reason 
and the inalienable rights of man this ought to be our study and 
leave the rest to political fanatics or religious cranks. 

The second book mentioned at the head of this article is a 
small volume made up principally of statistics concerning the 
common schools of this city. We presume that it is a fair state- 
ment of the amount of educational work done last year. But to 
us it is particularly welcome because it makes some important 
acknowledgments. 

The Board has spent $29.61 for each child in average atten- 
dance, the aggregate being more than four millions and a half of 
the public money. More money is called for; the deepest, and 
doubtless the sincerest, regret is expressed that yet more money 
was not spent. Many thousands of the children seeking to be 
taught the merest rudiments were turned away for want of room. 
Yet the vast sums expended in giving college-training free are 
by no means recommended to be applied for the extension of the 
facilities for primary instruction ; more money, it is affirmed, 
should be given to the primary instruction and not less to the 
higher. The tendency of education is to become, like some trees 
and plants, top-heavy. 

We mark two things in the report first, the tone is no longer 
that of jubilant triumph, but rather deprecatory and apologetic ; 
and, second, the part that the school plays in formation of charac- 
ter is admitted. The latter is a great gain. How long was it 
dinned in our ears that religion did not need the school ; that the 
school might stand apart from all doctrinal color and no harm 
be done to religion ; that home and church formed the man 
school had no influence capable of taking rank in competition 
with them ! Public-schools were necessary, indeed, but only to 
check the rapacity, to prevent the antagonisms, of warring sects ; 
they were a compromise for the sake of peace and efficiency and 
economy. In teaching children to read and write they were 
only the better fitted for home and church influence. Among 
other things said in this report, the remark is made that " our 
very form of government makes ignorance more dangerous here 



552 Two EDUCATION REPORTS. [July* 

than in any other country in the world." This is undoubtedly 
true. And we are glad to see that this truth is acknowledged. 
But we wish the writer of this report had been more specific 
and told us distinctly what he meant by " ignorance." Does he 
mean by " dangerous ignorance " the lack of knowledge such as 
has been given in our Sunday-schools or in our public-schools? 
Does he mean by " dangerous ignorance " the ignorance of the 
Ten Commandments of God, or the ignorance of arithmetic, 
chemistry, or algebra ? Does he mean by " dangerous igno- 
rance " that ignorance that ignores Who created man, why he 
was created, or how he can attain the great end of his creation 
the work of religion, the object of Divine Revelation or does 
he mean the ignorance of the curriculum for which our free col- 
leges were established ? What kind of ignorance does he mean ? 
Why so reticent ? 

But we forget ! The writer of the report does tell us, and 
explicitly, that "school life must be an apprenticeship in self- 
government " ; not only knowledge but " an adequate training in 
the use and value " of knowledge must be provided. " The doc- 
trine of W. von Humboldt" says the report, " should never be for- 
gotten, that whatever we wish to see introduced into the life of the 
nation must first be introduced into the life of its schools" ' De- 
velopment of judgment and reflection, the formation of character, 
are laid down as the object of the public-school system. 

This is what the religious critics of the system have ever 
maintained. The school forms the man. Teaching, example 
and correction, emulation, ambition and achievement, friendship, 
early recollections and life traditions, moral tone, atmosphere 
and drift, all applied during the most impressionable years, all 
brought to bear by the incessant labors of a highly-educated and 
disciplined body of teachers, cannot help but form the man. The 
influence of home and of church together will in most cases be 
unable to compete with the school in forming the man. The 
neutral school will form the neutral man. 

Thus the theory of education that the state is supreme and 
the Board of Education is a substitute for the family, the state, 
and the church underlies the public-school system as hitherto 
maintained, but hitherto denied by its advocates in the United 
States. This is rank rationalism. We are not surprised to hear 
this expressed by the Prussian, William von Humboldt, but we 
are surprised, we confess, that this opinion should be openly 
endorsed by the Board of Education in the city of New York, 

* Page 12. 



1885.] Two ED UCA TION REP OR TS. 549 

A wild, exultant light leaped into Peter's eyes. Next to Paul 
this was the very person of all others he wished to see. 

" I am glad to meet ye, ma'am," said he quietly, " but I fear 
ye come a little too late. P'raps not, though. But we'll see, 
we'll see." 

Barbara alone understood this mysterious language. He sat 
down among them in a cheerful mood, and began the chatter 
which was the delight of his friends and the astonishment of 
strangers. In the end Barbara won from him a promise to call 
upon her next day, and, having accomplished her mission, de- 
parted. 

TO BE CONTINUED. 



TWO EDUCATION REPORTS. 

Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education. No. I, 1885. 
City School Systems in the United States. By John D. Philbrick, 
LL.D. Washington : Government Printing-Office. 1885. 

Forty-third Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of 
New York for the year ending December 31, 1884. New York: 
Hall of the Board of Education, corner Grand and Elm Sts. 

THE first of these volumes for it has two hundred and seven 
pages is limited to the report of John D. Philbrick, LL.D., on 
" City School Systems of the United States." This is one of the 
many documents which it has pleased the Bureau of Education 
at Washington to print and send forth. From all we are able to 
gather and we have carefully read the report we do not see why 
the funds of the general government of the United States should 
be given to print and circulate Dr. Philbrick's lucubration. It 
quotes authors as authorities, among others William von Hum- 
boldt and Huxley, with whom we have little or no sympathy on 
this point, and with whom, in our judgment, the American people 
have just as little. Be this as it may, we ask, Why should the 
funds of the United States be spent, wasted nay, worse than 
wasted upon a sectarian scheme of education ? Is it not known 
that millions of the citizens of these United States protest with 
an overwhelming conviction against this worse than waste of 
their hard earnings? Who has switched the general govern- 
ment off its broad and safe constitutional road upon this side 
and dangerous track? What are the aims of these men? Will 



550 Two EDUCATION REPORTS. [July, 

not those to whose hands the responsibility of the political 
general government of the people of the United States has been 
recently entrusted ' take warning and look into this matter? 
Or are they, too, already hoodwinked by a class of restless 
men who live, in one way or another, by their wits ? To-day 
chemistry is introduced into the system of education, to-morrow 
physiology, the next day the senses must be trained, then comes 
psychology for does not the public school aim at the principle 
of " self-control" and the " formation of moral character"? and 
so forth and so forth. Who can tell where all this is to end ? 
Whither are we drifting ? 

The public-school system is a parasite, feeding upon the 
vitals of our free American institutions, and bids fair, unless 
timely cautions are taken, to revolutionize our republic and to 
ruin our people. Its natural tendency is to usurp the functions 
of the family, the state, and the church.* Already these divine 
structures have been removed from their time-honored land- 
marks, and we fear that this system has been allowed to absorb 
the functions of these sacred institutions to a greater extent than 
many are aware of. Already has it come to pass that American 
citizens cannot expose this false system of education without a 
hue and cry being raised against them by its partisans, and at- 
'tempts being made by these to exercise over their opponents 
political ostracism. Here is a new phase of things ! It is un- 
American. Whence its origin? It is too late in the day to 
start to run the political government either of the State or general 
administration in favor of any religious sect or division of creed. 
Education, unless you wish to form and fasten a dynasty upon 
the country to rule and govern it, is a business that does not 
concern the general political government at Washington. Stop 
heaping care and responsibility upon political governments ! 
The Bureau of Education at Washington is an anomaly in a 

* In the Boston Journal of Education of May 21, 1885, Superintendent B. A. Hinsdale writes 
in " expansion of some of the thoughts " expressed by another writer, Miss Ames, in an article 
entitled "Do Our Schools Teach Morality?" in the same journal of February 12. The 
thoughts to be expanded are thus summed up by Mr. Hinsdale : " Since ' moral training is pre- 
eminently the training of the will ' ; since the rising generation are ' exceptionably deficient in 
the fundamental virtues of obedience and respect for authority ' ; and since these virtues are 
' not inculcated in the homes of the majority of our children,' some other agency than the home 
must be relied on if they are to be educated in silence, regard for the rights of others, and, more 
than all, obedience and respect for authority. What shall this agency be ? Not the church and 
Sunday school, ' for the evident reasons that, at the most, it can affect the child but two hours 
of one day in the week, and its function is merely to quicken the child's religious perception and 
to touch his heart. It never touches the will, for it has no power to enforce anything. ' Xow 
the very things that the home (as a rule) does not do, and that the church and Sunday-school 
cannot do, are the things that the public-school does." 



1885.] VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK. 555 



VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK. 

THE death of Victor Hugo, although not unexpected since 
the poet had passed fourscore years, has caused deep emotion 
not only in France but throughout the world. The claims of 
genius on sympathy and admiration are not confined to a nation 
but to mankind, and Hugo long ago had been proclaimed a man 
of genius, the greatest lyric poet of "France, the founder of a new 
school in literature, a lover of humanity, a pure and uncompro- 
mising patriot. He had attained fame ere he reached manhood ; 
living beyond the limits of the average life of man, he received at 
the hands of his countrymen honors and ovations such as never 
were awarded the greatest hero ; had he lived a little longer he 
would have seen his own statue erected in Paris. His death was 
bewailed as a public calamity ; all Paris thronged under the Arc 
de Triomphe to view his body as it lay there in state ; and the 
government, imitating its predecessor of the First Republic, once 
more ejected God from the church of Saint Genevieve and turned 
the sacred edifice into a Pantheon, where the ashes of the " great " 
citizen will occupy the place once filled by those of Mirabeau and 
Marat. 

The ancients, prone as they were to make demi-gods of their 
heroes, did not always trust in the hasty enthusiasm of the popu- 
lace. In Egypt and in ancient Persia the dead man's past life 
was closely investigated and the good and bad in it weighed 
before his body was consigned to the grave. He won or lost 
immortality according as the balance stood for or against him. 
This old usage still obtains, in spirit if not in form, wherever free 
thought and a free press exist. We exercise a right, then, when 
we seek to determine not in a spirit of malice or of adulation, 
but by carefully sifting the facts before us what will be the ver- 
dict of posterity on the claims of the man whose world-stirring 
voice shall never more be heard. 

The task is no easy one. This man has filled the world with 
his name during three-quarters of a century ; his gifts were 
numerous : all at once poet, novelist, dramatist, philosopher, and 
patriot, these various rdles intermingle so that it is difficult to 
take them up singly, as a jury takes up each separate count in an 
indictment. He commenced writing when a mere lad, and we 
prepare to look with indulgent eyes on that early period of his 



556 VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK. [July, 

career, for youth is the season of error, when the passions lead 
astray the inexperienced heart ; with manhood comes reason, and 
with old age regret. Not so, however, with this singular man. 
He reverses the order of nature at the start, and this contradic- 
tion will be but the first of a series which will continue through 
his whole life, growing more and more evident with time. 

His earlier poems have a peculiar charm, a rare beauty of 
thought and felicity of expression, which he frequently attained 
but never excelled in his subsequent works. Not only are they 
remarkable for their purity in justice to Hugo let it be said, 
neither his poetry nor his private life were ever unchaste but 
they breathe a religious feeling, a trust in God and reverence for 
his greatness as seen in his works, equal to anything we may find 
in Lamartine's Meditations. Not a vague conception of an un- 
known God dreamed by the poet, but a Catholic belief, admit- 
ting of no doubt but that of his own worthiness. We have but 
to open that exquisite little volume, Les Feuilles d'Automne, to see 
this reflected in almost every page. What an admirable confes- 
sion of Christian faith in the well-known piece, " La Priere pour 
Tous " ! Could there be a more touching definition of prayer, 
especially the prayer of a pure young heart, than those lines 
where the poet teaches his little daughter to pray for all, for the 
good and the wicked, for the living and the dead ? He tells her 
to pray while her guardian angel smiles upon her, to lift up her 
young heart to the Lord and pour out the fragrant incense of her 
praise at his feet, as of old " Martha, the sister of Mary, laved 
them with sweet perfumes." Who has not felt moved on reading 
that eloquent appeal, " For the Poor," where he defines charity, 
the blessed virtue : 

" Qui, lorsqu'il le faudra, se sacrifiant toute, 
/ Comme le Dieu martyr dont elle suit la route, 

Dira: ' Buvez! mangez ! c'est ma chair et mon sang/ " 

We might quote indefinitely from this volume, and others 
that followed during a period of twenty years, evidences of a 
sincere religious faith, in sad contrast with what was to come 
later. The change, for being gradual, is not less painfully sur- 
prising. One can hardly realize that the same pen which wrote 
Les Feuilles d" Automne in 1831, the same brain which in 1862 con- 
ceived the ideal Bishop Myriel of Les Mise'rables, could have con- 
ceived and written all the pieces which fill the five volumes of 
La Le"gende des Siecles, his last work in verse. His God for 
Victor Hugo was never an atheist is no longer the God of love 



1885.] Two EDUCATION REPORTS. 553 

signed by its president and clerk, in the year of our Lord 1885. 
We don't know who wrote this report, but we do know that its 
author has let " the cat out of the meal-bag " in which it has 
been so long concealed. We do not know the president of the 
Board of Education, or its clerk, or the members of the com- 
mittee on this report, but what we do know is, none but ration- 
alists would approve of this report. It is honest. Did those who 
accepted it read it ? Did they think of the matter when reading 
it? They must have been distracted. If the American people 
have not abandoned Christianity they ought to open their eyes. 
The question squarely put is this : Is the public-school system 
supreme? and is the Board of Education a divine institution? 
A manual to guide the school-teachers has been published and 
put in practice. The next step would be to invite Paul Bert to 
give us a second edition with corrections and emendations ! 

If Von Humboldt is right, the question of the schools is, as we 
always have held it to be, the question of life the nation's life 
and the man's. If any nation is going to be filled with the divine 
life, then, if it has schools, they must be channels of that divine 
life ; otherwise the measure of the school's power will be some- 
thing like the measure of the weakness of home and church in 
imparting divine life. If we wish to see religion (and by this 
term we mean any form of belief and practice tending towards 
God and eternity) if we wish to see religion a vital element in 
American character, then into the schools of the American peo- 
ple religion must go. The power of the school is too great to 
go neutral ; the conflict incessantly waged in the human breast 
is too absorbing to permit any moral force to be neutral. The 
school is the power of God for good or the power of the flesh, 
the world, and the devil for evil. 

To form the conscience of the voter is to form the conscience 
of the man, to attune the whole moral nature to motives impera- 
tively commanding interior allegiance to the moral law. Can it 
be done without religion? The public-school system says, Yes! 
If our public-school advocates keep on saying that religion is not 
necessary to make men moral, then they will soon arouse the 
religious people of our country to the true state of the school 
question education versus God. 

Every earnest man, every man who is not a rationalist, must 
be opposed to the present public-school system, on the avowed 
principle that what you want in life you must put into the 
school. " Just as the twig is bent the tree 's inclined." It is dis- 
pleasing to God that any influence concerned with the training 



554 Two EDUCATION REPORTS. [July, 

of the little ones of Christ should be morally neutral or reli- 
giously neutral. And now that the state schools are forced to 
drop the neutral banner and are setting up to teach a positive 
morality, to form human character, to make men, we declare 
them to be more and more an open enemy of the faith of Christ, 
and, indeed, of all revealed religion. 

This new department of the public-school system as an edu- 
cator of the moral nature we condemn with every energy we 
possess, and declare it an affront to every religious man and 
woman in the land. We condemn any attempt to make " citi- 
zens " as adequate, except it be based on the authority of God 
as appealed to by the framers of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence. 

We record our firm determination all the more earnestly 
because we know that a little less bigotry and a little more 
fairness could so arrange the training of American youth as to 
secure, in a more democratic spirit, the rights of parents, the 
sanctity of citizenship, with less expense and not the faintest 
danger either to the state or the sensibilities of religious souls, 
but just the contrary. The public-school system, as now 
maintained and upheld for state support by its advocates, is at 
issue with the first principles of our American free institutions 
and contradictory to the Christian religion. No enlightened 
American, no intelligent Christian, can favor it. 

Whether knowingly or not, the advocates of this system are 
endeavoring to substitute the political government for the church, 
the school-teachers for the priesthood, and the school-room for 
home. It is an effort of those who have little or no belief in the 
Christian Church and her sacred functions to secularize the chil- 
dren of this generation in order to gain the future. Will those 
concerned awake to their danger before it is too late ? 



1885.] VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK. 559 

tune, he found himself suddenly thrust into the political arena. 
He had no longer to deal with fancies, but with stern realities. 
The idols he had worshipped were shattered and swept away ; 
everything was in chaotic confusion, especially his own brain. 
Ah ! well, there was France ; he had always loved her what 
Frenchman does not ? and the peuple, the poor pettple, so long 
down-trodden and now victorious ; he would take them to his 
heart and make them his fetich. (We are compelled to use the 
French word for people to render an idea which the American 
mind can hardly grasp. Here, where all are citizens with equal 
rights, the word, people cannot mean a class.) 

Such, then, was the conclusion at which the poet must have 
arrived when the treacherous Coup cTttat delivered France 
bound and gagged to Louis Napoleon. Hugo he tells the 
story in his Histoire d'un Crime was persuaded by his friends. 
to seek safety in flight, not, however, before he had protested 
and had spoken his mind to a general at the head of his troops ; 
the said general hanging down his head in very shame and let- 
ting the angry poet pass. The Bonapartists, even to M. de 
Maupas in his strangely candid History of the Coup cTfLtat, have 
always contended that there was no order of arrest against Vic- 
tor Hugo ; that he was not considered dangerous. Howbeit, 
Victor Hugo escaped to the Island of Jersey, where he remained 
in voluntary exile nineteen years, refusing absolutely to avail 
himself of the general amnesty or of the special overtures made, 
to him by the government of the emperor. It was during those 
long years that a complete and deplorable change was wrought 
in his ideas ; disappointed in his hopes, humiliated in his pride, 
continually brooding over his wrongs real or fancied he ac- 
quired the monomania of denunciation. " Le peuple " alone was 
spared. An eminent French critic, Vicomte de Pontmartin, 
wrote of him in 1864: "Given the predominant features of the 
temper, genius, and intellectual and moral physiognomy of M. 
Victor Hugo, nothing more fatal could have happened to him 
than to estrange himself as he has done, during long years, from 
the French mind and French society ; to cut to himself he, the 
son of a softened and diminished age a r61e in the ancient 
stories of a chained Prometheus, of a banished ^Eschylus, wan- 
dering Dante, or begging Homer; to condemn himself, willing 
or unwilling, to that superb sequestration which flattered and 
excited at the same time his two most dangerous propensities, 
pride and hate ; to create for himself a second St. Helena, where 
he walks about, his hands behind his back, in mute contemplation 



560 VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK. [J"ly> 

of the sky and the sea. With his disposition to magnify and 
exaggerate everything, principally his own importance and all 
that relates, in his person, to the glorious misfortunes and aposto- 
lic mission of poetry and the poet ; with his unhappy tendency 
to force the tone and to persecute our ears with a continuity of 
high notes, to pile up big words in order to obtain a counterfeit 
presentation of great thoughts, and finally to drown the thoughts 
in a redundance of words, he is become at last what one might 
have easily foreseen." This opinion, uttered twenty years ago, 
was more than confirmed when Hugo's later works appeared. 

Leaving aside the use of scientific names, technical terms, and 
obsolete words which display his vast learning but often puzzle 
the reader, his later poems and prose writings abound in pas- 
sages that are wholly unintelligible and of which it would be 
impossible to give an idea in English. His critics contented 
themselves with quoting these passages ; other writers amused 
themselves with imitating his peculiar style, clothing the sem- 
blance of an idea in a redundancy of grandiloquent phrases. 
The late Villemessant, who was inordinately fond of a joke, pub- 
lished a two-column poem in his paper, the Figaro, as sent him 
by Victor Hugo from Jersey. There was a tremendous rush at 
the newspaper-booths that day. Next morning Villemessant 
acknowledged that it was a sell ; the poem was the work of a 
young writer whom he adopted this means to introduce to the 
public. It is sad to think that a man of genius, whose impas- 
sioned words have so often stirred the noblest feelings in the 
hearts of his countrymen, who dealt with the gentler emotions 
so tenderly as to bring tears to the eyes, should have become a 
fit subject for ridicule. Far better if the great poet had died or 
become hopelessly insane in that eventful year 1851. Universal 
regret for his death or a respectful pity for his misfortune would 
have been his lot. But if we deplore the intermittent ravings 
of an intellect which remained otherwise strong to the last, with 
what sadness we must note that this aberration was particularly 
strong and persistent in the religious belief of the unfortunate 
poet ! He had loved God in his youth, and he clung to that love 
through all the evolutions of his mind, proclaiming to the last 
the existence of God and the immortality of the soul ; but his 
incommensurable pride and the morbid habits into which he had 
fallen made him found a theocracy of his own very different 
from that Christian faith which had inspired him in better days. 
The tendency of the foremost historians and philosophers of 
modern times even those who are not professed Christians is 



1885.] VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK. 557 

and mercy, who delights in the offerings of pure hearts ; he is the 
merciless God of hate and vengeance, who hurls his bolts at all 
offenders, or, in other words, at all in authority. Mankind is 
divided into two classes: the good that is, the people, always 
oppressed and wretched, with innumerable wrongs to avenge ; 
the wicked that is, the kings and rulers, the priests, those who 
make and those who execute the law. Is it a matter of wonder 
that the Communists of Paris insisted, on going to his funeral 
with their red flags displayed ? Do they not belong to the suf- 
fering class? are they not the victims of law and order? And 
yet Victor Hugo was not one of them. He had a horror of blood- 
shed ; he never did a physical injury to his brother-man. Why 
this inconsistency? A close study of the man's nature -and of 
the influence of events on his career may give us, perhaps, the 
key of the enigma. 

He was endowed with a highly-developed poetic tempera- 
ment, a lively imagination, with a strong tendency to look at 
things through a magnifying-glass, a strong memory, a soft heart, 
and an unusually large allowance (even for a poet) of self-esteem. 
His first royalist odes brought him favor, and Louis XVIII. gave 
him a pension of one thousand francs. He identified himself still 
more with the Bourbons by celebrating the coronation of 
Charles X. in 1825. Yet other themes inspired him, and, as he 
tells us in some celebrated stanzas written in 1830, "to the fallen 
emperor he erected a temple, and loved liberty for its fruits, 
the throne for its rights, the king for his misfortunes." His ad- 
miration for the first Napoleon was genuine. There was fasci- 
nation for him in the idea of the tremendous power of a victo- 
rious emperor, equalled only by the greatness of the papacy. 
The pope and the emperor, " those two halves of God," as he 
styles them in that magnificent scene in Hernani Charles V.'s 
soliloquy over the tomb of Charlemagne " one is truth, the 
other strength." He pitied the poor, he had a poetic tear for 
every suffering, but he found glorious accents when he tuned 
his lyre in honor of the great. It took many years to convince 
him that all kings and emperors were monsters who bathed with 
delight in the blood of their subjects, and that Pius IX., the 
pontiff venerated by the Catholic world and respected by his 
worst enemies, the pope who saw the temporal power wrenched 
from his hands, was responsible for all the oppression, all the 
crime and bloodshed, of one-third of a century. 

Hugo does not seem to have been hostile to the Orleans 
dynasty. A little flattery from princely lips reconciled him to 



558 VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK. [July, 

the new order of things. In 1841 he was admitted into the 
French Academy ; three years later Louis Philippe made him a 
peer of France. He was at the zenith of his fame. His novels 
were eagerly read. The principal, Notre Dame de Paris, was 
published in 1831, and its doubtful morality drew upon the 
author the censure of Rome. Its artistic merit consists chiefly 
in the wonderful architectual description of the venerable pile 
and the vivid pictures of so-called middle-age life, with which 
fancy had more to do than facts. It met with great success and 
was the corner-stone of the new school of literature which has 
given us a few masterpieces and an endless array of bad and 
stupid books. The indefatigable Hugo had also turned his at- 
tention to the stage, and here again success attended him. Not- 
withstanding the violent opposition of the classicists, &$> they called 
the admirers of Corneille and Racine, the free, ranting, uncon- 
ventional Drama ousted stiff old Tragedy from the stage. Hugo's 
dramas abound in fine scenes, poignant situations, and magnifi- 
cent verses, yet all truthful and impartial critics agree that they 
lack the principal qualities which reveal the hand of the true 
dramatist : unity of design, naturalness of character, clearness of 
exposition, and respect for historical truth when he has sought 
a subject in history. Few, even in his lifetime, have been re- 
tained on the stage. Their place is on the top shelves of the 
library, to be taken down when one wishes to read a fine passage 
or study what an admirable instrument the French language is 
in the hands of an expert. 

When the revolution of 1848 came Victor Hugo was grow- 
ing discontented some say because the king would not make 
him an officer of the Legion of Honor ; others, because he failed 
of becoming the leader of the Chamber of Peers. At all events, 
he accepted the Republic and was elected to the French As- 
sembly. There he mounted his favorite hobby and ran a tilt 
against capital punishment. During the short-lived Republic 
of 1848 he made but little noise, though, like the other members 
of the Assembly, he must have talked a great deal. He sided 
with the Conservatives and was not unfriendly to Prince Louis 
Bonaparte. This period of transition must have been very pain- 
ful to Victor Hugo. A poet, accustomed to live in dreamland, 
in a world of his own creation, where he moved at his will, sing- 
ing the praise of the good, beautiful, and great, consoling the 
unfortunate or denouncing wickedness in strains tender or 
heroic, and from which he descended to the sublunary world 
only to meet loving friends, sweet fame, and the smiles of for- 



1885.] VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK. 561 

to see the shadows left behind in the march of progress, and a 
pure light, steadily increasing in brightness, lighting our path. 
Whether this be founded on faith, as was the case with Lamar- 
tine and Chateaubriand, or attributed to the influence of civiliza- 
tion, as held by Cousin and Michelet, there is something con- 
soling in the thought. Victor Hugo's later view of the problem 
of life is the darkest, most hopeless that can be presented to the 
wretched beings whose fate he deplores. 

He has loved mankind and justice, and he sees man unhappy 
and injustice triumphant ; therefore he denounces society as ill- 
constituted, and calls the vengeance of Heaven upon all evil- 
doers those who commit and those who permit wrong. His 
voice is not heard, and he proceeds to reform God as he has 
reformed society. Since the ministers of God are powerless to 
prevent evil, they are useless. The dogma is a prison in which 
his soul frets ; he shakes it off. He has lost all conception of 
the fatherhood of God. But he does not doubt the existence of 
the Deity nor that of a hereafter. He ponders over the problem 
and solves it. God does not interfere with the affairs of man. 
He has put him on earth to be happy ; those who spoil that 
happiness will be called to account after their death. In his 
visions the iniquitous rulers and men in authority who stand 
trembling, awaiting the sentence of the inexorable Judge, seem 
to be still in the flesh ; the multitude of the oppressed call loudly 
for vengeance ; no song of praise is heard, no voice is raised in 
pitiful appeal. Hate demands its due, and an avenging God 
grants it. Of reward not a word. He has had visions of the 
torments of the damned, not of the beatitudes of the just. He 
isolates man from God, from that immense, motionless, veiled 
being which he describes in " The Temple," silent as a statue, un- 
fathomable yet visible, good to the good, terrible to the wicked, 
a God without priests, without dogmas, without worship the 
Fate of the ancients. And man who frets ; who, if he be one of 
the victims of " the tyrants," cannot wait for the Judgment Day 
to claim. Shylock-like, his pound of flesh ; who yearns for some 
token of his Maker's love, for some ray of hope that will lighten his 
burden ? M. Hugo tells him in " L'Abime " : " Go, move, seek ; 
but know, once for all, that you will never reach the goal or find 
what you seek. Whatever your religion, it will ever be too far 
from the Cause of causes ! " Well might the French critic ex- 
claim, when he reviewed the stupendous work in which the 
pieces we have quoted occur : " La Ltgende des Siecles c'est la 
nuit des siecles ! " 
VOL. XLI. 36 



562 VICTOR HUGO AND HIS WORK. [J u l)'> 

It is indeed the darkness of night succeeding the bright light 
of day. L ombre (the shadow) was a favorite rhyme of Hugo's, 
which occurs hundreds of times in his late works. This shadow, 
which other writers leave behind in their progress, he has 
thrown on the path through which his benighted disciples must 
pass. It is a shadow which must obscure his glory. It would 
doom his last work to eternal obscurity but for the flashes of 
genius which light it here and there. 

In attempting to analyze Victor Hugo's principal works, at 
least those that mark the periods of transformation in his ideas 
and manner, we have found it impossible to separate his person- 
ality from his works ; and in our endeavor to follow his eccen- 
tric genius in its ramblings we have been compelled to digress 
more than once from the original plan of our review. To sum 
up the results of our labor, with a sincere desire to do justice 
to a man who, despite his faults, must remain one of the most 
prominent figures in the literary history of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, we will add that Victor Hugo's private character was with- 
out blemish ; a fond husband and father, a faithful friend, a pa- 
triot devoted to his country, he was beloved by many and re- 
spected even by adversaries whom he denounced with the blind 
rage of hate. If we seek a reason for the strange anomalies pre- 
sented in his works we are forced to the conclusion that he had 
more genius than common sense. In the purely poetical view of 
things he was without peer; in the practical he hardly had an infe- 
rior. He looked at one side of the question, and often wasted 
his eloquence to justify a wrong while convinced that he was 
defending a right. The lavish praise with which his early works 
were received had raised his self-esteem to prodigious propor- 
tions, until his own dreamy conceptions became the standard by 
which he measured everything. The whole world was wrong 
if it disagreed with his notion of right a fatal idiocrasy in one 
who wished to be a leader or teacher of men. He possessed 
none of the qualities that make the statesman. He was impul- 
sive in action, verbose in argument. His philosophy was vague, 
his learning immense. As a novelist he had many superiors ; as 
a dramatist, still more, perhaps. His fame as a writer must rest 
on his poetical works. A day may come when some friendly 
hand, solicitous for that fame, will take those many volumes in 
which the purest dreams of a noble heart mingle with the 
hideous nightmares of a mind diseased, and separate the chaff 
from the grain. Were this done we should have an enduring 
monument of Victor Hugo's genius. 



1885.] AMONG THE INSECTS IN A SOUTHERN CITY. 563 

We have dwelt at some length on the strange perturbation in 
the poet's ideas of religion during the latter part of his life, as 
compared with the calm, hopeful faith of his youth. We have 
done so more in sorrow than in anger. We can hardly believe 
him responsible for these vagaries, hurtful to himself more than 
to others, for no sane man can find in them a substitute for the 
creed he professes. At heart Hugo was profoundly religious, 
and, though he had framed for himself a new idea of the Deity, 
something of the trusting belief of earlier days still remained. 
His pride had raised a wall between him and the dogma, which 
must have crumbled on the approach of death. We cannot be- 
lieve the report that the dying poet refused to see the Arch- 
bishop of Paris. He was probably unconscious, and his free- 
thinking friends feared the scandal of a death-bed repentance 
such as M. Littr6 had given. With our understanding of Vic- 
tor Hugo's disposition, we rather think he would have been very 
glad to see the archbishop ; his mind being free from its visions, 
a little friendly argument with the prelate would have made him 
admit that the God of his childhood was a more consoling, lov- 
ing, forgiving God than the sombre idol of his dreams. We be- 
lieve he would have died reconciled, and, furthermore, we be- 
lieve he would have been more gratified by the hope of being 
buried in Notre Dame his church, as the young Duchess of 
Orleans called it and thereby won his allegiance than by the 
prospect of the civic honors of the Pantheon. 



AMONG THE INSECTS IN A SOUTHERN CITY. 

I WAS strolling one afternoon last winter on the beach at Gal- 
veston. A pretty brood of pelicans near me were hopping along 
by the edge of the placid Gulf. Their mother was soaring aloft, 
with one eye on her chickens and one on the flying mullets, 
whose little bodies shone like silver as they shot up out of the 
water. I stopped to poke the ferrule of my cane at the fiddler- 
crabs that were slanting about on the sand, disappearing into 
their holes whenever my attack would seem to be in earnest. 
As I was amusing myself a tramp approached from a clump of 
water-cedars with a salute that was meant to be either servile 
or gentlemanly, as I might prefer. Tramps are not plentiful at 
Galveston, as they can only get upon the island by one of two 
railroad causeways usually well guarded against them by the 



564 AMONG THE INSECTS IN A SOUTHERN CITY. [July, 

Galveston police, who are careful to send all the tramps they 
catch over to the sister city of Houston. Nevertheless tramps 
do get across from the mainland occasionally, as this man's pre- 
sence proved. 

" I beg your pardon," he began, " but please don't look suspi- 
ciously at me. I am not a tramp, but an amateur Bohemian, and, 
I may say, an amateur naturalist. As Texas is an expensive place 
to travel in, and my means are not unlimited, I prefer to dress 
plainly, so as to be able to frequent the cheaper restaurants and 
hotels without exciting comment." His plain dress consisted of 
a few tattered remnants of what were once garments and if 
what is odd can be called a pair finished off below by a pair of 
shoes that, partly, must have been cast away by a negro field- 
hand ; for one of them was not only down at the heel, but there 
was enough of the leather in that direction to turn up again, 
while the other was nearly all upper with little of either sole or 
heel. He talked a deal of high-sounding nonsense, but one re- 
mark of his had so much of a peculiar truth in it as to be worth 
noting. ^ 

After hoping that he wasn't making any mistake or giving 
any offence for he always did like the genial manners and the 
hospitality of the South in taking me to be a Northern man, 
he gave vent to wisdom : " Wherever I've gone in this far 
Southern land I've observed the wealth and variety of animal 
life in the air, on the ground, in the forest, and in the water ; but 
I've also observed the lack of interest which these Southerners, 
even the educated Southerners, take in the study of the animated 
nature which is so near to them." As he paused for assent or 
contradiction on my side, he raised one arm aloft and scratched 
his armpit with the other hand. At which, lending him " two 
bits," I made an excuse to withdraw. 

It is true that these " far Southern lands " teem with life. Wher- 
ever an electric light is set up in the open air thousands of in- 
sects are attracted and fall dead to the ground from the electric 
shock. Even in a city like Galveston, of thirty thousand inhabi- 
tants, the stranger from the North finds it at first troublesome to 
walk in the streets, from the swarms of flying insects of all sizes, 
shapes, and colors which glance across in front, beside, and 
above him, not to speak of the danger of crushing out the ex- 
istence of nearly as great a variety that creep on the ground at 
his feet. If one were an entomologist, or were writing for ento- 
mologists, there would be enough of long, Greek- rooted, strange- 
looking insects to fill a whole page of small type. But, happily 



1885.] AMONG THE INSECTS IN A SOUTHERN CITY. 565 

for many readers, the people of the South do not bother them- 
selves much either about their most varied flora and fauna or 
about the scientific nomenclature. All their insects are " bugs " 
that are not cockroaches, ants, or mosquitoes. And yet a face- 
tious critic might fairly say that these last are the " big-bugs " of 
Texas. 

It is the negroes, the most intimate students of flying and 
swimming and creeping life at the South, who have originated 
many of the popular names in use there for plant, insect, fish, and 
bird, as well as for many of the strange creatures that run on 
four legs. When you want to know the name of anything that 
attracts your attention, and which you have observed nowhere 
else, ask the negroes, and you will be furnished with the charac- 
ter, kabitat, and name in a style to drive a naturalist mad. But 
don't go to the whites, for as a general thing the answer will 
be, " Well, now, I really decla', sir, I don't know." 

The dragon-fly, or devil's darning-needle, is an old acquaint- 
ance at the North. Who has not seen it of a hot July day glanc- 
ing its neat, small-waisted, brilliant little body over some clear 
pool ? It is the humming-bird of insects. In Galveston, how- 
ever, a species of this insect, called by the negroes the " mos- 
quito-hawk," sometimes so fills the air, even in winter, if the day 
is bright, that one- has to fight his passage along the sidewalks 
with a cane or umbrella. But the Father of Evil has another 
helper in southern Texas, if names have any significance. This 
is the " devil's-horse," a hideous-looking green fly, combining in its 
shape the appearance of a katydid, a wasp, and two or three 
other interesting, curious, or venomous things ; for it is said to 
be venomous. It has a bad habit of flying in at one's windows at 
night, if the slats of the shutters be left open ; for it loves the 
light, in spite of its name. And once in your room you cannot 
find him when you want him, though sometimes you will fancy 
you hear him. He lies low, or rather he flies high, and takes 
a back-seat, a retired station somewhere on a picture-frame, on 
your mantel behind a vase or ornament, or perhaps on the top 
of your mosquito-bar anywhere to see and not be seen. Just 
as you have concluded that the pest has very likely gone out 
when you were not looking, and are preparing to make yourself 
comfortable for the night fighting mosquitoes oh ! those mos- 
quitoes of Texas ; a volume might be written on them just as 
you are calmly preparing for a quiet night with your buzzing 
little friends the devil's-horse comes out from his retirement and 
indulges in a humorously triumphant flight, passing within an 



566 AMONG THE INSECTS IN A SOUTHERN CITY. [July, 

inch of your light, and rattling about from ceiling to floor, and 
suddenly settles down again out of your sight perhaps some- 
where about your bed ! But you will not close your eyes until 
you have killed him or driven him from your room, say you. 
Very good ; you may have to sit up all night, or a good part of 
the night. 

There is another favorite insect which has the same trick of 
getting into your room at night. This is the " flying cockroach," 
as Southerners call it. All Northerners are familiar enough with 
the female of the species cockroach (blatta orientalis\ the stupid 
little brown beetle which sometimes stands face to face with you 
as it comes up to the front of the pantry-shelf, and crosses its an- 
tennas nervously in wonderment at what you are. Galveston 
swarms with it. But there no one really minds it, though occa- 
sionally tidy housewives make war on it for a day. Yet what is 
the use ? While that painstaking person is powdering all the 
closets and crevices and corners with camphor, or with some 
" insecticide " which the smiling, obliging druggist has sold her, 
and a whole army of panic-stricken roaches are going hastily 
and ostentatiously out of her doors to come quietly in again 
when her fervor is cooled the winged males make their appear- 
ance at her windows, and though she may shout, " Don't want 
any ! " they come in, for in a Southern climate one cannot well 
keep all the windows or the slats of all the shutters closed, or 
there would be danger of suffocating with the heat. Alas ! for 
the lover of books who is so unsophisticated as not to keep his 
books in a tight book-case. And the doors of the book-case must 
fit so tightly that it requires more than patience to open and 
close them ; otherwise the cockroaches ! These semi-tropical 
roaches love choice old books, if you happen to have any, where 
the paste has gained a delicate bouquet ; and, like all inhabitants 
of sunny lands, they like bright colors, too, and your red and 
green and blue cloth bindings will soon be made away with, 
turned into blotched deformities, if you do not guard them 
closely. 

Early in May you will be forced to notice the coming and 
going of a black wasp in your room. The creature, if you let 
it alone, will not sting you, but will go on with its business, what- 
ever it is, for three or four days or a week. You will query, 
perhaps, what there is in your room to attract these insects. 
You observe them fly out at your window and alight on the 
oleanders that shade your sidewalk, returning again very per- 
sistently, and if kept out at one window coming in at another, 



1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 567 

or, if necessary, entering the house in some other part and then 
getting- in at your open room-door. Some fine morning you are 
horrified to behold one or two or more ugly daubs of black mud 
plastered against the wall of your room close to the ceiling. 
You have simply been favored by the mason-wasps, or " mud- 
daubers," as Galvestonians call them a species of wasp every- 
where found near the tropics. The little daubs of mud contain 
each six or eight nests, where the she-wasp has laid as many 
eggs, providing each with a caterpillar, which she has sealed in 
with the egg as food for the grub when it is born. Having per- 
formed this duty of decorating your walls, the she-mud-daubers 
go off and die. 

A Southern kitchen and pantry are a study for a Northerner. 
In the first place you notice two or three cupboards with doors 
of wire-net. These doors are to keep out the flying cockroaches 
and the clouds of innumerable gnats and flies of twenty different 
species, which are blown heedlessly about by every breeze into 
all corners, or which deliberately follow their noses if they 
have noses in quest of bread, meat, pastry, sugar, or anything 
good to eat or to drink. And if you look lower you will see that 
every cupboard and every table there and in the dining-room 
has a shallow tin dish set under each of its feet, and that each 
dish is full of water. That is to keep the ants which swarm over 
the floor from mounting higher. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

THE REVISION OF THE ANGLICAN VERSION OF THE HEBREW AND CHALDEE 
BOOKS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

That portion of the Old Testament which is received as canonical by 
Jews and Protestants has now been published in the revised English ver- 
sion prepared by a joint commission of English and American scholars. 
Such careful and full accounts of the changes which have been made in 
the text of King James' Bible have been published by the principal daily 
papers that it is quite unnecessary to recapitulate them. The revisers 
have bestowed a vast amount of labor upon the task now accomplished. 
We give them credit for having performed it in a scholarly and honest 
manner. The alterations which they have found reasons satisfactory to a 
ruling majority of their number to make in the old version are compara- 
tively few, and relatively of minor importance. The old version has many 
excellences and not many serious defects. The alterations in the revision 
do not, so far as we can at present make an estimate of them, compromise 
any Catholic doctrine. In some cases, at least, they are certainly im- 
provements. Another result of the labors of the English revisers, similar 



568 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July* 

to the result of equally laborious and learned efforts of the German re- 
visers, is of very great importance. This is, namely, the critical confirma- 
tion of the received Hebrew and Chaldee text of the ancient Jewish Scrip- 
tures, with but few and unimportant exceptions. Together with this vin- 
dication of the original text there is also associated a vindication of the 
traditional and current translation and rendering of its sense and meaning 
in the Greek, Latin, and modern languages, in all things which are essen- 
tial or of grave importance. In this way the foundations of the Christian 
doctrine and religion which were established in the revealed dogmas, laws, 
and prophecies given to the people of God in pre-Christian days are 
strongly vindicated and defended against the objections of unbelievers, to 
the great advantage of the cause of Christianity. As a whole, we consider 
that the revised version of King James' Old Testament is much superior 
to the revised version of the New Testament. Even this last has its good 
points and some value of its own ; the former, we think, has a great value 
and will aid in the preparation of a revised Catholic version, if such a de- 
sirable work is ever actually accomplished. 

We call this a desirable work with a certain conviction that we are 
expressing the sentiment of the generality of educated English-speaking 
Catholics. It does not seem to be such a very difficult work, after all. 
Of course such a version must be conformed to the Latin Vulgate, al- 
though marginal readings having other sufficient authority might ac- 
company the text. The sense being already determined beforehand by 
the authoritative version, the work to be done by revisers is chiefly of a 
literary kind. It is in respect to English idiom, choice of words, style and 
manner of constructing phrases and sentences, typographical form and 
arrangement, selection or preparation of prefaces, notes, etc., that the 
editors of a revised Catholic version would have chiefly to bestow their 
labor. With the two principal English versions, the Jewish one of Rabbi 
Leeser, the revised King James' Bible, and Archbishop Kenrick's revised 
Douay Bible as a basis of operations, it would not be, in our opinion, a dif- 
ficult work to produce an English Bible which in correctness of rendering 
and excellence of style would be completely satisfactory to English-speak- 
ing Catholics. The principal requisites of the editor, or editors, would be, 
besides competent learning, an exquisite judgment and taste in the use of 
language. We have already an English Breviary, the work of one man, 
which is almost perfect. One person iully competent could edit a Bible in 
an equally excellent manner. A small committee of learned ecclesiastics 
appointed by episcopal authority could pass the work under review, and if 
several metropolitans of important provinces, or even one provincial 
council, gave it approbation, it would assuredly before long receive that of 
the entire episcopal body in all English-speaking countries and come into 
universal and exclusive use. We have before expressed the opinion, and 
we repeat it once more, that the Scripture Lessons in Lord Bute's Breviary 
are specimens of what can and ought to be done with the whole body of 
the Holy Scriptures. 

PROPHECY AND HISTORY IN RELATION TO THE MESSIAH. Warburton Lec- 
tures for 1880-84. By Dr. Edersheim. New York : A. D. F. Randolph 
& Co. 1885. London : Longmans, Green & Co. 

Dr. Edersheim's Warburtonian Lectures furnish a suitable companion 



1885.] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 5 69 

to his Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. They contain some things 
which a Catholic cannot approve, particularly in the part which treats of 
the deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament. In the main, how- 
ever, the learned doctor is a controversialist arguing against our common 
opponents, Jews or rationalists against those who deny the fundamental 
doctrine that the Catholic faith respecting Jesus the Messiah, the Saviour 
of Jews and Gentiles alike, is contained in the sacred books and fore- 
shadowed in the sacred rites of the ancient church of the Jews. 

The destructive criticism which has been carried to its acme by Well- 
hausen endeavors to undermine the entire basis of Christianity in Judaism 
by ingenious and complicated theories of the later origin of the religious 
institutions and the sacred books which were existing and recognized as 
divine in the Jewish church as it was during the period immediately pre- 
ceding the foundation of the Christian Church. Just as Protestantism 
breaks the historical continuity of Christianity, this new German heresy 
breaks the historical connection between Jesus Christ and Moses, and be- 
tween Moses, the patriarchs, and Adam. It is a sapping and mining process 
intended to overthrow the whole edifice of revealed religion. Dr. Eders- 
heim's learned refutation of this destructive theory is able and thorough. 
Protestant works on' religion cannot, unless in some few instances when 
they are free from every error respecting faith or morals, be recommended 
to the perusal of the Catholic laity. Some of these works of learned men 
are, however, of great value and utility to Catholic scholars, and among 
them we assign a very high rank to this volume of Dr. Edersheim's lec- 
tures. Like the great Delitzsch, the author derives a special advantage 
from his Jewish education, which makes him at home with his own people 
and with their peculiar literature. 

NATURE AND THOUGHT : An Introduction to a Natural Philosophy. By 
St. George Mivart. Second edition. London : Burns & Gates ; New 
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1885. 

We pronounce without hesitation Nature and Thought a masterpiece 
of cogent, conclusive reasoning and beautiful writing. One of its "prime 
merits, in view of the author's purpose to instruct the multitude of readers 
and not the select few, is the smallness of its bulk. None but a master 
could say so much and say it so sufficiently within such a narrow compass 
of space. Another excellence is the combination of close, logical reason- 
ing with charm of manner and with poetic elements. The topics are phi- 
losophical, discussed in the form of dialogue, with a very pretty scenic 
background and environment, and a bright thread of personal story skil- 
fully interwoven. The book is fascinating both to the intellect and the 
imagination. Let any one read the first chapter, " Introductory Group- 
ings/' and then say if it is not at once a lesson in science and a piece of 
fine art. It is, however,only introductory. The author explains his object 
and scope to be the expression, in language from which technical terms are 
banished as'far as possible, of the outcome of recent discussions on funda- 
mental questions which underlie all science. His leading idea is, that Nature 
in every one of its parts and aspects is a symbol of Truth ; that Thought, 
to be true, must correspond to it in all respects, and to be complete and 



57o NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July, 

systematic must result from a harmonious relation of all faculties of the 
thinker with all parts and sides of the object of thought. This is why his 
essay is really an introduction to a natural philosophy. 

The sceptical formula is a formula of universal disharmony, discord, and 
dissymmetry between thoughts and things. Its precise contrary is Mr. 
Mivart's formula, which he demonstrates with scientific rigor, arriving 
finally at the existence of the Great First Cause, the origin of all being, 
goodness, truth, and beauty, as the conclusion of his argument. All those 
who desire to investigate the deeper problems underlying all science will 
do well to give this book a careful study. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISENCHANTMENT. By Edgar Everston Saltus. "In 
Arcadien geboren sind wir Alle." Schiller. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin 
& Co. 1885. 

Calvinism is Protestantism logically expressed, and pessimism is Cal- 
vinism logically expressed. Hence the origin and spread of pessimism in 
Germany, England, and to a very limited and feeble extent in the United 
States. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that the logical offspring of 
Protestantism in these lands should be floundering in Pessimism and in the 
varieties of its several forms. Life as presented by heresy, when logical, 
is indeed dark, sour, and hopeless, and not worth living. John Wesley 
truly said when speaking against the doctrine of Calvinistic predestina- 
tion, " Here I fix my foot you represent the Most High God as worse than 
the devil." The radical and satisfactory answer to pessimism and its varia- 
tions is the Catholic treatise on beatitude. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST : A Comparison with Contemporaneous Systems. 
By Austin Bierbower. Chicago, 111. : Colegrove Book Co. 1885. 

We cannot say that we have read this volume as carefully and atten- 
tively as we should have done had its author clearly, or even obscurely, 
stated his criterion of truth. The value of what the author says, in our 
opinipn, depends upon the value of his standard, and he nowhere tells us 
what that is ! Why has he not told us ? We don't know. He ought to 
have the ability to do it, for he is the author of a philosophy, as the title- 
page to this volume informs us. Where does Mr. Austin Bierbower stand ? 
What is he? Is he a Christian ? Or a rationalist ? Of what kind ? Hang 
out your banner on the outer wall. All we know is that, this book being 
the test, his and our estimate of many thirjgs do not agree. 

THE WORKS OF THE RT. REV'. JOHN ENGLAND, BISHOP OF CHARLESTON, 
S. C. With Memoir, Memorials, Notes, and full Index. By Hugh P. 
McElrone. In two volumes. Baltimore : Baltimore Publishing Co. 

The title given to this collection of writings from the pen of Bishop 
England, and which is explained in the preface, is misleading. These two 
volumes do not contain The Works either in a complete sense *>., all the 
works or in a restricted sense denoting all \h& principal works of Bishop 
England. They comprise certain selections from the complete edition 
published under the direction of his successor, Bishop Reynolds, in 1849. 



1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 571 

We are informed by Mr. McElrone that this edition was "cumbered with 
extraneous matter and badly edited," and that the object of the present 
edition is to free his (Bishop England's) works from these imperfections, and 
to present them to the public " in that shape which the great bishop him- 
self would have chosen." He lets us know that he founcl ''an immense 
amount of matter in the 1849 edition not written by Bishop England. 
None of this," he says, " appears in the present edition " implying that all 
which was written by Bishop England, and not included in one exception 
which he had just made, has been reprinted under his editorial supervision. 
The exception refers to articles which were repetitions of each other; "in 
these cases " the editor says he has " selected that which presents the sub- 
ject best, fortified by notes from other articles and such sources of informa- 
tion as were within reach." 

We have not found these notes taken from omitted articles or other 
sources, and such notes as do appear at the bottom of the page are few, 
brief, usually of little importance. What the editor has " selected " as 
" that which presents the subject best," an uninformed reader would sup- 
pose to be the ablest and most elaborate of Dr. England's polemical writ- 
ings. The fact is otherwise. The first volume contains only two pieces 
of a theological character, " Discourse before Congress " and "St. Peter's 
Roman Episcopate," which together fill about no pages in a volume of 531 
pages. The second volume is chiefly filled up by writings of a theological 
character or bearing upon matters connected with questions which in a 
wide sense are theological. But most of these belong to the minor and 
not to the principal writings of Dr. England. Most of his great polemical 
writings viz., the Blanco White, Fuller, Bowen, and Smith controversies 
have been entirely omitted. The principal pieces omitted in this edition 
occupy in the original and complete edition about 500 of its pages, which 
are equal to 1,000 pages of the new one. Those who expect to find in this 
new edition a collection of all the works of Bishop England, except such 
as were hasty, fragmentary, unimportant contributions to a newspaper, or 
of merely ephemeral interest, or whose valuable contents are included in 
some other distinct form among his writings, will find themselves disap- 
pointed. The edition contains the greater part of the minor and miscella- 
neous writings of Bishop England, with a selection from his principal 
works, from which those which are the ablest, most learned, and most 
elaborate, those which chiefly gave him fame as a writer, have been ex- 
cluded. 

Whether a republication of these principal works of Bishop England 
would promise sufficient remuneration to a publisher we cannot say. We 
should rejoice to see the work done, and also to see a life of the great 
bishop published which would be worthy of such a subject. Bishop Eng- 
land was a great man. He was the most eloquent preacher who has ever 
spoken in this country, among the Catholic clergy ; and we doubt if any 
one of the most famous Protestant preachers has ever surpassed or even 
equalled him as an orator. We cannot venture to make a judgment of the 
relative rank he would hold among our great forensic orators, but certain- 
ly, according to the estimate which some of these made of him during his 
lifetime, it would be a high one. In other respects also he was a bright 
ornament of the American Catholic Church and hierarchy. His name and 



572 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July, 

his works deserve to be held in perpetual remembrance, for he was one of 
the greatest among the fouaders, the fathers, and the champions of the Ca- 
tholic Church in this republic. 

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, FROM THE DISCOVERY OF 
THE CONTINENT. By George Bancroft. The Author's Last Revision. 
Vol. VI. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1885. 

We have now received the sixth and last volume of Mr. Bancroft's His- 
tory of the United States. While we have seen much in Mr. Bancroft's 
work to admire and praise, we have found much to censure. We are 
pleased to see that in one particular we have not criticised in vain. We 
objected, together with others, that Mr. Bancroft had omitted the foot- 
notes of references to authorities, which are valued as much or more by 
students of history than the text of the author. We now observe that 
some few authorities are given in the fifth and sixth volumes of the Author's 
Last Revision. It is this circumstance that makes the earlier editions, with 
notes, preferable to this. The present volume is less historical than dis- 
cussive. It discusses the Union and the government, and in this respect 
we must confess that Mr. Bancroft's views are formed more in the mould 
of the historical experiences of the country than of those original con- 
stitutional principles, balances, and compromises upon which the fathers 
formed it. This volume contains a fine likeness of Mr. Bancroft, which, 
we doubt not, will be acceptable to his countrymen. As Catholics we re- 
ject this last edition of the author as unjust to the Catholic chapters of 
American history, and as too strongly influenced and pervaded by the past 
and now decayed pretensions of Protestantism. Our opinion is still un- 
changed that Mr. Bancroft has left the history of the United States yet to 
be written. 

THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION : An Historical Essay on the Religious, 
Literary, and Social Condition of Christendom, with special reference 
to Germany and England, from the beginning of the latter half of the 
fifteenth century to the outbreak of the religious revolt. Part I. By 
Rev. William Stang. New York : The Catholic Publication Society 
Co. 1885. 

Father Stang has undertaken a work which ought to be of the greatest 
service to religion. He proposes, as his title-page shows, to give an 
account of the time preceding the Reformation, especially in Germany and 
England. Every one must see of what immense moment accurate and 
reliable information about this period must be, and at the same time how 
hard, on account of prejudice especially, it must be to get such information. 
The church, indeed, is essentially holy ; and however great may be the 
number of her unworthy children, the fault is and must be their own. 
Consequently Catholics are not precluded by any argumentative necessity 
from fully recognizing the existence of evils in the church, if and when 
there is proof of their existence. The fact is, in our judgment, some Catho- 
lics are too ready to magnify and exaggerate in this respect writers of 
saints' lives, for example. While this is true, we must confess that it 
would be painful to believe that before the advent of the Reformation the 






1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 573 

Catholic Church was not producing notable fruits of holiness ; and what 
these fruits were, at least some of them, Father Stang has indicated in this, 
and will in future parts point out more fully. In his first chapter he gives 
short lives of the popes of this period ; the second, third, and fourth chapters 
are devoted to the lives of some of its bishops, priests, and canonized saints, 
and in the sixth chapter there is an account of some of the first produc- 
tions of the printing-press. This chapter includes a valuable list of the 
versions of Holy Scripture which appeared during this period. Here is a 
fact by which we may judge of this time. The world has of late been 
doing honor to the memory of General Gordon ; his inner life has been 
laid before the public and the sources of its strength have been disclosed. 
Of the uninspired sources the principal was the work of a writer who died 
in the period of which Father Stang writes. This work was the Following 
of Christ. During this "godless " time it was so well appreciated that (see 
p. 181) between 1486 and 1500 fifty-nine editions were published. We wish 
Father Stang God-speed and a wide circulation ; he is doing a good work 
and doing it well, and, as he is writing in English, we hope he will spare no 
pains to do what refers to England as thoroughly as possible. 

THE LIFE AROUND Us : A Collection of Stories. By Maurice Francis 
Egan. New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. 

We recognize some old acquaintances among these stories, in company 
with others which we have read for the first time in this collection. 

Mr. Egan has a fine talent for writing short stories. One of these, 
" Philista," has been noticed with interest and praise by Cardinal Newman. 
The title indicates that their subjects and scenes are taken from our own 
time and country, which is true of all except one, the scene of which is 
laid in France. They are full of tokens of the author's wholesome sense, 
good taste, and cultivation. Except in one case viz., the story of " Car- 
mel," in which certain features are a repetition of similar ones in the 
"Tragi-Comedy " he does not, so far as we remember, reproduce himself, 
but furnishes the reader with an agreeable variety. There are excellent 
religious and moral lessons, as well as entertainment, to be found in the 
stories, not by way of prosing or preaching, but by making sketches of 
character and narration of incidents ipso facto instructive. We recom- 
mend the book heartily to readers, young and old, and wish the writer the 
success he well deserves, hoping that he may go on and prosper in his 
literary career. 

ESSAYS AND SPEECHES OF JEREMIAH S. BLACK. With a Biographical 
Sketch. By Chauncey F. Black. New York : Appletons. 1885. 

Judge Black was eminent as a lawyer, a judge, and a statesman. His 
most'distinctive characteristics, in which he shines by contrast with some 
as conspicuous as himself, were honor, integrity, uprightness, with the 
other great moral virtues. His speeches and writings have a thorough- 
ness, a manly directness, an intellectual force worthy of their author's high 
reputation, besides being replete with valuable and authentic information 
and an able presentation of the arguments by which the side taken by the 
statesmen with whom Judge Black was associated is defended, in regard to 



574 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July* 

the most important political events of the last quarter of a century. We 
must not omit to notice with approbation Judge Black's answer to Robert 
Ingersoll, for which he deserves the thanks of every Christian. At a 
period when so many public characters have various sorts of blots upon 
them it is gratifying and encouraging to look back upon the character, the 
life, and the career of Judge Black a man who is acknowledged to have 
been not only conspicuous for his ability, but an honor to his country by 
his noble and upright character. 

MEMOIR AND LETTERS OF JENNY C. WHITE DEL BAL. By her Mother, 
Rhoda E. White. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1885. (For sale by The 
Catholic Publication Society Co., New York.) 

Jenny C. White was a daughter of the late Judge White, of New York, a 
niece of Madame Catharine White, of the Society of the Sacred Heart, and 
a grandniece of Gerald Griffin. In 1862 she was married to Don Ber- 
nardino Del Bal, and in 1863 accompanied her husband to his residence 
'at Santiago in New Granada. Four years afterward she died suddenly of 
yellow-fever caught in nursing the sick. During this short period she 
accomplished so much for the religious, moral, and social improvement of 
all classes in Santiago that she was called the tutelary angel of the place, 
and her memory received the most distinguished honors, both official and 
private. The condition of things was most deplorable, and Mrs. Del Bal's 
letters give a vivid picture of the state of society, the manners and customs, 
the scenery and the tout ensemble, in that strange little revolutionary repub- 
lic, a mixture of good and bad, of the delightful and the revolting, of piety 
and wickedness, in a most singular combination. 

We have in this Memoir a simple and truthful narrative which reads 
like a romance and reminds us of Lady Georgiana Fullerton's Too 
Strange not to be True. It ought to be read by all, especially by wo- 
men. It narrates the brief but fruitful life of a lady, young, accomplished, 
full of gayety, taking part in all innocent festivities and amusements, ob- 
serving the customs of society, without anything singular in her manner 
of life, yet very holy, and accomplishing what we may truly call an apos- 
tolic work. There are many important lessons to be learned from such a 
life, especially by those who are placed in a similar position. 

THE PROTESTANT FAITH ; or, Salvation by Belief. An Essay upon the 
Errors of the Protestant Church. By Dwight Hinckley Olmstead. 
New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1885. 

Here is one more Protestant error, and an attempt to add another sect 
to the long list given in the appendix. There is no reason why any one 
should feel alarmed for any cherished truth or favorite error. The status 
quo ante bellum remains undisturbed by this small essay. 

A HOLY MENDICANT ; or, The Life of Benedict Joseph Labre. Translated 
. from the French of Abbe Solassol by Mrs. Marian Vinceletti. New 
York : D. & J. Sadlier. 

It has been said that Leo XIII. did a heroic act when he canonized St. 
Benedict Joseph Labre, for the reason that in the canonization lay an 



1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 575 

open protest against the spirit of this age of luxury and pride. The church 
always performs heroic acts; it is her mission. So far from being strange 
that she does them, it would be stranger if she neglected them. 

The translation before us is -zgood one, far better than many we have 
read which made more pretensions than this. It ought to be read by every 
Catholic, for the lessons learned from a saint of our own time are likely to 
be more lasting than those from others. St. Benedict stands, as it were, 
and preaches at the dawn of an evil and corrupt day, and the lesson may be 
easily learned from his life. We gladly commend it to all pious readers. 

OUR OWN WILL, AND How TO DETECT IT IN OUR ACTIONS. By the Rev. 
J. Allen, D.D. New York : Benziger Brothers. 1885. 

Our Own Will is a book that will attain the object for which it was 
written. It treats of the interesting subject of the free-will of man and' his 
co-operation with, or rejection of, divine grace. The author, the Rev. J. 
Allen, D.D., has evidently made himself thoroughly acquainted with the 
workings of the free-will, and has given in the book entitled Our Own Will" 
the result of his patient and attentive study. Although the work is princi- 
pally intended for those who are living a religious life, yet its very valuable 
contents on the means of detecting our evil inclinations, of regulating the 
inordinate emotions of our lower nature, of subjecting them to the empire 
of reason, and of rendering reason perfectly obedient to the action of God 
on the soul will, we are sure, prove very profitable even to people living in 
the world. Having read Dr. Allen's book with great interest, and with the 
conviction of having derived from it instruction and spiritual profit, we 
most heartily recommend its careful perusal to all those who are striving 
to acquire a knowledge of the subtle workings of their will and of the way 
to bring it in harmony with the grace and inspirations of God. 

THE CHAMPION PARISH SCHOOL HYMN-BOOK. A collection of sacred 
hymns, especially adapted to the wants and capacities of Catholic pa- 
rochial schools. Selected and arranged by E. J. Forgeron. St. Louis : 
P. Fox. 

All real wants meet sooner or later with an adequate supply, and we 
presume that hitherto the want of a cheap hymn and song book for use in 
our parish schools, though unquestionably real, has not found much ex- 
pression or we should long ago have had a suitable book prepared. One 
of the most refining exercises for the mind, as well as healthy exercise for 
the lungs and throat, is to sing; and wherever children, and grown people 
too, are encouraged to sing we know they are the better and the happier 
for it. This volume is an attempt to furnish a cheap book of the sort to 
be put in the hands of our school-children. 

THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. By W. Mathieu Williams. New York : D. 
Appleton & Co. 1885. 

Mr. Williams has an interesting pen. His Science in Small Chapters is 
very entertaining and instructive. So far as we have read this volume, it 
is of the same character. But it will take some time for the good sense 
which The Chemistry of Cookery contains to percolate into our kitchens. 
Read it, especially those who are concerned with this important part of 



576 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July* l88 5- 

human economy. The cook controls the world more than the world 
thinks. 

WILD FLOWERS. By Ruth A. O'Connor. New York : The Catholic Pub- 
lication Society Co. ; London : Burns & Gates. 1885. 

Wild Flowers is a neatly-bound volume of about a hundred pages of 
verse, with here and there a prose composition by way of variety. The 
contents of the book are of the class of writings we call " pretty." It is 
readable and will make a pleasant companion on a lazy summer's day, 
and this is what cannot be said of many a more pretentious volume. 

LOUISE DE LA VALLIERE, AND OTHER POEMS. By Katharine Tynan. 
London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1885. 

Miss Katharine Tynan has done well to gather in a volume the poems 
she has been contributing for a couple of years past to the Irish Monthly, 
United Ireland, some English magazines, and recently to THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD. If we are not mistaken in our prognosis, the flowery chain of 
Irish poetry that fell from the dead hands of Denis Florence McCarthy has 
been picked up by this young poetess. Miss Tynan- has certainly the 
Celtic genius for style, the Pindaric flexibility and refinement of utterance 
which is so purely a Celtic quality that we do not always find it in even 
Aubrey de Vere's chiselled stanzas. It is a natural gift and imposes on its 
possessor the responsibility of carefully cultivating it. Already we fancy 
we can perceive in Miss Tynan's writing the influence of the poets of 
the English renaissance, of Spenser, Lord Surrey, Sir Philip Sidney, Ben 
Jonson, Herrick. There could be no purer influence than the first three 
of these ; but to be secure and strong an impressionable poetic temperament 
should be nourished from the great Catholic poetry of continental Europe, 
from Dante's forward to Chateaubriand's. Miss Tynan is gifted with the 
true poet's sensitiveness to beauty in nature. She hears " silken-soft 
murmurs " that grosser ears would not detect, and marks every gleam of 
"the waved gold of the wheat." We have not space to quote from this 
volume as we would wish; but here is an animated little picture, in two 
verses taken from "The Dreamers," that is a good example : 

"... Hark ! in the hush 
A small wind ruffles with fingers slow 

The grasses long and lush, 
And O the choir in the elm-tree bough ! 

" The brown, bright shapes that swaying sit 

P the heart of shade, 
Their throats are amber and chrysolite. 

Frail each body was made, 
But the gold voice poured into it !" 

Miss Tynan's thoughts are high and pure, and very often holy. Even 
of the least spiritual of her lays it cannot be said, as Sainte-Beuve said of 
a volume of Victor Hugo's, that God is forgotten in it. It is a hopeful 
sign to meet poetry like this, which is at the same time full of warmth and 
color, in a day when " libidinous and ignorant poetasters " are more plen- 
tiful than when John Milton denounced them. Some of the strongest of 
Miss Tynan's writing is in the two or three Irish pieces, especially the 
elegy on A. M. Sullivan. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XLI. AUGUST, 1885. No. 245. 



HERBERT SPENCER'S ENIGMA. 

^ THE recent controversy in the Nineteenth Century and the 
Popular Science Monthly between Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. 
Frederick Harrison merits, not only from the character of the 
writers, but especially from the matter so carefully formulated 
by the first-named in his article, " Religion : A Retrospect and 
a Prospect," thoughtful and respectful consideration. To our 
mind he has done a decided service to the cause of religion. A 
man of vigorous thought, a writer of clearness and precision, a 
teacher who has the courage of his convictions and who utters 
them with the truthfulness and candor of one who is willing to 
risk everything for truth, whatever Mr. Herbert Spencer says 
will carry weight, and influence widely. Of course we differ 
with him ; we cannot for a moment admit his assertion of the 
impossibility of knowing the existence and attributes of God 
after our limited but none the less sure way, and our reasons 
will appear in the sequel. We feel, moreover, that in his ear- 
nestness to uphold his theory, as put forth in the article we are 
reviewing, he has gone too far, according to his own rules of 
reasoning, and, overstepping the limits, has contradicted himself. 
He is very categoric in laying it down as an axiom that man is 
conscious of a feeling in himself that leads him to believe in the 
existence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy which he cannot 
apprehend, of which he knows nothing, and which he there- 
fore calls the Unknowable. Yet, notwithstanding the assertion 
that it is unknowable, he proceeds to tell us something of what 

Copyright. Rev. I. T. HKCKER. 1885. 



578 HERBERT SPENCER' s ENIGMA. [Aug., 

it is, and a good deal of what it is not. Thus, for example, he 
says : 

"The cruelty of a Fijian god, who, represented as devouring the souls 
of the dead, may be supposed to inflict torture during the process, is small 
compared with the cruelty of a god who condemns men to tortures which 
are eternal ; and the ascription of this cruelty, though habitual in ecclesias- 
tical formulas, occasionally occurring in sermons, and still sometimes pic- 
torially illustrated, is becoming so intolerable to the better-natured that, 
while some theologians distinctly deny it, others quietly drop it out of 
their teachings. Clearly this change cannot cease until the belief in 
hell and damnation disappear. Disappearance of them will be aided by 
an increasing repugnance to injustice. The visiting on Adam's descen- 
dants, through hundreds of generations, dreadful penalties for a small 
transgression which they did not commit ; the damning of all men who do 
not avail themselves of an alleged mode of obtaining forgiveness which 
most men never heard of; and the effecting a reconciliation by sacrificing a 
son, who was perfectly innocent, to satisfy the assumed necessity for a pro- 
pitiatory victim are modes of action which, ascribed to a human ruler, 
would call forth expressions of abhorrence ; and the ascription of them to 
the Ultimate Cause of things, even now felt to be full of difficulties, must 
become impossible." 

Here we are told that the Unknowable is the Ultimate Cause of 
all things, and that it cannot by any possibility have acted as he 
supposes the Christian religion teaches God has acted and does. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer's philosophy is at fault. He starts with a 
false principle. It is only another illustration of the old saying: 
Causa mala patrocinio pejor frit. And yet we are far from call- 
ing his a bad cause. There is too much of good in it to be 
spoken of in that way. It is bad by defect ; what is in it is good, 
though that good be but twilight, a glimmer of truth. The 
good consists in this, that he teaches, without subterfuge of any 
kind, the existence of an Ultimate Cause, of an Infinite, Eternal 
Energy ; the bad, or the defect, is that he pretends we can know 
nothing about it, and that the only progress in the appreciation 
of this great Being will consist in a far greater increased con- 
sciousness of the belief that it is. What is still farther good in 
his theory is that this consciousness cannot be destroyed, as it 
belongs to nature ; but, on the contrary, will go on, becoming 
ever more stable and constituting the essence of all religion. 
To use other words, this is the testimony of nature, of which 
Tertullian and others spoke long ago ; and we may exclaim of 
Mr. Herbert Spencer: "Testimony of a soul naturally Chris- 
tian!" 

To us, to whom the explanation is so simple, it must appear 
surprising that this well-informed writer should speak so lightly 



1885.] HERBERT SPENCER'S ENIGMA. 579 

of the language of Holy Writ where it treats of God in the 
speech of men. With the knowledge that we must use material 
expressions to signify our internal intellectual and spiritual opera- 
tions, our thoughts and feelings, how can any one be surprised 
that in writing of God and of his operations, so far above 
our limited comprehension, the inspired author should have 
used terms easily understood by those for whom He was writ- 
ing, and who certainly would not have understood him had he 
used recondite phrases and words known only to himself? We 
should have thought a moment's reflection, with the light of 
common sense, would have prevented such a mistake as Mr. 
Herbert Spencer has made here. We could expect this from a 
Robert Ingersoll, but from Herbert Spencer we did not expect it. 
If he has ever given any attention to the theology he combats, 
such as every fair-minded man ought to give to theories he im- 
pugns, he must know that Catholic theologians teach that such 
expressions as he objects to are only figurative, while referring 
to acts which, among men, are accompanied with the phases of 
thought and feeling described by the writer of the inspired text. 
God is said to be angry, to repent, to be glad, etc. These are 
our ways of speaking. He himself is unchangeable ; seeing and 
knowing all possibilities from the beginning, he cannot be sub- 
ject to the changes such possibilities would produce on one who 
had not foreseen them. But the actions of God have the se- 
quence they would have had had he been capable of the emo- 
tions described, while all the result the actions of men could have 
on God is coeval with the eternal act whereby God willed crea- 
tion and ordered his providence ; for, in his eternal foresight, he 
knows all things past, present, future, or possible : nothing can 
escape him who willed all and made all things what they are. 

Another false view we must comment on is the one which 
causes Mr. Herbert Spencer to stigmatize the wording of Scrip- 
ture where God is spoken of as requiring the praise of man. It 
is strange that the obvious distinction between the Creator and 
the creature should have escaped so acute a thinker. The in- 
spired writer says, speaking in the name of God : In gloriain 
meam fed eum [i.e., hominetri\ " I have made him [man] for 
my glory." Mr. Spencer rightly condemns self-glorifying in a 
man ; and then he goes wide of the mark by applying the same 
rule to God, forgetting that the reason why man does wrong in 
glorifying himself is because all he has he has received of God, 
and all the glory, therefore, belongs to God and not to himself, 
who can do nothing without God. Justice requires that glory 



580 HERBERT SPENCER'S ENIGMA. [Aug., 

be given to him to whom it is due. God, being infinitely just, as 
we shall see, must exact that glory for himself, all the more be- 
cause he must correct the continued tendency of man to prevari- 
cate in this regard. Again, God must act for an end worthy of 
himself, and he can have, therefore, no end but himself, as nothing 
worthy of him exists outside of himself, for only an infinite end 
can be worthy of infinite action. God must hate the robbery of 
his glory by man, and must teach man to repair the disorder of 
which he has been guilty in attributing to himself any honor 
whatsoever. St. Augustine, in his book of Retractations, tells us 
how he made the mistake of attributing to himself the first steps 
in conversion, and how he was corrected by reading the commen- 
tary of St. Cyprian on the words of St. Paul : " What hast thou 
that thou hast not received ; and if thou hast received it, why 
dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?" The same 
may be said of every gift, even physical ; and therefore all the 
glory belongs to God, and he would fail in justice if he did not 
bid all men give it to him. 

A somewhat similar error Mr. Herbert Spencer falls into where 
he speaks of the Divine Intelligence, or intelligence ascribed to 
God. He gives us an argument, subtle but faulty, to show that 
the First Cause could not have been intelligent, as we understand 
the word, because this intelligence is dependent on alien activi- 
ties " the impressions generated by things beyond conscious- 
ness, and the ideas derived from such impressions." Now, intel- 
ligence is the exercise of the intellectual faculty on ideas, it really 
makes no difference how they come. They may come from con- 
sciousness or from outside, or they may so be in the mind as to 
be identified with it. The recognition of one's being and relation 
with others is itself an act of the intellect, an act of intelligence. 
The First Cause, therefore, could be intelligent at least in this 
way. But this is only to answer the argument. The real fact is 
that the First Cause, being first in order, must be also first in the 
intellectual order and possess it most perfectly ; and as the per- 
fection of intelligence is to understand the Infinite, so this First 
Cause must understand itself, all its possibilities which it sees in 
itself viewed, as it were, materially, these possibilities being the 
archetypes according to which things come to exist in the actual 
order. 

To come, however, to the fuller and more direct reply to the 
assertion that the First Cause is unknowable, the profession of 
belief in the existence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy frees us 
from the necessity of proving this existence. We see that Mr. 



1885.] HERBERT SPENCER'S ENIGMA. 581 

Herbert Spencer, by a different process perhaps, and in a differ- 
ent degree, is in harmony with the assertion of St. Paul, quoted 
by the Vatican Council, that man's mind can attain to the know- 
ledge that there is a God. But St. Paul goes further, and so do 
other texts of Holy Writ, the writers being more logical than our 
author, and not under the baneful influence of nineteenth-century 
unbelief. Once grant the existence of a First Cause, and rea- 
son recognizes it as infinite, and must do so, because it could not 
be limited, as it is the First, and it would be absurd to say 
it limited itself. This infinitude cannot be considered a mere 
name ; it implies no limit of any attribute compatible with it, and 
it must, in fact, be infinite Reality, in which everything is in it- 
self or as possible, and without which nothing can be. It must 
be, therefore, infinite truth, infinite goodness, infinite perfection, 
infinite power, infinite energy or will. Whatever is must first 
have existed as an object of that divine, infinite intellect from the 
beginning; for no one can give what he has not, and beings must, 
therefore, have received what they have from a Cause which first 
had what it has given them. Consequently reason shows us that 
the First Cause, whom we call God, has in him Infinite Intelli- 
gence ; he is the pure act of Intellect whereby he understands 
himself and all he is able to do in a word, all possibility. 

Again, reason teaches us that the First Cause must be Truth 
itself, all that which is in any way, as explained above. There- 
fore it excludes all error or falsity in this First Cause. And as it, 
moreover, recognizes in God infinite perfection, it excludes from 
him all untruthfulness, and all derogation from the moral law 
which is indelibly stamped on our mind and heart. The doctor 
of grace, St. Augustine, quotes the words of the Psalmist, " Who 
shall show unto us what is good?" and he answers with the 
words that follow, " The light of thy countenance is stamped 
upon us." This law first is in God and then exists by participa- 
tion in man ; and, as we have said, it could not be in man if it 
were not in the First Cause, on the principle that no one gives 
what he has not. The eternal fitness of the ideas of the Divine 
Intellect constitute this moral law which is natural to man, and 
found in him, in its essence, everywhere. 

In like manner reason recognizes personality in the First 
Cause, being the principle which makes a rational being the 
adequate source of his own operations and responsible for them. 
This noble prerogative is what makes man eminently worthy of 
respect, like unto his Maker, and merits for him the grade he 
holds in the esteem of his fellow-men. All society is based on 



582 HERBERT SPENCER'S ENIGMA. [Aug., 

the fact that man is a person. It comes into play everywhere, in 
daily life, in business, in the law-courts, in the Patent Office, 
where a man is awarded a right of property in an invention be- 
cause it is his own, from him as a person. To pretend that man 
could possess such a noble and eminent and perfect quality, and 
that the First Cause from whom he comes has it not, were to do 
outrage to reason. 

Reason can know more. It can know that this infinitely good 
First Cause cannot irresistibly lead man into error, and that, 
therefore, when man makes use of every proper means of becom- 
ing certain, he can arrive at the knowledge of truth to the extent 
it may please this First Cause to manifest it him, by ordinary or 
extraordinary means. It makes him realize, too, that the Infinite 
and Eternal Energy, being all-powerful, can maintain the physical 
laws, or alter or suspend them ; and therefore it recognizes the 
possibility of miracles, of which man judges surely by the use of 
the laws of evidence. And when he sees miracles used as a tes- 
timony to the truth of teaching he recognizes that teaching as of 
God. Reason, therefore, declares its belief in the possibility of 
revelation. 

To sum up. So far from man not being able to know what 
God is, so far from declaring the First Cause Unknowable, rea- 
son can know God ; know that he is ; that he is infinite ; that he 
is perfect ; that he is intellect itself ; that he is goodness itself 
and justice itself ; that he is the author of all that is, the Sove- 
reign Personality who has made man after his own image ; that 
he is morality itself, and the source of the moral law in man ; 
that he can make known his mind to men, cause men to recog- 
nize him as speaking, by signs of his omnipotence we call mira- 
cles, and oblige men to accept the truths which constitute a 
revelation. 

We have not given special attention to the arguments of Mr. 
Frederick Harrison. Materialism is so gross that it is not likely 
to hold long-continued sway over the minds of any large body 
of men. It is unfortunate that this form of error should have 
taken such hold on the minds of physicians especially. They are 
so much wrapt up in matter, and see so many strange and inte- 
resting phenomena of reflex action, that they come to regard mat- 
ter as the only thing that is, and the source of all activity. Were 
things as they should be, theology would hold the first place 
in a man's estimation, law the next, then physical science. But 
the theologians, so-called, have rejected divine or church autho- 
rity and given their own comments, and therefore have lost im- 



1885.] HERBERT SPENCER'S ENIGMA. 583 

mensely in public opinion ; lawyers, by substituting expediency 
for justice, or because they have to take the ignorant legislation 
of semi-cultured bodies as the law they interpret and apply, share 
the same fate, and are not in the esteem they should naturally 
have as a profession. The people remember the words of Scrip- 
ture, " Honor the physician on account of your need," and, as 
that need comes often, the physician is considered as more impor- 
tant than the minister or lawyer, while the brilliant discoveries 
of the profession dazzle the public eye. Those, too, who share 
the opinions of Mr. Harrison are apt to look on the physician as 
the high-priest of humanity, and hence make him share in the 
cult they pay it. Certainly the physician who does his duty, 
who is faithful to God and to man, is a noble being and a most 
powerful agent for good, not alone for the health of the body, 
but for the social weal. Such a man every one will willingly 
honor, and we should be the last to detract from his merit. But 
the physician who has given up God, and especially the material- 
ist, has no code of morality but his own ideas, and is therefore a 
dangerous man, liable at any moment to do, perhaps in invincible 
ignorance, the greatest ill. We remember in our young days 
meeting with one of these physicians, who had not the fear of 
God before his eyes. He was speaking before several, we being 
of the number, of his treating a young woman for some ailment, 
and told us he had for this purpose given her to read works of 
an immoral character. That incident has never been blotted out 
from our memory, and the thought of this physician comes up 
always as of one who was a traitor to a noble profession. The 
only safety there is for society is the moral law ; and without be- 
lief in God and in his revelation, which confirms and sanctions 
the moral law, that law loses its hold on men and untold evil 
will be the result. Mr. Herbert Spencer's belief in an Ultimate 
Cause which is an Eternal, Infinite Energy goes far to safe-guard 
the natural law ; but we hope and pray that his earnest and 
manly truthfulness will be rewarded by a still greater knowledge 
the knowledge which surpasses all earthly knowledge and which 
so satisfies man's yearnings. When that time comes he will ex- 
perience something of the joy and happiness that fill the heart 
of those who have found the truth. One of these, formerly a 
prominent writer on the infidel press of Paris, afterwards a 
doughty champion of the faith of Christ Louis Veuillot thus 
speaks of his feelings : " I was ruined the day I dropped from the 
clouds. But it is God who ruined me, blessed be his mercy ! 
These clouds concealed the lightning ; it lit up when mercy dis- 



584 CATHERINE TEGAKWITA. [Aug., 

sipated them. I have seen heaven, and in my dust I am heir to 
a kingdom that will never perish. Formerly, to my eyes, ail was 
but the splendid decoration of vast emptiness unfathomable ; the 
delightful sound of an ingenious mechanism put up by a fantas- 
tic workman, who, without saying why, had withdrawn from his 
work. At present all is clear ; at present I see, I hear, I know. 
The smiles and the sounds of nature are a language I under- 
stand ; my heart answers it with a beat that tells of brotherly 
love. I know why the hills are clothed with joyousness, why the 
seed rejoices in the earth, why a song of praise comes up from 
the valleys, why the little stream leaps and claps its hands. I 
know this, and my voice, uniting itself with those voices that are 
never silent, has begun to chant an eternal hosanna." 



CATHERINE TEGAKWITA, 

THE IROQUOIS MAIDEN FOR WHOM BEATIFICATION IS ASKED. 

O HUNTER race ! your sky-walled plains we till ; 

We left your prey no guard of secret shade ; 
Free forest rovers, where your gray oaks grew 

The white man's pride his shining street has laid. 

His presence pale to you has been a blight, 
The Aryan glance a dart to make you die ; 

Now, for the gloom our sight to you has brought, 
A star you give to us to light our sky 

A potent star that can our fates persuade, 
As erring sages taught of planets dead ; 

A radiant star to guide the vagrant bark 

When from sin-fretted waves the day has fled. 

Its bright beam shows us that all tribes of men 
Of man's true fellowship a memory kept, 

Through wars unceased, since Eden's closing gate, 
And grace awakes the virtue that but slept. 

Silent, though proudly sad, the stoic chief 

Sees the oncoming of extinction swift. 
Well hath the warrior known to fee the sword, 

And render for his doom a kingly gift. 



1885.] AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. 585 



AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. 

COMING down from the forests of Morvand we stopped at 
Sens, the ancient capital of Senonese Gaul, which stands at the 
confluence of the Yonne and the Vanne, nearly surrounded by 
water, in the midst of undulating- hills, the sides of which were 
flecked with quarries of white limestone, surging wheat-fields, 
and terraces of luxuriant vines the vines which, as the poet pre- 
tends, the renowned Brennus brought home from Italy and 
planted with the end of his victorious lance. The two unequal 
towers of St. fitienne rising majestically up from the red-tiled 
roofs, the beautiful gardens in the outskirts kept perennially 
fresh by numberless rills, and the graceful Yonne as it goes 
winding off among the hills, fringed with poplars and silvery 
willows, delight the eye and arrest the foot of the traveller. 
The old stone bridge over the Yonne, with its cross ; the cyclo- 
pean walls of Gallo-Roman construction, with the remains of the 
Orbandelle, or band of gilded bricks that once encircled the 
town ; the streets, with their suggestive names ; the old shrines 
left here and there at the corners, the antique portals and curi- 
ous carvings of the houses ; the churches that date from apostolic 
times all remind one of the past. Fragments of Roman history, 
monastic chronicles, and popular legends and traditions crop 
up at every step to interest the mind and charm the imagination. 

Among these traditions nothing is more delightfully astonish- 
ing than the great antiquity ascribed to the place, as related by 
Jacques Cassan in his work, Dynasties des anciens rois des Gaulois 
et des Franqais depuis le dduge, dedicated to Louis XIII. Ac- 
cording to him Sens was founded by Samothes, or Javan, sur- 
named Dis, the fourth son of Japheth and grandson of Noe, who, 
sent into Gaul by his father one hundred and fifty-two years 
after the Deluge, or, as some say, after the confusion of tongues 
at the Tower of Babel, left a colony in Greece, went to Italy to 
see his brother Gomer, and then, crossing the mountains, stopped 
in a pleasant valley enclosed among hills and watered by nume 
rous streams. Here he founded the city of Sens, which he sur- 
rounded with walls and towers, and made the capital of his king- 
dom. The Yonne he so named for his uncle Yonichus, or per- 
haps from his own name of Javan, from which the loanes, lones, 
or Yones derived their name. He built a palace for himself on 



586 AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. [Aug., 


the top of a neighboring mount where now stands the chapel of 

St. Bond. Here in the year of the world 1900 was born his son 
Magnus, who succeeded him as the second king of Gaul an 
event he joyfully celebrated by a great festival. Some years 
later he founded the city of Autun, and further up the Yonne, 
among the wild hills of Morvand, he built a castle where now 
stands Chateau Chinon so named in honor of his wife, China 
the picturesque ruins of which may be seen crowning the top of 
a sharp cone that rises up from a deep ravine through which 
pours a mountain torrent. At the foot of the cone is the town 
of Chateau-Chinon Petite ville et de grand renom, says the pro- 
verb. There is also a street in Sens still called Rue Chinon, 
doubtless from its first queen. 

Samothes was building another castle in a wooded region 
southwest of Sens when he received a present from his grand- 
father, Noe, of some ingots of gold and silver. This was in the 
year 1909, when Prince Magnus, who was with him, was just 
nine years old. When the gift arrived it found the young prince 
crying for some mishap, and to soothe him Samothes gave him 
one of the ingots, saying : " Voila de for ; ris There is some gold ; 
laugh," which the child did. Hence the name of Lorris (I'or, 
ris) given to the castle, and still borne by the village a presump- 
tive proof that Samothes had quite abandoned the use of his 
mother-tongue, the Basque language ! 

This same delightful writer tells us that Noe and his wife, 
with a long suite, came to Gaul to visit Samothes, and made an 
extensive tour through the country, going to Autun and Lorris 
(I am not quite sure about Chateau Chinon !) and even as far 
as Bordeaux, stopping doubtless to see his son Japheth, who, as 
every one knows, founded the town of P6rigueux. Perhaps it 
was in memory of this visit of the great progenitor that a village 
near Sens was called No6, a name it bears to this day. 

The people of Sens, it may be supposed, take pride in being 
thus assured of the purity of their descent so much depends on 
the particular strain of one's blood. Truly, as Shakspere says, 
" some are born great." And to be " of the offspring of the gen- 
tilman Jafeth," as Dame Juliana Berners styles him, 

"Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher? " 

Samothes seems to have bequeathed to his descendants a 
truly Oriental taste for water, for the Moors of Granada were 
not more given to irrigating their beautiful gardens than the 
inhabitants of Sens are to this day. A thousand streamlets and 



1885.] AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. 587 

canals convey the waters of the Vanne with a gentle murmur 
through the meadows and pleasure-grounds, and the Courtils 
(gardens) of the Faubourg St. Pregts and the Coquesalles, giving 
them a perennial freshness and making the environs of Sens ex- 
ceptionally beautiful. The avenues and bosquets share in the 
general verdure, attracting innumerable birds, which add to the 
charm of the many popular resorts. These streams and canals 
likewise propel a great number of gristmills and feed the tan- 
neries and other industries, such as the establishments for cut- 
lery, whiting, and the preparation of the wine for which this 
district is noted ; so that the town is full of modern life and ac- 
tivity in spite of its air of, and pretensions to, antiquity. The 
streets, too, are kept beautifully clean and healthy all the year 
round by the water which flows through them, giving freshness to 
the air and rendering Sens one of the cleanest towns in Europe. 

Wandering through these streets, you come here and there 
upon the type of all purity, the image of Maria Purissima, set 
up at the corners, as in the Ruelle de la Petite Bonne Vierge a 
name full of caressing affection which bespeaks the devotion of 
the people. Another is in the Quartier St. Paul, called Notre 
Dame de 1'Orme, which the Huguenots pulled down in 1558 and 
threw into the river. The whole city was roused at this profa- 
nation and the river dragged till the statue was recovered. A 
general procession was then formed to restore it to its place. 
The image of Our Lady used to stand over the nine gates of the 
city and the doors of private houses, as well as on the public 
squares and at the corners of the streets ; but only ten or eleven 
of these statues remain. Before them the people kept lights and 
flowers, and often came to sing hymns, dropping their offering 
in a box for the oil in the lamps. It is related of the celebrated 
Piron that, being fatigued one day, he seated himself on a bench 
beneath one of these wayside Madonnas which was held in great 
veneration, but which, as he was near-sighted, he had not per- 
ceived. Every one who passed by uncovered his head or made 
some other respectful salutation which Piron supposed addressed 
to himself, and never failed to take off his hat in return, till, 
weary of such general homage, he was glad to make his escape. 

At the corner of one street is an old Gothic house remarkable 
for the carvings on the outside timbers, representing, among 
other things, the genealogy of our Lord from Abraham down, 
nth all the personages in relief, on one piece of wood, forming 
a complete genealogical tree issuing from the side of that great 
patriarch. 



$38 AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. [Aug., 

Some of the streets have most significant names, like the 
Ruelle Queue de Loup, which whips through the garden of the 
Annonciades, cutting it completely in two; the Rue Monte-a-Re- 
gret, by which criminals were led to execution ; and the Ruelle 
des Pendus, leading up from the Rue Haut-le-Pied, where jus- 
tice was administered. Rue St. Benoit is so named from an old 
church of the time of King Eudes, commonly called St. Benoit 
la mal tournte because the altar did not turn to the east accord- 
ing to the usual custom. The Rue des Cinq Joies de Marie de- 
rives its name from a chapel of that title (now the college chapel) 
founded in 1348 by Jehan de M6zieres and his wife, with four 
chaplains to sing High Mass every day in honor of Our Lady a 
reminiscence, perhaps, of St. Thomas a Becket, who used daily 
to say the Ave Maria seven times in honor of the Seven Joys of 
Mary. The Rue Brennus recalls the famous chief, a native of 
Sens, who scaled the Tarpeian rock with his brave band of Gauls, 
and would have taken the Roman Capitol had not the garrison 
been roused by the clamor of the geese. And as in Rome the 
goose was afterwards honored as the saviour of the city, so the 
enraged Gauls used to subject it every year to horrible cruelties 
before serving it up to their soldiers. 

And the Place Drapes is called after another S6nonais who 
defied Caesar, and, when at last taken prisoner, refused all food, 
preferring death after the " high Roman fashion " to the loss of 
liberty. It was on this square that for several years lived Cre- 
billon the younger, whose works were so much in vogue for a 
time that the poet Gray could imagine no higher pleasure than 
to " read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon." 
Horace Walpole, too, admired both these authors so much at 
one time that he commissioned Liotard to paint their portraits 
for his gallery at Strawberry Hill. And Miss Strafford, a young 
English lady of fortune, from reading the works of Crebillon con- 
ceived such a fancy for the author that she ran away from her 
friends and went to Paris, where she married him. To escape 
from the consequences of his pernicious writings he retired to 
Sens with his wife. Their marriage proved to be a happy one ; 
for, though his works were licentious, his private character was 
unimpeachable. His wife nursed and attended him with ex- 
emplary fidelity to the day of her death. Crebillon's greatest 
amusement at Sens was the boyish one of rising before light, 
and, disguising himself as a ghost, appear in the cloisters of St. 
Etienne to frighten the canons as they were going to their morn- 
ing office. 



1885.] AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. 589 

Marivaux also lived for some time at Sens in the Rue de 
I'ficrivain. His wife was a relative of the Fauvelets, one of the 
oldest families in the place, and he composed his Marianne in a 
small pavilion, or summer-house, of theirs, called Tout-va, at the 
eastern extremity of the Coquesalles. In his Telemaque Travesti 
he introduces the names of several families at Sens. Horace 
Walpole, on receiving his portrait, describes his face as " a mix- 
ture of the buffoon and the villain." The popularity of these 
two writers happily decreased so soon that Walpole a few years 
later declared Crebillon was entirely out of fashion and Mari- 
vaux so much of a proverb that marivauder and marivaudage 
were established terms for the prolix and the tiresome. 

The cathedral of St. fitienne is the most prominent monument 
in Sens. The front is one of those wonderful pages of religious 
lore which the ages of faith loved to spread out before the 
people. Here is related the " passion " of St. Stephen, and be- 
fore his statue, left intact by the storms of centuries, might be 
sung the old Chant written by Gatien of Tours in the tenth cen- 
tury, which thus begins : 

" Por amor Deu, vos pri, seignor barun, 
Si ce vos tuit * escoter la legun 
De Saint Estenne li glorieux barun : 
Escotet la par bone intention, 
Qui a ce jor regu la passion." 

Above the saint-guarded portal are two series of bas-reliefs 
representing the homely labors of the husbandman during the 
year, such as the sowing and reaping and winnowing of wheat, 
the gathering of grapes and treading them out in the wine-press, 
picking acorns for the swine, cutting wood for fuel, etc. perhaps 
to denote the sacredness of labor. It was common in the middle 
ages to place the twelve signs of the zodiac on the churches, to- 
gether with the four seasons and the twelve months of the year, 
distinguished by the labors peculiar to each season, as a kind of 
moral calendar to remind man that by the sin of Adam he has 
been condemned to labor with his hands. 

At the north is the portal of Abraham, where once stood his 
statue with the long line of the kings of Israel. Around the 
Porte de la Sainte Croix were the twelve apostles and the 
prophets of the Old Testament, only a part of which are remain- 
ing. In one place you see Religion and Justice, the latter with 
a drawn sword, trampling errors and vices under foot. In an- 
other is Liberality, opening her treasures, with Avarice seated on 

* Si cela vous plait. 



590 AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. [Aug., 

a coffer, weeping and tearing her hair. At the sides of the chief 
entrance are the wise and the foolish virgins with their eternal 
lesson of the necessity of vigilance, and above is the holy city, 
the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven. 
The gates are open, and before one is an angel sounding a trum- 
pet, as if to announce that the Bridegroom cometh. Above he 
is standing with outstretched arms of welcome. And beyond is 
the same city with closed gates, above which stands a man 
mourning and weeping because of those not ready to enter in to 
the marriage-supper of the Lamb. And around the archway are 
a multitude of angels, archangels, and saints, looking up at a hand 
issuing from a cloud the hand of Him who saith : " And I will 
give unto them eternal life ; and they shall never perish : neither 
shall any man pluck them out of my hand." 

No wonder the court before such cathedrals used to be called 
the Paradise, when the hosts of heaven were thus spread out in 
glorious array. If we, who think we have some culture, take de- 
light in going from one grand old cathedral to another to read 
page after page of such divine lore, how much more the simple 
and unlettered of the middle ages must have enjoyed them, who 
had no other book to read ! Never were such books on religion, 
art, and poetry written ineffaceably written for the poor* 

This church was begun in the tenth century by St. Anastase, 
Archbishop of Sens, surnamed the Man of God because he was 
never weary of almsgiving and rose so much above the wants 
of the body that, among other austerities, he never touched 
animal food from the time of his ordination. It stands over 
three separate oratories of the Blessed Virgin, St. John the 
Baptist, and St. Stephen, built by St. Savinien, the first apostle 
of Sens, which now form the crypt. Within, the paintings, the 
statues, the glorious windows bespeak the devotion of its foun- 
ders to the Holy Virgin. And there are magnificent tapestries 
representing her crowned in heaven by the Eternal Father, 
with her prototypes, Esther before Assuerus, and Bethsabee 
crowned by King Solomon. In 1176 Archbishop Guillaume aux 
Blanches Mains appointed four canons to celebrate daily the 
office of Our Lady, and Archbishop Pierre de Corbeil drew up 
a missal expressly for their use, the music of which he composed 
himself, showing himself worthy of the reputation of Sens for 
the solemnity of its chants. One of the great schools of music 
founded by Charlemagne in France was at Sens, and from time 
immemorial all instrumental music was forbidden in its offices, 
and to this day a concession has only been made with respect 
to the organ. 



1885.] AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. 591 

This cathedral has many celebrated memories, such as the 
council at which Abelard was condemned, presided over by St. 
Bernard. Here, too, St. Louis was married to Margaret of 
Provence, and hither he and his brother Robert, Count d'Artois, 
clad merely in tunics, and with bare feet, bore the Holy Crown 
of Thorns which they had come to Sens to receive. 

Twice during the middle ages was Sens saved from its ene- 
mies by means of its bishops. One of these was St. Leu, a name 
for ever dear to the people on account of his beneficence. When 
Sens was besieged by Clotaire II., King of Neustria, this saint of 
royal lineage hastened to ring the cathedral bell with his own 
hands to summon the people to pray for their deliverance. This 
bell, which was named Mary, rang out with such miraculous 
power that the enemy, seized with terror, abandoned the siege 
and fled. This was one of the first church-bells introduced into 
France, and Clotaire ; s soldiers, chiefly from the north, where 
bells were still unknown, had probably never heard the sound of 
one, so it is not at all surprising that the solemn peal, ringing 
across the valley and echoed by the neighboring hills, should 
terrify them as something supernatural. 

Some years after, when Clotaire had become master of the 
place, he carried off this potent bell to set up in his own palace 
at Paris ; but, according to the legend, it lost its voice as soon as 
it left the territory of Sens. Clotaire, therefore, sent it back, and 
as soon as it arrived at Pont-sur-Yonne it recovered its voice 
and rang out more musically than ever. This bell lost its an- 
cient name and henceforth became famous throughout France 
as the Cloche de St. Leu. In the course of centuries it was re- 
cast, but it cracked when rung for some political purpose at the 
Revolution (no wonder !), and was taken to Paris, where it was 
probably melted down for profane usage. 

St. Leu is the St. Swithin of this region, and, like him, was 
buried, at his own request, beneath the water-spout of the church. 
And he is always invoked for rain, and his relics are borne 
in procession in times of great drought, because he once saved 
the city from destruction by fire through the abundant rains ob- 
tained by his prayers. 

In the next century St. Ebbon, another bishop of Sens, saved 
the town from the Saracens, who had laid waste the whole 
country around, massacred the people, and now laid siege to the 
place, to the great terror of the citizens. St. Ebbon revived 
their courage and placed himself at the head of the boldest to 
make a sortie upon the enemy, who, taken by surprise, were 



592 AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. [Aug., 

utterly routed, leaving- behind them the spoils of many pro- 
vinces they had devastated. 

There were formerly thirty-six houses for the canons in the 
cathedral close. Five gates gave admittance to the cloister, in 
the midst of which was a prtau (pratellum), or green, shaded by 
sycamores, with a well in the centre for common use. This well 
was noted at Sens. The water was remarkably good, and over 
it was the inscription : O vos, qui non habetis argentum, bibite 
aquam cum Icztitid " Ye who have no money, come drink of this 
water with joy." This well was protected by a dome resting 
on three light pillars covered with bas-reliefs. Around it took 
place the religious dances not uncommon in the middle ages. 
The priests and choristers hand-in-hand began the O filii et filiiz 
in the nave after Vespers, and proceeded to the cloister, where 
the people joined them in dancing around the well. This cus- 
tom at length degenerating into profanity, it was suppressed, 
and in its place a procession was made every Sunday to the well 
and the priest blessed the water. But for a long time after the 
canons were forced to admit wedding parties to the cloister, that 
they might dance in thefireau. 

Another noted well at Sens was called the Puits des Treize 
Pretres, because the thirteen priests appointed to attend Pope 
Alexander III. whenever he officiated during his residence at 
Sens came to this well every year, on the festival of the Holy 
Cross, to receive their stipend. 

One of the glorious memories of Sens is that of St. Thomas 
a Becket, the great upholder of the rights of the church, who 
spent four years of his exile here in the abbey of St. Colombe, 
the remains of which are now occupied by the sisters of the 
Sainte Enfance. Every traveller, of course, goes to see 

" Where the English exile Thomas 

May have dreamed prophetic dream 

Of those distant Kentish meadows 
Where, at scarce a later day, 

His own tomb should be the altar 
Where half Europe flocked to pray." 

Here he gave himself up almost continually to prayer, and one 
night in the abbey church, while praying for England, he had, 
in fact, a wonderful vision in which the fate that awaited him 
was revealed. The historic abbey of St. Colombe was founded 
in the seventh century by Clotaire II., and became noted for the 
shrines of St. Leu and the titular saint. There is a poetic legend 
of St. Colombe, a young martyr in the reign of Aurelian remark- 
able for her beauty, around whose body, left for a time without 



1885.] AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. 593 

burial, the cattle of the fields came every night and knelt as if in 
adoration, their horns blazing in the darkness like torches, till the 
Christians came to give her honorable burial. 

St. Eloi adorned the shrine of St. Colombe with gold and 
precious stones at the expense of good King Dagobert, and 
wrought several other ornaments for the church, which having 
been carried off by robbers, the people hastened to beg St. Eloi 
to obtain their restoration. Whereupon he went into the church, 
and, kneeling before the shrine of St. Colombe, cried in a loud 
voice : " Hearken, O Columba ! to my words. Our Redeemer 
commands thee to restore forthwith the jewels of gold that have 
been taken from this church. Otherwise I will close up the en- 
trance thereof with thorns and briars, so thou wilt no longer be 
honored and served within these walls." The jewels were re- 
stored, but in the sixteenth century were again carried off, to- 
gether with the precious shrine of St. Colombe, by the Hugue- 
nots, who, more impervious to saintly influences than the robbers 
of the seventh century, never brought them back again. 

In the church of St. Colombe was buried in the tenth century 
Richard, Duke of Burgundy, the terror of the Normans, who 
during his life was called the Justicier for his love of justice and 
the severity with which he administered it. When he lay on his 
death-bed the bishops standing around exhorted him to beg par- 
don of God for shedding the blood of so many people. He re- 
plied that he only repented of not having shed still more, for by 
ever}' robber he had put to death he had saved the lives of a 
hundred by intimidating his accomplices. His son Raoul, when 
dying, sent his crown and sceptre as gifts to this church, and was 
here buried by his own order, in a gray marble tomb at the left 
of St. Colombe's shrine, afterward destroyed by the Huguenots. 

Another celebrated abbey at Sens, but now demolished, was 
that of St. Pierre-le-Vif (vif is a corruption of vie, or bourg), so 
called from an ancient church founded by St. Savinien in the 
very first ages of the church. There are many legends of this 
great saint. With one breath, solo mutu, says Dom Mathoud, he 
overthrew the temples of Mercury and Bacchus, and set up ora- 
tories to the true God. And as late as the thirteenth century 
there were crosses on the walls of the city, imprinted in the solid 
rock, as upon soft wax, by the mere finger of the saint. But 
other impressions, made by his preaching the religion of the 
:ross, have proved more durable and remain to this day. When 
St. Savinien came to Sens he received hospitality from a wealthy 
patrician named Victorin, who became one of his converts, and 
VOL. XLI. 38 



594 AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. [Aug., 

near by he built the church of SS. Peter and Paul, who had 
appeared to him after their martyrdom. This remained the 
aristocratic quarter of the town. The church here was after- 
wards included in a larger one, built and endowed by Clovis at 
the request of his granddaughter, Th6odochilde, who founded a 
monastery adjoining. In this church the archbishops of Sens 
passed the night before their enthronement, keeping vigil at the 
tombs of the martyrs. The church with its neighborhood en- 
joyed great privileges, such as that accorded it by Louis VII., 
who made it a place of refuge like the Alsatia of London. Here, 
among other fairs, was annually held the Foire des Pardons, so 
called from the indulgence granted by the Holy See to all who 
should pay due devotion in the church of St. Pierre-le-Vif from 
the iQth to the 2ist of March, the time of the fair. 

Several of the monks of this abbey were noted for their learn- 
ing. Among these is Odoranne (tenth century), celebrated for 
his knowledge of mechanics, goldsmith's work, and the fine arts. 
King Robert and Queen Constance regarded him with great af- 
fection, and employed him to make two capses (shrines), adorned 
with gold and precious stones, to contain the relics of SS. Sa- 
vinien and Potentien, the first apostles of Sens. Odoranne also 
wrote a chronicle of historic value, and composed a prose in 
honor of St. Sabinian * (published by Cardinal Mai in his Spicele- 
gium Romanuni), in which he says that this saint was a Hebrew 
by birth and one of the seventy-two disciples. 

Another chronicler of this abbey was the monk Clairus, also 
numbered among the historians of France. 

' The ancient crypt of St. Sauveur is still to be seen, where St. 
Savinien was slain by the blow of an axe while officiating at the 
altar. Here he was afterwards entombed, together with St. 
Potentien and SS. S6rotin, Altin, Eodalde, and other martyrs. 
We like to make the discovery, as it were, of such unknown 
saints and martyrs, and recount their names one by one, and visit 
the places where they lived and confessed the faith by their suf- 
ferings. In the church of St. Didier is honored St. Mathie, who 
is in great veneration here and at Troyes. And in the church 
of St. Aveline are the relics of St. Fort, St. Guinefort, and the 
titular saint. 

There are several churches and chapels in the vicinity of Sens 
which are interesting to visit. One of these is at Soucy, to 
which belongs a large confraternity, the members of which come 
here to celebrate the rites for their dead. A distaff is kept on 
the altar, which is presented to brides on their wedding-day after 

* St. Savinien. 



1885.] AN EARLY SETTLEMENT. 595 

the nuptial Mass a custom handed down from primitive times, 
when it was the mark of a good housewife, as in the days of 
King Lemuel's mother, to be able to lay her hands to the spindle 
and take hold of the distaff. There is a similar custom at Vil- 
liers-Louis, not far from Sens. 

Northeast of Sens is the ancient chapel of St. B6ate, where 
once stood the village of Sancy, so named for St. Sanctien, who 
was martyred here about the year 276, together with his sis- 
ter, St. Beate, and SS. Augustin, F61ix, and Aubert, over whose 
graves an oratory was built, and, at a later day, a priory, which 
was wholly destroyed during the wars, with the exception of this 
chapel, around which gathered a few hermits in better days, and 
which has continued to be a resort, though the remains of the 
martyrs were long ago removed. 

Not far from St. Beate, but further to the east, is the chapel 
of St. Sauveur des Vignes, built over the tombs of other martyrs 
by Archbishop Magnus, a favorite of Charlemagne's, who lies 
buried in the churchyard with several of his successors and 
many of the ancient canons. 

On the top of an eminence southeast of Sens is the chapel of 
St. Aignan, Bishop of Orleans, who was born at Malay le Vi- 
comte, a village at the foot of the mount. He lived in the time 
of Atilla, the Scourge of God, from whom he preserved the city 
of Orleans, as Rome was by St. Leo the Great, and Troyes by 
St. Loup. Malay le Vicomte is surrounded by fertile meadows 
in the midst of a smiling, picturesque region, with the remains of 
an old rampart and moat, around which sweeps the Vanne, ren- 
dering it almost an island. The villagers, with their cure, ascend 
in solemn procession every year on the i/th of June to the 
chapel of St. Aignan, which has stood here from time imme- 
morial. 

Northwest of Sens, between Mount Echelotte and Mount St. 
Bond, is a gorge called Vaumartoise, or the Valley of Martyrs,, 
where so many Christians were immolated for the faith in early 
times that their blood ran through it like a stream. The pro- 
cessions of Rogation week, in going from one of these holy 
places around Sens to another, used to pass through this gorge 
and stop before the cross to sing the antiphon of martyred saints. 
They likewise ascended to the old chapel of St. Michael the 
Archangel, otherwise called St. Bond (Baldus) from a hermit of 
the seventh century who ended his days here. The early his- 
tory of this hermit resembles that of St. Julian Hospitator. After 
his crime he made a pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land, 
and, returning to Sens, placed himself under the direction of St. 



596 HAWTHORN, HEART, AND HOMILY. [Aug., 

Artheme, the archbishop, who, presenting him with the staff he 
was carrying in his hands a staff of dry wood wholly divested 
of its bark ordered him to plant it on the top of this mount, and 
water it every day from the river that flows at the foot till new 
bark should be formed and it should put forth buds, bloom, and 
bear fruit. The penitent obeyed. Every day he ascended the 
mount with a jar of water, following the path still known as the 
Pas de St. Bond. He built a hermitage beside the chapel of St. 
Michael, where he so sanctified himself that after his death his re- 
mains were removed to the city and enshrined, and the chapel, 
taking his name, became a place of pilgrimage, particularly in 
times of public calamity. 

An old legend says that while St. Bond was at his devotions 
in the chapel one day the devil beset him with such force that, 
to get rid of the distraction, he took him by the ears and plunged 
him into the holy-water stoup, and, placing his breviary on the 
top, kept him there a fortnight. A curious stone font at St. Co- 
lombe depicted this scene with the long ears of the demon, like 
those of an ass, thrust out each side of the breviary. 

It was on this mount, it will be remembered, stood the palace 
of Samothes, the first king of Senonese Gaul. 



HAWTHORN, HEART, AND HOMILY. 

I ASKED her, " When doth Woman love ? " 
(As man on woman e'er presumes) ; 

And, with a sense mere sense above, 

She answered : " When the hawthorn blooms." 

I asked her : " When doth th' hawthorn bloom ? " 
(My query formed of hope and fear) ; 

Whereat she breathed this rich perfume : 
" The hawthorn bloometh all the year ! " 

I asked her nevermore a word, 

For I lov'd her, and she lov'd me ; 
Taught were we by a little bird 

The heart and hawthorn's homily 

But there's a love mere " love " above, 

And ne'er inconstant as the wind ; 
It animates or saint or dove 

The love of God and humankind. "* 



1885.] FALSEHOOD AS A MORAL AGENT. 597 



FALSEHOOD AS A MORAL AGENT. 5 ] 

" IT is never worth while," says Cardinal Newman, " to call 
whity-brown white for the sake of avoiding scandal " ; and Car- 
dinal Wiseman repeats substantially the same warning when he 
invites from all sides the most rigorous scrutiny, satisfied that, 
having dug to the very bottom of the well, we shall find Truth 
sitting there to greet us. Yet it is a melancholy fact that a large 
proportion of lies are told every year by the unco guid, partly 
through obstinate ignorance, and partly because they think such 
fabrications better fitted to instruct the average .mind than a less 
didactic accuracy. Fox's Book of Martyrs is an admirable in- 
stance of what can be accomplished by discreet lying, and the 
reports sent home by a great many Evangelical missionaries 
fairly bristle with fictitious narratives that are calculated to 
arouse the enthusiasm of church-members and send the chil- 
dren's pennies rattling into the mission-box. It was all very well 
for men like Bishop Heber and Henry Martyn to acknowledge 
that the number of converts was painfully small, and that their 
zealous labors were not crowned with the success they fondly 
hoped for ; but the modern correspondent of a Sunday-school 
paper is far too wise for any such rash admission. His glowing 
accounts of his own sacrifices and of his neophytes' devotion are 
pleasingly suggestive of a print we once saw, where a lot of lit- 
tle savages, in next to no clothing, were gathered round a ven- 
erable missionary and poring rapturously over some spelling- 
books just arrived from the land of civilization and freedom. 
The joy and gratitude with which these youthful darkies were 
learning to spell must have covered with confusion their small 
white brothers and sisters, realizing, as well they might, how very 
far they were from sharing in such virtuous transports. 

But it is not from amid the heathen alone that the missionary 
sends forth his graphic pictures of life. Italy, France, Spain, and 
Mexico are now his beaten tracks, and vast are his exploits 
therein. A few years ago an elderly colporteur presented us, 
unsolicited, with a copy of a religious paper containing, among 
other valuable matter, a letter from Rome with an account of a 
little American boy, only seven years old, who, seeing the people 
kneel and make the sign of the cross when the Blessed Sacra- 
ment was carried by, and being filled with horror at the sight, 



598 FALSEHOOD AS A MORAL AGENT. [Aug., 

took it upon himself to explain to them then and there how very 
wrong it was. Whether the little American expressed himself 
in fluent Italian, or whether the crowd was sufficiently cultivat- 
ed to understand English, does not appear ; but the readers were 
solemnly assured that this baby-eloquence produced such an ef- 
fect upon his hearers that they one and all became desirous to 
know more of this strange religion. Whereupon the small apos- 
tle in knickerbockers or perhaps in kilts requested them to 
come to his home every morning, when he would be happy to 
instruct them ; and they, gladly availing themselves of his invita- 
tion, had been drinking in ever since from his lips words of sal- 
vation and life. 

Now, incredible as it may seem, whoever wrote that little tale 
must have expected somebody to believe it; and though a lie so 
petty and so palpable appears hardly worth the telling, it was 
evidently accepted as an instructive story for the young. If it 
wasn't true it might have been ; and, even as a falsehood pure 
and simple, it was yet calculated to instil right principles into 
the youthful mind. Or take, again, that ever-recurring little 
anecdote about the priest who in middle life accidentally comes 
across a Bible, and by it is converted from the error of his ways. 
The story is like one of the solar myths we hear so much about 
of late. It crops up anew whichever way we turn, the cir- 
cumstances altering slightly, the main incident remaining always 
the same. Sometimes the priest is French, sometimes Span- 
ish, while now and then an Italian monk works in nicely for a 
change. Cardinal Manning, in his Doctrines of the Church, refers, 
with a half-weary sense of humor, to his chronic reappearance ; 
and the last time we made his acquaintance he was actually a 
Mexican, who, though ignorant of any religion but his own, yet 
read its falseness by the light of that unlucky Bible, and, more- 
over, brought his entire congregation to acquiesce in his views. 
As a result of this prompt measure and of the apparent indif- 
ference of his bishop the first Evangelical missionaries who pene- 
trated into that part of the country found a body of people, Ca- 
tholics in name but Presbyterians in faith, and ready to be re- 
ceived at once into communion with the strangers. 

It may, perhaps, be urged that these follies are hardly worth 
serious notice ; but Mr. Mallock, in his vigorous refutation of 
Henry George's fallacies, has wisely pointed out that any error 
or absurdity accepted by even a small portion of mankind is 
worth combating for their sakes. And there is no greater mis- 
take than to suppose that the extravagance of a statement in- 



1885.] FALSEHOOD AS A MORAL AGENT. 599 

jures its reception among those who would be pleased to think 
it true. It is surprising how much people can believe, if they 
give their minds to it ; and if five readers out of ten pass by the 
story of the priest and his Bible as painfully improbable, the 
other five are ready to accept it as a beautiful and instructive 
truth. 

Chance threw into our hands a few years ago a book pub- 
lished by the Presbyterian Publication Society and purporting 
to be founded upon fact ; the writer announcing in his preface 
that his pious labors would be more than rewarded could he 
but impress upon Protestant parents the dreadful risk they run 
in placing their children at convent-schools. The convent there- 
in depicted was a cross between the Bastile and the " Castle of 
Otranto," and, being located in the streets of New York, formed 
a pleasing link between the picturesque wickedness of the past 
and the commonplace realism of the present. Immured in its 
gloomy depths, an unhappy young Presbyterian suffers every 
indignity rather than renounce her faith, refutes all the argu- 
ments of the priest with surprising readiness, and finally makes 
her escape in a dramatic climax worthy of Mrs. Radcliffe's best 
endeavors. The things that happen within those convent-walls 
would startle the most indifferent, while every now and then a 
singular and instructive light is thrown upon the habits of the 
devout Catholic laity. One rigorous and bigoted Romanist 
brings her three-year-old daughter to be baptized, and, by way 
of atonement for any little dilatoriness in that respect, the child 
makes her First Communion at the same time, notwithstanding 
a shocking fit of passion at the altar-rail. Escaped herself, the 
heroine devotes all her energies to rescuing her unfortunate 
comrade in captivity ; and by the time we have reached the last 
chapter, and all the good people in the book including an Irish 
servant-girl named Bridget have happily embraced Presbyte- 
rianism, we cannot help experiencing a slight relief at so com- 
fortable a termination to so many horrors. We feel a little like 
Mrs. Linnet, va Janet's Repentance, when she is reminded of the 
good moral effect resulting to the Paddiford Lending Library 
from a similar work of fiction : 

'"If the task had been confided to me,' said Miss Pratt, 'I could not 
have made a selection combining in a higher degree religious instruction 
and edification with a due admixture of the purer species of amusement. 
This story of Father Clement is a library in itself on the errors of Roman- 
ism, and I have ever considered fiction a suitable form for conveying 
moral and religious instruction.' 



6oo FALSEHOOD AS A MORAL AGENT. [Aug., 

" ' One 'ud think,' said Mrs. Linnet, who also had her spectacles on, but 
chiefly for the purpose of seeing what the others were doing, 'there didn't 
want much to drive people away from a religion as makes 'em walk bare- 
foot over stone floors, like that girl in Father Clement sending the 
blood up to the head frightful. Anybody might see that was an unnat'ral 
creed.' " 

They might, indeed, and we would be the last to blame them 
for declining such an ordeal. But while these harrowing nar- 
ratives represent the sensational and amusing side of religious 
lying, it has its graver aspect which concerns us more nearly. 
How many calumnies directed against the church of God have 
borne black fruits of corruption and unbelief! How many stupid 
falsehoods have, by dint of constant repetition, usurped the place 
of truth and established themselves securely in the public mind ! 
Purge history of its lies, purge controversy of its wilful miscon- 
ceptions, and what remains behind ? A few simple and inalien- 
able truths at which men would stare aghast. As for the great 
polemical leaders, the doctors and warriors of the church, friends 
and foes have alike united to destroy in our minds any clear con- 
ception of what these men were like. On the one side we have 
fierce abuse alternating with grudging praise and a total misap- 
prehension of their minds and missions ; on the other a persis- 
tent attempt to strip them of all human attributes, and to present 
them to us shorn of their manhood and enveloped in a misty 
halo of serene perfection. 

Which of us has not been struck, when reading the records of 
the saints, with that air of unreality which too often deadens our 
healthy spirit of interest and emulation? It is not that we know 
so little about these servants of God, for we know a great deal 
less about many of the characters in Holy Writ, whose images 
are nevertheless sharply and lastingly imprinted on our hearts. 
It is the fault of their biographers, who, as a rule, persist in telling 
us too much, and who, having a preconceived notion of what a 
saint ought to be, are resolved to contract him into that mould 
for the better edification of their readers. After they have 
denuded him of every human impulse and of every human fail- 
ing, after they have carefully destroyed all the thousand subtle 
links between his being and our own, and there is nothing left by 
which we can claim brotherhood, then the etherealized saint is 
placed on a supreme pinnacle of virtue and we are requested to 
climb by easy stages to his side. But, alas ! we cannot breathe 
that rarefied air, and the steps by which he mounted are con- 
cealed from us. We are discouraged at the very outset by find- 



1885.] FALSEHOOD AS A MORAL AGENT. 601 

ing no single likeness between our nature and his, and we end by 
considering his sanctity as something as far removed from any 
possibilities of our own as are the beauty and the glory of the 
cherubim. We fail even to get a very distinct view, owing to 
the haziness of the biographic atmosphere ; so, leaving him on his 
eminence, we are content to admire him from a respectful dis- 
tance, without drawing the smallest practical lesson from the 
hard-fought battles of his life. 

This mode of proceeding is alike unfair to the saint, who was 
not born to his high estate, but had to wearily contend every 
inch of the way, and to the reader, who gains through it no clear 
insight into what it behooves him best to know. Pious writers 
are wont to lay undue stress upon the serene and holy childhood, 
the unspotted and apparently untempted youth, of God's chosen 
servants; and the average Christian, realizing that his own child- 
hood was hopelessly commonplace and his youth turbulent and 
vain, comes to the conclusion not only that the saint was some- 
thing apart and unapproachable, but that he probably had no 
evil tendencies to overcome that he was, in fact, an abnormal 
being, whose instincts from infancy upward pointed all towards 
heaven. Now, the truth is that the devil is not so easy to con- 
quer, and they who defeat and trample on his power do not 
emerge from the struggle with the " half-scornful delicacy " and 
contemptuous ease of Guido's Archangel, who spears his dragon 
with such graceful unconcern, but rather with spent breath and 
torn garments, and after many falls that mark, each one, a sturdy 
and glorious uprising. 

Nor were the saints less human for their sanctity. Cardinal 
Newman at least recognizes this truth, and, seeing with clear eyes 
how meagre is the good resulting from so many well-intentioned 
efforts, he has striven hard, in his papers on the early Fathers, to 
set before our minds these men just as they really were men 
who revered or distrusted each other, as the case might be ; men 
who loved, and prayed, and toiled, and suffered, and laughed and 
jested too, with a delicious sense of humor about them which 
might have scandalized a less sincere observer. He is ever anx- 
ious that we should study these first defenders of the faith by the 
light of their own written words, so that we may grow to under- 
stand what manner of men they were. He is not at all afraid of 
coming up close to them in unguarded moments; he "exults in 
their folios," and welcomes every scrap of evidence that can be 
brought to bear upon their daily lives. But he does not care 
to have them artificially prepared for modern palates " minced 



602 FALSEHOOD ASA MORAL AGENT. [Aug., 

up into spiritual lessons." The principal fault he has to find 
with pious biographers is that they want to turn commentators 
as welk Not content with relating a saint's actions, they must 
needs supply his motives also, and to get at these they assume 
to themselves an intimate acquaintance with his most hidden 
thoughts. On the other hand, the brilliant author of Obiter Dicta 
complains, with some show of reason, that they will not tell us as 
much as they might, and are consequently responsible for our 
lack of true knowledge. " The saints of earth," he sighs " how 
shadowy they are ! Which of them do we really know ? . . . 
Their memoirs far too often only reveal to us a hazy something, 
certainly not recognizable as a man. This is generally the fault 
of their editors, who, though men themselves, confine their edito- 
rial duties to going up and down the diaries and papers of the 
departed saint and obliterating all human touches. This they do 
for the ' better prevention of scandals ' ; and no one can deny 
that they attain their end, though they pay dearly for it." 

But if this be the case where the motive at. least is honest, and 
the omissions such as in no way derogate from the saint's honor 
and glory, what shall we say of those compilations from the Fa- 
thers which have in view a distinct twisting of their doctrines 
to suit the beliefs of one particular class ? What shall we say of 
St. Augustine " as prepared " for Anglican readers, or of the dis- 
torted and mutilated remnants of theology which circulate under 
the general name of primers, and are supposed to administer 
homoeopathic doses of truth warranted too weak to be danger- 
ous ? It is no longer necessary to be a scholar in order to pro- 
nounce judgment on the early confessors, for these little brown 
text-books, revealing a scrappy synopsis of their great writings, 
may be bought for a trifle at every stand, and the imperfect 
knowledge which is the distinguishing badge of our day spreads 
rapidly over an enlightened country. " Every man gets a 
mouthful, and no man a full meal," growled Dr. Johnson when 
it was represented to him how universal was education in Scot- 
land ; and the worst of it is that they who are satisfied with the 
mouthful cannot be persuaded that to take more would not be to 
overload their stomachs. In addition to these superabundant 
primers we have a host of spiritual works altered and abridged 
to suit the market, from A Kempis, with the fourth book mu- 
tilated, to Father Faber's hymns, with all the objectionable senti- 
ments removed. Perhaps it does not occur to a compiler that to 
change and deface an author's writings, or to present them so 
arranged and curtailed as that the whole drift of his meaning is 



1885.] FALSEHOOD AS A MORAL AGENT. 603 

no longer clear, is to offer a deliberate lie to the reading- public. 
Historians like Froude and Macaulay have a talent for quot- 
ing just enough to bear properly on their case, and ignoring 
any further authorities that might prove less tractable. When 
Mason undertook to edit the poet Gray it occurred to him that 
he could improve in many respects upon the original, and he did 
not hesitate to do so ; while Colley Gibber doubtless considered 
that to his emendations Shakspere would owe lasting fame. 
But these vagaries, while reprehensible enough in history and 
poetry, become grave errors in theology, and are responsible 
agents for the mischievous confusion they induce. 

What is wanted on all sides is a little more sincerity, a little 
more charity, and a great deal more sense where controversy is 
concerned. Perhaps the time will come when Protestants will 
no longer consider skirmishing around the flanks of the church a 
meritorious Christian warfare, and when Catholics will no lon- 
ger be so fidgety where a supposed " scandal " is concerned. At 
any rate, no lasting good can be accomplished by swerving from 
the simple truth, which in the end is certain to prevail. People 
are slowly beginning to realize that Galileo was not the perse- 
cuted victim of Rome, that Bonnivard received no more than 
his deserts, and that Cranmer makes the poorest martyr on re- 
cord. On the other hand, with the multiplicity of books and 
newspapers available to young and old, with the floods of cheap 
erudition surrounding us on every side, until, like Lady Ashbur- 
ton, we not only overflow with learning, but positively stand in 
the slops, it is as well to be prepared from the start with some- 
thing like accurate information. 

Especially is this desirable when women are in question ; for 
in this country, where leisure is unknown to men, it is the women 
who support the circulating libraries and keep the booksellers 
from starvation. They only have the time to read and think, 
while their fathers, husbands, and brothers are engaged in the 
ceaseless task of crowding into each day more than it was meant 
to hold. They, with their curious, active, illogical minds, are 
giving themselves up unreservedly to whatever literature has to 
offer, equally at home with its best and worst conditions : happy 
with the poets, critical with the critics, dogmatic with the his- 
torians, dipping an eager finger into science, interested in theo- 
logy, and skirting the edge of agnosticism with a wistful desire 
to know what it is all about. How is a girl fresh from a convent- 
school, her faculties alert, her interests quickened, her mind un- 
balanced how is she to make a stand against the new influences 



6o4 FALSEHOOD AS A MORAL AGENT. 

that beset her ? Her mental pabulum has altered so swiftly 
that her brain spins with the shock she is totally unprepared to 
meet. She has been taught all things from one exclusive stand- 
point, and recreated with those semi-religious novels in which 
a row of fallacious arguments are set up like nine-pins, for the 
sole purpose of being easily and quickly knocked down. But it 
is not in this fashion that error manifests itself in the world, or 
in the widely different literature which she devours so eagerly. 
She is amazed to find her faith assailed on every side now with 
skilful and apparently dispassionate reasoning from Hallam or 
Buckle, now with plausible brilliancy from Motley and Prescott, 
now with angry satire from Browning and Carlyle, or a well- 
bred sneer from Matthew Arnold, or a covert calumny from Mr. 
Hepworth Dixon, a gibe from Heine, a jest from Pater, a passion- 
ate invective from Ruskin ; while among the scientists, the nov- 
elists, and the magazine-writers she is no whit better off. 

It is useless to say that these books need not be read, and 
that a French girl would not be permitted to read them. The 
fact remains that in nineteen cases out of twenty an American 
girl reads what she pleases ; nor should those authors whose 
works form part of every liberal education have any force to 
hurt her, if only the plunge were not too sudden and too deep. 
It is surely unwise that at seventeen she should be guarded from 
even the necessary knowledge of error, and at eighteen be turn- 
ed loose to make its acquaintance for herself. Above all things 
it is essential that her education be conducted on a basis of 
simple sincerity, lest she learn later to distrust all that she has 
been taught. It is hardly worth while to tell her that Henry 
of Navarre was a pious convert ; that James II., of unsavory 
memory, was a good king, or that Mary, Queen of Scots, was a 
blameless martyr to her faith. Still less is it worth while to 
eliminate from history all that might shock or scandalize her, 
and from literature all that might give her food for thought. 
She cannot and she will not think always with the minds of those 
around her, and the sooner she is taught to use her own justly 
and temperately the better. We Catholics, secure in our church 
and in the abiding promises of God, have no cause to doctor 
history and to modify science for the sake of edifying the young.. 
We, at least, have no need to call whity-brown white, but 
may look at all things squarely and truthfully, without anxiety 
or distrust, or the foolish fear that prompts a useless lie. 



1885.] LUNATIC LITERATURE. 605 



LUNATIC LITERATURE. 

A MARVELLOUS change has taken place during the last fifty 
years in the treatment of the insane. Previous to that time it 
was, for the most part, simply barbarous. Gentle management 
was the exception ; coercion, and too often cruelty, the rule. 

St. John of God, in the paroxysms of penitence which accom- 
panied his conversion, was taken to the mad-house at Granada. 
There, in accordance with the usual practice, he was daily fas- 
tened down and scourged until the blood flowed, this method 
being intended to drive out the evil spirit, supposed to be in 
possession of the patient. While under the blows of his keepers 
he vowed that, if he escaped alive from that place of torment, 
he would found a hospital where the insane should have gentle 
treatment. And nobly he kept his vow. The shed into which 
he gathered his needy sufferers devotedly tending, feeding, 
nursing, begging for them grew into the great hospital of the 
" Caritad " at Granada, the first of its kind in Europe. 

As regards the old-fashioned English treatment of lunatics, 
one remedy much in favor was " bowssening," * of which Carew 
gives the following account as practised at Alternum, in Corn- 
wall: 

"The water running from St. Nun's t Well fell into a square and en- 
closed plot. . . . The phrantick person was set to stand with his back to the 
pool, at the margin thereof, from whence, with a sudden blow in the breast, 
he was tumbled headlong into the pond, where a strong fellow, provided 
for the nonce, took him and tossed him up and down, alongst and athwart 
the water, till that the patient, by foregoing his strength, forgot somewhat 
of his fury. Then was he conveyed to the church and certain Masses sung 
over him, upon which handling, if he returned to his senses, St. Nennok 
had the thanks ; but if there appeared small amendment, then was he 
bowssened again and again while there remained in him any hope of life 
or recovery." 

Still worse " remedial " barbarities than the foregoing con- 
tinued in vogue in England long after the humane treatment 
inaugurated by St. John of God had been adopted in Spain. In 
France it has been customary for some time past to employ the 
patients in field and garden work, and to allow them the recrea- 
tion of music, dancing, and theatrical representations. 

* The word is apparently derived from the German Busze penitence or penance. 
_ t St. Nannita, or Nennok, daughter of St. Taffyd- (David). 



606 LUNATIC LITERATURE. [Aug., 

Of late years in England, and also in America, the experiment 
has been tried of providing them with materials for painting and 
for writing, these disordered brains being encouraged to express 
their ideas whether in literary or artistic composition. The ex- 
periment has been found to answer in every way. The compo- 
sitions, besides often affording valuable indications of the treat- 
ment to be adopted in individual cases, also furnish subject-mat- 
ter for conversations between doctor and patient which tend to 
promote in the latter a return to sane and coherent ideas. Com- 
positions unfit for publication are destroyed, but not without an 
endeavor to show the author the necessity and justice of the 
indictment. Besides, there are many lunatics who have their 
intervals of lucidity, but who can only be enticed out of their 
shell, as it were, by means of writing or painting, as will be seen 
in the course of this article. This, however, in no way attempts 
to treat of the management of the insane, but merely, by giving 
specimens of their literary productions, to indicate the extent to 
which, in spite of their mental derangement, they are capable 
not only of much acuteness and sagacity, but also of sustained 
thought. 

Were a complete account of lunatic literature possible it 
would include many things far more extraordinary than edify- 
ing. Such a history was suggested by Charles Nodier, and 
partially attempted by Champfleury and Delepierre; but a mine 
of unexplored material remains and is ever accumulating. Be- 
sides, it is a matter of no small difficulty to distinguish the 
writers who are mad from those who are sane in what they 
write, or to decide where reason merges into madness. Dryden 
regarded genius as the border-land of lunacy ; and, indeed, the 
partition between them often is so slight that the one has frequent- 
ly been mistaken for the other. The reverend director of one of 
the most admirably-managed asylums in England* told the writer 
of this notice that some of the cleverest articles in the high-class 
magazines of the day were written by patients within those walls. 
After this we need not wonder that the high-class magazines 
now and then give their readers something startling. 

But with this external literature the present notice is not con- 
cerned, but solely with the Literature of the Insane, properly 
so-called. This comprises journals, pamphlets, periodical maga- 
zines and reviews, all emanating from lunatic asylums, and written 
exclusively by persons suffering from one or another form of men- 
tal derangement. These productions rarely go outside of the 

* St. George's Retreat, Burgess Hill, Sussex. 



1885.] LUNATIC LITERATURE. 607 

establishment where they were written, unless in exchange for 
those of some other asylum. It is no easy matter, therefore, to 
form a collection of these compositions, which, we may add, are 
under the control of scientific practitioners whose character and 
position do not allow a moment's suspicion of trickery. 

Most, if not all, of the large British institutions for the insane 
Colney Hatch, for instance, the Royal Crichton (Dumfries), the 
Royal Edinboro', and Hanwell possess printing establishments 
of their own, whence issue the books and periodicals written, put 
in type, revised, and printed by the patients. Among their mag- 
azines and journals we find the titles of the New Moon, the Excel- 
sior, the Morningside Mirror, the York Star, the Opal, the Gartna- 
vel Gazette, etc. Nor are these lunatic lucubrations devoid of 
worth or meaning. Often from amidst a mass of rubbish gleam 
jewels of an originality and wisdom to which the soundest under- 
standing might willingly lay claim. Imagination, " la Folle de la 
mat'son," seems to take pleasure in illuminating the mental gloom 
of these unfortunates with bright though transient flashes of 
etherealized sanity. In them she is only a trifle more mad than 
she is in other dreamers who pass for sane; that is all the differ- 
ence. 

The eccentric publications whose titles we have given above 
comprise a little of everything : monstrous fancies, fresh and 
pure reminiscences, outbursts of piety and of blasphemy, tear- 
ful plaints and idiotic laughter, incoherent discourses, noble 
thoughts twisted awry, tender sonnets or wild tirades to some 
kind or cruel fair one, drinking-songs, nuptial odes, satires, bur- 
lesques, and dislocated rhodomontades all this fantastic embroi- 
dery, and much besides, wrought on a groundwork of despair. 

One thing to be borne in mind in perusing these productions 
is that they are not supposed to be those of ordinary individuals. 
The writers are clothed by their own imagination with what- 
ever lofty form of dignity it may please them to appropriate. 
Some there are whose mania for riches leads them to spend 
their days in the fabrication of bank-notes ; but for the most part 
these condescending authors are mighty sovereigns, or at least 
princes or princesses, invincible heroes, immortal patriots, or 
canonized saints. Some poor, puny sufferer announces himself 
to be the Almighty, and, perched on a stool which he calls his 
Mount Sinai, incessantly fulminates a new decalogue of his own 
for the benefit of those around him. 

A French author who writes under the name of " North 
Peat," and of whose experience we have largely availed our- 



608 LUNATIC LITERATURE. [Aug., 

selves in the present article, was allowed the rare privilege of 
admission to the large room at Hanwell in which the literary 
circle of that establishment was at work. Round a table piled 
with books and papers sat about fifty patients, old and young. 
Some, with eyes fixed and .stupid, gazed vacantly before them, 
as if waiting for their lost reason to return ; others, with flushed 
cheeks and sparkling eyes, were writing rapidly, while others 
again seemed to be spying the rest or furtively looking round, 
in search, ma)' be, of some shadowy memory or bright idea to 
touch them on the elbow and inspire their pen. One, a young 
man of singularly graceful and refined appearance, painfully im- 
pressed the visitor by the exceeding melancholy of his counte- 
nance and attitude. The cause of his madness was the marriage 
to another of the lady of his choice. He firmly believed himself 
to be the murderer of her husband, who was alive, and spent his 
whole time in writing to the lady, who was dead. 

" Have you any letter, William," said the doctor kindly, " for 
me to take charge of to-day ? " 

" Better still ! " answered the patient, springing up and laying 
his hand on the doctor's shoulder " I have written her a little 
poem ! You will not fail to give it to her into her own 
hands?" he added, bursting into tears. 

With this touching and tender " Complaint " we will com- 
mence our selection of lunatic literature : 

" WILLIAM'S " POEM. 

" Oh ! had she been but false or proud, I would not now repine, 
Nor grieve the cup of proffered bliss was never to be mine ! 
But no ! she was as good as fair ; no accent ever fell 
From her that did not breathe of faith so true was Isabel ! 

" I saw her in her infant years ; I watched her in hei prime, 
And still the more she grew, the more my love did grow with time. 
But now all that hath passed away, and broken is the spell 
That bound my heart and being with my charming Isabel. 

" O had it been the loss of friends or wealth, I would not mourn, 
For other friends might fill the void, and wealth again return. 
But no ! a greater grief is mine than fancy's self can tell, 
For life to me is all a void without my Isabel ! " 

On being asked for more of his writings William gave the fol- 
lowing, amongst others, refined and plaintive as the foregoing : 

" I cannot strike one joyous note ; My harp hath lost its tone, 
For it, like me, hath been of late Neglected and alone. 



1885.] LUNATIC LITERATURE. 609 

I cannot join thee in the song : My heart is full of care, 
And when I am with thee I feel, No sorrow should be there. 

" Some other day, if such a day Shall ever come to me, 
When grief shall cease to press my soul, I'll strike my harp to thee ; 
In measures such as we were wont When hope was fair and young, 
'Ere yet upon a willow bough That cherish'd harp was hung. 

" But now the voice of song is like Some tale of by-gone years, 

And chords of harp and heart are all Unstrung and wet with tears ! 
Oh ! no, I cannot strike my harp In its accustomed tone, 
For it, like me, hath been of late Neglected and alone." 

As in the case of William, insanity is, in numberless instances, 
confined to one idea or set of ideas ; and it is these monomaniacs 
who are the chief contributors to the literature of their respec- 
tive institutions. They usually have a poetic tendency, love 
solitude, and are inclined to melancholy. Sombre views of re- 
ligion have driven many to despair, while others write touching 
entreaties to divine Providence to shed a ray of light upon their 
clouded reason. 

The literature, if such it can be called, of maniacs is of a dif- 
ferent stamp, wild and reckless, without apparent sequence of 
ideas. Dr. Winslow observes that frequently, during their worst 
paroxysms of delirium, these madmen write with more than 
ordinary good sense, while at other times their brain is in utter 
confusion and their language unintelligible or incoherent. We 
cannot venture in these pages upon even a single specimen of 
these strictly maniacal effusions, but will next give some verses 
by a hypochondriac, beginning with a note of playful satire, but 
plaintively closing in a minor key. In an asylum in Yorkshire 
called " The Retreat " was a patient who, according to his own 
account, had neither heart nor soul, brain nor lungs, liver, blood, 
bones, or anything in his body. Our hypochondriac, an inmate of 
the same house, hearing him one day expatiating upon his piti- 
able plight, was roused from the contemplation of his own ima- 
ginary miseries to criticise those of his neighbor : 

( " A miracle, my friends ! Come, view 
A man (admit his own words true) . 

Who lives without a soul ! 
Nor liver, lungs, nor heart has he, 
Yet sometimes can as cheerful be 

As if he had the whole ; 
His head (take his own words along), 
Now hard as iron, yet ere long, 
VOL. XLI. 39 



6 io LUNATIC LITERATURE. [Aug., 

As soft as any jelly ; 
All burnt his sinews and his lungs! 
Of his complaints not fifty tongues 

Could find enough to tell ye. 
Yet he who paints his likeness here 
Has just as much himself to fear 

He's wrong from top to toe. 
Ah ! friends, pray help us, if you can, 
And make us each again a man, 

That we from hence may go ! " 

A celebrated botanist, who lost his reason amongst the flowers, 
is under the impression that he has been on a botanizing excur- 
sion in the fields of heaven. So fixed is this idea that he has 
written a voluminous work describing The Flora and Fauna of 
Paradise an extraordinary composition, in which the strange 
originality of the text is equalled by that of the illustrations. 

In many cases the rapid succession of mental impressions is 
marvellous. Then all rules of prosody are set at naught. The 
Muse, scorning the beaten track, rides a steeple-chase through the 
world of fancy. The following is an extract from a poem of 
about forty verses, composed by a patient who, quite mistakenly, 
imagines that he has entered the marriage state : 

"No more scheming ; no more dreaming ; no more seeming ; 

I am sure ! 
My path is bright ; my heart is light ; now all is right. 

And secure. 
Plans are ending; now I'm spending time in blending 

Into one 
The wishes sweet which seem to greet Love's joyous feet, 

His journey done. 
Now the altar. How I falter ! What a halter ! 

Ah ! I'm caught. 
Jane is pretty, somewhat witty, rather gritty, 

I think, too ; 
Hates my smoking, and my joking. Now, this croaking 

Will not do." 

Etc., etc., etc. 

Maniacs are very acute, often exercise great self-restraint, and, 
when the} 7 think they are being watched, seldom give way to 
frenzy. It is rarely, however, that their particular form of mad- 
ness does not discover itself in their writings. For this reason 
they are encouraged in literary work, whether by flattery, which 
gratifies their vanity, or by threats of the douche. It was thus 
that a poor unfortunate, after obstinately concealing for a length 



1 885.] L UNA TIC LITER A TURE. 61 1 

of time what " screw was loose " in his mental department, end- 
ed by letting out his secret in the composition of his " Last Will 
and Testament," which we here give word for word : 

" Last words and last wishes of the late W. Robertson. I will that 
there shall be henceforth no more fires, and no more wars ! I will that all 
the pretended 'patients 'of Bedlam shall be allowed to return home to 
their families. I will that Mr. Jones shall leave off talking to the walls ; 
that Mr. Groves shall leave off swearing, and that Mr. Smith shall leave off 
giving advice. Lastly I will that I should be buried without any delay, for 
I have already been much too long walking about in this house a dead and 
corrupted corpse ! " 

Thanks to this revelation, it was discovered that this man's 
obstinate refusal to take food arose, not from a spirit of resis- 
tance, but from his conviction that he was a phantom, a skeleton, 
or a dead body ; and thus the key was obtained to the treatment 
of his case. 

In the collections from which these gleanings have been taken 
last wills and testaments, more or less similar to the foregoing, 
abound. They eschew all lawyer-like circumlocution, are short 
and to the point, rarely exceeding a few lines. The writing of 
advertisements also seems to possess a peculiar charm to many 
patients. One, imagining himself the editor of the New Moon, 
advertises for contributors, " as soon as possible, if not sooner, 
capable of undertaking leading articles which cannot ruffle the 
susceptibilities of any nation." Another, who has a horror of 
rats, " wishes to purchase a dozen cats well versed in their 
trade." 

The two following specimens are from the Gartnavel Gazette : 

" i. A desideratum, The editor of this journal offers the title of Baron 
to whomsoever shall discover, whether in the regions of physical, meta- 
physical, physiological, or psychological science, an instrument fitted to 
keep within just limits, to curb and control, like the rein of a horse, the 
ideas, impulses, and ardor of the human brain. 

" 2. For a Throne, which it would be indiscreet to name at this moment, 
Wanted an Emperor or King who knows his business. No Tsar of Russia 
need apply." 

The next advertisement is that of a man whose mania for 
collecting curiosities developed into a veritable madness. His 
hands and pockets are always stuffed with rags and other rub- 
bislf, regarded by him as treasures unique in their value and in- 
terest, as the following quotation will show : 



612 LUNATIC LITERATURE. [Aug., 

" Mr. C B wishes to dispose of a few of the curiosities he has 

been so fortunate as to collect in his numerous journeys round the world. 
Amongst other rarities he offers to amateurs the following : i, the famous 
fairy broom upon which Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, was wont to take his 
nocturnal excursions ; 2, a watch belonging to an inhabitant of the moon, 
and regulated by the sun ; 3, a nut the size of a melon ; 4, a cobweb weigh- 
ing two pounds ; 5, a tile off the roof of the Tower of Babel ; 6, Mahomet's 
snuff-box ; 7, a hair from the tail of Alexander's horse, and, 8, ditto from 
that of Alcibiades' dog ; lastly, a congealed flame from Mount Etna." 

The author of this advertisement is a charming writer, both in 
poetry and prose. His history is remarkable as an instance of 
the acuteness and self-possession exercised, for a set purpose, by 
the most violent lunatics. He first showed symptoms of madness 
when about thirty years of age, and was then sent to travel 
abroad under the care of an experienced man. His alternate 
states of extreme depression and fury becoming seriously worse, 
it was resolved, after his return home, to place him in an asylum. 
On the day secretly fixed for his departure his brother invited 
him to take his usual drive. He accepted with pleasure, and on 
the way was very cheerful and communicative, and perfectly 
rational in his conversation. As the distance was considerable, 
the brother halted at a wayside inn to rest the horse and refresh 
himself. The lunatic quietly allowed him to alight, but, instead 
of following his example, seized whip and reins and started off 
at a frantic pace. The brother, from a window of the inn, saw 
him tearing along in the distance amid clouds of dust, and knew 
it was hopeless to attempt to overtake him. An hour passed 
away, when, to his immense relief, he beheld his runaway charge 
soberly returning. The latter drew up at the inn, calm and 
smiling. Where had he been? To the questions with which he 
was assailed he only answered by rubbing his hands or by im- 
moderate laughter, but not by a syllable would he satisfy the 
curiosity of his questioners. 

He had driven straight to the asylum. There he gave his 
brother's name, and was at once shown to the director's room. 
A letter had been received the day before from his family, an- 
nouncing that he would be sent under this gentleman's care. 

" I am come, sir," he said with the utmost courtesy, "to as- 
certain that all is in readiness for the reception of my unfortunate 
brother." 

" We are quite ready for him ; in fact, I expected to see him 
with you." 

' I thought it advisable, however, on reflection, first to men- 



1885.] L UNA TIC LITER A TURE. 6 1 3 

tion to you some particular characteristics of his case. He is 
remarkably acute and intelligent so much so that even you might 
be deceived by him." 

" Scarcely ! " said the doctor, secure in the sense of his long 
experience. 

" But his lunacy has of late taken a peculiar form. He is 
persuaded that / am the lunatic, and that he has to take care of 
me. You will soon have proof of this. When I bring him here 
he will not fail to tell you that he is bringing me, in the hope that 
I may be cured ! " 

" This, my dear sir, is by no means an isolated case. I have 
known more than one very similar." 

"However, I thought it just as well to tell you beforehand. 
~And now I will go for your new patient. We shall be here in 
the course of an hour." 

And duly, about that time, the cabriolet, now with two occu- 
pants, stopped again at the gate of the asylum. Mr. C 

B , to the amazement of his brother, who kept behind him, 

went without any hesitation to the doctor's study ; there, intro- 
ducing his companion, " This," he said with perfect gravity, 
"is the gentleman I mentioned to you." 

" Very well," said the doctor, with a penetrating glance at 
the new-comer, whose eyes and mouth were open in breathless 
bewilderment ; and, feeling his pulse, added, " We shall soon 
have him all right, I hope ! " 

" What," gasped the brother, " is the meaning of this? You 
are deceived he is deceiving you ! He is " 

" The lunatic," said the doctor, completing the sentence and 
smiling benignly. " Yes, my good friend ; we know all about 
that." 

And noting an impending paroxysm, he made a sign to two 
keepers, who secured their charge, and, in spite of his struggles 
and protestations, led him towards the door. 

" This is infamous ! " shouted the unfortunate man. " I swear 
to you that he is the lunatic ! Let me go this instant, or " 

" You see," said the real lunatic, calmly, " he is just as I told 
you he would be. Suppose, now, that you give him the douche ? 
We always find that the most effectual remedy." 

" Never fear," said the doctor ominously, as the keepers and 
patient disappeared from sight, but not from hearing. 

" And now," said the other, " I must hasten home to relieve 
the anxiety of our family by assuring them of my poor brother's 
safety." 



6 14 LUNATIC LITERATURE. [Aug., 

And he mounted the carriage and drove steadily away. 
Great was the consternation at home when he returned 
thither alone. It was thought at first that he had murdered his 
brother ; nor was it until the morrow that the latter, after having 
been subjected to more than one vigorous douche, was discovered 
and set at liberty. 

Mr. C B , satisfied with having played this prank, re- 
signedly took the place of his victim. He consoles himself with 
the conviction that between two and three o'clock in the morn- 
ing he does not want for company, the whole world being at that 
hour nothing but one vast lunatic asylum, given over to dreams 
and phantasmagoria of every kind. Moreover, during all the 
remaining hours he heartily endorses the opinion of Seneca : 
" Non est magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementia" 

The following verses, in which he playfully makes the best of 
his captivity, are characteristic of the man : 

" Come, let us be happy, and drive Care away. 

What's the use of indulging in sorrow ? 
If we have not our senses about us to-day, 

We may chance to light on them to-morrow. 
Did all the crack-brains of some places convene, 

And give us their company here, 
Silk gowns and big wigs would enliven the scene, 

And make it more court-like appear. 

" We should then have the spectres of railway directors, 

Engineers and contractors in crowds ; 
The fortunate holders of scrip, and projectors 

Of schemes that were hatched in the clouds ; 
Promoters of loans who had nothing to lend. 

Of mines that were all in the shades ; 
And a few Mr. Dunns,* their proposals to send 

To rich widows and wealthy old maids. 

" The Navy could some gallant heroes afford, 

The Army, of colonels a few ; 
The Peers could well spare us one troublesome lord, 

And the Commons an M. P. or two ; 
The temperance cause, and financiers bold, 

Would have fit representatives here, 
Who tell us that paper is better than gold, 

And water much better than beer.' 1 . . . 

Another case of what has sometimes been called " lucid 
mania " was that of a distinguished mathematician, whose chief 

* A person who made himself remarkable by the importunity of his attempts to gain the 
hand of Miss Burdett-Coutts. 






1885.] LUNATIC LITERATURE. 615 

amusement consisted in the solution of complicated or impossible 
problems. His doctor, finding him one day seated before piles of 
papers covered with figures, asked him what he was doing. He 
answered gravely : " I am trying to calculate the length of Eter- 
nity ! " 

There are countless examples of insane persons who, being 
perfectly aware of their insanity, take pleasure in describing its 
varied symptoms, and, by a strong effort of their understanding, 
clouded though it be, coolly analyze their own hallucinations ; 
forcing their reason back, as it were, to give an account of their 
delirious ravings. 

These descriptions are often extremely valuable from a medi- 
cal point of view. For example, the following remarkable lines, 
by a lunatic in the Ohio Asylum, are quoted by Dr. Winslow as 
presenting an exact and complete picture of true mania : 

" A maniac ! 

Know ye the meaning of that word, 
Ye who of health and reason are possessed ? 

Can ye scan 

The tumult raging in the inner man ? 
Could ye draw aside the curtain 
That doth envelop his distracted soul, 
And see behind it what he doth conceive is real, 
Then might ye see him scorched 
On bars of iron, heated red by fire 
Enkindled 'neath them. On every side 
Are those whose office 'tis (so doth it seem to him) 
To see it is not quenched. Should this delusion leave him, 
His poor distracted soul by some new fear 
Is tempest-tossed. Then will he fancy 
Everything that he doth see or hear, 
And cannot comprehend, is but some method 
Or to destroy or harm him. 
O thou whom God hath blest with reason, 
Thou canst not know nor feel 
A tithe of what he suffers. 

For, thus to know or feel, thou must become, like him, 

A maniac ! " 

Those who have been consumers of spirits or of opium appear 
to suffer most frightfully from spectral and other illusions. Their 
descriptions, sometimes terrible in the extreme, are far too volu- 
minous, even if they were not frequently too horrible, to tran- 
scribe. There are, however, certain forms of lunacy in which 
the hallucinations are of a pleasing character. " I feel with de- 



616 LUNATIC LITERATURE. [Aug., 

light," writes a patient, " the approach of a fresh attack ; for then 
only am I perfectly happy. My memory acquires incredible 
power, and I can recite to myself all the great literary works of 
ancient times. I have, naturally, much difficulty in versification, 
but, during these attacks, without any effort I find myself a poet." 

A patient in the Royal Crichton Institution has written a 
series of articles, biographical and critical, upon all the Great 
Insane who have distinguished themselves, whether as learned 
and scientific men, poets, or philosophers. Among their names 
we find those of Nathaniel Lee, who, during his most violent fits 
of madness when confined in Bedlam, composed a tragedy in 
twelve acts, called " The Rival Queens " ; Thomas Lloyd, one of 
the most prolific of English versifiers, who ate up his composi- 
tions, if, on reading them over, he did not find them otherwise 
suit his taste ; Clonmel, a painter when in his right mind, and a 
poet when he went out of it ; Jonathan Swift, Southey, Cowper, 
Shelley, Chatterton, Beattie, Collins, and, amongst others, Alex- 
ander Cruden, compiler of the well-known Concordance of the 
Bible. An unrequited attachment having unhinged his reason, he 
set up as a reformer of public morals, and, sponge in hand, wan- 
dered from street to street, inspecting the walls and rubbing out 
therefrom all unseemly scribbling. 

In this slight notice we have treated our subject merely from 
the point of view of literary curiosity ; but even thus we think 
that it sufficiently indicates a probability that a careful study of 
lunatic literature on the part of specialists will throw some light 
on the still obscure and difficult question of mental derangement. 

Works of fiction not unfrequently represent a lunatic or a 
maniac either as a senseless idiot, entirely deprived of the think- 
ing faculty, or else, with bloodshot eyes, foaming mouth, and hair 
on end, a victim of delirium tremens or of hydrophobia. But the 
states of idiocy and insanity are clearly distinguished in the more 
complete examples of both.* Idiocy, fatuity, or dementia is an 
apparent obliteration or torpor of the mental faculties, whereas 
the maniac seizes relations acutely and rapidly, but not soundly ; 
nevertheless, many instances occur in which the two states alter- 
nate or pass into each other. Madness does not, any more than 
sleep or a trance, destroy the activity of the understanding 
which it distorts and dislocates. The brain of man may be com- 
pared to a clock still going, though its works are injured. It 
marks the time, it strikes the hour, but the time is too fast or too 
slow, and the hour is not that of the sun, and the wild alarum 

* See Abercrombie On the Intellectual Powers. 



1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 617 

rings unbidden. Even so, the wondrous mental mechanism is 
there, unhinged or overwrought, 

"Like sweet bells jangled out of tune," 

too roughly swung, may be, by the pitiless hand of Time, but 
destined to find their harmony again when Time for them is lost 
in Eternity. 



A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 

(CONCLUDED.) 

THE boys came home, where they remained until the middle 
of March, when they returned to their home in the wilderness, 
another young man accompanying them for a few months. 
While at home they got permission from the government, 

through the influence of . Mr. M , to establish a post-office in 

their log house, naming the place M . and the elder of the 

party getting the appointment of postmaster. This has been an 
accommodation to all the farmers in their vicinity, and their mail 
is quite large enough to warrant it. They arrived at Blue 
Spring on the 24th of March, finding their house and stores in 
good condition. The extracts from their letters are continued. 

April 2. We secured a mail-carrier, who, after being sworn 
in, failed, after the first trip, to make his appearance. I went to 
his house to see what had happened, and found that he had de- 
cided to give it up ; but when I told him that he was liable to a 
fine and imprisonment if he did not do his duty, he begged to be 
allowed to make up the lost trip. The walk of several miles 
through deep snow, which is eight or ten inches on the ground, 
was discouraging to the poor fellow. One day we walked ten 
or twelve miles to get some chickens. At evening we heard an 
unusual noise, and, going out, saw a wildcat trying to make its 
escape. Following its tracks in the snow to a pile of brush 
under which it sought to conceal itself, Bert fired seven shots 
into its head before he could kill it, after which he skinned it 
and tacked it on the outside of the house. The fur is long and 
handsome, of a dark-brown color mixed with gray, striped like a 
tiger. These cats grow to the length of three feet sometimes, 
but this one must have been young, as it is not much larger than 



618 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [Aug., 

an ordinary cat. On the Qth we had a hard shower of hail 
with thunder and lightning. We have been piling up and burn- 
ing logs, which are quite brilliant at night, even through a hard 
rain. The boys have set fire to a large stump that broke off 
about fifteen feet from the ground, by dropping coals into it. It 
looks like the chimney of one of our factories, and puffs and roars 
like a steam-engine. 

I sometimes fancy myself at home when looking at the place 
all cleared and the green grass beginning to show itself. Have 
you ever had the feeling that you were very high up in the air ? 
I have this sensation almost constantly, and as if I would tumble 
off some day, which need not surprise you, as the valley, six or 
eight hundred feet below us, is in full view, and the slope to it at 
an angle of forty-five degrees. 

I send to-day one of our county papers containing items 
about railroads and about the murder and lynching at Charles- 
ton. 

May. Our garden is planted, and squash, melons, and cu- 
cumbers have been up for days, and since the wished-for shower 
peas have made their appearance. Our lawn is as beautiful as 
the best at home in its prime. Elk Mountain, opposite, is quite 
green with foliage at its foot, and it is curious to watch the buds 
and leaves as they unfold gradually to the top. The mark made 
in their advance is as distinct as a line drawn on a piece of 
paper, which is partly owing to the different varieties of trees 
growing at the various heights. For instance, elms are natives 
of the valley, but are never found here. Currant, raspberry, and 
wild-gooseberry bushes are coming up all over our clearing, 
where they have not grown before. Can the winds or birds 
have brought them in so short a time, or has the seed lain dor- 
mant all these centuries ? It is well known that wheat found in 
the Pyramids of Egypt will grow. 

Your objection to the burning of the logs is not practical, as 
a tree lying on the ground occupies more space than a tree stand- 
ing, and a forest lying on the ground leaves no space for any- 
thing else. The ashes are also beneficial to the land. On our 
clearing we have left a few cherry-trees that are one hundred to 
one hundred and fifty feet high. It is a surprise to look at them 
when separated from the others. They have not a limb for sixty 
or seventy feet, and then a splendid, large top. The oak is not 
here the monarch of the forest, being smaller than the cherry, 
poplar, or ash. Nearly all the wood is so hard that it is difficult 
to cut or drive a nail into it. Our cattle are in good condition. 



1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 619 

One day the cow ate my soap, and to-day she swallowed my 
towel. 

Later. The weather is hot, but never sultry. Our coolest 
spot is down by the spring, where we have a delightful shade, 
and a log to sit on ; and we go often for a refreshing draught of 
ice-cold water when we are thirsty at our work. Our place 
looks splendidly. The birds have come in great numbers about 
our clearing ; one has a flute-like note I have never heard be- 
fore. The owls at night keep up a constant hooting. 

June. The frosts, that have killed fruit and vegetables in 
many parts of the country, have injured our garden, but many 
of the plants have been revived by a recent shower. Yesterday 
afternoon we had a thunder-shower lasting from four till five 
o'clock. It overtook us after we had started from Flint's, and 
we took shelter in a shed that some workmen had built by the 
roadside. When the shower was over we walked up the moun- 
tain to our home, and saw in the valley a magnificent rainbow. 
It was a complete arch, its base resting on the ground. I could 
go within ten rods of the spot. Cheat Mountain was hidden by a 
cloud which rose perpendicularly, like a dark wall, about midway 
between that and our mountain, and I think it was raining there. 
Against this cloud was the rainbow, its colors very distinct, the 
ground below where it seemed to rest reflecting a pure, white 
light, as when two prisms are placed near each other in the sun's 
rays. In New England we look up at a rainbow, but in this in- 
stance we looked down upon the arch itself. In a walk down 
the mountain a few days ago I followed the ridge for a con- 
siderable distance instead of taking the usual path, and found 
myself unexpectedly opposite Gauley Mountain. It was the 
rockiest piece of land I have ever been across, but I was well re- 
paid for my trouble, as I came suddenly upon as pretty a piece 
of woods as I have ever seen. It was like a park, the ground 
soft as velvet and smooth as a floor a lovely place for a house. 
To the left was Elk Mountain, at the base of which is Elk Valley, 
dotted here and there by a clearing. The effect was picturesque 
beyond description. 

How much do you suppose our taxes are ? Just three cents 
for the three acres on which we live, and for the six hundred and 
forty-eight acres four dollars and sixty-six cents. It will not 
break a fellow here to pay taxes. 

Last year two Englishmen bought sixteen hundred acres of 
land near Mingo, paying fourteen thousand dollars for it, which, as 
eight hundred acres was improved land, was considered a reason- 



620 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [Aug., 

able price. They have purchased several thousand sheep at three 
and a half cents a pound, and yesterday they drove a flock of 
about five hundred down the road. They are men of culture 
and considerable capital. A gentleman who stopped here for 
shelter during a shower told me of six hundred acres of fine, 
mostly level land in Monroe County, three hundred of which are 
cleared, a good house all plastered, a barn and other buildings 
and five thousand dollars' worth of timber on the land, that can be 
purchased for four thousand dollars. If a man in this country 
has plenty to eat and drink, and comfortable clothing, and about 
four hundred dollars at interest, he can buy horses and cows, etc., 
and by the end of the year have three or four times this amount. 

We have seen another remarkable rainbow while the shower 
was yet in the distance. It was like a huge pillar of fire rising 
straight up from the valley below, the other end of the arch 
resting apparently on the mountain near us. It was wonderfully 
beautiful, the colors being quite distinct, and the second bow 
only a little less vivid than the first. 

July. On the 4th I went fishing and caught about thirty 

trout. Mr. H gave us ripe cherries and a young pheasant 

for breakfast. 

As fast as our string-beans appear above ground they are 
eaten by some animal. Bert has shot a rabbit, supposing him to 
be the thief, and we have set a trap for the others. 

August. The heat of the sun has been intense for a few days, 
though we always have a refreshing breeze. On Sunday night 
there was every sign of a thunder-storm, but it did not reach us. 
Each peal of thunder was like an explosion and shook these hills 
like an earthquake. We have had little rain for over a month, 
and our spring runs slowly in consequence. I wish it would 
rain, as it is time to plant turnips, for which purpose we have 
fenced in quite a piece, this being a necessary precaution to keep 
out the animals that are turned loose in the woods. 

I think the earthquake you mention was felt here, though I 
did not give it much attention at the time. If I remember, it oc- 
curred on Sunday, the loth, between two and three P.M. It sound- 
ed like heavy artillery over on Elk Mountain. There was a roar 
and a crash, as if heavy timber were being felled, and I won- 
dered at the unusual disturbance of the day. I think we may 
have had earthquakes at other times, as we have felt a rocking 
sensation in the house, which we attributed to the wind ; but one 
night, when it was more noticeable than usual, I got up and 
looked out, expecting to see a storm coming up. To my sur- 



1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 621 

prise the night was bright and clear, and not a breath of wind 

stirring. A Mr. C is stopping with us to-night. He is on 

his way to Addison to buy a mowing-machine. 

September 7. I have been quite ill for three days with a 

cold, the first and only illness I have had. I was alone, B 

having gone to Beverly and R to Mingo. I got along but poor- 
ly, and am now nearly well, excepting a slight lameness. I shall 
go to Addison to-morrow for a few days, lock the house, turn 
the cow and calf into the woods, etc. This morning an old man 
named Peter Conger met with a severe accident on this moun- 
tain. He was getting out timber for Mr. Flint's barn, and a tree 
he was felling lodged in the branches of another tree. He at- 
tempted to cut down the second tree, so as to allow the first to 
fall, but the great pressure caused the second to kick back in- 
stead of falling forward, and, catching him by the leg, it pinned 
him to the ground. His leg was crushed and broken in several 
places, and he will probably die. The natives seldom work sin- 
gly in the woods. About eight miles north of us a woman found 
her husband one morning lying dead across a log, a large tree 
having fallen upon him. 

Addison, September 9. I started yesterday from Point Moun- 
tain at nine A.M., and got within two miles of Addison before 
sunset, where I spent the night. I walked much of the way, but, 
being so lame, I accepted the offer of a horse for a part of the 
journey. I was awakened long before day, and had breakfast 
by candle-light, and, starting again on my way, I arrived here at 
an early hour this morning. The place is small and pleasantly 
situated among the hills, and has evidences of civilization one 
does not see at Mingo, or even at Beverly. It is only about 
twenty miles from our home on the mountain, and would be a 
pleasant place to stop in for the summer. They have a daily 
mail and will soon have a railroad. Board can be had any- 
where in the State for two or three dollars a week. This house 
is kept by a Mr. Townsend, whose father was a Connecticut man. 
He gave me a room with a man named Anderson, a very nice 
fellow, originally from this State, but now from Kansas. He is a 
man of education, has travelled a good deal, and expressed a de- 
sire to visit the Eastern States. Mr. Townsend had built, apart 
from his house, a long shed divided into seven or eight rooms, 
each being furnished with two beds. When I first saw this 
structure I thought it was a row of bath-houses like those on 
the beach at home, and was somewhat surprised when I found 
them to be bed-rooms. The table is supplied with plenty of 



622 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [Aug., 

fresh meat and vegetables, but they fry beefsteaks, cutting them 
as thin as you would slice roast beef. I have feasted on water- 
melons and other fruits that we cannot get in the woods. The 
water affected me unpleasantly at first, but I like it now and am 
feeling much better. On the shelf in my room I noticed some 
fossils, one of which particularly interested me, as on it was a 
perfect representation of a scallop-shell. I never before was so 
tempted to take anything not belonging to me as this specimen. 
The shell was perfect, as if it had been just picked up on the sea- 
shore and laid on this stone. I understand that these were 
gathered in the vicinity of Addison, which shows conclusively to 
me that the ocean once rolled over these mountains. I have 
found fossils in these woods, but none containing shells. I have 
one at home with the bark of a tree distinctly impressed on the 
stone. 

Addison is a favorite resort on account of its sulphur springs, 
and the completion of the railroad will greatly increase the num- 
ber of its visitors. The sulphur waters of this State have been 
famous for more than a hundred years. Some of the springs 
have a temperature of 107 Fahr. The papers say that Vanderbilt 
and others have purchased property here, with the intention of 
building a large hotel. The place is quiet excepting on Satur- 
days, when large numbers of farmers come on horse or mule- 
back to trade. 

September 14. The weather has changed and the day is de- 
lightfully cool. I shall walk home with perfect ease, my lame- 
ness having disappeared. The turnpike roads are excellent, and 
I walk nearly everywhere I go, as it is not easy to procure a 
horse, and, besides, it takes time to hunt up the owner. 

In Addison and other places there grows by the streams a 
curious kind of wood called leather-wood, from its resemblance 
to leather. I think it also grows in New England. It is pliable 
and makes an excellent whip. There is also a fruit growing wild 
here, the papaw. much like the banana in appearance and taste, 
which ripens late in the fall. This State also abounds in medici- 
nal plants not found elsewhere, and we find the Kentucky coffee- 
tree, cottonwood, dogwood, box-elder, three species of hickory, 
etc., etc. 

September 21. This is a splendid, cool day, and not a cloud 
to be seen. There were clouds in the valley this morning, mak- 
ing it look like a sea which is an indication of rain, so I shall take 
the letters down to-morrow. The Post-Office Department have 
advertised this route for bids, and made the supply-office at Val- 



1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 623 

ley Head instead of Mingo Flat. The bids are closed January i, 
1885, the route not being provided with a carrier until July, 1885. 
In the meantime I shall be expected to secure its transportation 
the best way I can. At present we are acting as carriers. A 
description of the northeast portion of this State has recently ap- 
peared in the New York Times, which is a correct picture of this 
part of the country, excepting that our houses are built mostly 
of logs. Coal, iron, and timber are as abundant here as there. 
You cannot dig without striking a vein of coal a few feet below 
the surface. The whole coal area of the United States is fifty- 
eight thousand square miles, of which West Virginia contains at 
least sixteen thousand square miles. In many places coal-mea- 
sures have a thickness of one thousand feet. The Times writer 
predicts that in less than ten years West Virginia will be the 
greatest coal and iron producing region in the world, all it needs 
being two or three railroads. 

This country is one vast wilderness. The only railroads in 
the State are the Baltimore and Ohio, built forty years ago, 
through the northern part, and the Ohio and Chesapeake, built 
fifteen years ago, through the southern portion. In the west 
along the Ohio River is the Wheeling and Parkersburg Railroad. 
In the east, and not in the State, is the Shenandoah Valley Rail- 
road, which follows the Alleghany Mountains nearly their whole 
length. The northern and southern roads mentioned are one 
hundred to one hundred and sixty miles apart, and the distance 
between the other two mentioned is fully three hundred miles. 
There are short branches from these roads, recently built, but I 
am told there are but six hundred and ninety-three miles of 
railroad in operation, which is small considering the extent and 
natural resources of the State. Charleston, the capital, is in the 
interior on the Kanawha River. It is the largest town, and yet 
smaller than Fairfield in Connecticut. Its population in 1880 
was four thousand one hundred and ninety-two. All the cleared 
land in the State would occupy a space no larger than Fairfield 
County, there being an area of nine million acres in the original 
forest. We have ample water-supply from the large rivers that 
traverse the State in various directions, of which the Great 
Kanawha is the most important, and its valley the richest part of 
the State. 

October 2. This morning again the valley was filled with 
beautiful clouds, white, soft, and fleecy, giving it the appearance 
of a vast sea with here and there an island. A little later these 
clouds began to move, and then it seemed like the ocean roll- 



624 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [Aug., 

ing and the spray dashing against the mountain-sides. If at the 
same time a high wind had been blowing to make the roar and 
moaning of the sea, the delusion would have been perfect. I have 
seen these clouds in the valley at night, charged with electricity, 
glowing and flashing like the Northern Lights, without thunder. 
Imagine the Northern Lights at your feet, and if you look beyond, 
and not at the ground beneath you, you might fancy yourself 
standing on a cloud and viewing this wonderful scene. I have 
seldom heard the wind whistle here. It sometimes shakes the 
mountains ; and why should it not? Thousands of trees waving 
violently in the wind, each tree vibrating even to its roots, 
would easily cause the mountain to tremble, while of course one 
tree would cause no disturbance. I have noticed this in a high 
wind, and even during a lull, when you hear the roar in the dis- 
tance. I at first attributed the shaking to other causes, but I 
believe this is the true cause. We are preparing for winter,^md 
have plastered the cracks in the house with mud and papered 

the inside. B is going to select another stove to be put into 

the front room, and, with an extra floor laid over the present one, 
we shall be as snug as possible. 

October 8. It is raining to-night and dark as Egypt outside. 
Thunder with sharp lightning came at first, but this passed away 
and it has settled into a hard drizzle. An approaching thunder- 
storm makes considerable noise in this region ; your windows 
rattle and there is a sound on the other side of the hill like the 
discharge of heavy artillery, which dies away or suddenly ceases, 
and the rain usually comes down in torrents. 

October 13. Mr. M arrived this afternoon a most wel- 
come visitor his capacious trunk being filled with home-parcels 
for our comfort this winter, which gives us an ample supply of 
everything needful. There is frost in the valley to-night. The 
leaves are falling fast, but there is still a freshness and greenness 
in the woods that remind one of spring. The foliage seldom 
assumes the gorgeous hues we see in New England. Chestnuts 
lie thickly on the ground, and you gather them before the frost 
comes. 

October 23. Thermometer falling. Ice in the wash-basin 
this morning, and snow in the distance, which looks, before it 
reaches you, as if an avalanche were descending the opposite 
hill. 

November 6. Clear and cold. Bert and I have been about 
fourteen miles away to hunt up winter-quarters for the cow and 
calf. As we walked along we saw smoke issuing from a cabin a 



1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 625 

short distance from the road, and stopped to inquire our way. 
We found living here a man named Swope, one of the strangest 
characters I have ever met. He was boiling mush over a log 
fire in the cabin, and invited us " to partake of his mess of pot- 
tage." Having no dishes except a cup, he told us to whittle out 
a couple of sticks and help ourselves out of the kettle, which we 
did. He also offered us some wild turkey he had killed a day or 
two before. He used good English in speaking, and informed 
us that he had studied for the ministry. I should call him a 
religious crank. He believes it his duty to lead a life of solitude 
and contemplation, and occasionally "go into society and com- 
municate his thoughts." His only book is a Bible. He was 
feeling the bad effects of too much turkey when we arrived. His 
cabin, about eight feet by ten in size, had a rough floor ; the fire- 
place, on which was burning a good hot fire, was near the door, 
and opposite was a bedstead made of rails stuck into the walls of 
the house about three feet from the floor, on which were placed 
two or three bundles of straw. He lives in a most Indian-like 
fashion by hunting and raising corn enough for his own use. 
We invited him to visit us, if he could ever be persuaded to 
leave his den. 

November 13. Yesterday three wagon-loads of luggage for 
the railroad party who are encamped in the valley were brought 
to the foot of the mountain. The railroad bill passed by five 
hundred more votes than were needed, and, as they are going 
right to work, we shall in two years have a railroad as far as 
Huttonsville, only fifteen miles distant. The Wheeling Register 
says this road will be completed in one year, and that the Black 
Diamond road will be commenced from Parkersburg next spring 
and finished to Norfolk, Va., in two years. 

December. Snow two or three inches deep. Thermometer 
24 to 28. We are still clearing land, and the wood we shall have 
to burn would supply a large town for a season. We saw the 
trees into lengths, pile the brush, and leave all on the ground 
until spring. Last night was clear and beautiful, not a cloud to 
be seen, and the moon shining on the distant mountains showed 
forests all covered with snow. It was just cold enough to make 
a moderate fire pleasant in the house. 

I wish you could have spent Thanksgiving with us. We had 
fresh mutton, and the next day fresh venison. To-day we dined 
on fresh roast pork. The hay-crop has been so short this year 
that we are fortunate to have any for our cattle. In places where 
the usual yield is two or three tons to the acre the crop did 
VOL. XLI. 40 



626 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [Aug., 

not exceed a quarter of a ton. The cost of carting to our place 
would be equal to the cost of the hay, and, as a cow needs also 
corn and bran, we have made the best arrangement we could ; for 
if the mountain cannot go to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the 
mountain. Our present supply of provisions consists of eleven 
hams, one barrel of flour, one barrel of meal, eighteen bushels 
of potatoes, fifteen pounds of venison, twenty-five to thirty pounds 
of mutton, some live chickens, etc. The cave you mention is on 
Cheat River, near Kingwood, in Preston County. The river 
rises on Cheat Mountain about ten miles east of us, flowing 
north into the Monongahela, being one hundred and fifty or more 
miles in length. About forty miles from its mouth it is navi- 
gable for large vessels for about seventy-five miles. Between 
this point and its mouth it is impassable, from which peculiarity 
it perhaps received its name. We are in excellent health ; head 
shaved close ; no colds, coughs, nor sore throats. 

December 21. Plenty of snow. Thermometer 18 below zero. 
Every traveller stops to warm himself, there being only one 
other house, three miles off, between us and Valley Head. Some 
ask if we have a good fire, and rush in ; others will wait for an in- 
vitation. They pull off their boots and put their feet on the hot 
stove. One man, when told that it had been 18 below zero, said, 
" Yes, you have the Genholicker, and look and see." 

January 21, 1885. Weather changeable; frequent fogs in the 
valley. To-night the wind is whizzing outside, the rain pattering 
on the roof and window-panes. It is not below 4. Every rain- 
storm changes to snow. 

January 24. Yesterday, when it was snowing hard, a whole 
flock of sheep started in single file down the mountain. The 
owner had been looking for them, with no intention of taking 
them home. Think of leaving them out in such weather without 
feed, except the shrubbery they find in the woods ! Cattle are 
very fond of a winter fern that grows plentifully here, but is 
now covered with snow, and though sheep need some shelter, 
they should not be entirely housed in winter. Most diseases 
common to sheep are unknown here. 

January 25. Our neighbors in the lower counties are suf- 
fering from the scarcity of corn, it being eight or ten dollars a 
bushel instead of the usual price, seventy-five cents or one dollar. 
My cap did me good service when I went to find feed for the 
cattle. I had a dinner of eggs a luxury at this season also corn- 
bread and pork and some nice jelly. Housekeepers make large 
quantities of apple-butter, and pies, usually of fruit, are offered 



1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 627 

you at every meal. The fare consists mostly of pork, either 
boiled or fried, potatoes, corn-bread, honey, apple-sauce, pre- 
served blackberries, buckwheat-cakes with maple-syrup, pies, and 
hot wheat-biscuit (which they make of buttermilk), all of which 
are eaten off one plate. The host takes the corn-bread on his 
own plate, cuts it in pieces, and passes it around, after which all 
help themselves without ceremony to whatever they like on the 
table. The blackberries are eaten in your cup, with cream, after 
you have drank your coffee. The old men ask a blessing at 
table, a practice the young- men usually neglect. They neither 
know poverty nor riches, the well-to-do living about the same 
as their poorer neighbors. There is, however, one exception not 
many miles from us, where they use napkins, silver forks and 
spoons, etc., and have a fine piano. Among this large class of 
illiterate people there is little or no vulgarity. An ordinary 
school is only taught four months in the year, though there are a 
few colleges or universities of some note in various parts of the 
State. There is a Roman Catholic college at Wheeling, and 
there are a few Roman Catholic churches in the State. The 
Methodists are more numerous than any other religious body. 
The Dunkards are a peculiar sect, more numerous in Pennsyl- 
vania than here. They wash each other's feet, as the apostles 
did ; the men part their hair in the middle and kiss when they 
meet. They wear a particular dress on state occasions, and are 

much given to piety. Aunt S was pained to see women 

working in the fields in France. We see that here every day. 
They hoe corn, potatoes, etc. (if this is done at all), put the hay 
into stacks, besides making the garden and doing the house-work, 
while men do the heavier work, clearing land, etc. They express 
surprise that all women do not work in the field ; but I asked one 
day what they would think if they should see Mrs. Garfield hoe- 
ing corn, at which they laughed quite heartily, saying " that kind 
of work did not belong to her." 

January 28. Snow a foot deep. Thermometer 30 at noon, 
6 below zero at evening. Yesterday I started again to look for 
feed for the animals. I had not gone a mile down the mountain- 
side when I came to a pleasant, romantic, narrow valley, where 
I could have walked in the lightest kind of shoes without damp- 
ening my feet. The air was mild and balmy, and the grass in 
places green. Not a sound could be heard except the murmur 
of the brook as it gurgled over the stones. I stopped to listen, 
thinking some one was talking. Looking back up the mountain, 
covered with snow to its summit, I realized the remarkable differ- 



628 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [Aug., 

ence in the climate of the valley. I stayed here all night, during 
which a light snow fell. About 10.30 A.M. I started for home, 
walking up the valley in about an hour, and stopping for dinner 
at the first house on the road. Then commenced my climbing 
up the mountain, which took two hours or more, the snow be- 
coming deeper, and deeper as I went on. Long before I arrived 
I was perspiring as if it had been the hottest day in summer, and 
when I reached home I was one mass of icicles and looked more 
like Santa Claus than anybody else. It was 4.30 P.M., and the 
thermometer stood at 4 below zero. To-night, as I write, it is 
6 below. We are comfortable in the house, and I write without 
cold fingers. We are perfectly well, having neither cold nor 
cough (in fact, lung diseases rarely occur in this State), and we 
do not feel this cold weather to any degree as we would at home. 
I have eaten four meals to-day. You see a traveller is well fed 
in this country, though the houses are far apart. 

Last week, Wednesday, I saw a remarkable phenomenon. 
The sun had been up about twenty minutes. It was snowing 
hard off in the distance, and the sun shining through or upon the 
snow and clouds formed a bright pillar with all the colors of the 
rainbow. It only lasted a minute and was unlike anything I had 
ever seen. I did not know that the particles of snow would 
divide the light and produce colors. 

January 29. 3 below this A.M. We drove the cattle down to- 
day, and had trouble in getting them across the streams, there 
being considerable ice, which we had to break. I tumbled in 
and had to walk four miles with my clothes frozen stiff, but 
caught no cold. Our boots filled with water, as we were obliged 
sometimes to return to the stream to warm our feet after walking 
awhile in the snow. We followed the cattle as they would cross 
and recross the stream, and once I waded in waist-deep. We sat 

before Mr. C "s fire until late in the evening to dry our clothes. 

Near this place the United States troops were encamped during 

the war, and the ground is filled with rifle-pits, etc. Mr. C 

says when he came home after the war he was more of a rebel than 
ever, for his house, barns, fences, and cattle were all gone ; but 
to-day he has over one hundred head of cattle and his farm is 
worth one hundred dollars per acre. Rising from his land is 
a high hill on which the snow never rests, but in the coldest 
weather, for some unknown cause, disappears in a few hours after 
a storm. 

February 18. Snow thirty-one inches deep, and falling still, 
almost in a solid mass. I walked four miles to meet the mail- 






1885.] A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. 629 

carrier yesterday ; and with snow up to your knees, either ascend- 
ing- or descending a hill, this is not easy work. The old men 
tell me that their fathers hunted buffalo across these mountains, 
and the panther is said to live here still. A man lost twenty 
sheep from wolves last week, and not far down the road lie two 
sheep now with their throats cut, as wolves only suck the blood 
and do not eat the sheep. A wolf carried off a sheep from Mrs. 

S 's door-yard, right before her eyes, a few days ago, though 

they did their best to frighten him away. 

If E would study up on animals she would learn that a 

sheep does not shed its skin like a snake. She asked, in a recent 
letter, if I had read Elsie Venner. I have only read poems and 
short essays by O. VV. Holmes. I wish I had read more of his 
works. .t. I 

I wish this snow would disappear, or that we could have 
skating until we can resume work. It has been once 23 below 
zero. The sky is of the deepest blue. The trees in the forest 
snap and crack like a pistol-shot, and, before we were quite snow- 
bound, the scene was like fairy-land. The trees in the distance, 
when covered with ice and glittering in the sun's rays, present a 
picture of wonderful beauty, and it is a relief to view the mea- 
dows and pastures in the valley and on Cheat Mountain, as it 
seems to take us out of the woods. 

March 2. The railroad to Philippi has enabled land-own- 
ers in that vicinity to make a fortune in a short time. A wo- 
man has been shipping black walnut to England, receiving 
two hundred and ten dollars per thousand feet on the dock in 
New York City, she paying the cost of transportation to that 
place. Besides coal and salt of the best quality, we have petro- 
leum, building-limestone of great beauty, fire-clay, potter's clay, 
glass-sand, ochre, saltpetre, and many other valuable products. 
I think 'this country as favorably situated for stock-raising as 
any. The climate is less severe than Nebraska, Iowa, Dakota, 
or some parts of Colorado ; and these places are considered excel- 
lent for sheep-raising. West Virginia wool will bring a higher 
price than any other. Grass is usually so abundant here that you 
can make sure provision for your stock. Blue grass grows all 
the way up to the mountain-crests. Wheat, oats, rye, buck- 
wheat, corn, etc., yield large crops, though corn grows better in 
the valley. This section is considered by " natives " the best grass- 
growing portion of the State. Beets and turnips grow to a very 
large size. The " natives " cut wheat, as in Bible days, with a 



630 A FARMING EXPERIMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA. [Aug., 

sickle. They say they can reap faster, which is true, because 
they are unfamiliar with the use of modern implements. I have 
seen a plough here of the genuine old Roman pattern used in 
Virgil's time. Those who manage well must make money, and I 
do not doubt our success, even without a railroad. Many start 
without a cent and become comparatively rich. The natives are 
good and honest, with a certain innate refinement and conse- 
quently good manners, but no knowledge of the outside world. 
Many of them have never been farther from their farms than 
to visit a next-door neighbor two miles off. They spin and 
weave, raise their own provisions, and have no occasion to leave 
their homes. I was one night at Valley Head when our Eng- 
lish neighbors arrived with a flock of perhaps eight hun- 
dred sheep. Mr. L C- lives there, and this is some- 
what the conversation that passed between them : " Where can I 

turn these sheep in for the night ? " L replied : " Perhaps at 

George Ives' or Eli Crouch's." " I can't go as far as that in the 
rain. You must take them in, and feed them too." To which 

L replied : " I cannot do it. I haven't enough feed." 

"Now look here," said the sheep-drover, "you must! Do you 
hear? Open those bars and turn in the sheep." Whereupon 
the bars were removed, the sheep sheltered and fed, for which 
five cents a head was paid the next morning. They are the 
most hospitable people in the world. You can travel from one 
end of the State to the other and find a welcome in every house, 
and are never charged for meals or lodging. We arrived once 
at a farm-house at midnight when on our way home. They 
made room for us by turning one of the family out of bed, and 
proposed to make a fire and get supper for us when they found 
we had not had any, but we would not allow them to do it. In 
the morning we paid them twenty-five cents for each of us, and 
they were happy. 

April i. Spring has come with a rush, and the snow is 
rapidly disappearing under a temperature of 62 Fahr., and 
not a particle of frost in the ground. I find digging garden 
much less difficult than last year. The coming winter we expect 
to keep all the stock we want, and I have full confidence that the 
farm will soon pay expenses. We ought to have done this last 
year, but our winter at home and one or two disappointments 
have delayed us. Our farm has now a civilized appearance. 
The house for Herman, about a quarter of a mile distant, and 
a spring-house are completed, and Herman, his wife and baby, 



1885.] Sr. MARCIAN, MARTYR, TO HIS WIFE. 631 

are comfortably settled, with every appearance of contentment 
and happiness. The gradual appearance of foliage where all has 
been so long buried in snow, the singing of the birds, the huge 
piles of logs burning night and day, give us a cheerful outlook. 
We are in perfect health, well pleased with the result of our 
labor, and full of hope for our success in the near future. 



ST. MARCIAN, MARTYR, TO HIS WIFE. 

i. 

MY wife ! Alas ! that little words so sweet 
Should seem so bitter in my mouth to-day, 
That thy true love should learn love to betray, 

Thy lips breathe eloquence for them unmeet. 

Nay, turn aside the pleading of thine eyes 
Dear eyes, that ever, till this hour of ruth, 
Have kept the promise of our love's fond youth, 

Have borne unstained the light of calm, blue skies. 

Can Caesar's thunder menace so their peace? 

Earth's heavy clouds obscure their steadfast light? 
God's sunshine lost in gathering gloom of night 

That winneth from deep shadow no release 

Through star, uprising, fettering clouds to rift. 

A martyr's wife should braver lids uplift. 



II. 



Can thy white hand, to me e'er prodigal, 
Denying not the richest gift thy heart : 

God ! accept the scalding tears that start 
This day refuse me noblest gift of all, 

The dear-bought vision of eternal life? 

1 think thou hadst been glad to see me wear 
The victor wreath our legionaries bear ; 

Wouldst thou discrown me in a higher strife ? 



632 ST. MARCIAN, MARTYR, TO HIS WIFE. [Aug., 

Ah ! passing sweet the days thy love hath cheered, 

Holy the ever-present thoughts of home 
. When, far from thy sweet voice, I fought for Rome. 
Long grew the hours as the moment neared 
When I should feel thy soft hand rest in mine, 
See faith unbroken in thy kind eyes shine. 



in. 



So faithful then ! Ah ! Love, wouldst thou to-day 
Dim all the tender duty of the past, 
Death's shadow backward on that sunshine cast, 

With flickering swamp-lights lead my feet astray ? 

For what true light would shine on our cold hearth 
Did I, for thy love's sake, our Lord deny ? 
What giant shadow of His cross would lie 

Through all my days upon the dreary earth, 

Reproaching me for e'er with Judas' sin ! 
How could I teach our little son to pray, 
How speak of Him that is the Truth, the Way, 

While burned the quenchless thought my heart within 

Oh ! that in that brief moment I had died 

Ere I, for earthly love, my soul denied ? 



IV. 



So, let me kiss our boy's sweet, wondering face ; 
So fair and innocent, it will not plead 
For any cause save Christ's in my great need : 

His baby hands will only beg God's grace, 

Not man's, not Caesar's, whose best grace of life 
Were bought by me with everlasting shame. 
Helpless as this dear little one, God came, 

Was nursed in sorrow, trembling fears and strife ; 

Made Himself little that man might be great ; 
Despised and mocked, was lifted on the Cross, 
For one soul's sake had suffered all life's loss. 

Nay, sweetheart, love like ours is born too late, 

Pure though it be, through His love sanctified, 

To set its claim Eternal Love beside. 



1885.] ST. MARCIAN, MARTYR, TO HIS WIFE. 633 

v. 

Look up, dear wife, above our little earth. 
I know thou lovest me, I feel thy fears, 
I see the long, dark shadows of the years 

Whose life, without me, wins so slight a worth. 

How hadst thou blushed had men unto thee said : 
" On such a day, when fierce the battle ran, 
Rome's eagles driven backward on the plain, 

Marcian his legion and his trust betrayed." 

Shall I less faith to Caesar's Master show 
Than ever unto Caesar I have given ? 
Rome's eagles cannot bear me unto Heaven ; 

Christ's Cross, alone, so lifts us here below. 

The soldier by his standard must abide. 

Sweet, couldst thou trust me if I God denied? 



VI. 



Ah ! Love, I pray that in the after-years 

Our Lord for this sad day may comfort thee ; 

Lifting thy soul above its misery, 
Teach thee to thank Him, through thy tears, 
That unto me vouchsafed the precious grace 

To bear His blessed Cross up Calvary, 

To witness bear unto his charity, 
Spite the dear beauty of thy pleading face. 
May His love comfort thee when thou shalt brood 

O'er this mine hour of triumph, thine of loss, 

So shall the beauty of His holy Cross 
Grow unto thee life's best beatitude. 
Still dost thou tempt me ? O sweet tongue, be dumb; 
Our life is God's, not earth's. Jesus ! I come. 



634 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 



SOLITARY ISLAND. 
PART THIRD. 
CHAPTER IX. 

A CONFESSION. 

" AND so Ruth Pendleton is back ! " was the cry in Clayburg 
two days after a tired and disappointed woman left the train at 
the station, and, unrecognized by her friends, walked in the direc- 
tion of the squire's now lonely mansion. Yes, Ruth was back to 
the old scenes, a much sadder and much happier woman than 
when she left them ; and if the tears filled her eyes at sight of 
the familiar objects, and a great pain pierced her heart, it was 
not more than the protest which Nature makes against change. 

Coming home at a late hour that night, Pendleton felt his 
heart give an awful thump as he saw lights in the unused parlor 
windows and heard the tinkling of the long-closed piano. 

" It's Ruth," said he, stopping to catch his breath and rid 
himself of a fit of trembling. " It's Ruth come back again for 
good. Little girl," said he, as he stood nervously in the door and 
held out his arms to her. Ruth saw the tears in his eyes and 
the hopeful, expectant look on his big face. 

" I've come back for good," she whispered, as he threw his 
arms about her. " I shall never leave you again, father." 

And they both believed it ; for it had been a pet theory of the 
squire's that if Ruth again returned it would be to never leave 
him, and in her hopelessness at that moment she felt a premoni- 
tion that her stay in Clayburg was to be permanent. 

" And where did you come from ? " said the squire. 

" From New York ; and I have some astonishing news for 
you. Barbara Merrion has become a Catholic, and Florian is 
going" 

" Hold on ! " said the squire, with a gasp, and may be an oath. 
" Barbery become a Catholic! Ruth, you'll have to don your 
old clothes. It isn't a religion for any one when she's in it." 

" She is very much changed," said Ruth, in a tone that seem- 
ed to approve of the squire's sentiments. " You would not know 
her." 



SOLITARY ISLAND. 635 

" H'm !" grunted Pendleton. "I'd know her if she put on 
the pope's own rig. She's Barbery all the same. I'll wager 
any sum that she's up to some of her devilish tricks. She hasn't 
got her eye on Florian now, has she ? It would be easy enough 
to give old Merrion the slip, and she'd coax an angel into steal- 
ing, I swear." 

" Florian is engaged to Frances Lynch." 

" O Jer-rusalem ! " said the squire, with a mighty roar of 
pain. " Then it's all over, Ruth it's all over." And in an instant 
the tears were falling in a shower and a few sobs shook him 
fiercely. He had never given up his hope that Florian and 
Ruth would yet be reconciled. 

" It was all over years ago," Ruth replied gently. " I did not 
think you expected it still, father." 

" And I had no right to," said the squire, striding impatiently 
down the room. " You never held out a hope, though Florian 
thinks just as much of you to-day as he did ten years ago. Let 
it pass. I'm always making a fool of myself. Don't know when 
I cried before. And so Barbery is a papist, hey ? I wonder 
how long she'll remain one? And Florian's done it at last! 
Well, he's got a mighty nice girl, but it won't please Peter Car- 
ter much." 

Ruth started at the name, while the squire shook with hearty 
laughter. The memory of Peter was a source of mirth to him. 

" What about Mr. Carter?" she asked timidly. 

" Oh ! you knew him the greatest fool that ever lived ; and I 
dunno," added the squire dubiously, " but that I was a greater 
fool, for I actually thought that man a genius. He had an idea 
that Flory was no match for that Lynch girl, and was anxious to 
help me in matching you and Flory. He did, but he helped me 
the wrong way. I'm inclined to invite him up here this sum- 
mer, and let him make an ass of himself through the town." 

Conscious of her own unlucky dealings with Peter, -Ruth 
grew alarmed. " It would not be becoming," said she ; " he is 
too too " 

" Too much of a talker," supplemented her father. " Yes, he 
gives one away every five minutes when a secret is entrusted to 
him. Oh ! no ; I'll not invite him to this house. Well, Ruth, 
you're back, and I'm consoled for all my waiting. I'll have to 
stand a pile of chaff, though, from the boys when they see you 
going up to the Catholic church. It's better, though, than to 
see you at Buck's establishment. How does that man live with 
his eternal polishing? He ought to have been polished out of 



636 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

existence long ago, by all rules of calculation ; but he's just the 
same as ever. I've got the drop on the boys there. I have the 
tongue, you know. I'm a match for 'em. How will you stand 
the women, though ? " 

" I am not afraid," said Ruth cheerfully, " for I am a sort of 
balance for Sara Wallace's defection." 

" That's a good argument," said the squire in delight. " I'm 
glad you mentioned it, for I'll give it to 'em first thing. I hope 
you're contented, Ruth, with your new clothes. Do they fit 
easy ? " 

" So contented ! " said Ruth, with a happy smile. " And oh ! 
if I could but persuade you " 

" There, there ! " he interrupted hastily. " It's all right if 
you are happy, but don't try to rope me into any of these reli- 
gions. They're good enough for the women, but they're be- 
yond me. I thought more of Catholics, though, before Barbery 
joined them." 

With a sigh Ruth relinquished the appeal which she had in- 
tended to make to him. 

" I must warn you," continued the squire, " that if you try to 
convert me I'll take to drink, upon my honor. I'll get too stu- 
pid to understand an argument. So just let up on ideas of that 
kind. Go to bed now, and sleep off convent notions." 

During the next few days the greater portion of the town paid 
its respects to Ruth. Among her visitors were the worthy 
elders of the various congregations, curious to know by what 
process of reasoning this young lady had gone over to the enemy, 
and many were the amusing questions put to her. Her great 
defence was the perversion of Mrs. Buck and the right of pri- 
vate judgment. With these weapons she triumphed easily, and 
Clayburg accepted the position with the easy-going, matter-of- 
fact slowness which is an inheritance from Manhattan ancestors 
and does not prevail in bitter, unforgiving New England. 

Mrs. Wallace had not yet called, much to Ruth's surprise, 
and at the first opportunity she went over to see her. Time had 
dealt hardly with the placid lady. The Mrs. Winifred who 
feebly grasped Ruth's hand was an insignificant shadow of the 
stout, timid lady of three years ago. She tried to smile and chat 
with the old-time manner, but had not breath enough for so large 
a word as "seemingly," and Ruth sorrowfully recognized the fact 
that Mrs. Winifred's days were numbered. Billy was full of anx- 
iety. He questioned every one eagerly for their opinion of her 
condition, and brought doctors from Albany to assist her. There 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 637 

was something- mysterious in her complaint. She had begun to 
decline slowly and almost unnoticed a year ago. Without suffer- 
ing any pain or making any trouble, her flesh began to disappear 
and the wrinkles made themselves visible in her face. In vain 
they questioned her. She knew not why her appetite should 
fail, or her hands tremble violently, or her sight and strength 
give way. Nor could Ruth's sympathetic inquiries elicit any in- 
formation. Her chief anxiety was for Florian. She hoped he 
was well. 

" Oh ! very well," Ruth said, " and getting so rich and famous, 
and moving in the very highest society." 

" I suppose," said Mrs. Winifred, " that he is a great friend of 
the count that was here some time ago." 

" I believe they spoke of a nobleman to whom he was attached, 
but I never saw him." 

" He did not look troubled or anxious?" said the mother ear- 
nestly. " He has not written in so long a time." 

" Florian never shows much of his inward thought or feel- 
ing, but to me he seemed full of happiness. Why should he not 
be? He is about to marry a handsome and good woman. He is 
fortunate." 

" Not as fortunate as he might have been," protested Mrs. 
Winifred ; " but I am glad he is happy. I do have such terrible 
dreams about him, and I dreaded some of them might come true." 

Ruth looked at her with great pity, and a suspicion that all 
was not well with her mind. And this suspicion took deeper 
root after a few more visits. Florian was the theme of every 
conversation, and her chief anxiety was whether her boy was 
easy in mind and haunted by no apprehensions. 

" Because if he is," she said very plainly to Ruth in Sara's 
presence, " I can help him, and I will in spite of every one." 

It was the most determined expression Mrs. Winifred had 
ever been known to use, and only her extreme weakness account- 
ed for and excused it. Sara shook her head sadly. It was plain 
to her that her mother's mind was giving way. 

" I have no patience with you," said Sara. " You were always 
the queerest woman. Why can't you tell us what you think is 
the trouble with you or Florian, so that we can do something for 
you? " 

" When you've done all that I ask for," replied her mother, 
" your duty is done. Don't trouble yourself any more. I think 
death is the matter with me. You were always a great reader, 
and you married a minister ; can you tell me a cure for that ? " 



638 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

Ruth smiled at Sara's discomfiture. The lady did not reply 
to her mother's sarcasm, for even her defective taste could see 
how utterly shameful it would be to bandy words with an in- 
valid. 

." I think it will not last much longer," said Mrs. Winifred, 
after a few moments of silence. " I wish it had ended long ago. 
But no matter. Ruth, let me tell you something " Sara had 
gone "this trouble is all about Florian and Linda, and I feel 
it here," laying her hand on her breast, "gnawing always. In a 
few days I shall send for you, may be, to do me a favor. You 
will come, won't you? Promise me, Ruth." 

" Oh ! certainly," said Ruth assuringly, for the sick woman 
began to get dangerously eager. 

"Ah ! but you must promise, dear," she cried, catching Ruth's 
dress with feverish hands. " Seemingly you must promise that 
you will come, no matter what stands in the way." 

" I promise," answered Ruth. 

After scanning her features for a moment in an invalid's piti- 
ful way, she lay back satisfied. 

" What do you think of her?" said Billy when next he met 
her. 

" What can you think of a dying woman ? You will not have 
her long. Why not send for Florian ? She is always speaking 
of him." 

" The pere wouldn't hear of it," said Billy tremulously. " No, 
no, he wouldn't hear of it. I couldn't permit it. It was that 
Russian, the divil ! that did it all. Ever since he came here we 
got no good of her. It's awful ! " 

Ruth wondered at the pere's interference in the matter, but 
said nothing, as she wished to speak to the priest later. 

" It seems reasonable," she remarked to her father, " that if 
the poor woman would like to see her son she ought to see him." 

" Why, of course," shouted Pendleton, " and so she shall. I'll 
send for him no, I'll go for him myself." 

" And do all sorts of harm," Ruth interposed. " No, no, 
father ; but you might find out from Billy what his reason is for 
not informing Florian of his mother's condition. Then we would 
the better know what to do." 

" Jes' so," said the squire, with a blush for his own stupidity. 

" And to-morrow," said Ruth, " you must get out the boat 
and take me over to the islands. I have not seen the hermit 
since my return." 

" There isn't much about him to see," said her father in dis- 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 639 

gusted tones. " He's had a doctor running over there for some 
time seeing to a patient who lives with him or near him, and not 
one of us can find out who the sick man is." 

" Trust a woman to do that," said Ruth. " I shall know what 
is to be known about him by this time to-morrow night." 

Since the day she had bidden him good-by in the cabin pre- 
vious to her departure for New York she had not set eyes on 
Scott, and she was curious to learn what changes time had made 
in his looks, habits, and opinions. All that had taken place dur- 
ing the years of her absence she knew that he was informed of, 
and his views on these subjects were sure to be interesting. 
They went over the next day, and were a long time getting to 
their destination owing to the scanty wind ; but the scenes, the 
old scenes, were so very beautiful that Ruth could have lingered 
even longer among them. A soft haze rested like a veil on dis- 
tant objects, and the river was dotted with the boats of fishing- 
parties, whose songs and merrymaking floated pleasantly to the 
ear. Every spot was a memory to Ruth, and Linda's bright face 
seemed ready to peep coquettishly from behind rock and tree. 
Eel Bay glittered, as usual, with deceitful radiance in the after- 
noon sun. How many times Linda had wept for the unfortu- 
nates buried so deeply in its treacherous waters ! 

" It keeps up its reputation, I suppose?" Ruth said. 

41 A pesky place," grumbled the squire. " No amount of warn- 
ing seems able to keep some from getting caught here e veryseason." 

They came to anchor opposite the well-known boulder, and 
Ruth, leaping ashore, ran eagerly up to the house and knocked 
smartly. She heard the sound of voices in the room within, but 
only the hermit met her at the door. He had Izaak Walton in 
his hand and a cold look on his face, but she offered both hands 
so radiantly that he could not but smile at her delight and take 
them gingerly. 

" You are welcome back," said he gravely. " You've come to 
a safe harbor, and I hope you'll stay in it." 

" You may be certain that I will," she answered in a low 
voice, for the squire was abusing Scott loudly from the boat. 

" Hello ! " he was shouting. " When a man comes to see you 
the least you might do is to help him into port." 

" How if he wasn't wanted?" said the hermit shortly. 

" Don't get off any bosh, now," replied Pendleton ; " keep it 
for those who understand it. I brought Ruth over, and it's no 
wish of mine to intrude on you except in a matter of business. 
You owe me five dollars, I think." 



640 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

Scott laughed dryly and led the way into the house the same 
old house, unchanged even to the patches on the bed-quilt. 
Ruth's tears began suddenly to flow as she stood looking at the 
only perishable spot about her which had a seeming of immor- 
tality. There it stood, not one iota different from the room in 
which Florian and Scott and she had discussed measures for the 
squire's safety nearly a decade of years past. 

" I always thought it the gate of heaven," she said, smiling 
through her tears, " but now I am sure of it." 

" It makes little difference to some people what gate it is," 
he replied. " They wouldn't take advantage of it anyhow." 

" The nearer you get the harder to get on," said Ruth ; " and 
the gate is the worst part of the road." 

His eyes flashed an instant's surprise and admiration. 

" You've learned something since you were here last," he 
deigned to say. 

" Learned something ? " retorted the squire, laboring to keep 
his oar in the conversation. " Why, man, do you think a woman 
goes backward as she gets older ? Men advance, why not she ? " 

" I didn't say that men advance," replied Scott, " or that wo- 
men didn't. Flory used to say that woman was the only crea- 
ture which learned nothing from experience." 

" Right he was, too. When Flory said a thing he hit the nail 
on the head every time." 

" You saw him lately, perhaps ? " said the hermit to Ruth. 

" Yes, and he was very proud and happy in the possession of 
a young lady whom he is soon to call his wife." 

" Ah ! " said Scott indifferently. 

" But his mother is so ill," Ruth went on, " and the family do 
not seem to think of sending for him. She is always speaking of 
him. I wonder they are so careless." 

" These great statesmen," said Scott, " are not always willin' 
to give up their time to sick people. He must have consid'able 
work on his hands besides." 

" There is nothing to excuse that much attention to a dy- 
ing parent," Ruth answered sharply, " and I have no doubt the 
fault is on the side of the family. They could at least notify 
him." 

Scott did not answer, for he seemed to feel they had no right 
to discuss the matter. 

" You have not asked me yet," said Ruth, " about my expe- 
riences since I left. They have been very new, I assure you." 

" I know them all," Scott replied briefly. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 641 

" And you tike no credit to yourself for the fulfilment of your 
prophecies ? " 

" They might never have been fulfilled, an' they weren't 
prophecies. I guessed what might happen, an' it did that's 
all." 

Ruth was disappointed. Scott's ordinary brusqueness seem- 
ed to have taken a more gloomy shade, and the sarcastic, rough 
philosophy of his speech to have given way to a matter-of-fact 
plainness. They talked on in an aimless way for a half-hour 
longer, and then took their leave dissatisfied, without having 
discovered any trace of the stranger who was supposed to be 
living with the hermit. Ruth pressed his hand at parting, with 
the tears in her eyes. 

" You are as human as the rest of us," she said. " You have 
changed, and not for the better." 

He did not reply, and Ruth, as they sailed away, watched 
him sadly. 

" Change, change, and nothing but change," she murmured. 
" I am getting old indeed. None but the old feel change. 
These differences in people hurt me." 

Until the new life began to fit her shoulders she was weigh- 
ed down with despondency. For a time it seemed hardly worth 
the trouble to live and fight the daily heart-ache and try to fill 
up the sense of loss which existed in her soul. Nursing feeble 
Mrs. Winifred helped her to overcome the.se feelings. But as 
the lady grew weaker, and there was the same hesitation in 
sending for Florian, she began to feel indignant. Every day the 
mother called incessantly for her son. She did not ask to see 
him, but an increasing anxiety as to his personal safety was evi- 
dent in her manner. Although it was thought she was delirious 
at times, Ruth perceived a hidden meaning in the apparently 
wild utterances. She spoke to Pere Rougevin one day rather 
sharply. 

" Is there a conspiracy among you, pere, to keep Florian in 
ignorance of his mother's illness? " 

" Florian," replied the pere, not at all disconcerted, " has 
never troubled himself about his relatives since he left, and I do 
not think he would thank us for troubling him now." 

" I am sure it is quite otherwise with him," said she ; " and if 
you do not care to inform him yourselves, I shall certainly take 
it on myself to do so." 

The priest did not reply, but his manner showed that he re- 
sented her interference. He went away with the pettish air 
VOL. XLI. 41 



642 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

which no one can adopt towards a woman bette* than a bache- 
lor, and Ruth was about to send word to Florian when Mrs. 
Winifred called her and gave her the key of a cupboard in the 
room. 

"Open that," she said, "and then follow my directions." 

The cupboard contained on its dusty shelves a few old books 
and papers. At the back was a secret compartment neatly in- 
serted and concealed in the plastering ; and from this mysterious 
hiding-place Ruth drew out a metal box small enough to be car- 
ried in the pocket. 

" Now get pen and paper," said Mrs. Winifred, with a new 
decision in her voice, " and write as I bid. Seemingly this can't 
last for ever, and I'll not have Florian's blood on my hands." 

Ruth sat down in awed silence and began to write the follow- 
ing extraordinary confession. Several times she laid aside the 
pen in amazement, thinking Mrs. Winifred's senses had taken 
leave of her ; but the lady smiled reassuringly and bade her con- 
tinue : 

" Florian Wallace and his sister Linda are not my children. 
Thirty years ago a stranger came with them to me and begged 
me to take care of them. Their mother was dead, and he offer- 
ed me a large sum if I would adopt them as my own and keep 
from them for ever the secret of their parentage. I have done so 
up to this moment. Now Florian stands in danger from secret 
enemies, and I make this confession for his benefit, that he may 
know how to meet them. 

" His father resembled him closely, but that his hair was yel- 
low and his eyes blue. He told me his story. He was from 
Russia, compelled to fly because of his religion. He wished that 
his children should never return to Russia, and urged me to rear 
them as my own. He had papers in his possession which he in- 
tended to destroy ; but I stole them from him and kept them to 
this day. What their value is I do not know. He left his chil- 
dren with me and went away. Some time ago a stranger, said to 
be a Russian, came to this town. I believe he was looking for 
the children. I know he will do harm to Florian, and I warn 
him. My husband can witness to the truth of this confession. 

" WINIFRED WALLACE." 

" You will give that to Florian," said she feebly, " and also 
the box. It was a great trouble to me, but now I feel better. 
You will have to be secret. There are some who think I have 
the papers, and would like to destroy them. Be careful, my 
dear be careful." 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 643 

Exhausted by the effort she had made, Mrs. Winifred fell 
asleep, and Ruth was left to think over and realize this strange 
story. The metal box was easily opened. It was full of papers, 
legal documents most of them, composed in French, and all 
tending to show that certain persons were nobles or princes of 
high rank in Russia. And so Linda, poor, dead Linda, was per- 
haps a Russian princess, born to luxury and love, to move 
through storied halls in proud attire, to live among the great and 
mighty ; and fate had given her instead a home and a grave in 
an obscure American town. She could not picture to herself 
that dainty girl in any other form than the sweet, familiar one, 
nor fancy her a haughty lady of royal blood. And Florian was 
a prince ! It was easy, indeed, to dream of him in such a posi- 
tion, who had ever been a prince among men ; but she sighed as 
she recalled his present temper, and thought how little such an ele- 
vation would benefit him. His grasping ambition would now be 
increased and the field of wicked opportunities widened. While 
she sat and thought the sick woman opened her eyes again. 

" Ruth, dear," she whispered, " you must carry the letter to 
New York yourself. I could not trust it in any one's hands." 

" No," replied Ruth ; " but Florian shall come after it." 

A look of joy passed over Mrs. Winifred's pale face. 

" I would so like to see him again ! " she said. 

And Ruth posted with her own hands a letter to Florian, 
urging him in strong, mysterious language to lose no time in 
reaching Clayburg. 

A guest of another description arrived that afternoon by the 
special express from New York. The squire, seated prominent- 
ly on a barrel at the station and staring at each passenger as he 
alighted, recognized in a gaily-dressed, stout-bodied gentleman 
a familiar form ; but so unique was the traveller's appearance 
that Pendleton did not like to act at once on his conviction. 
The gentleman was dressed in a tight-fitting summer costume of 
pale yellow and gray, with a jaunty straw hat on his round head, 
a cigar in his mouth, a blue necktie at his collar, a slender cane 
in his gloved hand, and an eye-glass dangling at his button-hole. 
He jumped lightly on to the platform as a boy would, but trip- 
ped the next moment and sprawled at the squire's feet. As he 
rose, muttering, his eyes fell on Pendleton's amused face. 

" Pendleton, old b'y," said he, with a shout which drew the 
rowd's attention, " is it yer own foolish face I see before me, an* 
lot drunk or swearin' ? Almightee cats ! but it's me that's glad 
to see ye. I've come up to see yer daughther." 



644 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

The squire, with a very red face, pulled him away from the 
mob, and began to walk in the direction of home with a stolid 
frown settled on his countenance. 

" Carter," said he gruffly, " you will have to take the train 
out of this to-morrow. You're too much for the town. I 
wouldn't have you stay here for a fortune." 

" I'm sorry for ye, then," said Peter, turning smartly on his 
heel, " but it's not you I came to see, my b'y, an' I'll get lodgin's 
where I'll be more welcome." 

" Hold on! " said the squire ; " you're my guest while you're 
here, but you can't stay long. I'm the sheriff, Carter, and I'll 
trump up a charge against you and fine you one hundred dollars, 
if you don't get out as soon as your business is done." 

" Well, yer daughther has a say in that," replied Peter jauntily, 
with a knowing wink at the squire which troubled him. 

" I don't see what Ruth has to do with your kind," he said ; 
" she's not so particular as she used to be." 

" I'm a necessity to the distressed female," said Peter ; " I'm 
the only remnant of ancient chivalry now at large in this country, 
and my time and talents are ever at woman's disposal. At pre- 
sent your daughther requires my services, an' I'm proud of it, 
squire, though Mme. Lynch an' the divine Barbara have em- 
ployed me." 

He kissed his hand to an imaginary distressed female, and 
executed his usual single step on the roadway. 

" Don't ! " said Pendleton in apprehension ; " they'll think 
there's a lunatic arrived." 

" Every man's a lunatic, more or less. I am less, you are 
more. It's a mere matter of circumstance. I admit cheerfully 
me present state of aberration, but I see every hope of recovery 
in this lovely climate." 

When they came to the house and entered Ruth's presence 
she flushed to the roots of her hair at sight of Peter and was 
scarcely able to speak. Her father stood eyeing her in simple 
wonder. 

" That's the way they all do," said Peter gleefully, "as if I 
were a young boy goin' courtin'. Never mind, Miss Pendleton, 
me darlin' ; I have good news for you. I can't hold it in any 
longer, so here goes." 

" Thank you," Ruth interrupted quickly ; " but I shall not 
hear it now, nor until you have taken tea. Do sit down and 
make yourself comfortable." 

"Not a bit of it," said the contrary fellow, maliciously ignor- 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 645 

ing her looks of appeal. " I couldn't keep it in ten minutes 
longer." 

" Would you like a drink, Carter?" said the squire. 

" Pendleton, me b'y, ye were always " 

The squire shoved the glass of whiskey which he had poured 
out into his hand, and Peter tossed it into his throat like a bear. 
Ruth was slipping away, but he stopped her. 

" I had a letter from Paul." 

" How fortunate ! " said Ruth, resigning herself to the torture, 
while Peter flourished a letter in the air and poked the squire's 
ribs. 

" And where d'ye think it's from ? " continued the journalist, 
with a proud leer. " Why, straight from yer own town here, 
post-marked Clayburg. Read it, embrace it, and be happy." 

Ruth read the short letter : 

" DEAR PETER : Have no trouble about me. I am well and 
may return to New York in the winter. If I do not, send my 
traps to this place. PAUL ROSSITER." 

" Who is the fellow, anyhow ? " said the squire. 

" Don't ye remember the yalla-haired boy that was Florian's 
friend?" 

"Oh! I think I do," said the squire, with a whistle and a 
queer look at his frightened daughter. " Did he get lost, and are 
you looking for him ? A pretty detective you make ! " 

"Just so," said Peter ; " an' I'm goin' to stay here until I find 
him. So to get rid of me ye'll have to lend a hand in the 
search." 

" I think he's not here," said the squire. " If he were he'd 
been found out long ago. There are sharper noses than yours 
after that lad." 

And he threw another look at Ruth and relapsed into silence; 
but Ruth was thinking of the stranger supposed to be hiding 
with the hermit. 



CHAPTER X. 
INTO THE ABYSS! 



PETER created a commotion in the steady village before he 
had been there a week. The squire was forced to introduce him 
to the leading citizens of the town, and to them he made known, 
in loud, important tones, the object of his presence among them ; 



646 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

insisting, with the earnestness of a privileged friend, that as there 
was a lady in the business they should give him all the assistance 
possible. His youthful costume, gay manner, and odd sayings 
and doings soon made him a favorite, and the squire, to his 
astonishment, found that instead of covering him with humilia- 
tion Peter actually shed a lustre upon him. As a journalist he 
was the object of many bits of description, as to his past career 
and present movements, in the Clayburg Independent. He tickled 
the imaginations of the towns-people occasionally with spicy arti- 
cles on the metropolis, and his conviviality so far surpassed the 
highest reaches of the village celebrities that he became at once 
their leader. This happy state of affairs having been built up, 
Peter proceeded, with his usual contrariety, to pull it down. 

" I wish you would be more careful in speaking of your errand 
to these towns-people," Ruth said to him one day. " I am not at 
all pleased at the manner in which every one speaks of it." 

" It's the paper," said Peter in apology. " He's a brother- 
journalist, d'ye see, an' I must tell him all, of course, an' he hasn't 
the sense to keep it out of print. I can't help it. An' we're no 
nearer to findin' Paul than we were a week ago. Ye're gettin' 
thin, poor girl ! wid the long waitin'. But cheer up ! Meet sor- 
row wid a smile, an' never give in. We'll find him yet. " 

" I do not think there is any need of searching for him 
longer," said Ruth. " If he is in this county I can wait until 
he discovers himself, and if you would accept a small gratuity for 
your services and go away you would oblige me very much." 

" Would I, indeed ! " said Peter, throwing a regretful glance 
at his summer costume. He could never wear it in New York, 
and he had counted on wearing it out in Clayburg. " Ye're 
plain enough in yer hints. Well, if ye say so, of course I must 
go, girl." 

" Thank you." And she promptly handed him a roll of bills. 
" Please go as soon as you can." 

He went out on the veranda and stood moodily surveying 
his money, more and more dissatisfied with the idea of leaving. 
" ' Please go as soon as you can,' hey ! " he muttered as he started 
for the town. " It's easy to dismiss an old friend when his useful- 
ness is over. But ye're not done with him just yet, me girl." 

This fact both Ruth and her father discovered a few hours 
later as they sat on the veranda talking. A short, stout figure 
came hastily down the road. 

" It's Carter," said the squire ; " what's bringing him back so 
early?" 






1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 647 

Ruth looked up in apprehension. Every movement and men- 
tion of Peter caused her intolerable dread and shame. The jour- 
nalist was somewhat excited as he hurried into the garden and 
took a seat beside them, his handkerchief to his face, his eyes 
sullen, and his under-lip hanging. 

" Pretty warm," said the squire, surveying him sharply. 

" I believe you are the father of this girl," said Peter, turning 
upon him suddenly. " Punish her, then, or I will. She ordered 
me away out of this to day me, a guest, and a gentleman that's 
used to the best society ; told me to go as soon as I could, and the 
quicker the better." 

" She had good reason for it," said the squire, while Ruth, 
with a burning face, withdrew ; " and, to judge from your ap- 
pearance now, I say the quicker the better, too. You're tipsy, 
Carter." 

" Ay, am I, an' on me own money," said Peter bitterly ; 
" money honestly earned. An' I'll have ye to know, Pendle- 
ton, that I'm not to be spoken to that way by you nor your 
daughter." 

" You're a fraud," said the squire contemptuously, " a stale 
fool ; staler " 

Peter bounced from his chair in a fury and made a sudden 
pass at the squire, who drew back and allowed him to describe 
his length on the veranda. Then he stood in defensive attitude 
waiting for the climax, but Peter came slowly to a sitting posture, 
drew out his handkerchief, and, raising his voice, wept. The 
squire was struck with consternation. 

" Ye have bethrayed me ! " sobbed Peter, digging his fists into 
his streaming eyes. " Ye were the friend of me bosom, but ye 
have bethrayed me, an old man who would have died in your 
defence. I came to your house as a gentleman, expecting the 
same treatment I gave ye in New York ; an' what have I met 
with? Insult, outrage, violence! Pendleton, I forgive ye, but 
we part for ever. Allow me even in goin' to show you the re- 
gard I have for you. Accept a ticket for the lecture I am to 
deliver at the town-hall on Wednesday evening. Adieu. You 
are ingrates, you an' your daughter. I despise ye ! " 

He walked slowly down to the gate, leaving the squire stand- 
ing statue-like with the ticket in his hand. It might have 
been that Peter expected a recall and hasty apology from the 
squire and an immediate restoration to favor, for he stopped at 
the gate a moment, looked back doubtfully, and then began to 
return. 



648 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

" Keep right on ! " shouted the squire suddenly ; " don't let 
anything detain you. I am glad to be rid of you." 

" Well, ye're the funny b'y," said Peter in his gayest tones, as 
he mounted the steps. " Sure ye might know I was only foolin*. 
It's me way, squire, an' for the sake of old times ye'll overlook 
it, an' we'll sail on together through bright an' stormy weather, 
meetin' sorrow wid a smile, an' keepin' " 

" Not a bit of it," replied the squire, looking down the road 
to see a carriage which had just come into view. " I tell you, 
you're played out, Peter, and you must go. Seems to me I know 
the person in that team. Good gosh ! it's Florian ; yes no but 
it is. Here, Ruth, come down ; it is Flory himself." 

The carriage, which stopped at the gate, really contained the 
handsome form of the distinguished politician, and Pendleton 
tossed Peter aside like a toy as he rushed down to welcome him. 

" I have little time to stay," said Florian hurriedly. " I must 
see Ruth at once." 

" Ah ! " cried the squire, as a flash of the old hope lit up his 
eyes. " She's here. Come right in, Flory." 

Peter moved haughtily down the walk without looking at 
either, and took the direction of the village. 

" Is not that " Florian began. 

" Carter ? Yes," broke in the nervous squire, " and I have just 
kicked him out. Is it anything important you have to say to 
Ruth ? " 

"She herself is the best judge," replied Florian, in a tone 
which set the old man's heart bounding. " Send her to the par- 
lor, and do not keep me waiting." 

But Ruth was already therewith her papers in her pocket, and 
when they were alone, and she was sure of no one being in their 
neighborhood, she told him of the circumstances which had led up 
to his mother's confession, and placed it and the papers in his hands. 
She thought he received the astonishing news very coldly. 

" I knew of this matter before, but there was nothing certain, 
no proof. These " after a glance at the papers " are of im- 
mense value. You will still keep this a secret, and if you will 
come with me now we shall go at once to my mother and obtain 
a piece of information almost as necessary as these papers. How 
can I thank you sufficiently for the prudence with which you 
have acted ? I shall never forget it." 

When they came to the hall again the squire was talking with 
a wild-eyed boy who brought the news that Mrs. Winifred was 
dying. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 649 

" No time to lose, Tlory," said the squire, as he studied 
Ruth's face for some indication of his hopes. She and Florian 
drove away in the carriage, while Pendleton followed briskly on 
foot. Mrs. Winifred was in her last agony as they entered the 
room, where Billy knelt praying with Sara. Pere Rougevin was 
reciting aloud the prayers for the dying. Mrs. Winifred was 
unable to speak, but her eyes showed the joy she felt on seeing 
him. 

" You will be kind enough to leave us alone for a moment," 
said Florian. " I have something to say to my mother. Ruth, 
you will remain." 

All left the room in some surprise, and Sara looked at Ruth 
significantly. Florian took Mrs. Winifred's hand. 

" I received your letters, mother," said he. " But I must 
know one more thing. Tell me, is my father living ? " 

She hesitated, and then signified " yes " with a motion of her 
head. 

" I must find him," he continued. " These papers are almost 
worthless unless I find him. Is he in the neighborhood?" 

She would not answer, and it seemed cruel to urge her. 

" Do you try, Ruth," said he earnestly. " So much depends 
on it. It must be discovered from her." 

Then the dying woman shook her head determinedly. 

" She will not tell," said Ruth. " There is no need of trying." 

And although he persisted, Mrs. Winifred was silent until the 
death-mist rose in her eyes. 

"Remember you have your father yet," said Ruth gently. 
" He may know, he must know, something about it." 

Mrs. Winifred lived but a few minutes longer, and died as a 
good woman dies who has suffered much in a meek way. She 
was buried beside Linda, and Billy was offered the choice of a 
residence with his daughter or his reputed son. Clayburg 
he could not leave, and Sara it was impossible for him to more 
than tolerate ; and 'when Pendleton invited him to take up his 
quarters with him the lonely man accepted eagerly. He knew 
nothing, however, of Florian's father, save that his son resembled 
him, and Florian was compelled to give up in despair. 

" Yet something must be done," he told Ruth, "for the case 
is incomplete without evidence of his death." 

She thought Pere Rougevin might know something, he had 
so mysteriously interfered of late, but such a coldness had risen 
between him and Florian that she did not care to mention this 
to him. 



650 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

" He is probably dead," said she. " You will be a great man 
in Russia when you have taken possession of your title, and Miss 
Lynch's fate is an enviable one. I pity your destiny, though, and 
the awful Russian tongue to learn." 

" I shall never see Russia," he replied, " unless in travelling 
through it. I shall not even wear my title, but, like Esau, barter 
my birthright and take a good mess of golden pottage." 

"You are a true American," she said proudly, taken by sur- 
prise, "and I honor you for so noble a resolution." 

He did not think it necessary to tell her that it would be 
death to himself eve,n to attempt to gain his own, and that he 
was but making a virtue of necessity in accepting the mess of 
pottage. 

" I shall never be able to express to you my gratitude for all 
you have done," he said, as he rose to depart. 

" Thank you," said Ruth simply. He looked at her for a mo- 
ment undecided, for the old affection had its dying forces, and 
then he turned quickly and left her, lest its power should master 
him. The squire bade him farewell with anxious eye. 

" I thought mebbe " he began awkwardly. 

" Don't think any more of such nonsense," said Florian. " I 
am to be married within the year to the best woman in New 
York. I wish to see you at the wedding, squire, and Ruth 
too." 

"Jes' as you say," muttered Pendleton, feebly clasping his 
hand. 

When Florian returned to New York he continued to keep 
his own counsel regarding late events and to study up a line of 
action. His was an eminently practical mind. He thought less 
of his title and his ancestry than of the gold they represented. 
The idea of donning his princely name and settling down in 
Russia entered his mind only to be ridiculed. He would not do 
such a thing even were it at all feasible ; with assassination threat- 
ening it would be the highest folly. His chief difficulty was the 
mess of pottage. If he could get a half-million ! It was a large 
sum half of it was a large sum but one serious circumstance 
threatened to diminish and perhaps destroy it. His father was, 
perhaps, still living, and no plans that he could think of safely 
bridged that difficulty. The prince would not risk his money 
on a chance, nor would he himself care to act so freely with 
what was only presumptively his own. His mood was preoc- 
cupied while he pondered these things, and Frances noticed it. 

" There is something on your mind," said she. " You are 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 651 

looking- so troubled. You do not tell me what it is, when I 
should know." 

"Indeed!" rather sarcastically. "And then we would have 
two troubled faces instead of one." 

" Misery loves company, particularly of a cheerful kind, and I 
can make light of your heart-aches, and so soothe them to sleep, 
at least." 

" It would take a heavier draught than you can give," he said, 
smiling, "to set my care sleeping. But it is not of much con- 
sequence, and you shall know it, perhaps, when we can both 
laugh at it. I can't do any laughing now." 

" You have never laughed much in your lifetime, Florian," 
said she. " But I mean to change that disposition. You must 
tell me more about yourself, though. Do you know, you seem 
almost as grand and distant now as you did before. Whose 
fault is it?" 

" Mine, I fear ; but I promise amendment." 

" No, let me break you off it in my own way. First I shall 
use your own testimony to^show you how ridiculous it is that 
you do not laugh more and think less. Why are you deficient in 
humor? " 

" There is in this world so little to waken a sense of fun." 

" That depends on the view you take of the world. Is it not 
funny to fancy a huge ball swinging wildly through space, with 
millions of tiny beings clinging to it for dear life, yet eating, 
drinking, marrying, killing, as if there were no danger of falling 
off?" 

" To me it is a melancholy exhibition of man's weakness. He 
can never rise above himself or above this little world." 

" Do you not think it funny to see those tiny beings, whose 
destinies are immortal, acting as if they were mortal, just as if a 
mart worth millions should starve himself, or vice versd ? " 

" How can I think laughable what leads to so much misery?" 

" Laugh at thejncongruity, as we laugh at a man whose feet 
turn in." 

" Now let me question in turn " 

" Pardon me, but I have not yet done with you, Florian. Is 
it not funny to see a man, with ambitions which never can be 
realized, acting as if he could obtain them, and quite aware that 
he can do so only by surrendering his very soul ? " 

" Ah ! " thought Florian, "the cunning witch is beginning the 
process of conversion already. Well, madam," said he, " if you 
are showing me the comic side of life you choose mournful in- 



652 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

stances. I could never laugh at them. They are the very things 
which give me pain." 

" Do they pain you ? " she said, while her eyes threatened a 
shower. "That is something." But Florian jumped up be- 
fore she could say another word, and pleaded an engagement 
which called him away immediately. He remembered Barbara's 
prophecy that when a woman would attempt to subdue him 
with tears, then would come his greatest humiliation. 

After many days of weary thinking he had come to no con- 
clusion in regard to his manner of procedure with the count. 
That gentleman had of late been sinking deeper and deeper into 
the mire of dissipation, and, in spite of the care which he took of 
his health, found it hard to eat and drink and be merry always. 
Florian did not care to tell him at once of his late discovery. If 
his father were alive it became necessary to produce him. If he 
were dead his death must be well proven before the Prince of 
Cracow would part with his gold to the prince's son. And 
Florian so needed the money that he could not think of the 
dread possibility of waiting for it another year. The convention 
of the next summer was to nominate a candidate for governor, 
and he was determined to try for the nomination ; but he needed 
gold to soften the bigotry of his own party and to gild his Ca- 
tholicity out of sight. Here was his only chance to obtain it. 
Ambition's fever was eating him up, and his moral perceptions, 
long blunted, seemed losing their edge entirely. He allowed 
the autumn and winter to slip away without doing more than to 
set a very commonplace detective on his father's track. No- 
thing, of course, was discovered concerning him. 

His only confidant in business matters was Mrs. Merrion, 
whom he had not yet made aware of his change of fortune. 
He called on her one afternoon when twilight was drawing near 
and visitors and admirers were sure to be put aside. She had a 
new doubt of conscience for him to solve. -Her conscience al- 
ways troubled her now that she was a Catholic. " Father Ba- 
retti told me to-day " she affected foreign clergymen " I had 
been speaking to him of some dear gentleman friends of mine 

" The count, for instance," Florian interrupted with bitter- 
ness. 

" The poor count ! " she said. " He is such a harmless crea- 
ture, and will die soon. Well, I had been speaking of them, 
and he told me I was altogether too gracious with them. And 
these men are so little to be trusted." 

" How coolly he traduced his own! " said he. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 653 

" Well," she replied, " I really think they are sometimes a 
little just a little unscrupulous." 

" Singly, perhaps, but not in such quantities as you have them. 
You counteract bad effects by variety. My pathetic advices can 
be enlivened by a sprinkle of the count's wit and rendered very 
harmless by an infusion of Merrion's dulness. And as many 
other compounds as you please can be made with the help of 
your numerous admirers." 

" You have a testy disposition to-night ! Presently I shall 
have you in a rage. You are spoiling our conference, and I 
have not told you all Father Baretti " 

"God help him," groaned Florian, " if he has to listen to the 
tales of women ! I know a tithe of what his sufferings must be." 

" But let me tell you" 

" No, no," he cried impatiently, " not a word. But let me 
tell you what I come to say. Look at me as I walk up and down 
this room, as I have walked many a time. Would you take me 
for a Russian prince of royal blood ? " 

" I would take you for czar," she said with enthusiasm. 

" Well," said he, standing before her smilingly, " if you ask 
the count he will tell you that he does not believe I am plain 
Florian Wallace. He will swear almost that I am Prince Florian 
of Cracow, the heir to a noble title and estate, whom he has been 
commissioned to find in this country. For want of proof he has 
not been able to do it. But I have the proofs now. My sup- 
posed mother gave them to me on her death-bed, and I am at 
this moment truly the Prince Florian. Is it not a romance? " 

She did not answer for a moment, but sat staring into his 
earnest face. His strange words carried conviction with them, 
but they caused her such astonishment and bitter disappointment 
that her first expression was a half-stifled sob. He looked at her 
curiously. 

" I suppose," said she, " that I am the first person on this 
continent to whom such a story was ever told. I do not know 
what to say. I cannot congratulate you. Pray tell me all from 
the beginning." 

He obeyed, and she listened with shining eyes. 

" Oh ! what a happy destiny," she cried; " what a future for 
your wife ! How we missed it that we thought so little of you 
in Clayburg ! What a bitter punishment for us ! " 

" Ay, indeed," he sighed, " what a bitter punishment! " 

" Ruth will be sorry enough now that she threw you aside." 

" Not at all," said he moodily ; " she it was that first heard 



654 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

the story and got me the proofs. Unless she be a skilful actress 
there was not one whit of regret in her manner. If there had 
been " 

He growled the rest of the sentence to himself. 

" If there had been," she continued maliciously and bitterly, 
"somebody would be left out in the cold." 

A burning flush spread over his face. 

" You see how I estimate you," she said archly, " and you 
cannot get offended at the truth." 

" I have not the title yet. I came to you to help me in get- 
ting it. Here is the point we are to discuss. I am not going to 
Russia nor to wear my title. I am going to sell my right to it 
and remain in America." 

" You are not going to wear your title ! you are going to 
remain in America ! That takes the romance from the story. I 
.don't feel like helping any one that's so foolish as to do that." 

" It is not so very foolish. I am -to run for the governorship 
of this State, and, if I have money enough, I shall get the place. 
Which would you prefer, the governor or the prince?" 

" The governor, by all means," said she promptly, seeing that 
such was his inclination. 

" But my father, who has first claim, is living. I cannot sell 
while he is known to be alive ; and if he appears or does not 
appear, where am I? " 

" Say nothing at all to the count about your father, but act 
as if he were dead. Probably he is, and will never disturb you." 

He walked the room in thought. The twilight had deepened 
into darkness and the street-lamps outside were shining on the 
wintry night. Her advice had occurred to him already, but he 
did not like to whisper its dishonesty to himself. 

" I will think about it," he said ; " it's a nice point to decide." 

" And naughty," said Barbara cheerfully ; " but it is the only 
thing to do, and you ought to do it immediately, if you expect to 
have the money in time for the convention. You are attempting 
high flights, Florian." 

" It will not be my last, if it succeeds. If it does not I shall 
come down with a crippled wing." 

" Prince Florian," said she, half to herself, " I fear me you 
will get the crippled wing. In some ways you have not the sup- 
port you should have. Frances is too weak a woman for you." 

" I know it," he said calmly, but his face had whitened sud- 
denly and his hands were trembling. " But the one woman 
fitted to support me is beyond my reach." 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 655 

" I am not so sure of that. Love and ambition laugh at many 
things. I know one woman who, if you would dare to take her 
in spite of many difficulties, would be willing to follow you into 
hovel or palace. But you are too fearful. You would not dare 
to do as she would dare." 

" Perhaps not," he answered ; and then, after a pause, he said 
in a singularly quiet voice, " Name her, and I swear to you that 
if she be the woman I think her I shall dare anything." 

Barbara very significantly gave him her hand. 

Count Vladimir was honored next day with a visit from 
Florian, who carried a packet in his hands. 

" Welcome, my dear friend," said the count ; " you are be- 
coming a model fiance. All your time so exclusively devoted 
to Miss Lynch that you cannot spare an afternoon to your 
friends. It is well. Have all the skeletons of the closet laid 
bare for madame's inspection, and there will be no dread of them 
after." 

" Never mind those trifles, count. I have here some serious 
business for you. I can now prove to you that I am the only son 
of the missing prince. Here are some new revelations." 

Vladimir could not repress the exclamation of surprise that 
rose to his lips. 

" My mother died in September," said Florian, " and made a 
confession. She also delivered to me these papers. Now please 
examine them and tell me what you think of my chances." 

The count read the documents slowly and carefully, with an 
expression of professional distrust on his handsome, wearied face. 

" They are very complete," said he, "and I congratulate you 
on your advancement. You are now a fit object of assassina- 
tion." 

" So I suppose ; but as I emphatically decline to accept either 
the title or Russian citizenship, I hope that danger is averted." 

" It would be," said the count slowly, " if you really mean 
that. But I cannot understand you to mean that you will not 
attempt " 

" I mean that precisely. I don't want the title, but I am in 
need of half a million. If my noble relative concludes to buy 
me off for that sum, he can remain for ever unmolested." 

" My dear boy," said the count, delighted, "you relieve me. 
I shall never have the pain of seeing your stiffened body lying in 
the morgue. Instead I shall have the pleasure of handing you 
as much money as I can squeeze out of the prince. There is one 



656 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug., 

little obstacle. There are no proofs of your father's death, 
wherefore it is to be presumed that he is alive." 

" Do not let that trouble you. My father knows your Rus- 
sian methods too well ever to bother you. It is I who will re- 
ceive the trouble, and I am prepared for it. If he makes his ap- 
pearance, depend on me to manage him. If I do not your noble 
employer will." 

"Is it so?" said the count, with a peculiar smile. "Then 
consider the work done. And now may I not invite you to the 
residence this evening? There is to be a special elegance in the 
appointments, and your new good-fortune will fit you the better 
if you offer a little tribute to the goddess' favorite game." 

" Precisely," laughed Florian, and the reckless ring in his 
laugh tickled the count's ear pleasantly. 

" I have you, my friend," he thought ; " you are ready for 
anything to-day." 

" I would advise you," said Florian, " to call in that agent of 
yours and dismiss him. It is impossible to say what harm he 
might do through the country, looking for the heir." 

" His work is ended. You need not fear him." 

" That I never did," said Florian. That very day he began 
to lay his plans to secure the nomination at the convention, and 
with the money which he had acquired, the influence he had 
won, and his name rung to every change by the partisan news- 
papers, his prospects looked very fair. The story of his life was 
published far and wide. When it became known that he had 
preferred his American citizenship to the proud birthright of a 
Russian prince, his popularity knew no bounds, and papers and 
people were never tired of calling him Prince Florian and point- 
ing to him as a bright example of American training methods. 
His religion was not mentioned. It was a question which his 
party never could handle with perfect freedom, and the opposi- 
tion never disturbed it unless for campaign purposes. He con- 
tinued to receive public attention and the loudest praises until 
the convention prepared to assemble, and his name appeared 
prominently among the candidates for the nomination. 

TO BE CONTINUED. 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 657 

AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 

(CONCLUDED.) 

A CONTRAST to this was my Virginian experience. Virginia 
is, morally, socially, and technically, " the South " ; but the cli- 
mate and scenery are still Northern, in many parts English. 
Here at present you hear only of the past ; in the country districts 
you find that life has stood still since the convulsion of the war 
fifteen years ago. Half the male population has gone West and 
North to repair their fortunes, or at least relieve their families 
of additional mouths to feed, and what remains constitutes the 
forlorn " remnant " characteristic of every crushed community. 
Here, too, I happened to pass only a winter. The summer still 
has an air of half-prosperity ; strangers from States further 
south come here for coolness, and those who cannot afford Sara- 
toga can still manage to screw out enough money for White 
Sulphur Springs. There are " springs " all over the State, and 
the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry is as well supplied with 
them as it is scantily supplied with hotels. Of this you have a 
startling evidence at Harper's Ferry itself, an important junc- 
tion, even though the Armory of "John Brown " fame exists no 
longer. The place would support a thoroughly good hotel; the 
number of hungry passengers (mostly men, for this is the great 
route to the West) " dumped " every day on this forlorn plat- 
form would justify and make profitable at least a good restau- 
rant, while the reality is little better than a disreputable tavern. 
A rickety house, only an enlarged shanty, serves both as station 
and hotel; the unpainted floors are carpeted with dirt; the din- 
ing-room takes your appetite away ; the food, except the shad in 
its season (spring), is oily and raw ; the mulatto behind the bar 
serves as cook, clerk, and waiter, except when an unusuaPpress 
of travellers necessitates the help of the single chaml^m^id, a 
white woman, in baggy, untidy clothes, and with a scared, hur- 
ried, wearied look in her eyes. Up-stairs a few cfi$$ serve fc&.\ 
bed- rooms, and in the wide, cloister-like passage t&$ plas^gr j 
falling off the walls. Only one nook in the house 
the housekeeper's sanctum up in the attic, whe 
Canary-birds and knits bright worsted antimacassars. The view 
over the junction of the two brawling torrents, the Potomac and 
VOL. XLI. 42 



658 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [Aug., 

the Shenandoah, and the abrupt hills on either side covered with 
thick woods, where the echo of the horn-signals of the canal- 
boats is heard almost every quarter of an hour, is very beautiful ; 
and so is the road for ten miles on either side of " the Ferry " 
fringed with willow, wild peach, red-bud trees which have the 
peculiarity of the Judas-tree of Italy, the blossoms coming before 
the leaf, wild cherry, oak, pine, and maple and the rocky paths 
running up the hills, carpeted with more varied wild flowers 
than I know in any temperate climate, except that of the White 
Mountains. My destination was thirty miles beyond the pic- 
turesque, hilly, tumble-down, foreign-looking, pig-invaded ham- 
let of Harper's Ferry, in the plain or valley of the Shenan- 
doah, with its wall of blue mountains encircling it the famous 
Blue Ridge, through whose gaps Daniel Boone first found his 
way to Kentucky, and where fearful scenes took place in the 
late war. The woods have disappeared to a great extent, but 
there are park-like enclosures here and there. The general fea- 
tures of the immediate neighborhood are flatness, richness, and 
roughness a tempting country for a Lincolnshire farmer with 
energetic and improving tendencies ; any amount of raw mate- 
rial for agricultural wealth, provided you start with capital 
enough, say from five hundred pounds upwards, for the land 
will require care and outlay for at least two years before it will 
support and enrich you. As to existing improvements, I saw 
some odd and grandiloquently-described specimens on one or 
two expeditions to look at farms for sale. The description was a 
sad satire on the reality. But I was going to describe the local 
houses of entertainment, and have wandered far from the sub- 
ject. The town in question is a county town, and had at the 
time two hotels ; my host's establishment has collapsed since, 

while the original house has risen up again. T 's Hotel, 

where I first landed, stood in the main street and was over fifty 
years old, with an inner courtyard and galleries running round 
on three sides on every floor a common arrangement in South- 
ern hotels of the old fashion. All the private houses took board- 
ers at times, and a few regularly. And six weeks of this de- 
plorable existence in a houseful of women, a batch of whose fe- 
male relations from the country filed in to dinner every other 
day, making inroads on the " spare-ribs " of pork or mutton, or 
the couple of chickens which were the alternately standing dish 
for a household of six or eight, and were never added to when 
extra guests " happened " to come in just in time, made it de- 
sirable to change quarters. True, the change involved some 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 659 

losses ; for if the large, twenty-feet square bed-room was draughty, 
it contained a magnificent English four-poster nearly seven feet 
wide, with an old-fashioned English counterpane, and had also 
a dressing-room, or ante-room, with a centenarian press, half cup- 
board, half-desk, filled with vellum-bound books, and a pair of 
boots, once the property of a lord-lieutenant of colonial days, 
whose name survives in that of a neighboring county, where his 
hunting-box remains in a ruinous condition ; while the modern 
chamber which in the railway hotel became the substitute of 
this room was a slice of space at the end of a passage, which the 
bed and a coal-stove, with a table two feet wide and a miniature 
chest of drawers, so effectually filled that, had there not been a 
small recess just big enough to turn around in, the washing- 
apparatus would have hardly found room. The building in this 
case was in nowise typical of the style of boarding common in 
the country, being a modern, high, unsightly edifice overlooking 
the railroad station. But the company which succeeded each 
other reckoned fair specimens of many classes, from the hand- 
some Episcopalian clergyman to the fictitious negro of a " minstrel- 
troupe." The hotel-keeper was a tall, elderly man of good ap- 
pearance, a former quartermaster in the Confederate service, 
with the title of major and a thorough understanding of the 
" colored " element. He was one of those men of no calling 
who yet have tried almost every career: he had commanded a 
Mississippi steamboat and " run " a cotton-plantation ; had kept 
a store and served in one under another man ; had tried whole- 
sale business and been cheated by his partner ; had married and 
wandered about in Southern and Western boarding-houses, 
where he learned by experience what to avoid, and had now 
set up, a good deal on his father-in-law's money, an exceptionally 
well-kept hotel. The father-in-law himself cut a strange figure 
in the house where he lived. His daughter scarcely ever ad- 
dressed him ; his opinion on any matter seemed wholly unimpor- 
tant ; in fact, he seemed " under a cloud " rather than a mere 
cipher. I never knew his relationship to the host till some small 
negotiation brought us together and it turned out that he had 
land to sell and was anxious to dispose of it. It had fallen to 
him through usurious practices which were his "profession"; 
the smallest loans and the most penniless debtors were all fish to 
his net, so that he held half the county in his fingers and nume- 
rous plots of " real estate " in mortgage. The shabby-genteel, 
thin, gray-haired man who sat almost apologetically at the fami- 
ly table and was scarcely attended to by the waiters was, in fact,. 



660 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [Aug., 

chief owner of the house. The only other permanent boarder 
was a young lawyer, handsome, sullen, and silent, with hardly a 
dollar, and a vague expectation of " dead men's shoes," lazy 
enough for a " man about town," and clever enough to earn a 
respectable living if he chose. At regular intervals came a wine- 
grower from a town of some energy and importance thirty miles 
away a small, wiry, nervous man, who ate as fast as if for a 
wager and jerked out his words like corks from a bottle. An 
English land-agent ; a Presbyterian minister " on trial " ; a Catholic 
priest invited by one of the guests ; a Washington official who 
drank himself so ill in one night's sitting as to require a dose of 
morphine injected into his arm the next morning ; a country 
couple in outrageously bright colors and with voices as hearty as 
their appetite ; a young local " exquisite " of tremendous ances- 
try and Belgravian manners ; " horsy " Baltimore men on their 
way South, but staying to look in at the local annual agricultu- 
ral show ; performers of different kinds, among others a mild, 
deprecatory man of uncertain age, formerly a " minister," but, 
his health failing, now a showman, alias " Professor," with a supe- 
rior kind of magic-lantern, the views consisting of capital scenes 
from the most famous cities and neighborhoods in Europe ; and 
a noisy gang of vulgar " Ethiopians," at whom none laughed 
more heartily than the genuine negroes these were a few of our 
occasional fellow-guests. One day we noticed the absence of 
the " steward," as the head-waiter liked to be called (the ser- 
vants were all colored), and were told that he and another of the 
men had had a difference, and, the former being terribly passion- 
ate, there had been knife-drawing and bloodshed. He had been 
dismissed, and some of the boarders looked alarmed and won- 
dered how the landlord had dared play so dangerous a game 
with a servant of this formidable kind ; but the " major " was 
cool as ice, and looked as unconcerned as if he had only dismissed 
a scolding wench. It was not long before the man begged to be 
employed again ; and after some formalities, such as respective 
threats and promises, he was reinstated as if nothing had hap- 
pened. Another time the master caught two of the waiters 
fighting in the " office," and summarily put a stop to it by break- 
ing his cane on their backs, which they did not resent, but seem- 
ed to think a very efficient and natural mode of quieting them. 
These murderously-inclined waiters were merry fellows and 
capital company, combining the fawning, affectionate familiarity 
of an Italian servant with the drollery and sprightliness of an 
Irish one. One of them, the " boots " and general man-of-all- 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 661 

work, was a " shining light " in the Methodist church, and de- 
lighted to sing the queer, plain-spoken hymns of his African co- 
religionists, the refrain of one of which ran thus : 

*' Shall we know, shall we know John the Baptist?" 

i.e., shall we know him when we meet him on " the beautiful 
shore " ? He was an orator, too, though he did not scruple to 
borrow eloquence ready made on moral and patriotic subjects 
for the monthly gathering of his club ; and though he would take 
anything you gave him, and even ask you for whatever took his 
fancy in the shape of a coat, a cravat, a pair of boots, he could 
also borrow money of you in the most solemn, business-like, and 
man-and-brother style. 

There were negro customers, too, at the " bar," and some who 
coined tales of sickness and distress at home to touch the major's 
heart and obtain some whiskey without paying for it ; but though 
they succeeded in the latter design, they failed in the former, 
and thus helped the major to get rid of some of his most fiery 
and nondescript stuff, as well as to win a reputation for con- 
temptuous kindliness. Outside the house, on the bench where 
" loafers " congregated on fine days, was another " character " 
a white man seldom sober, a cripple, who had " written " a book 
and bore the title of " The Captain." He would tell his story to 
any new-comer for a drink, and sell his book for five cents. A 
lawyer in the town had had the making of the latter, and in its 
manufacture had hoaxed the author (who could neither read nor 
write, and was a waif from his infancy) almost as much as the 
public. Marvellous adventures were recorded in it ; feats of 
valor, of trickery, and of cowardice were chronicled in sublime 
indifference, with equal gusto and unconsciousness. Of course 
since the war, through which he had gone as a horse-stealer, 
if it can be said that he had stuck to any one profession his 
wooden leg was studiously referred to the effects of a cannon- 
ball in the thick of a fight. Down the street, before this knot 
of loungers, rode sometimes an old man over eighty, in clumsy 
clothes, and his feet hidden in the huge slipper-stirrups common 
in the South, the counterpart of those we see in pictures of 
Cavaliers and Roundheads. This veteran had seen the war of 
1812, and lived to lose his all in the civil war of 1860-4. An 
old lady, younger than he, but still old enough to have been 
a " belle," both as maiden and widow, in the days when the 
White House at Washington had its shadow of a " court," occa- 
sionally came to the hotel to vary her scanty home-cooked meals. 



662 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [Aug., 

Money and youth were gone, a law-suit hung over her, and 
straitened means forced her into this dull retreat ; but she had 
paint and coquetry still at her beck and call, and now and then 
the excitement of a little bottle of something stronger than the 
jerky wine-grocer's vintage. Sheep-drivers, in big boots and 
blouses, stayed to dinner now and then, their long whips laid be- 
side their chairs, and their forks seldom lifted from beside their 
plates. And as the summer came on a polished family of travel- 
lers from a Southern city stayed two or three nights, and, such is 
the contagion of Bohemianism, made at least one of their neigh- 
bors excessively uncomfortable by their dainty ways, talk, and 
costume. Not that the usual company at the family table was 
rough, for the hostess was agreeable and well informed, thor- 
oughly sensible, and nearly pretty. The beauty of the family, 
however, had' already centred in the two little daughters of the 
landlord children with glorious black eyes and genuine waxen 
complexions, the beau-ideal of " Creole " loveliness. The preco- 
cious younglings, however, had nothing of the West Indian 
about them but the surface, for more worldly-wise little dames 
never existed, nor more active and mischievous, disconcerting, 
and bewitching little monkeys. If this scrimmage of hotel-life, 
this comparative freedom from petty observation, and this varied 
and abundant table, equal to anything in the large cities, was not 
a fair representative of the real boarding-house element of this 
dull and dignified neighborhood, it yet offered a wider variety 
of personal types than a short stay would have afforded in one of 
the ancient, cool, secluded mansions where the meagre income 
was eked out by taking boarders. These houses were all more 
or less of the kind I lived in for the first six weeks, though gene- 
rally better provided in the matter of food ; they were pleasant, 
with wide halls, old furniture, family portraits, and prim old 
maids mildly discussing domestic problems as they sat, knitting 
or darning in hand courteous, stiff, and thoroughly true, sensi- 
tive and child-like, curious as to English fashions and doings, 
very jealous of their privileges as English descendants from old 
families, and, above all, mortal enemies of " Yankees." The want 
of variety in these eminently respectable houses, and the general 
atmosphere of plaintiveness which is almost synonymous with 
good breeding, and which the frank republicanism and rather 
blunt manner of a young Englishwoman shocked considerably 
more than they would have done any circle of English society 
for there are cases of out-Heroding Herod would have 
seriously counterbalanced the advantage of studying one type 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 663 

thoroughly, while the hotel afforded opportunities of observing 
many of the local human peculiarities loftily ignored by the aris- 
tocracy of the town. 

To be settled for more than eighteen months in one boarding- 
house, and live familiarly with the small nucleus of cultivated, 
unaffected, and pleasant people round which gathered a floating 
population of " boarders" pure and simple, is almost like making 
a home ; but even under these circumstances curious traits and 
half-sketched romances cropped up now and then. One summer 
a young couple with a child, nurse, and the wife's grandmother 
took half the house for a month " of sea-air and change." The 
old lady was of the quiet New York society which strangers 
somehow invariably miss seeing in that city of millionaires and 
parvenus ; the young wife excellent material for the same type, 
as years would ripen and mellow her, and the husband a copy of 
the English " swells " of large means and good position, as good- 
natured as he was empty-headed, and interested in nothing but 
racing and shooting. His coat and cravat were English; his 
shirt, with foxes' heads, English ; his splendid mail-phaeton and 
pair of horses English. A wonderful, masculine, terrifying old 
maid, who called a spade a spade, and was fastidious to the point 
of perverseness and outspoken to the point of coarseness 
though possessed of at least a dozen well-authenticated ancestors 
made another of the " family." She was supposed to be under 
the spiritual direction of a famous Presbyterian divine, who had 
set her, among other things, to visiting hospitals and reading the 
Bible to the sick. Her generosity was equal to her bluntness ; 
there was nothing she hated like pretence a rough diamond in 
every sense, but wanting in one of the essentials of her sex : wo- 
manliness. A fat, good-tempered nurse (in charge of two sickly 
children) dined in the kitchen with " Bridget " and held theo- 
logical discussions with her, which were sometimes audible 
through the open doors of the " elevator." On one occasion 
Bridget, being severely lectured upon her non-attendance at 
church, blurted out, " I don't like to hear a woman talk so much. 
/ like to hear a man" whereupon nurse retorted, " Well, you're 
the ignorantest person ! " Besides these strangers and the three 
permanent boarders there was a friend of the mistress of the 
house, with a couple of small, brown, delightful grandsons, one 
of whom was sufficiently advanced to pass a not inappropriate 
judgment on the local Baptist preacher, whose chapel he once 
went to with his mulatto nurse. His funny, demure little 
brother said " he spoke too loud," whereupon he, with the wis- 



664 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [Aug., 

dom of seven years correcting five, answered, " He is a Son of 
Thunder." His grandmother asked him what he meant. " Why, 
Boanerges, you know," he said, and showed her his last Sunday- 
school lesson. 

Into this respectable household was soon introduced an alien 
and exciting element. 

One day a pony-carriage, very prettily appointed, drove up 
to the door, and a lady with a suspiciously exuberant bonnet got 
out, handing the reins to a fashionably-dressed man who sat be- 
side her. She was voluble and airy in her manner ; said she 
wanted a room for six weeks or so until her wedding, which 
was to take place at New York at a fashionable church, whose 

rector she named as her reference, and requested that Mr. R , 

her fiancS, should have a bed in the house every Saturday night, 
as he usually spent Sunday with her. There was no room un- 
occupied, the mistress answered ; for herself she could have one 
in a week. " Oh ! " said the stranger, " that is of no conse- 
quence ; he used to sleep on the parlor sofa where I boarded 
before, and he would not object to doing so again." The lady 
of the house, however, did object, which seemed to strike the 
other with astonishment ; but, having arranged to take a room, 
and lodge her ponies and her intended at the inn in the village, 
she gave another reference at a huge sea-side hotel two miles off, 
and, embracing the bewildered hostess, departed with a flourish. 
A week after that she took possession of her room, bringing an 
unusual quantity of baggage. Her hotel friend had answered 
the inquiries politely but vaguely, saying the lady in question 
was the widow of a merchant and in easy circumstances; he had 
not known her very long. She herself was very communicative, 
but the details were distractingly hard to fit together. She was 
the daughter of a Louisiana sugar-planter ; she had been brought 
up in a convent in Canada (she could not speak French, and her 
English was ungrammatical and colloquial to a shocking degree) ; 
her husband had been the son of a great London jeweller, who 
had since adopted her son, a boy of fourteen ; she owned saw- 
mills in the Southwest; she had lived several years in Paris, etc. 
Her manners were free and easy, and her toilets nearly as rich as 
Worth's. Her chief friend and admiring confidant in the house 

was the before-mentioned nurse. Mr. R accompanied her 

on her arrival and stayed to tea. He called himself a broker, 
but looked more like a smart groom ; his language, however, 
was more correct than the widow's. As he walked up the street 
he used to swing his light cane like a circus-whip, and his rings 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 665 

and watch-chain were conspicuous. One night the pair sat up 
till midnight in the parlor, and next morning at breakfast the 
lady, looking agitated and dtfaite, asked the company in general 
what they thought of a man who wanted his wife's money made 
over to him before the marriage. No one but the clergyman re- 
plied, but we saw how reluctant he was to speak out, and how 
he tried to get over the topic with generalities. She got ter- 
ribly excited and poured out wonderful theories, with hysteri- 
cal vehemence, vowing Mr. R should not marry her for her 

money. A day or two after she engaged a land-agent to take 
her over a house she thought of buying, the owner having re- 
cently failed. He was at home and received her like a gen- 
tleman, as he was. One of the peculiarities of the house, which 
was small, was the value and beauty of the woodwork, whether 
in floors, dados, wainscoting, or bannisters ; but on this being 
pointed out she turned sharp round and bade her host " not 
try to fool her, for as sure as she found out he had told her one 
untruth she would break her bargain with him : she was a good 
judge of timber herself and had plenty of experience, and she 
did not need \\\s puffs " Before she left the house she contrived 
to tell the owner roundly that he ought to be ashamed of him- 
self for having lost the property, which, she had discovered, was 
mainly bought and improved with his wife's money; if she had 
been his .wife it would have been very different. All this she 
frankly recounted at the table when she came home, and on 
some one askinar her if she would let her husband starve had 

o 

she been in Mrs. S 's place, she answered energetically : " If 

he had made ducks and drakes of his own money she'd turn him 
out of any house that was her own ; she would be involved in no 
man's ruin." We all pitied the future bridegroom, though, in- 
deed, he looked well able to look after his own interests. An- 
other day some one started the subject of machinery in an idle 
way, as listless guests do when waiting for the somewhat tardy 
" second course," and the widow suddenly launched out in an 
able, technical, and interesting description of an invention for 
heating street-cars. It was the first time we had heard her talk 
intelligently and unaffectedly ; strange it should be on a topic on 
which women are commonly so wholly uninformed! She spoke 
rapidly, and described, with evident relish, every detail of a com- 
plicated arrangement which was beyond the comprehension of 
most of her listeners; you would have fancied her an enthusiastic 
young engineer pleading the cause of his first invention. At 
last, after about six weeks, there was a mysterious collapse; her 



666 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [Aug., 

visits to New York grew frequent and she spoke airily of familiar 
intercourse with the Postmaster-General and a business call at 
the fire-proof building where owners of property hire safes, at 
enormous rents, for the better keeping of their papers, plate, and 
other treasures. A second visitor used to accompany her fianct, 
and she volunteered the information that he was her half-brother 
and the head of an extensive milk business in New York. Then 
the engagement was broken and renewed within three days, and 
finally broken again. There were long discussions in her room be- 
tween the three, and the clergyman was at last Called into council, 
after which she announced her intention to leave, and, in spite of 
the hostess' wish that she should wait till the morning, she insist- 
ed on going at once by a night train. At this time she did not 
seem so over-burdened with money as she had been during her 
stay. We never heard anything more of any of the three actors 
in this little drama, though our curiosity was naturally on the 
alert. Such an interlude did not often break the routine of life 
in this nook of modified and half-dressed rurality, with its pretty 
cottages and trim villas of well-to-do men, its fashionably-dressed 
Sunday congregation, its antiquities and Revolutionary memo- 
rials, and its very name attesting the respectability and antiquity 
of its settlement two centuries ago. After this all incidents 
must seem tame, as no doubt was the reflection that crossed the 
mind of our Texas friend, a lay delegate to the Episcopal Con- 
vention, who, tired of the city hotels, came down to us, well 
recommended, for a week's quiet. As he pathetically informed 
a married man of the then party : " It was all very well for him, 
who had a wife in the house ; but for a single man, like himself, 
it was d slow. Not a soul to speak to. And what could he do 
but take enormously long walks into the country, and go to the 
post-office to see if there was any news from his folks?" He 
was a tall, well-dressed, quiet-mannered man, a lawyer, and the 
son of a farmer in good circumstances, evidently the very re- 
verse of a rake ; but the society in the house acted so powerfully 
upon him as to drive him out every night to " old man Hanley's " 
the acquaintance who had recommended him to our retreat of 
the Sleeping Beauty where he could enjoy unlimited "euchre." 
He played forty games in succession one night, as he told us 
next day at breakfast in answer to his hostess' civil and anxious 
inquiries as to his enjoyment. A convenient telegram recalled 
him home before the week was over. Besides boarders this 
house, being the bachelor-clergyman's temporary abode, grew to 
be a kind of clerical headquarters : the neighboring clergy com- 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 667 

ing to "conference," missionaries from Utah that is, Episcopa- 
lians settled there over schools and chapels to stem the influence 
of polygamy and Brigham Young special preachers on certain 
occasions, etc., staying there a few hours between two trains, or 
occasionally a night or two. One day we were threatened with 
an incursion of school-teachers, for whose accommodation a 
Methodist minister and the local school inspector were canvass- 
ing on the contract principle, and the house was even turned 
topsj'-turvy, so as to make dormitories of each of the large bed- 
rooms ; but cheaper places under-bid " our house," and the ex- 
pected guests did not come. Beggars, tramps, and miscellaneous 
visitors on business formed another category of the clergyman's 
official belongings for instance, eager couples bent on marriage 
(the State laws are loose enough to allow the validity of any 
marriage before witnesses and either a magistrate or a minister, 
without any previous inquiry or formality), one of whom came 
three successive evenings, having walked four miles with the 
prospect of the same walk home each time: the third visit 
proved lucky, and the young people, accompanied by the bride's 
mother, went home man and wife ; a poor family trudging on 
foot with a wheelbarrow from one wretched temporary home to 
another, under a hot August sun, and the elderly wife fainting as 
she sat down in the hall ; a man in clerical but shabby dress, call- 
ing himself a clergyman, and evidently in a far stage of maudlin 
intoxication ; a charming individual bound for a Sunday-school 
feast at his own former school, and " got up " in a tight coat and 
a shirt trimmed profusely with white lace on an embroidered 
frill, his face shining with soap and good-humor the latter was 
always there, though generally invisible, as his calling, that of 
picking " clams " out of the knee-deep banks of Sound mud in a 
broiling sun, mostly encrusted his whole person in a sort of brown 
enamel ; and tramps of many species, one of whom, on asking the 
nervous hostess, with jaunty air, whether she could give him any- 
thing to eat, and being offered some slight cold remains of yes- 
terday's dinner, declined in a lofty and careless manner, saying : 
" No, I don't care for cold vittels ; I thought may be you might 
be sitting down to dinner soon, and I could have a square meal"; 
and another, dressed with some pretence to fashion, but bearing 
marks about him which the black-and-tan of the establishment 
evidently smelt as suspicious, who inquired with great perti- 
nacity for the clergyman, declined the offer of the mistress to 
give a message for him, and, after staring about him as far as the 
half-opened door would allow him, at last departed with some- 



668 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [Aug., 

thing that sounded a good deal like a round oath. Half-way 
down the garden-path, as the dog continued to sniff and snarl at 
his heels, he turned suddenly and pulled out a revolver, pointing 
it at his tormentor, whose behavior during the whole interview 
had been aggravating. " You a b c d dog !" he cried 
in a fury, evidently the result of several minutes' self-repres- 
sion ; and only the uselessness of the revenge, and the scream 
of horror of the dog's helpless owner on the doorstep, made him 
change his mind and once more pocket his weapon. 

Boarding-houses at summer resorts are a separate feature of 
the system. The owners are mostly farmers or have been so ; at 
any rate, they turn their hands to all other kinds of promiscuous 
tasks besides keeping the house, which in the winter resolves it- 
self practically to two or three habitable rooms used by the family. 
Some of these houses, as distinguished from the hotels with their 
city cooks, city clerks, and over-dressed company, are very large 
and important, some small and cosey ; it is curious, too, how, in 
spite of the ordinary social-equality rules prevailing on all public 
travelling routes, certain classes gradually branch off and settle 
round each house. After a little experience in a White Moun- 
tain village, famous for its scenery and its central position as a 
starting-point, I could tell almost at a glance which house each 
" boarder" frequented. One of these houses, the pleasantest of 
all, had gained the exaggerated reputation of a cross between a 
hospital and an old-maids' asylum. A tale was afloat that one 
male boarder having imprudently taken up his quarters there, he 
was carried out next morning in his coffin. The veranda, on 
cool mornings, was as charming a picture as anything exhibited 
in a gallery of domestic art ; three or four old ladies in snowy 
caps and quiet gray or black dresses, their knitting, tatting, or 
embroidery in hand, sat on wide rustic rocking-chairs painted 
deep red, and a few children played croquet on the patch of 
grass which did duty as a lawn. Sometimes the host himself, a 
very old countryman of picturesque appearance, and manners 
perfectly free from either servility or familiarity, sat laying down 
the law to the dignified spinsters or grandmothers, telling tales 
of his youth, when this place was unknown to the fashionable 
world, or explaining country matters which the old ladies, and 
often the children, were interested to learn by this easy, lazy 
method. There was another house just like it next door, and 
one or two more two miles further up the valley, with a view 
over twenty miles of wide bottom-land alternately meadow, 
corn-field, and grove, a mountain-stream running over a bed of 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 669 

granite boulders, and an amphitheatre of mountains from four 
thousand to seven thousand feet high. More than half the 
houses of this neighborhood are boarding-houses, and two or 
three scattered at wider intervals, built like warehouses or rail- 
way-stations, are summer-hotels an institution as peculiarly trans- 
atlantic as the American style of steam and ferry boat. From 
two to five hundred guests is the number they provide for, and 
less than seventy cannot keep the house in bare expenses ; a band 
of musicians is regularly engaged, besides their board and lodg- 
ing and sometimes their families' as well for the two months 
of July and August ; one house, a few miles from Mount Wash- 
ington, kept a menagerie of bears, deer, squirrels, musk-rats, 
raccoons, etc., as specimens of the local fauna ; in all there is a 
barber, a book-stall, and a stall of Indian curiosities. The hall, 
parlors, and verandas, or " piazzas," as they are called, are like a 
Conversationshaus at the German baths, if they are like anything 
in Europe ; the company so mixed that to distinguish between its 
elements is like the task of sorting the tangled skeins, as in the old 
fairy-tale of the hapless maiden and her cruel stepmother ; ultra- 
dress is the order of the day ; and women with their hair cut 
short over their foreheads, arid heavy jewelry swinging around 
their necks and heads, walk in a listless, dramatic style up and 
down the wide, polished staircase, trailing skirts of intricate cut, 
with a superabundance of trimming. Here and there you see a 
lady, generally in a plain walking-dress of dark color, with plain 
linen collar and cuffs and a sensible hat. ,The pianoforte is 
always in requisition, and some noise or other going on ; and 
really the man whom a comic paper describes as a Second-Ad- 
ventist in readiness to obey the Angel Gabriel's trumpet is 
not to be blamed if he mistakes this noise for the terrible call of 
doom. Occasionally there are foreigners among the boarders, 
but Boston and the East supply the larger proportion of White 
Mountain visitors, whom the natives regard as a separate order 
of beings, and whose habits they study as a naturalist observes 
those of a new specimen. Indeed, some are eccentric enough to 
be exceptions anywhere as, for instance, the old Englishwoman 
of eighty who brought her own mutton with her and insisted on 
paying so much less on her board in consequence. How she got 
to the village was never clearly known, as she said she was on 
her way to the Rocky Mountains and hoped to pass by Niagara 
Falls ! She was alone, and wore an ancient poke-bonnet, a calico 
gown, and a large calico reticule, and, on her appearing at the 
rectory to ask advice and information, began by telling the 



670 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [Aug., 

clergyman that she was not poor and had not come for relief, as 
he doubtless supposed, and must have been likely to expect from 
previous experience of unprotected females. No, she was well 
off, but she seemed to mistrust all mankind, and was specially 
indignant with some people in Boston who had recommended 
her to try the White Mountains in search of fossils. She be- 
longed to the Royal Geological Society, and was travelling for 
the purpose of collecting fossils. The White Mountains were 
nothing to her, hardly higher than the Grampians ; and as to 
fossils, there were none. The rector advised her to give up the 
trip to the Rocky Mountains, the magnitude of which expedition 
she had evidently not realized before, and gave her a sketch of 
the route she must follow to reach Niagara. The people to 
whom she had been recommended in Boston were Congrega- 
tional ministers, something akin to her home associates, who were 
chiefly Low Church ; but she seemed disposed to distrust advice 
which must have been careless, to say the least, since it had 
landed her so far out of her way, and determined now to depend 
on no one but the Episcopal clergyman, who represented, in her 
eyes, the vague respectability of the " Established " Church. 
After a cordial invitation to come and see her at her own place 
in the south of England, which she seemed to think involved no 
very great exertion or expense, she left the rector, and next day 
went to Boston to start afresh on her scientific travels. Several 
summers in succession a would-be Byron a melancholy cynic 
with bare throat and hair cut a la Byron, a spiritualist, as far as 
that creed is compatible with professed atheism, and a more 
than blast flirt bored the quiet inmates of one of the larger 
boarding-houses and fascinated giddy school-girls with his high- 
pressure verses ; some clever enough, though the sentiment was 
hollow. A fair proportion of questionable women and their 
admirers, and a very disproportionate majority of hard drinkers, 
increased the gains of many of the hotel-keepers, while at intervals 
amid this throng came other summer visitors of a well-known 
stamp tramps and gipsies. A caravan of the latter passes 
through the town every year, and, though they beg unblushingly, 
especially clothing, tea, and sugar, and steal chickens and fod- 
der where they can, they are seldom impertinent or aggressive. 
Their breakfast " equipage " will stand comparison with that of 
many a struggling and stationary householder: the table-cloth, 
spread on the grass by a hedge, in the meadow where they 
camped, was snowy and whole ; egg-shells were scattered plenti- 
fully around, and on the bushes by the brook were hung very 



1885.] AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. 671 

creditable clothes to dry. The caravan consisted of three wag- 
ons, one with a pair of horses. The tramp of our own race is 
often a more dangerous individual ; yet even he may be painted 
blacker than he is. Last year I had an early visitor of this kind, 
who categorically begged for nothing but a cup of tea. He was 
an American and spoke very correctly. After sipping the tea 
he praised its strength, and said : " It is good oolong. I never 
drink anything but tea, and I know the right flavor." He joined 
quite naturally in the conversation and accepted a second cup 
with an ease that was not impudent. On being pressed to take 
some mince-pie and hard-boiled eggs with him tor his luncheon, 
he said, " There are not many would take the trouble to help 
folks like me " ; and as he was leaving he turned on the doorstep 
and said : " Well, I'm sorry I can't pay you ; for I'm sure a man 
pays many a fifty cents for his meal at a hotel and gets nothing 
fit to eat for it, and if I had two dollars I would not think it 
too much for you. Good-morning." The farm-houses along the 
roads, both those that take boarders and those that do not, are 
turned into temporary refuges twenty times in the season, either 
by lost or exhausted pedestrians, or inquisitive explorers bewil- 
dered by the absence of sign-posts, thirsty and sometimes hun- 
gry travellers, who have missed their regular meals, and people 
taking shelter from the sudden and almost tropical down-pours 
frequent in the mountains. It is odd to play the host to stran- 
gers, and entertain them, sometimes for hours, without knowing 
their name ; and what various human beings they turn out ! now 
a voluble, capable widow who has just made the ascent of Mount 
Washington, and is loud of voice and disagreeably prodigal of 
laughter; now a publisher, a travelled man of the world, inte- 
rested in books, engravings, music, antiquities ; now a party of 
young people with an elaborate mountain " get-up " and a regi- 
ment of alpenstocks ; now a quiet clergyman and his wife, just 
returned from Montreal, where the skull of Montcalm specially 
interested them, and on their way to Ticonderoga for the hus- 
band's bias is towards the investigation of national landmarks ; 
he wears a coat and waistcoat of almost Catholic clerical cut, 
and speaks with an odd foreign accent, but turns out to be a 
Southerner and the " principal " of a well-known girls' school ; 
the wife is silent, handsome, and young enough to be his daugh- 
ter. All through the summer one hears of tempests in a teacup 
through the bickerings of the ladies at the various houses. The 
idleness and frivolity of two months cut adrift from the rest of 
the wholesomely-filled domestic year are enough to account for it, 



672 AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSE SKETCHES. [Aug., 

but it is odd that " going into the country " should suggest to 
the majority of the " boarder " population no better employment 
or amusement than lounging and gossiping on the piazza, or 
getting up evening entertainments, readings, concerts, theatri- 
cals, " sheet-and-pillowcase " dances or masquerades, and other 
such things to kill time, which, if they succeed in this purpose, 
certainly do anything but kill jealousies, rivalries, breaches of 
social peace and sometimes even of social decorum. The long 
day-expeditions for which a party of ten or twelve club together, 
and the men's pedestrian tours, are a better feature ; but in the 
former case some of the party are sure to make themselves 
absurd by blowing horns and swinging paper lanterns on their 
return in the dusk of the evening, while others of tastes and 
education still more questionable, but therefore more pardonable, 
think nothing " better fun " than a moonlight " ride " in a hay- 
cart, the party sitting in each other's pockets on a carpet of hay 
or straw, and seldom keeping their lungs unused for five minutes 
together. 

Country people often wonder, with reason, at the rowdiness 
and unmannerliness of certain among the boarders, and their as- 
sumption that politeness is out of place on a holiday. For in- 
stance, staring over the garden fence into your parlor- windows, 
and helping one's self to boards out of your stable-yard ; sitting 
on your doorstep, or even your rustic seats, without " by your 
leave or with your leave," and even taking up your newspaper, 
if you happen to have left it within reach, are but small items in 
the catalogue of careless impertinence of summer tourists. The 
place, residents and private dwellings included, is to them the 
playground they have paid for ; and of course " country folk" do 
not know when some little omission from the social code occurs 
among the jaunty, well-dressed, full-pursed city-ites. What won- 
der, then, that such a class should resent the presence among 
them at table of a quiet mulatto couple, the husband a lawyer 
and the wife formerly a church-singer? But the spice of the 
disturbance lay in this bear in mind that negromania is the 
watchword and badge, not to say the boast, of the Republican 
party that the chairs of these well-bred and unassuming people 
were first placed at table by the side of a prominent Western 
" politician " and his wife, the former just appointed by his friend, 
President Hayes, to an "office" at Washington. The head- 
waitress, a staid, elderly woman, reminded the politician's wife of 
this fact in an incidental and apologetic way which, perfectly 
polite as it was, could not entirely conceal her keen New Eng- 



1885.] VICTOR MARIE HUGO. 673 

land irony ; but the indignant Westerner ordered her to remove 
her own chair from the " contaminating 1 " neighborhood, alleging 
that she could not afford to lose caste like that, and the difficulty 
was settled by the colored guests dining at the host's little table, 
where he and his family tried to make amends for the unlady- 
like behavior of the female politician. The lawyer, however, 
managed to let it be quietly understood that he could not afford 
to lose caste with his own people by intruding where he was not 
welcome, whereupon faction Number Two set up his wife as an 
idol and made her really beautiful voice a pretext for more feeble 
squabbling with faction Number One for there are always two 
camps ready at a moment's notice to take up opposite causes, 
with no reference whatever to principles. It is really not sur- 
prising that men grow misanthropic after a certain age and long 
to go back to the " Deerslayer " type of civilization. At any 
rate, boarding-house experience is peculiarly fitted to foster such 
a frame of mind. 



VICTOR MARIE HUGO. 

A SONNET. 

IF the Soul's Life were ended at the grave, 
If, in Lethean crypt beneath the dome 
Of Gothic-groined cathedral, sage and mome 

Were swept to Chaos by the aegre-wave 

Of Death, belike since naught could save 
The sleepless Soul from that gaunt gnome 
Oblivion 'twere well to foul the home 

Where rest the ashes of the pure and brave. 

But for thee, whose soul read its future state, 
Was it well, O Prince of Gallic Letters ! 

To toy, at death, with words that made a f6te 
Of obsequies? words that th' upsetters 

Of Royal Faith misused to desecrate 

God's Holy ere thou hadst burst Life's fetters ? 

VOL. XLI.43 



674 KATHARINE. [Aug., 



KATHARINE. 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

LIFE on shipboard lends itself easily 'to intimacies. There 
is little to do but eat, sleep, and read, walk the decks in fair 
weather, and lounge or play cards below when it is foul. Dr. 
Norton had, indeed, provided himself with various resources for 
making the time pass in his usual industrious fashion, but his 
books remained unopened for the most part, while he gradually 
abandoned himself to such an engrossing study of the living, 
healthy subject as he had never made before. There were not 
many passengers, and Mrs. Lloyd was as willing as himself to 
keep aloof from the few there were. Their talks were endless, 
though, after the first day, they never recurred to the subject 
of the earliest one. It seemed to Norton sometimes, as he re- 
flected on them in his berth at night, that they were fast becom- 
ing a sort of monologue in which his own acts, thoughts, and 
surroundings in the past, and his hopes and ambitions for the 
future, occupied a space of which he felt rather ashamed when 
he contrasted it with the very little he knew of his always in- 
terested listener. Every line of her supple, graceful figure, 
every soft curve and vanishing dimple, every flush of varying 
color in her charming face, grew at once familiar and yet en- 
chantingly new with each new day ; but beyond that it seemed 
to him that he knew nothing. 

He had more leisure to reflect upon this fact when the 
chances of travel separated them during their journey across the 
desert, and by the time they took ship again at Alexandria he 
had resolved upon a change of base. 

" Talk to me about yourself," he said to her one night when 
they had lingered on deck long after all other promenaders de- 
scended to their staterooms. " Here I go on, day after day, 
turning myself inside out for your amusement, I suppose? I 
certainly cannot hope it is for anything more flattering to me, 
so long as you make no correspondingly frank response. I 
blush tor my own fatuity when I recall the manner in which I 
must figure in your eyes. I wonder, if with so much evidence to 
the contrary, you could ever be induced to believe that I am not 



I8S5-] KATHARINE. 675 

usually that I never have been before such an egotistic idiot 
as I must seem now." 

" What can a woman have to tell a man like you ? Would 
you have her own to him how much his youth, his energy, his 
sex, and, above all, his freedom move her envy ? Besides, you 
must be amusing yourself at my expense now, as you so un- 
justly accuse me of doing at yours. Did I not give you my 
history and that of my family within the first half-hour I met 
you?" 

" Who knows a man from reading the dates and names on 
his tombstone or in his family Bible ? He was born here, he 
married there, he died at such an age. What clue to what he 
was, to what he thought, enjoyed, and suffered, does all that 
give? You are like the Sphinx. You tempt to all manner of 
inquiries, and make one dread that you will answer none." 

" I seem to remember that the Sphinx is a stone idol with 
its head sticking out of the sand somewhere in the desert. 
My belief about her is that she never answers because she never 
has anything to say. But what do you want to know about me 
more than you know already ? " 

" What do I know, I wonder, except " 

" Except what ? " 

" Except that you are adorably beautiful, and that while I feel 
persuaded that I offend you no more than your mirror does by 
telling you the same story, I don't suppose I give you any great- 
er pleasure." 

They were walking aft, and the binnacle-light showed him 
that she smiled. But what she said was: 

" You are quite right. What is the use of beauty to a 
woman? So far as that goes, your knowledge of me is quite 
accurate. Can I afford you any further information or corrobo- 
ration ? " 

"Yes." 

" Go on, then. I am all openness and emptiness too, I fear, 
like my wardrobes and presses when I left Hong Kong." 

" Tell me, then, why should you envy me either my youth, 
my sex, or my freedom ? Your years must certainly be less than 
mine." 

" I am twenty-seven." 

"So much? But I should have remembered how long it is 
since you came East. But why should you desire freedom, who 
have power?" 

" What power?" she asked, with a little ring of scorn in her 



676 KA THARINE. [Aug., 

voice. " For women like me there is no such thing as freedom. 
That is for men, or for women who have no desires, no ambi- 
tions, or at least no pride. And if I had neither I can easily 
imagine myself the slave of my own caprices, as I have been 
more than once already." 

" I was mistaken," Norton said ; " you are not the Sphinx : 
you are an oracle. You answer, but you leave me more in the 
dark than ever. I wonder " and he hesitated a little, but then 
went on boldly " whether you will tell me why you married?" 

" Oh ! for various reasons. Because I was a woman ; because 
I was asked ; because I was tired of being scolded at home. I 
married, as you ran away, because my mother was hard to me, 
and I thought any change must be for the better." 

" But not because you loved your husband ? " 

" No," hesitating also in her turn, " not for that reason. I 
made the one venture for liberty that a young girl can, and it 
turned out to be only an exchange of servitudes." 

" Then you have never loved ? " 

" No yes I don't know. The oracle is cold and sleepy, and 
would like to go below." 

" But tell me" 

" No ; I haven't anything to tell. I don't know what right 
you have to put such questions, nor why I should answer even if 
I knew and were able." 

" Will you give me the right?" he asked in a voice that shook 
a little, and laying his hand on hers as she was about withdraw- 
ing it from his arm. 

" No," she answered, pulling it away and turning to descend 
the stairs. " I gave that right once. Whoever gets it again will 
have to conquer it for himself." And she was gone, with a soft 
laugh that sounded to him like a challenge. 

" We talk too much," she said when they met the next day. 
" I am not used to it and don't think I like it. Suppose you try 
to improve rny mind by a little reading. It has been wofully 
neglected, I assure you." 

" With all my heart. But what can I read you ? There is a 
Bible down in the saloon, I see, but, except a Shakspere, I have 
nothing with me but medical works." 

" Oh ! not the Bible. I learned too many chapters of it as 
a punishment for naughtiness when I was little to have ever 
thought of it since without a shudder. I suppose we shall have 
to fall back upon the Shakspere. That will be unbroken ground 
to me." 



1885.] KATHARINE. 677 

" You don't mean it ? " 

"Why not? Do you know where I have lived? In Mon- 
treal and in Hong Kong-, and in neither of my homes were books 
in plenty. I have never even seen a play performed except by 
amateurs." 

" How did you pass your time, then ? " 

" Do you know that you are very inquisitive? If my baby 
had lived I think I might have spent some of it in spoiling him ; 
but as he didn't, I fell back on dressing and dining out, scolding 
my servants, looking at myself in the glass, going to the annual 
balls, and otherwise performing the duties of an idle woman." 

" What sort of man was your husband ? " 

" He was my husband," she said shortly. " I told you I was 
tired of talking. Go now and get your book." 

She took it out of his hand when he came back, and began 
turning over its pages, dipping in it here and there, and read- 
ing out a line or two as her eyes fell on something that caught 
her fancy. Finally she handed it back to him open at " Antony 
and Cleopatra." 

" Read me that," she said. " Somebody used once to call me 
Cleopatra, and I shall be glad to learn the reason why." 

" Somebody ? " 

" What a walking interrogation-point you are ! Yes, some- 
body. You don't know who, and I don't know why." 

" Very well, then ; but I would hardly have made such a se- 
lection, if you had left the choice to me, even though our nearness 
to Egypt had suggested it." 

"Why not?" 

" For the same reason that makes me warn you that if you 
catch an awkward break in the sense now and then, or a line that 
does not go on all-fours, you are to lay it to my clumsy elocution 
and not to any defective sense of rhythm or reason in the man 
who made the play." 

" I don't know what you mean ; but go on, and afterwards I 
will borrow the book of you." 

He cast a quick glance down the page, and began with Cleo- 
patra's opening speech, reading on without any break through 
the first scene. 

" There ! " he said, as he finished it, " you see already why 
one might call you Cleopatra. You brought these lines to my 
mind also when I left you after our first talk." 

She smiled and leaned over his shoulder to follow them as he 
drew his finger beneath the passage. 



678 KATHARINE. [Aug., 

" 'Fie, wrangling queen ! ' I suppose? " 

He laughed and went on again, growing more interested as 
he read, until she stopped him at the close of the second scene of 
the second act. 

" Read that again," she said. " Begin about the barge and 
go straight on. Why am I not a queen, I wonder, and why does 
the world grow stupid and goody-goody as it grows older? I 
don't remember ever reading anything in the Court Gazette that 
made me want to change places with Queen Victoria ! " 

" Here you are again," he said, stopping as he came to the 
last words of the scene. " ' Age cannot wither you,' either." 
And he looked up at the glowing face above him. 

" How do you know? It has never had a chance as yet." 

" It never will. You are youth itself, and vigor, and beauty, 
which would fail somehow of their end if they went on into de- 
crepitude in the natural course. To be consistent you ought to 
go down here in mid-seas. Come, let us read no more to-day. 
The Nile is a muddy stream, and Caesar and Pompey and An- 
tony, and the Egyptian too, have been rotting for these nineteen 
centuries. The sun shines here on the Mediterranean this morn- 
ing, the waters glance and ripple, and you are lovelier than the 
Serpent of old Nile in the days when she was as young and igno- 
rant as you. I don't want to read you any more of the play. 
There is nothing else in it that you would find complimentary." 

" You are not complimentary yourself in that remark," she 
answered, rising, though, and taking his arm. " If I am ignorant 
you should go on reading. I thought you began for the sake of 
improving my mind." 

" Perhaps I think it cannot be improved, or prefer to try a 
more original if an older method." 

From that day onward their relations to each other changed. 
Whether Norton was consciously acting on the hint she gave 
him, or whether, as is more probable, the overflow of a first pas- 
sion took naturally the mould of his imperious temper, his tactics 
altered, and as his success a real one in its way grew increas- 
ingly evident to him, it put to sleep the vague, instinctive mis- 
giving that haunted him at first. 

" Do you remember," he asked her one day when the voyage 
was nearly over, " that you either could not or would not answer 
me when I asked you first whether you had ever loved before? " 

" I remember ; but you did not ask me whether I had ever 
loved before, but whether I had ever loved." 

" What is the difference ? " 



1885.] KA THARINE. 6/9 

" Would you have had me answer that I was just beginning ? 
What right had you to put such a question then ? " 

Norton was very much in love. He smiled the fatuous, tri- 
umphant smile which belongs to men in that condition, and 
sometimes gives them goose-flesh when they recall it afterwards. 

" You started on a search for freedom," he went on ; " are 
you very sure it is your free-will which leads you straightway 
into another cage?" 

" What freedom does a woman care for," she replied, " except 
that of choosing the place of her captivity with her eyes wide 
open ?" 

It was the first week of March when they reached London, 
and they were married there shortly after, by special license, in 
one of the city churches. Dr. Norton looked at his wife's name 
after she had signed it in the register when the rite was over. 

" Mary Lawton Lloyd," he read out, and then looked up at 
her as she stood beside him. Her bouquet lay on the desk, and 
she was beginning to draw on her gloves again. 

" Why do you sign in that way ? " he asked. " Is Mary Law- 
ton your baptismal or your maiden name ? " 

" The latter, of course. For that matter, my mother having 
been a Baptist, how could you suppose me to have a baptismal 
name? Why do you ask? " 

" Did you ever know a man named Louis Giddings ? " he in- 
quired, looking at her intently. 

" Louis Giddings ? " she repeated in a half-meditative, half- 
inquiring accent. She bit her lip slightly, and looked down as if 
to assist her memory, stretching out her hand for her flowers at 
the same moment. She must have grasped them hard, for a 
thorn penetrated her soft palm and drew a spurt of blood. 

" Oh ! look, " she cried, "it is dripping all over my dress." 

Then, as her husband stanched it with his handkerchief, she 
went back to his question. 

" Was he Bertie Crawford's tutor for one summer? " 

" I don't know what he was to Crawford. Was he anything 
special to you? Did you know him? " 

" I knew Bertie Crawford's tutor. In fact," she went on, 
after a moment's hesitation, " I don't suppose it is fair to tell such 
things, but he was very much in love with me, poor fellow. It 
was too late, though, for I was promised already. Why do you 
inquire ? " 

" Oh ! no matter. Only it must have been he that Crawford 
had in mind when he spoke of my knowing one of your friends." 



680 KATHARINE. [Aug., 

No more was said about it at the time, but one day, as the 
honeymoon was waning, he asked her, apparently a propos of 
nothing : 

" Was it Giddings or your husband who called you Cleo- 
patra?" 

44 Neither ; that was some nonsense of my school-girl days, 
farther back still. What has become of Giddings, by the way ? 
I have never heard anything about him since that summer. Is 
he a friend of yours ? " 

" The greatest I have. He was in Italy when I had a letter 
from him last ; but he is a bad correspondent, and that was two 
years ago. He is probably back in Boston by this time." 

" In Boston ? That is where we are to live, isn't it ? What 
was he doing in Italy ? " 

" He went there on his wedding journey." 

"He is married, then?" her face dimpling into a smile of 
satisfactions " I am glad of that." 

"Why?" 

41 Because I often used to fear that I had hit him very hard, 
and he had the look, poor fellow ! of a person who would not get 
over such a thing very easily. Some people are like that, they 
say, but I imagine they are few. I hope he has a charming wife, 
who has console^ him for it by this time." 

"Yes," replied Norton, with a curious lightening of the heart 
that he was unable to account for, " he is very thoroughly con- 
soled, I assure you. But you must have flirted tremendously 
with him to have left such a mark that he never even looked at 
another woman in the way of marriage until long after he heard 
that you were dead." 

44 How do you know that? " 

44 It was I who brought him the news from Crawford. How 
was it, by the way, that such a passion as he must have had for 
you did not tempt you to reconsider your engagement? You 
say you did not love the other?" 

44 What a strange man you are, Dick ! " she said, smiling 
and offering a caress. " Would you have girls break their word 
like that ? And if I had, where should you and I be now ? " 

44 Why should we go back to America?" she asked him a 
day or two later. " We are rich enough to enjoy life over here, 
where everything is so much more interesting. I am an English 
girl by birth, you know." 

44 1 don't propose to go back just at present. We will see 



1885.] KATHARINE. 68 1 

Europe well together first ; but, after that, America is the place 
for me, and my work more interesting, on the whole, than play. 
Besides, I have an old father and mother who must be wearing 
out their hearts for me. I have not been the most filial of sons 
in the matter of going home often, and of late my conscience 
begins to give me a warning twinge or two. I am not sure we 
ought not to take a flying trip over before starting on any more 
extended travels." 

The fall of Sumter, and the call for men which followed it, 
roused him to a quick determination on that point from which all 
the soft persuasions of his wife were powerless to move him. 

" No," he said in answer to them all, " if we are to have a war 
with the South I am in for it at once. It won't last long, but it 
will be hard and heavy while it does, and I want my share of it. 
I suppose you think this is a case for saying, I have married a 
wife and cannot come ; but console yourself. The part a sawbones 
plays is not very dangerous at best, but if I manage to make you 
a widow again you won't, at least, be the widow of a coward. I 
will take you to my parents, or try to induce them to go at once 
with you to Boston, where my uncle's house is all ready for us. 
That will give me the chance to surround them with the com- 
forts their old age stands in need of, and if you find anything 
lacking to yours you can alter it to suit yourself." 

" That is a cheerful prospect for me ! Has your mother 
grown sweeter-tempered in her old age, do you imagine ? Be- 
sides, I want to go to Montreal and make an effort to recover my 
own property. If you insist on going to war I will take advan- 
tage of your absence to'look it up." 

Norton frowned. "What is the use of that?" he asked. 
" As either my wife or my widow you will not need it, and I 
thought Crawford advised you that it would be useless." 

" He was not so positive as that. He said only that it would 
certainly be difficult, and probably impossible. But it is worth 
making the effort, as you must know." 

" How do you propose to set about it? Do you remember 
what I told you when you explained your scheme to me ?" 

" Yes, and I have altered my plans in consequence. I saw at 
once the force of your objection, and shall adopt the one which 
you suggested." 

"What is your own conviction on the subject?" he asked, 
sitting down opposite her and taking her two hands in his. 

"On what subject?" 

" What do you suppose to be the truth as to your mother's 



682 KA THARINE. [Aug., 

action and her motive for it? Did she believe you dead, or 
not?" 

" How can I judge her motives ? As to her belief, I don't see 
what reason she could have had for it. I told you that at first. 
She opened and returned my letters, with ' unread' marked across 
them, until I stopped writing." 

" She must have been a cantankerous old woman 'Unless you 
were an extraordinarily obstreperous young one. Which was it? " 

" A little of both, perhaps." 

Both of them laughed, and then he went on again : 

" You wish me to understand, though, that in any action you 
bring you propose to assume that her belief as to your death was 
genuine but erroneous ? " 

" Didn't you tell me that would be the safest theory to work 
on?" 

" Are you aware that you will have to state your whole case 
to your lawyer your own belief about the facts, and your rea- 
sons for it ? " 

" Oh ! certainly. I shall go to Mr. Rector. Mr. Crawford 
said he would be the proper person." 

" And your means to carry on the case ? " 

" You will help me, of course." 

He threw away her hands with a quick gesture of displeasure 
or disgust. 

" You thought, then, that I would assist my wife to lie in 
order to recover money ? Don't count on me. I have nothing 
to throw away in a struggle such as that." 

" I have some money of my own ! And you are very unkind ! " 
breaking into tears. " It is very hard if I am to suffer for an- 
other person's lie in that way. I need tell no untruth at all, even 
to my lawyer. I should only have to show myself in order to 
convince any unprejudiced person, who did not know my mother 
as well as I, that she must have been in some explainable error. 
What business have other people's orphans with money that 
ought to belong to her own ? You are very cruel ! " 

" Come," he said, relenting and drawing her back to him 
again, " I admit that your way of looking at it is natural enough. 
But don't you know that a man's first desire is that his wife's lips 
should be those of a ' very honest woman,' and one not ' given to 
lying,' even by implication? And when the man is like me he 
prefers, also, that his wife should take all she has from him, and 
not feel herself overburdened or overpaid even then. Why 
should she, when she has given him all she is ? " 



1885.] KATHARINE. 683 

" Men are very hard to women," she said, the tears still hang- 
ing- on her lashes. " We like to give them a\\ we have, as well." 

" It is essential to keep up the balance," he answered, laugh- 
ing ; " we must be hard when women are as soft as you. More- 
over, for an honest man, or, at all events, for a proud one, no wo- 
man has anything but what she is. Put on your bonnet now, 
and, if you have any final shopping to do, we will drive out and 
attend to it, and afterwards you may go along with me to take a 
last look at, and pay for, my instruments before having them sent 
home. To-morrow must be given to packing up and getting off 
to Liverpool." 

She came and stood beside him next day while he was ex- 
amining the tools in question, caressing them with eye and hand, 
feeling their delicate edges, and delighting in them like a child 
with a new toy. 

" How dreadfully bloodthirsty you look ! " she said, smiling, 
and picking up one also; "and what a frightful sum of money to 
throw away on things of this sort ! What is this knife for ? " 

" That is the surgeon's vade mecum, his pocket companion ; 
good for anything, from taking a splinter out of his finger to 
lancing an abscess." 

He took it from her as he spoke, and, drawing from his 
breast-pocket a similar one cased in a leather sheath, compared 
the two, trying them alternately on the skin of his fore-finger. 

" Don't do that ! " she said ; " you will draw blood, and I can't 
bear the sight of it." 

He looked up, smiling, and put his left arm about her. 

" Do you know how easily I could let out all the hot stream 
of yours ? This is the place, where I feel your heart beating 
under my fingers. One little thrust, and the thing would be 
over before you knew it. Shall I ?" 

" Don't ! " she said, drawing back a little from the curved 
blade which he laid playfully against her corsage. " I hate the 
thought of death ; it makes me shudder. To lie in the ground 
and rot, and be crawled over by worms! Ugh! Give me the 
old one, will you? You don't need two." 

" Give it to you ? " he said, lifting his eyebrows. " What on 
earth do you want of a lancet ? " 

" I haven't any." 

" Of course you haven't. I'll buy you a penknife, if I can find 
one warranted not to cut anything less resisting than these rosy 
nails. Don't you know that the gift of edged tools breaks friend- 
ship ? " 



68 4 KA THARINE. [ Au g. , 

" Yes ; and I know you think children and fools should not 
be trusted with them," she answered tartly. " It is very tire- 
some of you to be always saying no when I ask anything in 
earnest." 

" You did not ask that in earnest, surely. An instrument like 
this is too dangerous a weapon to be put in the hands of an inex- 
perienced person, besides being too useful and too costly to con- 
vert into a plaything." 

" How careful you are about money ! " she said, curling her 
lip a little. " If you would help me try to get my own I should 
not be such a costly luxury as you seem to find me." 

" Take care ! " he answered, his eyes growing sombre under 
their bent brows. " Don't remind me that there are more ways 
than one of breaking friendship." 

CHAPTER XL. 

THE nameless but profound inductive philosopher who for- 
mulated the great general law, " women are chancy things," re- 
ceived one convinced adherent in Richard Norton before the 
brief period of his married life was over. Until it began he had 
entertained some theories on the sex in general which were, 
doubtless, sound enough in the main, but had the defect of being 
necessarily subject to revision under a special rule whose precise 
equivalent had been thus stated, not long before, by an eminent 
member of his own profession : " There are no diseases ; there 
are only patients." 

His convictions on the subject of marital supremacy and the 
proper means for attaining it owed a good deal more to the law 
of heredity, and a good deal less to memory, reflection, and de- 
liberate volition, than he was inclined to "suppose ; and how they 
might have worked had the case before him been less compli- 
cated, and he had been called to treat questions of temperament 
and natural predisposition solely, is a matter which need not 
here be entered into. But in such an event, as he did not lack 
that essential fulcrum in all moral leverage which is furnished by 
a strong mutual attachment, the problem would at least have 
presented some element of uncertainty. As it was, it had none 
at all. The woman's past, and the future to which it was con- 
ducting, formed a net in which both were inextricably entangled, 
unless issue could be found by cutting its meshes. 

She was one of the results of an ill-assorted union in which 
the woman, then well on toward the close of her third decade, 






1885.] KA THARINE. 68 5 

had married a man several years her junior, against the warnings 
of her own better judgment and the advice of all her friends. 
His personal attractions and her own need of loving proved 
stronger in the end than either. She lived to see her worst fore- 
bodings realized where he was concerned, and to suffer more 
than she had ever dreamed of as possible through the children 
that she bore him. There were but two, a son and a daughter, 
separated by a long interval of years, but singularly alike in ex- 
ternals and other inherited characteristics. The father was weak 
rather than flagrantly vicious. He was a spendthrift who squan- 
dered all he was able of his wife's fortune, and a drunkard whose 
stupid excesses gradually wore out her affection ; but he was 
nothing worse. His children, as they grew up, showed a like 
proneness to self-indulgence, but intensified by an obstinate 
strength of will which was their mother's, and which, under 
the circumstances, was simply an added weakness. The poor 
woman tried her best to do her duty by her son in the way to 
which her own childhood had been accustomed, but she could 
make little headway against the foolish lenience of his father. 
The boy broke openly through all restraints, and, being ham- 
pered by the want of money for his pleasures, took to evil ways, 
went rapidly from bad to worse, and was sent into penal servi- 
tude not long after attaining the age of legal freedom. This 
blow completed for the father what his own excesses had already 
begun ; and the mother, sick at heart, her pride suffering under a 
disgrace which none of her blood had known before, gathered 
together the meagre remnants of what had once been wealth, 
and left her native land to seek shelter and forgetfulness among 
strangers. 

Her daughter was then a mere child, but old enough to re- 
member the manner of her former life and the petting, caressing 
ways of both her father and her brother. Already, too, she gave 
promise of a beauty which, as she grew, attracted a sort of ad- 
miration which alarmed the mother. She repeated with her, as 
8ne consequence of this alarm, the same course of unintelligent, 
ill-advised harshness which had alienated her boy's affections ; 
but it was because she knew no better way, and had, besides, 
some not unfounded reasons for attributing the bad results of it 
in the first case to her husband's interference. She had suffered 
greatly, but suffering had neither softened the natural acerbity 
of her disposition nor taught her the wisdom sometimes gained 
through sympathy. Her Calvinistic creed, held lightly in her 
youth, became more real and more binding as the years went by, 



686 KA THARINE. [Aug., 

perhaps because it seemed to offer some explanation of her fail- 
ures. She was less perplexed, if not more reconciled, when she 
reflected that the children who had cost her so many tears and 
seemingly unavailing prayers were by nature heirs of the devil, 
born in wrath and subject to iniquity, nay, might even have been 
preordained from all eternity to promote their Maker's glory as 
the instruments of her purification and their own damnation. It 
is an explanation, in its way, and one which many an honest, 
wrong-headed soul has striven faithfully to live by, but it is one 
which sealed up for this woman the avenues of gentleness and 
sympathy, never open thoroughfares at best, through which 
alone she might have reached her child and moulded her for 
the better. 

Full as she was of evil tendencies, the girl was human, like 
the rest of us, and had at least the virtues as well as the defects 
of her qualities. There were not many of either sort, for she 
was drawn on very simple lines ; yet everything is good in its 
own nature, say common sense and St. ATigustine, and becomes 
evil only by excess, perversion, or privation. Though incapable 
of lofty or of constant feeling, her passions had the one merit of 
reality, and swayed her as a reed is swayed by a strong wind. 
She became a facile liar in the end, but she had no natural cun- 
ning. She sinned through one impulse and then covered her 
traces through another, simply because her pride was, on the 
whole, most vulnerable on the side of social shame, and her cour- 
age yielded to the smart which it inflicted. But she never be- 
came an adept in the art of falsifying, not being one of those con- 
genital fabricators who embroider the humblest tissue of fact with 
arabesques of fiction for the mere artistic pleasure of the thing. 
She used a lie when she could not attain her end without it, but 
it was a weapon which hurt her hand, and at which she was a 
bungler to the end. It was her pride, nevertheless, which re- 
volted from it, and not her conscience. She had never accused 
herself of sin, though of folly she had repented bitterly and 
often. To herself she never lied at all a fact which admits of 
being judged of differently, according as one regards it from the 
intellectual or the moral point of view. From the liar's own 
standpoint it is decidedly disadvantageous, as it is not merely apt 
to rob him of that air of assured conviction which belongs to the 
other type, but exposes him to variations in his text, to faults of 
redundance or poverty of detail, and, in general, puts him at the 
mercy of his own memory as well as that of his victim. 

Her motives in entering upon her present relations were, as 



1885.] KATHARINE. 687 

usual, not very complex. She was still young, but she had by 
this time a thorough, though, for that very reason, a half-scorn- 
ful, appreciation of the value of her beauty. Judging by its 
actual results thus far, she had concluded that it could be only 
one among several means of securing all she wanted. She was 
more intent than ever on getting what pleasure it contained from 
life ; but events having pretty uniformly shown her that she had 
been purblind as well as eager in her pursuit of it, a certain 
worldly wisdom had come to her which did duty as substitute 
for conscience and the moral sense, and gave a veneer of decorum 
to a nature which at bottom was unaltered. She was still in- 
wardly at war with the social principle, but she had decided to 
avoid, as far as she was able, all further struggle with social re- 
strictions, and the purpose of being a good wife according to her 
lights was one of those she had in mind in accepting Richard 
Norton. Though she had less reason for surprise, she was not 
less enraged than she. avowed herself at the news she had re- 
ceived from Mr. Cnnvford at the moment of her departure 
from Hong Kong, and, as usual, her passion had rendered her 
short-sighted. Afterwards, as the mists cleared away and the in- 
fluence she was exerting on the young surgeon became evident, 
she resolved to profit by it to the utmost and not involve herself 
in a contest whose possible perils were brought vividly before 
her by his words. Mrs. Lawton had indeed returned her daugh- 
ter's only letter endorsed in the manner she had described, but 
the name of Louis Giddings had also been written across its face. 
A mislaid or forgotten letter from the deceived but unsuspect- 
ing husband, had been found by her among her daughter's papers 
after her departure, which had opened her eyes with a miserable 
completeness to the depths of the infamy to which the girl had 
descended. Torn with pity for both the men, full of disgusted 
anger at her daughter's conduct, and yet recoiling with invin- 
cible loathing from another public disgrace, the mother had 
ended by obeying neither of her conflicting impulses and re- 
maining entirely passive. The only sign of active displeasure 
that she showed was the returned letter, which, falling first 
into the hands of Burton Lloyd, had nourished the suspicions 
which certain discrepancies in his wife's conduct had already 
kindled. They poisoned his existence for him, and made hers so 
intolerable that when he shot himself, after a scene of violent mu- 
tual recriminations in which he accused her as the author of all 
his misfortunes, she felt nothing but relief. 

She recalled all these things after having broached the matter 



688 KATHARINE. [Aug., 

of the will to Dr. Norton, and though she was right in supposing 
it improbable that her mother could have left any record which 
would expose her, yet she found she had the burnt child's dread 
of possible fire. She would dare it if no other escape from pov- 
erty presented itself. But meanwhile another seemed opening 
at her hand. She was not long in doubt, nor long, either, in com- 
ing to a conclusion in which, though none but selfish motives 
entered, they took various shapes. She would marry her new 
lover and turn over a new leaf. He was young ; he was intel- 
ligent and rich ; he pleased her personally, moreover, even by the 
half-unconscious airs of mastery, which had for her the charm of 
masculinity without being in anywise akin to that load of sus- 
picion under which she had groaned with Burton Lloyd. Best 
of all, they were absolutely new to each other. To begin life 
afresh with him would be almost a new birth, "a sleep and a 
forgetting," on her own part, to gain which she felt ready to 
submit to a good deal of fond restraint of the sort he seemed 
likely to prescribe. For once she might "ope to reckon safely 
without her host, cut loose from Nemesis, and start untram- 
melled. 

. And then came her wedding-day, when a bomb exploded 
under her feet and tore away all her illusions. The name which 
had so long been the signal for her tortures to commence reap- 
peared again, as if it had been written once for all in indelible 
characters upon the walls within which she had enclosed herself. 
Was she never to escape it? She grew sick of her life in those 
days, and sometimes felt tempted to throw up the burden of it 
altogether. She was irritable ofteii, and peevish, and ill-tempered 
when, out of sheer self-pity, she would have been glad to be gen- 
tle and caressing. She was nervous, even a weakness to which 
her superb physique had thus far been a stranger. Her instinct 
told her that this time she faced a real danger. Norton once or 
twice caught her eyes fastened on him with an expression in 
which unmistakable personal fascination was blended with fear 
and entreaty in a way which lent her an additional charm, but 
set him musing none the less. 

" You make me feel like a snake-charmer," he said to her 
when he observed it for the second time. It meant, perhaps, 
that she knew he would be merciless, but liked him none the less 
well for the knowledge. 

One expedient after another to avoid or delay exposure sug- 
gested itself to her not very fertile mind, but the one which came 
oftenest, and seemed most likely to succeed if only it could be 



1885.] KATHARINE. 689 

put in train, was that of seeing- or otherwise opening communica- 
tion with Louis Giddings before Norton should be able, and ap- 
pealing- to his generosity or his fears. Surely, if, supposing her 
dead, he had married a woman whom he loved, after guarding 
their joint secret so jealously as he had evidently done before it, 
it would be his interest as well as hers to cover up the past, and 
in that case her future would be assured. But how to manage 
it ? If he, too, proved inexorable and were ready to sacrifice his 
pride rather than his friend, then there remained flight, with its 
train of ignominy and open shame. Would not death be better 
than either? But she hated death with all the vigor of the 
healthy, unspiritualized human animal, to whom, if it mean no- 
thing more than annihilation and corruption, it means all that is 
horrible in meaning those. 

Things were in this thoroughly uncomfortable condition when 
the breaking-out of the Civil War, and Norton's invincible deter- 
mination to go back to America and volunteer, opened for her a 
new region of conjecture. There were a thousand possibilities in 
war, both for him and for the other, who might, not improbably, 
be bitten by the same patriotic fury. The}' might never meet at 
all, if only they could be prevented from doing so at the outset. 
If she could but command for a little while her temper and her 
fears, and listen only to that one strong prompting which made 
her like to become in his hands the pliant wax it pleased him best 
to find her, and to meet which he was himself most yielding, she 
might yet be able to provide for her own safety. Once or twice, 
even, when their domestic skies were at their serenest, the dar- 
ing thought occurred to her of telling him the whole truth at 
once and accepting its full consequences at his hands. That, in- 
deed, would have been the part of wisdom for her, but she could 
never quite resolve to take it. 

Chance seemed to favor her at first on their arrival in New 
York, which they reached in the first days of May. Every one 
who lived through that spring, and was old enough to be aware 
of its significance, must remember the bustle of warlike prepara- 
tion going on all over the country, the militia regiments hurry- 
ing from the North to the defence of Washington, the forming 
and drilling of companies in every town and village, and the rage 
and surprise which were the dominant feelings in the breasts of 
all Unionists at the mode of forcing conclusions which had been 
precipitated by the South. But neither the temper nor the re- 
sources of either side were yet estimated at their just value, and 
there were not many at the North to whom the President's first 
VOL. XLI. 44 



690 KATHARINE. [Aug., 

call for volunteers did not appear amply sufficient for the work 
on hand. Such, at all events, was Dr. Norton's conviction, and 
his eagerness to enlist was in almost exact proportion to his be- 
lief that there was need for haste if one did not wish to see oth- 
ers carry off all the honors. If it were not entirely so, that was 
because he was a man whose conscience was more susceptible 
to the obligations imposed by voluntarily-assumed engagements 
than to any others. He had a half-acknowledged feeling that his 
marriage had thus far proved a less satisfactory experiment than 
he had hoped, but the fact remained that he had a wife, and 
therefore duties toward her. He could not quite turn his back 
unceremoniously, as he had done on other claims, and think first 
and chiefly of his own wishes. He must establish her some- 
where, and he admitted to himself that his father's house, where 
he would have preferred to leave her, might be a more uncom- 
fortable residence than he could in fairness consign her to on the 
eve of a parting which might be final. Men had fallen on either 
side already, and he would have to take his chances like the rest. 
Pending a decision, however, he took her there, leaving New 
York for the purpose OH the evening of the day they entered it. 
His arrival, and the events which almost immediately followed 
it, put a new face on things. His own desire had been to attach 
himself in his professional capacity to one of the newly-forming 
Massachusetts regiments, the acceptance of his resignation from 
the navy having reached him while in London. But the painful 
joy with which his parents greeted him, the exalted, semi-reli- 
gious fury with which they rejoiced in the war as the scourge 
which was at once to annihilate slavery and punish those who 
had winked at its continuance, their willingness to see him de- 
part and bid him God-speed, which asked no sacrifice at his hands 
but that of spending with them what little time might yet be 
possible, altered his purpose. His own ardor sprang from no 
such considerations as these. His zeal was for the Union 
solely, and yet it pleased him to see the old folks base theirs on 
still more ideal grounds. He concluded to enlist where he was, 
and return to Boston only when all was over. But before he 
could take even the first step toward carrying out this plan his 
father, enfeebled by age and the stress of conflicting emotions, fell 
seriously ill, and Richard's experienced eye recognized in the at- 
tack some grave but not necessarily fatal complications. The ut- 
most care, the most watchful nursing were imperatively necessa- 
ry, and the son at once dismissed all other thoughts and devoted 
himself entirely to the bedside. May was ended and June near 



1885.] THE NUN'S PRAYER. 691 

its ides before he could pronounce all danger over. And then, 
as his parents would not entertain the idea of removal while the 
future was so unsettled, and his wife was plainly out of her ele- 
ment with them, he yielded to her desire to go back to her old 
home, where she declared that she still had many friends, until 
he should call her to rejoin him. He accompanied her to Mon- 
treal, settled her in a quiet hotel, and started to go back home 
and carry out his previously-formed purpose. A copy of the 
New York Herald which he bought in the train diverted him 
from his purpose. It contained a list of Massachusetts regiments 
about starting for the seat of war, with the names of officers ap- 
pended. They were to leave Boston the following night, and 
Louis Giddings was a captain of volunteers. That yearning for 
one of the old, familiar talks which men experience who have 
known real friendship came over him, and he changed his desti- 
nation. 

TO BE CONTINUED. 



THE NUN'S PRAYER. 

MY God, that I could die and go to Thee ! 

Years fleet like meteors through the starry dome, 
Bringing but peace and joy in this dear home 

Sweet hours of prayer and willing toil to me, 

Shedding new beauty o'er Thy world ; I see 
By turns the Winter's crystal glory ; Spring 
In youthful freshness ; Summer with hot wing 

Ripening the stores for Autumn's granary ; 

Change follows change, all beautiful, for light 
Streams from Thy essence pure, as from a sun 
With rainbow tints enrobing, gilding all. 

And though up from this visible its flight 

My soul may take, Thou art not all mine own 
Till Death fold o'er these wearied limbs his pall. 

And so I fain would die ! Not half so sweet 
The perfumed breath that floats through monarch's hail- 
Not Sabean odors that commingled fall 

Adown the waves, and fly with rapture fleet 

The distant, sea-worn manner to greet ; 



692 NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. [Aug., 

Beloved dare I say ? not unto Thee 
More sweet the broken wealth outpoured so free 
By her whose heart first broke at Thy dear feet, 
Than to my soul shall come Thy angel's breath, 
Steeping each sense in that celestial air, 
As soft he whispers : " Come, the Bridegroom waits ! " 
Ah ! Thou wilt be so near that radiant Death 

Shall turn his sweetness having killed me there 
And THOU wilt bear me through th' eternal gates. 



A NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. 

THE views of thoughtful foreigners on the developments of 
the Irish question ought to have a peculiar interest just now. 
The general election which is to come off next November will 
probably see a greater change over the face of Anglo-Irish 
politics than any general election since that which followed the 
Act of Union, not excepting even the first election after the 
Reform Act. New constituencies will go to the polls with a 
new franchise. The Redistribution of Seats Act, introducing 
into the United Kingdom the single-member-district system 
in vogue in the United States, is an experiment the result of 
which all parties look for with exciting uncertainty. The exten- 
sion of household suffrage to the rural districts of England and 
Scotland (where it had been extended already to the boroughs) 
and to the whole of Ireland places the franchise in the hands 
of an immense class of the population which never cast a vote 
before ; and those political thinkers who are anxious about the 
dangers of universal suffrage will look with curiosity to the 
working of this scheme of franchise, which is simply the univer- 
sal suffrage with but one degree of modification. Independent 
of these great changes the purely Irish question has been grow- 
ing in interest and magnitude. Politics in Ireland have in re- 
cent years been developing a vigor and at the same time a self- 
command and sobriety that are without precedent, and that seem 
to be accounted for by a healthy sense of responsibility be- 
coming daily apparent in Irish public opinion on both sides of 
the Atlantic. It seems plain that Ireland is on the eve of great 
political changes of her own quite apart from the social transfor- 
mation she will share in common with England and Scotland. 



1885.] NE w FRENCH VIE w OF THE IRISH Q UESTION. 69 3 

So that, from every point of view, the coming electoral struggle 
in the United Kingdom is pregnant with interest for the histo- 
rical student. 

There is no better way of obtaining light on a vexed political 
question than by noting its reflection on the mind of a competent 
foreigner who has made a study of it. He is outside the strife ; 
there are no taints of unsuspected prejudice in his blood ; he can 
take a calmer, less partial, more general, and, commonly speak- 
ing, more philosophic survey than one who would write from 
the theatre of war. And there is no foreign nation whose views 
upon Ireland have been so intelligent and suggestive as the 
French. To the Montalemberts, Lacordaires, De Beaumonts, 
Perrauds, and Thebauds we owe some of the deepest insights, 
noblest conceptions, and truest criticisms of the Irish genius and 
character. A current of sympathy and understanding seems ever 
to have flowed between the two peoples from the time when the 
Normans became " hibernicis ipsis hiberniores," to the days when 
the brightest glories of French arms were won by the Irish Bri- 
gade, and when, banned by the penal laws of their own country, 
the levites of the harassed Irish Church found in the colleges of 
France a welcome and an education. There has ever been a lea- 
ven of French ideas, of the ideas of the magnificent intellects of 
Catholic France, in educated Ireland. Even Irish Protestants 
are not without a reason for sympathetic regard for this gene- 
rous nation; for to the Huguenot refugees Dublin owed its far- 
famed tabinet and poplin manufacture, the north of Ireland its 
linen trade, and other parts of Ireland many of the industries 
which were the sources of their pride and wealth in the days of 
their industrial pre-eminence. It is therefore that a work on 
modern Ireland by a French writer of repute, announced last 
month in Paris, has been awaited with something more than cu- 
riosity. The book is " The Irish Crisis, from the End of the 
Eighteenth Century to the Present Time," by fidouard Herve.* 

To persons who have hoped to find M. Herve's book a pro- 
found study like those of Monsignor Perraud or Gustave de 
Beaumont La Crise Irlandaise is a disappointment. M. Herve 
shows himself to be possessed of far less sympathy than might 
have been expected, while in his history he is often considerably 
astray. But in spite of its drawbacks the book is a noteworthy 
contribution to the literature of the Irish question, and there can 
be no doubt but its publication will do good on the Continent, 

* La Crise Irlandaise, depuis la Fin du Dix-Huitilme Silcle jusgu'a Nos Jours. Par 
douard Herve. Paris : Hachette et Cie. 1885. 



694 NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. [Aug., 

where public opinion on the Irish crisis is in a very poor way 
for want of information. 

M. nerve" classifies his subject under three heads : the ques- 
tion of legislative autonomy, that of religious liberty, and the 
land question " the three great questions which have simultane- 
ously agitated Ireland during the last hundred years." Let us 
consider M. Herv6's book under these three heads, reversing 
their order, however, for the sake of the timeliness of the land 
question : 

I. THE LAND QUESTION. 

In considering the material condition of Ireland M. Herve 
falls into two very serious mistakes. He neglects to take into 
reckoning the periodical distress as a factor in causing the agra- 
rian crises ; and in accounting for the distress he omits mention 
of the great originating cause of the material ills of Ireland the 
destruction of her manufactures while assigning a cause which 
has long been rejected by all save a school of theorists that is 
rapidly losing repute. So inseparable is the distress question 
from the land question in Ireland that every agrarian crisis was 
immediately preceded and accompanied by a season of distress. 
M. Herv6 seems to think that the Irishman's proverbial " land- 
hunger " is the source of all the troubles about the land, and that 
the distress is caused by over-population. " With many faults," 
he says, " the Irish peasant is a man of pure morals. In youth he 
does not give himself up to dissipation he marries, and, faithful 
to the precepts of the Holy Scriptures, he does not fear to allow 
himself a numerous family. Painful fact, that so praiseworthy a 
trait of the Irish character should be one of the causes of Irish 
misery ! " (Elsewhere he says it is the principal cause.) There is 
no more erroneous theorv held about the Irish peasant than that 
he is naturally land-hungry. In the United States the Irish emi- 
grant cares less about the land than the emigrant of any other 
nationality ; he remains in the cities, where he finds more attraction 
for his quick wit and sociable temperament. It is only in Ireland he 
displays this feverish greed for the land, and that is simply because 
in Ireland the land is his only resource. M. Herve truly remarks 
that in England the land question is of secondary importance, 
because there the farmers' sons find careers in the manufacturing 
industries. There are no manufactures in Ireland that is the 
whole difference. Why is Ireland without manufactures ? If M. 
Herv6 would study the Parliamentary history of the eighteenth 
century he would find the reason. Ireland at the end of the 



1885.] NE w FRENCH VIE w OF THE IRISH Q UESTION. 69 5 

seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries was 
in so flourishing a commercial condition as to have excited the 
jealousy of the English manufacturers, whose trade was suffer- 
ing by the competition. These manufacturers petitioned Par- 
liament, and the result was a series of enactments which effec- 
tually demolished the manufacturing industries in Ireland, pro- 
ducing a famine in the country and compelling the manufacturers 
and artisans to emigrate in thousands.* It may be naturally 
doubted that such remote legislation could be producing such 
serious effects to day as to be mainly accountable for the absence 
of Irish manufactures. But for one who has not studied the 
question on the spot, and is not, therefore, convinced that such 
is the case, it is only necessary to read the proceedings of the 
Select Committee of the House of Commons on Irish Indus- 
tries that has been sitting for the past two months. In one 
of the recent sittings Professor Sullivan, of the Queen's College, 
Cork, declared, in reply to Mr. Justin MacCarthy, that*" up to 
this date the English legislation of the last century against 
Irish manufactures operated ; an act of Parliament directed 
against a particular trade might extinguish it for ever." The 
difficulty most deplored by patriotic Irish reformers has been 
that the land question has been the foremost and most pressing 
of Irish questions. It ought not to be, any more than the land 
is the most pressing question in Belgium or England or Scot- 
land. If Ireland were possessed of the manufacturing industries 
she might have, she could support on her fertile area as large a 
population as Belgium does on her poor and restricted one. 

Has the Irish land question been settled by Mr. Gladstone's 
Land Act of 1881 ? M. Herv6 does not think so. Here are 
some of his remarks : 

"The land law of 1881 has not solved the terrible question of the land. It is 
even to be feared that it has rendered the solution, which is still to seek, more diffi- 
cult. This law, in fact, is a new step in the false path which Mr. Gladstone took 
in 1870. It renders more complicated and more inextricable still the respective 
situation of landlord and of tenant. 

" In the first place, it recognizes in the tenant the right to dispose of his inte- 
rest in the land ; as a consequence, the dismemberment of proprietorship is still 
clearer, still better acknowledged than in the law of 1 870. In the second place, it 
authorizes the farmer to get his rent fixed by a special commission ; here it is not 
only the right of ownership that receives a blow,. it is freedom of contract also. In 
the third place, the rent, once fixed, is unchangeable for fifteen years." 

* See Hutchinson's Commercial Restraints of Ireland; the writings of Swift, Molyneux, 
Lucas, Bishop Berkeley ; Walpole's Kingdom of Ireland; Lecky's History of England in the 
Eighteenth Century; Froude's English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century; Macaulay's 
History of England, or any good history of Ireland. 



696 NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH^ QUESTION. [Aug., 



This, according to M. Herve, is but the old programme of 
tne " three F's " : 

"The peaceable enjoyment of the farm during fifteen years is 'fixity of ten- 
ure ' ; the right to have the rent fixed by a commission is ' fair rent ' ; the right 
of the farmer to dispose of his interest in the land is ' free sale.' 

" But the system of the three F's is perfectly absurd unless it be an advance 
towards complete dispossession of the landlords. It is thus, at any rate, that the 
Irish understand it ; it was with this arriere-pensee that it was devised, adopted, 
and defended by the leaders of the agrarian agitation. Mr. Gladstone, on the 
contrary, appears to believe that the system of the three F's suffices for itself, that 
it constitutes a definitive settlement of the question. We are afraid this is but an 
illusion. This co-proprietorship, this sort of fellowship between landlords and 
tenants, above all between landlords and tenants who hate each other, cannot 
be kept up. It must be one thing or the other. The land must belong altogether 
to the landlord or altogether to the peasant. 

" In the second part of his law Mr. Gladstone touches, according to our view, 
on the true solution when he gives the peasants some facilities to become purchasers 
and proprietors of the lands they till. Already something analogous had been tried 
in 1869, after the establishment of the law which deprived the Irish Episcopal 
Church of its official position. The ecclesiastical property had been put up for sale 
under the charge of a special commission. Quarter of the purchase-money was 
required on the spot ; the surplus being payable by annuities distributed over a 
period of thirty-two years. This experiment succeeded perfectly. Out of eight 
thousand four hundred and thirty-two farms comprised in the ecclesiastical es- 
tates, six thousand and fifty-seven were bought by the farmers. This was a 
most favorable result. The laws of 1870 and 1881 have given somewhat similar 
facilities to the tenants to buy their farms from the landlords. Why have not they 
succeeded as well ? For a very simple reason. The tenants knew that they 
could only have the ecclesiastical lands by paying for them ; consequently they 
bought them. They hope, on the contrary, that they will have the lands of the 
landlords without paying for them ; so they take good care not to buy them. The 
first part of the two laws of 1870 and 1881 falsifies the second part and makes 
it barren. You give a farmer a sort of co-proprietorship : he hopes you will not 
stop there, and that you will end by giving him entire proprietorship. That being 
so, do you think he will buy for money what he counts on obtaining for nothing ? " 

This criticism is plausible enough up to M. Herve's theory 
that all the trouble comes of the Irish tenant's dishonest " con- 
voitise " for land. There has never been a desire in Ireland 
to defraud the landlords of their rights ; there is not a coun- 
try in the world where socialistic theories have less natural hold 
upon the people ; and it is a curious fact that all the violent in- 
citements to such rapacity have reached Ireland from other 
countries. M. Herve, who writes like an English doctrinaire, 
seems to have drawn his ideas about the Irish peasant from M. 
de Molinari,* who, when the present writer met him in Ireland 
during the famine of 1879-80, was studying the condition of the 

* Author of IJIrlande, le Canada, Jersey. 



1885.] NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. 697 

tenantry at the dinner-tables of their landlords. Indeed, M. 
Herve's curious notion betrays him into an almost grotesque 
position ; for he devotes a touching page to the trials of land- 
lords' families in England and on the Continent, and of the fami- 
lies of " petits bourgeois et boutiquiers" to whom they owe money, 
consequent on the non-payment of rent, while he has not a word 
of commiseration for the awful sufferings of the peasantry not 
even in describing the famine of 1847 nor f reprobation for the 
system which left them not merely without money to pay exor- 
bitant rents, but without the price of enough Indian meal to keep 
soul and body together. How unjust those rents were is being 
daily proved by Mr. Gladstone's Land Act Commission, which is 
reducing them at the rate of twenty, thirty, and in some cases 
even fifty per cent. ; and how wise the Irish leaders have been in 
counselling the farmers not to be in a hurry to buy their hold- 
ings is proved by the statement of Mr. McCarthy, head of the 
Kerry Land Commission, the other day, to the effect that if the 
value of land continues to decrease at its present rate, the rents 
now being fixed will be too high four years hence. 

M. Herve declares himself in favor of peasant proprietary for 
Ireland, and of that scheme of it, moreover, which was expound- 
ed at a meeting in Liverpool last year by the present prime 
minister of England. He says the programme of Lord Salisbury 
appears to him " more liberal and at the same time less danger- 
ous than the system of Mr. Gladstone. If there be a way by 
which the agrarian question can be pacifically solved in Ireland, 
it is that indicated by Lord Salisbury." M. Herv6's views on 
this question are particularly interesting, and it is not impossible 
that the Marquis of Salisbury may be cogitating the scheme for 
the general election in November. We may, therefore, quote the 
French writer's remarks in full, expressing no opinion on them : 

"Three forms of ownership have, by turns or simultaneously, existed on the 
earth : the collective ownership of the tribe or clan that is, the system of nomadic 
or pastoral peoples, of the Arabs of the desert, of the ancient Celtic populations of 
Ireland* and of Scotland; feudal ownership, a modification of the collective pro- 
prietorship, established oftenest through conquest, carried out in the middle ages by 
the Germanic races wherever they ruled ; and, finally, individual ownership, a form 
superior to both the others, which the Romans, with their juridical genius, defined, 
systematized, and laid down on the mighty base of a monumental legislation. 
Celtic by origin, but Roman by education, by language, and by laws, the nations 
of Western Europe, France especially, have always had the taste, the passion, 

* M. Herve appears to forget that clan-tenure existed in Ireland under the Brehon laws not 
only after the Irish had passed the nomadic or pastoral stage, but during several centuries in 
which Ireland was the most highly civilized nation of "Western Europe. 



698 NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. [Aug., 

for this class of ownership. Thus the feudal system of rural proprietorship, 
weakened though it was, modified, softened, and reduced to its most simple ex- 
pression, was rejected by our country in a supreme convulsion. The revolution of 
1798 was not merely a political revolution ; it was also, it was above all, an agrarian 
revolution. Revolution accomplished at the cost of such tragic conflicts, of such 
bloodshed, of such atrocious crimes ! Nevertheless, in spite of its foulness and 
horror, it so responded, in its inner thought and in its mysterious principle, to all 
the instincts and ideals of our race that less than twenty years after the sale of 
the., confiscated estates there was not a statesman, not a serious politician, Louis 
XVIII. and Villele included, who did not consider this revolutionary measure, if 
not legitimate, at least inevitable. By the ratification of the sale of national 
estates, by the milliard voted to the Emigres that milliard so bitterly and so un- 
justly criticised the former proprietorship was indemnified, the new proprietor- 
ship was sanctioned. Memorable service rendered to the public peace, work of 
conciliation and of concord which, in the midst of our political crises and of our 
changes of government, has remained the indestructible basis of our social organi- 
zation ! 

" According to the most plausible valuation, it would require four or five 
milliards [of francs] to indemnify the Anglo-Irish proprietors threatened with being 
dispossessed, if not by an armed revolution, at any rate by a refusal to pay rents. 
England is rich enough, if not to sacrifice such a sum, at least to advance it, under 
the form of a loan repayable by annual instalments, to the purchasers of lands. 
The system has already been tried, but on too-small a scale. 

" The English Parliament and government proved, in the question of the 
Church of Ireland, that they were capable of accomplishing peacefully one of those 
great reforms which commonly are effected only through violence of making, in a 
word, a legal revolution. They commenced and they carried out peaceably the 
liquidation of the property of the Anglican clergy of Ireland. Dare they under- 
take now the liquidation of the property belonging to the English landlords in 
Ireland ? The task is heavier ; it does not appear to us, however, beyond the 
powers of that great school of politicians which, from Canning to Disraeli and 
from Robert Peel to Gladstone, is transforming progressively, by a series of 
reforms sapiently calculated, the political, religious, and social organization of the 
United Kingdom. The greatness of the end ought to be an encouragement to 
surmount the difficulties of the work. The object of the present agitation is to 
constitute in Ireland a class of peasant proprietors. In England the aristocratic 
system may last for many years to come. The conditions are not the same 
as in Ireland. The English peasant does not covet the ownership of the soil ; 
he is not the enemy of the landlord. Both are of the same race ; they have 
the same faith and the same prejudices. One is rich and the other is poor, 
'tis true. But the poor man is less poor than he is in Ireland, and he has the pos- 
sibility of bettering his lot otherwise than by seizing on the fields of the landlord. 
Commerce and industry are there, to utilize idle arms. In a word, the peasant of 
England does not say to himself every day, as does he of Ireland, that his fathers 
were hunted, dispossessed, despoiled by the ancestors of the landlord. 

" In France, while the social war rages in the towns, it never makes its appear- 
ance in the rural districts. Why? Because we have five millions of peasant 
proprietors. There is no need to apprehend an agrarian agitation so long as the 
peasant owns his plot of ground and the plot of ground nourishes its owner. 
These two conditions united are our safety ; try to realize them in Ireland. The 



1885.] NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. 699 

Irishman like the Frenchman, the insular Celt like the Celt continental, covets the 
land ; he longs to. have his holding all to himself. Aid him to satisfy his passion ; 
it will cost you less than to combat it. The land that you took from the tribe to 
give to the landlord, buy back from the landlord and resell it to the peasant. 
Property in Ireland will thus have run the complete cycle of its transformations ; 
it will have passed through its three successive phases collective ownership, 
feudal ownership, and individual ownership ; in other words, the land to the tribe, 
the land to the lord, and the land to the peasant." 

II. THE QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 

M. Herv6's version of the history of the achievement of Ca- 
tholic Emancipation is very unfortunate. According to his view, 
Catholic Emancipation was the dream of Pitt, and the measure 
as it passed in 1829 was due rather less to the efforts of O'Con- 
nell than to the wisdom and generosity of British statesmen. 
His admiration for Pitt is unqualified. In that statesman's career 
he sees nothing to alter his opinion of him as a man who, invest- 
ed in a free country with power equal to that enjoyed by a Ximi- 
nes or a Richelieu under absolute monarchies, used that power 
only to further wise and noble ends. 

The majority of historians are agreed that there is hardly 
anything in history less justifiable than the Irish policy of Pitt. 
Grattan described it as one " than which you would hardly find 
a worse if you went to hell for your principles and to Bedlam 
for your discretion." But Pitt has found enthusiastic eulogists, 
and it is the eulogists M. Herv6 has allowed to capture his 
judgment. M. Herv6 justifies the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, as 
necessitated by that viceroy's mistakes and imprudence in over- 
stepping his instructions ; * and he considers that Pitt " wanted 
foresight in not estimating that the nomination of Lord Fitzwilliam 
to the viceroyalty of Ireland had given an irresistible impulse 
to the movement in favor of the emancipation of the Catholics." 

The truth is, it was precisely because he calculated Lord Fitz- 
william's nomination would give this impulse that Pitt nomi- 
nated him ; and Lord Fitzwilliam was recalled precisely because 
his policy in Ireland had given the intended impulse. The para- 
dox is explained by the different circumstances under which Pitt 
acted when he appointed Lord Fitzwilliam and when he with- 
drew him. 

Pitt never seriously cared for Emancipation and never seri- 
ously objected to it. He supported it or opposed it just as it 
suited his policy. In 1794 disaffection in Ireland had reached 
an acute stage on account of the opposition of the government 

* Pp. 16-18. 



700 NE w FRENCH VIE w OF THE IRISH QUESTION. [Aug., 

to the completion of the Emancipation begun by the Relief Bill 
of 1793. This disaffection was not among the Catholics merely, 
but among the Protestants, who were the most ardent advocates 
for the emancipation of their fellow-countrymen. The Protes- 
tants had started the club of United Irishmen, whose object was 
to attain this end ; and, exasperated at the opposition of the gov- 
ernment and excited by the ideas of the French Revolution, they 
talked of rebellion. Things looked threatening. In England a 
large party, thrown into alarm by the events in France, were 
for appeasing the Irish. It was this party, seceding from Fox, 
who brought a new element of power to Pitt. To ingratiate 
himself with them he resolved to adopt a policy of conciliation 
towards Ireland, and he began by recalling Lord Westmoreland 
from the viceroy alty and sending over in his stead Lord Fitzwil- 
liam. Lord Fitzwilliam was not only the most distinguished of 
Pitt's new Whig allies, but was best known for his warm and 
unqualified advocacy of Catholic Emancipation. Lord West- 
moreland, on the other hand, was the bitterest opponent of 
Emancipation, and his policy was chiefly responsible for the dis- 
affection. The substitution of the first for the second could have 
no other meaning in the eyes of the Irish people than a corre- 
sponding change of policy on the part of the government. They 
hailed the new viceroy with delight. Nor did Pitt leave the 
matter in doubt. He himself sought an interview with the fore- 
most of all the advocates of Emancipation, Henry Grattan, and 
expressly informed him that the intention of the government was 
" not to bring forward Emancipation as a government, but, if 
government were pressed, to yield it."* Grattan shaped his 
action according to this understanding ; so did the Irish Whigs, 
who came in a body to the side of the government ; so did 
Lord Fitzwilliam all set themselves to preparing the way for 
Emancipation. The country was strung to an extraordinary 
pitch of enthusiasm : the Catholics by the prospect of equality 
with their fellow-countrymen, the Protestants, who believed 
religious liberty to be essential to the developing independence 
of their nation. The country, that was on the verge of revolu- 
tion a year before, was now all peace and loyalty. The United 
Irishmen prepared to dissolve their organization, its great object 
being on the point of attainment. There never was a moment 
when Ireland was easier to govern ; never was such an opportu- 
nity for brilliant statesmanship. Lord Fitzwilliam, in pursuance 
of his policy, had dismissed, among other officials hostile to the 

* The Life and Times of Henry Grattan. By his Son. 



1885.] NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. 701 

cause of Emancipation, two very powerful ones Beresford, a 
commissioner of revenue, and Cooke, the secretary of war. 
Beresford went to London and laid the state of affairs before 
the chancellor, Lord Fitzgibbon, who was the rabidest foe of 
the Catholics and Pitt's favorite minister. Pitt's jealous)' was 
aroused. Lord Fitzwilliam was succeeding too magnificently ; 
and Lord Fitzwilliam with the Irish Whig party behind him was 
a rival to be feared. In haste he ordered the viceroy's immedi- 
ate return. 

The effect of this step in Ireland can scarcely be imagined. 
The hopes of the nation, which were suddenly bid to rise from 
the depths of angry despair, were as suddenly dashed back again. 
Wild, unallayable resentment followed. The United Irishmen 
in a trice was transformed from a club of reformers into a for- 
midable revolutionary conspiracy. Rebellion became inevitable. 
Thenceforth Pitt resolved upon the project of the Union, and he 
and Castlereagh set a-going their plot to precipitate the rebellion 
and corrupt the legislature a plot as demoniacally cynical as 
ever was hatched in the brain of man. 

This is the true version of the episode that M. Herve glozes 
to credit of Pitt. 

Writers on the Union do not always lay sufficient stress on 
the attitude of the Irish people and the Irish Parliament at this 
period towards the Catholic question. A public opinion which 
had been slowly forming under the hands of Berkeley, Molyneux, 
Lucas, and Swift reached a noble healthfulness when the most 
illustrious patriot of his age, Henry Grattan, began to lead it, 
when a national volunteer army was formed and the independence 
of the Parliament was declared. Seldom has the invigorating in- 
fluence of freedom been more plainly seen at work among a peo- 
ple. The creeds forgot their animosities, and the ascendant Pro- 
testants, of their own acord, raised the cry of Catholic Emancipa- 
tion. Imperfect and sadly in need of reform as the Parliament 
was, it was becoming steadily more responsive to public opinion, 
so that in 1793 it passed a Relief Bill giving the Catholics the 
electoral franchise a measure from the penal laws to which was 
a greater stride than from that point to the Emancipation Act of 
1829. " It is curious," wrote Lord Sheffield, an opponent of 
Emancipation, " to observe one-fifth, or perhaps one-sixth, of a 
nation in possession of the power or property of the country, 
eager to communicate that power to the remaining four fifths, 
which would, in effect, entirely transfer it to themselves." * His- 

* Observations on the Trade of Ireland, 



702 NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. [Aug., 

tory affords no such spectacle of Christian brotherliness be- 
tween two religions which a few years before had been ranged 
in bitter hostility against each other, and which a few years later, 
under the blight of malignant legislation, were to be plunged 
into internecine strife again. Nor was this liberality the result 
of religious laxity, for the sceptical ideas of the Continent had 
found no reception in Ireland, and both Catholics and Protes- 
tants were warmly attached to their respective beliefs. It was 
simply a broad and strenuous sentiment of true Christianity 
whose spirit was well voiced in the watchword of Grattan, " It 
is the error of sects to value themselves more upon their differ- 
ences than upon their religion " ; and it should always be an assur- 
ance to those Protestants who look with apprehension to an au- 
tonomous and Catholic Ireland that bigotry is no part of the free 
Irishman's nature, and is less a part of him than ever when he is 
an ardent professor in his faith. This being the state of public 
feeling before Pitt recalled Lord Fitzwilliam, it is impossible to 
doubt that the Union, so far from being essential to Catholic 
Emancipation, as M. Herve implies on page 58 of his book, and 
as all apologists of the Union contend, was the means of throw- 
ing back Catholic Emancipation thirty-two years. The historian 
Lecky declares that " few facts in Irish history are more certain 
than that the Irish Parliament would have carried Emancipation 
had Lord Fitzwilliam remained in power." * 

After the rebellion, which, in Castlereagh's phrase, had been 
forced to a " premature explosion," had been trampled down 
amid scenes of frightful massacre and devastation, after Pitt and 
Castlereagh had debauched the Parliament to the extent of their 
ability, it was found that yet the Union could not be carried if 
the Catholics resisted it. To insure the passivity of the Catho- 
lic body Lord Cornwallis, the viceroy, and Lord Castlereagh as- 
sured the Catholic prelates, not formally, it is true, but still most 
expressly and with the consent of the minister, that one of the 
first results of the Union would be Emancipation. How did Pitt 
keep his pledges to this already shamefully-duped class, which 
constituted the bulk of the Irish people ? M. Herv6 thinks he 
acted the part of an honorable statesman. George III., as Pitt 
of course knew when he was giving his assurance to the prelates, 
was violently opposed to Emancipation. The Union being effect- 
ed, Pitt addressed the king a letter asking his authority to intro- 
duce a bill for Emancipation, adding that if the king refused he 
would be obliged to request his majesty's permission to resign. 

* Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, 



1885.] NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. 703 

The king refused and Pitt resigned. Three weeks afterwards 
Pitt was assuring his majesty that never again during his reign 
would he bring forward the Catholic question ; and a short time 
later, on becoming minister again, he pledged himself not only not 
to bring in Catholic Emancipation during the king's lifetime, but 
to oppose the measure if any one else introduced it. This was 
all was ever done for Catholic Emancipation by the minister who, 
in M. Herv6 words, " ambitioned the honor of associating his 
name with this great reform." M. Herv6 says : " To-day, after 
five-and-forty years have passed away, in presence of the me 
moirs of all contemporary statesmen, in presence of the corres- 
pondence exchanged between George III. and his prime minister, 
history ought to render Pitt the justice which is his due, and to 
recognize that the only cause of his resignation was the absurd 
opposition of the king to the emancipation of the Catholics." 
The memoirs of contemporaries establish no such fact. Pitt 
could not avoid resigning without losing prestige ; besides, Lord 
Grenville and other members of his cabinet had an honester 
sense of their obligations to the Catholics. It is true, also, that 
resignation was a peculiarly opportune policy for Pitt at that 
moment, as he thereby counted on avoiding the dreaded humilia- 
tion of having to sign a peace with Napoleon. If Pitt resigned 
because of an " unalterable sense of public duty " in regard to 
his Catholic fellow-subjects, it is impossible to understand how 
he could voluntarily throw them overboard three weeks later, or 
how he could assume office on the express understanding to op- 
pose their claims whenever they would be put forward in Parlia- 
ment. The simple explanation is that Pitt only handled the Ca- 
tholic question to forward his own ambition, and when it had 
ceased to serve his purpose he took no further interest in it. 

The most disappointing part of M. Herve's book is that 
which deals with O'Connell. One sees there how narrow a hori* 
zon is his. This modern Frenchman writes on Irish subjects as 
an old-fashioned English Whig might write who combats the 
advance of facts at every step. He views the situation from the 
interior of English cabinets. Consequently he has no historical 
perspective. O'Connell, who filled his age as no man of this 
century has done, whom one historian compares with Martin 
Luther, another with Napoleon, whom Balzac called " the incar- 
nation of a people," of whom Montalembert, Lacordaire, Ven- 
tura wrote in eulogy that touched the stars, M. Herv6 writes 
of as a troublesome agitator who was continually making diffi- 
culties for English ministers. In a survey of Irish history that 



704 NE w FRENCH VIE w OF THE IRISH Q UESTION. [A u g. , 

reaches from the last decade of the eighteenth century to the 
present time, O'Connell fills no bigger place than Pitt, or Peel, 
or Grey, or Castlereagh. M. Herv6 does not point out that 
O'Connell was the inventor of that tremendous weapon of re- 
form, public opinion organized into agitation ; nor does he dwell 
on the fact that so great was the resistance to the noble efforts of 
Grattan and Plunkett in the Imperial Parliament that there was 
no hope of Catholic Emancipation until O'Connell arose ; nor 
does he show that O'Connell, wielding a power which he himself 
created, had to bring the country to the verge of revolution 
before the measure could be forced from the ministry of Peel; 
and, singular to say, he makes no mention of O'Connell's struggle 
to prevent Emancipation being qualified by the investment in the 
English crown of the power of vetoing the appointment of ec- 
clesiastics a struggle in which he had to overcome the influence 
of the whole body of English Catholics, of the richer Irish Catho- 
lics, and of a rescript, actually conceding the veto, signed by- 
Cardinal Quarantotti. 

Yet, in spite of this near-sightedness," i't is plain that M. Herv6 
writes without prejudice and honestly according to his lights. 

III. LEGISLATIVE AUTONOMY. 

Having seen so far of M. Herve, his position in regard to the 
Act of Union will hardly be surprising. He says : 

" The historian and the politician cannot, assuredly, condemn the suppression 
of the Dublin Parliament. The System of personal union and legislative separa- 
tion between two states presents such obvious inconveniences that it is hardly 
necessary to recount them. The reform undertaken by Pitt was therefore \vise. 
It is only to be regretted that it was accomplished by means of which morality 
cannot approve. Let us add, however, that rarely has there existed a political 
assembly less respectable than the Irish Parliament. Corruption and violence held 
sway at elections. Castlereagh's admission to the House of Commons cost his 
father, it is said, thirty thousand pounds sterling. Grattan himself, the loyal and 
honorable Grattan, in order to reappear in Parliament to oppose the Act of Union, 
had to purchase the borough of Wicklow with a sum of money. The English 
Parliament had long emerged from the shadow of corruption when half the Irish 
peers and members were bargaining with Castlereagh for the price of their politi- 
cal consciences. 

" The Irish patriots need it be said ? could not take the same view of this 
question that we can. For them, in spite of its vices, of its servility to power, of 
its intolerance in regard to the Catholics, the Parliament of Dublin remained the 
symbol of a conquered country. Its suppression was looked on as a supreme 
defeat and a supreme humiliation. Since that epoch every politician, every agi- 
tator who has aimed at the re-establishment of the legislative autonomy of Ireland, 
at repeal of the Act of Union, has found a following more or less numerous, but 



1885.] NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. 705 

ardent and convinced. Although under the Act of Union the material and moral 
condition of Ireland has been improved, afthough the Catholics have been emanci- 
pated and the farmers lifted up, although Irishmen have sat in the English Parlia- 
ment and directed the councils of the crown, it makes no difference ; the Irish 
people still cherish the memory of their national legislature, they ever hear the 
echo of those generous voices that had sometimes glorified that melancholy assem- 
bly. It would seem as if their orators were robbed from them by being forced to 
enter the Parliament of the United Kingdom, as it would seem that they were 
robbed of the ashes of Grattan when they were laid beneath the stones of West- 
minster." 

It is plain from the above passage where M. Herv gets his 
history. The apologists of Pitt, Macaulay at the head of them ) 
defend the Act of Union by a tissue of the most unworthy mis- 
statements, their chief contention being that the Irish Parliament 
was a thoroughly obnoxious assembly, and that it was an act of 
wise and even splendid statesmanship to get rid of it. This is 
not the place to examine the character of the Irish Parliament or 
the quality of its abolishers' statesmanship. But it may be re- 
marked that it would be a task which would well repay one who 
would undertake it, and be especially timely now, to make a 
careful comparison of the work and progress of the Parliament 
which Grattan founded and which Pitt destroyed with that of the 
Parliament which immediately preceded it in England and which 
was not abolished but reformed. Of that Parliament Wai- 
pole's Macaulay himself has written : " A large proportion of 
the members had absolutely no motive to support any Adminis- 
tration except their own interest in the lowest sense of the word. 
Under these circumstances the country could be governed only 
by corruption. . . . We might as well accuse the poor Lowland 
farmers who paid blackmail to Rob Roy of corrupting the virtue 
of the Highlanders as accuse Sir R. Walpole of corrupting the 
virtue of Parliament."* Yet it is that Parliament which, by the 
continuous application of reform, has been metamorphosed into 
the magnificent legislature that manages the affairs of the British 
Empire to-day, and that, when it provides for the transaction of 

* See Burke's Thoughts on the Present Discontents, The Letters of Junius, Walpole'S 
Memoirs of George III., C lies ter field's Letters to his Son, The Grenville Papers, The Annual 
Register, for some accounts of the corruption of the English Parliament at this period. It cost 
the Duke of Portland and Sir James Lowther ^40,000 apiece to contest Westmoreland and 
Cumberland in the elections of 1768, and at the same election each of the parties who contested 
the town of Northampton expended ^30,000. The borough of Sudbury openly advertised 
itself for sale to the highest bidder. " In 1774, out of the 513 members who sat for England 
and Wales, 234 represented less than 11,500 voters, and as many as 56 about 500 voters. Of 
these 56 members no one had a constituency of 38 electors, and 6 had constituencies of not 
more than 3 " (Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century). 
VOL. XLI. 45 



706 NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. [Aug., 

its Irish business by a branch in Dublin, and submits to some 
further modifications, will be perhaps the most perfect representa- 
tive assembly ever evolved from a constitution. It is possible to 
show that the Irish Parliament might have been steadily re- 
formed into the useful Dublin branch of this legislature, instead 
of having been violently and feloniously wiped out by a " states- 
manship " that neglected to provide for the discharge of the 
functions it used to fulfil. 

For our present purpose, however, we need only note that 
M. Herv6 has fallea into error on a few points. He believes 
the Irish Parliament was wholly useless as well as corrupt. To 
disabuse him of that idea we refer him to Macpherson's Annals 
of Commerce, to Lord Sheffield's Observations on the Trade of 
Ireland, and to Grattan's speeches, where he will find some 
account of the energy, enterprise, and attention with which the 
Irish Parliament fostered the industrial interests of the country, 
and of the extraordinary material progress made by Ireland from 
the date of her legislative independence. Lord Clare, speaking 
of the period between 1782 and 1798, in a pamphlet published in 
the latter year, said : " There is not a nation on the habitable 
globe which has advanced in cultivation and commerce, in agri- 
culture and manufactures, with the same rapidity in the same 
period." 

M. Herv6 follows Macaulay and other English writers and 
politicians in justifying the suppression of the Irish Parliament. 
Let us quote on this head one of the most respectable of modern 
historians. Mr. Lecky, in his Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland 
says : " There are few things more discreditable to English poli- 
tical literature than the tone of palliation, or even of eulogy, that 
is usually adopted towards the authors of this transaction. 
Scarcely any element or aggravation of political immorality was 
wanting, and the term honor, if it be applied to such men as Cas- 
tlereagh or Pitt, ceases to have any real meaning in politics. 
Whatever may be thought of the abstract merits of the arrange- 
ment, the Union, as it was carried, was a crime of the deepest 
turpitude a crime which, by imposing, with every circum- 
stance of infamy, a new form of government on a reluctant 
and protesting nation, has vitiated the whole course of Irish 
opinion." 

As to the political wisdom of the Union, it need only be re- 
marked that a tree is known by its fruits, and it is a poor proof of 
the statesmanship of the destroyers of the Irish legislature that 
responsible English ministers of both parties to-day are declaring 



1885.] NEW FRENCH VIE w OF THE IRISH QUESTION, 707 

that some kind of substitute for the defunct assembly must soon 
be provided.* 

To M. Herve's allusion to the " religious intolerance " of the 
Irish Parliament sufficient answer has been given already in 
dealing- with the question of Catholic Emancipation. 

M. Herve's views on the legislative Union being such as we 
have seen, his ideas on the Home Rule movement of to day are 
all the more remarkable and significant. He admits that the 
great majority of the Irish people are in favor of a reasonable 
measure of Home Rule. But he sees only two hypotheses in 
which there is a chance of their dreams being realized. It would 
never become a question, he rightly says, of absolute separation 
between England and Ireland ; but he sees the possibility of an 
arrangement analogous to that which exists to-day between Aus- 
tria and Hungary. " England, in presence of certain European 
complications, of certain dangers from outside, might find it 
necessary to appease Ireland at any price, as Austria in a similar 
situation wished to appease Hungary at any price." 

His second hypothesis is more natural : 

" The British Empire tends more and more to become a vast confederation of 
quasi-independent states. The colonies of North America, those of Australia, and 
others still, have loCal parliaments and responsible ministers. May not a day come 
when, to maintain a certain unity in this vast empire, it will be necessary to super- 
impose on all the separated parliaments a common parliament in which each of 
them would be represented in due proportion ? In a confederation of this class 
Ireland might be treated like Canada or New South Wales ; Ireland might have its 
separate parliament while being represented in the imperial assembly. We need 
not despair, then, of seeing ended some day, by a legislative act, this long conflict 
between two countries which nature intended to live in unity, but which differences 
of race, of religion, and of custom have kept for canturies in a state of war." 

This is a rather costive admission of the inevitableness 01 
Home Rule, but it is nevertheless an admission ; and, coming from 
one who views the prospect with such reluctant eyes, and since 
the Irish do not ask for more than this dispassionate foreigner 
outlines as bound to come, it is an admission of importance. The 
mass of the Irish people have not at any time within the century 
demanded separation from England or dismemberment of the 
British Empire. Another foreign student of the Irish question, 
one who with the eyes of an American has made his studies on 
the spot, Mr. James Redpath, has declared in THE CATHOLIC 

* See recent speeches of Sir Charles Dilke, Mr. Chamberlain, and the Earl of Rosebery, 
members of the late Gladstone cabinet, and of Lord Randolph Churchill, Secretary of Stale for 
India in the cabinet of the Marquis of Salisbury. 



708 NEW FRENCH VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION. [Aug., 

WORLD * that it is his belief that " given Home Rule to Ireland 
and the self-ownership of the soil, a large majority of the Irish 
people of to-day would prefer to remain, as Canada remains, a self- 
governed member of the British Empire." In fact, it is held by 
many Irish and English thinkers to-day that the thing most neces- 
sary to the stability of the empire, the one thing needed to bind 
the two nations together in a bond of real union, is exactly what 
the Irish demand, liberty to manage Irish affairs in Ireland, while 
leaving imperial affairs to the imperial legislature an arrange- 
ment similar to that which works with such smooth and grand ef- 
fect in the United States between the States' constitutions and the 
national government, and which England has already carried out 
in regard to New South Wales, New Zealand, Canada, and nearly 
a dozen other of her dependencies. Grattan, in that prophetic 
speech of his, the last delivered by him in the Irish Parliament, 
warned the empire that its greatest danger would be begun 
when it had forsworn this policy. " The cry of the connection 
will not in the end avail against the~ principles of liberty," he 
said. " Connection is a wise and profound policy, but connection 
without an Irish Parliament is connection without its own prin- 
ciple. . . . Identification is a solid and imperial maxim, necessary 
for the preservation of freedom, necessary for that of empire ; 
but without union of hearts, with a separate government and 
without a separate Parliament, identification is extinction, is dis- 
honor, is conquest not identification." The events of the cen- 
tury have vindicated Grattan's wisdom, and it is his view, with, 
of course, essential modifications, that is now held by most rea- 
sonable Englishmen and Irishmen, and that seems likely to in- 
spire the imperial legislation of the near future. We may, there- 
fore, hope, as M. Henre" does, to see this strife ended at last and 
soon, and, under Providence, the union of the Celt and Saxon 
consummated, typifying, as it will, so glorious a synthesis in hu- 
manity and in religion ; and we may hope to see realized the sub- 
lime vision of the most illustrious Englishman, the most illustri- 
ous Catholic of his age, John Henry Newman, whose rhythmic 
eloquence sounds like the utterance of a seer : " I look towards a 
land both old and young old in its Christianity, young in its 
promise of the future ; a nation which received grace before the 
Saxon came to Britain, and which has never questioned it ; a 
Church which comprehends in its history the rise and fall of 
Canterbury and York, which Augustin and Paulinus found, and 
Pole and Fisher left behind them. I contemplate a people which 

* April, 1885. 



1885.] THE REPUBLIC AND SAINT GENEvfEVE. 709 

has had a long- night and will have an inevitable day. I am turn- 
ing my eyes towards a hundred years to come, and I dimly see 
the Ireland I am gazing on become the road of passage and union 
between the two hemispheres, and the centre of the world. I 
see its inhabitants rival Belgium in populousness, France in 
vigor, and Spain in enthusiasm." 



THE REPUBLIC AND SAINT GENEVlfeVE. 

BY a recent decree of the President of the French Republic, 
duly approved by the Chamber of Deputies, " the Pantheon is 
restored to its original use." 

What is the Pantheon and what was its original use ? The 
question involves a point of law and equity which we should not 
fear to submit to a non-Catholic tribunal. We do not wish, for 
the present, to consider its religious aspect, but, in order to give 
a true history of the case, we must search the records, as a lawyer 
does who wishes to establish a perfect title to some property, and 
in doing this we travel back to the earliest days of the French 
monarchy and we find the original title vested in a saint, a wo- 
man. Our readers will pardon us the apparent digression of a 
brief sketch of this saint; it has an important bearing on the 
question at issue. 

When we study the lives of the saints we are struck by the 
variety as well as the beauty of the examples presented for our 
imitation. Here are martyrs giving proofs of fortitude and 
courage which put to the blush the deeds of far-famed heroes ; 
the holy eloquence of this one has converted nations ; another 
has devoted his days to the service of the poor and sick ; these 
have condemned themselves to a life of self-imposed penance, 
while those others have affronted the world, defied the powerful, 
and protected the weak. This saint was a ruler of men, seated on 
a throne, yet so pure of heart as to merit the immortal crown ; that 
other was born in the humblest walks of life, he lived in obscu- 
rity and died in glory. While the faithful honor all these bless- 
ed protectors, the popular mind, in our Catholic countries, is often 
attracted to some particular saint, whose name becomes a house- 
hold word, and whose true history is soon lost in the numerous 
legends invented by the popular fancy. And yet " invented " is 
a word that will hardly apply to these legends. There is always 



7io THE REPUBLIC AND SAINT GENEVIEVE. [Aug., 

a true foundation, but as the story is repeated by generation 
after generation it is gradually altered, until, magnified and dis- 
torted, it passes for ever into the domain of legends. No saint, 
perhaps, has obtained a greater hold on the popular mind than 
J3t. Genevieve, the patroness of Paris. Innumerable are the 
legends some very beautiful, all touching to which her simple 
story has given rise. That story might be told in a few words : 
the power of prayer illustrated by humble faith and a pure 
heart. 

Genevieve was born in 419, at Nanterre, a small village near 
Paris. Her parents were poor, and when quite a child she tended 
their small flock of sheep on the shores of the Seine. Every 
one noticed her for the candid expression of her innocent face 
and her extraordinary piety. At ten years old she declared her 
intention of giving herself to the Lord when she would be grown 
up. It was no whim, but a vocation. St. Germain, Bishop of 
Auxerre, was so struck with the precocious intelligence and vir- 
tue of the child that he blessed her and consecrated her to God, 
young as she was. 

The child continued to lead a simple, pious life near her pa- 
rents until their death, which occurred about the time she reach- 
ed girlhood. She Distributed her small inheritance among the 
poor, and went to live in Paris with a saintly woman, her god- 
mother. Here she gave herself up entirely to devotional prac- 
tices, leaving her humble abode only to attend church and visit 
the poor. Ere long the people came to designate her as " The 
Saint " ; the supernatural light which enabled her often to fore- 
see and predict events was, in their eyes, evidently a divine gift. 

An important event happened which engraved the name of 
the humble shepherdess in the history of her country. Attila, the 
barbarian, whom the terrified populations called " The Scourge 
of God," had invaded the Gallic country at the head of an army 
of six hundred thousand men. Wherever he passed death and 
desolation marked his track. Paris trembled for her fate ; the 
bishop ordered public prayers, and the frightened inhabitants 
made preparations to leave the threatened city. Genevieve had 
remained in prayer in her cell. Suddenly she presented herself 
to the crowd of weeping women assembled at the church door; 
she told them to be comforted, that God had listened to the sup- 
plications of his servant. Attila is going to change his course ; 
Paris will be spared the presence of those barbarian cohorts. 
The glad tidings spread quickly, and the inhabitants, trusting in 
the promise, returned to their usual occupations. 



1885.] THE REPUBLIC AND SAINT GENEVIEVE. 711 

But if the words of the saint restored calm and confidence 
to those troubled minds, the publicity given to them came very 
near causing her death. Everybody did not share the same vene- 
ration in which the virgin of Nanterre was held by her poor 
neighbors. She was charged with treason ; it was assumed that 
she wished to delude the Parisians with false hopes the more 
easily to betray them. She was a spy, a witch ; she should be 
tied to the stake and burned. A formidable riot broke out riot 
is a Parisian institution as old as their city and the infuriated 
populace rushed towards the humble house on the hill where 
Genevieve had her cell. They reached it, and suddenly the 
death-cries were hushed, the lifted arms fell powerless. Amid 
the profound silence a sweet voice was heard singing the praise 
of the Almighty. Genevieve, ignorant of danger, was singing 
her evening hymn. The rioters fell on their knees. When the 
song ended they departed in silence. 

The saint's prophecy was soon verified. Attila had suddenly 
changed his route and moved on Orleans ; then he fell back and 
took his position on the plains of Chalons, where the Roman gen- 
eral, Aetius, defeated him. 

Genevieve's renown continued increasing. Five or six years 
later the Frank Merovig took Paris from the Romans after a 
long siege. The country around had been completely devastated, 
and the Parisians were suffering all the horrors of famine. Gene- 
vieve ascended the Seine in a boat, and went from city to city 
along the river, soliciting aid. She returned with eleven boats 
laden with wheat. She had again saved Paris by her works, as 
she had saved it before by her prayers. 

It is not to be wondered that the people venerated her and 
felt her influence in all things. This happy influence extended 
further. Merovig, the victorious chief, his son Chilperic, and, 
above all, Clovis, the first Christian king, were moved by it to 
great and good deeds. Clovis' queen, Clotilda, whom the 
church honors as one of the saints, was the friend of Genevieve. 
This pious queen and her glorious husband, guided by the coun- 
sels of the village girl of Nanterre, did much good, distributed 
abundant alms, and erected fine churches. 

Genevieve died A.D. 512, aged ninety-three years. She was 
buried in the church of SS. Peter and Paul, which King Clovis 
had built at her instance, and where he had been laid in his royal 
tomb in the preceding year. The many miracles worked by the 
saint after her death led to the name of this church being changed 
to that of " Church of St. Genevieve." This was in 631. Her 



712 THE REPUBLIC AND SAINT GENEVIEVE. [Aug., 

body was exhumed and enclosed in a rich casket, the handiwork 
of St. Eloi, the goldsmith-minister of King Dagobert I. St. 
Genevieve was adopted as the patron saint and guardian of the 
city of Paris and, by extension, of the kingdom of France. In 
1242 her relics were transferred to a still more magnificent 
shrine, all studded with precious gems, the offerings made at 
different times by kings and queens who had sought the inter- 
cession of the saint. 

The veneration in which these relics were held was not con- 
fined to royalty. It obtained among all ranks. It still obtains, 
for it has survived the changes and revolutions of ages. The 
Gauls have become Franks, the Franks Frenchmen ; dynasties 
have succeeded dynasties ; the blessings of peace and the horrors 
of war have alternated, barbarism and civilization have struggled 
for the mastery : each and all have left their imprint on ancient 
Lutetia and helped to make it that wonderful combination of good 
and evil modern Paris. The memory of the chieftains and he- 
roes, of the kings and emperors, who were actors in those great 
dramas of the past has faded away from the minds of the people, 
but the saintly village girl of Nanterre is not forgotten. The 
immense throng which assembles at her shrine on her feast-day, 
January 3 and it was as great this year as at any other is a con- 
soling proof not only that popular gratitude remembers Gene- 
vieve, but that a large portion of the people of Paris cling to the 
faith of their fathers. " They cling to their superstitions ! " the 
scoffers will say. " It is this very sort of thing we want to do 
away with. Enlightened by the science of a new civilization, 
man's reason rejects such mummeries." That may be, but, for 
our part, we confess that to the " science " which sends the Com- 
munists on a mission of arson and murder we should prefer the 
" superstitious ignorance " which leads the people to St. Gene- 
vieve's shrine. 

In 1757 the old church of St. Genevieve threatened ruin. 
As, moreover, it projected beyond the line of the Rue Clovis, 
Louis XV., instead of having it repaired, decided that a new 
church of St. Genevieve must be built. The architect Souf- 
flot drew the plan, and the king laid the corner-stone in 1764. 
Soufflot died in 1784, leaving his work unfinished. It was con- 
tinued after his plans, and finally completed in 1790, but in the 
meantime the Revolution of 1789 had broken out ; the building 
was not consecrated. The religious emblems used in decorating 
the interior were removed, and, by a decree of the Constituent 
Assembly, dated April 4, 1791, the edifice received the name of 



1885.] THE REPUBLIC AND SAINT GENEVIEVE. 713 

Panthdon Frangais, and was destined for the burial-place of such 
citizens as had rendered some great service to the state. An in- 
scription in letters of gold was placed in the triangular frontal 
which projects from the centre of the portico : Aux Grands 
Hommes la Patrie Reconnaissante. 

Thus was St. Genevieve despoiled of the monument erected 
in her honor, and whose conception has placed Soufflot among 
the first architects of his or any other time. The best judges de- 
clare it second to only three sacred edifices in the world : the 
church of St. Mary in Florence, St. Peter of Rome, and St. Paul's 
in London. But this spoliation was nothing in comparison with 
what was to follow. In 1793 the madness of the Revolutionists 
had reached its paroxysm : they had transformed the ancient 
church of Notre Dame into the temple of the " goddess Reason " ; 
they now proceeded to break open the tombs of the kings and 
saints, and to desecrate their ashes. The relics of St. Genevieve, 
which had been transferred to the church of St. Stephen on the 
Mount when the old church of SS. Peter and Paul's was torn 
down, were carried off by the mob. The precious casket, robbed 
of its gems, was sent to the mint to be melted, and the greater 
portion of the bones of this daughter of the people who had 
twice saved Paris, of this gentle virgin who for nearly a whole 
century had loved, served, and helped the Parisians, was cast into 
the fire amid the ribald jests of the populace. A few of these 
precious relics, however, were saved by pious hands and hidden 
away. In 1803, when persecution had ceased to threaten the ser- 
vants of God and the doors of the churches were thrown open to 
the faithful, these relics were brought out from their hiding-place 
and deposited with solemn ceremonies in the church of St. 
Stephen on the Mount. 

The question now arose : Had the Constituent Assembly of 
1791 the right to change the destination of a sacred though 
unconsecrated edifice? The churches, which had been put to va- 
rious uses during the stormy period of the Revolution, were re- 
stored to divine worship. Should an exception be made in the 
case of the Pantheon ? The council of the Emperor Napoleon 
thought otherwise, and in 1806 an imperial decree restored the 
Pantheon to its " original use " to wit, a place of worship mak- 
ing it at the same time a sort of French Westminster Abbey by 
designating it as a fit monument wherein the ashes of France's 
most illustrious sons should be deposited. The Bourbons re- 
turned. Louis XVIII. made the Pantheon exclusively a church 
under the protection of St. Genevieve. The remains of Rous- 



714 THE REPUBLIC AND SAINT GENEVIEVE. [Aug., 

seau, Voltaire, and Mirabeau, which had been placed in the crypt, 
were transferred to the public burying-ground. Those of Marat 
had already been thrown into the common sewer. In 1830 the 
government of Louis Philippe again changed the church into a 
Pantheon. The inscription was replaced, and the sculptor David 
(d'Angers) added the admirable basso-relievo which adorns the 
frontal. The interior decorations were respected ; the celebrated 
" Apotheosis of St. Genevieve," painted in the cupola by Gros, 
remained, an eloquent protest against the decree. In December, 
1852, Napoleon III. annulled the decree of 1830 and gave back 
the Pantheon to the church. Now God is once more driven 
out of the ill-fated monument. The Archbishop of Paris pro- 
tested in vain. The clergy were given twenty-four hours' 
notice to quit ; the huge cross, sawed off at its base, was 
lowered from the top of the elegant lantern which crowns the 
dome, and the Pantheon was ready to receive the remains 
of Victor Hugo. Eventful is the history of the Pantheon- 
church ! 

The question of right stands where it was in 1791, and the 
action of the three governments which recognized the rights of 
the church can have no weight with the present government, for 
none of the three were republican. The recent decree, there- 
fore, should cause little surprise. Mirabeau said once : " In order 
that France should cease to be monarchical she must be first 
uncatltolicized" It seems that the leaders of the present repub- 
lican government have accepted and are endeavoring to carry 
out Mirabeau's idea. They are encouraged in this belief by the 
royalists themselves, who have very improperly identified the 
church with their cause. We say improperly, because while 
they have not benefited themselves, they have done much harm 
to the church. "Ancient France," says a French writer, "was 
the creation of the kings and bishops ; she was born and she 
grew under this double influence. The monarchical idea and the 
Christian idea have been so well mingled, and, if I dare use this 
figure, so well kneaded together, that to separate them has be- 
come an impossibility." Here is the fatal mistake of both royal- 
ists and republicans linking in one common fate that which is 
of the world and perishable with that which is of God and im- 
mortal. Christian civilization made Christian monarchs of bar- 
barian chiefs, and the church whatever her adversaries say to 
the contrary while upholding the authority of the kings, stood 
between them and their subjects as a powerful mediator. Hence 
their cause was deemed inseparable, and when the great Revolu- 



1885.] THE REPUBLIC AND SAINT GENEVIEVE. 715 

tion came the terrorists who had beheaded the king hunted down 
the priests and sent them to the guillotine. 

The axe that struck off Louis XVI. 's head sapped the foun- 
dations of the throne. Kingly authority has never recovered 
its prestige. The growth of liberal ideas has been steady in 
France, despite her various experiments in monarchical and 
imperial rule. The era of kings is past, and it might be safe to 
say that the Republic will endure, if it was not bent on following 
a suicidal course which must fatally end in anarchy, the precursor 
of Csesarism. No people can live without religious faith. Civil 
and penal laws do not suffice to bind men together ; both rest on 
the moral law which has its inspiration in religion. The men 
who compose the French parliament are not all infidels ; proba- 
bly the majority of them have no particular animosity towards 
the church; they are respectable heads of families who are very 
glad to see their children make their First Communion, and who 
don't grudge their wives the right to go to confession ; certainly, 
few of them can be called fools, and yet they are blindly aiding 
the disintegration of society by their votes. They are beset by 
two fears : one, well founded, is the fear that the anarchists may 
overthrow the lawful government; the other, groundless, that 
the clericals will restore the monarchy. Not daring to proceed 
with vigor against the anarchists, they try to conciliate them, 
and their anti-church measures are but a sop to Cerberus. They 
must keep up the majority to hold the clericals in check. What 
do they hope to accomplish by this dangerous policy ? Simply 
to gain time, to let the republican idea take root in the minds and 
customs of the people. They lose sight of this inevitable conse- 
quence : that by demoralizing the people they make them unfit 
for liberty. Theirs is a misplaced love of country. 

It is surprising that these French republicans, who profess 
a great admiration for American institutions, have failed to see 
that religion is a vital element in the prosperity and strength of 
our country. They might also have learned this other great 
truth that the Catholic Church is not identified with any par- 
ticular form of government. Her mission is to save souls and 
reform morals, not to direct the political opinions of her sons. 
Christ, who came among the poor and lowly to free them from 
the bondage of sin, taught them respect for established autho- 
rity. It was not the clergy of Paris who changed the form of 
government half a dozen times in less than a century. The Pari- 
sians made their revolutions, and every change found the church 
unchanged, ready to console, to pray, to bless. Had she acted 



7 1 6 NE w FUBLICA TIONS. [Aug. , 

otherwise, had she refused to recognize the monarchy of yes- 
terday, the empire of to-day, or the republic of to-morrow, she 
would not have been true to her mission. Kings and presidents, 
citizens and subjects, are words without meaning for her ; she 
sees in them only human creatures with souls to save. Until the 
French republicans learn this they cannot found a stable govern- 
ment. When they proscribe religion they play into the hands of 
the anarchists ; they deliver up to them the vast army of poor, 
suffering men, robbed of the last hope that helped them bear 
their trials ; with no God to fear and love, no hereafter with its 
reward or punishment, they will be docile instruments with 
which to re-enact, with still greater success, the hideous scenes 
of the Commune. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

AN INGLORIOUS COLUMBUS ; or, Evidence that Hwui Shan and a Party 
of Buddhist Monks from Afghanistan discovered America in the fifth 
century A.D. By Edward P. Vining. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 

Mr. Vining, we think, has not been well advised in the choice he has 
made of the first title of his work. Reflection, of course, will make it clear 
that the words "inglorious Columbus "are used in the sense of the in- 
glorious Milton of Gray's Elegy ; but we are afraid that, the meaning not 
being obvious, the idea derived by many from the title will be that the 
work is written mainly with a view to depreciate and detract from the 
glory of one whom all agree in holding in honor, and even veneration. 
Should this be the case it would give a very wrong impression of a work 
which is composed in an entirely different spirit, and which is a scholar- 
ly attempt to prove the antecedent discovery in the fifth century by Bud- 
dhist monks a thing which, whether true or not, leaves Columbus in all 
his glory and renown. Mr. Vining's object cannot be better described 
than in his own words : "There is among the records of China an account 
of a Buddhist priest who in the year 499 A.D. reached China and stated 
that he had returned from a trip to a country lying an immense distance 
east. ... It is the object of this work to show that the land reached by 
Hwui ShSn was Mexico, and that his account, in nearly all its details, as to 
the route, the direction, the distance, the plants of the country, the people, 
their manners, customs, etc., is true of Mexico and of no other country of 
the world. ... It is true that there are a few difficulties to be surmounted, 
but the author believes that he has succeeded in removing a number over 
which some of his predecessors have stumbled, and that the few that re- 
main cannot outweigh the immense volume that is presented as to the 
general truth of the account." This evidence consists, in the first place, of 
translations of all that has been written on the subject, so far as Mr. Vin- 
ing is aware, in French and German, together with a statement of what has 






1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 717 

been written by English writers, with the exception of Mr. Leland, to whose 
works Mr. Vining refers his readers. Then follows the original Chinese 
account, with all the translations hitherto made and a new one by Mr. 
Vining. Afterwards the statements made by Hwui Shan are compared 
one by one with all that can be learned of Mexico prior to the Spanish 
conquest. There follows an examination of the evidence for the existence 
among the Mexicans of traditions of such a visit, and of -the claims of 
Japan to be the country referred to by Hwui Shan. It would not be showing 
the respect due to Mr. Vining's long labors and their worthy outcome for 
us to give in this notice what must, from the necessity of the case, be a 
hastily-formed judgment on the question whether he has proved his thesis 
or not. What we can say is that he has adduced in support of it a mass of 
evidence which it will be the duty of all students of American history 
carefully to examine ; and whatever conclusion they may arrive at on this 
point, all will agree that Mr. Vining has produced a work which does 
honor to American research and will foster that love for the history of this 
continent which all Americans ought to have. There is an excellent index, 
and exact references are given for all statements made. We are sorry, 
for one thing, that we cannot enter into Mr. Vining's glorification of the 
early Buddhists so fully as he would wish : if he had kept to Sir John 
Mandeville's statement of the case he would have kept nearer at once to 
Catholic theology and the truth. 

THE HISTORY OF ST. MONICA. By M. 1'Abbe Bougaud, Vicar-General of 
Orleans. Translated from the French by Rev. Anthony Farley, St. 
Monica's Church, Jamaica, L. I. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 

The lives of the saints are the object-lessons by means of which the 
Holy Spirit teaches us the maxims of the Gospel. The life of St. Monica 
teaches us to be patient with the sins of those we love, and to pray to God 
with unflagging confidence through many years of the darkest discourage- 
ment. It' teaches the mothers of unruly children that by their prayers and 
good example the very worst child may become a saint. " I would relate 
her story," says the author, "for the consolation of so many Christian 
mothers who weep to-day, as they wept of old," over the vice and unbelief 
of their sons. Confidence in God, perseverance in prayer, magnanimous 
forgiveness of injury, true love as woman and as mother, are taught no- 
where, outside of inspiration, more vividly and pathetically than in the life, 
sufferings, and triumph of St. Monica. 

Abb6 Bougaud has done his work in a learned and very devotional and 
none the less popular way. 

MISTAKES OF MODERN INFIDELS; or, Evidences of Christianity. By 
Rev. George R. Northgraves, Diocese of London, Ont., Canada. De- 
troit : Free Press Printing-House. 

This book contains a complete refutation of Ingersoll's objections to 
Christianity, as well as the chief objections of Voltaire, Paine, and others 
of their stamp. 

While showing the inconsistency of Ingersoll, the author brings out 
the perfect consistency of the truth. To the absurdities of this pretended 
philosopher he opposes genuine reasoning. The book is well written and 



7 1 8 NEW PUB LIC A TIONS, [Aug. , 

can be easily understood by any reader. Books of controversy of this 
Character have a most important place at the present time. They are use- 
ful to believing Christians, and often necessary to reclaim those of weak 
faith. We are glad to see this book in paper covers. It should be within 
the reach of all. It deserves to be a popular book. 

A MANUAL OF SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Being an Analysis of the Historical 
Books of the Old Testament. By the Rev. W. J. B. Richards, D.D., 
Oblate of St. Charles, Inspector of Schools in the Diocese of West- 
minster. London : Burns & Oates ; New York : The Catholic Publica- 
tion Society Co. 

Of all the Bible histories which we have seen this is one of the most 
complete and systematic. The sacred events are given with accuracy and 
their significance pointed out clearly. What we especially admire is the 
care which the author has taken to point out the Old-Testament types of 
our Lord and of his teaching. The proper names are given according to 
the Douay version, and the dates are those adopted in recent editions of 
the Douay Bible. The most important genealogies are given and valuable 
synopses of the chief events of each period. Dr. Richards' work is most 
useful for schools, academies, and colleges, and is also an excellent book 
for all who privately read the Sacred Scriptures. 

WOMEN OF CATHOLICITY. By Anna T. Sadlier. New York, Cincinnati, 
and St. Louis: Benziger Bros. 1885. 

Miss Sadlier has been singularly fortunate in her choice of examples of 
"women of Catholicity." For a book chiefly intended for American Catho- 
lics hardly a happier selection could be made than the half-dozen illustrious 
women to whom Miss Sadlier devotes her six charming memoirs. The 
chief nationalities that go to make up the American population are repre- 
sented in the names of Margaret O'Carroll, an Irish princess of the fif- 
teenth century ; Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain ; Margaret Roper, Sir 
Thomas More's daughter; Marie de 1'Incarnation, Foundress of the Ursu- 
lines of Quebec ; Marguerite Bourgeoys, Foundress of the Congregation of 
Notre Dame, Montreal ; and Ethan Allen's daughter, the first American 
nun all the nationalities, with two notable exceptions. We should have 
liked to have seen one example from the many noble women who, without 
attaining the qualities of saintship, have added a glory to German Catho- 
licity, and one from such daughters of Italy, whose name is legion, with 
Vittoria Colonna at their head. But this is really no complaint ; and to 
gratify this wish, besides, might have made too large a book. Miss Sadlier 
writes with a good deal of literary skill, and she brings sound erudition to 
her task. Particularly engaging is her account of Margaret O'Carroll, 
that high-born Irishwoman to whom D'Arcy McGee devoted one of his 
ringing .ballads : 

" O bards and bardsmen far and near, hers was the name of names, 
The lady fair of Offaly, the flower of Leinster dames." 

We pity the young woman who could not read this book with more 
pleasure than a novel, nor draw inspiration from it that would make her 
the better daughter, the better wife, or the better mother. 



1885.] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 7 1 9 

LECTURES DELIVERED AT A SPIRITUAL RETREAT. Edited by a Member of 
the Order of Mercy, authoress of the Life of Catherine McAuley, etc. 
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London : Burns & 
Dates. 

An excellent little book to assist religious or others during a season of 
recollection. Here are treated those eternal topics which never become 
commonplace ; here life's aims are shown plainly and with devout unction. 
These Lectures are fitted for points of meditation or as aids to priests or 
others who may be engaged in assisting religious communities or pious 
societies in their annual spiritual exercises. 

MARY IN THE GOSPELS ; or, Lectures on the History of Our Blessed Lady 
as recorded by the Evangelists. By Very Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, 
D.D., Provost of Birmingham. Second edition. London : Burns & 
Oates; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1885. 

This is a new edition of one of those good books which are well fitted 
to place in the hands of these who make their appeal to the " Bible only." 
For here we have all the Catholic doctrine concerning Our Lady proved 
by this process. It is well worth the perusal of Catholics also, for it will 
help one to strengthen himself in his position and in devotion to the Mo- 
ther of God. 

SONGS AND SONNETS, by Maurice Francis Egan ; and CARMINA, by Conde 
Benoist Fallen. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1885. 

Mr. Egan's chaste and beautiful Muse is no stranger to us; and" we are 
glad, for the sake of those at the other side, to see her fame has spread 
across the Atlantic. In the dozen pieces in this little volume sounds the 
music of the true poet. If we miss in Mr. Egan's verses a certain fire which 
stirs the blood, we have what is the higher function of poetry a con- 
stant suggestiveness to high and sublimated thought, as well as some 
wonderful poetic insights. There has seldom been a better criticism passed 
upon a poet than that noble conceit by which Mr. Egan elucidates the 
blending of the Christian and the pagan in Maurice de Guerin : 

" He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sighed, 
Till earth and heaven met within his heart : 
As if Theocritus in Sicily 
Had come upon the Figure crucified 
And lost his gods in deep, Christ-given rest." 

Mr. Fallen's seventeen carmina seem to be the utterances of a meta- 
physical lover; and if she be aniearthly being they must be very grati- 
fying to the person to whom they are addressed. They are expressed in 
pure and often poetical diction and set in faultless metres ; and, on the 
whole, as the work of a young poet, they give promise of considerable lite- 
rary capacity. 

VAPID VAPORINGS. By Justin Thyme. Notre Dame, Ind. ; Scholastic 

Publishing House. 1885. 

The author of Vapid Vaporings is a humorist, 
genuine flavor of its own. It is a sunny, winning hni 
ment of boyish fun might be said to predominate, only 
by another quality wit. In reading this book, whichV$e\ 
without being tired, we met suggestions of several qu: 
Leigh Hunt's, of Tom Hood's, of Dr. Holmes', of Bref 




720 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Aug., 1885. 

Thackeray's. But they were only suggestions the author's quality is new 
and of its own class. Of course, since the book was " mainly written for 
the students of Notre Dame University " (where the author seems to be a 
professor), there is much in it of so local an interest as not to be apprecia- 
ble to the general public. But there are numerous pieces, from the first, 
"An Undesired Prefix," in which the vain attempt to flee from the title of 
" Professor " is described, to the last, an " Italian operetta " in celebration 
of a certain historical episode connected with a little hatchet, which would 
make the reputation of a comic journal. In a department called " Exem- 
plifications of Style " a poem on " Poetic License " is capital, and nothing 
could be happier in its way than " The Commentator," an extract from a 
work of the dim future in which a learned antiquarian devotes two pages 
of annotations to four lines of a fragmentary poem left by the ancient 
Americans and entitled "Kathleen Mavourneen." An "exemplification of 
style " in parody of " Coming thro' the Rye " begins 

" Gumming was a temp'rance man 

When other folks were by, 
But p'rhaps you'd better not inquire 
Where Gumming threw ' the Rye.' " 

In "Chansons Physiologiques," "The Strawberry Festival" and "The 
Lady Anatomist " are better, to our view, than similar handlings of the ses- 
quipedalian language of the physiologist by Bret Harte. 

GOOSE-QUILL PAPERS. By Louise Imogen Guiney. Boston : Roberts 
Bros. 1885. 

This is a collection of quaint and desultory essays in which the author 
shows herself to be endowed in quite a remarkable degree with the gift of 
style. It is a firstling, we understand at least in prose, for the author has 
already published a volume of poetry and it is much overweighted with 
an air of bookishness, an affectation, however, which is not unnatural in a 
young lady writer hailing from Boston. By and by when Miss Guiney 
shakes off these old clothes, and, escaping from the air Bostonian, gives 
her own esprit free play, she may write something which will be very 
charming indeed. As it is, there are items in this collection " Vagabon- 
diana," " Old Haunts," " Hospitality," for example which contain many 
pretty fancies, while " A Child in Camp," in which there is least affectation, 
is an almost perfect and most touching little sketch. So that there is reason 
to look to Miss Guiney's future with expectation, and we shall do so with 
especial interest, since she is a CatholiQand daughter of the colonel of the 
old Ninth Massachusetts, the late General Patrick Guiney. Let her prove 
herself worthy of her double heritage of religion and of race ; and let her 
learn to wear her learning, not as the " Modern Athenians " wear it, but as 
all writers who know how to please have learned to wear it not like a 
burden, but like a flower. 

GOD'S WAY : MAN'S WAY. A Story of Bristol. By Henrietta M. K. Brow- 
nell. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London : 
Burns & Oates. 

A very entertaining novel indeed. The authoress has succeeded in in- 
culcating a moral lesson well worthy the literary art which she has brought 
to the task. The book is cleverly written and shows no inconsiderable 
dramatic skill in both plot and characters. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XLI. SEPTEMBER, 1885. No. 246. 



A MEDIAEVAL STUDY OF THE TEMPERANCE 

QUESTION. 

IN Saratoga County, New York, where health-giving- water 
is so abundant, a clergyman, a lawyer, and a physician combined 
to form a temperance society in the year 1808. These represen- 
tatives of the learned professions agreed on a plan of public 
action to oppose the vice of intemperance and its attendant evils. 
In recognition of his services as a pioneer in the reform which 
they wished to extend, they elected Dr. Benjamin Rush, of 
Philadelphia, an honorary member of their society. From the 
year 1785 a treatise had been in circulation entitled An Inquiry 
into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human System. Dr. 
Rush was the author of this treatise, and, not content with giving 
his testimony as a physician, he likewise appealed to the minis- 
ters of every denomination to aid him with their influence in dis- 
seminating correct opinions concerning the abuse of intoxicating 
drinks. He recognized clearly the truth sometimes considered 
of little importance by certain physicians, viz., that man is com- 
posed of soul and body. Due attention, therefore, should be 
given to the condition of the soul in prescribing for the welfare 
of the body, especially in cases where an inordinate craving for 
stimulants is likely to become chronic by strict compliance with 
the directions of the medical adviser. 

Total abstinence as a specific remedy against the dangers of 
alcohol in all its forms was first endorsed by a convention of 
temperance delegates at Saratoga Springs, New York, in the 

Copyright. Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1883. 



722 A MEDIAEVAL STUDY OF [Sept., 

year 1835. Previous to that date those who engaged in the tem- 
perance reform had adopted partial abstinence and various forms 
of restriction in the use of strong drinks. Some prominent ad- 
vocates of the movement allowed themselves the use of wine 
while fiercely denouncing the social usages which almost com- 
pelled men to take frequent draughts of New England rum. 
During fifty years the treatise issued by Dr. Rush in 1785 was 
probably regarded as a sort of guide-book in the study of the 
temperance question. From a medical standpoint he had pointed 
out the same evils that others had discovered by personal expe- 
rience and the teaching of common sense. The societies formed 
before the new departure in favor of total abstinence had as their 
chief object to secure a reasonable moderation in the use of 
liquor. Some of the members of these organizations were very 
enlightened men ; not a few were lawyers who lived to see the re- 
sults of their deliberations embodied in the excise laws of various 
States. Slowly but surely the evidence was accumulated which 
convinced them that the state has a duty to perform not only by 
branding intemperance as a crime punishable by law, but also 
by exercising a salutary control over the agents that operate 
against sobriety. Whatever may be said concerning the defects 
of their plans, they were assuredly correct in maintaining, first, 
that the strong arm of the civil law should be wielded in defence 
of sobriety ; second, that it is possible to use stimulants with 
proper limitations, and at the same time to hate intemperance as 
a degrading vice which should be rigorously suppressed by all 
the forces of civilized society. 

The founders of the temperance movement in the United 
States probably never thought of looking into the records of the 
thirteenth century for light on the problem which occupied their 
attention. Being under the influence of Protestantism with its 
falsified history, they could scarcely be expected to search for in- 
formation on any topic in an author highly esteemed by the 
Jesuits. Even now, however, after the temperance question has 
been discussed for a century in nearly all the dialects of the 
English language, it will be interesting and profitable to ascertain 
what data had been gathered on the subject in the thirteenth 
century by the renowned scholar, St. Thomas Aquinas. This 
great man became famous as the ablest defender of the Christian 
religion during a momentous epoch ; and towards the close of 
his life he was urged to prepare a compendium which would serve 
as a summary of the lectures delivered by him in the Latin lan- 
guage. Such was the motive that led him to write his colossal 



1885.] THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 723 

book entitled the Suntma. His vast range of thought covered 
six hundred questions, divided into about three thousand " arti- 
cles," among which we find temperance, together with its specific 
form, sobriety, and its contrary vice, drunkenness.* 

" I. Temperance is treated in the 141 st question of the secunda secundce 
of the Summa. The 'question ' is divided into eight 'articles.' i. In the 
first, after three objections against its being a virtue at all, since it puts a 
restraint upon the natural desires of a man, St. Thomas shows that it is a 
virtue, since in a reasonable man it establishes such moderation as is rea- 
sonable. It puts such restraint, that is, upon the animal part of a man as 
his right reason sees fitting ; it does not restrain him from reasonable en- 
joyment, but only from such brutal enjoyment as is unworthy of his posi- 
tion as a rational being, 2. In the second ' article ' the Angelic Doctor 
shows, in answer to those who say that temperance is not a special virtue, 
but only a quality to be found in every virtue, that temperance is also a 
special and distinct virtue, as much so as fortitude, for instance. For 
while fortitude is the virtue giving a man courage to do the good that he 
dislikes doing, temperance holds a man back from doing the evil he would 
like to do. And temperance is, as it were, the beauty of all virtue ; since 
beauty consists in a thing being well proportioned, and temperance keeps 
everything in its due proportion and right measure. So temperance is itself 
a beautiful virtue, and makes all the other virtues beautiful as well. 3. In 
the third article St. Thomas shows that temperance as a virtue restrains 
the pleasures taken in things of the senses, reducing that pleasure to obedi- 
ence to reason, and helping the rational man to quell the unruly desires 
of the animal man. 4. In the fourth article he shows that it is in the sense 
of touch that the animal man principally seeks satisfaction ; that this 
se-nse is very strong in the taste for food and drink, since these are in- 
stincts of the natural man, necessary for his preservation, and so strong 
(and since man's fall so unruly) that they require constant restraint, lest 
they pass the bounds of reason. 5. In the fifth article St. Thomas shows 
that it is the pleasure of taste that temperance has principally to deal 
with a pleasure that belongs to eating and drinking, both of which may, 
by excess, injure that nature they were ordained to nourish. 6. Again, in 
the next article, we are shown that it is for our right conduct in this pre- 
sent life that temperance is first required ; that even were there no heaven 
or hell we should still be temperate, if we would live as reasonable and 
healthy men men capable of minding their own concerns and of fulfilling 
their duties towards the community in which they live. 7. Seventhly, 
temperance is a cardinal virtue, since in it that moderation which is re- 
quired in the practice of every virtue is principally found. On the re- 
straint of those pleasures most natural to us, and therefore most powerful, 
hinges the whole spiritual life ; and, as a cardinal virtue means a hinge 
virtue, or one on which other virtues hang or depend for support, so tem- 
perance, on which all virtues depend for their moderation and beauty, is 
rightly called a cardinal virtue. 8. In the eighth and last article of this 
I4ist question St. Thomas shows that the reason why temperance is such 

* This exposition of the teaching of St. Thomas recently appeared in the Irish Ecclesiasti- 
cal Record from the pen of the Rev. Arthur Ryan, of St. Patrick's College, Thurles. 



724 A MEDIEVAL STUDY OF [Sept., 

a splendid and excellent moral virtue is because it keeps a man from sins 
so brutal and debasing, and because its practice is so difficult, and therefore 
so pleasing to God. 

"So ends this question. In the following question, of four articles, are 
treated the vices opposed to temperance. 

" II. Sobriety is the subject of the I49th question of the secunda secundce. 
St. Thomas discusses the question in four articles, i. In the first he ap- 
plies the word ' sobriety ' to moderation in drink our ordinary use of the 
word and he quotes to this purpose the text from Ecclesiasticus : ' Wine 
taken with sobriety is equal life to men ; if thou drink it moderately, thou 
shalt be sober.' He says the word ' sobrius,' or ' sober,' is derived from a 
word, ' bria,' * which means a wine-measure. Ebriety is, then, the same as 
not\n a wine-measure that is, an unmeasured use of wine ; and 'sober' is 
the same as not ' ebrius,' or drunk that is, not drinking without measure 
or restraint. The word sobriety means, then, according to St. Thomas, 
drinking wine or intoxicating liquors in due measure, and he shows that 
this strict meaning of the word is the proper meaning, because it is intoxi- 
cating drink that most easily clouds the intellect and impairs the reason 
and even the bodily movements ; and, therefore, it is to the use of such 
drink that a measure should be most strictly applied the measure of so- 
briety. 2. In the second article the Angelic Doctor shows that sobriety is 
a special and distinct virtue, being opposed to the special sin of drunken- 
ness. Where there is a special sin, there must be over against it a special 
virtue. In the excessive use of intoxicants over and above that of other 
drinks, or of food, there is the special sin of depriving one's self of the use 
of reason ; to remove such a sin a special virtue is necessary and that 
virtue is sobriety. 3. In article three St. Thomas handles what is now 
known as the teetotal, or total abstinence, question. As usual, the article 
opens with objections quotations and arguments seeking to prove that 
the use of all intoxicating drink is forbidden. But St. Thomas places 
against these the advice given by St. Paul to Timothy, to drink a little 
wine for his stomach's sake; and the saying of Ecclesiasticus that ' wine 
drunk with moderation is the joy of the soul and the heart.' Then the 
saint, as he always does, gives the pith of the true doctrine in a few words, 
which in this case are of such weight that I will give them literally : 

" Although the use of wine is not, of itself, unlawful, nevertheless it may, under 
certain circumstances, become unlawful (per accidens illicitum reddi potest) either from its 
being hurtful to the drinker, or from excess in quantity, or because it is taken in spite 
of a vow to the contrary, or because it is a cause of scandal." 

"These reasons why intoxicating drinks may be unlawful for individu- 
als, and by accident, as theologians say, St. Thomas repeats : ist. Some are 
easily injured by wine.t and cannot stand its use at all. 2d. Some have a 
vow and we may in these later times add that many have what is of less 

* Modern philologists do not sustain St. Thomas in this derivation. 

tThis statement is in accordance with recent medical testimony. In a pamphlet published 
in 1884 the dean of the New York Homoeopathic Medical College, J. W. Bowling, M.D., gives 
the results of careful investigations concerning the effects of the abuse of alcohol on the circu- 
latory and respiratory organs. He declares that, " with few exceptions, the damaging ingredient 
of all the so-called stimulating drinks is alcohol. It matters not whether they be in the form of 



1885.] THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 725 

obligation than a vow, still of some binding power, namely, a pledge 
against intoxicating drink, and so are more or less, as it is by vow or 
pledge, forbidden its use. 3d. Some cannot drink intoxicants without 
drinking to excess, and so are bound not to drink such at all ; and, 4th, It 
may happen that even moderate drinking may be to others a cause of scan- 
dal, and in this way unlawful. A little further on the holy doctor adds 
another reason in these words: 'Christ withdraws us from some things 
as altogether unlawful, but from others as being impediments to perfec- 
tion ; and in this way he withdraws some persons from wine on account 
of the desire of perfection, as he does from riches and other such things.' 
4. In the fourth and last article the saint discusses the necessity of so- 
briety for persons of position such as bishops, priests, high officers of the 
state, and such men of weight and influence as are likely to set an example 
to others. In proof of such a necessity he quotes the words of St. Paul to 
Timothy regarding the duty of old men and of bishops, and the words of 
the Wise Man, 'Give not wine to kings.' To these proofs the holy doctor 
adds the passages exhorting women and youths to sobriety, and shows 
that while exalted persons in church and state are specially bound to so- 
briety because of the clearness of head their duties demand and the force 
their example has with the multitude, women and youths are also specially 
bound to be sober because of the weakness of the former in resisting 
temptation, and because of the latter being specially prone to sin on ac- 
count of the fire and lustiness of their years. The saint adds the striking 
fact recorded by Valerius Maximus, that among the ancient Romans wo- 
men never drank wine. Thus ends the I49th question, regarding sobriety. 
" III. In the i5oth question, divided into four articles, St. Thomas treats 
of the sin of drunkenness, i. In the first article he gives, as he always 
does, the objections. The first in this case is a curious one, worth record- 
ing, if only because of the saint's answer to it. It is objected that drunk- 
enness is not a sin, because every sin has some other sin directly opposed 
to it as cowardice to rashness, faint-heartedness to presumption. But no 
sin can be found as the opposite, in this way, to drunkenness. Towards 
the close of the article the holy doctor answers that perhaps such wilful 
(obstinate ?) abstinence from wine as a man knows will seriously injure his 
health is not free from fault. A second objection answered by St. Thomas 
in this article is, that no one (or scarcely any one) wishes to be drunk, 
that is, to be deprived of the use of reason ; therefore, drunkenness is not 
wilful, and therefore it 'cannot be a sin. But St. Thomas most clearly 
shows how far this objection can stand. Drinking to excess is the sin; 
and he who wilfully drinks to such excess that he knows that loss of 
reason must follow is guilty of the sin of drunkenness. For the pleasure 
of the drink he is prepared to undergo the shameful consequences ; and in 
this way he is responsible for both the sin and its consequences. This loss 

spirituous liquors, cordials, still wines of high and low grades, the most delicate champagnes, 
ales or beers." 

" It is undoubtedly true that some constitutions are far more susceptible to the action of 
alcohol than others. It is also true that in some the effects are more marked on the nervous 
system, in others on the digestive organs, in others on the kidieys, and in others on the circu- 
latory and respiratory organs. How often have we as physici ins been called to treat diseases 
resulting from the habitual use of alcoholic beverages in patients who considered themselves 
temperate 1 " 



726 A MEDIAEVAL STUDY OF [Sept., 

of reason is, as the holy doctor points out, the punishment that follows on 
the sinful excess, but is not the sin itself.* 

"The question of 'treating,' as it is called, St. Thomas disposes of in 
answering the objection that, if drunkenness is a sin, they sin who invite 
others to drink to excess quod videtur esse valde durum! The saint re- 
plies that as a man is not guilty of sin who, through ignorance of the 
strength of the liquor, becomes intoxicated, so he who treats another to 
drink, not knowing that he is likely to get drunk, is excused, by his igno- 
rance, from sin. But if he is not in such ignorance that is, if he knows 
that the friend whom he 'treats' will probably sin by excess he shares 
in his friend's sin. May we not, with theological exactness, add that the 
sin of the ' treater ' is generally greater than that of the 'treated,' since 
the latter is generally, owing to the pressure brought to bear with such 
cruel kindness on him, scarcely a free agent, drinking very often, not be- 
cause he likes it, but because he fears to give offence ? In such a case 
the cardinal virtue of Fortitude would save its fellow-cardinal, Temperance. 

" At the end of this article St. Thomas quotes the words of St. Augus- 
tine. Even if they did not come to us with the authority of two saints and 
doctors of the church, they would be worthy of being written on the first 
page of every temperance journal and in the heart of every temperance 
apostle. Translation would destroy their perfect finish : 

" ' Non aspere, quantum existimo, non dure, non imperiose ista tolluntur ; sed magis 
docendo quam jubendo, magis monendo quam minando ; sic enim agendum est cum mul- 
titudine peccantium ; severitas autem exercenda est in peccata paucorum.' 

" For the cardinal Prudence, as well as the cardinal Fortitude, must 
stand by its brother Temperance. 

" 2. In the next article, the second of this question, St. Thomas proves 
the gravity of the sin of drunkenness against those who would make little 
of it excepting when habitual. He cites the Apostolic Canon which says : 
' Episcopics, aut presbyter, aut diaconus, alece aut ebrietati deserviens, aut desi- 
nat, aut deponatur.' But such punishment could follow only mortal sins. 
Of course the saint shows that the state of intoxication is a sinful state 
only when it has been foreseen, the simple indulgence to excess in drink, 
without knowledge or advertence to the intoxication likely to follow, being 
of itself only a venial sin, as want of moderation in eating, or in drinking 
non-intoxicating beverages, would be. The man sins mortally who ' -volens 
et sciens privat seusurationis.' The saint adds this reason for the sinfulness 
of such a wilful deprivation of reason namely, that it is by the use of rea- 
son that man acts virtuously and restrains himself from sin ; and so the 
drunkard sins mortally by placing himself in the danger of sin. The words 
of St. Ambrose are here quoted: 'We say that drunkenness should be 
shunned, for on account of it we are unable to guard against sins. For 
those things which we are on our guard against when sober, we commit, 
through ignorance, when drunk.' 

" The article closes with St. Thomas' reply to those who seem to call 

* " May we not infer from the shame and degradation of that punishment, from the 
scourge it is to the body and mind of individuals and to the peace and prosperity of communi- 
ties, what the guilt is, in the eyes of God, of a sin which he visits with such awful rigor, even in 
this life ? " 



1885.] THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 727 

for a hard-and-fast line defining the quantity of drink that may be taken 
without sin. Temperance, he says, moderates the use of food and drink 
according to their effect on the health. An amount of drink that would be 
wholesome, perhaps, for an invalid would be excessive for a healthy man, 
and vice versa. An excessive dose of warm water might be taken medi- 
cinally as an emetic, and without sin, though it has in this case one of the 
effects of the excessive use of stronger drinks which, taken, even medi- 
cinally, in order to produce intoxication, are not allowed. 

" 3. In the next discussion, as to the relative gravity of the sin of drunk- 
enness, St. Thomas, avoiding the exaggeration that has so often weakened 
modern temperance advocacy, states his opinion that drunkenness is not, 
of its own nature, the gravest of sins, since a direct outrage against God is 
graver than what is directly an outrage only against human nature. In 
the course of this short article the words of St. Ambrose are quoted : ' Non 
esset in homine servitus si non fuisset ebrietas ' ' There would be no slavery 
among men if there had been no drunkenness.' What a host of thoughts, 
not all, perhaps, either logical or theological, fills the mind on reading 
those memorable words, ' Non esset servitus si non fuisset ebrietas ' ! 

"4. In the fourth and last article the Angelic Doctor shows that while 
intoxication, in proportion as it is involuntary, excuses from sin arising 
from it, when it is voluntary increases the gravity of such sin as may be, 
or ought to be, foreseen as its likely consequence. The last words of the 
holy doctor are words of mercy : ' Levius est ex infirmitate quam ex malitia 
peccareS May we not trust, without relaxing a single effort to check this 
sin of drunkenness, that it is, at least with our poor people, oftener a sin of 
weakness than a sin of malice ? " 

When St. Thomas wrote the above passages in his Sumnta 
drunkenness was not exhibited to the world in its present hideous 
proportions. No doubt it would have been considered marvel- 
lous if any one in the thirteenth century had ventured the pre- 
diction that six centuries later, amidst the environment of modern 
life in the large cities controlled by non-Catholic influences, 
intemperance could become a source of so much moral and phy- 
sical evil for individuals, a ruthless invader, producing pauper- 
ism and crime in so many homes, and a most destructive force 
acting as an incentive in arousing and sustaining the worst pas- 
sions of human nature, thereby fostering a spirit of lawlessness 
and a hatred of reasonable restraint dangerous alike to church 
and state. 

No special directions can be found in the Summa for the 
management of the liquor business. But, according to the stand- 
ard of human excellence inculcated in its pages, we would be 
obliged to declare that the man who scoffs at the moral virtues 
which are acquired by practice is not a man of good moral 
character. The Angelic Doctor would decidedly object to having 
such a one nominated as a wise counsellor of the working-man, 



728 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. [Sept., 

especially with reference to the expenditure of his hard-earned 
wages. A tour of inspection among the low saloons in one of 
our modern cities would convince the most benevolent philoso- 
pher that the men who stand behind the counters, using every 
cunning device to adulterate their liquors and to encourage ex- 
cessive drinking, may justly be called drunkard- makers. The 
following statement shows the convictions of a writer distin- 
guished for " fidelity of observation " and an " anxious endeavor 
to report the truth and nothing but the truth," and who enter- 
tained very broad views in regard to personal liberty : " I prefer 
a country where I don't make bad blood by having to see one 
public-house to every six dwellings which is literally the case 
in many spots around us. My gall rises at the rich brewers, in 
Parliament and out of it, who plant these poison-shops for the 
sake of their million-making trade." * 

The coming centennial of temperance reform in the United 
States, which will be held in honor of Dr. Rush at Philadelphia 
during September, 1885, will furnish a suitable opportunity to 
gather together the testimony of the best physicians regarding 
the legitimate use of stimulants. It would be a great advantage 
if they could at least be induced to endorse unanimously a state- 
ment to the effect that total abstinence has a special sanitary 
value for young people during the period of growth. Some 
Board of Health might be found not wholly absorbed in detect- 
ing the sources of poisonous air, whose members would be will- 
ing to make an estimate of the damage done to the physical man- 
hood of our citizens by drinking vile adulterations of beer and 
whiskey. 

Many have hitherto held aloof from active participation in 
the temperance movement on account of the wild statements put 
forth by some of its defenders, not to speak of the side-issues 
associated with heretical opinions that have been inculcated by 
men sadly deficient in the cardinal virtue of prudence. Yet, 
judged on its merits and according to the arguments of its most 
competent exponents, the movement against intemperance is a 
justifiable assault on a most odious and wide-spread vice. It is a 
modern crusade in which every one may take part who loves his 
fellow-men as becomes a Christian animated by the desire to 
see human nature in himself and others elevated to the highest 
attainable perfection. 

* Letters of George Etiot, edited by J. W. Cross, vol. iii. p. 45. Franklin Square 
edition. 






1885.] DELECTABLE SEVILLE. 729 



DELECTABLE SEVILLE. 

THERE are but three spots, in the world of which I had 
formed mental pictures from my reading-, which rose to the level 
of anticipation .when I came to visit them. Venice was one of 
these, Naples another, and Seville, delectable Seville, the third. 
There is a Spanish proverb which declares, " Who hath not seen 
Seville hath not seen a marvel," and I am prepared to own that 
who doth r\ot believe that proverb is an unenviable unbeliever. 
At first sight it is a disappointment. Glance at it from a rail- 
way-car and you will have no wish to stop. But alight and 
remain there a few days, and you will find it hard to drag }^our- 
self away. The place grows upon you. Each hour reveals new 
charms ; there is a fascination in the very atmosphere ; and in 
the end you will catch yourself exclaiming that the pearl of 
Andalusia is the fairest gem in the Spanish crown would be a 
priceless ornament to any crown. 

The setting of the jewel is not worthy of it a great plain 
covered with grayish grass, clumps of tall, brown-blossomed 
agave ; a sky metallic in its lustre, blazing and intense ; a dim 
streak of azure on the horizon indicating the far sierra, and, creep- 
ing lazily through the flat, a dull, yellow river. But the city 
itself ! Verily, it is a marvel. 

Don Juan I mean the Don Juan of the Tenoris family, linked 
to fame by Tirso de Molina, Gliick, and Mozart, not the hero of 
Byron's poem was born here, lived here, and lies under an ivy- 
clad sarcophagus in the gardens attached to the Duke de Mont- 
pensier's palace. No sweeter nook of earth could he have chosen 
for life's dreary pilgrimage, which he made as little dreary as he 
well could, if one-half that is said and sung of him be true. He 
was a sad scapegrace and no pattern to the rising generation, 
but he died penitent. 

Threading the puzzling maze of Seville streets, one would 
fancy that all the ladies were in mourning for him. The dress of 
womankind of the better classes is invariably black ; their tiny 
feet, coffined in dainty shoes, peep from under a pall of black 
skirts ; black mantillas float over billows of inky hair, while black 
eyes flash with the melancholy fire of funeral torches over the 
tremulous tips of black fans. Why they patronize black (which 
is a conductor of heat) in this hot climate is a puzzle. Most cer- 



730 DELECTABLE SEVILLE. [Sept., 

tainly it is not because of sympathies, solemn or lugubrious ; for 
the character of these elegant damsels of Seville is the reverse of 
gloomy. They are grave only exteriorly, and all that is coquet- 
tish, winning, and womanly within. If they hang out the under- 
taker's emblems it can only be through love of the rule of con- 
traries ; for they are arch in every step and glance, and bring sun- 
shine with them into shady places. They are fond of seeing and 
being seen ; they cannot be looked upon as mutes, for they carry 
a fan, which in Spain is equivalent to a semaphore ; why, then, 
will they persist in wearing this sepulchral raiment? Perad ven- 
ture the reason is no more recondite than this : it is very be- 
coming, and modest withal, as the garb of the gentler sex 
should be. 

The women of the lower classes do not confine themselves to 
the same severity of taste. They are as amorous of the gaudy 
as the negress. Cross the iron bridge over the Guadalquivir 
here a slow current of chocolate and milk and enter the Triana 
suburb, where Tatterdemalion holds sway. There you will meet 
gowns of printed cotton of the liveliest hue, gowns that flaunt 
violent pink and gamboge, but never a violet or a pearl gray, 
much less a black. These daughters of the people generally 
adorn their braided dark hair which is thick enough to vex a 
Parisian belle with pangs of envy with a few bright natural 
flowers, and sport cheap trinkets and ear-rings, and fling gay 
kerchiefs over their shoulders. The men are as true to the 
native costume as the women. That abomination, the stove-pipe 
hat, seldom shocks the aesthetic soul. The head-gear is the wide 
round hat with low crown and inward-turned brim. The large 
blue or brown cloak with parti-colored lining is almost univer- 
sally worn as in Madrid, but with this difference : in Madrid the 
tail of it is held before the mouth, as if there were an epidemic of 
toothache ; in Seville it drapes full and free. The Andalusian 
jacket broidered with tags, and short so as to show the scarlet 
waist-sash and tight trousers, and shoes of untanned leather are 
likewise common. A tidy, active working-dress this Andalusian 
dress is, but it must no more be argued that the men who wear 
it are tidy and active and addicted to hard work than that the 
women who wear black are going to a burial-service. No ; 
Seville is the most deliciously idle place in creation, and the 
Sevillanos are the most deliciously idle people. 

The vis inertia is cultivated there as a science ; the Castle of 
Indolence is somewhere in the neighborhood ; the central offices 
of the Lazy Society are situated in the Calle de las Sierpes. 



i85-] DELECTABLE SEVILLE. 731 

The natives take to lotus-eating naturally pure effect of climate. 
The Seven Sleepers were born in Seville, and their descendants 
still have their lethargic being in the city. It was never meant 
for the bustle of trade or the whirr of machinery. It is the 
corner of all others to read Anacreon 'mid bowers dipping their 
leaves into plashing fountains, to consume fruit and ices, listen 
to distant music, and blow languid wreaths of perfumed smoke. 
It is the veritable opium-eater's Paradise. 

Of deliberate design I abstain from enlarging on the public 
buildings and monumental curiosities of the city. All that can 
be had at first hand, better than I can give it, from Richard Ford 
and Henry O'Shea. To my thinking nothing can be more in- 
sufferable than the statistics of architecture, the bald jargon of 
styles platenesque and ornaments charrigaresque, the raptures 
over chancels and transepts and ogee-windows, the precise ac- 
counts of such a bell which would turn the scale at so many 
notes, and such a spire which is three yards and a quarter taller 
than that of Trinity Church, with the everlasting scraps of poetry 
from the treasury of ready-made quotations interlarded between. 
It is worse even than the cant of criticism which Laurence 
Sterne castigated with honest pen. Hugo was a genius, and 
even Hugo was almost unequal to saving Notre Dame de Paris 
from the dead weight of architectural detail which cumbered its 
spirit. 

Let us look at Seville of to-day without guide-book or guide, 
meander through its labyrinth of narrow, paved streets with 
minds open to receive and mark the features of the East side by 
side with those of the West. Those flat-roofed buildings with 
greeneries on top, those jealous balconies and windows with 
their iron trellis-work, those cool inner spaces with their tes- 
sellated floors and surroundings of marble pillars, of which we 
catch glimpses through the metal fret-work of the private doors 
how Moorish they are ! Then the sights and sounds, the rag- 
ged and bronzed beggar-urchins, the hawkers of lemons and 
fresh water, the strings of donkeys and mules in fringed blinkers 
pattering along under huge net or straw panniers crammed with 
fruit, or charcoal, or tiles, or corkwood how characteristic, 
how utterly un-Frankish ! That lolling clown, with legs dang- 
ling over the tawny sheared sides of a diminutive donkey, is a 
study in himself. Then the melodious street-cries, the lively 
braying and whinnying, and the perpetual tinkling of the collar- 
bells worn by all four-footed beasts that pass, except nobody's 
dog and the rich man's horse what a pleasant concert they 



732 DELECTABLE SEVILLE. [Sept., 

make! If you wish to change the scene roam through the 
plazas with their marble water-basins and orange-trees ; go to 
the Duke de Montpensier's garden with its wealth of myrtle and 
fern-palms ; wander to the river-side and look at the ships lading 
or unlading ; or ascend the Giralda, the old mosque steeple from 
which the muezzin called " the faithful " in turbans to prayer, 
and take in the comely mass of color beneath in one broad 
sweep. Then the changing sky that canopies this " fragment 
of heaven let fall upon earth " ! The riot of clouds when the 
elements war, and, after the mid-day heats, the genial rain pours 
down as if the blue expanse overhead were a lake how fervent 
and cordial! At night, when the city streets are crowded with 
groups in conversation ; when the fragrant, flower-garlanded pa- 
tios are visible by mystic lights pendent from gilt chandeliers, 
like votive lamps before a shrine; when caballeros pay court to 
their lady-loves through gratings as caballeros are licensed only 
to pay court in Spain ; when plaintive songs, with a reminis- 
cence of the desert about them, are chanted in monotonous ca- 
dence to the accompaniment of a guitar how grateful it all is 
to him who is not lost to the sense of poetry ! Insensibly one 
yields himself to the associations of the by-gone, and imagination 
takes wing. As the night ages and silence enwraps the scene 
a silence only broken by the deep boom from a clock-tower or 
the voice of the sereno, the Spanish watchman, hobbling along 
with his lantern swinging from his pike and his bunch of key^ 
from his girdle, singing out the hours the effect is stronger; 
and I confess, while roaming in such a frame once, I so lost my- 
self to the present that I would not have been surprised if I had 
met the Knight of La Mancha and the three gallants of the Ca- 
nard a Trots Bees in mocking whispers at his heels, or Figaro 
himself on a serenading excursion ; but with the last puff of my 
cigar died out the ideal and returned the real. I hastened back 
to my hotel, which might once have been a Moorish palace, and 
there, to make the assurance doubly sure that this was the nine- 
teenth century, sat in an American rocking-chair a gentleman in 
tweed suit, reading Galignanfs Messenger and drinking pale ale. 

That gentleman was not a poet ; he was an English tourist. 
It was the period before the Holy Week, with its world-renown- 
ed solemnities, celebrated with a pornp second only to that of 
Rome in her heyday, and which draw strangers in swarms from 
every point of the compass. If I expected to enjoy an intel- 
lectual chat with that gentleman I was mistaken. 

" Only fancy ! " he began : " the landlord has been here, and 



1 885.] DELECTABLE SEVILLE. 733 

the beggar says we'll have to pay double for board and lodging 
if we don't clear out before the 5th of April." 

To my explanation that a time of deep interest was at hand, 
and that accommodation would be at a premium, Manchester (I 
felt instinctively he must be a " drummer" and in the dry-goods 
line) continued : " Yes, I know : bull-fights, Italian opera at the 
San Fernando, races, fat women, talking-seals, peep-shows, 
whirligigs all the fun of the fair. By Jove ! I've half a mind to 
hang on." 

He had not heard of the grand open-air religious processions 
from Palm Sunday to Good Friday, nor of the uniquely pathetic 
service of the Tenebrc?, nor of the gorgeous jubilance of Easter 
Sunday. For him the sacred biblico-traditional drama of "The 
Seven Dolors of the Virgin Mary" had no attraction. .He pre- 
ferred fireworks and the learned pig. 

" No," he added, as if musing ; " on second thought, I sha'n't. 
Bull-fights I can see at Madrid; and the only race-meeting 
worth attending, I'm told, is that at the place where the sherry 
is manufactured." 

" Surely," I ventured, with artless good-nature, " you will 
wait to patronize Mr. Spiller, who is advertised as skater-in-ordi- 
nary to the Duke of Edinburgh, and your countryman, Mr. 
Price, the circus-proprietor, who pitches his tent in the Alame- 
da of Hercules," 

" Tom Price bah! You should go to Astley's, in the West- 
minster Bridge Road, my boy. That fairly takes the cake. I'm 
off!" 

He went, and I was not sorry ; but the spell was broken. I 
was guest of an inn. My delicious train of reverie had been 
smashed up ; the genius of dry-goods had evicted poetry under 
circumstances of aggravated harshness ; before the stamp of the 
elastic-sided boot of Manchester, Pedro the Cruel and Alonso 
the Wise, Murillo and Luca Giordano, Maria de Padilla and 
Leonora de Guzman, el Rey Chiquito Boabdil and the heir of 
Columbus all had melted into thinnest of air. 

Inexorable duty called me to Gibraltar before the Holy 
Week solemnities, so that I have no opportunity of describing 
them de proprio visu, and I do not care to rehearse twice-told 
tales. But whilst I was in Seville I wandered to and fro and 
made good use of my leisure, hearing and seeing as much as 
most visitors. Of those things which remain imprinted on my 
memory I may repeat some without incurring at least so I 
trust the imputation of boring the reader. There was a basin 



734 DELECTABLE SEVILLE. [Sept., 

in the gardens of the Alcazar where I was wont to sit beneath the 
shade of the foliage among the fervid heats of noon. There is an 
anecdote connected with it which impressed me mightily. King 
Ferdinand was sitting here one day and was sore perplexed by 
an affair of state. He required a just and astute judge to decide 
some vexed question of the first importance. Walking up and 
down, he unconsciously picked an orange, cut it in twain, and 
flung one half into the water, the cut side downwards. Sud- 
denly an idea struck him. The monarch sent for a judge and 
asked what was that floating before him. " An orange," was the 
answer. Irritated, he dismissed him, summoned another, put the 
same question, and received the same reply. This went on until 
at length one authority, before answering, drew the fruit towards 
him with a branch of a tree, lifted it out of the water, and said, 
" Half an orange." 

There are five-and-twenty parish churches in Seville and two 
thousand priests ; but, as too often happens on the European Con- 
tinent, I discovered that the women were vastly more attentive 
than the men to observances of devotion. I made the acquain- 
tance of a wealthy burgess, a dealer in curiosities, who asked me 
round to his store to inspect some of the charming peasant cos- 
tumes of Murcia, now fast falling into disuse and a grievous 
pity it is. It was Friday when I visited him, and the old sinner 
was gobbling pork-chops. 

" What ! you a Christian,* you a son of the church ! " I ex- 
claimed. 

" Ah ! sefior," he apologized, " forgive me ! I am very frail, 
but my wife is so good a Christian I reverence that woman. 
She has gone to Mass without breaking her fast, and when she re- 
turns she will eat only one small cup of chocolate." 

But all the burgesses of Seville are not like to him who prac- 
tised mortification by proxy. The gentlefolk are pious and the 
commonalty are not irreligious. Cheerfulness and sobriety are 
the rule ; gambling and an idleness excused by the enervating 
influences of the too generous sun are the predominating vices, as 
elsewhere in southern Spain. I saw few ebullitions of temper, 
much hospitality amongst the poor, no downright thievishness, 
but an irresistible tendency to pass bad money, which is accounted 
a venial failing in the Peninsula. 

The cathedral is a superb pile and occupies the site of an an- 
cient mosque. The stained-glass windows are so many captive 
rainbows. Pretermitting talk about dimensions and the like, I 

* In Spain Christian means Catholic. 



1885.] DELECTABLE SEVILLE. 735 

may note some few of the remarkable features which are most 
apt to be recalled by the stranger. Foremost among these are 
the stone pulpit from which St. Vincent de Ferrer preached ; the 
slab over the remains of Ferdinand, son of Christopher Colum- 
bus, whereon are inscribed the words (referring to his illustrious 
father), " A Cast ilia y d Leon Mundo Nuevo Did Colon" and a Cru- 
cifixion by a Mexican negro, who was never known to paint any 
other subject. It is a peculiarity of artists of the Spanish school, 
in representations of the Sacrifice on Calvary, to use three nails 
and place the wound on the right side ; Italians use four and 
place it on the left. In the Capilla Real is the figure of the 
" Vergin de los Reyes," the patron of Seville, a gift from St. 
Louis of France, surmounted by the identical crown with which 
the brow of the canonized monarch was pressed, and enclasped 
as to the throat by a diamond necklace valued at ninety thousand 
duros, presented by Dona Berenguela, the mother of St. Ferdi- 
nand. Among the treasures in the relicario of the sacristy is a 
massive gold group made of ore brought by Columbus from 
America, consisting of two figures sustaining a globe, the globe 
alone weighing fifteen pounds. Passing under a horseshoe arch, 
in a dusty corridor beside which is preserved the shrivelled 
mummy of an ungainly alligator sent by the Sultan of Egypt to 
Alonso the Wise when seeking his daughter's hand, the Chapter 
Library is reached. The prizes of this collection are the manu- 
scripts of the discoverer of the New World and the book, 
Tractatus Imagine Mundi, he took with him on the caravel when 
he first crossed the Atlantic. There are marginal notes to it in 
his own minute and legible handwriting, in one of which he lays 
down this apothegm of sad wisdom : " No one is secure from ad- 
versity." There are no especially beautiful pictures by Murillo 
especially, I say, for all of his are beautiful in the cathedral, 
but the church of La Caridad contains two masterpieces : the 
" Miracle of our Lord feeding the Multitude " and that of 
" Moses bringing the Living Water from the Rock of Horeb." 
The latter is full of diversity of 'expression underlain by a thrill 
of mad eagerness brought out with a terrible truth. Another 
famous picture is the " Descent from the Cross " of Campana. 
This was painted in 1548, and was so natural that Murillo was 
never weary of resting in rapt contemplation before it, and on 
his death-bed asked to be buried at its feet in the church of Santa 
Cruz. He had his wish. But the dogs of war came panting that 
way. Soult entered Seville, pulled down the church, desecrated 



736 DELECTABLE SEVILLE. [Sept., 

the master's grave, and stole all of his canvases he could lay sacri- 
legious hands on to grace the Louvre. The Spaniards do not 
love the French, nor is it wonder. 

There is a cannon-foundry and a copper-foundry, but more 
in keeping with the associations of the district is the porcelain 
factory, where an Englishman, Mr. Charles Pickman, produces 
some capital imitations of the glazed tiles which were brought to 
such perfection by the Moors. Seldom has a hive of industry 
been reared in nobler building or on more lovelv site it was a 
convent up to 1836 nestling in gardens, enamelled with flowers, 
wealthy in fruit-trees, and on the banks of a river. Some may 
consider it profanity that potters' wheels spin and buzz in an 
edifice once consecrated to religion ; but labor is prayer and 
sanctifies of itself. A number of healthy, handsome girls are 
busily engaged coloring and burnishing the ceramic ware 
which is fashioned in the old cloisters, and are ready with joyous 
carols over their work old airs sometimes plaintive as well as 
gay, of which you may hear many a memory in Bizet's Carmen. 
Here Andalusian lasses have to thank the foreigner for giving 
them the privilege of earning their bread and olives honestly, 
and have the happy look of independence. Their full-blooded 
complexions would shame the pale operatives of Lancashire or 
Massachusetts. They can hardly realize how lucky they are to 
ply such a neat trade in an atmosphere of freshness and sweet 
odor under a dome of sapphire. Another institution to inspect 
is the great government tobacco-factory, close by the cathedra], 
where no fewer than five thousand females are employed. The 
sight is the workwomen. The process of cigar-making is as un- 
interesting as that of diamond-polishing, and yet one goes to wit- 
ness both with more anxious feeling than to see what is far more 
remarkable the making of a pia. The building in which tire 
manufactory is carried on is a world in itself an imposing, ob- 
long block, with a railed enclosure in front. As it is guarded by 
soldiers, the traveller is likely to take it for an enormous barrack. 
But admission has only to be sought to be obtained. The interior 
consists of long, whitewashed halls, divided into colonnades by 
rows of pillars, from which spring vaulted ceilings. The work- 
ers are seated at low tables about two feet from the ground, in 
parties of half-dozens. They were there of every age, from the 
tawny hussy of sixteen to the matron with her infant crowing 
and tumbling in a cradle beside her, and the wrinkled hag with 
her iron-gray locks bound with a bright bandanna. Poor, but 



1885.] DELECTABLE SEVILLE. 737 

merry and impudent withal, they were, and some of the sprightly 
hoydens displayed rosebuds and sprays of lilac in their magnifi- 
cent ebon hair. There is a tradition that they smoke, not dainty 
cigarettes, but full-flavored cigars; in any case they are carefully 
searched before leaving, to prevent them from smuggling out 
trabucos for personal consumption or as offerings to favored 
swains. They were clad invariably in cotton-prints with short 
shawls of red, or crimson, or saffron, or other hue outvying the 
tulip in garishness. To be brutally frank, not one of these Car- 
mens was conspicuously pretty ; they had all brilliant eyes and 
teeth, but all had an ill-fed, dried-up appearance, even those who 
were inclined to flesh. The Spanish woman, after a certain age, 
has a proclivity to get too stout ; connoisseurs pretend that 
this is the combined effect of rancid oil and sweet stuff. Very 
assiduously these " lazy Andalusiennes " bent to their tasks, 
picked and sorted the leaves, rolled the cigars into shape, clipped 
them, gummed the ends, and packed them into bundles tied with 
smart ribbons of silk for they are paid by the piece, and the 
bull-fighting season is near, and they must save the price of a seat 
at the corrida on Easter Sunday, come what will. The cigars 
are assorted in boxes according to their size and strength, brand 
and shape. Leaving the cigar-hall, I was shown into the cigar- 
ette-hall, where a number of quieter girls, with shallow boxes of 
tobacco-dust almost as fine as snuff before them, were rolling the 
paper cylinders exactly as it is done by smokers, but with fingers 
surer and nimbler. In another hall the cartucJios, or packages to 
hold cigarettes and tobacco, were made. They were ready print- 
ed and cut, waiting to be put on a wooden frame, turned over, and 
pasted. One child of ten was pointed out to me as the quickest 
in the lot. Her small hands flew over her work with a rapidity 
that dazzled. She had need to be expeditious, poor wean ! for 
she received just one farthing British, or half a cent, for every 
hundred packages she made. 

There are others besides the tantalizing tile-makers and the 
saucy cigarreras who are rebellious to the drowsy influences of 
clime and profanely work the gipsies and the beggars. There 
are some gipsies in Seville, though not so many as in the pages 
of Murray. The excessively dirty and extremely picturesque 
race with parchment skins and high cheek-bones is dying out. A 
few stray members of the tribe remain in the remotest and rag- 
gedest part of the transpontine suburb and shear mules, cope 
horses, and do tinkering jobs generally, filling in their spare time 
VOL. XLI. 47 



738 DELECTABLE SEVILLE. [Sept., 

with petty larceny. Their women shuffle cards and tell fortunes. 
A splendid people they are, those gipsies in Sorrow's book 
and on canvas. In private life their society is not to be courted. 
If you do not want to see them they are sure to turn up ; if you 
do, as I did, you must look for them, and not always with suc- 
cess. I came across but one during my stay in Spain a yellow 
girl who was eager to exhibit her palmistry at my expense in 
the immense coffee-house under the Fonda de Paris at Madrid, 
and she left a strong impression on my mind of having been own 
sister to a persuasive prophetess who once cozened me of half a 
crown on the towing-path at Putney at the 'Varsity boat-race 
on the Thames. Your hopes of assisting at a gipsy dance at 
Seville will be disappointed. If you give a courier ten dollars 
he may be able to improvise you one ; a pack of filthy, bony men 
and women will execute epileptic saltatory movements before 
you not the Esmeralda dance, but coarse swaying of the body 
from the hips and vehement contortions and finally one creature 
will throw her handkerchief at your feet. A well-bred caballero 
will fill the handkerchief with shining silver and hand it back to 
her with a bow. This dance is work, downright hard work ; but 
it is a dance for money. Mammon, not Terpsichore, is the genius 
to whom worship is paid. The mendicants work as hard at their 
trade as those dancing gipsies. I counted fifty-seven in a short 
morning walk some robust and some well dressed, with the 
well-acted meekness of genteel poverty. The cripples, the de- 
formed, the adults with their baby arms, and the jumping Billy- 
the-Bowls could not be paralleled out of South Italy. From the 
assortment could be furnished Burns' "Holy Fair" and the 
Pattern in Peep o Day twice over, with something to leave. 
They are all past-masters and mistresses in the art of peti- 
tioning; they are professors of physiognomy like Lavater, and 
can tell at a glance a face which ought to belong to a chari- 
table mortal; and then what a command they have of the gamut 
of lungs, from the whine, the wheedle, and the snuffle to the 
unctuous, droning prayer or the fierce malediction ! 

Still, beggars, gipsies, heat, and laziness to the contrary not- 
withstanding, Seville is delectable and a marvel in its gardens 
and groves, its flowers and fruit, its fountains and fish-pools, its 
soft climate and soft people, its languorous repose and silvery 
tinkles to prayer. Seville is romance. Shall it ever be^ mine 
again to lie beneath the shade of its secular orange-trees, and 
blink at clustering shafts of marble tipped with silver sun-rays, 



1885.] A DAY-DREAM. 739 

and dream dreams? As I write, methinks to my ear rises the 
cry of the guardian of the night, the last I heard as I left, half- 
warning, half-supplication: " Ave Maria Purissima, las diez han 
dado." 



A DAY-DREAM. 

ONE eve in summer-time, when silent stole 
Through windows blazoned rich the slanting beams 
Of yon declining sun, 1 knelt me down 
'Mong holy places of the past to pray. 

An old cathedral vaulted wide and large, 
Where saints shed from the windows glorious light 
As if in that blue firmament to heaven 
A vista opened, to disclose the thrones 
Of cherubim and angels, and the bowers 
Of Beulah's amaranthine land, and shining streams. 
I knelt to pray, but closed the gates of prayer, 
Or thronged with olden memories grave and glad 
Of faces that on earth see light no more, 
Of voices that 'mong men are nowhere heard, 
Of hands that clasp not friendly hands again, 
Of feet that know no more the paths of care 

But lo ! a wonder, comes a white-stoled band ; 
The priest and deacons fill the olden throne, 
The chanters take their place on carven seats ; 
The mighty organ peals its thund'rous chimes, 
And many breathed anthems loud and full 
Fill with grand harmonies that ancient dome ; 
The altar shines and glows with lights and flowers, 
And billowy incense makes the joy complete. 

Now hushed the sounds, and fade the lights as stars 
'Fore Titan's morning blaze ; the white-stoled band 
Pass two by two slow through the vestry porch ; 
Through three vast doors the townsfolk lingering home ; 
And I alone, with none but memories near, 
Then now and ever, for 'twas but a dream 
A dream, but anchored deep in Being's sea ; 
Which, while the world's vain fashions change and pass, 
Abideth still a constant, changeless joy. 



740 THE WELSH CONQUEST OF ICELAND. [Sept., 



THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. 

i. 

OF those that appreciate most the good qualities of Irish- 
men, who can be blind to the fact that they often distribute 
praise and blame unfairly ? They have a knack of denounc- 
ing the wrong man, or at any rate charging the less culprit 
with the cardinal sin. Influenced, perhaps, by a remnant of that 
loyalty of the clan which has lingered longest among them and 
their near cousins of Wales and the Scottish Highlands, they 
have preferred to curse the " brutal Saxon," when the rack-rent- 
ing absentee landlord of their own kith and kin is a far greater 
sinner. Popular feeling is directed in a lump ; it moves in large 
masses; it cannot ever be made to draw fine distinctions. Al- 
ways, in a landlord class, there are men of profound sympathy, 
of charitable longings, and of immediate and most lovable action 
toward the class ground down by that strange mixture of greed 
and mental confusion as to what is fair and unfair which char- 
acterizes the rule of the upper classes of the British Empire. 
Therefore the landlord class cannot be denounced en bloc ; there 
are too many exceptions. The foreign " Saxon," however, rep- 
resented by a few thick-headed, over-bearing, recent settlers 
from Great Britain, is, as a mass, too distant and too little under- 
stood by the average Irishman that his more respectable traits 
should be appreciated. Hence the success of appeals to the 
prejudice of Irishmen against Englishmen, reinforced as they are 
by the facts of legislation in London facts that show an indiffer- 
ence to the real welfare of one of the most important thirds of 
the Empire which is almost incredible. Only since the Irish 
leaders in Parliament have begun to meet cynicism with cyni- 
cism, brutal indifference with the coolest disdain, and interest- 
ed appeals for fair play with the deaf ears they deserve, has Ire- 
land begun to exercise her rightful weight in the councils of the 
empire. Foreigners, and Americans also who are never really 
foreign in their inmost hearts to Great Britain, so many and 
intimate are the ties of history, literature, and language be- 
tween them cannot but regard this with satisfaction. If the 
results are painful to Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Welshmen, the 



1885.] THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. 741 

latter are themselves to blame for neglecting so long to do their 
duty by their cousinry. 

But more to blame, however the Irish may be gentle with 
their faults, are the upper classes of Ireland, who have for the 
most part kept up a tacit alliance with the ruling classes of the 
rest of the empire more shameful to them than to any one else. 
Birth, wealth, the regard of their poorer fellow-countrymen, and 
a superior education should have made them the champions and 
protectors of Ireland. They should not have been seduced by the 
social pleasures of London or dazzled by the hopes of preferment ; 
and because they have misused their opportunities it has come 
about that Ireland, the country of clannish men, worshippers of 
rank and believers in blood and breeding, has at length developed 
some of the worst levellers, violently opposed to the old system of 
rank and caste, and among them men who are as cruel and unjust, 
as ready to destroy the innocent for the sake of gaining their 
point, as any that were bred of the anarchy of the French 
Revolution. 

An instance of the slowness the Irish have shown to place 
blame where it properly belongs is the way in which the - 
agency of the Welsh in gradually overrunning and holding 
down Ireland has been ignored. It is true that onslaughts have 
been made by patriotic Irishmen on the books of Welshmen who 
have written on Ireland. But the position of the Welsh toward / 
the Irish seems to have remained always hazy in the minds of 
the Irish and English writers on the history of Ireland. Yet 
on examination we find that the conquest of Ireland various- 
ly called Saxon or Norman may be far more correctly termed 
Welsh. Diarmaid, son of Murcadha, "a man by whom all Ire- 
land was made a trembling sod," was the Irishman who caused 
it. The organizing element, to be sure, was Norman, and in part 
Flemish ; and at a later date, before Cromwell's injection of 
Englishmen into Ireland, the Pale seems to have been largely 
colonized by men of purely Saxon stock who coalesced with the 
remains of the Scandinavians not absorbed by the Kelts. But 
the conquest itself was begun by a mixed army of Welshmen, 
led by an Irish refugee, and supported presently by a Welsh 
prince of Norman blood on the father's side, who took his Saxon 
name of Strongbow from his father, Gilbert, and whose force con- 
tained Normans, Welshmen, and Irish refugees. Richard, Earl 
of Pembroke and Strygill called Rickert, Earl of Terstig, in 
the Welsh annals appears to have had ?' Welsh mother ; he mar- 
ried an Irishwoman, the daughter of /Oiarmaid mac Murcadha, 






742 THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. [Sept., 

a petty king deserted by his subjects for his crimes, and a fugi- 
tive before the prince who just then could best support his 
claim to be Ard-Ree, or Head King, of all Ireland. It was 
the way of that epoch. Macmurcadha, having interviewed 
the Norman-English king in France and made arrangements in 
Wales with several Norman- Welsh adventurers, set sail in ad- 
vance of them, accompanied by a Welsh force, as would appear 
from his beginning almost at once to make head against his na- 
tive foes. According to the Four Masters, seventy heavy-armed 
Flemish knights were in his pay. A year after (A.D. 1169) came 
the first little army persistently called Anglo-Normans, when Nor- 
man-Welsh would be the better term. It was not till 1170 that 
the main body arrived under the son of Strongbow, but there is 
little to show that Englishmen composed it in any appreciable 
quantity. Moreover, Rhys ap Gryffith, Prince of South Wales, 
sent his nephew Robert, son of Stephen the Constable, in this ex- 
pedition to aid Diarmaid. Most probably this was, in the opinion 
of that day, the important part of the army, while " Strong- 
bow's " was a contingent. It was much later that Saxon settlers 
made themselves obnoxious. One gathers from Caradoc's history 
of Wales that the invasion of 1170 must have appeared only one 
in a long line of expeditions in both directions across the Irish 
Sea, according as it was a Welsh or an Irish prince who found on 
the opposite side friends, money, a band of cut-throats, and a wife, 
to aid in repossessing himself of his little " realm." So, taking 
Caradoc's dates without further question, since it is not a matter 
of exact years but mass of testimony, we find : 

A.D. 917. The men of Dublin devastate the island of Anglesey. 

958. The Irish land again and burn Holyhead under princes 
of Danish stock. And once more in 966. 

1041. Gryffith flies from Wales to Dublin, marries a daughter 
of the local king, and returns to Wales with an Irish army. The 
chances are in favor of the ascendency, at this period, of the Irish 
language among the Scandinavian colonists. Welshmen and 
Irishmen could make themselves understood. 

1042. Slaughter of Irish troops at Aberteivi. 

1043. Conon of Wales raises in Ireland an army for the pur- 
pose of regaining his dukedom. 

1073. Gryffyth ap Cynan gets an army from " Encumallon, 
King of Ulster," and the kings Ranallt and Mathawn, and re- 
turns to Wales. 

1080. He gets anothe" Irish army and makes himself Prince 
of North Wales. 



1885.] THE WELSH CONQUEST OF ICELAND. 743 

1087. Rhys ap Tewdor flies to Ireland and returns to over- 
whelm his Welsh enemies (who probably have Norman help). 

1098. Howel ap Ithel flies to Ireland. Irish pirates devastate 
Mona, instead of protecting it as they were summoned to do 
(Annales Cambrics). 

noo. The Norman- Welsh nobles make an alliance with " Mur- 
kart, King of Ireland." 

1105. Flemings, drowned out by the sea in the Netherlands, 
come in numbers to England. The Norman-English king gives 
them lands in Wales if they can take and hold them ! 

1106. The Welsh prince Owen flies to Murkart in Ireland. 
1118. King Henry defeated by the Welsh. 

1142. Cadwalader buys, in Dublin, Irish and Scottish merce- 
naries (that is to say, Irishmen of Scandinavian and Keltic stock 
who speak the same tongue), and returns to Wales, where the 
hirelings are destroyed. 

1168. The nephew of the Welsh prince Rhys takes an army 
to Ireland to help Dermot, son of Murkart of Ulster. The next 
year comes Richard, son of Gilbert " Strongbow," Earl of Stry- 
gul, who was the ruler of Cardiganshire. This is the so-called 
conquest of Ireland ! 

1171. Richard "Strongbow" marries Dermot's daughter. 

1172. King Henry goes to Ireland. Famine in his army. 
1209. King John goes to Ireland. 

1245. King Henry invites the Irish to plunder Anglesey. 

1258. Llewellyn of Wales routs at sea an expedition coming 
from Ireland to aid the besieged Earl of Chester. 

According to the Abb6 MacGeoghegan, who wrote about a 
century later than Keating, dying in 1750, we find a good pro- 
portion of the nobles and adventurers who got lands in Ireland 
about the period of Strongbow either Welsh or with Old British 
blood in their veins. Names like Caddel and Finglas betray 
their origin ; the Stacks were considered of British ancestry, not 
English ; the Walshes appear to have been so-< 
Irish but Cambrian, while at least two nobl< 
(Philip and David) were entirely British, 
was the son of Nest, the Cambrian prince^ 
sons by different husbands. Meyler, one ol! 
helpers, was her grandson, and so was 
Maurice and William Fitzgerald were her sons by Gerald Fitz- 
Walter, and Raymond le Gros, a famous wrester of lands from 
the older owners, was of the same stock. Prendergast and Milo 
de Cogan appear to have been Welshmen. The Aylmer family 




744 THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. [Sept., 

boasted descent from an Earl of Cornwall of the tenth century; 
and Gerald de Barry, the famous Giraldus Cambrensis, whose 
fantastic writings on Ireland have given Irishmen so much pain, 
was also of the line of Princess Nest. All these names represent 
famous families founded in Ireland about this period, and called 
afterwards Anglo-Irish, though the Anglo part was as great as 
possible a misnomer, in view of the fact that a homogeneous 
nation called English was far from having existence at the time. 
Their language was doubtless Norman, with very little Old 
English or Saxon to boast of, but a very considerable stock of 
Welsh, the language of their mothers and nurses, of the common 
folk and domestics, if not always of their fathers. Being near the 
Irish speech, the Welsh vernacular made it easy for them to con- 
ciliate the Irish. The fashion was Norman, of course ; most men 
Normanized their names, if they could. Notwithstanding which 
the strong Welsh complexion of the King of Ulster's aids can be 
seen. The name of Archibald the Fleming must in the same way 
stand for by no means the only Belgian adventurer who carved 
a home for himself with his sword in the hurly-burly between 
native chieftains. It should also be remembered that in succeed- 
ing periods the Welsh names would be apt to be taken for Irish, 
owing to their general similarity, and that the families of those 
Welshmen who did not take the precaution to hand down Nor- 
man or English names to their offspring must have lost their 
identity as aliens in a few generations. Other notable Welsh 
names will occur, such as Davis, Mitchell, Morgan, Taafe, Capel, 
Peppard, and Barrett ; perhaps Cusack, Carew, Tobin, and 
Tyrrel. A greater grievance the Irish might have had against 
the Welsh than their settling in Ireland, which was only tit 
for tat, consisted in the reports of the country, the people and 
their manners and customs, given to the world by Gerald de 
Barry, a Welsh ecclesiastic of the old princely line of Wales, 
only partially Normanized, who was more than suspected by 
the Norman kings of England of aiming at a Welsh throne, 
or at any rate of preparing the ground for a rebellion in Wales. 
Wherefore he could never obtain the bishopric due to his parts 
and the love his countrymen bore him. A very learned man 
for his time, he was fond of show, delighted in elaborate cere- 
monials, and held his own talents in enormous esteem. Though 
a Welshman, he either could not or would not preach in the 
Old British ; yet as a prelate and politician he inclined to the 
Welsh. Gerald " Cambrensis " told many marvels and lies 
about Ireland after the manner of the travellers of his day. 



1885.] THE WELSH CONQUEST OF ICELAND. 745 

He never went far from Dublin, and was more intent on attract- 
ing the notice and good-will of King Henry than doing justice to 
the people he pretended to describe. Undoubtedly he was the 
means of a good deal of the contempt for the Irish which ob- 
tained among other nations, but that he was intentionally malig- 
nant does not appear. Edmund Spenser, the Elizabethan poet, 
was juster : at least he took pains to inform himself ; he lived in 
Ireland long enough to write a large part of the Faerie Queett, and 
had much more reason than Cambrensis to hate the Irish, for, if 
the report is true, his home, with wife and child, was burned by 
the nationalists (if so they can be called) of his day. 

The conquest of Ireland, then, if that term can be used (cer- 
tainly it was not a conquest in the sense of that made by William 
the Norman over England a century before), was made at Irish 
instigation by Welsh princes, who had at their disposal trained 
warriors from Norman-England, Normandy, Flanders, and Brit- 
tany. The Welsh had the largest share in it ; and if, in looking 
back at the first settlers, Norman names seem to preponderate, 
it must be remembered that prestige induced Welshmen to take 
the Norman rather than the Welsh name of their parents when- 
ever there was an excuse so to do. Later on we find their de- 
scendants taking Keltic names and becoming the fiercest nation- 
alists of all. At the time the spirit that directed them, the 
statesmanship and tenacity that fortified them, in their conquests 
were undoubtedly Norman ; it is the same noble mixed race at 
work here as in Great Britain and Scotland, in Languedoc, Italy 
and Calabria, in Sicily and the JEgean. But the hands that 
effected it were principally Irish and Welsh, and, if it is to be 
called a conquest at all, it should be called the Welsh conquest 
of Ireland. Note that the landlord class, the peers and gentry of 
Ireland, have continued to the present day to betray their own 
country after the modern fashion, even as the petty kings of Ire- 
land did not scruple to invite over the Welsh and Norman ad- 
venturers in order to gain lands at the expense of their fellows 
or compel the people under their yoke. 

II. 

Certainly such inroads on Irish soil were nothing new ; they 
seem to have been in order from the earliest times. Go back to 
the ages that are close on the borders of the mythical, and find 
the hero Cuchulin taking the son of a king of Alba (Scotland) 
for an intruder and committing a great slaughter on his men 



746 THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. [Sept., 

before he recognizes him. The passage in The Feast of Bricrend 
offers one of the few examples of an allusion to the secret writ- 
ing called Ogham after an old Keltic god of knowledge, which 
is now supposed to have been a notched character, based on the 
old Greek alphabet, like the Runes, but more of a secret cipher 
than the Rune. 

Dobert Cuchulaind a sleigin do agus doforne ogum n-ind, agus 
adbert feis: "Erich co ro bi im suidhi-se ind Emain Macha corris !" 
Cuchulin gave him his little spear and cut an Ogham thereon, 
and said to him : " Up now, until it is to my seat in Emain Macha 
that you come ! " This shows the prevalence of expeditions 
across the Irish Sea and testifies to the antiquity of letters in 
Ireland ; the genuineness of the story is attested by internal evi- 
dence, for nothing could be more Keltic of the heroic age than 
the gift of a spear to a stranger as a passport on which the native 
hero has notched his mark in all probability it was his initial in 
a Runic character rather than the system of numbered notches 
which is commonly called the Ogham. There seems to have 
been anciently a Keltic sun-god, in some of his phases a patron of 
art and literature, like the Aztec sun-god Quetzalcoatl. He was 
called Ogma Grian-Eiges Ogma Learned-in-the-Sun and the 
mystery of letters was under his special care. It need not be 
said that the common Druidical devices of concealment were 
practised in regard to writing ; it is plain that the Druids must 
have practised the art, probably in a rude ancient Greek or 
Phoenician alphabet, while professing to rely entirely on their 
wonderful memories. It is curious and suggestive, in this con- 
nection, that recruits for the body of men known as the Fiann, or 
Fenians, who seem to have been at first a governing caste, then a 
police force, and finally a species of irregular Janissaries, were 
examined for literary qualifications as well as such bodily ones as 
leaping, running through thick woods, steadiness of weapons, 
ability to ward off javelin-strokes. Before he could be admitted 
the Fiann was examined as to his learning ; he was rejected if 
he could not repeat twelve books of poetry. The Fenius of the 
native histories, after whom the Fenians were named, is perhaps 
a pure creation of the annalists in imitation of the Greek story of 
Cadmus. Phoenix was called the brother of Cadmus. We may 
conjecture that when the Irish took the Greek letters they began 
to write their own history, and while so doing sought a native 
parallel to the story of the beginnings of Greek history. Cadmus 
was fabled to have brought to Europe the sixteen letters of the 
Phoenician alphabet, which we still use, as did the Greeks and 






1885.] THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. 747 

Romans. Suppose some learned Druid to start a similar fable 
for Ireland, or possibly at first for Gaul, using Phoenix instead 
of Cadmus to fit the tradition to the name of some great leader, 
or of some conquering tribe, called Finn. Yet it is always possi- 
ble to argue an origin for such a myth quite as native and inde- 
pendent as that of Cadmus. Why should not the Phoenician set- 
tlements on the Mediterranean transmit to Gaul and Ireland the 
myth of a Phoenix as the inventor of letters, at the same epoch 
that similar settlements in Greece were carrying the myth now 
associated with the name of Cadmus? Phcenix is supposed to 
mean " date-palm." Cadmus is translated " Eastman." The an- 
cient history of Ireland reaches so far back into the fogs of the 
past that it is often a question whether a given story, custom, or 
word first appeared among the semi-civilized Kelts of Western 
Europe or among the nations on the Mediterranean whose glory 
dazzles the imagination and causes one to refer everything to 
them. Indeed, the surprising thing about Irish antiquities is the 
small amount of coloring from classical sources which can be 
detected. Fenius may possibly be Phcenix, chosen because he 
was the brother of Cadmus, or its root may be purely Keltic and 
have had originally no relation to Phoenicia whatever. Edmund 
Spenser saw clearly enough the difficulties in the way of deriv- 
ing everything Irish from Greece or Rome. In A View of the 
Present State of Ireland the great English poet makes Eudoxus 
ask Irenasus regarding the letters of the Old Irish : " Whence, 
then, I pray you, could they have those letters ? " 

" Iren. It is hard to say ; for whether they at theyr first coming into 
the land, or afterwardes by trading with other nations which had letters, 
learned them of them, or devised amongest themselves, it is very doubtfull ; 
but that they had letters aunciently it is nothing doubtfull, for the Saxons 
of England are sayd to have theyr letters and learning and learned men 
from the Irish, and that also appeareth by the likeness of the characters, 
for the Saxon's character is the same with the Irish. Now the Scithyans 
never, as I can reade, of old had letters amongest them ; therefore it seem- 
eth that they [i.e., the Irish, whom Spenser derives from a mixture of 
Scythians and Spanish Kelts] had them from that nation which came out 
of Spayne ; for in Spayne there was (as Strabo writeth) letters aunciently 
used, whether brought unto them by the Phcenesians or Persians, which 
(as it appeareth by him) had some footing there, or from Marseilles, which 
is sayd to have been inhabited first by the Greekes, and from them to have 
the Greeke character ; of which Marsilians it is sayd that the Gaules learn- 
ed them first, and used them only for the furtheraunce of their trades and 
private business ; for the Gaules (as is strongly proved by many auncient 
and authentical writers) did first inhabite all the sea-coast of Spayne, even 
unto Gales and the mouth of the Streits, and peopled also a great parte of 



748 THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. [Sept., 

Italye, which appeareth by sundrye cittyes and havens in Spayne called of 
them, as Portingallia, Gallicia, Galdunum ; and also by sundrye nations 
therein dwelling which yet have receaved theyr owne names of the Gaules, 
as the Rhegni, Presamarci, Tamariti, Nerii, and divers others. All which 
Pompeius [sic] Mela, being himself a Spanyard, yet sayeth to have dis- 
cended from the Celtics of Fraunce, wherby it is to be gathered that that 
nation which came out of Spayne into Ireland were aunciently Gaules, and 
that they brought with them those letters which they had learned in 
Spayne, first into Ireland, the which some also say doe much resemble 
the old Phoenician character, being likewise distinguished by pricke and 
accent, as theyrs aunciently." 

Spenser, whom it is the habit of nationalist writers to assail 
unduly, considering the many handsome things he has said of the 
Irish of his time and before, had a very wonderful insight into 
the Irish past and an excellent idea of its value, whatever we 
may think of his remedies for the evils of the Elizabethan age in 
Ireland. He makes Irenseus say : " Indeede, Eudoxus, you say 
very true ; for alle the customes of the Irish, which I have often 
noted and compared with that I have read, would minister occa- 
sion of most ample discourse of the first original of them, and the 
antiquitye of that people, which, in truth, I doe thinke to be more 
auncient than most that I knowe in this end of the world ; soe as 
yf it were in the handling of some man of sound judgment and 
plentifull reading it would be most pleasant and proffitable." 

And speaking of his own epoch, he alludes to "a certayne 
kind of people called Bards," as men who " sett foorth the pray- 
ses and disprayses of men in theyr poems and rimes ; the which 
are had in soe high request and estimation amongest them that 
none dare to displease them for feare of running into reproche 
through theyr offence, and to be made infamous in the mouths 
of all men. For theyr verses are taken up with a generall ap- 
plause, and usually songe at all feasts and meetinges by certayne 
other persons, whose proper function that is, which also receave 
for the same greate rewardes and reputation besides." It is not 
to be resisted quoting a specimen of one of these performances, 
for the benefit of those readers who have forgot or never read 
this able work of the English poet : 

" Of a most notorious theif and wicked outlawe, which had lived all his 
lifetime of spoyles and robberies, one of these Bardes in his prayse said : 
That he was none those idell milksops that was brought up by the fire-side, 
but that most of his dayes he spent in armes and valyaunt enterprises; 
that he did never eate his meate before he had wonne it with his swoorde ; 
that he was not slugging all night in a cabin under his mantell, but used 
comonly to keepe others waking to defend theyr lives, and did light his 
candell at the flames of theyr howses to leade him in the darkenesse ; that 



1885.] THE WELSH CONQUEST OF ICELAND. 749 

the day was his night, and the night his day ; that he loved not to lye 
long wooing of wenches to yeeld unto him, but where he came he tooke by 
force the spoyle of other men's love, and left but lamentations to theyr 
lovers ; that his musicke was not the harpe, nor layes of love, but the 
cryes of people and the clashing of armour; and that finally he died not 
bewayled of many, but made many wayle when he died that dearely bought 
his death. Doe not you thinke, Eudoxus, that many of theese prayses 
might be applyed to men of best desarte ? Yet are they all yeelded to a most 
notable traytoure and amongest some of the Irish not smally accounted of. 
For the songe, when it was first made and songe unto a person of high de- 
gree, they were bought (as their manner is) for forty crownes. 

"Eudox. And well worthye sure ! But tell me (I pray you), have they 
any arte in theyr compositions? or be they any thing wittye or well sa- 
voured as Poems should be ? 

" Iren. Yea truly; I have caused diverse of them to be translated unto 
me, that I might understand them ; and surely they savoured of sweete 
witt and good invention, but skilled not of the goodly ornamentes of 
Poetrye ; yet were they sprinckled with some prety flowers of theyr owne 
naturall devise, which gave good grace and comliness unto them, the 
which it is a greate pitye to see soe abused, to the gracing of wickedness 
and vice, which would with good usage serve to beautifye and adorne ver- 
tue." 

The long quotation must excuse itself, owing- to the light it 
throws on Irish poetry in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and the view 
it gives of Spenser's attitude toward poetry a singularly Philis- 
tine attitude, if we may still use Mr. Matthew Arnold's useful 
naturalization of German student slang. 



III. 

The fear of satire among the Irish, which we now find in their 
thinskinnedness under the ceaseless raillery of strangers, has 
been often noted and instances given ; here, in a threat from the 
Senchus Mor, is an odd separation of satirical literature into 
specific kinds : " I will grom satirize in satire called glas gabJiail ; 
I will glam satirize in the extempore lampoon, and I will aer 
satirize in the full satire." Learning was so fully recognized as a 
profession that laws were established defining the duties, one to 
the other, of the pupil and his " literary foster-father," or master, 
as the liabilities of master and apprentice in regular trades. And 
in the same treasure of ancient habits and customs we read how 
a master must act toward his pupil, what his perquisites are, and 
what he can expect from him : 

"The social connection that is considered between the foster-pupil 
and the literary foster-father is, that the latter is to instruct him without 



750 THE WELSH CONQUEST OF ICELAND. [Sept., 

reserve, and to prepare him for his degree, and to chastise him without se- 
verity, and to feed and clothe him while he is learning his legitimate pro- 
fession, unless he obtains it from another person ; and from the school of 
Fenius Forsaidh onwards this custom prevails ; and the foster-pupil is to 
assist his tutor in poverty and to support him in his old age, and the 
honor-price of the degree for which he prepares him, and all the gains of 
his art while he is learning it, and the first earning of his art after leaving 
the house of his tutor, are to be given to the tutor; and the literary fore- 
father has power of pronouncing judgment and proof and witness upon 
the foster-pupil, as has the father upon his son, and the church upon her 
tenant of ecclesiastical lands." 

In Wales minstrelsy appears to have been coeval with the 
nation, but that it needed reforming- is seen in Caradoc's history 
when it treats of Gryffith ap Conan, of North Wales, who was 
one of the greatest princes of the time just preceding that, when 
Wales overflowed into Ireland. Gryffith was Irish on his mo- 
ther's side. He " reformed the great disorders of the Welsh 
minstrels, which were then grown to great abuse. Of these 
there were three sorts in Wales. The first were called Beirdd, 
who composed several songs and odes of various measures, 
wherein the poet's skill was not only required, but also a natu- 
ral endowment or a vein which the Latins term furor poeticus. 
These likewise kept the records of all gentlemen's arms and 
pedigrees, and were principally esteemed among all the degrees 
of Welsh poets. The next were such as played upon musical in- 
struments, chiefly the harp and the crowd ; which music Gryffith 
ap Conan first brought over into Wales, who, being born in 
Ireland and descended by his mother's side of Irish parents, 
brought with him from thence several skilful musicians, who in. 
vented almost all the instruments that were afterwards played 
upon in Wales. The last sort were called Atcaneid, whose busi- 
ness it was to sing to the instruments played upon by another." 
Here is an admission in regard to music and musical tools, the 
pride of the Welsh, made, not by one, but by several successive 
Welsh editors of Caradoc's history ! Two of these three classes 
of literary men in Wales were mentioned by Edmund Spenser in 
the quotation given above. Gryffith ap Conan died in 1136; 
four centuries later Spenser finds much the same system extant 
in Ireland, whence the Welsh took it again at the revival of the 
minstrel's "art by Gryffith ap Conan. The color-sense appears 
among the Irish, and presumably the Welsh also, in various 
ways, and early. A commentary on an old text of the Senchus 
Mor names the different colors of the winds. Thus from the 
east blows the purple wind, from the south the white, from the 



1885.] THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. 751 

north the black, and from the west the pale. From the north- 
east blows the dark, speckled wind, from the northwest the 
gray and dark brown, while a green and pale-gray storm comes 
out of the southwest, and a red and yellow wind approaches 
from Spain. This fantastic treatment of the colors of the winds 
is worthy of the imagination of Victor Hugo ; strange to say, it 
is not without analogies in Oriental literature and Mexican an- 
tiquity as well. In Queen Elizabeth's day the wearing of saffron 
coats and smocks was prohibited by law, for the very good and 
humane reason that it was distinctive of the Irish, and therefore 
must be abolished, like the wearing of moustaches and the not- 
wearing of beards. " You foreigners," remarked in sub- 
stance the Englishmen of the great epoch of English literature, 
" if you don't wear beards as we do, and shave your upper lips, 
and will not cut off those ' glibbes ' [great bangs of hair over the 
forehead], and discard your yellow coats, you shall be made to do 
so with the argument of horse and foot. Your big mantles, too, 
we do not like. They carry stolen things, and conceal sword, 
pistol, and dirk; off with them! No matter if you must have 
them in order to keep alive in the cold and wet in a country 
where inns are not, and houses and cabins few. We don't like 
them." 

At some period elaborate rules were laid down in Ireland 
concerning the color of garments. Under a certain king, so the 
tradition recorded by Keating holds, people began to wear red 
and blue coats, and add to the cloak all sorts of ornaments due 
to the deft fingers of workmen. Whereupon he ordained that 
slaves and the lowest order of the people should wear clothes of 
but one color (yellow ?), soldiers of two (red and yellow ?), noble 
youths of three (red, yellow, and blue ?), rich farmers of four (red, 
yellow, blue, and green ?), lords and magistrates of five, and, 
finally, the chief of the literati, or filedha, and the king and queen, 
garments of six colors. May we not find here perhaps in the 
five colors of the lord's dress the key to the bright variegated 
patterns of the plaids which the Scottish Highlanders wear to 
this day in honor of their several clans ? 

Spenser held that the shaving of their beards indicated a 
southern origin of the Irish, and attributed the custom to the 
Spanish side of the nation, instancing the Mohammedans of Spain 
and Africa as doing the like. Cleanliness and coolness in a hot 
clime are the reasons proposed. The saffron color of their clothes 
gives another note of Oriental descent, and shows a curious idea 
that the dye-stuff was hygienic. So to this day the dye of red 



752 THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. [Sept., 

flannel is supposed to give it superior hygienic qualities. " Saf- 
fron shirtes and smockes," he writes, " which was devised by 
them in those hote countryes, where saffron is very common and 
rife, for avoyding that evill which commeth by much sweating 
and longe wearing of linnen." Whilst the heavy shock of hair 
over the forehead, called a " glibbe," is referred to the Scottish 
or, as he calls it, Scythian side of their ancestry. I have else- 
where had occasion to question whether green was anciently the 
national color of Ireland, pointing out that the Irish word for the 
sun, pronounced "green," has probably been confused with the 
English word for the color, as it is to-day in our word green- 
house, where the " green " is more likely to hark back to the 
Keltic word for the sun (sun-house) than to refer to the place 
where plants are kept green. The passage from Spenser adds 
to the suspicion that green was not originally the national color. 
There seems to be more of a case for a brilliant hue like yellow, 
both from the small likelihood that a bold, rude people would 
choose green as their livery in a rich, green land like Ireland, and 
from the fact that yellow would be just the color for sun- wor- 
shippers, as we know the ancient Irish were, and so remained to 
some extent long after the introduction of Christianity. A desert 
race like the Arabs would naturally choose green for the distinc- 
tive color of a turban, but not the inhabitants of a cloudy, moist, 
pale and dark green island. Yellow and red are the colors they 
would take. Doubtless the tradition of yellow as a national Irish 
color disappeared when the hated Protestant settlers began to 
wear orange in honor of the house of Hanover. But it should be 
noted that yellow and green, or gold and green, remain the two 
colors of the Irish flag, whether the charge thereon be a sun- 
burst or a harp. The Welsh have a tradition that the chief bard 
wore a robe of sky-blue, signifying Peace. 

The fame of Ireland as a place rich in castles and settled com- 
munities, in fine cattle and high-bred hunting-dogs, and especially 
noted for its breed of horses, has confirmation in the " Kudrun," 
a sea-ballad of great length, which vies with the Nibelungen-lied 
as the beginning of German literature. Its epoch is supposed to 
be not later than the eleventh century, not earlier than the ninth ; 
but in this, like many of the old poems of Ireland, it contains 
hints of the heathen past, some of the actors, indeed, being heathen 
gods reduced to the level of heroic men. Thus the princes of the 
Netherlands and Flanders receive as gifts horses brought from 
" Irlande." When the bold abductors of the Irish princess go to 
her father's court Wat6 wins the prince's regard by his clever- 



1885.] THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. 753 

ness at games, and the ballad expressly mentions the love of the 
Irish for enjoying themselves : 

" 354. Nach site in Irlande vil often man began 

Maneger hande freude. Da. von Wate gewan 
Den Kunic ze einem vriude " 

" After the custom in Ireland, often were all sorts of sports 
undertaken. For that reason Wat6 won the king as a friend." 
He is so agreeable that the king calls in his master of fence to 
teach his new friend how to use his sword, whereupon the crafty 
Wat6 makes the master of fence spring " alsam ein L6bart wilde " 
even like a wild leopard to escape his blows. And when the 
king himself enters the ring to teach him four strokes, the secret 
of which he reserves for special friends, Wat6 belabors him until 
" er als ein begozzen Brand riechen began " he began to reek 
like a watered fire-brand. This shows, at least, that a poet of the 
Rhine valley felt himself justified in placing as high a civilization 
as the epoch knew on the coasts of Ireland in the ninth or tenth 
century. When the princess is abducted the runaways appear to 
have landed in " Waleis," by which we may understand Wales, 
though there is some difficulty later on in identifying the spot as 
the Welsh or any other definite strand. The elopers supposing 
themselves safe here, the sails of the Irish king are suddenly seen, 
being known by " ein Kriuze in einem Segele ; Bilde lagen drinne " 
a cross on a sail wherein were pictures. This gives the poet a 
chance to say that Old Wat6 " of such pilgrims had no love," allud- 
ing to the practice of pilgrims of putting big crosses on their sails. 
What interests us is the essentially Irish nature of the emblem 
on King Hagen's sails, Ireland having been converted at a very 
early date ;. also the proof that the abductors of an Irish princess 
thought themselves safe from pursuit on the land of the kindred 
but hostile Welsh. Hagen, it need hardly be said, does not 
mince matters, but falls to and makes things extremely lively for 
the robbers a trait not without parallels in his country's history ! 
Perhaps the placing of the main action of " Kudrun " in Ireland 
and Wales points to an Irish prototype from which it may have 
been imitated with so much change of persons, names, and scenes 
as would make it suitable to a Netherlandish audience. 

IV. 

But to return to Edmund Spenser and the Ireland of Queen 
Elizabeth. Four centuries had, indeed, made over a great num- 
ber of Norman- Welsh and Flemish- Welsh families into ardent 
VOL. XLI. 48 



754 THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. [Sept., 

Irishmen, but it was not these with whom the poet, representing 
the feared and detested new swarm of land-grabbers, came in con- 
tact. His sources of information must have been such families of 
Norman- Welsh descent as held themselves superior not only to 
the " meere Irishe," but to later-coming " Saxons," whom they 
considered to have no right of conquest to the soil. By their 
Welsh and Irish blood they were hereditary enemies of English- 
men ; through their Norman admixture they felt all the pride of 
the conquerors at Hastings. The Welsh element would account 
for Spenser's derivations of words from the Old British. He 
seems to have looked at everything through Welsh eyes, though 
his advice as to the pacification of Ireland would have won the 
approval of William the Conqueror. Doubtless his sketch of the 
way to garrison Ireland only repeated the policy of the Nor- 
mans when dealing with England, which proved in the long run 
so very successful. He pointed out that Irish juries made " noe 
more scruple to pass agaynst an Englishman and the Queene, 
though it be to strayne theyr othes, then to drinke milke un- 
strayned " a simile very appropriate to Ireland, famed more for 
cattle than any other product and advocated a thorough coloni- 
zation of Ireland with settlers from Great Britain. Spenser also 
hinted a parallel between Ireland in his day and England under 
the Saxon Heptarchy, and considered that the common people of 
Ireland should be divorced from their leaders by dividing them 
into shires, hundreds, wapentakes, and tithes, which would en- 
courage the individual to feel himself independent of his chief ex- 
cept in war-time. Although he did not express himself in our 
terms, Spenser was well aware of the clan system and its disadvan- 
tages; he wanted the Saxon folk-basis applied to Ireland. He 
touched on this when Irenasus says to Eudoxus : 

" All the Irish allmost boast themselves to be gentellmen, noe less then 
the Welsh ; for yf he. can derive himselfe from the heade of a septe, as most 
of them can (and they are expert by their Bardes), then he holdeth him- 
selfe a gentellman, and thereupon scorneth eftsoones woorke, or use any 
handye labour, which he sayeth is the life of a peasaunte or churle ; but 
hencefoorth becometh either an horse-boy, or a stokaghe to some Kearne, 
enuring himself to his weapon and to his gentell trade of stealing." 

Here we find one root of the aristocratic disease among the 
Irish, which seems to be dying slowly out under the pressure of 
the democratic necessities in the political situation of to-day. 

And again Spenser is more explicit in showing the bad side 
of what the Anglo-Irish of his day called the law of Kin-Cogish, 
which was, " that every head of every sept, and every cheif of 



1885.] THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. 755 

every kinred or familye, should be answerable and bound to 
bring foorth every one of that kinred and sept under hym at all 
times to be justified, when he should be required or charged 
with any treason, felonye, or other haynous crime." 

The truth, of course, was that Ireland had never been con- 
quered, and that on Irish soil two principal systems of internal 
government (not to speak of others, more recondite, which cannot 
be examined here) were in continual warfare. The population 
might be roughly divided into Irish and English, yet the Irish was 
by no means pure Keltic, and the English was very far from the 
folk of that name in England. The conquest of Ireland, such as 
it was, may be held to have a strong geographicatl likeness to the 
conquest of Great Britain by the Normans. In each case it was 
the people nearest the fated island, aided by professional adven- 
turers, freebooters, and younger sons of nobles seeking to found 
new families, who made the attempt. Under the Normans of 
William are included great numbers of Armoricans (Bretons), of 
Flemings, and of Hollanders. Under the " English " of Strong- 
bow it is difficult to find any but Welsh, Normans, and Flemings. 
This has been written to little purpose if the reader has not 
come to the conclusion that popular ideas are often fallacious, 
and that it will no longer do to take things in a lump and follow 
the blind prejudices which often rest upon foundations entirely 
misunderstood. The noble of to-day is often a parvenu with 
hardly three generations of gentlemen behind him. On the 
contrary, a poor Irish-speaking family from the hills of Con- 
naught, little better than paupers, is as likely as any other to 
derive its blood from families of the gentry class, with Keltic 
names, who had at one time relapsed into the clan system. 
Ascending still further, one might reach the old Norman- 
Welsh nobility that fought and married into temporary fame 
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Back of them the 
track may hold to British princes and the Norman Conqueror 
himself. According to the stiffest English ideas, no better pedi- 
gree could be found. Yet the ignorant self-sufficiency of most 
men who speak English is such, that without examination they 
would hold themselves as of a superior blood, a finer clay, a 
loftier ancestry than the man with the Irish name. To the on- 
looker who has no sympathy with these confused ideas of upper 
and lower, better blood and worse, the people who indulge in 
them seriously seem little short of lunatics. Some of the failings 
of the Scotch in their attitude toward the Irish have been noted 
(THE CATHOLIC WORLD for June : " Irish Bards and Scotch 



756 THE WELSH CONQUEST OF IRELAND. [Sept., 

Reviewers"), and it may seem invidious to point to something 
similar among the Welsh. Yet it is certain that the Welsh ex- 
hibit coldness toward the Irish which verges on jealousy, a cold- 
ness shown by an affectation of ignoring Ireland among the 
Welsh scholars not of the very latest group. The positive and 
negative injustice of Kelts of the larger island to those of the 
smaller would not, in itself, be worth notice ; it merely arises in- 
cidentally while trying to fix Ireland's place as regards England. 
It is only fair to the English to show that if they have been sel- 
fish and cruel, and at best indifferent to the Irish, they are not 
entirely alone, since much nearer portions of the Union have 
been, to say the least, unsympathetic. Though it does not ex- 
cuse the unpardonable spirit of English legislation up to the 
latest years, this is a factor which must not be overlooked. At 
the end of the last century the worst outrages were committed 
by Welsh troopers, and quite recently a Welsh regiment quar- 
tered in Ireland indulged in a fatal riot with the people. The 
English have followed the old Norman methods pursued at the 
" conquest of Ireland " used the Welsh to pull the chestnuts out 
of the fire. The relations borne to each other by the Welsh and 
Irish in the past remind one, considering their near kinship, their 
quarrels, and the gallant men and beautiful women they pro- 
duce when they intermarry, of the Breton proverb, 

" Bugale ar c' hefnianted 
Gwasa kerend a zo er bed, 
Ha gwella ma vent dimezed." 

" Children of distant cousins the worst relatives in the world ; 
but if they are wedded to each other, the best." 






1885.] FRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 757 



PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 

IT touches a thoughtful Christian mind with most sensible 
pathos to study the philosophy of the ancients. In want of in- 
spired authoritative teaching, the human intellect, never greater 
nor more earnest, looked alternately outward and inward, and 
sought eagerly to find the origin and the ultimate end of man 
and what were the things most suited to the purposes of his 
being. We may compassionate but never contemn the specula- 
tions of the physiologists, Thales upon Water, Anaximenes upon 
Air, nor of the mathematicians with Pythagoras at their head, 
whom tradition made to tame with a word the Daunian bear, to 
be heard lecturing at Metapontum and Tauromenium on the 
same day and hour, to be saluted by the river-god while crossing 
his waters, and to hear the harmonies of the spheres. There was 
modesty and there was melancholy in the spirits of these most 
gifted men. Those preceding the last-named had been called 
Wise Men. But he, greater than all his predecessors, would have 
an humbler title. There is much modesty in the following 
words : 

" This life may be compared to the Olympic games. For as in this 
assembly some seek glory and the crowns, some by the purchase or by 
the sale of merchandise seek gain, and others, more noble than either, go 
there neither for gain nor for applause, but solely to enjoy this wonderful 
spectacle and to see and know all that passes ; we, in the same manner, 
quit our country, which is heaven, and come into the world, which is an 
assembly where many work for profit, many for gain, and where there are 
but few who, despising avarice and vanity, study nature. It is these last 
whom I call Philosophers ; for as there is nothing more noble than to be a 
spectator without any personal interest, so in this life the contemplation 
and knowledge of nature are infinitely more honorable than any other 
application." 

Herein we behold a spirit searching for wisdom, not for its 
practical uses, but for its own sake. Therefore he called himself 
a Lover of Wisdom, to whom the noblest exercise of the under- 
standing was contemplation. 

It is interesting to follow the development of philosophy 
through the Eleatics. Sadder yet these verses of Xenophanes : 

" Certainly no mortal yet knew, and ne'er shall there be one 

Knowing both well, the Gods and the All, whose nature we treat of ; 
For when by chance he at times may utter the true and the perfect, 
He wists not unconscious ; for error is spread over all things." 



758 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Sept., 

Then come the independent speculators, from Heraclitus to 
Democritus, of whom 

" One pitied, one condemned the woful times ; 
One laughed at follies, and one wept o'er crimes " 

illustrating how " life is a comedy to those who think, a trage- 
dy to those who feel." To the laughing philosopher succeed 
the Sophists, who, tired of the problem of human life, acknow- 
ledged to be incapable of solution, turned away from it and de- 
voted themselves, as if grimly to compensate or revenge for the 
continued elusion of truth, to the development of the art of dis- 
putation. 

And then Socrates, who seems to us to have been sent into 
the world to convince it that the most consummate genius, un- 
aided by revelation, is incompetent by searching to find out 
God. What a career was led by this, the wisest, humblest, brav- 
est, best of mankind ! How did he yearn for Truth ! How did 
he pursue her ever-eluding form, through heat and cold, in hun- 
ger and rags, loving her none the less, believing in her none the 
less, because he could never find out the exact place of her shrine. 
His predecessors, because they could not embrace her, had de- 
clared her to be a phantom. Not so Socrates. He knew that, 
though he could not behold her, she was around and near him, 
that her laws were immutable and eternal, and that to obtain her 
blessing mankind must pray without ceasing. Mankind could 
not do what this Silenus (as they named him) told them they 
must do or be ruined, and so they slew him. Never was a death 
a death of a mortal more inevitable. Hear what his lover 
says, the brilliant Alcibiades : 

" I stop my ears, as from the Sirens, and flee away as fast as possible, 
that I may not sit down beside him and grow old in listening to his talk ; 
for this man has reduced me to feel the sentiment of shame, which I 
imagine no one would readily believe was in me ; he alone inspires me 
with remorse and awe, for I feel in his presence my incapacity of refuting 
what he says, or of refusing to do that which he directs ; but when I depart 
from him the glory which the multitude confers overwhelms me. I escape, 
therefore, and hide myself from him, and when I see him I am over- 
whelmed with humiliation, because I have neglected to do what I have 
confessed to him ought to be done ; and often and often have I wished 
that he was no longer to be seen among men. But if that were to happen 
I well know that I should suffer far greater pain ; so that where I can turn, 
or what I can do with this man, I know not. All this have I and many 
others suffered from the pipings of this satyr." 

The career of Socrates showed the highest height to which 



1885.] PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 759 

the human understanding- could reach. Sublime indeed was 
that height. It showed also the highest height of human vir- 
tue, and that, too, was sublime. For a man to proclaim the 
supremacy of virtue over all other rules of human life, to teach 
that brave, unswerving adherence to justice was not only the 
most precious but the only happiness, to declare that only those 
are unhappy who are not just these of themselves prove the 
divine origin of mankind. What the Sophists declared to be a 
phantom he worshipped as an Existence, not less real because 
invisible to human eyes ; and sometimes in solemn argumentation, 
sometimes in irony that burned like fire, he pursued and put to 
silence those who refused to pay the worship that was ever 
pouring from his heart. In this wonderful man the human con- 
science also performed its most perfect work. Had he been a 
Sophist he must have gone mad from despair. In moral certi- 
tude that is, in the certitude that virtue was eternally existent 
he found the repose for his soul, that had hungered and thirsted 
to attain it. Always poor, he never doubted the acceptance of 
his poor sacrifices, being persuaded that humility, purity, and 
piety were more pleasing to the gods than when, without these, 
their altars were overspread with costliest gifts. His prayers 
were not for the things which himself might have chosen, but 
for whatever the gods knew it was good for him to receive. 
Nothing in all times can excel those words in his last speech 
to his judges : 

" The difficulty, O Athenians ! is not to escape from death, but from 
guilt ; for guilt is swifter than death and runs faster. And now I, being 
old and slow of foot, have been overtaken by Death, the slower of the 
two ; but my accusers, who are brisk and vehement by wickedness, the 
swifter. ... It is now time that we depart, I to die, you to live ; but which 
has the better destiny is unknown to all except the God." 

And so they slew him. A people made blind by interest and 
passion cannot see and cannot endure the excellent greatness of 
such a man. Had not even Alcibiades expressed the wish that 
he might no longer be seen amongst men? "Everywhere," 
says Heine, " that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, 
there also is Golgotha." And so they slew him. He had prayed 
to the gods all during his life, and his last words were a prayer 
to the gods. 

The pupil of Socrates, second only to him in the greatness 
of renown, Plato had not the cheerfulness of his master, though 
he was equally devoted to Truth and Immortality. How sad, 



760 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Sept., 

how intensely melancholy he who has been styled " the inheri- 
tor of the wisdom of his age " ! How beautiful his theory of the 
perfect winged chariots of the gods, contrasted with those, vari- 
ously imperfect, of mankind ! How melancholy the repeated 
failure of men in placing themselves in the train of the gods and 
ever journeying along with them ! Like Socrates, believing that 
man came from heaven and has it in his power to be restored 
thither, his pure, solemn soul was ever unhappy at man's per- 
sistent obliviousness or disregard of the Real Existences before 
seen and known in his native country. In Beauty, for instance 
(TO Kot\ov), some of his thoughts and words are much like those 
of the Prophets and Evangelists. What unites the human soul to 
God is Love, and Love is the longing of the human soul for 
Beauty. 

" But it is not easy for us to call to mind what they saw there " [whilst 
in heaven, before their human birthj "those especially which saw that 
region for a short time only, and those which, having fallen to the earth, 
were so unfortunate as to be turned to injustice, and consequent oblivion 
of the sacred things which were seen by them in their former state. Few, 
therefore, remain who are adequate to the recollection of those things." 

After some observations about temperance, justice, etc., he says: 

" But Beauty was not only most splendid when it was seen by us form- 
ing part of the heavenly possession or choir, but here also the likeness of 
it comes to us through the most acute and clear of our senses, that of 
sight, and with a splendor which no other of the terrestrial images of 
super-celestial existences possess. They, then, who are not fresh from 
heaven, or who have been corrupted, are not vehemently impelled to- 
wards that Beauty which is aloft when they see that upon earth which is 
called by its name ; they do not, therefore, venerate and worship it, but 
give themselves up to physical pleasure after the manner of a quadruped." 

Sublime yet touching his doctrine that the Good (TO ayaBov) 
is GOD, who is invisible, while Beauty, Truth, and others are his 
attributes. These we may see, but the Good never, but can 
know it only by its attributes. The great desire of Plato's heart 
was to see mankind live in a manner like the gods, and his soul 
grew ever more and more sad because of its continued disappoint- 
ment. 

Aristotle, the most learned of mankind, with little thought of 
ethics, bestowed himself mainly to physics and metaphysics, and 
paved the way to the Sceptics and the Epicureans, the former 
doubting the existence of truth because of its undiscoverable 
criterion, and the latter endeavoring to solace disappointment 
with magnifying the good of pleasure and pursuing it. Not that 



1885.] PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 761 

the Epicurean philosophers practised or inculcated either debauch- 
ery or intemperance. That was a sincere inscription at the en- 
trance of their garden : " The hospitable keeper of this mansion, 
where you will find pleasure the highest good, will present you 
liberally with barley-cakes and water fresh from the spring. The 
gardens will not provoke your appetite by artificial dainties, but 
satisfy it with natural supplies. Will you not be well enter- 
tained?" 

It is very interesting to study the histories of the Epicureans 
and their rivals and enemies, the Stoics, by whom they suffered 
from misrepresentations that by the majority of mankind are be- 
lieved to this day. The times were favorable to two just such 
rival sects. The glories of Athens were departing. Greece was 
fast getting to be 

"Living Greece, no more." 

Epicurus and Zeno, both good men, revering the name of Soc- 
rates, looked upon the decay of civilization with different eyes. 
The former would console himself with the search and attain- 
ment of whatever pleasures were attainable, but always with 
the purpose of temperate use. To him there was no good, not 
even pleasure, either in evil indulgences or in the intemperate 
use of those that were good. See how often Horace, a disciple, 
commends economy, temperance, and other virtues. How in 
that most touching of his odes, 

" Eheu fugaces Posthume, Posthume," 

he commends to his opulent friend thoughts of the tomb, over 
which, alone of all the trees in his garden, the cypress, neglected 
in life, will stand. Pleasure, but pleasure not too eagerly pur- 
sued, and especially not intemperately indulged, was the rule 
of Epicurus. Yet when the pursuit of pleasure is the rule of 
life, effeminacy and intemperance must ensue among the most. 
It was, therefore, a noble purpose when Zeno, the father of the 
Stoics, with sorrow for the general decay of Grecian manhood, 
and indignant with the men of culture who merely counselled 
every possible avoidance of pain, undertook to restore that man- 
hood which he saw departing from his countrymen and taking 
its abode with the barbarians who had built their city upon the 
banks of the Tiber. Zeno was as earnest and solemn a preacher 
as Socrates or Plato. Yet, though he derided the softness of the 
Epicureans, he could not endure the railings, the rags, the in- 
decencies of the Cynics. So he formulated his own doctrine, 



762 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Sept., 

"Live harmoniously with Nature." Contemning effeminacy, in- 
activity, and mere silent, moody speculation, he urged to untiring 
activity, in whose career if perils and pains appeared, as they 
must, to meet them with courage and ignore them by endurance. 
He taught that the intellect, which was divine, should despise 
whatever interfered with its legitimate work, whether that was 
pleasing or painful ; that the corporeal senses should be and 
could be held under control by the intellect, and thus it could 
and would march onward along the highway of freedom and 
virtue. 

But manhood was passing away from the Greeks. The dis- 
ciples of Zeno among his own people were to be few : the many 
rose among the Romans. A great man and a good was 
Zeno ; but what a mournful commentary on the doctrines he 
taught, to read that, when at ninety-eight years of age he was 
writhing under the pain of a fractured limb, disgusted, he 
strangled himself with a rope ! a mournful example, destined 
to be imitated many times in both nations, especially in the one 
which, though foreign to the great teacher, were most studious 
and fond of his teachings. For the Greeks were gentle as they 
were brave, and their greatest heroes had wept as freely as they 
had fought with the courage of the gods. Tenderness found 
little place with the rude people across the Adriatic, and so the 
Stoa was removed from Athens and had its most numerous dis- 
cipleship in Rome. An anecdote is told of the behavior of the 
elder Cato when Carneades, the leader of the New Academy, 
came to Rome. On his first appearance before the Stoic censor 
the latter's convictions were shaken ; on the next day, when the 
Greek, in ridicule of the Stoic's great doctrine of common sense, 
refuted his own arguments of the previous interview, the audi- 
tor persuaded the senate to send back Carneades to his native 
country. Not that great teachers were to arise in Rome ; for 
Rome, having conquered Greece in arms, was taken captive by 
Greece in arts, among which the Stoic creed was best suited to 
the energetic activities of the victor. But men who were actors, 
not thinkers merely, who were statesmen, not philosophers, learn- 
ing from Athens, learned mostly the Stoic creed and practised 
its precepts, from Cato to Marcus Antoninus. 

It is pleasing to contemplate the lingering that philosophy 
made around the fallen capital of Greece. It must in time de- 
part. Its first new resting-place was at Alexandria, where Philo 
the Jew reason alone having been found insufficient for man's 
intellectual and spiritual wants brought in the alliance of Ori- 



1885.] PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 763 

ental mysticism, and, more important yet, that of faith. He was 
the first to announce that science, in its most important being, 
was the gift of God. The name he imparted to it was Faith, and 
the faithful performance of its behests was called Piety. Then 
came on the controversy between the Jew and the teachers of 
the Neo- Platonic school, which also was domiciled at Alexandria. 
These men sought to revive whatever was possible of the ideas 
of the founder of the Academy. He had, indeed, seemed almost 
to approximate the faith announced by Philo, if not as to reason, 
at least as to virtue, which he maintained was not a thing for the 
intellect of man to discover, but a gift of the Creator. The Jew 
applied this definition to science as well, and so in his hands phi- 
losophy became theology. Henceforth the combat is between 
Reason and Faith. In the fulness of time Christianity was born. 

And now the victory, humanly speaking, was the more 
speedily certain when we contrast the benignity and the univer- 
sality of the Christian faith with the exclusiveness and the fre- 
quent inhumanity of philosophy, as well as its incertitude and its 
contradictions. What had been left of philosophy that was not 
sceptical professed to hold in contempt the body of man with its 
capacities for pleasure and for pain. Some of the later philoso- 
phers had gone to the length of expressing their disgust that 
they had bodies that were necessary to be fed, clothed, and 
housed. Christianity appeared, and from the mouths of unlet- 
tered fishermen doctrine claimed to be infallible came forth 
that God himself had become incarnate in the womb of an Im- 
maculate Virgin, and had made himself known, and had been 
tempted to evil even as mankind, though without yielding ; that 
he had suffered like mankind in the human body that he had 
assumed, and groaned in anguish from this suffering ; that he had 
wept tears of blood, and in his human being had died, but that 
afterwards he, his body as well as his spirit, had risen from the 
tomb, and both had gone to his native heaven. Then these same 
fishermen announced that not only is the spirit of man immortal, 
but the body also ; that the latter is destined to resurrection simi- 
lar to that of the Incarnate God, and both, under conditions, live 
for ever with him in such felicity as the mind of man has never 
conceived. 

Behold now what dignity was attached to the human body, 
which so many of the philosophers had despised. It was even 
styled a temple wherein was wont to dwell the Most High. Not 
that its evil wants were less to be condemned, but more ; yet that 
they must be restrained, power to accomplish which endeavor 



764 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Sept., 

could be obtained by fervent requests to the risen God to impart 
it ; further, that yielding to them in periods of incapacity to re- 
sist might be condoned by penance ; that while compunction for 
wrong-doing was ever becoming and salutary, remorse such as 
led to despair was regarded by Heaven as one of the greatest in- 
juries that man could inflict. Henceforth the body was to have 
recognized all of its importance in the being of man all ; no 
more, no less. We were not taught that pain was no evil. Pain 
was an evil, at least a misfortune, inherited by man from an- 
cestors who had violated well-recognized laws. Yet pain could 
be lessened by submitting with all possible endurance to its in- 
fliction, in the confidence that deliverance was to come, even as 
it had come to the Incarnate when he had risen from the tomb; 
that such endurance would cause the evil to be remembered with 
pleasure in good time, even during this mortal existence. 

That such doctrines must be received by the multitudes rea- 
soning minds, even unaided by religious faith, must perceive. 
Philosophy, in its department of ethics, must go down. It made 
a feeble struggle. Its last great one was when Julian, persecut- 
ed by his kinsmen while they sat upon the throne Christians in 
name but heretical in opinions was driven to seek consolation 
for the wrongs he had suffered to the melancholy Plato. Among 
the careers of princes none seems more to be compassionated 
than that of this, the last and greatest of the Flavian line. What 
he might have done and what he might have become but for his 
early death are known only to God. Other things besides ad- 
mission of defeat may have been meant in those last mournful 
words : " O Galilean, thou hast triumphed ! " 

We said that there was a pathos in that philosophy of the 
ancients its various discoursings after the certitude which was 
to bring tranquillity to the upright, thoughtful mind ; its ever- 
repeating disappointments ; its alternatings between the pursuit 
of pleasure and the contempt of pain, between the dogmatic as- 
sertions of the existence of gods and the doubts thereupon that 
overwhelmed with sadness and sometimes drove to despair. 
What sadness in the words of Cicero to Brutus in explanation of 
what the world wondered at his resort to philosophy : " An- 
other inducement to it was a melancholy disposition of mind, and 
the great and heavy oppression of fortune that was upon me ; 
from which, if I could have found any surer remedy, I would not 
have sought relief in this pursuit." Scarcely less sad the con- 
cluding words of that treatise on The Nature of the Gods, when, 
after the dispute between Cotta, a disciple of the Academy, and 



1885.] PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 765 

Balbus, of the Stoics, Velleius, whom the Epicureans loved to 
style the most gifted of the Romans, could thus decide : 
" Velleius judged that the arguments of Cotta were truest, but 
those of Balbus seemed to have the greater probability." The 
great orator, like the last of the Greeks, tired of strife and tur- 
moil, of the weight of years, of the sight of the decay of liberty 
and patriotism, turned again to the scene of the studies of his 
youth, 

" The olive-grove of Academe 
Plato's retirement where the Attic-bird 
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long," 

and dreamed, but only dreamed, of things than the present 

" Far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.*' 

The thoughtful Christian mind sees in all these struggles 
what both to compassionate and what to admire the earnest- 
ness of purpose searching for the truth with anguishing anxiety, 
believing in immortality yet dreading annihilation, yet, during 
all these struggles, loyal to friendship, and love, and honor, 
and justice, and patriotism. Ah ! how good is God to have 
bestowed upon the heathen world such exemplars both to the 
heathen and to the Christian who was to come after with the 
Word in his hands and an infallible interpreter of all its inten- 
tions ! No wonder that even Christians styled Plato in particu- 
lar The Divine. Says the Abbe Bougaud in Histoire de Sainte 
Monique : " II a Iaiss6e les Peres de 1'Eglise incertains du nom 
qu'il fallait lui donner; ceux-ci voyant en lui le g6nie humain 
elev6 a sa plus haute puissance; ceux-la Tappellant un Moise 
paien, un prophete inspire" de Dieu, un preparateur 6vang61ique 
envoye aux nations assises k Tombre de la mort ; tous d'accord a 
saluer ce doux et merveilleux 6tranger du nom de Divin." These 
words were becoming to use while referring to the mother of the 
great Augustine, whose mind lingered so fondly with the sage of 
the Academy, and whose teachings received from that exalted 
source carried him at length to the highest. 

What if such a man had lived to meet the Baptist clothed in 
camel's hair in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming that the king, 
dom of heaven was at hand ? Were there not Philo and the rab- 
bis? Were there not the Neo-Platonists ? Alas! the former 
were deaf to the voice, because they had mistaken the nature of 
the royalty in which their King was to come in triumph, while 



766 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Sept., 

the latter could not endure to listen to the " foolishness of preach- 
ing " in the unlettered poor. From the former, because, being his 
own, they received him not, he turned away to the Gentiles, 
and the very wisdom of the latter, now polluted by the decays of 
many kinds, "knew not God." 

Such is a brief, partial view of ancient philosophy. Its ethics 
were overthrown by those of Christianity. Its last teachers 
went out of Christendom to linger out their lives in the king- 
doms of the East, while Christians like Thomas of Aquin en- 
grafted its methods upon the new faith, reconciling, never to be 
disunited, the subtlest reason with the humblest belief. Truth, 
called at one time a phantom, at another a phantasm, was found 
to exist only in the church of Christ. Happiness, for which the 
wise of all ages had sought, was found in the grace of God 
extended in equal abundance to the innocent and the sincerely 
penitent. The best lovers and the best-loved of Christ were the 
virgin John and Magdalen the repentant sinner. Since that time 
the very greatest among the greatest intellects, the higher have 
they been exalted in genius, culture, and earnestness, have been 
let down into the lowest depthi of humility and humble thank- 
fulness. 

It is less interesting to pursue philosophy in the feeble at- 
tempts it has since made to recover what Christianity wrested 
from its hands. Yet there is interest in contemplating the career 
of that greatest of modern philosophers, Bacon, who wisely sepa- 
rated from Christianity the field which was peculiarly the lat- 
ter's own, and enlarged that wherein it might work for the at- 
tainment of its lawful ends. The greatest of the philosophers of 
modern times, he was, or he meant to be, a Christian. As in the 
careers of the men of Greece, so in him, after his fall, there is 
profound pathos, mingled with gratification that he turned for re- 
lief to the only source whence it could come to the guilty and 
the fallen. We can never read without emotion the following 
portions of one of his prayers: 

" Most gracious Lord God, my merciful Father from my youth up ! my 
Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter! thou, O Lord, soundest and 
searchest the depths and secrets of all hearts; thou acknowledgest the 
upright of heart ; thou judgest the hypocrite ; thou ponderest men's 
thoughts and doings in a balance ; thou measurest their intentions as with 
a line ; vanity and crooked ways cannot be hid from thee . . . O Lord, my 
strength ! I have since my youth met with thee in all my ways, by thy 
fatherly compassions, by thy comfortable chastisements, and by thy most 
visible providence. As thy favors have increased upon me, so have thy 
corrections ; so as thou hast been always near me, O Lord, and ever as my 



1885.] PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 767 

worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from thee have pierced me ; 
and when I have ascended before men I have descended in humiliation be- 
fore thee. And now, when I thought most of peace and honor, thy hand is 
heavy upon me, and hath humbled me according to thy former loving- 
kindness, keeping me still in thy fatherly school, not as a bastard, but as 
a child. Just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in 
number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies ; 
for what are the sands of the sea ? Earth, heavens, and all these are no- 
thing to thy mercies. Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before thee 
that I am debtor to thee for the greatest talent of thy gifts and graces, 
which I have neither put into a napkin nor put it, as I ought, to ex- 
changers, where it might have made best profit, but misspent it in things 
for which I was least fit ; so I may truly say my soul hath been a stranger 
in the course of my pilgrimage. Be merciful unto me, O Lord, for my Sa- 
viour's sake, and receive me unto thy bosom, or guide me in thy ways.' 1 

When philosophy can thus humble itself before God, confess 
its errors, and pray for pardon and guidance in the pursuit of 
things beyond its ken, we may bid it God-speed in inquiries 
within the range of its possibilities. Philosophy may provide 
for the material wants of mankind, but religion alone can be 
counted on to satisfy the spiritual. Its simplicity and its ex- 
actions keep away many, especially of the prosperous and the 
proud ; but what healing have not the stricken and the humble 
found in its sweet influences ! Did some of the philosophers call 
pain an evil, and others not? What would both sets of disputants 
have said if they could have foreseen St. Francis Xavier first in 
his labors and then in his repose? " Amplius, O Domine ! am- 
plius ! " he said when his sufferings in the East were foretold him. 
Afterwards, when resting in the gardens of St. Goa, and his spi- 
rit could not support the flood of happiness that poured with- 
in it, he could only cry out in the anguish of ecstasy, " Satt's, 
O Domine! satis est ! " The men we have mentioned would have 
rejoiced for the coming of such a day, although knowing that 
they must die without the sight. 



768 A JAPANESE TOWN. [Sept., 



A JAPANESE TOWN. 

IN the fifteen years of its existence Kobe has not had time to 
develop into a town of much size ; consequently its principal 
interest to the stranger lies in a broad Japanese street that runs 
for perhaps two miles through the native town of Hiogo, of 
which Kobe is but a small fraction. It is called the Kiyo Machi, 
is lighted by foreign lamps, and lined with Japanese shops of all 
kinds, many of which are of so interesting a nature that they will 
bear visiting again and again. Were you to pass along this 
street you would find china-shops in which European styles of 
porcelain are almost as abundant as the native ware ; you would 
pass shops where Fairbanks' scales are sold, and in other places 
would see foreign toilet-soaps, and quite probably both the scales 
and the soaps would be forgeries. Before other doorways you 
would find European straw hats for the Japanese manufacture 
these in myriad numbers. It is a business that has sprung up 
among them within the last decade, and appears to be remunera- 
tive ; for the Japanese, almost to a man, are wonderfully taken 
with the straw hat. An African chieftain is satisfied with an 
umbrella, but the Japanese must have a hat and an umbrella also, 
both of European make. But there are also on this street many 
shops distinctively Japanese; among these several curio-shops, 
where, among much that is good and desirable to purchase, did 
not the dealer ask such unconscionable prices for them, you find 
a lot of old swords and cross-bows, and murderous arrows with 
double-edged daggers for heads, and suits of old armor, and sad- 
dles and stirrups that he has put together from old remnants for 
your personal edification. 

By far the larger part of the curio-dealer's business lies among 
the Europeans; and, possibly to propitiate them and have their 
good-will, he hangs a card out at his door stating that his rooms 
are closed on Sunday. This at the front entrance in good and 
well-lettered English ; there is a back door with no such sign, 
through which one can always enter of a Sunday, should he so 
desire, and the proprietor will be found working as hard as he 
ever worked in his life before. 

Many of the signs at the shop-doors are in English. Over the 
way there is a photographer's. His rooms are in the European 
style, and the photographs taken are quite good, although the 



1885.] A JAPANESE TOWN. 769 

operator is not always happy in disposing the light. Directly 
before us is a druggist's. Were we to enter this man's shop we 
should find him sitting upon his heels before a hibachi a box 
more or less ornamental, filled with sand on which burn a few 
small pieces of charcoal, and to one side accommodating a box 
of mild tobacco, a bamboo tube serving as a cuspidor, and a long, 
slender pipe with a diminutive bowl. Before this arrangement 
he sits on his heels, surrounded by his drugs and bottles. He is 
smoking the pipe as we enter, and, save that he noisily takes a 
deep and prolonged inspiration, at the same time bowing down 
to the floor, he is quite stolid. The posture he assumes in bow- 
ing gives us a fine opportunity to note the shaven furrow, some 
two inches wide, ploughed through his hair from forehead to 
crown, and the hair at the back gathered into a small queue and 
brought forward into the cleared space in what is called the gun- 
hammer style of top-knot. No chairs or seats of any kind are in 
his shop. If you must sit, then must you sit on the floor ; for you 
cannot possibly sit on your heels, as he sits on his no foreigner 
can keep such a position five minutes, though the Japanese can 
retain the posture with ease throughout the day. He has a 
counter and a glass show-case ; but these he has borrowed from 
the European. He looks at you quite pleasantly, and you look 
at him as blandly as possible, and, supposing this the first shop 
you have entered, you naturally begin to talk straight English at 
him. He doesn't know a word you are saying, and if he did it is 
probable that he would not answer you in the same tongue. He 
dislikes English, and possibly with sufficient reason. He talks 
Japanese at you, and, finding you do not understand, he hands 
you a little book in which his wares are set forth in both English 
and Japanese. Then all else is done in profound silence. You 
run your finger down the columns until you come to the thing 
wanted. You point it out to him ; he reads the Japanese, and 
immediately rises and hands you what is required. He sells 
excellent drugs better than can be gotten from your own peo- 
ple in Japan, for as yet he understands little about adulterations. 
And when he has handed you your purchase neatly wrapped, 
and you have your hand on the knob of the door, about to depart, 
he startles you so by saying, " Sayonara ! " that you fairly jump, 
it is so unexpected. You turn quickly and sharply say, " What ? " 
" Sayonara ! " he smilingly repeats. You have paid him it can- 
not be money that he wants ; so you slowly turn your eyes over 
his shop, as though a casual inventory of his stock might assist 
you in discovering what is meant by this sudden sayonara ; and 
VOL. XLI. 49 



A JAPANESE TOWN. [Sept., 

when you find his floorful of bottles gives no clue, you look help- 
lessly at him and say in pigeon, " No sabe," and go out. But 
you soon learn that " sayonara " means " good-by," and after 
this first experience use it on all possible occasions. 

You have been impressed by this man, unconsciously, it may 
be, but in a little while you find yourself admiring that shaven 
furrow and that little percussion gun-hammer top-knot ; they 
had such a trim, clean, cool look, and harmonized so completely 
with the general contour of the face. And you like his loose, blue- 
gray dress : it suited the man and his surroundings. Had he 
not that quaint coiffure and that subdued dress that hid the 
shape of his limbs, could he thus have sat upon his heels before 
a hibachi, surrounded by his bottles, that stood in phalanxes upon 
the floor, without appearing grotesque? Certainly not. Pre- 
sently, as you are walking along thinking of this, you may pos- 
sibly see the governor of Kob6, in a barouche drawn by a pair 
of fine American horses, drive by. Your glance has not been 
quick enough to take in the governor's dress in detail, but you 
note that he is clothed in gorgeous regimentals and that the 
driver wears a coat with fur collar and a high silk hat with a 
cockade. You begin to think, what nearly all foreigners resi- 
dent in Japan already believe, that perhaps the government has 
made a mistake in denationalizing the dress of the people ; and 
when you have been to Osaka and seen the army the backbone 
of Japan in navy-blue regimentals with lemon-colored stripes 
down the breeches' legs, you are sure of it. Why, the uniform 
makes the army look like an army of boys with sorrowfully emaci- 
ated legs and with extraordinarily big heads ; and if hair stand- 
ing on end denotes fear, they are one and all badly frightened. 
And then they can't walk that is, not with the solid, martial 
tread of a European regiment. No; the Japanese army is an 
army of stragglers. To sit all one's life upon one's heels, or to 
sit tailor-fashion on a floor, is not conducive to easy, graceful 
walking ; on the contrary, it produces bowleggedness, and the 
Japanese are all more or less bowlegged. Of course if they con- 
tinue in this borrowed fashion of dress, sit upon chairs, and re- 
cline upon bedsteads, this bowleggedness and uncertain, and 
certainly ungraceful, manner of walking may disappear in time, 
the present attenuation of limb develop into a rounded plump- 
ness, and the coarse, unruly black hair become graceful locks. 
It was in 1868, the year of the Meiji, that the dress was changed 
by edict seventeen years, and as yet the order has been obey- 
ed only by those filling offices under government, and by those 






1885.] A JAPANESE TOWN. 771 

who have been educated abroad or have otherwise been brought 
into close contact with the European. For the rest, the vast 
majority, they continue to wear their loose, flowing robes, to 
shave their heads ; and the women, the coy young girls about to 
become wives, still shave their eyebrows from their faces, still 
blacken their teeth with lacquer. Would you have them sell 
their birthright for a mess of pottage ? 

In walking through the Kiyo Machi one who is at all fami- 
liar with China will note many differences between it and a 
Chinese street. First, and above all, it is infinitely more cleanly, 
as the Japanese themselves are more cleanly as a people than 
the Chinese. There is a conspicuous absence of the red and 
gilt signs and oiled-paper lanterns that so obtrude themselves 
on the notice in a Chinese thoroughfare. As the Japanese do 
not burn joss-sticks nor firecrackers, there is not that heavy, 
Fourth-of-July odor hanging in the air that is at first such an 
unpleasant feature of a Chinese town, but which one is inclined 
to like and appreciate at its full value after a little constant 
smelling, since it must keep down and destroy far worse smells. 
Nor are sun-dried fish and boneless smoked ducks and geese met 
with at every turn. Roast pig is not paraded through the 
streets with flying colors to the music of gongs, tom-toms, and 
hautboys. Roast pork is not a Japanese dish, and melody fills 
not the Japanese soul ; for on the street I never heard music of 
any kind, save the dulcet strains of the " manipulator's " tin flute 
and the foreign martial airs played on foreign instruments in the 
hands of Japanese military, nor saw a procession, either hyme- 
neal or funereal, save that of the Japanese army. The houses in 
the street are frame, and, excepting a few of a certain charac- 
ter, are of no architectural pretensions whatever, totally unfitted 
for the climate, unsubstantial and trifling in appearance, put to- 
gether without the use of nail, left unpainted, and presenting a 
remarkable air of newness, as though they had just been built. 
It is always safe to assume that the court knows a little law, yet 
there is room for grave doubt whether the Japanese knew what 
was required when he planned his house, for the climate is often 
rigorous and the dwelling is but a toy. In the midst of the 
chilling winds and snows of January and March, when all Chris- 
tian men delight to gather about their firesides, he draws near to 
his hibachi, whose few pitiful coals disseminate the ghost of a 
cheerful heat through a space of six inches. Evidently it satis- 
fies him, else he would purchase a little American stove ; but 
what a fraud it must be on his poor, tailless cat ! A Japanese 



772 A JAPANESE TOWN. [Sept., 

house is a comfortless home for a cat, but the streets of a Japan- 
ese town are a paradise for crows. Here they hop at one's feet, 
light upon fences and the eaves of the low houses, swoop down 
from flag-poles from which floats that curious ensign of Japan a 
white flag with a red ball in the centre, suggesting the possibility 
of a skating-rink within the building beneath it. The crows are 
considered scavengers, and a law prohibits the killing or interfer- 
ing with them in any way. 

But the stranger in a Japanese city finds most interest in the 
temples, for on them is lavished all the native idea of architec- 
ture and art. In style and beauty they far excel buildings of a 
similar nature in China, and, though not always placed the most 
conveniently for access, the most picturesque and beautiful spots 
in all the town's surroundings are chosen for their sites. On the 
mountain's steep sides in Kiyoto, nestling among the tall trees, is 
the temple of Kiyomidzu, built upon a huge framework of heavy 
timbers, so that three sides of its broad veranda are lifted a hun- 
dred feet in air. A hand-rail surrounds this veranda ; but as the 
altitude is so great and the Japanese inclination to jump over so 
strong, an outer chevaux-de-frise of sharpened stakes has been 
placed upon the extreme eaves. A hundred yards or so away 
the upper stories of the charming square pagoda, with its many 
balconied floors and massive eaves dropping melody from a hun- 
dred ever-tinkling bells, lift up above the tree-tops. Within the 
temple the gods have orderly arrangement ; the walls are hung 
with Japanese pictures and several foreign paintings of scenes in 
Japanese history. In the centre of the room hangs a portrait of 
a woman evidently painted by a European ; and what strikes won- 
der to the European mind is to see this painting covered with 
what school-boys inelegantly call " spit-balls." The explanation 
is simple. The woman has become a goddess, and believers in 
her anxious to learn whether such and such good luck will come 
to them chew a piece of paper into a pellet and throw it at the 
portrait. If it sticks good luck is assured to them. One would 
think that the paper would be masticated very fine to insure this 
happy ending. Such portraits are frequent in the temples, but 
are usually covered with a wire screen to render the placing of 
the pellet more difficult ; but this painting is free of the screen, 
and the goddess must be a Lady Bountiful. These temples are 
not always strictly devoted to religious services, for one of the 
most prominent hotels in Kiyoto is in a temple's courtyard. Its 
tables are often surrounded by white-robed, shaven priests, sit- 
ting in stiff-back chairs, eating European viands with knives and 






1885.] A JAPANESE TOWN. 773 

forks, and drinking European wines from cut glasses with all the 
gusto in life. 

There is a curious little temple in Kobe, situated some short 
distance beyond the Kiyo Machi, having the customary stone 
archway at its entrance two upright posts of granite on which 
rests a cross-piece slightly curved upward at the extremities. 
This slight, graceful upward curvature is the distinctive curve of 
Japanese architecture. Were it more decided its identity would 
be lost : it would become Chinese. It is used in ail buildings of 
the least importance, and not only on horizontal surfaces, as in 
the arch, but it is seen in the long sweeps of the roofs of temples 
and the almost vertical walls of castles, imparting to them a 
charming grace and lightness. Should the Japanese continue in 
the liking they at present show for foreign styles in their build- 
ings, this exquisite curve may eventually be lost, for all the struc- 
tures the government now erects are of brick and of the most 
commonplace European architecture. 

The word " temple " is apt to suggest an idea of grandeur, 
but the small building before which this arch is sprung has no- 
thing grand about it, unless it be the old oaks and pines whose 
dark green foliage seems to clasp it in a protecting embrace. It is, 
in fact, more in the nature of a shrine. It had some architectural 
beauty in days gone by, and much gilding and red lacquer, but 
time has dealt hardly with it. Yet the gilded god within its 
weather-stained and bronze-bound doors still sits in dreamy, 
dignified repose and works the weal or woe of the way-worn 
worshippers at his feet. Before the doors a bell hangs suspend- 
ed a huge globular sleigh-bell as large as a tea-kettle from 
which falls a stout crimson cord by which .it is jangled to awaken 
the god and let him know he is about to be worshipped. In a 
stall a little to one side of the shrine is a watch-eyed, milk-white 
pony, a thousand years old, that a tonsured priest rides on cer- 
tain state occasions. A plaster model of this watch-eyed pony is 
back of a grating in a stall next the live horse, and, between the 
two, the plaster model seems much the fierier animal. A thou- 
sand-year-old pony is not such a wonder in a land of wonders. 
Over near Kiyoto there is a remarkable tree that spouts water 
whenever there is a fire in its vicinity. It is a statement safely 
made, for there has never yet been a fire in its neighborhood, and 
it is probable there never will be, since there is absolutely no- 
thing to burn within a radius of ten miles of it. 

Neither in Kobe nor Hiogo are there any buildings of such 
architectural pretensions as are found in the great towns of 



774 A JAPANESE TOWN. [Sept., 

Osaka "and Kiyoto. Two thousand feet above the placid blue 
sea, on the slopes of the evergreen hills, and beyond where a 
broad ribbon of water falls and bounds from rock to rock, is 
situated perhaps the largest temple in Kobe the Moon Tem- 
ple, before whose gateway reposes a colossal granite statue of 
Buddha with " the light of the world " ever flashing from his 
cold gray forehead. With eyes almost closed, in stony serenity 
he sits upon an opening flower of the sacred lotos, and, though 
the sun shine hot or the snow fall on his broad shoulders, his 
divine head is still protected by the covering shells the snails 
have left there. A symbolical statue, yet to a strange and for- 
eign eye quite grotesque. 

A mile or so out the Kiyo Machi there is still another temple ; 
but were it not for the stately buildings with quaint, curving 
roofs, the stone lanterns and images about the enclosure, one, on 
entering at its gateway, well might think he was entering a fair, 
so full are the grounds of booths and tea-houses and gaily- 
dressed Japanese. This air of revelry is not true of all the 
temples, for about many is gathered that mysterious, quiet, reli- 
gious air that impresses one strongly. The broad flights of steps 
leading to their entrances are as clean and white as though they 
had just been scrubbed with soap and sand. There need be no 
fear that one will soil his stockings should he add his shoes to 
the row of sandals and clogs of the Japanese, the patent-leather 
gaiters and top-boots of the European ; for the interiors of the 
buildings are even more cleanly, if that were possible. The only 
thing that will give concern and put one to the blush is to dis- 
cover a hole in his stocking through which his toe protrudes. 
Carpeted with the finest a of mattings, and partitioned with screens 
of subdued tints sparingly enlivened with sprays of ferns and 
flowers, the halls would present quite a Quakerish appearance 
were it not for the highly-ornamented ceilings and the row of 
gilded gods behind the " chancel-rail," before whom hundreds 
of coins lie scattered on the floor. And then there is such an air 
of reverence among the worshippers ! These are not of the in- 
tellectual part of the community, nor of the wealthy, but rather 
of the lowest of Japanese society. No particular day of the 
week is set for them to gather and worship, but the temple is 
open at all times and the worshippers are constantly coming and 
going. 

All day long, and all night, apparently, for every day and for 
every night in the year, this temple's grounds in the Kiyo Machi 
are thronged with all sorts of Japanese life. The pathways are 



1885.] A JAPANESE TOWN. 775 

lined with booths having everything imaginable that is Japanese 
to sell. There are candies at the stands, and toys indescribable 
and without number ; there are all kinds of cheap jewelry, to- 
bacco-pipes, umbrellas (many of European make), fans, India-inks, 
and a thousand-and-one things besides. There are shooting-gal- 
leries within the enclosure, where the instruments are bows and 
arrows ; there are large lenses set in a blank wall, through 'which 
for a few cents one may look on brilliantly-lighted views; there 
are theatres, such as they are, and lecture platforms or rostrums 
where one may hear a cleanly-shaved, white-robed individual, 
whose little gun-hammer top-knot stands up rakishly from the 
centre of the smooth furrow ploughed along his head, read classi- 
cal literature in a deep bass voice that suddenly flies to a high fal- 
setto, then as quickly back to bass again, at the same time point- 
ing his sentences and emphasizing his words with incomprehen- 
sible manipulations of a fan. What a wonderful instrument the 
fan is in his hands ! With what scorn he points it at his audience, 
and, at the moment one expects to hear a torrent of irony well 
from his lips, he flirts it open, utters a series of shrill squeaks 
most incompatible with his facial expression, and his little, rak- 
ish top-knot goes bobbing up and down in a manner ridiculous. 
Here in the grounds are a pack of trained dogs and laughable, 
tailless monkeys with shaven heads and topknots, dressed as 
samurai, with two swords thrust within the folds of their cos- 
tumes ; here are magnets and electrical machines such awful 
wonders to the simple Japanese. There are tea-houses within 
this temple's grounds ; not such as the people have been accus- 
tomed to, or as are still found in the rural districts, but ^tea- 
houses where tea, the least important potable, can be had, of 
course, but where it is largely displaced by champagne, bottled 
beer, and Scotch whiskey tea-houses that have become, in fact, 
Western barrooms in all respects, save that one can also get ice- 
cream and sponge-cake. This cake is to be had in every tea- 
house, and possibly in every house, in Japan. It is the only 
European cake the Japanese know how to make, but, like the 
old sea-captain's only song in the play of " Charles the Second,' 
" it's a main good one." Many years ago the Spaniards gave them 
the recipe. For this reason it is known as castira the nearest 
approach the Japanese can make to Castile. 

A troupe of jugglers of a high order are also in this temple's 
courtyard. They occupy a barn-like structure, whose exterior 
wall is covered with illustrations of the feats performed within. 
The admission fee is two cents, and the entertainment lasts half 



776 A JAPANESE TOWN. [Sept., 

an hour. These acrobats and jugglers really perform throughout 
the day, but every thirty minutes the building is emptied, a new 
audience assembles, and the same feats are gone through with 
again. The floor of the room inclines toward the stage, before 
which hangs a bamboo curtain. In the absence of chairs one is 
constrained to seize a mat and sit like a Turk (or a Japanese) on 
the floor. To be thus one of an audience that sits cross-legged 
on the floor of a building where the entertainment is to be novel 
and more or less startling, inspires one with quite an Oriental 
feeling; and when, to beguile the tedium of waiting for the some- 
what battered curtain to rise, he smokes mild tobacco in a dimin- 
utive pipe and drinks tea from fragile cups, the feeling is height- 
ened. Presently a tom-tom is heard, then a flute, then the 
twanging of a hybrid instrument something between a guitar 
and a banjo known as a samisen, and the curtain rises. The 
performers are all girls. This discovery gives one a shock : the 
expectation was to see men. But then these are men. It is 
their diminutive stature, their slender physique, and the manner 
they dress their heads that give them the appearance of women. 
A stranger might fancy that the sex could be told by the dress, 
but in the Japanese costume there is no great difference between 
the man's and the woman's, except that the latter wears an obi. 
There are no girls or women on the Japanese stage. This is a 
law among the people, written or unwritten, so there can be no 
doubt about the sex of these acrobats, even though they do look 
so remarkably like women ; and presently they will show such 
steadiness of nerve, such strength of muscle, that the little shock 
will subside and leave one intensely interested in their perfor- 
mances. 

In the winter months a river flows by Hiogo ; but through 
the summer its water disappears, so that there is nothing but its 
glistening bed of sand, its high green banks, and the stone bridges 
to show where it is wont to flow. Its banks are well wooded on 
the far side from the town, and reaching up among the tall trees 
to some thirty or forty feet are camellia-japonicas which in April 
and May are in full flower, giving touches of sprightly color to 
the dark green of the grove. These woods are so delightful, 
their shade so refreshing, the scenery round about so charming 
that the people Japanese and Europeans alike have with one 
consent made it into a sort of natural park. The Japanese, 
always alive to business, have erected a tea-house here, scattered 
tables and' chairs at desirable spots, so that the weary European 
seeking shade and solitude may sit in comfort and drink tea 



1885.] A JAPANESE TOWN. 777 

that a pretty little Japanese waitress, glorious in sleek black hair, 
painted cheeks and lips, and gaudy obi, politely brings him. The 
view round about is varied and pleasing. Between the trunks 
of the trees and through the openings in the foliage glimpses can 
be caught of the farms the husbandmen are so industriously till- 
ing. Beyond the river-bed the eye glances over the thousand 
low, black-tiled roofs of Hiogo to the sea, whose calm surface, 
flashing in the sunlight, is cut by many little, noisy steamboats 
that the Japanese ply to and from Osaka. Towards the east the 
mountains loom frowningly, with midway of their height a cu- 
rious, foreign-looking, red brick building having a tall chimney. 
This structure is a crematory, where the process of consuming 
the dead by slow fires of brushwood, and with a barbarous ab- 
sence of ceremony, is too revolting for description. 

One would naturally suppose that only barbarous nations 
tattoo themselves, trim their hair into grotesque shapes, paint 
their faces in unnatural colors, and interfere with the regularity 
and beauty of their teeth. The Japanese does all these, and yet 
he exhibits other traits that would place him in a high scale of 
civilization. He reveres art, and his country is a country of art 
such art as it is. We do not fully appreciate it or understand 
it. He shows a peculiar reverence for intellectual training and 
knowledge, and his attitude towards his own classical literature 
is one of humility. He has a poetical mind, and the very names 
he gives to his children are for the most part poetical. I once 
asked a Japanese of good social standing the meaning of his 
name. After some protesting that he could not express himself 
in his broken English, he told me it meant the still wistaria. His 
broken English served him very well. His sister's name signified 
the plum-blossom. The Japanese instinct is also more or less 
literary. He does not show that inordinate love for his hiero- 
glyphics that the Chinaman shows for his. He does not put 
them in gilt upon crimson signs; a little unpainted board with 
black characters serves him. He often writes them on his porce- 
lain bits of poetical sentiment, quatrains of verse, and proverbs 
from the classics. He prints many newspapers throughout the 
country, and in writing divides his characters into a masculine 
and feminine hand, and also a running hand where several char- 
acters are joined together in a long string, thus permitting rapid- 
ity in expressing thought. He has so often need to put these 
characters to use that his ink-plate, ink, brush, and paper are 
always at his hand. I have by me a root of walnut curiously 
twisted into the similitude of a sword. It is much worm-eaten, 



778 A JAPANESE TOWN. [Sept., 

and one or two artificial worms of satin-wood are ingeniously let 
into it. In a hollow, deep for the thickness of the root and al- 
most closed at its opening, are a pair of rampant horses, also of 
satin-wood. The portions of the walnut not worm-eaten are 
elaborately carved. An ink-well and brush are artfully concealed 
within this sham weapon. This sword an ancient poet carried. 
He, being a man of peace, needed no arms, and as he walked by 
the green shores of Lake Biwa or in the forests of oak and 
bamboo near Kiyoto, a happy thought suddenly striking him, his 
sword was quickly out and the inspiration booked. 

He has pride, too a pride in himself as a man, and an almost 
overpowering pride centred in his country. He looks back 
upon a long line of ancestors, whose images of wood he sets in 
shrines and temples. His veneration for these men and his belief 
in the mikado's divinity constitutes the Shintoism of Japan ; and 
if from it no other good arises, it certainly fills him with an un- 
bounded patriotism. 

He is hospitable and disdains not to invite his European 
friend to his house and feast him royally, not upon Japanese food, 
for which the foreigner must acquire a taste, but upon viands 
cooked and served in the European fashion. His hospitality is 
boundless and peculiar. Of all the courses forming the meal, 
certain quantities are provided in single dishes for each guest. 
As the courses are removed the guest's name is placed upon 
the dishes he has had before him, and when he returns home all 
that he has left of his meal is borne after him by a coolie. This 
is Japanese courtesy, and to refuse the remnants is to offend 
grossly. 

And he dines with his European friend sometimes, and, if he 
still wears his native costume, he leaves his sandals on the veran- 
da, entering the house in his stocking-feet. He does not enter 
his own house with his sandals on, and he would not think of 
doing otherwise at his friend's. At table he makes a great noise. 
It is not constant, but every little while he takes a noisy sip of 
tea, or it may be wine, or places a piece of cake in his mouth 
with a deep and noisy inspiration, as though some crumbs had 
loosened and were about to fall. It is somewhat surprising on 
the first hearing, but it is an act of politeness on his part: it 
shows his appreciation of that which is set before him ; and then, 
too, this forcibly drawing the breath over the tea as it is sipped 
is said to materially enhance its flavor. 

Since the Japanese does not himself enter his house with his 
sandals on, he requires the foreigner to remove his shoes before 



1885.] A JAPANESE TOWN. 779 

entering 1 ; and this not only as to his house, but also as to his 
shop. Consequently if the European wishes to do much sight- 
seeing in a Japanese town it would be quite a lamentable over- 
sight did he fail to take his bootjack with him. 

In all Japan there is nothing large statues and bells except- 
ed. Unless it be the rolling hills, the trees and hoary Fujiyama, 
there is nothing even the conventional size ; men, horses, houses 
are all small. And the native habit of sitting on the floor re- 
quires but a meagre supply of most diminutive furniture in an 
apartment, and throws a trivial atmosphere about the affairs of 
Japanese life. The young lady's bureau is an apparatus not 
more than fourteen inches high, the table she dines at five inches 
only ; her meals are brought her in tiny dishes set on the irregu- 
larly-arranged shelves of a little cabinet ; she eats with ivory 
chopsticks and takes tea from cups that hold but a thimbleful. 
How like a child's nursery her boudoir seems ! Were she happy 
in the ownership of a pony she would offer it drink in a tin cup. 
Even the horse is forced to look upon life as a joke. Although 
this young lady is as great a victim to the diminutive pipe as the 
man, and as constantly and untiringly sits upon her heels before 
her hibachi, she is not without some personal beauty. She has 
rich, glossy black hair, arranged into that coiffure which so aston- 
ishes the European lady on first observing. Its glossy blackness 
is largely due, however, to the aromatic gum she uses to hold it 
in place. It is dressed with much taste and neatness ; and when 
at night she lies down to peaceful dreams upon the floor, she 
rests not her head upon a pillow, but places a wooden stand 
beneath her neck, that her hair may not be dishevelled. It is 
never in disorder. See her at any hour of the day, at any work, 
and it has the appearance of having just been done up. She is 
also neat and pleasing in her dress. She has not that love for 
color that her Chinese sister shows, nor has she the China- 
woman's love for jewels. I cannot now recall ever having seen a 
Japanese woman with jewels of any kind as personal adornments. 
This lack of appreciation for the trinkets and baubles so dear to 
other women's hearts is something remarkable, and stamps her a 
peculiar exception to womankind the world over. In dress she 
prefers a subdued tint, a blue gray or a brown, made in simple 
style, and encircled at the waist by a broad obi, or sash, of the 
same material, though lined with brilliant crimson, which is 
gathered at the back into a colossal bow, looking not much un- 
like the " Grecian bend," and imparting to her a decidedly awk- 
ward appearance as she moves. She is awkward, in fact ; for not- 



780 A FRENCH LOVER OF NATURE. [Sept., 

withstanding the ungraceful motion her clogs give her, she walks 
very much pigeon-toed. Tastes differ. To a Japanese eye this 
is the acme of grace. The coolie women, and the lower-class 
women generally, walk with their toes pointing straight before 
them ; they have not the time to practise this little feature of 
fashion. She has fine eyes somewhat almond-shaped, it is true, 
but then to have oblique eyes is to be only the more beautiful ; 
she has a good if sallow complexion, and, although she may arti- 
ficially enhance their bloom, her cheeks are often naturally rosy ; 
she has well-formed lips, which she is wont to paint a livelier 
color, a small mouth, regular, pearly teeth, and an intelligent ex- 
pression. Yet at the moment her charms have matured she de- 
stroys the sightliness of her teeth by a coat of black lacquer and 
brings an inane look to her face by shaving her eyebrows. 

Understanding little or nothing of their language, unfamiliar 
with their literature and modes of thought, unacquainted with 
all save their middle and lower-class life, we have here endeav- 
ored to give an idea of the Japanese as we saw them in the Kiyo 
Machi. 



A FRENCH LOVER OF NATURE. 

THE close and loving observation of nature, not only in her 
grander aspects and more striking scenes, but especially in her 
common features and minute details, is a thing of comparatively 
recent date. One can scarcely realize the fact that not so very 
long ago, either the stilted and elaborate descriptions of Thom- 
son and Cowper were dutifully accepted as pictures of her en- 
trancing and ever-varying loveliness, which never palls or 
wearies, but is fresh and new every morning, as each season 
comes round in its turn, filling her faithful lovers with a delight 
and reverent wonder that no lapse of time can make less keen 
and vivid. A truer note was struck by Wordsworth and the 
other " Lake poets," and ever since the number of writers, both 
in prose and verse, in whom we find this watchful study, this 
delicate appreciation of God's wonderful works, has gone on in- 
creasing. It is this which, to our mind, gives its crowning charm 
to Tennyson's poetry. In his highest flights he has often been 
equalled and surpassed, but where shall we find a poet to match 
him in his marvellous power of sketching a picture in a few lines, 
of choosing the words in which he brings a delicate detail before 



1885.] A FRENCH LOVER OF NATURE. 781 

us with a felicity so perfect that the result is something like a 
revelation ? 

What a scene that is which he sketches for us in those four 
lines of the " Morte d' Arthur " beginning, " A broken chancel 
with a broken cross " ; and the garden " not wholly in the busy 
world, nor quite beyond it " ; and " the light of London flaring 
like a dreary dawn " before the traveller pacing along " the 
dusky highway " ; or the closing lines of that exquisite poem, 
" Love and Duty," which are like nothing but an echo of " Lyci- 
das." It is needless, and would be impertinent, to multiply in- 
stances ; every one can recall a score of such pictures for him- 
self ; but only those who are thoroughly intimate and at home 
with nature can enter into the accurate perfection of some of 
Tennyson's touches, or understand the delight it is to find such 
an interpreter of nature in every mood and season. How we feel 
the keen sharpness of the autumn air, and how the tender beauty 
of the autumn landscape rises before us as he tells of " the dews 
that drench the furze," of the " silvery gossamers that twinkle 
into green and gold " ; and how our sense of the autumn still- 
ness is deepened when we are reminded that it is only broken by 
" the chestnut pattering to the ground " ! He does not discourse 
in a general way of the richness of autumnal tints, but brings the 
season before us, " laying here and there a fiery finger on the 
leaves," and marks how the " beeches gather brown " while the 
maple " burns itself away." And when the year is further ad- 
vanced, with what a masterly touch he paints a stormy Novem- 
ber morning " the last red leaf whirled away," " the rooks 
blown about the skies " ; and how, " wildly dashed on tower and 
tree, the sunbeam strikes along the world " ! Can anything be 
more true or picturesque than this picture of the sudden bursts 
of sunlight on a wild morning in late autumn through the torn 
rifts of the racing clouds, unless it is the description of the early 
hours of a dusky summer night, when " the white kine glimmer- 
ed, and the trees laid their dark arms about the field "? March 
is the month " when rosy plumelets tuft the larch," and April 
brings " deep tulips dashed with fiery dew ; laburnums, drop- 
ping-wells of fire." He loves trees as those most gracious things 
in nature deserve to be loved, and draws their distinctive fea- 
tures with an artist's hand because he notes them with a lov- 
er's eye : the " milky cones " of the horse-chestnut, the cedar's 
" dark-green layers of shade," " the lime, a summer home of 
murmurous wings," "the poplars with their noise of falling 
showers," " the dry-tongued laurel's pattering talk." 



782 A FRENCH LOVER OF NATURE. [Sept., 

Minor poets have followed in the same strain, showing, in 
varying degrees, a deeper love and a closer study of nature than 
can be found in any writer between the age of Shakspere and the 
renaissance of which we are speaking. Before passing on to the 
particular subject of this paper we must pause to quote from Mr. 
Alfred Austin a picture of a late spring which appears to us abso- 
lutely perfect ; the first stanza is not only most true and beautiful, 
but entirely original : 

" Rude Winter, violating neutral plain 

Of March, through April's territory sallied, 

Scoured with his snowy plumes May's smooth domain, 
Then, down encamping, made his daring valid ; 

Nor till June, mastering all her gallant train 
Of glittering spears, Spring's flying legions rallied, 

Did the usurper from the realms of sleet 

Fold his white tents and shriek a wild retreat. 

" Then, all at once, the land laughed into bloom, 

Feeling its alien fetters were undone ; 
Rushed into frolic ecstasies the plume 

The courtly lilac tosses in the sun, 
Laburnum-tassels dropping faint perfume, 

White-thorn pink blossoms showed, not one by one, 
But all in rival pomp and joint array, 
Blent with green leaves as long delayed as they. 

" A subtle glory crept from mead to mead, 

Till they were burnished saffron to behold, 
And, from their wintry byres and dark sheds freed, 
The musing kine lay couched on cloth of gold." 

The portraits of the " courtly lilac " and the " musing kine " 
might have been drawn by Tennyson himself. 

In a more recent volume of verses Mr. Austin has some lines 
on primroses deeply marked by this quality of observant tender- 
ness, which comes out in many exquisite touches : the " confident 
young faces " hidden at first among the dead leaves, then coming 
" first by ones and ones, lastly in battalions," shaking the snow 
from their eyelids to " meet the sun's smile with their own," al- 
ways fearless and undaunted by the most ungenial weather, ever 
" gracious to ungraciousness." How pretty is the description of 
the blossoming black-thorn, " snowy-hooded anchorite," and of 
the primroses when just departing " waning morning-star of 
spring " ! This charming poem is full of such subtle graces. 
But we must hasten on. 

France was very far behind England and America in the 



1885.] A FRENCH LOVER OF NATURE. 783 

study of nature, as she was far more deeply tainted with the 
plague of artificiality than England in her dreariest days. All of 
us at least all real country-lovers among us have shuddered 
over the si-called descriptions of nature presented to us by 
French " classical authors." To do them justice, they did not 
venture very far in this direction, only treating natural beauties 
as a background for their Watteau-groups of ladies and courtiers, 
or as a suitable scene for their nymphs and shepherds to make 
love in. Even now, though a day of better things has come, we 
shall look in vain for such abundant tokens of the fact as meet us 
at every turn in the English literature of the time, and therefore 
we welcome the more gladly so real and deep a lover of the 
country as Andr6 Theuriet. He is chiefly known by his novels, 
which, though very far from meriting a sweeping condemnation, 
are not free from grave faults, the more to be regretted as these 
tales are full of delicious sketches of rural life and scenery ; he is 
a poet, too, and some of his verses are of idyllic beauty, breath- 
ing the freshness and perfume of the heathery lande, the lonely 
shore, or the solemn woods. Woodland scenery, indeed, has the 
greatest charm of all for him a charm which is most keenly felt 
in one or two books of his devoted to country subjects. He, too, 
has a calendar of his own, and the end of February is " the time 
when the hazel catkins are turning yellow." Not a wayside 
flower is there that he does not know, and he lingers over their 
beauties, describing them with a truth and feeling peculiarly his 
own. What, for instance, can be more exact than his comparison 
of the scent of honeysuckle to vanilla and of meadow-sweet to 
bitter almonds ? He has given us a regular portrait-gallery of 
birds, and some of his descriptions of their different flights recall, 
in their accuracy, that perfect line of Lowell's, " the thin-winged 
swallow skating on the air" We must find space for a few ex- 
tracts : 

"Why," Theuriet wonders, "are nearly all the water-side birds so 
melancholy herons, curlews, sand-pipers, kingfishers ? Even the pretty 
little water-wagtail, with all its briskness, makes one think of an unquiet 
spirit as it runs restlessly up and down among the stones. Is it their sur- 
roundings ? Do the ponds, with their mournful willows, their sighing 
winds, their morning and evening mists, and the sobbing voice of the 
woodland brook, make the birds pensive as well as ourselves ? " 

Here is a pretty sketch of the wren : 

" This tiny bird is a lover of tall trees, the pines in which the wind 
makes such grand music, especially the great fir-trees of the Vosges, from 
whose boughs the long beards of lichen hang so thickly ; there he loves to 



784 A FRENCH LOVER OF NATURE. [Sept., 

sway and rock, with the waving sea of forest below ; there he builds his 
little marvel of a nest, a hollow ball of daintily woven moss and spiders' 
webs, lined with the warmest and softest down the very perfection of down, 
culled from poplar catkins, the ripe heads of thistles, and th^cottony seeds 
of the willow herb. The only entrance to this cosey nest is by a tiny hole 
in one side ; and here the female lays her eggs, from seven to eleven at a 
time, no bigger than peas. Only kings " (in allusion to the word roitelef) 
" and poor people have these large families ! The wren has both royal and 
plebeian blood in his small body : his size, his industrious ways, and his 
cheery temper stamp him as one of the people, but for all that he wears a 
crown and reigns, after a fashion of his own, in the woods. It is a myste- 
rious, intangible sort of sovereignty, something like Queen Mab's and 
Oberon's, but not the less real. You may see how it is in winter, when all 
the singing birds are gone : there is the wren darting backwards and for- 
wards, glancing like a will-o'-the-wisp through the masses of the sleeping 
trees, the only thing of life and motion there. Above the underwood white 
with snow he every now and then lifts his pretty, yellow-crested head ; 
lightly and deftly he passes through the thickest brushwood, and the bird- 
catcher's net has no terrors for him as he slips through its closest meshes. 
The slenderest twig bears him without bending, a bramble leaf is large 
enough to hide him altogether, and he runs like a lizard through the fag- 
gots that the village housewives collect in the evening. The cold of the 
winter seems only to quicken his warm blood, and he stands ten degrees 
of it bravely. When the streams are frozen into silence, when the with- 
ered grass is stiff and motionless, and not even a field-mouse is astir, the 
wood-cutter, as he blows on his fingers to get a firmer grip of the axe, 
hears a merry cry and sees a dainty creature with red-gold crest flash past : 
it is the familiar spirit of the woods, the wren, flouting snow and wind. 
The brave little bird's shrill note makes the old wood-cutter less lonely, 
and after they have exchanged greetings he sets to work again with fresh 
courage.'' 

This is a life-like winter vignette, not the less truthful for the 
graceful touch of fancy which brightens it ; and Andre Theuriet 
has drawn many such, for he is as much at home with birds as 
with trees and flowers: every note tells him a different tale. 
This is what tie thinks of- the sedge- warbler's : 

" The tune may be a little common, perhaps, but it has all the entrain 
and reckless merriment of a song of the people. Its modulations may be 
rather poor and monotonous, but it has a character of its own, and, once 
heard, you cannot forget it. It is associated with fair summer mornings in 
blossoming meadows, just as the noisy song of the belated peasant is asso- 
ciated with the tender and poetic memory of some balmy night in May." 

We do not remember having met before with the graceful 
legend he quotes as the origin of the universal reverence for the 
swallow : 

" The Jews were once seeking Jesus to take him before Caiphas, and 



1885.] A FRENCH LOVER OF NATURE. 785 

our Lord, who was sleeping in the open air, was on the point of being 
surprised, when a vast flock of swallows awoke him by their cries, and, sur- 
rounding him in their circling flight, completely hid him from the eyes of 
his pursuers. Jesus blessed them with his hand, and ever since the swal- 
low has been a sacred bird, and it is well with those whom it loves and 
dwells with." 

In conclusion we give the following sketch of 

"THE SABOT-MAKERS. 

" In a deep combe (or wooded valley), close to the borders of 
the forest, and beside a clear stream with a voice like a flute, the 
sabot-makers have camped down. There is the whole clan the 
master, with his son and son-in-law who work under him, his 
apprentices, the old goodwife, and the little ones paddling 
among the cresses in the brook. There, under the alders, is the 
wooden shed which is their sleeping-quarters ; at a little distance 
a couple of mules which have carried the camp-baggage are 
tethered to stakes, and pull at the halter to crop the grass in the 
ditch. Last autumn the encampment was on the high ground 
of the forest ; where it will be next year no one knows, not 
even the master. It is all a matter of chance and the promise of 
the felling ; for the sabot-maker, like the lark, does not build 
twice in the same furrow. He explores every part of the forest 
in turn, stopping when he finds a place where felling is going to 
begin, and where a good stroke of business may be done. He 
has a house with some crazy old furniture in a village hard by, 
but he hardly goes there except in the dead season, and never 
takes to it altogether till the time comes for the last sleep of all. 

"This year the situation is first-rate ; nothing can be better 
than this green, quiet combe, only a f^^^JiC^Sfrom the spot 
chosen for the felling, where the treesj^^ughta^^Vey stand, are 
marked by the highest bidder. They/aifc^fi^^ baches, whose 
silver-gray branches stand out well agjai\st the wuef April sky ; 
their shafts are fifty feet high, and measur>e^-full/metre round 
where the tree forks. Six dozen sabots td v ~ke_#et'out of each of 
them ! There are aspens, alders, and birch-trees, too, in the lot, 
but the sabot-maker makes small account of them ; to be sure, 
the sabots made from them are less apt to split, but the wood is 
of a spongy nature and lets the damp soak through. Now, beech- 
wood sabots are quite another thing light and good-looking, 
and keep the feet dry and warm in spite of mud and snow. 

" Every one is busy in the combe. Round the door of the shed 
VOL. XLI. 50 



;86 A FRENCH LOVER OF NATURE. [Sept., 

the women are chatting away as they mend the clothes ; the 
men are felling the trees close to the ground; then the trunks 
are sawn into tronces, and if the clumps are too large they are 
split into quarters. One workman cuts out the sabots roughly 
with the axe, taking care to give a different curve for the right 
and left foot ; then he passes them on to another, who works at 
them with the gimlet and scoops out the inside with a tool called 
a ' spoon.' All the while the men are chatting and singing. For 
the sabot-maker's trade is not a melancholy one, like that of his 
neighbor, the charcoal-burner ; the constant play of the mus- 
cles, the work by daylight after a good night's rest, give him a 
fine appetite and high spirits, and he sings like a bird as the 
glossy shavings, like dainty white ribbons, fall off from the fresh 
wood, and the work goes on to the tune of laughter and rustic 
ditties. 

" The first sabots the largest size come out of the biggest 
tronces, close to the ground. They are for the stout laborer who 
is off to his work at early dawn through wind and rain ; they 
will clatter on the pavement of the empty streets as the sweepers 
collect and the country folk are on their way to the market, and 
we lazy ones shall hear them as we turn half-awake on our com- 
fortable beds, and, wrapping the clothes around us, give a pass- 
ing thought of sympathy to those whose lives are so hard and so 
full of struggle. 

" Then come the tronces from which the women's sabots are 
cut : the solid one of the housewife, with plenty of wear in it, 
and the lighter ones for the girls ; we all know the merry clatter 
of those quick and brisk as youth itself on the stones of the 
washing-place by the fountain in the day-time, and at nightfall on 
the path which leads to the veilloir. 

" As they get nearer to the top of the beech-shaft the clumps 
become shorter ; these are for the sabots of the little herd-boy, 
who follows the cows over the wide commons, and watches the 
straight column of blue smoke rise into the still air from some 
brushwood fire ; and for the school-boy's sabots but their career 
is short and stormy, and what a variety in the pace and sound ! 
Slowly and heavily they drag along the pavement on the way to 
school, but what a merry din they make when they come out 
again ! 

" The last clumps of all are kept for the cotillons, or the little 
children's sabots. Ah ! they have the best of it. They will be 
feted and made much over, especially when, at St. Nicholas and 
Christmas, they come out in the morning, after a night in the 






1885.] d FRENCH LOVER OF NATURE. 787 

chimney-corner, stuffed with toys and good things. And then 
these tiny sabots have not time for much wear; the little feet 
soon outgrow them, and they are carefully put away in a corner 
of the cupboard with baby's first tooth and christening-robe. 
Long years after, when ' baby ' is a man grown, or when his 
place in the home is empty, the mother will take out the little 
sabot and show it, sometimes with a loving smile, but ah ! how 
often with tear-dimmed eyes. 

" So our sabot-makers sing away as they work at the wood, 
and the clumps take shape rapidly under their hands. Once hol- 
lowed out and chipped into shape with the rouette, it is the turn 
of another workman, who smooths off the edges and then hands 
on the sabot to a third, whose business it is to give the last 
touches with the paroir, a kind of sharp knife fixed by a ring to 
a pine plank. He is the artist of the gang, who turns out the 
sabot in its perfect finish, marking it with a rose or a primrose, 
according to fancy, if it is for a woman's foot ; sometimes carry- 
ing elegance so far as to cut an open-work pattern along the 
instep, which will show the white or blue stocking of the village 
belle who is to wear this sabot de luxe. 

" When finished the sabots are put in the shed under a thick 
layer of shavings ; this prevents their cracking, and once or twice 
a week they are laid before a fire of green chips to harden, while 
the wood-smoke gives them a rich golden-brown color. 

" So the work goes on till all the trees in the lot are used ; 
then the camp breaks up. Good-by then to the green combe 
and the babbling brook where the blackbirds come to drink. 
The mules are laden, and every one is off to a fresh felling-place. 
And so, all the year round, whether the woods are green or yel- 
low, enamelled with flowers or strewn with dead leaves, there is 
a nook as busy as a hive of bees with the hum of the sabot- 
maker's workshop as he turns out dozen after dozen of the 
homely, comfortable chaussure as simple, healthy, and useful as 
country life itself." 



SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept., 



SOLITARY ISLAND. 
PART THIRD. 

CHAPTER XI. 
REJECTED ! 

FORTUNE smiled on Florian during- that year as it had never 
smiled on him before. The Democratic convention nominated 
him for governor amid universal acclamation ; and if the means 
employed to obtain this result were questionable, such as the 
free use of money and the glossing-over of his religious tenets, 
they were not crimes and did not disturb the sweet serenity of 
his slowly toughening conscience. In all his life he had never 
experienced such a thrill of delight as swept through him on 
seeing his name at the head of the State ticket. It dazed him 
for an instant. He felt already under his hand the mighty throb- 
bing of the great State whose destinies he was to guide for 
twenty-four months, and the mad current of his ambition tossed 
him like a cork on its waves. He would give a world, eternity 
even, for one continuous draught of such a delight. 

Men looked at him respectfully as he passed through the 
streets, and pointed him out to strangers as the coming man. 
His wealth was known to be boundless, and adulation was all 
the more servile. Of these things he thought little. Flattery of 
a nobler, more pleasing kind met him at home in his own circle. 
Politicians crowded around him with their protestations of fidel- 
ity, men of influence bowed at his throne, and ladies of high de- 
gree whispered their congratulations in his ears. The prince- 
governor they called him, and he was intoxicated with the subtle 
flattery. Frances alone was silent and reserved. She made no 
such demonstration as her mother did, and was ever looking at 
him with a vague alarm in her face. She received her share of 
public attention also, but it did not please her so much as the 
newspapers troubled her. 

" Why do they not mention your Catholicity ? " said she. 
" They speak of you as if you were no more than an infidel." 

" Do not trouble yourself, dear," he replied in a dry way 
which of late he had adopted with her. " Wait till the Whigs 
get at me, and you will hear enough about my religion." 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 789 

He was sufficiently tender-hearted to feel ashamed in the pre- 
sence of the pure young girl, and to wish to keep out of her way 
as much as possible. What was he to do with her, now that she 
was become a burden to him ? It was a question he did not like 
to face, for when looked at squarely it showed him so much in 
the light of a villain that the reflection was unpleasant. He had 
no conscience in the matter, but he had a spark of something 
which is called honor. 

" I know it is not necessary for you to shout, ' I am a Catho- 
lic ; vote for me if you dare ! ' " she said ; " but some of the papers 
speak so queerly of you that it seems unjust to let them con- 
tinue." 

" And if I were to try to set them right I would be in a worse 
condition than before." 

She said nothing to this argument, but looked her uneasiness. 

" I much dread the result for you, Florian. These Protes- 
tants will never vote for you. They have not so much liberali- 
ty. It is very well to point out Protestants filling the highest 
places in Catholic countries. It will not influence them one jot. 
You are flying too high." 

" What ! a Russian prince? " he said good-humoredly. " Fly- 
ing too low, you mean. If we fail we can fall back on our royal 
birth." 

" Your self-respect will be deeply wounded, though," she re- 
plied, and changed the subject for one more agreeable to him. 

Enraged with her correct notions and loving anxiety, he usu- 
ally fled to Mrs. Merrion, who met him with proud and elated 
face, and had no fears or scruples with which to torment him. < 

" My dear prince, the victory is assured. I hail you as 
prince-governor." 

" Thank you. But it is not at all assured, and I dread too 
premature congratulations. They are premonitions of defeat. 
You had a visitor to-day ? " 

" Oh ! the count." And she laughed. " He takes his dis- 
missal keenly and cannot account for his ill-luck. I pity him." 

" Let him remain in ignorance until he has paid me my 
money. It would not be unlike him to take a big percentage off 
the round sum for the chagrin I have caused him." 

" Not to speak of the danger of setting his tongue in motion," 
said Barbara, and she began an animated discussion which, for 
Florian's sake, had better be left unmentioned. 

During the course of the month he met the count by appoint- 
ment and received the first instalment of his quarter-million. 



790 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept., 

" After this it will come rapidly," said Vladimir ; " and my em- 
ployer desires me to give his sincerest thanks to the young rela- 
tive who concludes to accept the inevitable for so handsome a 
price. You are always welcome, so he says, at the ancestral 
hall." 

" Much obliged, indeed. I shall be careful not to call, though, 
until the price is paid. If I died intestate the money would 
revert to the prince. I can fancy he would like nothing better 
than an opportunity to get it back. What do you say, count ? " 

" Oh ! he is not a niggard by any means, and in many ways is 
a very fine old fellow ; but life for him is not winding up very 
brightly." 

"No more than for yourself," said Florian, studying the 
count's worn face. " You have eaten and drank and been merry, 
and now your morrow is coming. You can't bear the strain of 
the metropolis much longer." 

" No," answered the count, with a laugh and a yawn ; " I con- 
fess that I am wearied. I need building up. I shall take to the 
sea-coast or the mountains." 

" Your philosophy will carry you through, if the grave does 
not swallow you suddenly." 

" Tell me," said Vladimir, as they were parting, " have you 
yet any notion of where your father might be ? " 

" What put that in your head ? " with a quick, sharp look into 
the count's yellow face. " I hope your bloodhound is not look- 
ing for him." 

" We have nothing more to do with him," he said proudly. 
" It was mere curiosity that prompted the question." 

Nevertheless the count's curiosity wakened dormant conside- 
rations in Florian's mind, and he walked away ill at ease. His 
thoughts were turned forcibly into a channel which hitherto they 
had avoided. His father, if alive, was probably determined to 
die with his history a secret, yet his existence was in some sort a 
menace to that relative who had purchased from Florian rights 
which were not actually his to sell. What if that relative had 
instituted a search for his father. And what if he should be found 
by that Nicholas whose murderous profession declared itself in 
his face ? Florian shuddered and put the thought from him as 
too awful for probability ; but it seemed so fitting a climax for 
the defections of which he had been guilty that again and again 
through that day and night he trembled with apprehension. His 
faithlessness to Frances, his bad dispositions and political heresies, 
loomed up before _him like gigantic clouds from whose bosom 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 791 

threatened to leap the thunderbolt of parricide. He was urged 
thereby to renew more actively his search for his father, and to 
have Nicholas shadowed. Under these precautions his mind 
found temporary rest, but occasionally the first thought pre- 
sented itself like a spectre and wrung his soul most cruelly. 

Barbara, on his next visit, was absent in Buffalo, but she had 
left a note for him enclosing a telegram. Its information was stu- 
pefying but welcome. Mr. Merrion had died suddenly in a Buf- 
falo hotel, and his widow had gone to bring the body home. Fate 
clearly was helping him in his onward course. There remained 
between him and happiness but one obstacle the fall elections. 
He had a sublime American faith in the power of gold, and was 
determined to spend his last cent in convincing the people of the 
harmlessness of his faith in American politics. As he had ex- 
pected, the Whigs assaulted him for his religious belief. The 
old war-cries of Protestantism appeared as the captions of cam- 
paign news, and it was seriously questioned whether the pope 
would not be domiciled in New York within the year, ready 
to step into the White House from the shoulders of his faithful, 
slave, Hon. Florian Wallace. To which the honorable gentle- 
man replied with an open letter to the citizens of the State, giv- 
ing his views on Italian politics, the temporal power, and infalli- 
bility with a freedom and liberalism which astonished his friends 
much more than his enemies. It caused a sensation. In the 
solitary hut where Scott spent his quiet life it had the place of 
honor with Izaak Walton, and was as much thumbed and studied 
in the hermit's desultory way. The squire procured a copy and 
read it to Billy and Ruth with a triumphal snarl at every sen- 
tence, and was surprised to see the old gentleman tear his hair 
in silent grief, while the tears ran from Ruth's eyes. 

" He's following Sara," said Billy ; " he's not my son, thank 
Heaven ! He was a good boy when he left me, the divil ! " 

And Ruth, mortified beyond measure at this bold departure 
of Florian, hung the letter prominently in her room as an example 
of the evil consequences of ambition. 

Over it Frances wept the bitterest tears she had ever shed. 
Her idol was showing his feet of clay. She did not think it wise 
to do more than allude to it with sad reproachfulness, and come 
in to him holding it between her finger and thumb daintily, as if 
it were a filthy thing. She was not afraid of him, but his manner 
was very strange of late. 

" What a reception you would receive from Pope Pius," said 
she, " after he had read your opinion of him !" 



79 2 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept., 

" It is an honest opinion," said Florian, apprehending a lec- 
ture, and thinking it better to show the master's front, " and if 
he received such oftener would be in happier condition than he 
is at present." 

She put her hand over his mouth, and he kissed it. 

" You are doomed," said she soberly. " When a Catholic is 
forced to throw up the traditions of his faith to secure his ad- 
vancement, that moment he is lost. You may be governor, but 
you will have lost the faith." 

" It must be a poor religion which does not fit the position," 
he said sullenly, and was sorry the next moment for the foolish 
speech ; but she showed no annoyance. 

" Do not lose your logic with your temper, Florian. I am not 
going to argue a question of expediency with a statesman. You 
are another Napoleon. What chance would poor Josephine 
have with you if a Maria Louisa were to appear? " 

She did not see the faint pallor which crept about his lips, 
nor did she understand the motive of his polite but abrupt de- 
parture a moment later. Her heart was very heavy. What fate 
was in store for the wife and children of a man so completely at 
the mercy of his own desires ? 

" I shall pray for him," she murmured; " it would never do 
to desert him while a spark of the faith remains in him. He is so 
confident that he is still a Catholic ! It is something to begin 
with." 

The most effective attacks which were made on Florian dur- 
ing the campaign came from an anonymous writer in the shape 
of a series of letters descriptive of his personal character. They 
could have been written by no other than a person well acquaint- 
ed with him. The letters verged on brilliancy. They were 
spicy and contradictory, and gave a fair account of Florian's rise 
and gradual change of opinions, with the views which orthodox 
Catholics held concerning him. Florian read them with feelings 
of indignation. There was a traitor in the camp, and he thought 
seriously of libel suits, until the failure of the letters to appear 
quieted him. He received his first hint as to their possible au- 
thor from Barbara. She was certain Peter Carter wrote them. 
She could see his natural manner in every line ; and, sure enough, 
after critical examination many evidences of the man appeared in 
them. When Florian had made complaint to madame and she 
had accused Peter of abusing her hospitality, he admitted the 
charge cheerfully. 

" I've been waitin' this many a year to put him down to the 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 793 

public for what he is," said Peter, with the usual flourish, " an' 
I'm doin' it. Those letters aren't half of it, either. I've given 
him only the first an' mildest dose. Two weeks before election 
day I'll publish a selection of his sayings for the past six years. 
If he doesn't go sailin' up Salt River after the 4th of November, 
don't blame me." 

Madame glared at him in a dangerous way. 

" You may look, mother-in-law," said he jauntily, " but the 
days of looks are over. Ye are goin' to marry Frances, in spite 
of all my remonstrances, to a man that's fit for nothing better 
than the Brooklyn free-lance. I told ye I'd never permit it. I 
tell ye so again. I'll be the ruin o' the heartless politician. I'll 
give him some blows that'll frighten him, but the complete way in 
which I'll leave him minus Frances will surprise ye. It'll please 
him, too. Ye needn't look, madame. The days of looks are over." 

Frances was present at this tirade, and felt, without knowing 
its cause, a deadly sickness of heart. She looked at her mother 
inquiringly, and it drove madame into a passion. 

" You need not repeat your threats to me," she said, " but go 
and execute them." 

" That I will shortly, an' ye can get ready for it. Ye're a 
queer mother to allow such a man to be connected with yer 
daughter a man that would give the whole of her for Barbara 
Merrion's little finger, an' will be apt to do it before long, now 
she's a widow. Annyhow, I'll do it for him " 

" How dare you," cried Frances, starting to her feet, pale with 
rage " how dare you talk so of a gentleman? O mamma ! why 
do you permit it ? " 

" How dare I ? " snapped Peter pitilessly. " What daren't I 
do ? An' he's a gentleman, is he ? Oh ! he's a gentleman of the 
new school, I suppose. But I'll teach him ; an' if you don't give 
him up of your own accord, you will of mine." 

Frances burst into sobs and ran out of the room, which so- 
bered Peter. 

" From this moment," said madame frigidly, although she was 
terribly excited, "our relations cease. You must leave this 
house for ever, and one penny of your allowance you will never 
again receive." 

" What a joke ! But the days of jokes are over, too. I'll not 
leave the house, an', by hook or crook, I'll have my allowance to 
the last." 

" Go, go ! " cried madame, trembling. " Do not urge me to 
have you forcibly removed." 



794 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept., 

" You would never do that. I would blazon your name 
through the whole city. I would make it the talk of the com- 
monest newsboy and street-hag ! Ah ! with all yer fine feath- 
ers " 

Peter said no more. The look which he had once thought 
murderous suddenly flashed into madame's eyes. Awed and 
frightened, he went from her presence without a word. His 
future was becoming cloudy. It would never do to lose his al- 
lowance for fifty Florians and their marriages, although he felt 
bitter enough to sacrifice more. He had a secret conviction that 
Barbara, if she had not entangled Florian already, was laying 
snares for him, and that in due time he would desert Frances 
without his interference. Why not go to Mrs. Merrion and urge 
her to bring the affair to a crisis ? It was a brilliant idea. He 
had a temporary footing at the Merrion house since the day Bar- 
bara had engaged him to search for Paul. 

" An* if I approach the subject diplomatically," thought Peter, 
" an' draw her into an admission of some kind, I think she'd 
do it." 

The result of his reasonings was that he hurried over to 
Brooklyn, and by ten o'clock that evening was bowing friskily to 
Barbara in her quiet parlor. Peter always found it necessary, 
when on a diplomatic mission, to adopt a youthful airiness of 
manner which he thought lent an effective grace to his asser- 
tions. 

" The lateness of the hour " began Barbara, appalled at his 
boldness. 

"Just so," said Peter. " I knew I'd find ye alone, an' that's 
what brought me over at so late an hour. Ye see, night is the 
witchin' hour for reporters an' matchmakers, an' I had that to 
say which would be mightily ashamed of the daylight." 

" It is unnecessary to say it, then," said Barbara haughtily. 

" Whisht, darlin' ! Don't say a word, for we're both on the 
same tack, if not in the same boat. You're anxious to get Florian 
from Frances, an' he an' I are anxious ye should. Now, don't be 
troubled from me plainness. You're a smart woman, an' I ad- 
mire ye for it. You're goin' to haul in the lad sooner or later, 
an' I want to show ye a little trick that'll help ye ; an' ye must 
listen, for I won't go away till ye do." 

Barbara was flattered, and, being in the humor for fun, lay 
back among her cushions and signed for him to continue. 

" First diplomatic triumph," thought Peter. " Mrs. Merrion, 
there's no doubt that you an' Florian are suited for each other. 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 795 

You're like him, bold an' ambitious an' not scrupulous ; an' ye 
haven't much more religion, for ye're only a convert, poor thing ! 
Yez'll match well together. An* as for Frances, sure the child is 
not the wan to hold the reins for such a steed. I don't want her 
to marry him ; I know he's anxious to be rid of her, an' the way I 
propose to keep him away from her, wid your help, is this." 

He bent closer to Mrs. Merrion and began to speak in an 
important whisper. The lady sat indifferently listening at first, 
but as the story went on a sudden interest lighted her face. 

"Now, what d'ye think of that an' the plan ? " said he, with a 
beaming face. 

" It is astonishing," Barbara answered cautiously ; " and the 
plan is very good, if it can be tried. But how do I know you are 
all you pretend to be ? " 

" ' Honor among thieves,' " quoted Peter knowingly. " Try 
me an' see. It's worth the tryin', for you'll have him all the 
quicker." 

" You must not come here again for some time," said Barbara. 
" You can discover by the end of the week if I decide to follow 
your methods. You are such an odd man, Mr. Carter, and so 
flattering when you do begin to pay a woman attentions." 

" An't I, now ? " said Peter, with the smile of a Gorgon, and 
lost in ecstasy until roused by the striking of the clock. " Eleven 
o'clock, an' I must be off. Au revoir, you witch ! You've en- 
tranced me, as you do every man. Whisht ! there's some one 
coming in, an' by the voice I should say it was Florian. He 
mustn't see me here, ma'am." 

" By no means." And she pushed him into another room. 
" From here you can find your way to the hall. Good-night." 

Peter was tortured with remorse, during the next few days, for 
the apparent crime which he contemplated against Frances. She 
seemed so happy in her love and so proud of her lover ! And in 
what odium she would hold him when the work was done ! But 
a contemplation of the evils of a marriage with Florian nerved 
him again, and the scornful glances which Florian showered on 
him daily stung him into the bitterest resolves against the politi- 
cian. Did he know what a kindness the journalist was about to 
do him ? It was part of the plot that he would, but his manner 
gave no evidence of such knowledge. 

Florian was sitting one evening in madame's private parlor. 
Frances was engaged with her needlework, and her mother was 
nodding over the pages of a magazine, when Peter unceremo- 
niously entered. One glance at his face would show that he had 



796 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept., 

come on a desperate errand. It was purple from suppressed 
feeling, and his eyes were averted. He made a great fuss over 
shutting the door. Madame sat pale and apprehensive, yet with 
the calmness of a courageous despair. Frances, seeing her mo- 
ther's expression, grew nervous, and Florian shaded his pallid 
face with his trembling hand. Peter, coughing and strutting, 
stood before him. 

" I have a story to tell you," said he in tones too unsteady for 
coughing to render firm, " and I'd like you to listen." 

Florian bowed a cold assent. One of Peter's peculiarities of 
speech was that in moments of excitement he lost much of his 
brogue. 

" Ye are engaged to marry this girl here," continued Peter. 
" Well, I forbid the banns ahem ! that is, the thing can't go on 
without my approval, which I won't give. I am her father /" 

Naturally, after this astounding revelation, there was an awe- 
some silence, broken only by a sob from Frances, upon whom the 
truth of his last declaration fell crushingly. 

" There ! " snapped Peter, turning angrily on madame, 
" there's your training. She's ashamed of her father." 

" She must thank her father for the feeling," said madame, 
greatly relieved at the bursting of the storm, and apprehensive 
only of losing Florian for a son-in-law. 

" Just so," said Peter thoughtfully. " You see and under- 
stand, Mr. Wallace, why I've so often threatened you about this 
marriage. You see I know as well as you do that the coming 
governor of this State, and perhaps the next president, can have 
nothing to do with the daughter of the scribbler, the dead-beat, 
the broken-down gentleman. I'm sorry I didn't tell ye of it be- 
fore, an' so prevent any unpleasantness. But my daughter is 
sensible, if her mother has misled her a little. She'll give you 
back your freedom, an' for her sake you'll pardon the mother 
who deceived you into an alliance not at all creditable to one of 
your blood and position, even if you made it willingly." 

Proud of his speech and his diplomacy, Peter strutted over 
across the room. He had effectually silenced madame. Frances 
was struggling with her agony, and there was another silence 
until Florian, shamefaced and awkward, spoke : 

" This is a very peculiar a incident. I regret extremely 
that I had not known it sooner. If you will permit me I shall 
retire to consider " 

" Of course," said Peter briskly, " but not till Frances has 
shown the proper spirit of the Desmonds. She's not ashamed of 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 797 

her father, sir, the direct descendant of a noble Irish house, and 
will release you willingly. Stan' up, girl, and throw him back 
his pledges that is, Frank, he couldn't marry you, you know, 
and your father such a villain." 

"You are free, Mr. Wallace," said she. 

" Bravo ! " shouted Peter to supplement her weakness, for 
Frances was panting with the effort. " Spoken like Desmond's 
own daughter." 

" My dear child," said madame, " you wrong Florian " 

" Not another word ! " cried Peter ; " you've wronged him 
enough already, and can't you see by his face he's crazy to be 
rid of us ? Don't dare to play mother-in-law any more." 

" You are entirely free, Mr. Wallace," said Frances again and 
more calmly. " Under no circumstances could I now think of a 
marriage with you. Please do not' add to the painfulness of this 
scene by speaking, but go at once." 

His pride would not let him depart so meanly, and, coming 
over to her side, he tried vainly to take her hand. 

" Believe me," said he feebly, " no one more sincerely regrets 
these circumstances than I do. You will always have my high- 
est esteem, and unless you bid me go I shall never leave your 
side." 

Madame would have strengthened this offer with her own 
influence but for Peter's silent threat to demolish her if she said 
a word. 

" Oh ! go, sir, go ! " cried Frances, hardly able to repress the 
anguish of her heart, which this hollow speech increased tenfold. 
He went out of the room rejoicing and flew to Barbara. 

" There goes the greatest villain this side of the Atlantic," 
said Peter, half-triumphant, half-disgusted. " A Russian prince, 
forsooth ! A gentleman, an American gentleman, bedad ! D'ye 
mind, Frances, how ready he was to give ye up ? He is gone 
straight to Widow Merrion now, to tell her the whole story and 
get her ready for marrying him. I'm sorry I let him off so easy. 
He ought to be made pay for it, and, if it was only to spite 
him, I'd like to see you married to him. I'll make him pay for it 
yet." 

" You had better," said madame, " for your work to-night 
shall cost you dearly. If you are not gone from this house to- 
morrow the police shall remove you. You shall have no further 
opportunity to show your vile ingratitude." 

" No, no, mamma," said Frances ; " we have suffered too 
much to add to our sufferings. Father has done well, and he 



798 SOLITAR Y ISLAND. [Sept., 

shall stay with us in his rightful position. I am glad to know 
you, father," she added, throwing her arms about him and kiss- 
ing him ; " only " 

She broke down and wept, and Peter mingled his tears with 
hers. 

" You are a fool, Frances," said madame severely. 

" Never mind, dear," whispered Peter ; " you'll get over it 
some time. And you won't be ashamed of your father hereafter. 
He was born and bred a gentleman, and his Desmond blood was 
as pure as whis milk when the Russian stream was no better 
than a barbarian's. I've saved you, and I don't care for twenty 
allowances." 

" But I might have saved him," sobbed Frances, "and now 
he is hopelessly lost." 



CHAPTER XII. 
"LET HIM DIE." 

COUNT VLADIMIR was at this moment the most disappointed 
man in the city. Barbara had made a deeper impression on 
him than he had deemed possible, and he took her curt dismissal 
keenly. His vanity had received a more serious wound than his 
affections. How was it possible that an elegant and titled aris- 
tocrat could fail in a quarter so open to the influence of such 
qualities as he possessed ? Was the blade dulling through long 
service? He vainly tried to account for Barbara's action to- 
wards him, and was inclined to suspect Florian of undue inter- 
ference ; but his good sense convinced him that the betrothed of 
Frances could have very little to do with Barbara at present. 

" Unless," he thought bitterly, " my instructions and exam- 
ple have made him a more consummate rascal than I imagine." 

This supposition was somewhat wild, however, and he con- 
tinued to visit Barbara and speculate drearily on the matter 
until chance revealed to him what reasoning and observation had 
failed to discover. He paid Florian his last instalment of money 
two days before the election, and at the same time referred inno- 
cently but effectively to the oft-mentioned existence of his father. 

" The prince, my employer," said he, " trusts that should 
your father turn up you will see that he submits to the present 
arrangement." 

" He need have no fear," Florian replied agreeably. " I am 
sure of my ability to manage him better than the prince himself." 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 799 

" I doubt it," said Vladimir, with a smile that pierced Florian's 
heart. " If you failed to deal with him by your roundabout 
American methods, Russian simplicity would surely make an end 
of him. I warn you of that now and finally." 

" I am glad the whole matter is completed," Florian replied 
indifferently. " It has been very troublesome and dangerous " 
with a placid but meaning look at the count, who was pleased to 
let the insinuation pass. " You are not improving in health, Vla- 
dimir. You look like one suffering from mental trouble as well 
as dissipation." 

" I am always gay," said the count briskly, " but that witch 
Barbara is beyond me. I try to explain her behavior and I can- 
not. Yet I do not and will not give up hope." 

" If report be true she is about to console herself for Mer- 
rion's abrupt departure by walking in my footsteps. In other 
words, she is soon to be married, but rumor does not point out 
the man." 

" Ah ! " cried Vladimir, with a gasp, " this is wonderful." 

" These American women," said Florian, " are deeper than 
Russian intrigues and cleverer than Russian cleverness. Where 
be now your gibes, my Yorick ? Silent, eh ? Then be for ever 
dumb and boast no conquests on your return to St. Petersburg." 

" I am vanquished partially in this one instance, but I have 
scores of respectable trophies hanging at my girdle. Alas ! not 
one to compare with Merrion ! But there is always hope. This 
information of yours is based on rumor, which is almost as great 
a liar as man." 

" Well, go ahead," said Florian petulantly, " and fling your- 
self to ruin. You would never be warned by me in your deal- 
ings with Barbara. You would never admit her superiority to 
the general run of your acquaintances. If it is not enough to 
have been flatly rejected, keep on until the coming man shoots 
you." 

" That would be a pleasure indeed," said the count, his dull 
eyes brightening. "A duel ! I have not enjoyed one in years." 

" Life is not a superfluous article here, my dear count." 

" Nor anything else, although your citizens rate each other's 
lives less than their miserable dollars. But, really, are you not 
joking when you say that Barbara is to be married ? " 

" I give you the story as rumor gave it to me." 

" I must make sure of it, then," said the count. " Well, our 
business relations, dear prince, are ended, and your last hold 
upon your native country is cut off. I wish you all the honor 



8oo SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept., 

and glory America can give you. Let me advise you once more 
to keep a bright lookout for your father." 

He went away smiling, as if he knew how those last words 
rankled in Florian's heart. Why did he so persistently refer to 
the subject? Had he some news of the lost prince, and was the 
spy still on the trail, seeking to put out of the way this last ob- 
stacle to his master's security ? Florian shook like a leaf at the 
suggestion, and, half-maddened at its possibility, sought counsel 
and sympathy from Barbara. Her face was very sympathetic 
as she listened to him, but she was laughing at him secretly. 

"The count has seen," said she, "that you are annoyed by 
this idea of your father rising spectre-like to demand his own, 
and delights in punishing you. I do not think your father can 
be living. You have shown the most admirable diligence in 
looking for him. It would not do to be too open or too sharp in 
the search, for you might meet an impostor who would give you 
much trouble and expense." 

" That is very true," said Florian, much relieved. " I am too 
scrupulous." 

" It is highly probable that the prince is dead, or so hidden, 
in fear of his relatives, that it is too great a task to find him. I do 
regret one thing in the late transactions with the count that in 
renouncing your rights to your father's estate you did not insert 
the clause, 'until all heirs of the present family fail.' I have an 
idea I would look well in a Russian court, and I am so fond of a 
title." 

" When you reign in the executive mansion, ma cktre, you 
will hold a more assured and brilliant position." 

" But suppose you do not get elected ? " 

" A senatorship then awaits me. But you must not begin to 
croak so soon. If money and influence mean anything the posi- 
tion will be mine." 

" But your religion," said Barbara, " is a great stumbling, 
block." 

" I have glossed it over pretty well," he answered lightly, 
" and my plain utterances on many mooted questions have shut 
the mouths of my enemies tight. Away with these dismal specu- 
lations ! You relieved me of my fears for my father, let me now 
banish your doubts of my election. This is love's hour. Poli- 
tics and business too rudely intrude on it." 

" Don't be foolish. That is the count's talk, and I hate it." 

" Poor fellow ! his famous to-morrow is almost here. He has 
hopes of you still, even when I told him to-day that you were to 



1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 801 

be married to a man who was a world's mystery. He was going 
to see you very soon and settle matters finally." 

" He had an idea," she said indignantly, 4< that I might fall in 
love with him after the European fashion. I saw it from the 
first and resented it. Otherwise he would have made an im- 
pression on me, for he was a most charming man." 

" That past tense is a hard criticism on him, my dear." 

" There, there, more of the Russian foolishness." 

" I beg pardon," said a voice at the door. " I did not think " 

Florian's haughty self-confidence never showed better than at 
this trying moment. ^ He released Barbara's hand, rose politely 
and coolly to greet Count Vladimir. 

" You will excuse me," said the count in a vain effort for com- 
posure. 

" Not at all," said Florian. " Come in. We were just speak- 
ing of you, and you fit into the conversation most excellently." 

" I am honored," said the count. " Do you converse as ten- 
derly and as often about me with Miss Lynch, your affianced ? " 

"Not my affianced, count. That little romance is dead." 

" I begin to comprehend," said Vladimir, struggling des- 
perately with anger and humiliation. " And am I to suppose 
that the lovely Mrs. Merrion is soon to console herself for her 
recent great sorrow by becoming " 

" Precisely," said Barbara, who had regained her usual cool- 
ness. 

" I congratulate you both," said the count, whitening to the 
lips, " and at a more convenient time I shall be happy as a friend 
to learn more of this extraordinary romance. Good-afternoon." 

It was with blinded eyes and staggering gait that he found 
his way out of the mansion. A horrible bitterness and wild rage 
against himself and Florian filled his heart, and but for the shame 
of publicity he would have raved and cursed where he was like 
any madman. 

" My teachings have turned on myself," he muttered. " I 
taught and influenced him to descend, and, by all the gods, he 
has gone lower than I by degrees. But wait. Have patience, 
Vladimir." 

He rushed into his own rooms and gave way to the passion 
which consumed him. Never had he been so bitterly humiliated, 
and never had he so poor an opportunity of revenging himself 
on his enemy. What was the poor consolation of a duel when 
he wished to tear his rival limb from limb what benefit to him 
when death had placed his enemy beyond his reach? Oh! if he 
VOL. XLI. 5 1 



802 DUBLIN OF To-DA Y. [Sept., 

could but inflict upon him some maddening, life-long torture. 
When his rage had cooled somewhat he noticed a letter ad- 
dressed to him lying on the table, and its well-known writing 
made him seize it hurriedly. It contained but one line : "/ have 
found him. What am I to do?" A sardonic smile spread over 
his worn face. He held a match to the letter and stood smiling 
while it burned to ashes. 

" No answer," he muttered, " is a death-warrant. This is the 
first drop in the bucket." 

A little flame leaped up from the paper and scorched his fin- 
ger. He started angrily from the reverie into which he had 
fallen, stamped it under foot, and fell to thinking again. He was 
not so satisfied with his action when it was done. What had 
Florian's father done to him that he should wish to murder him ? 
A word from him at this critical moment would save a human 
life, and he hesitated to give it because he had been humiliated. 
Humiliated ! The word brought on his passion of anger again 
with twofold intensity. He pictured anew the scene he had 
just witnessed in Barbara's drawing-room, and, foaming at the 
mouth, stamping and blaspheming, he shouted, " Let him die ! 
Let him die, and his accursed son with him! " 

TO BE CONTINUED. 



DUBLIN OF TO-DAY. 

IN many respects Dublin is at present, and has been for some 
time past, one of the most interesting cities in Europe. Though 
of comparatively small magnitude, its history is full of incident, 
and during recent years it has added to its previous importance 
by becoming the centre of one of the most extraordinary social 
revolutions of modern times. In the Irish Land League it has 
seen revived the story of the Roman Gracchi, with the dif- 
ference, that while the Gracchi failed and speedily terminated 
their career in death, the leaders of the Irish land movement 
not only live, but have been so far successful in their efforts. In 
this, as in some other respects, the analogy between the history 
of Rome and that of Dublin or Ireland is so remarkable as to 
lead one almost to believe that while Dublin might seem to have 
imitated Rome in her programme of reform, she also took a les- 
son from her in the department of crime. The fact may be ac- 
cidental, but it is no less interesting for the philosophic student 



1885.] DUBLIN OF TO-DAY. 803 

of history to know, that while Rome had her pacific and high- 
minded Gracchi in the field of agrarian reform, Dublin has also 
her agitators in a field almost similar ; and that if the former had 
Catiline and his assassins, Dublin has had also her Carey and his 
Invincibles. 

Dublin is a very ancient city in name, but in actual construc- 
tion there is no part of it, with the exception of a small portion 
of the Castle, more than two hundred years old. Of its street 
architecture in its grander phases it is not necessary, in this age 
of tourists, and photographers, and voluminously eloquent guide- 
books and no less eloquent newspaper correspondents, to say 
much. Every one knows all about Sackville Street, and the Bank 
of Ireland, where the Parliament used to sit, and Trinity College, 
and Merrion Square, and the lost glories of Donnybrook, and 
the living disgrace of Tommy Moore's statue, with all the other 
architectural and aesthetic marvels which have placed Dublin, 
if not first, at least in the first line of European cities. All 
that the wonder-worshipper has read of and the ballad-singer 
sung of is there still. The Four Courts, boasting, alas ! no longer 
such lights as used to shine in those " other days " when it was 
illuminated by the genius of a Curran, a Whiteside, or a Butt, 
yet still there, with its bagfuls of wigs and its army of rising 
young barristers who have not yet risen ; still there is the Cus- 
tom-House, looking down from its Venetian-like front with mag- 
nificent rebuke upon the gentle Anna Liffey that brings it so lit- 
tle merchandise, and hiding behind the cool shade of its splendid 
fagade a host of officials whose principal labor seems to consist 
in drawing their monthly salaries and exercising their faculty of 
analysis upon each other's private character ; there, too, is the 
Rotunda, its great hall still eloquent with the clank of the Volun- 
teer sabres of 1782, and with the music of many a tongue which 
henceforth only the angels shall hear ; and there is the City Hall 
with its sixty civic legislators sitting like Roman senators of the 
days of Brennus, in their scarlet robes, under their new flag of 
green ; and still there (gaudeamus !), notwithstanding the revolu- 
tionary spirit of the time, is the statue of him who was once from 
July to September the ruling toast in Castle hall and tap-room 
King William, the " great and good," of "glorious, pious, and im- 
mortal memory." 

Up till a comparatively few years ago the statue of William 
and two or three highly fantastic and flattering figures of the 
royal Georges were almost the only public monuments of which 
Dublin could boast. Of statues to Irishmen, as such, it had only 



804 DUBLIN OF To-DA Y. [Sept., 

two that to O'Connell by Hogan, and that to Dr. Lucas, the 
founder of the Freeman s Journal, in the City Hall. There was 
little in Dublin to indicate that Dublin was in Ireland, much less 
that it was its capital city. Worthless viceroys and their fa- 
vorites were commemorated everywhere in the names of its 
streets and squares, but there was nothing, unless perhaps the 
name of some obscure court or alley, to show that Dublin was 
an Irish city and the metropolis of a country which had been the 
theatre of great achievements and the mother of many illustrious 
men. It was not fashionable to celebrate the memory of any- 
thing Irish ; more than that, it was hardly safe. All this has been 
changed. Flunkyism has had its day, and now the city is 
adorned with some admirable memorials of men whom Ireland 
really delights to honor. Grattan stands in College Green with- 
in a few yards of the House where he achieved his greatest 
triumphs ; Burke and Goldsmith guard the entrance to Trinity 
College, and the colossal figure of O'Connell stands at the open- 
ing of the bridge once known by the name of " Carlisle," but 
now altered to that of O'Connell bridge in his honor. A move- 
ment even is on foot for the renaming of the streets and calling 
them after men who have in some way or other been identified 
with the National cause in Ireland. All this indicates a remark- 
able change in public feeling, and contrasts strangely with the 
sentiments of the time when to have mooted such a thing would 
probably have exposed the author to a charge of constructive 
treason, or at least would have caused him to be ostracized by 
all " respectable " society. 

Dublin is a beautiful city, but to the American eye, accus- 
tomed to the never-ceasing flow of life in American towns, it 
might seem at first little more than a beautiful wilderness. Its 
beauty is at best of a somewhat sad type. There is an air of 
vacancy almost pathetic about its magnificent squares, an absence 
of activity in its finest streets which their generally great breadth 
makes all the more conspicuous, a want of that noise and bustle 
which one is accustomed to associate with city life, a sort of not- 
at-home look about its greatest houses, as if their inmates had 
gone hastily away and left them, in sheer desperation, to take care 
of themselves. In the dull quiet of some of the streets, with 
their odd side-passenger here and there, and the meditative 
" jarvey " nodding on his car as he moves slowly along, dream- 
ing of the fare that so seldom seems to come, one could almost 
fancy himself in an English cathedral town. There is nothing, 
however, of the sleek and sleepy look of satisfaction and repose 



1885.] DUBLIN OF TO-DAY. 805 

which marks the ecclesiastical settlement about any part of Dub- 
lin. On the contrary, it is very wide-awake painfully so, one 
would almost say not with the wakefulness of activity, but the 
unnatural sleeplessness and unrest which come to him who has 
waited long for something, and waited while his soul hungered 
within him, in vain. Like Mariana in the moated grange, Dublin 
seems, morning and evening, weary of the fate which has robbed 
her of all that made life desirable, and living only to feel the 
feverish sickness of a hope that promises little yet refuses to be 
altogether extinguished. 

In the silence and solitariness, yet thronging associations, of 
some parts of the city, one seems to walk among shadows. The 
past has gone and left a vacancy which the present has failed to 
fill. Nothing has come to take the place of those ornaments and 
accessories of social and mental life which once made Dublin the 
gayest and most intellectual capital in Europe. We take up 
the skull of Yorick and muse with melancholy tenderness over 
the soul that once flashed with life and merriment within. We 
look into its hollow sockets and we see nothing except what is 
furnished by our own fancy. So with some parts of Dublin. 
Here, where legislators and lawyers, a hundred years ago, had 
their home, is a street to which their genius and eccentricities 
gave a reputation at once classical and comic, silent and almost 
deserted now, yet carrying a history in almost every stone. As 
we stand and look with half-closed eyes through the shadow and 
sunlight which fall on its deserted pathways, we can almost fancy 
we see the angular form of Grattan descend from some of the 
doorsteps and move down the street, with his singularly solemn 
and uneven footstep, to take his place in the House, or catch a 
gleam from the light of Curran's luminous eye as he passes from 
grave to gay in his conversation with the friend who walks by 
his side. 

Solitude and silence have not, however, in every instance fol- 
lowed in the wake of departed greatness in Dublin. The senti- 
ment involved in the lines, 

" Imperial Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, 
May stop a hole to keep the wind away," 

may find an illustration in many parts of the city. Previous to the 
Union most of the nobility and gentry of any note had their town- 
houses in Dublin, and these houses were no less remarkable for 
the splendor of their architecture than for the hospitality of 
their masters. No city in Europe, perhaps, can boast of finer 



8c6 DUBLIN OF To-DA Y. [Sept., 

mansions than they were in the heyday of their glory. The 
Irish nobleman of the past had Oriental ideas on the subject of 
expense ; and if we examine the interior of some of these build- 
ings, still showing, after the lapse of nearly a century of neglect, 
marvels of carving and color, we may accuse him of extrava- 
gance, but we cannot accuse him of want of taste. One is re- 
minded, as he looks at them, of the elegant fancies that figure 
upon the walls and ceilings of some of the palaces of Venice or 
Milan. We should hardly wonder at this when we learn that 
the artist in almost every instance was an Italian and the same 
individual. The story is that he had been brought from Italy to 
Dublin by Lord Charleraont, who was a traveller and a man of 
taste, to decorate his house in Rutland Square, and that he 
received many similar engagements from other members of the 
aristocracy. When the Union was passed Irish wealth and no- 
bility went to London, and the old palaces, becoming deserted, 
were never afterwards occupied as residences. Uses were found 
for them one by one, but not such uses as they had been intend- 
ed for. Charlemont House itself, upon which so many resources 
of art had been lavished, became, after years of vacancy, an office 
for the Valuation Commissioners ; Alborough House, the resi- 
dence of Lord Alborough a magnificent structure, which can be 
seen miles out at sea by ships entering the harbor became itself 
a barracks, and the grounds surrounding it a repository for all 
the worn-out hats and superannuated tinware of the neighbor- 
hood. Others of them got hemmed in and closed up by pushing 
plebeian new-comers, and so, crushed into obscure corners, sank 
into tenement-houses or fell into total decay. More happy than 
most, some of them were hired for trading purposes, or turned 
into hospitals or bath-houses, or, if specially fortunate, into con- 
vents or schools. The last was the fate of Belvidere House, the 
residence of Lord Belvidere, which stands at the head of Great 
George's Street and continues to look down that fine but almost 
forsaken thoroughfare with a dignity not unbecoming the gran- 
deur of its early days. The usual deeensus, however, for all large 
buildings in Dublin, when they have fallen away from their 
natural use, is to become barracks an obvious course for them to 
take in a country where the government thinks it desirable to 
maintain a permanent garrison of about fifty thousand men. If 
they do not become barracks they may be turned, in government 
hands, into something very much worse. Strange, indeed, the 
fate of houses as of men ! One of the largest and most respect- 
able houses in the suburbs, which, having ceased to be a family 



1885.] DUBLIN OF TO-DAY. 807 

residence, became in turns an academy, a bath-house, and a 
boarding-house, has at last found its destiny as a depot for the 
training and protection of professional informers. This house, 
be it known to all travellers, is pleasantly situated by the sea- 
shore, in the vicinity of Clontarf, about half a mile from the city, 
and is perhaps the most perfect, if not the only, institution of its 
kind in Europe. 

Though shorn of the glories which distinguished it in the old 
days of the Irish Parliament, Dublin is not by any means going 
back in the world. Indeed, during the last few years, more espe- 
cially since the National party acquired the ascendancy in the 
corporation, it has been making considerable progress. Streets 
have been built over ground where, but a short time ago, one 
might have seen conspicuously displayed the legend, " Rubbish 
may be shot here " ; and streets have been removed where houses 
were found to be in an unsafe or incurably unsanitary condition. 
One of the curses of the city was the system of crowding in 
tenements which largely prevailed among the working-classes. 
To a great extent this evil has been remedied in the erection by 
the corporation of buildings under the name of "artisans' dwell- 
ings," where working-men and their families can have separate 
residences, and be free at the same time from the tyranny and 
unappeasable greed of the tenement-house monger. The exten- 
sion of this idea will go far towards forming a new Dublin, as 
well as a higher and more self-respecting class of working-men. 
One of the most interesting sights more interesting, in its way, 
than all the dazzling glories of Sackville or Grafton Streets is 
that presented by the neat little artisan colony of Gray Square, 
situated in the very centre of the filthiest and most decrepit, 
though formerly one of the prosperous, parts of the city. The 
prosperity, however, is of old date. It belongs to those times 
of which Irishmen love to talk talk merely, and perhaps too 
much when Ireland had a manufacture, and when the silk of the 
Dublin Liberties was as well known as the woollens of Leeds or 
the cottons of Manchester. Nothing remains now in the tumble- 
down walls, the straining chimneys, the heaps of rubbish which 
seem to have made up their mind to a permanent occupation, or in 
the aspect of the corner-store, where commercial enterprise sel- 
dom ventures beyond the sale of a pennyworth of turf or half an 
ounce of tobacco, to indicate that there was once a manufacture 
in this locality whose products made fair ladies look more fair, 
and the brightest ball-room more bright. All that is gone now, 
and there is nothing bright or promising about the place except 



8o8 DUBLIN OF TO-DAY. [Sept., 

Gray Square. It is a veritable oasis, an island of light in a sea 
of darkness. We well remember the first time we saw it. There 
is much to interest the man to musing prone in this part of Dub- 
lin, dirty though it be ; and if the Cologne-like essences which 
assail him on all sides do not interfere with the efforts of his 
imagination, he may picture to himself the time when the streets 
were musical with the sound of the loom, and when the fair 
daughters of the citizens might perhaps have been seen going off 
o' nights in their sedans to fashionable ball or rout, looking more 
bright than the lustrous silks they wore. We had been trying 
to find comfort and a little mild excitement in contemplating the 
few tottering relics of Elizabethan architecture which continue 
to mark the spot, and wringing some pleasant thoughts from the 
past by putting the fancy to work generally. The failure, how 
ever, notwithstanding the suggestive observations of our gifted 
and genial cicerone from the City Hall, was complete. Fancy re- 
fused to fly in such an atmosphere and amid such surroundings. 
Suddenly we came upon Gray Square. Fancy was appealed to 
no longer, for here was a fact worth ten thousand fancies, a plain, 
palpable, and most attractive fact, for which its chief author, Mr. 
E. D. Gray, M.P., lord-mayor of the city at the time of its erec- 
tion, deserves the thanks of all lovers of neatness, comfort, and 
cleanliness. The corporation of Dublin is often accused of a 
disposition to over-indulgence in political discussions, but when 
we learn that, in addition to such improvements as the above, 
they have recently opened free baths and news-rooms, we can 
hardly say that they have been altogether neglecting their proper 
business. 

Among other localities in Dublin over which the spirit of 
change has passed is one formerly known as Mud Island. Mud 
Island was, in the old days of three or four generations ago, the 
Alsatia of Dublin, and served, on a small scale, all the purposes 
that the London city of refuge did to the distressed in the days 
of Sir Walter Scott's hero in the Fortunes of Nigel. Here 
the king's writ ran with exceeding difficulty, and the bailiff who 
came with legal process in his pocket walked with a stealthy 
step and slow that contrasted wonderfully with the rapidity of 
his movements in retreat. The Mud Island boy went in for 
Home Rule ; and being, moreover, of monarchical proclivities, 
Mud Island had a king of its own. Dynasties small as well as 
great, however, die out, and the kings of Mud Island, like the 
Caesars of old, are now no more. The last of the line was called 
"Jerry " tradition sayeth not what was his surname, or whether 



1885.] DUBLIN OF TO-DAY. 809 

he had one at all and is said to have terminated his career rather 
abruptly in the convivialities which, more majorurn, followed close 
upon his elevation to the royal dignity. With him passed away 
the last faint flickering of Mud Island glory. Even its very 
name is now almost a tradition, for with the death of its last sove- 
reign it was officially rebaptized, and became in reality an append- 
age of the city proper, which it has ever since peaceably con- 
tinued. 

Dublin is a city of a small population (not quite three hundred 
thousand), but it makes up for its meagreness in this respect by 
the number of its social distinctions. Over and above the artisan 
classes it would hardly be too much to say that there are almost 
as many classes as there are occupations in the community. 
Traders associate with traders, professional men with profes- 
sional men, and so on. Some traders are even disposed to draw 
a line of sub-division among themselves, and to narrow their 
social world to the members of the trade in which they them 
selves are engaged. This is especially the case with the mem- 
bers of what is called the "liquor interest" in Dublin. The 
liquor interest is very strong and very wealthy, and of late years 
has, while other trades have been falling off, been growing both 
in wealth and importance. The late lord-mayor was a member 
of it, so is the present lord-mayor, and so also are the majority of 
the members of the corporation. It might, perhaps, puzzle an 
outsider to discover the special qualifications possessed by these 
gentlemen for occupying the position of civic rulers; but when 
you are told that each of them has two or three, or perhaps half 
a dozen, public-houses at his back, and that he has been a sub- 
scriber to the National League since the National League be- 
came a settled institution of the country, you are looked upon 
with a suspicion that you are either ignorant or something worse 
if you do not appear satisfied. For the Dublin liquor-dealer is 
not simply a liquor-dealer, he is a patron of Irish manufactures. 
The distillation of whiskey is the principal manufacture which 
the iniquitous legislation of past times allowed to exist in Ire- 
land, and he therefore considers that he is justified in regarding 
himself as one of the main props of Irish industrial life. The 
mere grocer does nothing but simply transfer such foreign 
commodities as tea and sugar from hand to hand, the draper 
is not much better, and the other members of the trading com- 
munity are severally too insignificant to be taken into account. 
The liquor interest stands, therefore, in a measure, alone. View- 
ing himself from this standpoint, and remembering that he rules 



8io DUBLIN OF TO-DAY. [Sept., 

in the corporation and possesses a large share of the wealth of 
the city, and has often such a country-house as a prince might 
envy, we can hardly marvel at his sense of self-importance, 
or feel surprised that he should sometimes take up the tone 
of the dethroned landlord and speak of the liquor interest in 
somewhat the same way as that in which the latter used to 
speak of the " landed interest " in the days of his power. For 
mark what the liquor interest is doing and has done. It oc- 
cupies some of the best houses in the city, it beats out all 
other interests hollow in the way it effects that consummation 
so devoutly wished for by shop-keeping economists the putting 
money into circulation it gives the largest subscriptions to 
religious and charitable purposes ; and, to show the impartial 
manner in which it bestows its favors, it has restored, if not 
quite rebuilt, the two (now) Protestant cathedrals of Christ's 
Church and St. Patrick's, while it erected some years ago a per- 
fectly new house for the use of the Presbyterian community. 
When the time comes for building the new Catholic cathedral in 
Dublin there is no doubt but that it will maintain its reputation 
as a generous and cheerful giver. 

To what is called society proper he of the liquor interest, 
however, no matter what his importance, is never admitted. 
That is a sacred enclosure, inside the circle of which no person 
actually in trade is, as a rule, allowed to pass. Some considera- 
tion is shown to those who have retired from business, provided 
they have retired upon a good understanding with their banker, 
and they are graciously permitted to take a back seat or play 
the part of listener or appreciative spectator in the gatherings 
where Dublin fashion loves to exhibit itself. Though Dublin 
has no aristocracy, properly speaking, it has a substitute for one. 
The substitute consists of professional men as a permanent basis, 
strengthened by government officials of the better sort, with a 
few military men, of whom the numerous barracks in Dublin can 
always furnish a supply, as an ornamental fringe. This is Dub- 
lin society in the highest sense, and is the best that is to be had 
in the city, if we accept its own opinion of itself, and the opin- 
ion very deferentially entertained of it by those who occupy 
more humble or more prosaic positions in life. Perhaps it is 
right, but in conceding that we are not conceding much. Be- 
tween military snobs and government officials, the natural grace 
and freedom of Dublin society have been destroyed or distorted. 
It has everywhere upon it the stamp of artificiality and sham 
it seems, in fact, altogether a government affair. The mark of 



1885.] DUBLIN OF TO-DAY. 8ti 

the broad arrow is as clearly to be seen upon it as if it had been 
supervised and passed by some custom-house officer. The great 
attraction of the women of Dublin consists not so much in 
beauty of face or form as in their grace of manner and in the sil- 
very music of an accent which makes one, when they speak, think 
almost involuntarily of the Greek in which Sappho spoke and 
sang. They are as far as possible removed from being blue- 
stockings ; they do not pretend even to be intellectual in their 
tastes. They lack the piquancy, the individuality and power of 
repartee, of their southern sisters, and so too quietly, perhaps, 
let men whose vanity needs a bridle very often have their own 
way. By their passivity of character they have lost much of 
their native charm. It has exposed them to become the vic- 
tims of surrounding influences, and has straitlaced the beauties 
of the natural Nora under the corset of the formal and fashion- 
able Lesbia. Like the rest of the fashionable world of Dublin, 
they have bowed and bowed with unthinking heads to Dublin 
Castle until they have hardly a thought above it. Its thoughts 
are their thoughts, its ways are their ways ; and in the dream of 
joining the crowds that go to its balls and levies they live and 
move and have their notion of a respectable being. 

We might linger long enough by the suburbs of Dublin, 
dreaming away the time as we sauntered by the sea at Clontarf, 
where more than eight hundred years ago, on the Good Friday 
of 1014, King Brian defeated the Danes, terminating on that day 
with his own life a war that had been going on more or less con- 
tinuously for over two hundred years, and in all probability sav- 
ing by his victory the British Islands from a permanent Danish 
supremacy. Or we might walk to old Glasnevin, and, sitting by 
the pleasant Tolka, endeavor, as we listened to the childlike prat- 
tle of the little river, to conjure up visions of the days when 
Prior and Parnell and Addison used to meet there together, and 
when the scsva indignatio of Swift was often soothed by the ge- 
nial society of his friend Bishop Delaney, whose episcopal resi- 
dence still stands on the green rising ground that overlooks its 
banks. 

" Where'er we tread is haunted, holy ground." 

Or, going further, we might look in at the little graveyard, in an 
obscure corner of which, under a mound marked by a stone 
on which no epitaph is inscribed, sleeps all that is mortal of one 
who will always live in the affection and reverence of his coun- 
trymen. For here, it is said, Robert Emmet is buried. There 



8 12 DUBLIN OF TO-DAY. [Sept., 

is a doubt about the matter, but we can easily believe that love 
might have selected a spot like this in which to lay the dust of 
one so dearly cherished. 

Far away is the great Hill of Howth, rich with legends and 
stories of heroic days, sleeping beneath its purple crown of heath 
in the light of the soft Irish summer, and at its foot the castle 
of the St. Lawrences, Lords of Howth, the doors of which are 
opened every day as the dinner-bell rings, according to a promise 
exacted from the owner of the time when the castle was visited 
by the celebrated Grace O'Malley, or Graun Uaile, the Queen of 
Connaught, on her return to Ireland from the court of Queen 
Elizabeth. Hither might we go and riot in beauty to our hearts' 
content, while we listened to the waves as they broke in musical 
murmurs, like old and pleasant memories on the soul, against the 
rocks a thousand feet below, or gazed lazily across the bay at 
Dalkey Island, where the Monks of the Screw used to hold annual 
revel in the wild and witty days of Curran and his contempora- 
ries. 

But let us return to the city. It is a beautiful city, as you 
may see, but it is not a city which an American or a man of 
American tastes would care for living in. It is a place for one 
to go to to take the air in, to breathe freely for a time and wipe 
off the dust of previous contests, in order to prepare for future 
struggles ; but it is not a place in which to stay. To the man of 
active mind it would prove a very Capua without any of the 
pleasures of the Italian siren. But there is a fascination about 
its people, a charm and kindliness of manner, which make one 
linger when he should not ; a home-like feeling in the tone of their 
voice which puts the stranger at once at his ease and makes him, 
before he knows it, " one of themselves," which may yield much 
pleasure and that few can resist. It is a beautiful city, but, think- 
ing of what it was as compared with what it is, looking over its 
lonely streets and listening to the sighs which seem to breathe 
through solitudes once peopled with the thoughts and presence 
of great men, its beauty seems no more a living beauty, but the 
beauty of a body that has lost its soul. 



188$.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 813 



A PROTESTANT HERO. 

GASPARD DE COLIGNY is the central figure in the dramatic 
struggle between the church and French feudalism in the six- 
teenth century. He is almost. the only figure of the Reforma- 
tion that has escaped the honest iconoclasm of painstaking Ger- 
man historians and their English followers. Other leaders in 
the revolt have suffered eclipse. Henry VIII. , Elizabeth, even 
Knox and Calvin, are now admitted to possess characters that 
somehow fall short of perfection. But Coligny stands out in re- 
lief from a background of imposing horrors, the one stainless 
actor in those sinister scenes. " There is no one," says his latest 
biographer, Mr. Walter Besant, " in the long list of French wor- 
thies like unto the great admiral, worthy to stand beside him." 
This sentiment strikes the keynote of Mr. Besant's estimate of 
the character of the great Huguenot leader. If Mr. Besant, 
charming story-teller that he sometimes is, had constructed his 
heroes on the same principle that he applies to Coligny, he 
would hardly have met with the measure of success that has re- 
warded his literary labors. Perfection is likely to be insipid in 
fiction. In real life there never has been a statesman or warrior 
of whom it could be predicated. Even the best of them have 
some imperfections that bring them near the level of our com- 
mon humanity. Above all, there never was a period less likely 
to produce heroes of the Sunday-school order than the sixteenth 
century. It was a period of the clashing of creeds and systems ; 
a chaos from whose foulness and confusion sprang new births, 
some lovely, some hideous, but all bearing marks of the deadly 
struggles and violent passions that produced them. To en- 
velop Coligny in a halo dimmed by no shadow is neither just 
to the man nor to the age in which he lived. But, indeed, 
as a history the work of Mr. Besant, like the works of most 
writers written from the same standpoint, is beneath contempt. 
It is interesting as a gauge of the intellectual training a 
large majority of our fellow-countrymen receive. Probably not 
a tithe of the most thoroughly cultured of them ever think 
of verifying their estimates of controverted events and the 
men who wrought in them by comparing the views of their 
favorite author or preacher with those of writers holding a 
brief " on the other side." A Catholic who is ordinarily well 



8 14 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept., 

informed is much better equipped for the discharge of judicial 
functions in disputed historical questions than a Protestant who 
accepts the conclusions of his Froude or Macaulay or Motley 
as final, without troubling himself to examine the other side of 
the shield. An English-speaking Catholic, whether he will or 
not, must see both sides of a question. If he wishes to compre- 
hend the currents of thought that sway his fellow-countrymen 
he must be familiar with their literature, and for the most part 
that literature is intensely anti- Catholic. When he has made 
himself equally well acquainted with the opinions of Catholic 
writers he is certainly in a much better position for correctly ap- 
preciating the tangled incidents of the Reformation and the com- 
plex characters of the actors in it than if he confined his stud- 
ies within the narrow circle of biassed and partisan writers, and 
that, too, notwithstanding the obscuring influences of inherited 
prejudice. But what Protestant reader, when he is told by Be- 
sant that " there was no one like him [Coligny], not one, even 
among our Elizabethan heroes, so true and loyal, so religious and 
so steadfast, as the great admiral," will take the trouble to find 
out what these Elizabethan heroes were whose truth and loyalty 
and religion came within measurable distance of the same vir- 
tues in Coligny? An examination of original sources would 
easily convince him that the heroes mentioned in the author's 
sweeping generalization were about the most thorough-going 
scoundrels of an evil generation, and, if imbued with a sentiment 
of admiration for the great Huguenot leader, he would feel 
naturally indignant that the object of his veneration should be 
supposed to resemble Leicester, the murderer of his wife, or 
Essex, the plaything of a royal wanton, or Raleigh, the assassin 
and pirate, or Bacon, the mean and corrupt judge, or a hundred 
others not one of whom, with the single exception of Sidney, 
possessed a shred of loyalty or truth or religion. 

If we were simply reviewing Mr. Besant's monograph it 
would be amusing to point out the glaring discrepancies and in- 
consistencies that bristle on every page, and for which, perhaps, 
a writer who would write in a tone of unmixed eulogy of the 
Reformation can hardly be blamed. To cite one instance, in ac- 
counting for the failure of the movement in France he says: 
" One great cause was the fact that the scholars and divines of 
France did not take part in the movement. On the contrary, 
they held themselves aloof or condemned it. While in England 
the great scholars and eminent divines all came over to the new 
faith, in France we see them either openly hostile or else indifferent." 



1885.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 815 

And a few pages further on we are told : " Wherever in France 
a man was induced to think and read for himself, he came over 
from the opposite camp. It seemed, at the outset, as if ignorance 
and stupidity alone ivould remain in the old faith." In a rather in- 
teresting and picturesque description of Chatillon, the birthplace 
of Coligny, as it is at present, from which it would appear that the 
inhabitants lead a very contented if rather humdrum and drowsy 
existence, undisturbed by the march of progress, Mr. Besant 
says: "In that time, too, yon gray old building by the bridge, 
the Hotel Dieu, founded and maintained by the seigneur, was a 
college of free thought and noble learning. Thought and learning 
have been banished." It would be interesting to know what kind 
of free thought the sour-faced Genevan ministers, who must have 
witnessed with pious satisfaction the dying agonies of Servetus, 
doled out to the young Huguenots of Chatillon. We fear if Mr. 
Besant, who is not theologically sound according to Calvinistic 
canons, had lived at the time and fallen into their clutches, his 
admiration for their free-thought teachings would have been 
considerably modified. To any one acquainted with the unlove- 
liness, nay, utter brutality, of English rural life the simple vir- 
tues and rustic happiness of the people of Chatillon will seem an 
adequate compensation even for the absence of a " college of 
free thought." 

In this little town of Chatillon Chatillon-sur-Loing Gaspard 
de Coligny was born in the year 1517. His birth happened at a 
period of great prosperity for France. It was a zone of calms 
between two tempestuous eras. France, consolidated by the 
patience and vigorous though rough methods of Louis XL, had 
made marvellous progress under the benevolent sway of Louis 
XII., and its progress continued unchecked during the first years 
of his successor. The roads were free from brigands. The or- 
ganized bands of ruffians that had desolated farmyard and cot- 
tage were things of the past, and the horrors of the " Reforma- 
tion" had not yet come. According to one of the many uncon- 
scious admissions of Coligny 's biographer, " The sentinel stood 
on the walls, but he slept. The ploughman had returned to 
clear the fields ; there was once more tolerable security for his 
crops ; there was no necessity, save that of habit, for locking up 
the town-gates at nightfall. The religious wars had not begun. 
France was internally prosperous and peaceful." 

Though the house of Chatillon had never been on a level 
with the great feudal families that exercised more authority than 
their nominal sovereign in their vast domains, it had for genera- 



8i6 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept, 

tlons held a position of great dignity and power in the southeast 
of France, and its importance was further increased in the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries by alliances with the sovereign 
houses that dotted Vienne, Dauphiny, and the borders of Savoy 
and Germany. The Colignys had been to the front in the 
chivalrous enterprises of the middle ages. Some of them are 
found among the followers of the Emperor Conrad in the Holy 
Land, others are chronicled as first in the breach at the taking 
of Constantinople ; and there were few of the struggles of this 
turbulent period in which the vigor of the race did not assert 
itself in domestic broils or foreign wars. And not only did 
it supply doughty captains in the English and Spanish wars. 
It was equally prolific of bishops, abbots, and abbesses. No 
generation passed without numerous Chatillons figuring at the 
head of priories and convents in the old duchy of Burgundy. 

The father of Gaspard had added much to the greatness of 
his house by his influence with Francis I., and above all by his 
marriage with Louise de Montmorency, the sister of the great 
Constable. Of this marriage there were four children born. 
Pierre, the eldest, died young while serving as page of honor to 
Francis I. Odet became famous as the Cardinal Chatillon. 
Gaspard was made the head of the family either through the 
instrumentality of the Constable or because his tutor, Nicolas 
Berault, thought he discerned in the second son greater capacity 
for action, a richer share of the qualities necessary to maintain 
and increase the power of a great feudal house, than in his eldest 
brother. Little did the tutor foresee that these qualities, exag- 
gerated and misused, were to level that proud house in the dust. 
Francis, the youngest, is better known by the name of his fief, 
D'Andelot. 

The Catholic writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies have severely inveighed against the Chatillons for their 
apostasy, and not a few French writers of the present day have 
discussed their abandonment of Catholicism in the same spirit. 
Nothing could be unfairer than such reproaches. The young 
Chatillons were no more responsible for their religious errors 
than a young American would be, nurtured in a vague horror of 
popery in some remote New England village. Their tutor, 
B6rault, might have been one of those lukewarm souls, the pro- 
duct of the Renaissance, that Dante saw before entering the First 
Circle, who were neither for God nor for his enemies. He him- 
self never left the church, but, like many bright spirits of the 
time, he put religion aside, as far as it could be considered a 



1885.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 817 

moral agent claiming to influence his actions. The friend of 
Bude and Erasmus, he possessed little of the spirit of the Renais- 
sance, except the ostentatious pedantry which was one of the 
minor evils produced by the mighty awakening of paganism on 
those of its followers whose learning was showy rather than 
deep. Nor could Berault remain unaffected by the moral deca- 
dence that enfeebled the mental fibre of his fellow-scholars. The 
classical world, after sleeping for a thousand years, suddenly 
awoke to life, fascinating and bewitching the human race. Its 
influence pervaded all classes. The very corruptions, the ineffa- 
ble vileness draped in the seductive garb of Greek and Roman 
writers had an attraction for certain minds. The beauty of 
form dazzled their vision, and they accepted with indiscriminat- 
ing delight the good and the bad. Whatever had the classical 
stamp brought its own justification along with it. It would be 
vain to deny the obligations under which the modern world lies 
to the Renaissance, but undoubtedly its temporary effects were 
to enervate the moral sentiment of the sixteenth century, to 
spread the allurements of artistic sensualism, and to rend Chris- 
tendom asunder. 

Coligny's tutor marched in the ranks of this moral and intel- 
lectual revolution. His mother, without abandoning the church, 
utterly disregarded its laws and teachings when they ran counter 
to her whims or her interests. " Religion, in the mind of Louise 
de Montmorency, was a matter of authority for the common 
herd, of private opinion for the well-born ; according to Nico- 
las Berault, the dogmas of the church were to be weighed and 
considered by scholars and accepted by the ignorant." * 

The religious instruction of the boys appears to have been 
confined to sneers at priests and ridicule of the dogmas of the 
church. They could not help themselves. In the hands of an 
egotistic and self-indulgent teacher, careless of his duties to his 
pupils and to society, and a mother steeped in the iridifferentism 
of the Renaissance, like Catherine de Medicis, Marguerite of Va- 
lois, and so many grand dames of the age, it was not surprising 
that the Chatillons should have felt rebellious and antagonistic 
to any influences likely to run counter to their passions. 

It was in keeping with the cynical and unscrupulous methods 
that moulded the education of the boys that one of them should 
be destined for the church he was taught to hate. Odet was the 
one selected, and, according to the bad custom of a bad time, he 
was made a cardinal at sixteen. Such a cardinal as Odet has 

* Besant. 
VOL. XLt 52 



8i8 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept., 

never been seen since, except once when the church of France 
was punished for her slavish subservience to the state by the 
awful spectacle of a Dubois clothed in the Roman purple. 
Scarcely was he installed in his bishopric of Beauvais when he 
introduced his mistress, Elizabeth d'Hauteville, into the very 
sanctuary where he presided at the celebration of a Calvinistic 
Lord's Supper. Until his open lapse into Calvinism his relations 
with this lady had been kept secret. But as soon as Paul IV. 
had deprived him of the purple he gloried in the shameful con- 
nection, and the good people of Beauvais were horrified at see- 
ing a heretical service solemnized in their cathedral, in presence 
of a cardinal in his robes, with a lady by his side about whose 
position there could be no misconception, gorgeously attired a 
veritable Scarlet Lady indeed ! After a wayward and wretched 
career he took refuge at the court of Elizabeth, who treated him 
with the neglect which agents meet usually at the hands of sove- 
reigns when their days of usefulness are past. His ending was 
a melancholy sermon on the Nemesis that generally finds the 
priest who deserts his standard in face of the enemy. He 
died a year before the massacre of St. Bartholomew, miserable 
and neglected, poisoned, it was said, by his valet. 

For a young noble like Gaspard, the acknowledged head of 
his house and the lord of many vassals, only one career was pos- 
sible that of the sword. Accordingly we find him brought to 
the court of Francis I. at the age of twenty-one by his mother, 
who had been appointed gouvernante of Jeanne d' Albret ; and here 
he met Francis of Guise, and between the two young nobles sprang 
that quick affection which was fated to have such a tragic ending. 

The Prince de Joinville, as Francis was then called, be- 
longed to a family that then and for a generation afterwards 
overshadowed all the great houses of France. Its heroic gran- 
deur was very little indebted to accident of birth : it was found- 
ed on brilliant services to the nation and the king. It continued 
to produce successive generations of mighty statesmen and war- 
riors until the daggers of assassins quenched the illustrious line 
in blood. Rene of Lorraine fought with the Swiss at Morat, 
and his brilliant valor was a principal factor in the achievement 
of the freedom of the cantons. His grandson, Claude, sought 
his fortunes in France with little but his good sword to rely on. 
With this and his illustrious birth, backed by personal grace and 
beauty, he won the hand of Antoinette of Bourbon. Nothing 
further was required to give him a footing in the court and 
army, which he strengthened by his irresistible valor and chival- 






1885.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 819 

rous urbanity. Sent with troops to the succor of Leo X., he 
charmed the pontiff, as he charmed everybody. When the pope 
expressed his sense of the services he had received at Bologna, 
Claude replied : " Your Holiness shall see whether I am of Lor- 
raine, if I ever have the happiness to draw sword in the church's 
quarrel." 

Well did he fulfil the pledge in many an ardent fray. But 
his impetuous zeal neverMegenerated into the savagery common 
in religious wars. When ten thousand German fanatics, after 
sweeping over Franconia, burst into Lorraine and Burgundy, 
burning churches, slaying priests, and committing all those out- 
rages that marked the progress of the Reformation, Claude col- 
lected a small force, hurried to meet them, and drove them pell- 
mell into the village of Lupstein. Here they made a stand and 
galled his soldiers by a cross-fire from the houses and from bar- 
ricades hastily erected. His soldiers were falling in numbers, and 
he gave orders to set fire to the houses. But the shrieks of the 
victims touched the hero's heart. He leaped from his horse and 
by his exertions saved more than four thousand at great risk to 
himself. He afterwards broke the strength of the fanatics at 
Chenouille, and for a time preserved France from the scenes of 
misery and murder that were to be so common in the days of his 
sons. 

Claude transmitted his great qualities to his sons. In many 
qualities the sons outshone the father. The Mar6chale de Retz 
says that near the Lorraine princes other princes appeared com- 
mon. If in some respects, if in simplicity and directness of pur- 
pose, there was a falling-off ; if ambition, " that last infirmity of 
noble minds," warped their inclinations and weakened the moral 
element in their natures, we must pardon something to the dizzi- 
ness of their elevation. They stood so high that it became a 
necessity to lay hold of every prop that could support them. 
The Cardinal of Lorraine won all hearts by his noble bearing, his 
eloquence and learning. His diplomatic skill was the admiration 
of Europe. His enlightened protection of the arts attracted to- 
wards him the enthusiasm of scholars, while his generosity and 
charity had no bounds, and his name was mentioned with bless- 
ings in the homes of the poor and afflicted. 

But the flower of this robust stock was Francis. By the 
unanimous consensus of all enemies as well as friends, he was 
the greatest man of his time. " His consummate skill in war," 
admits De Thou, " joined to his singular good-fortune, his rare 
prudence in the handling of affairs, would have made him regarded 



820 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept., 

as born for the ornament and happiness of France, if he had 
lived in times less stormy and in circumstances in which good 
government was possible." No one was proof against the seduc- 
tive sweetness of his nature. His majestic personality, his gen- 
tleness and generosity, struck the imagination of every home 
in the kingdom. His presence in a village made a gala-day. 
Women rushed forward to kiss his hand or touch his mantle. 
The people of Paris made the welkin ring with shouts of " Ho- 
sanna to the son of David ! " on his arrival words whose ap- 
parent irreverence were neutralized by the sentiment of love that 
dictated them. He was so frank, so sincere, that he seemed to 
incarnate the best spirit of the nation. He was as much of the 
people as if he had been born amongst them, and, as a conse- 
quence, he was strong because they endued him with their 
strength. Even the Huguenots forgot their hostility in his pres- 
ence ; and, therefore, there is no marvel that Gaspard de Co- 
ligny should have felt the universal attraction. 

The friendship that sprang up between these two young no- 
bles was one of the most remarkable in history. In its purity 
and unselfishness it resembled that of David and Jonathan, or a 
page out of one of the chivalrous romances. They were both in 
the flower and fire of their youth, and worldly calculations and 
ambitious promptings had not yet come to dim the fervor of their 
affection. They were never happy out of each other's company. 
They studied military tactics together in times of peace and 
fought side by side in times of war. Whatever hunting-party or 
festival witnessed the presence of one friend was sure the other 
was not far behind. They wore the same colors and dressed 
after the same fashion. In the campaigns which they made to- 
gether against the emperor the chroniclers of the time give 
many interesting instances of the perilous exploits of the two 
friends, and of the difficulty the old Duke of Guise and the Con- 
stable de Montmorency the father of the one and the uncle of 
the other had in keeping their heroic impetuosity within bounds. 
Francis saved the life of Coligny at the siege of Montme'dy in 
1541. In a spirit of bravado that forms a curious contrast to the 
caution of his military operations afterwards, Coligny rode al- 
most up to the very ranks of the enemy and was met by a hail of 
balls, one of which wounded him in the temple. The Prince de 
Joinville spurred furiously to his side, and, after performing mira- 
cles of valor, bore away his friend to a place of safety, stanched the 
wound, tore his scarf into bandages, and applied them to the head 
of Coligny. Even the rough soldiers were moved by the terror 









1885.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 821 

and anxiety of one who never knew what fear was on his own 
account as long as his friend was in danger. There is a cruel 
superstition in some countries of Europe that whoever rescues a 
drowning man may expect to meet with some fatal calamity at 
the hands of him whom he has preserved. But the generous 
soul of Francis of Guise had no premonition that the friend he 
saved and wept over was to arm the assassin who cut short his 
bright career. 

How their mutual affection manifested itself in other daring 
feats, and how it gradually weakened until it changed to impla- 
cable hatred, cannot be told within the limits of an article. The 
dispositions of the two men were so antagonistic that perhaps 
the wonder is it should have lasted so long. They exhibited 
such sharp contrasts that one would suppose their antipathies 
would be constantly coming in collision. Coligny was close and 
secretive in his nature. Francis of Guise was as open as the day. 
The one was enviously jealous of the advancement of others, the 
other was generous even to his enemies. Coligny never made a 
friend even among his party. The love of the people for Francis 
of Guise amounted to adoration. When the two friends cam- 
paigned together, although Coligny performed many brilliant 
exploits, their lustre was lost in the overpowering splendor of 
those of his companion. Where Saul had slain his thousands, 
David had slain his tens of thousands. When, in 1552, Francis of 
Guise compelled the emperor, Charles V., to raise the siege of 
Metz with a loss of thirty thousand men, exciting the astonish- 
ment and admiration of Europe by his brilliant defence, the 
hatred of Coligny could no longer be repressed. It broke forth 
with cool malignity on the eve of the battle of Rentz in 1553. 
By the skilful manoeuvres of the Duke of Guise the enemy were 
drawn into a position favorable to a charge of cavalry. Consid- 
ering that success was certain, he allowed the young Due de 
Nemours to take his place and venture his chance of winning his 
spurs. The charge failed, and the Constable, who was in com- 
mand, declared that but for his nephew, Coligny, the battle was 
lost. The generosity of Francis of Guise in giving a brave 
young officer a chance of distinguishing himself was tortured by 
Coligny into something like cowardice. He declared that in the 
battle the duke had not been where he should be, and, by hint 
and innuendo, led the camp to understand that Guise's conduct 
was due to regard for his personal safety. When these rumors 
reached the ears of the hero of so many fields his indigna- 
tion was unbounded. He met Coligny in the tent of the king 



822 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept., 

and demanded satisfaction. Coligny persisted in his accusa- 
tion. 

" Ah ! mort-Dieu ! ". shouted the duke. " Do not try to rob 
me of my honor." 

" I am not trying to do so," coldly replied Coligny. 

" You could not if you tried," cried Guise, fairly beside him- 
self with rage. 

The admiral and duke, forgetful of the presence in which they 
stood, grasped the hilts of their swords and were drawing them 
when the courtiers threw themselves between them. The com- 
mands of the king forced them to embrace and forget, but their 
reluctant reconciliation did not disguise the enmity that was in 
their hearts. So ended the chivalrous friendship that promised 
such loyal results, leaving in the mind of Francis de Guise an 
animosity that found honest satisfaction on well-fought fields 
from which he returned victor, in Gaspard de Coligny a malevo- 
lent rancor that was afterwards to receive bloody gratification 
from the arquebuse of Poltrot. 

But Guise and Coligny were soon to be separated by causes 
more pregnant with disunion than camp rivalries or private en- 
mities. The awful shadow of the Reformation was beginning to 
loom over France. This is not the place to speak of the causes 
of the great revolution. But we may say that assuredly self- 
interest played a principal part amongst them. It was the mis- 
fortune of the church to possess immense domains in Germany 
which were a glittering prize in the eyes of covetous secular 
princes. Fortunately no such social system prevailed in France. 
The kings of France had nothing to gain by adopting the sys- 
tems of Luther and Calvin, and so Protestantism, which has 
never succeeded in any country unless when backed by the poli- 
tical authority of that country, failed in France. Another cause 
of its failure in France, as in Spain and Italy, was the extent to 
which education and enlightenment had spread among the peo- 
ple. Some authors are in the habit of writing as if the Spain 
and Scotland of to-day were the Spain and Scotland of the six- 
teenth century. The fact is that Spain and Italy then marched 
at the head of European civilization, closely followed by France 
and afterwards by England. They were as superior to half-bar- 
barous Germany and Scotland as Germany and Scotland now 
fancy themselves to be to them ; and as to Scandinavia and Den- 
mark, they were very little removed from savagery. The Re- 
formation had marvellous success among semi-civilized peoples, 
who were the slaves of a brutal lord, where the motto," Ubi r(gio t 



1885.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 823 

ibireligio," prevailed in all its cynical shamelessness. In every 
country where the people had a certain modicum of freedom, 
where they had capacity to think and reason, the Reformation 
was checked at its outset. 

But still Protestantism started in France with great advan- 
tages. The interests of the crown were enlisted against it, but 
the interests of the great nobles were enlisted in its favor. Pro- 
testantism in France was simply a political weapon in the hands 
of the great houses of Chatillon, Rohan, and La Tr6mouille for 
recovering the independence lost in the struggle with the crown. 
The same miserable ambition that turned France into a charnel- 
house in the reign of Charles VI. was equally insolent and ag- 
gressive in the times of the Valois. A military aristocracy, who 
believed that, with a suzerain in London rather than in Paris, 
they could misgovern their domains with more impunity, a dis- 
affected and profligate prince of the blood royal, a worthless and 
vacillating succession of kings, a court openly and shamelessly 
vicious, a timid and treacherous woman at the helm of state, 
Calvin spinning a web of intrigue over all France from his den of 
Geneva, where he had erected an inquisition more cruel than that 
of Spain, and was burning and breaking on the wheel such of the 
Reformers as went a step farther than himself in the path of re- 
form all the conditions essential to the success of the Huguenots 
were present except one. The heart of the nation was sound, 
and all the learning and virtue of the country was stanch to the 
old faith. 

When Coligny returned from Spain, where he had been a 
prisoner for more than a year after the disastrous battle of St. 
Quentin, France was in a ferment. Which side the admiral 
would take was not long a matter of doubt. Neither he nor his 
brothers had received any religious training to speak of. His 
pride and ambition, tinctured with a slight leaven of hypocrisy, 
dictated his course. The Guises were omnipotent. The mili- 
tary chieftainship of a great feudal aristocracy was the only 
thing left that could gratify his inordinate lust of power. The- 
mistocles could not sleep for thinking of the trophies of 
Miltiades. The splendid reputation of Francis of Guise galled 
him. 

Meanwhile the Reformation was making its progress in 
France by atrocities fully as fearful as those ushered in later by 
the Reign of Terror. Massacres were formally inaugurated in 
Beam by Jeanne d'Albret. They culminated in the poisoning of 
the Catholic lords of Beam by Montgomery and his German 



824 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept., 

reiters at the instigation of this horrible woman.* Imprisoned 
at Pau, after surrendering on a formal guarantee that their lives 
would be spared, they were invited to a collation, and by a foul 
crime an obstacle was removed from the path of the Calvinists. 
The laconic despatches written on the occasion may still be read, 
and are instructive. They show that Montgomery at first re- 
volted at the barbarous treachery, that the queen herself shrank 
from giving formal orders for its execution, and that her resolu- 
tion was finally determined by the advice of the reformed minis- 
ters about her, couched in the Biblical style familiar to the tribe. 
Over every quarter of France the work of massacre and pillage 
went on. New modes of cruelty unknown to the Roman em- 
perors were invented in the interest of the Reform. Des Adrets 
made his prisoners jump from the height of lofty towers or leap 
into rivers, while his soldiers set fire to the dress of the women. 
One Huguenot captain's favorite diversion was to cut off the 
ears of priests and wear them as a necklace, unrebuked in pre- 
sence of his commander. Others amused themselves by disem- 
bowelling priests, replacing the intestines with corn and making 
the unhappy victims serve as cribs to their horses while still 
alive. Some were burned at slow fires, others tied to oxen and 
torn asunder. When Coligny surprised the town of Sully-sur- 
Loire, thirty-six priests were massacred with the usual attendant 
circumstances of savagery and torture. The Michelade of 
Nimes was not outstripped in horror by the Noyades of Nantes, 
and in many of its features bears a striking resemblance to the 
massacres of September, especially in its hideous and quasi-judi- 
cial regularity. The Catholics of the city were first imprisoned 
in the H6tel de Ville. Then they were made descend one after 
the other into the cellars of the church at midnight, where assas- 
sins armed with daggers awaited their approach. The butchery 
continued from eleven in the evening to six in the morning. The 
darkness of the awful tragedy was lit by the gleam of torches. 
The victims were flung into a well forty-two feet deep. No cir- 
cumstance of horror was absent from the scene. The blood 
overflowed the margin of the well, and for hours after the moans 
of some poor creatures could be heard from the depths who 
were flung in half-alive. Such scenes as these were common 
over all France. They do not palliate the melancholy reprisals 
afterwards exercised by the French people, but they certainly 
explain them. As long as men are men cruelty will beget 
cruelty. In the eyes of a certain school of historians the op- 

* D'Aubigne, Histoire Universelle, t. xer, i. v. ch. six. 



i88"5.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 825 

pressions of the French aristocracy excused the crimes of the 
French Revolution. Yet surely, bad as many of the French 
nobles then were, they did not bring a tithe of the calamities on 
the nation that covered it with ruin and massacre in the time of, 
Coligny, Cond6, and the other feudal chiefs of the Reformation. 

After Coligny had formally passed over to Calvinism he re- 
tired to his castle of Chatillon, and devoted himself to the or- 
ganization of the conspiracy that was to play such havoc with 
his country for more than a generation. Everything was favor- 
able to his hopes. He had soon his emissaries in every part of 
France. Agents from Geneva swarmed over the country, send- 
ing him tidings of the wonderful success of "the Religion." 
They transmitted to him lists of great lords who were ready 
to take up arms in its defence. But both they and Coligny for- 
got one thing. The great lords did not hold the people in the 
hollow of their hands in France, as they did in Scotland or 
Germany. Much as the privileges of the people had been 
abridged by successive generations of kings, they were still 
sufficiently numerous to form a bulwark behind which the na- 
tion could organize a resistance to the oppression of prince and 
noble. The cities elected their magistrates, they had a civic 
guard whose officers were chosen by themselves, they could re- 
fuse to receive a royal garrison. They formed an invincible bar- 
rier against the advance of Protestantism, though deserted by 
their nobles and hampered by the lukewarmness of their kings. 
In the words of a Protestant w/riter, it was the people of France, 
not the court, that proscribed Protestantism. Coligny bided his 
time. Nothing was to be gained for his cause during the life- 
time of Henry II., who towards the end of his reign treated the 
Huguenots with a rigor that amounted to cruelty. If he did so 
we must remember that Calvin was threatening to let loose his 
Genevan rabble on the south, and on the east hordes of German 
fanatics were constantly crossing or threatening the frontier. 
Henry was an indifferent king and a bad Christian, and such a 
man will be little scrupulous about the means he will employ to 
meet an impending danger. His death by a spear-thrust at the 
hands of the Huguenot Montgomery whether by accident or 
design will never be known saved the Calvinists from grave 
danger, if not utter ruin. 

Then came the accession of Francis II., and Coligny 's oppor- 
tunity seemed to be at hand. But the death of Henry had not 
weakened the power of the Guises. The young king was but a 
name. Even the influence of Catherine paled before the au- 



826 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept., 

thority of the Guises. The}' had become the centre of a great 
party. Coligny did not stir out of his castle except to attend a 
meeting of Huguenot gentlemen at La Ferte, where he promised 
his followers the support of Elizabeth, and where, according to 
De Thou, a proposal was entertained to assassinate the royal 
family and the Guises, but was rejected by the majority on the 
ground that its execution would bring odium on their cause. 

But the meeting at La Ferte" was a prelude to the Conspiracy 
of Amboise. The chief mover in the plot was a gentleman 
named La Renaudie. Banished from France for forgery, he had 
found an asylum at Geneva, then the common resort of all the 
criminals of Europe, where a frank acceptance of the doctrines of 
Calvin was considered amply sufficient to condone the crimes of 
the forger and the assassin. His zeal made him the intimate 
friend of Calvin and Beza, with whom he concerted the details of 
the conspiracy. Being allowed to enter France through the 
favor of Francis of Guise, whose ruin he was meditating, he 
travelled over the kingdom, everywhere combining the scattered 
Huguenots and preparing them for the rising. In an interview 
with Conde* at Blois he received the sanction of the prince, and 
everything pointed to the successful capture or slaughter of the 
Guises and the royal family, when, in an unlucky hour for the 
conspiracy, he made a Huguenot lawyer named Avanelles, whose 
house in Paris was the headquarters of the party, a sharer in the 
secret. At first Avanelles was delighted with the part assigned 
him in the plot, but the day after the dangers of the enterprise 
filled him with such terror that he rushed to Blois and disclosed 
the affair to the Cardinal of Lorraine. At first the Guises could 
hardly believe that a mere felon like La Renaudie could foment 
such a conspiracy, but further disclosures convinced them that he 
was only an instrument in more powerful hands. These revela- 
tions compromised Cond6 and Coligny, and singular to say 
even the queen-mother herself. The Guises were equal to the 
emergency. They removed the king to the strong castle of Ara- 
boise, and published a royal edict granting a general amnesty to 
the conspirators. When the Huguenots marched on Amboise, ex- 
pecting to surprise the king, they found the Duke of Guise pre- 
pared to meet them. La Renaudie was slain, and the plot stifled 
in the blood of its contrivers. Such of the conspirators as sur- 
vived the conflict were executed with great barbarity, and the 
visit of Catherine and her ladies to the scaffolds to feast on the 
agonies of the victims adds a new element of horror to the scene. 
The weakness and treason of Conde and Coligny are almost as 



1885.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 827 

repellent as the vindictive cruelty of the court. After exciting 
the Huguenots to revolt they meanly abandoned them to Cathe- 
rine, thus securing their own safety. 

The edict of pacification did not satisfy the Huguenots. It 
certainly granted more privileges than a new church, suddenly 
springing into existence in the midst of a Catholic society whose 
destruction it made no secret of hoping to accomplish, might 
aspire to. At this very time the penalty for saying Mass in 
Geneva was death. The Huguenots had the logic of their con- 
victions. The Mass is idolatry ; break the altars ! The priest is 
an idolater ; kill him ! France was now becoming habituated to 
scenes of the most ferocious cruelty. Letters come from the 
baillis all over the south and west, filled with details of the de- 
molition of churches, the murder of priests, and the outrages on 
women. The bailli of Blois writes that thirteen of the youngest 
nuns in one convent have been stripped naked and distributed 
among the ministers. " And truly there are so many of such 
things that if they remain unpunished worse will come of it." 
Francis II. died in 1560 and was succeeded by Charles IX. at 
the age of eleven, and if ever the proverb, " Woe to the land 
whose king is a child ! " was to receive its fulfilment it was dur- 
ing this most unhappy reign. Up to this the Calvinists had con- 
fined their excesses to sporadic outrages, often met by brutal re- 
taliation on the part of the Catholics: Petty seigneurs from their 
picturesque castles on the Rhone issued forth to sack a convent 
or pillage a farm-house acts for which Coligny and his party 
might disclaim responsibility when their interests demanded it. 
But now the time was ripe for an organized revolt against the 
crown and nation. The spark that lit the conflagration is known 
in history as the " Massacre of Vassy." 

The Duke of Guise on his way to Paris turned aside to visit 
the Dowager-Duchess of Bourbon at Vassy. The Calvinists of 
the neighborhood were holding service in the grange next to the 
church. This they had a perfect right to do according to the 
terms of the edict, though their prudence in intoning their psalms 
next door to the Catholic church while Mass was being cele- 
brated, in a town burning with religious animosity against them, 
may be doubted. The pages and lackeys of the duke flocked 
to see the strange ceremonies. A mob of townsfolk gathered 
around the door. All the conditions necessary for a riot were 
present. A few shouts of " papists," " idolaters " from the 
Huguenots, a few stones thrown, and it was in full fury. The 
duke rushed from table to learn the cause of the fray. He re- 



8*8 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept., 

ceived a blow of a stone on the head when he reached the door 
of the grange. Maddened by the attack on their chief, his fol- 
lowers pursued the Huguenots with fury. They were joined by 
the mob. More than sixty of the Calvinists perished. The Duke 
of Guise asserts that he did everything possible to man to stop the 
carnage. The humanity that marked every incident in his career 
refutes the imputations which some Protestant historians charge 
on him of having incited a massacre at Vassy. On his death-bed 
a death-bed so beautiful as to have moved Guizot to one of his 
finest bursts of sympathetic eloquence he declared that the mas- 
sacre of Vassy took place in spite of him. " I defended myself," 
he declared, " I did not attack ; and when my people took arms on 
seeing me wounded, I did all I could to restrain their anger." 
If the character of Francis of Guise were not sufficient to refute 
the calumny it would be disproved by the words of the historians 
who were most hostile to his house. De Thou, Lacratelle, and 
Anquetil declare that in the affair of Vassy he was blameless. 
But the massacre of Vassy, in the words of Milton, 

" Let loose the sword of intestine war, 
Soaking the land in her own gore." 

The Huguenot chiefs had made all their preparations. They 
committed the most infamous treason against their country by 
agreeing to surrender the strongest military positions in the 
north of France to England in return for succors in money, men, 
and ships. Vidame, the agent of Coligny, went to the court of 
Elizabeth and obtained from that perfidious princess a large 
supply of troops in return for the actual surrender of Havre and 
the promised restoration of Calais on the triumph of the cause.* 
Coligny 's official position as admiral gave him control of the 
coast of Normandy. He used it to admit the English into Havre 
and Dieppe. No blacker act of treason is recorded in history. 

Even a brief reference to the events of the war that ensued is 
impossible. Conde was elected general of the rebels in virtue 

* The stippressio vert and suggestio falsi have been favorite weapons of certain historians 
for the last three hundred years. Although Mr. Besant is not a stranger to these useful aids to 
misrepresentation, he sometimes has recourse to something stronger shall we call it disingenu- 
ousness ? Thus he states that " Elizabeth of England offered to send an army if Calais was re- 
stored. When she saw that no Frenchman would give up that place again, she still sent 
men and money." 

The following is the fourth article of the treaty between Elizabeth and CondS : " Aussitot que 
le roi sera en liberte et que la paix aura ete retablie en France, le prince remboursera d la reine 
la somme de 140,000 6cus, et lui remettra la ville de Calais et le territoire qui en depend " 
(Forbes, View of Public Transactions in the Reign of Elizabeth, 1740, 2 vols. in folio). The 
treaty is also referred to in several of the letters of Coligny to Elizabeth. 

Such perversions of truth are very common in Froude, Motley, and Macaulay. 



1885.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 829 

of his royal blood, but the real commander was Coligny, and on 
him rests the responsibility of the failure and success of the ope- 
rations. In almost every battle in which Guise commanded vic- 
tory perched on the Catholic banner. Coligny, though at the 
head of the most warlike aristocracy in Europe, never won a bat- 
tle. This is one of the wonders of these campaigns. The admiral 
was constantly beaten, and yet he was as strong after defeat as if 
he had gained a victory. The solution of this mystery is found 
in causes that almost extenuate the crime of St. Bartholomew. 
After every defeat he had only to retreat to the Rhine or the 
Channel, and his army was filled with savage reiters from Ger- 
many, of the calibre of those who sacked Rome under Bourbon, 
or disciplined English troops supplied by Elizabeth. This was 
what rendered the* French people frantic. They saw their faith 
and nationality being torn from them by less than a seventeenth 
of their number, aided by Lutheran fanatics and their hereditary 
enemies.* 

Beaten in every battle in which Coligny commanded, the 
remnants of the rebel army, Huguenots, English, and Germans, 
were driven in disorder into the city of .Orleans. Guise had 
trapped the traitors at last, and the capture of the final refuge of 
the Calvinists was to restore peace to the distracted land. On 
the eve of the assault he addressed his soldiers, sternly forbidding 
them to pillage the city or offer violence to the inhabitants, and 
then proceeded to meet his wife, who, according to her womanly 
and sacred custom, was coming to prefer a request for gentle 
dealing with the conquered enemy a request to which her gen- 
erous husband had never been inattentive. Instead of the state- 
ly and majestic lord the Duchess of Guise was longing to em- 
brace, a pallid and blood-stained figure met her view. Many 
plots had been formed for his murder and failed, but the assas- 
sin's bullet had reached its aim at last. " Ah ! my God ! " was 
the wife's despairing cry, " I have slain him." 

Thus was the noblest life in Christendom cut short by the 
bullet of a vile assassin. We wish we could reproduce the pic- 
ture of that saintly and glorious death. Hostility was dumb in 
its presence. Huguenot and Catholic for a moment forgot their 
enmity in , admiration of the great leader whose heroism was 
never stained by harshness to a fallen foe. 

But there was one acrid and malignant heart that did not 
forget. " I think," wrote Coligny, " his death the greatest good 

* A document published at Lyons, 1561, De la Quotte et Feux des Protestants, puts the 
number at $ seventeenth o the population. 



830 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept., 

that could happen to this kingdom and to the church of God, 
and particularly to myself and to my house." The unmanly ex- 
ultation of the admiral over the destruction of one who had been 
his bosom-friend and who had saved his life at Montmedy is 
more hateful than even his complicity in the crime. Of this 
complicity very few historians of any standing have ever doubt- 
ed. As to his moral complicity, it is acknowledged even by his 
most energetic defenders. The assassin Poltrot, the true type 
of a fanatic, " stern to inflict and stubborn to endure," claiming 
with his dying breath that he had been divinely inspired to do 
the deed, never varied in his assertion that he had been solicited 
by the admiral to commit the crime, and that Theodore de Beza 
exhorted him " to execute the enterprise which M. 1'Admiral 
proposed to him ; because he would take away a tyrant from the 
world, by which act he would gain paradise." Even Sismondi 
concedes the participation of Coligny, and justifies him by ap- 
pealing to the " spirit of the age." " In our actual ideas," he 
says, " we cannot conceive how a great man, one of the most vir- 
tuous and religious men that France ever possessed, should have de- 
scended to so base and criminal an action." There are historians 
by whom the spirit of the age is always invoked to palliate the 
crimes of the leaders of the Reformation. When the wickedness 
of Catholic historical characters is brought to the bar we very 
seldom hear of the "spirit of the age." A tithe of the evidence 
that convicts Coligny has been deemed sufficient to. brand the 
memory of Mary of Scotland for ever. 

But the Huguenots were not long in reaping the fruits of the 
crime of Poltrot. A succession of battles, massacres, and trea- 
sons led to the peace of St. Germain in 1570. The Hugue- 
nots had been routed everywhere: at St. Denys, where the 
death of the Constable is cynically noted by Catherine : " His 
majesty owes much gratitude to the Constable for ridding him 
of his majesty's enemies, and to his majesty's enemies for rid- 
ding him of the Constable " ; at Jarnac, where Coligny was near- 
ly captured and the brave but dissolute Conde was slain ; at 
Monconcour, where the admiral was wounded and lost eight 
thousand men. But the war appeared interminable. The bases 
of supply of the Huguenots were behind the Rhine and in Eng- 
land. The ranks of Coligny, decimated on one day, were filled 
as if by magic the next. Neither skill, nor valor, nor victory 
could save the unhappy peasants of France from being harried by 
the brigands with whom Coligny inundated the country. Let us 
remember this when gazing on the closing scene of his life. 



1885.] A PROTESTANT HERO. 831 

The treaty of St. Germain made the Huguenots for a time 
all-powerful at the court. " We had beaten our enemies," ex- 
claims Monluc in natural irritation, " again and again ; but, not- 
withstanding, they had such good credit with the king's council 
that the edicts were always to their advantage. We won by 
arms, but they won by those devilish writings." But no amount 
of toleration that left the national church standing would have 
satisfied the arrogance of the Calvinists. Coligny visited the 
court and was received as a conqueror. Caressed by Catherine, 
himself and his followers loaded with honors and money by the 
king, everything seemed within reach of his credulous vanity. 
His aim was to withdraw Charles from the influence of his mo- 
ther and direct the national policy in whatever channels he wish- 
ed himself. He threatened to renew the civil war if his plans 
were rejected. For a long time Catherine was ignorant of the 
plotting that was going on between the king and the admiral. 
When she learned it her rage was boundless. This weak old 
man, who had been as wax in her hands, had nearly succeeded in 
hurling her from the power which was as the breath of her nos- 
trils ! But the event showed that Coligny was no match in in- 
trigue for Catherine de M6dicis. His confiding ambition served 
but to expose his party to extermination and his house to ruin. 

The triumph of the Huguenots was to be emphasized by the 
marriage of Henry of Navarre with the daughter of Catherine 
on the i8th of August, 1572. Crowds of Huguenots kept pour- 
ing into Paris. They demeaned themselves with as much 
haughty insolence as if they had entered a conquered city, and 
stirred the rooted hatred of the populace to fury% Were not 
these the men who had so often threatened to pillage the capital, 
and was not the wealth they bore on their persons the spoils of 
plundered churches and abbeys ? There is no need to trace the 
day of St. Bartholomew to the plots of statesmen and politi- 
cians. On that day the mob of Paris glutted the vengeance it 
had been nursing for twenty years. 

But the death of Coligny was due to an odious woman who 
trembled for her power, and a son who saw in him the murderer 
of his father. If young Henry of Guise had remembered that 
father's words on his death-bed, forgiving his assassins and im- 
ploring that none of them should suffer for his death, it would 
have been better for his fame. When Catherine forced from her 
son his consent to the death of the admiral, the Duke of Guise 
proceeded with a band of followers to put it into execution. 
They forced the Hotel Bethesy, where he lodged. The events 



832 A PROTESTANT HERO. [Sept., 

that followed were sufficiently dramatic to require no aid from 
the theatrical ornaments which rhetoricians are so fond of lavish- 
ing on such tragedies. His words on meeting his enemies were 
simply, " What do you want, gentlemen ? " words quite too tame 
to suit the requirements of the historical muse. The occasion 
demanded, when Besme prepared to strike, that he should utter 
some such eloquent remark as, " Young man, respect my age," 
according to one chronicler ; or, " You should respect my white 
hairs. But do as you will ; you can only abridge my existence 
for a little," according to another; or, "Young man, stain not thy 
hands with the blood of so great a captain," according to a third. 
Besme and his followers fell on him and covered him with 
wounds. " Is he dead? " cried the Duke of Guise, who had re- 
mained in the court. For answer the body of Coligny was flung 
out of the window. "And so," says Tavannes, " it gratified the 
eyes of the son whose father he had slain." But not all the great 
services which Henry of Guise afterwards rendered France can 
efface the dishonor which that gratification has left on his 
memory. 

The rabble stripped the corpse, loaded it with blows, and 
flung it ignominiously into a stable. " Thus," says the courtly 
Brant6me, who never could see a fault in prince or noble, no 
matter what party he belonged to " thus did the Greeks, who 
were less valiant, formerly bluster around the body of Hector 
dead ; thus do we see the most timid animals exult in the desert 
around the body of the dead lion. Those also who feared this 
great admiral, and who with bent head bowed before him, blus- 
tered and triumphed very arrogantly around this poor trunk." 

There were some present who were perhaps actuated by dif- 
ferent memories. Some may have been struck by the prophecy 
long current in Paris, uttered by a monk at the stake when the 
admiral utilized his classical reminiscences at Angoul^me, in 1569, 
by tying Catholics to fagots smeared with sulphur and fashioning 
living flambeaux after the manner of Nero: "Remember Jeza- 
bel, the persecutor of the prophet. You, too, shall be thrown 
through a window and dragged to the gibbet ; and you shall suf- 
fer, living or dead, all the outrages and cruelties you now exer- 
cise on the servants of God." 

Meanwhile the tocsin ushered in the baleful work of St. 
Bartholomew, and deeds were being done only paralleled by the 
storming of Rome by the Lutherans under Bourbon, or the mas- 
sacres with which the Calvinists had already purpled every cor- 
ner of France. 









1885.] KATHARINE. 833 



KATHARINE. 

CHAPTER XLI. 

IT was late in the afternoon when Dr. Norton reached Bos- 
ton, and, being tired, hot, and dusty from the train, he went into 
a hotel near the station to refresh himself with a bath and dinner. 
A party of men in blue came in and established themselves near 
him when his meal was nearly over. He was dividing his atten- 
tion between a dish of strawberries and an evening paper, and 
paid no heed to the new-comers until one of them approached, 
and, touching him on the shoulder, saluted him by name. 

" You here, Norton, and in this rig, when all the rest of us 
are putting on regimentals ? I thought you were in the navy, or 
the antipodes, or both ? " 

The speaker was a tall, fair-haired young fellow of seven or 
eight and twenty, who had recently abandoned his desk in the 
paternal banking-house for a place in the volunteer ranks. 

" So I was until last January," said the doctor, rising to shake 
hands. He glanced as he did so at a mirror close by, in which 
were reflected at full length his own London-made suit of gray 
tweed and Mason's well-fitting uniform. "It does look suspi- 
ciously unpatriotic under the circumstances, but I am on my 
way home to exchange it for something of this sort," laying his 
hand on the other's sleeve. " The regimental tailors seem to 
have done their full duty by you." 

" Bother the regimental tailors ! " said Mason, looking at him- 
self in the glass with an amusing and amused complacence. " I 
went to my own man and ordered my toggery myself. Nice, 
isn't it? I haven't felt so well dressed since I was a shaver and 
wore a coat made out of my mother's red flannel petticoat on 
Fourth of July and general training-day. Why do you go home ? 
Why not come along with us? " 

" So I would if my parents did not regard me so much in the 
light of an Isaac whom they are about to lay on the altar. I 
wanted to start from here, but it seemed a little rough, after hav- 
ing been away so long already, not to give the last days to my 
father and mother. I have been at home for the last six weeks, 
though, and begin to find my resolution getting shaky again." 
VOL. x LI. 53 



834 KA THARINE. [Sept., 

" Better come along with us. Withrow is our regimental 
surgeon, but he thinks there is going to be some tall fighting this 
summer, and would be glad of more assistants. Come over to 
the other table, where the rest of the fellows are. You know 
most of them, I fancy. At all events, you must remember my 
old crony, Isaac Cohen, who went off to Leipzig half a dozen 
years ago to study music. He came back last fall and has been 
all the fashion, but he dropped his fiddle and the symphony he 
was writing, and is a high private in the th like myself." 

" The th is Louis Giddings' regiment, isn't it ? " 

" Yes ; he is captain of our company." 

" I want to see him to-night, if possible. I am just through 
my dinner, and I thought now would be as likely an hour as any 
to find him at home." 

" No," said Mason, looking at his watch ; " he is living on the 
other side of town, and would be leaving for the armory by the 
time you could get there. Go up along with us and you will be 
sure of him. We get off at this hour to-morrow, and to-night is 
the last general rendezvous before starting. We have had some 
West-Pointers to drill us, and they say we do them credit." 

As he finished speaking they turned toward the other table, 
where Norton recognized several acquaintances. They were 
nearly all young, unmarried men, one a mere boy of eighteen or 
twenty, and, though an occasional speech reflected what might be 
taken ns the anxiety of mothers or sweethearts, none of them ap- 
peared to entertain any serious forebodings. Soldiering was sim- 
ply a new experience, war a sport which would vary agreeably 
the usual monotony of business or professional life. Possibly 
some of this lightness of heart was assumed to cover deeper feel- 
ings, but most of it came from sheer want of reflection and love 
of novelty. When the thinning-out of the gay ranks set it, men's 
moods took on a soberer hue. Little Isaac Cohen, beside whom 
Norton walked to the armory after dinner, and who was gushing, 
as usual, in the way which made intimates of his own sex regard 
him very much as they would have done a nice girl, came back 
from Big Bethel before the summer was over with a wound 
which dashed for ever his ambition as a virtuoso of the violin ; 
and Mason, who was on his other hand, never returned at all. 
But no shadow of coming events colored their thoughts at pre- 
sent. 

Louis Giddings, with whom his friend was not even able to 
exchange salutations before the business of the evening began, 
was apparently in a graver frame of mind. His face, the doctor 



1885.] KATHARINE. 835 

thought, as he had now and then a chance to observe it closely, 
looked at once serene and serious. He fancied he would have 
divined his motive for enlisting, even unaided by a chance word 
or two which Mason dropped concerning him. 

" He did not like the notion of being our captain," the young 
fellow said in speaking of the way in which his company had 
been formed,." but he found there was no way to resist manifest 
destiny. We all wanted him and no one else, and he had to give 
in. There seemed to be a general feeling that when so many of 
us are going in just for a lark, a man who would keep out of it 
altogether if he could I mean, if he did not look at it so seri- 
ously, as a sort of duty a fellow owes his country and soon is the 
best one to take the lead. I don't think he has tried to enlist a 
soul, but he was on hand himself from the word go." 

" He is a tremendously good fellow," chimed in Cohen. " I 
never knew him until lately, but he makes me think of the middle 
ages and all that sort of thing. You know what I mean when 
people took themselves and everything else in dead earnest and 
weren't ashamed of it." 

" There was always something of that about him," said Nor- 
ton, " but I don't recall it as the first thing to strike one. It may 
have been the secret, though, of the curious attraction he had for 
so many of us." 

" Yes," said Mason, " you could always get down to bed-rock 
with him, if you had an inclination that way ; but, if he liked you 
at all, his angles did not protrude too abruptly. I think both 
peculiarities are a little more accentuated than they used to be." 

" Is he on the Chronicle still ? " 

" No ; he dropped journalism after he returned from abroad, 
and began to practise at the bar. He has done famously, too. 
He earned a reputation that would do credit to an old lawyer by 
a speech he made in a case he conducted last winter. It seems 
half a pity to run the risk of wasting him in a scuffle like this. 
He stands as good a chance of being picked off by an unlucky 
bullet as any of us, and there can't be many men of his age who 
would not be less of a public loss than he." 

A couple of the party, who had been walking somewhat in 
advance, happened to be stopped on a curbstone by a heavily- 
laden cart which took some time in passing, and Mason's last 
rimark caught the ear of one of them. 

" You are speaking of Giddings ? " he asked, half over his 
shoulder, and addressing Dr. Norton. " That is a piece of 
Mason's hyperbole which needs to be discounted heavily. Gid- 



836 KA THARINE. [Sept., 

dings is simply a case of personal magnetism, as little to be ac- 
counted for on any rational basis as the question of why one 
woman attracts you rather than another, or why a particular 
strain of music takes your ear. As to ascribing him all sorts of 
supereminent qualities, it is unmixed nonsense. What man of 
sound judgment, beginning his career here, of all places in the 
world, would have handicapped himself, as he has done, by enter- 
ing the Catholic Church ? " 

" There is something in that," said Mason, " but I doubt if it 
amounts to much, after all. I look on that particular whim as 
one phase of a many-sided nature, which will pass in due season ; 
and meantime, when a man of his calibre tells me he has looked 
thoroughly into a matter which I have not paid the least atten- 
tion to, my native modesty, which must have struck Wilson 
often as excessive, hints to me that I am not called upon to judge 
and condemn him out of hand." 

\ " Wilson is an infernal idiot ! " he went on when the others 
were well in advance again. " It did me good to give him that 
little dig. He pleaded on the other side in the case I was speak- 
ing of just now, and made a stupid blunder which threw it bodily 
into Giddings' hands. He went as far as he dared, afterward, 
toward insinuating personal prepossession in Judge Winthrop, 
before whom it was argued, and farther than he will care to go 
again in a hurry toward getting into hot water for it." 

They had reached the armory by this time, and further con- 
versation was suspended. 

The tone in which Captain Wilson had spoken was specially 
offensive to Dr. Norton, whose old affection for his friend time 
and absence had done nothing to diminish ; but his judgment on 
the fact with which it acquainted him was not unlike that of the 
speaker. He had himself been making steady progress toward 
a conviction diametrically opposed to that which Giddings had 
embraced. He was not a vulgar atheist, flaunting his opinions 
in an obtrusive manner, having, indeed, some strong views as to 
what good taste required in that regard. But he had reasoned 
his way to them in a manner and with a deliberation which sat- 
isfied him that they were sound, and to learn that the man whom 
he respected and liked above all others had gone over to what 
he esteemed the party of retrogression and superstition gave 
him a sufficiently unpleasant revulsion of feeling. That passed, 
however, the instant he saw his friend again, and in the interval 
that elapsed before they could address each other he had ac- 
counted for the fact in a way he found satisfactory. 



1885.] KATHARINE. 837 

" It is Kitty's work, of course," he said to himself, smiling at 
some of his recollections of the pair. " She must have taken the 
plunge she has been threatening for years, and he lends himself 
to it to give her pleasure. They will both come back to dry 
land again the wiser for their wetting. A man will go *a long way 
for the woman he loves, but that would be a hair's-breadth too 
far for me." 

His thoughts thereupon reverted to his own wife, whom he 
had left that morning in a grief as unaffected, and as temporary, 
as her other passions. Distance renewed that glamour of en- 
chantment which he sometimes fancied her continual presence 
had a tendency to lessen. It had been her fortune always to con- 
jure up phantom possibilities which never took on reality, to 
suggest to the imagination more than she was able to render to 
the heart. Norton's experience with her was by no means 
unique, but that was a fact which he could not be aware of. He 
knew only that although he had won her so recently he had not 
suffered overmuch in leaving her, and regretted it now for both 
their sakes, accusing himself of insensibility and not her, as he 
had sometimes inwardly done when near her of failing in some 
essential quality which he could not define, but whose lack he 
felt. 

He had not sought Louis Giddings with any special intention 
of speaking of her, but now that he was near him he found him- 
self speculating more than he had done of late on the nature of 
their early relations to each other. As he knew her better he 
had ceased to believe that she could have been the cause of the 
lasting trouble which had marred so many years of his friend's 
life. He had never had more tangible grounds for supposing that 
she had been so than his recollection of the effect he produced 
when he delivered Crawford's message some five years before, 
and the sickening apprehension which had blended with and 
tarnished the expected joy of his own marriage day. No suspi- 
cion of the actual truth had ever crossed his mind, and his wife's 
ready explanations banished those that threatened to take root 
there. Now, as the haunting recollection persisted in recurring, 
there came with it the memory of the scene which had half-un- 
manned him when he left her, and it seemed to him that both of 
them had been defrauded in that it had not done so altogether. 

" Poor girl ! " he thought, " the fire that is in her would melt 
anything but a stone. And yet I took myself for something 
softer than that, too. She may have hit him hard, as she says. 
I suspect she would have done the same by me if " 



838 KATHARINE. [Sept., 

He stopped short there, and promised himself to write her a 
letter before he slept. 

He found, however, when at last the men who left the ar- 
mory with them dropped off and their talk became more per- 
sonal, that he had an odd reluctance to introduce the subject of 
his marriage, even when it would have been naturally led up to 
by his friend's reference to Katharine and the baby-boy from 
whom he was about to part. He was going to pass the night at 
their house, and the thought crossed him that there would be 
plenty of time to tell his news, if he did not decide in the end to 
withhold it altogether for the present. They had reached home, 
in fact, and Mrs. Giddings had come down and spent half an 
hour or so in chatting with them, and then Louis and she had 
gone up into the nursery to pay the customary visit, which they 
excused themselves for not omitting on the ground that it 
would be the last for a time indefinite, before the full absurdity 
of his delay dawned upon him and made him resolve to end it. 

They had been sitting in the library around a table on which 
there stood a drop-light covered with a pale, tinted porcelain 
shade. Books and papers were scattered about, and a desk 
which stood open reminded him to ask for writing materials be- 
fore he was left alone. But he did not begin his projected letter 
at once. The atmosphere of contented, peaceful domesticity 
which surrounded him recalled some of his own early dreams of 
what home-life should be, and again he found himself growing 
sentimental and self-reproachful. He drew from his breast- 
pocket a case containing a miniature of his wife which he had 
had painted while in London. He had seldom looked at it since, 
partly because this was their first separation, and partly because 
the picture, though an admirable likeness, had never pleased 
him. The painter was a man celebrated among his brethren of 
the craft for the skill with which he caught the more subtle 
characteristics of his sitters ; and though Norton, not knowing 
this, had selected him almost at hazard, he had been struck by 
the way in which the miniature had renewed his own earliest 
impression of the face it reproduced. As he reopened it now 
the same experience was repeated, and he laid it down beside 
the desk with an impatient shrug, and shut his eyes a moment 
to recall more vividly the more agreeable mental image of her as 
he saw her last. 

He had dated his letter and written a line or two when Louis 
Giddings re-entered. 

" Don't let me disturb you," the latter said, throwing himself 



1885.] KATHARINE. 839 

down on a lounge at the opposite side of the table. " Finish 
your writing and then tell me how the world has been going 
with you since we parted." 

Dr. Norton pushed away his paper. 

" My letter can wait," he said ; " at best it can't be sent be- 
fore to-morrow, and I don't feel quite up to writing it just now." 

" You don't distinguish yourself as a correspondent," re- 
marked Giddings. " The last letter I had from you was posted 
at Yokohama upwards of two years ago. It reached me in 
Rome, and I answered it from there. What have you been do- 
ing since? " 

" Studying the yellow races in the treaty ports for the most 
part. There must be something beastly bad about our postal 
service! Do you mean to say that a letter I sent you from 
Shanghai last December never came to hand ? " 

" I never saw it. Were you stationed long at Shanghai ? " 

" Off and on about six months in all. I forwarded my resig- 
nation from there." 

" You went ashore often, of course," said Giddings, rising on 
his elbow. " I wonder if you ever ran across an old friend of 
mine who says he must have gone there for his sins." 

" Crawford ? I owe him the least tedious hours I spent in 
the city ; and if I had listened to him and half a dozen other 
Englishmen, I should have settled down to make my fortune, as 
they are doing. I concluded that I would rather do without one 
than get it by wasting my best years in China." 

" He is well and prosperous, I suppose? " 

" Yes, but heartily tired and bound to leave as soon as he 
thinks he can afford it. We talked about you tolerably often." 

" He sent me no message? " 

" The usual ones, of course." 

Both men dropped into a silence which Dr. Norton was the 
first to break. 

" I met another friend of yours on shipboard as I was on my 
way home from Hong Kong. Crawford, who came on as far as 
that from Shanghai, partly on business and partly to see me off, 
introduced us just as the boat was leaving." 

" Who was that ? " 

" Mrs. Burton Lloyd." 

Giddings looked blank and unresponsive. Evidently the 
name had no associations for him. 

" I don't remember Mrs. Burton Lloyd." 

Dr. Norton laid his hand on the miniature-case with a ges- 



840 KA THARINE. [Sept., 

ture unobserved by Giddings, who was nearly flat on his back, 
with his hands clasped under his head. Apparently Norton had 
been about to pass it silently across the table, but thought better 
of it. 

" She is hardly the sort of woman whom one forgets, either," 
he said, retaining the picture beneath his palm. 

" Possibly you misunderstood Crawford. She may be a 
friend of his, but I am quite sure that I never heard of her be- 
fore." 

" I did not learn the fact from Crawford, but from herself. I 
have a likeness of her here which I don't think much of, but 
which will probably recall her to your memory." 

Then, as the other half-rose again and put out his hand to 
take it, he added, " I thought you might have known her by that 
name. She was a Miss Lawton before her marriage. " 

Louis Giddings fell back on the lounge, the hand he had ex- 
tended striking the edge of the table heavily as he did so, as if 
the life had suddenly gone out of it. 

Emotion of some sort Norton had felt certain of producing, 
and had ascribed his own curious reluctance to bring the subject 
forward to that expectation. But up to this moment he had per- 
sisted in assuring himself that he anticipated nothing greater or 
other than such a natural surprise as he had observed in Craw- 
ford at the moment of his meeting Mrs. Lloyd the sort of feeling 
with which any one might learn of the continued existence of a 
person long accounted dead. Under different circumstances 
there might possibly have been something more than this ex- 
pected where Giddings was concerned, but it could not be sup- 
posed that a man who had been and still evidently was so much 
in love with his wife would be seriously affected by any tidings 
which recalled an outlived attachment. But it was not surprise 
which was most visible in Giddings' face, though that also had 
flashed across it. He looked, Dr. Norton thought with a quick 
professional instinct, as though he might be on the point of death 
from haart disease. His professional instinct went no farther 
he felt unable either to offer him assistance or to speak. For the 
horror, the spiritual recoil and loathing, which made themselves 
felt as the chief element of the silent agony he witnessed, struck 
to his own heart a conviction of his wife's worthlessness which 
refused to admit itself as sudden. He seemed to have known 
from the first instant of their acquaintance what as yet he could 
not strictly be said to know at all. He ground his teeth and 
cursed his own lolly inwardly before it occurred to him to ask a 



1885.] KATHARINE. 841 

question. He felt, as he said long afterwards, as if the bottom 
had dropped out of the universe, and he were hanging from no- 
thing above a void. 

It was Louis Giddings who recovered himself first. He rose 
to a sitting posture after a long silence, during which neither 
had many thoughts to spare for the other. His face had lost its 
grayish pallor and looked composed, though still somewhat rigid. 
He took up the picture, which Norton had dropped in the middle 
of the table, and gave it a hasty glance. Norton looked up, and 
their eyes met. 

" I know her," Giddings said in a low voice. " Why do you 
carry her picture?" 

" She is my wife." 

The words, and the look on his face as he uttered them, re- 
minded Giddings of a child who expects a heavy blow and in- 
stinctively puts up his arm to ward it off. Norton was literally 
cowering under the dread of what might be coming. The other 
paused almost imperceptibly. His eyebrows rose a little, and 
then the ghost of a smile flickered about his mouth. 

" Hardly, Dick ! I am sorry to rob you of that treasure, but 
I must. She is my wife." 

" Good God ! And Kitty ? " 

" Don't ! " said Giddings, wincing like one who has been 
touched upon an open wound. 

After a while the broken thread of talk was taken up again, 
and again it was Louis Giddings who resumed it. 

" I don't see my way through this at all," he began. " Of 
course, before offering myself to Katharine, I took every means 
in my power to verify the message you may remember bringing 
me from Crawford some years ago. He wrote me that he got 
the information from her mother and, short of a burial certifi- 
cate, which was unattainable, I thought no evidence could be 
more satisfactory than that. He did not tell you who she was ?" 

" No ; I noticed that he was overwhelmed with surprise at 
seeing her." 

" And when did you learn her identity and her knowledge ot 
me?" 

" Five minutes after our marriage, when she signed her name 
in the register. I was idiot enough to make no inquiries which 
would have led up to it beforehand, but what I heard of her 
before we started, and the fact of Crawford's consigning her to 
my care in the quality of a friend of his, seemed enough at the 
time at least in addition to such information as she was good 



842 KATHARINE. [Sept., 

enough to volunteer. Possibly I should have been sufficiently 
idiotic to go on even had I done so. I knew nothing of her, you 
may remember, except that I thought you seemed rather moved 
when I notified you of her death. I must have mentally identi- 
fied her as the cause of some serious trouble to you, but I was 
not likely to hit on this one." 

" It was a hideous thing to own to, but I have not waited 
until now to be sorry that I kept it secret. She must have 
spread the report of her death, I suppose. I always thought 
that would be a part of her scheme." 

" It was a bad move on her part if she made it, since it appears 
to have cost her a fortune. That is her tale, at least, and her re- 
gret was so genuine that I never had any misgivings on that 
score. God knows," he went on, with a sort of suppressed rage, 
" that I had plenty of another sort from the moment I laid eyes 
on her accursed face, but I might have had the same if I had 
watched her from her cradle. What motive could she have had 
to abuse her mother's mind to that extent ? " 

" Two at least. She might naturally suppose that it would 
come to me in course of time through that channel, and dam up 
one very obvious source of danger. She would also be likely to 
desire that all home communications should be broken off out of 
a pious regard for the peace of mind of the other man whom she 
swindled into marriage." 

" He did not know of your existence, then ? " 

" Probably not certainly not in the capacity of a legally -mar- 
ried husband. Oh ! " he went on, answering the question in Nor- 
ton's eyes, " she is an artist in her way, and immensely careful 
about her stage properties. A scandal, or an elopement, or even 
the absence of a decent bandage over the eyes of the special dupe 
she has on hand, would gall her pride, which is more difficult 
than her virtue. For that reason I have sometimes doubted 
whether I might not honestly have dispensed myself from believ- 
ing any of her statements for which I had not independent evi- 
dence. But your experience of her must be very unlike mine if 
you have not sometimes run against a hard edge of truth in her 
and recognized it, if only by the ugly wound it made. I certain- 
ly married her, and have never seen good reason to doubt that I 
had the honor of precedence in that line. She left me under 
that impression when her desire for safety as well as her per- 
sonal pride would naturally have counselled an explicit statement 
to the contrary." 

" I don't understand." 



1885.] KATHARINE. 843 

Giddings went into a succinct account of the circumstances 
attendant on his marriage and the confession volunteered him 
afterward. 

" She blundered stupidly," he ended, " in writing me at all. 
It would have been so much easier and safer to have decamped 
without a word that I found myself obliged to accept her self- 
accusation as genuine." 

The two men looked at each other silently a moment, and 
then Norton put out his hand. 

" I had been envying you, rather," he said, with a sickly effort 
at a smile, " but I see the sting she gave me was not quite unique. 
You have felt that venom, too." 

" God curse her ! " he broke out a minute later. " What dif- 
ference can it make to you at all ? If she turned the iron in you, 
that is over and done with long ago. You have known since 
what it is to love a pure woman and be sure of her. I can drop 
her into the place where she belongs, but I can't drop the hideous 
recollection with her." 

" It will pass," said Giddings. There was a light in his eyes 
and a smile about his lips which made the other groan. " I don't 
presume to offer you any consolation. I know what you suffer, 
having been through it. I think myself that I am in a rather 
better plight than you, even though the sole redeeming feature 
in your case is the deadly one in mine. Some goods no fate can 
rob us of." 

He rose as he spoke, and stood with his back against the 
chimney-piece, looking down upon his friend. In another in- 
stant Norton also rose. 

" Don't let us be fools," he said. " There is something more 
practical to be done than talk. You are obliged to start to-mor- 
row night, of course. My own departure I must put off until 
later. I take it for granted you will not tell Kitty for the pre- 
sent I don't see any reason why she should ever be told at all. 
I will go with you to-morrow to put things in train to relieve 
you of the load I have saddled on you." 

" To take the preliminary steps for a divorce, you mean? " 

" Assuredly. The chances of war may carry you off, and 
there are some things which must not be left to chance. You 
have Kitty's future and that of your child to safeguard." 

" That is easily arranged. I shall make some verbal alterations 
in my will to-night. Beyond that there is not much that I can do." 

"You mean that you will defer it until after your return? 
For how long have you enlisted?" 



844 KATHARINE. [Sept., 

" For the war." 

" Don't put it off, then ; the risks for Kitty are too great. 
Our joint testimony to the facts will be data enough to begin on, 
and additional affidavits must be easily procurable from Hong 
Kong. Montreal will be the proper field of operations, I sup- 
pose. She is there at present, and is a British subject." 

" Do you want to take criminal proceedings against her? I 
am at your service in that case, either as witness or as prose- 
cutor." 

" Certainly not ; what have I to do with her except to cut her 
off as a poisonous excrescence ? I should have thought my 
meaning must be obvious enough. I don't understand why you 
did not seek a divorce years ago. She was not so utterly out of 
reach that you could not have proceeded against her by making 
the necessary inquiries at the time." 

" Years ago I thought it a filthy mess, and had the same dis- 
gust at owning to have been in it which you experience now. 
At present it is impossible for another reason. Neither Katha- 
rine nor I can entertain the idea of profiting by a divorce. We 
knew already that our parting to-morrow might be final we 
shall know now that it must be." 

" You will have the cruelty to tell her ? " 

" How can I avoid it ? Suppose me to be shot in the first 
battle can I leave her with the possibility that she may learn 
the fact and my present knowledge of it when I am not at hand 
to soften the blow as far as may be ? " 

Dr. Norton reflected for a moment. 

" Yes," he said, " I see the necessity. What I don't under- 
stand is your reluctance to take at once the obvious steps to free 
yourself. It must come to that in the end, and if begun at once, 
and carried on in Canada with all possible precautions against 
unnecessary publicity, it might perhaps be accomplished before 
your return, and no awkward questions ever arise as to the 
cause of your absence." 

" It cannot be accomplished at all. Has no one told you that 
we are both Catholics ? " 

" What has that to do with it? " 

" Everything. Divorce, with freedom to remarry, is forbid- 
den by the divine law, which we accept as binding on our con- 
sciences." 

" Divine law ? Is that a euphemism for ecclesiastical ty- 
ranny?" 

Giddings colored painfully and for a moment made no an- 



KATHARINE. 845 

svver. When he did speak it was in a voice somewhat con- 
strained. 

" If you see fit to put it that way. It does not occur to me to 
do so. The fact, in so far as she and I are affected by it, remains 
the same under whatever name is given it." 

" You mean to say that you will let this harlot come between 
you and the woman you love, that you will let her rob your 
child of a name, and for a whim, an outworn, obsolete folly such 
as that ? God ! I did not believe any sane man could sink his in- 
telligence to quite that level least of all you ! " 

" See here, Dick," said Giddings, putting his hands on his 
friend's shoulders, " I understand your feeling and am at no sort 
of loss to comprehend your thoughts. We know each other well 
enough to speak plain truths and listen to them. Take this one 
for granted. Men play at belief sometimes, but when it comes to 
the test no man tears the very heart out of his body for a whim. 
If I sacrifice myself and her I do it with my eyes open, counting 
the whole cost, and feeling to its last pang the' full bitterness of it 
to us both. But I know her through and through, God bless 
her ! and I will not belie either of us by pretending to find room 
for hesitation concerning our mutual duty. To part now is pos- 
sible, but only because neither she nor I could endure the 
thought of parting for eternity." 

Again they looked silently into each other's eyes for some 
brief space. 

" I have seen the same phenomenon before," Dr. Norton said 
at last, " but never under the same conditions or in the same de- 
gree. Finding it in you I must needs respect it, but I neither 
sympathize with nor share it. The most obvious thing to say 
about it is that it is going to make my own course a little more 
difficult than I hoped it would be." 

They parted for the night a few minutes later, each feeling in 
his own way the need of solitude, and the heavy strain of what 
had passed. 

CHAPTER XLII. 

RICHARD NORTON, coming down rather late the next morn- 
ing, found that his hosts had just preceded him into the break- 
fast-room. He had passed a wretched night, during whose first 
hours sleep had been impossible in spite of physical fatigue. It 
was only as dawn began to announce itself on the edge of the ho- 
rizon that drowsiness at last overtook him and offered a brief re- 



846 KATHARINE. [Sept., 

spite from his miserable thoughts. As he dressed himself the 
traces they had left behind in haggard eyes and newly-furrowed 
lines were plainly visible. It seemed even to him, always less 
observant of himself than of his neighbors, that he had aged per- 
ceptibly within twelve hours. 

Louis Giddings, too, was very pale, but seemed otherwise un- 
altered. His glance followed Katharine, and lingered on her 
when her own was turned away, but Norton was perplexed by 
its expression. He felt unable to determine from it whether his 
resolution of the night before had been reconsidered, fulfilled, or 
was simply waiting for its time to come. 

His study of Katharine was more satisfactory, for it convinced 
him that she was still in blissful ignorance. She looked very 
young and very innocent, he thought not much older than she 
had done on the day, which came back involuntarily to his memo- 
ry, on which he had first mentioned to her the name of the man 
who sat opposite her now, and of whose child she was the mo- 
ther. He was not certain that she did not look younger still, 
since the eyes which smiled serenely at him had lost that wistful, 
searching, and yet baffled look which used sometimes to give her 
the appearance of premature and melancholy age. She could 
hardly be more than twenty-two now, he reflected her life was 
all before her yet. It would be a too atrocious cruelty to plunge 
her also into the gulf, the only innocent victim except her child 
innocent even of the folly which was, after all, the heaviest accu- 
sation that either he or Giddings could justly lay to their own 
charge. Serene and peaceful as she seemed, it was still evident 
that the grief of the approaching separation was constantly pre- 
sent to her mind. She had plainly done nothing more than acqui- 
esce passively in her husband's verdict as to his duty to his coun- 
try, and would have been overjoyed had his conscience permitted 
him to take another view. Such, at least, was Dr. Norton's con- 
viction as to her mental attitude, though he admitted that nothing 
in her actual speech lent it any special weight. 

Presently she rose to leave the table, making as she did so 
some playful reference to her baby, which had not yet been put 
on exhibition, and promising to bring him down when his morn- 
ing toilet should be made. 

"You have not told her?" Norton asked when she had gone 
up-stairs. 

" I have had no opportunity. We were out together before 
breakfast, but the street is hardly the place one chooses for 
a communication of that sort. It cannot be delayed much Ion- 



1 885.] KATHARINE. 847 

ger, but I dread it." He sighed heavily as he stopped speak- 
ing. 

" Be advised, and delay it altogether." 

Giddings shook his head, but said nothing. 

" Delay it, at least, until I can make some further effort to un- 
tangle what seems to me a very lame and crooked story. I have 
been lying awake all night over it." 

" I have been through that mill before you. What can have 
occurred to you, do you suppose, with which I have not tried to 
cheat myself a thousand times already ? You think there is no 
certainty that I did not occupy relatively to Lloyd the position 
I suppose you to occupy toward me." 

"Why not?" 

" Because the absence of all vestige of a motive forbids the 
supposition. What woman would blacken herself in such an un- 
necessary and hopeless fashion unless the tale were true? It 
seems to me that the fact of her having done so is the very best 
thing I know about her. To tell the truth," he said, flushing a 
little, " I always felt sure she had for me the feeling that passes 
with her for love, and wanted to make things as easy as she 
could for me by showing me how little I had lost." 

Norton ground his teeth and muttered an execration. 

" It never occurred to you, then, that she might have read 
you well enough to foresee that the more horrible the filth she 
plunged you into the less likely you would be to call attention to 
it? Yet that is precisely what happened." 

Giddings paused, apparently to turn over the suggestion in 
his mind. It was evidently a new one to him. 

" How long have you known her? " he said at last. 

" About five months, during which I have been with her al- 
most daily." 

" You have had a better chance than I to judge her. Our 
whole acquaintance did not cover much more than half that 
period. Has she struck you as sufficiently subtle to hit upon 
such a scheme?" 

Norton made no immediate answer, and presently Giddings 
went on again : 

" It is plain she has not. She is bad enough as it is, but that 
would argue a malignity, a cold-blooded calculation and ingenu- 
ity, which I don't believe in as a part of her temperament. It 
is useless for you to try to assume my burden, old fellow. It is 
very good of you, but it can't be done." 

" I did not offer that as anything more than a suggestion, 



848 KATHARINE. [Sept., 

though I believe it a plausible one. As to subtlety, a chance 
inspiration sometimes does duty for it with the dullest people 
I have ever met. I noticed last night that you said she left you 
under the impression that she was your wife. Did she not posi- 
tively say so ? " 

" If she had taken that pains I fancy I should have felt less 
confident about the fact than I do. She did what was tanta- 
mount to it in assuring me that I was free to act as though she 
were dead. What precise evidential value would you feel in- 
clined to attach to any statement she might make where her in- 
terests or her safety are concerned ? " 

"That is neither here nor there. What I want to get at is 
this : You seem to think that she was fond of you and afraid 
of Lloyd. If your first supposition is correct, why should 
she have left you ? Unless Lloyd were her husband, what special 
grounds for fear could she have had where he was concerned ? 
To me she always declared that she tolerated him at first and 
detested him afterward." 

Giddings smiled. " What else did she tell you ? Lloyd is an 
unknown quantity to both of us. I think it likely that her fear 
of him was a much more insignificant factor in her motive than 
her desire for the money and position he could give her. She 
said so plainly, and I think she told the truth. I was nothing but 
a boy, not out of college yet, and with my career to make un- 
aided. If she had not been in absolute need of a husband at the 
time I fell in her way, I am persuaded I should never have been 
in just the box I am. I was infatuated with her, I don't deny, 
and thought I wanted to marry her ; but, left to my own devices, 
I would have waited until I was in better shape to do it. 
Lloyd's claims, whatever they were, she would probably have 
found means to dispose of had she seen sufficient reason for so 
doing. And as to your first difficulty " He stopped and shrug- 
ged his shoulders. " Caesar or Antony, what great difference do 
you think it makes to creatures of that sort which one of us it 
is? What they seek is their own pleasure, and all they dread is 
open shame. They are ready to throw themselves at the head of 
Octavius into the bargain, if only he will excuse them from his 
triumph." 

He pulled out his watch and regarded it with a sigh. 

" Do you see the hour ? " he asked. " And besides the one 
thing I have to do, there are a dozen others which must be seen 
to before starting." 

" Make me your deputy wherever you find it possible. I 



1885.] LIBERALISM AND THE CHURCH. 849 

can't stand coming back here under the circumstances, but I 
will be at the station to see you off, and shall take the night train 
north afterwards. Meanwhile there are some few details which 
I must ask you to give me in writing." 

" Be warned ! " Giddings urged as they clasped hands in 
parting some minutes later. " Don't risk an interview with her 
at present. You will gain nothing which cannot be secured 
some other way, and may lose what you will regret hereafter." 

" You think it might be the part of wisdom to adopt your old 
plan of quiescence ? " Norton answered, a note of bitterness in 
his voice which had not until now been audible. " There are 
some tempting things about it, I can't deny, but unfortunately I 
am not able to divest myself of certain old prejudices which re- 
gard the welfare of my neighbor." 

Giddings reddened even to the roots of his hair. 

" I deserve that above all from you. For God's sake, don't 
give me reason to regret it more bitterly than I do already ! " 

Dr. Norton looked him rather curiously in the eyes. 

" Of what do you think me capable? " he asked. " I was not 
cast in the same mould as you." 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



A FRENCH "LIBERAL CATHOLIC'S" VIEW OF 
LIBERALISM AND THE CHURCH.* 

THE coming general election in France will be the most 
important chapter, perhaps, in the history of the republic, for it 
must decide whether the conditions of the Concordat, already 
violated in principle, shall be entirely abrogated, or whether 
they shall be readjusted in such a way as will secure the church 
from further molestation. In other words, the whole social order 
is at stake ; the true issue is between Christianity and infidelity, 
and does not affect France alone, but Christendom. 

By a singular anomaly each of the two camps is occupied 
by two parties between which the differences of opinion are 
great enough to preclude the probability of union. The Radi- 
cals, on the one side, have declared a war of extermination 
against the church. Like the demoniacs of old, the very name of 

* The Liberal Catholics : The Church and Liberalism since 1830. By Anatole Leroy- 
Beaulieu. Paris, 1885. 
VOL. XLI. 54 



850 A FRENCH "LIBERAL CATHOLIC' s" VIEW OF [Sept., 

God throws them into a fit of rage ; their leaders are avowed 
infidels, their followers embrace all the Communists, priest-killers, 
and incendiaries of Paris and such kindred element as the pro- 
vinces may supply. They are preparing the ruin and destruc- 
tion of France by anarchy. But though their flag is red, they 
hoist it in the name of Liberty, and the unthinking multitude fail 
to read under this sacred word the more fitting one of License. 
In the same camp, yet exchanging glances of distrust and hatred, 
are the Moderate Republicans, well-meaning temporizers, who 
foresee the dangers that threaten their country, and who, know- 
ing that their allies are by far worse than their adversaries, yet 
hope, by half-concessions, to keep them within bounds. They 
are undecided as to the question of separating church and state, 
they don't quite see how they could improve upon the terms of 
the Concordat, or whether it would be wise to cancel that com- 
pact; so they propose, vaguely, to agree upon some policy which 
will guarantee freedom of conscience while opposing clericalism, 
" which, under the mask of religion, is really a union of all the 
factions hostile to the republic." 

In the opposite camp we find under the general designation 
of " Clericals" all Frenchmen who have or make a semblance of 
having any respect for religion. The name is of comparatively 
recent use and scarcely fits all to whom it is applied ; nor do 
these form a party hostile to the republic, as alleged. In former 
years the church party proper was styled the Ultramontanes 
to distinguish it from the Gallicans Catholics also, but who 
claimed certain privileges or liberties for the Gallican Church. 
While the Gallicans, as a whole, did not represent a political 
party, the Ultramontanes were thoroughly identified with the 
Legitimist party. These faithful adherents of the fallen Bourbon 
dynasty were certainly hostile to the republic, as they had been 
to the empire and to the constitutional monarchy of Louis Phi- 
lippe ; but they were not a faction. They did not disturb the 
peace of their country. They were faithful to their God and to 
their king, and stopped at no sacrifice to show their fidelity. 
Their name will go down to posterity, despite the sneers of their 
adversaries, as a rare example of a virtue but little cultivated in 
this progressive age. When Henry V. died the Legitimists were 
relieved of their oath of allegiance. Neither the Orleans princes 
nor the would-be representatives of defunct Imperialism had any 
claim upon them, and rather than support either they would glad 
ly rally round the republic ; but if they have buried in the grave 
of the last of the Bourbons the political hopes cherished by them 



1885.] LIBERALISM AND THE CHURCH. 851 

during- half a century, no death, no human event, can relieve them 
of their allegiance to their church, and they cannot lend their 
hands to the triumph of infidelity. The Legitimists, therefore, 
are hostile to the republic only in so far as the demagogues who 
wish to control her strike at their dearest and most sacred rights. 
They have no candidate of their own, no pretender silently pre- 
paring a coup-cTttat, no illusions left ; they are, therefore, the sur- 
est allies a truly patriotic republican could desire. 

The case is entirely different with the Imperialists and Or- 
leanists. They have hopes and aspirations, avowed or covert. 
Their allegiance to the republic must ever be the subject of sus- 
picion. Their past offers no guarantees. To confound them 
with the Legitimists under the common appellation of Clericals is 
a farce. The Orleanists have never shown much devotion to the 
church. As for the Imperialists, if to persecute her could serve 
their ends they would not hesitate. Under a Christian republi- 
can government they would side with the infidels. 

Near these parties, and affiliated with neither, yet, like them, 
called Clericals by many, is another group, the Liberal Catholics, 
intent on bringing a reconciliation between the church and the 
republic. They love their country too well not to see the dan- 
ger that threatens it and not strive to avert that danger. Their 
dream is that which, after the revolution of 1830, inspired such 
men as the ill-fated Lamennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert, and 
other generous-minded Catholics, who hoped that by making cer- 
tain concessions to modern ideas the church would be greatly 
benefited. The first efforts of those eloquent men were not un- 
successful, but they soon realized the danger of compromises and 
innovations in matters of religion. Deaf to the voice of warning, 
Lamennais persisted and was lost ; the others stopped in time and 
bowed before the superior wisdom of Rome. Modern society 
has progressed at a terrible pace since that time, and one asks 
himself what concessions could be made that would satisfy it, 
and how much authority would be left the church after she has 
made them. 

The views and hopes of the Liberal Catholics are very ably 
set forth in a book just published: The Liberal Catholics: The 
Church and Liberalism since 1830, by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. 
The author deals in a dispassionate and argumentative manner 
with the problems of the day, and meets victoriously the oft-re- 
peated charge of Catholic intolerance as contrasted with Protes- 
tant liberalism. He asks whether Christianity " under its most 
ancient and widespread form the church which still counts the 



852 A FRENCH "LIBERAL CATHOLIC' S" VIEW OF [Sept. 

greater number of believers is or is not compatible with liberty 
and the new order of society." This question, one of the great- 
est of our time, he thinks will continue to be agitated during 
many generations to come, although on both sides the spirit of 
intolerance flatters itself with the thought that it has settled it in 
the negative. We American Catholics must fully agree with 
Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu that liberty and Catholicism are not antago- 
nistic ; the " new order of society " will require elucidating ere 
we can safely say the same concerning it. Here he remarks 
that among those Catholics who hold, as do the unbelievers, but 
for opposite reasons, that this incompatibility exists, a mode of 
demonstration is much in favor which he cannot accept as suffi- 
cient. This is demonstration by means of texts and examples 
borrowed from all periods of history and from ecclesiastical au- 
thorities bishops, learned doctors, popes, and councils. While 
these examples and texts provided they be properly authenti- 
cated have a real importance, they do not always possess a de- 
cisive value. They may be good proof for the time to which 
they belong, but not for other times. Admitting that they 
prove the past, it does not necessarily follow that they also prove 
the future ; they might establish the theory without proving the 
practice. A religion, in fact, as any living thing, accommodates 
itself practically with its surroundings, even though it remains 
immutable in principle. 

But however easy the adversaries of all reconciliation be- 
tween the church and modern society may find it to accumulate 
texts in proof of their thesis, and even though these texts should 
admit of no other interpretation, but be as categorical as authen- 
tic, one fact would greatly diminish their value in Mr. Leroy- 
Beaulieu's eyes : it is that, with a little patience and industry, one 
may just as easily collect a formidable array of analogous sen- 
tences, of judgments as categorical and not a whit less hostile to 
religious liberty, coming from those sects which, rightfully or 
not, are reputed the most respectful of the rights of conscience, 
from those even which people affect to consider the mothers 
or nurses of political liberties. He proceeds to show that the 
Roman Church is far from having the monopoly of intolerance. 
If every church which, at some time or other, rejected liberty of 
worship and tolerance of error must be declared incompatible 
with modern civilization, then Eastern orthodoxy, Episcopal 
Anglicanism, and Protestantism in all the inexhaustible fecundity 
of its sects should be proscribed. Nay, as well might Chris- 
tianity in its entirety, all religions, in fact, be included ; for, 



1885.] LIBERALISM AND THE CHURCH. 853 

upon this principle, your only logical liberal would be he who re- 
jects every form of worship. 

Our author goes on to show that if any sect has failed to 
prosecute " heresy and blasphemy," it is only such as never had 
the power to prosecute. " Everywhere, even in those countries 
that are celebrated as the classic cradle of political franchises, in 
Holland and in Switzerland, in England and in the United States, 
in republics as well as in monarchies, the most cultivated and 
most passionate for liberty among Protestant peoples have, under 
the influence of their clergy and theologians, inscribed in their 
constitutions Draconian laws against the heterodox ; sometimes 
excluding them entirely from the territory of the state, at other 
times restraining them arbitrarily in the exercise of their form 
of worship, or reducing them systematically to a sort of civil 
helotism and treating them as pariahs unworthy of public trust. 
It was thus with the Episcopalians of Great Britain and the 
Presbyterians of Scotland, with the Puritans of New England 
and the Gomarists of Holland, with the Calvinists of Geneva 
and the Lutherans of Sweden. In most Protestant countries 
liberty of worship notably the emancipation of Catholics is of 
recent date, and when this right was wrested from it Evangeli- 
cal pietism compensated itself by substituting to the intolerance 
of the law another not less vexatious and provoking social in- 
tolerance. 

" Singular though it may seem, the Catholic states in Europe 
have been for the greater part the less tardy in suppressing all 
religious distinctions in the laws and in the manners and cus- 
toms, while in America it was a state with a Catholic origin 
Maryland which first proclaimed absolute liberty of worship." 
The truth of the remark about " social intolerance " intolerance 
des moeurs is the comprehensive French expression used will 
strike any one in this liberal-minded community of ours who is at 
all an observer of the ways of the world. 

Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu meets the possible objection that in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the laws restrictive of reli- 
gious liberty in most Protestant countries were directed against 
the Catholics as political adversaries, feared as enemies of the 
state rather than as enemies of religion, with the remark that, 
admitting there may have been a grain of truth originally in 
this view, it does not suffice to explain the long-lived intolerance 
of the Protestants, for the provisions of these restrictive laws did 
not affect the Catholics only. The Jews, the rationalists, the 
nonconformists and dissenters of all sorts, the Protestants with 



854 A FRENCH "LIBERAL CATHOLIC'S" VIEW OF [Sept., 

radical tendencies, notably were, just as much as the Catholics, 
objects of public distrust and legal restrictions. Catholics, Is- 
raelites, and unbelievers have long suffered from the intolerance 
of ruling sects, in countries and at epochs when they could not 
be looked upon as enemies of the state: such was the case in the 
English colonies, for example ; such it was in the German and 
Scandinavian states. From the study of the political and reli- 
gious history of the two worlds Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu deduces 
a fact which is contrary to the generally-received theory that 
religious liberty preceded free political institutions. He cites 
the example of England, Holland, Switzerland, and the United 
States, and considers the fact sufficiently proved to justify a new 
axiom in historical law : that " political liberty is generally of 
more ancient date than religious liberty." He admits that, from 
the logical standpoint, the proposition may be reversed and lib- 
erty of conscience be held the life-giving source from which all 
others spring ; but with that inconsistent being, man, historical 
order is far from agreeing always with logical order. Facts and 
revolutions are far from corresponding regularly with the ra- 
tional succession of ideas. 

" Moreover," the French writer holds, " public liberties were 
not born of an abstract idea. Almost everywhere, previous to 
the French Revolution, and especially among the Protestant 
nations, public liberties, instead of proceeding spontaneously from 
the abstract idea of right, have sprung from the brutal conflict of 
interests and the struggle between social forces. This, no doubt, 
is a reason why, in so many countries, political liberty has pre- 
ceded religious liberty. The dissenting minority interested in 
the latter was not strong enough to compel the ruling sect to 
grant it. In most cases they obtained it only through political 
liberty, despite the resistance of clergies who were the more at- 
tached to their privileges that they believed them to be as indis- 
pensable to the safety of the state as to the salvation of souls." 

Tolerance, Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu argues, has been nowhere the 
offspring of a religious doctrine, and, though it has flourished 
magnificently for the last half-century in certain Protestant coun- 
tries especially Anglo-Saxon ones it is not a flower grown 
naturally on the stems of the Reformation stock. When Pro- 
testantism saw around it freedom of worship imposed by political 
necessities ; when it saw, among its own adepts, the right of 
private judgment step out of the circle in which it had hoped 
to confine it, Protestantism yielded gradually. It submitted as 
to an inevitable evil. It was only later that its doctors ended by 
erecting into a principle and admitting as a right that which 



1885.] LIBERALISM AND THE CHURCH. 855 

they had reproved as contrary to divine and human law. Yet, 
despite the resistance of Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans to 
the encroachments of tolerance, the fundamental principle of 
Protestantism, its persistent revolt against authority as per- 
sonified in Rome, its irremediable want of unity, and the inev- 
itable multiplicity of its sects prepared it to accommodate itself 
more easily with a liberty which it could not reject for ever with- 
out an inconsistency which must become more manifest with 
each new generation. This, beyond all doubt, Mr. Leroy-Beau- 
lieu thinks, is one of the reasons why the Protestant peoples have 
rallied more completely, if not more rapidly, to entire freedom of 
conscience. A reason, but not the only one. There is another, 
he claims, too often overlooked the comparative ancientness of 
political liberties in the leading Protestant countries, which was 
as the first link of a chain, necessarily pulling up the other links 
after it. 

Following up this argument, Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu shows that 
quite different have been the destinies of most Catholic coun- 
tries where political liberty is of comparatively recent introduc- 
tion, and could not, therefore, open the way for religious liberty. 
" Let it not be said," he warns, " that the fault lies with the Ro- 
man Church that France, Italy, Spain, and southern Germany, 
having remained Catholics, condemned themselves to absolutism. 
This would be begging the question ; for in all those countries, as 
early as at the time of the Reformation, the rulers had succeeded 
in crushing the public liberties, and the Protestant countries that 
were placed in similar political conditions, such as northern Ger- 
many and the Scandinavian kingdoms, did not conquer more lib- 
erties for having embraced the new doctrines. Far from it; the 
Reformation of the sixteenth century, which had been in great 
part the work of princes, resulted to the advantage of princely 
power." 

" Howbeit," adds Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu, " the Roman Church 
during the last three centuries has found around her neither po- 
litical rights nor electoral franchises nor habits of discussion. 
She has had, therefore, neither the obligation nor the time to get 
accustomed to them. For this reason alone, leaving out that of 
her principle, it must have been easier for her to hold to the an- 
cient theological maxims common to all Christendom. In other 
words, Catholicism and the Catholic hierarchy have not had, as 
other confessions had, to bend themselves practically to all the 
political or religious liberties. This is sufficient reason why they 
should not yet be accustomed to them. Though these liberties 
may seem repugnant to the teaching of the Catholic Church," the 



856 A FRENCH "LIBERAL CATHOLIC'S" VIEW OF [Sept., 

author argues, " there is nothing to justify the assertion that, had 
she been slowly led to them by custom and public opinion, she 
would not have resigned herself to accept them. Whatever ob- 
stacle her dogmas or her traditions seem to oppose to this end, 
the past, in such matters, does not authorize one to prejudge the 
future. Rash indeed would he be, Catholic or infidel, who 
should pretend to deny to the church the faculty of ever 
adapting herself to new customs, and should forbid her to ac- 
cept modern ideas in fact, at least, which, for policy, is the es- 
sential." 

" The political education of the church and clergy is not yet 
made," Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu holds, " and liberty is for them a novi- 
tiate which they have not served to the end. It requires more 
than a century ere a revolution which has so profoundly altered 
secular laws and customs can be patiently accepted by all classes 
of society by all interests, material or spiritual. It would be 
showing singular simplicity to wonder that the clergy has not yet 
made up its mind to accept this state of things. There would be 
injustice, in a measure, to expect as much in this respect from 
the Catholics of France, Italy, and Spain as from the Protestants 
of England and America, where the liberal evolution is by far 
older. For there is here a question of date which should not be 
overlooked." 

We have quoted very fully from this book, because it speaks 
the sentiments of a party united for a patriotic purpose, and 
whose praiseworthy efforts at conciliation are dictated by devo- 
tion to the faith of their fathers. Yet it is difficult to follow Mr. 
Leroy-Beaulieu in his method of argumentation or to agree with 
him in all his conclusions. It is well to remind the country at 
large that Catholicism is not more intolerant than any Protestant 
sect, that Catholic governments have often been the first to grant 
religious liberty ; but the differences between Catholicism and 
Protestantism are not in question here. No more does the re- 
publican government need the assurance that the church can live 
at peace with it. The true issue is between Christianity and In- 
fidelity, and France is but the battle-field on which the contest 
silently prepared everywhere is to be fought. An admirable les- 
son is taught here: Hundreds of sects claim to belong to the 
great Christian family, and yet not one is made a party to the 
heinous charges hurled at the Catholic Church. They are ig- 
nored as adversaries not to be feared, and of which the atheists 
would make short work could they once overthrow the church 
which, built upon a rock by divine hands, still adheres to its 
foundation despite the storms and earthquakes of nineteen centu- 



1885.] LIBERALISM AND THE CHURCH. 857 

ries. There is no gainsaying the fact ; it is patent to whoever 
examines the question with an unbiassed mind. The Catholic 
Church is, as she should be by right, the chosen champion of 
Christianity ; she holds aloft the labarum with its promise of vic- 
tory, and all must rally round this banner who wish not to fight 
under the red flag of the anarchists. Twenty years ago the late 
Mr. Guizot saw the inevitable conflict preparing, and, though he 
did not agitate the question of championship, he proclaimed the 
necessity for all Christians to unite against the common enemy 
infidelity. It is this enemy, not the republican form of govern- 
ment, the French Catholics are preparing to meet. 

The question thus presented in its true light, that of possible 
concessions to " modern ideas" comes up. If by this it is meant 
that the Catholic Church must accept the republic in good faith, 
it will strike American Catholics as a very simple matter; for are 
they not as patriotic and devoted to American institutions as 
any citizens of this glorious Union? But American Catholics are 
protected in their rights ; while the republic does not recognize 
a religion of state, it guarantees to every religious denomination 
equal security and protection. By what inducements does the 
French Republic expect to win the love and devotion of its Catho- 
lic citizens? So far it has denounced them as traitors, wounded 
them in their most sacred feelings by making war upon their 
priests, compelling their sons to leave the seminary for the army, 
proscribing the cross from school-room and courtroom as a 
hated emblem of superstition, and, finally, alarming their con- 
science by acts and threats too numerous to recite. 

To whom, then, shall the church make concessions? To the 
atheists who persecute her children? A preposterous idea, since 
they don't believe in God. To the false science which wishes to 
disprove everything and proves nothing? The church and true 
science are in accord ; there is no need of concessions. Mr. Le- 
roy-Beaulieu acknowledges that " our modern liberties," as their 
name itself indicates, are but novelties more or less recent, and 
therefore more or less suspicious and debatable, whose reign is 
not definitely established ; men inclined to the cult of the past 
may still doubt the future of these novelties, but it will be other- 
wise a generation or two hence, he thinks, when the ideas and 
manners shall be entirely imbued with the principle of liberty. 
This is all very good, but does not explain very clearly in what 
these novelties consist and what is expected from the church. It 
is to be feared that this well-meant movement will result in 
nothing. The question to be presented to the French people 
should be plainly : Shall the republic be Christian or godless ? 



858 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Sept. , 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

THE TRAINING OF THE APOSTLES. Part IV. By H. J. Coleridge, S.J. Lon- 
don : Burns & Gates; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 

This is the eighth volume of the Public Life of our Lord, which is the 
second part of the complete work entitled The Life of Our Life. The 
first part has not yet been entirely published, but the portion still lacking 
is announced as in press and to appear before next Christmas. The his- 
tory of the period between the confession of St. Peter and the Ascension, 
embracing somewhat less than one year, will still remain, requiring, un- 
doubtedly, several more volumes. The author seems to fear that he may 
not be able to pursue his work to the end, but we earnestly hope he may 
do so, and successfully accomplish his great and pious undertaking. 

The present volume begins with our Lord's second visit to Nazareth, 
and closes with the confession of St. Peter at Caesarea Philippi. The prin- 
cipal dogmatic and practical elucidations of the Gospel text contained in it 
deal with the instructions given to the twelve apostles when they were 
sent out to preach, and the long discourse on the Blessed Eucharist in the 
synagogue of Capharnaum. The author proceeds in his usual calm, care- 
ful, and leisurely manner, gathering up the fragments of the feast, that 
nothing may be lost. Father Coleridge's exposition of our Lord's instruction 
to the twelve is an admirable elucidation of the general rules and princi- 
ples of the apostolic teaching of the Catholic Church in all times. His ex- 
planation of the discourse at Capharnaum is excellent. The commentary 
on St. Peter's confession is satisfactory, but more succinct. There are sev- 
eral other important events falling within the scope of this volume treated 
more succinctly than usual, yet in a satisfactory manner. Most readers 
would prefer greater condensation of style throughout the whole work. 
But, although the plan and method of Father Coleridge will make his great 
work when completed less popular than if it were thrown into a more 
compendious form, it will always be a treasury from which preachers and 
instructors can draw abundantly, and it will be read and studied with the 
utmost profit and pleasure by the most thoughtful class of readers. 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
By Dr. H. Von Hoist, Professor of the University of Freiburg. Trans- 
lated from the German by John J. Lalor. 1850-1854. Compromise of 
1850 Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Chicago : Callaghan & Co. 1885. 

This is one of a series of works by a learned and studious foreigner on 
the constitutional and political history of the United States. The previous 
volumes have proved valuable contributions to our constitutional history, 
and have been favorably received, more especially in the northern and 
eastern portions of the country. The study of our American institutions, 
embracing as they do a better form of government than is practically known 
in Europe, can but be favorable to the extension of constitutional govern- 
ment in Europe and throughout the world. When we contrast the expul- 
sion of the religious orders and of the Christian teachers in France from 
their schools, the seizure and secularization of the great and venerable 
church of St. Genevieve, and other similar acts of the government under 



1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 859 

the so-called French Republic, with the security of the people, the teach- 
ers, and the clergy in this country in the enjoyment of their civil and re- 
ligious rights and of ecclesiastical property, we are amazed at the misnomer 
the French have given to their form of government. When we witness 
in European countries the sudden changes of cabinets and of adminis- 
trations, dependent upon a mere difference in opinion between the ministry 
and the parliament on a single measure, and contrast this with the well- 
defined official tenure of cabinets in this country and the quiet and busi- 
ness-like regularity of our public governmental machinery, we rejoice in the 
superiority of the American system. We should, therefore, feel satis- 
faction at a more extended study of American institutions by foreigners, 
and the publication of candid and lucid works in European languages for 
the instruction of their people in constitutional government. 

Of course we cannot expect all such efforts on the part of foreigners to 
be precisely to the tastes of all parties in this country. In the present in- 
stance the effort is an intelligent one, but the book is conceived and writ- 
ten too much in the spirit of the Sewardand Sumner school of American 
public men to meet the present more temperate wishes and sentiments 
of the American people. However, our German author has espoused the 
side in American politics that has triumphed for nearly a quarter of a 
century and has stamped its sentiments upon society here for many years 
to come. Reactionary ideas will from time to time modify or check the 
tendency of centralization of power and lavishness in public expendi- 
tures. Internal reform will restore the official purity and efficiency of 
the government to the high standard of the administrations of Washing- 
ton, the Adamses, and of all the earlier Presidents ; for the American Con- 
stitution and American political life are susceptible of continual develop- 
ment, retrenchment, and restoration. But in the main a written consti- 
tution is to be followed by a people with the exactness that private in- 
dividuals observe their written contracts. If Magna Charta was necessary 
to protect the rights of Englishmen against royal usurpations centuries ago, 
so now a written constitution is necessary to protect the liberties and pro- 
perty of our people against the rapacity of trading politicians for office, 
against centralized power, and against the communism and agrarianism of 
the masses. 

THE ART OF ORATORICAL COMPOSITION, BASED UPON THE PRECEPTS AND 
MODELS OF THE OLD MASTERS. By Rev. Charles Coppens, S.J., Pro- 
fessor of St. Louis University, St. Louis, Mo. New York : The Catho- 
lic Publication Society Co. ; London : Burns & Oates. 1885. 

Nothing very new can be written on the art of oratorical composition. 
A subject, as John Quincy Adams said, which has exhausted the genius of 
Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian can neither require nor admit much addi- 
tional illustration. But, as society goes on developing new aspects and 
creating new needs, there will be a constant demand for new applications 
of the precepts so thoroughly laid down by those great writers. Experi- 
ence would soon show that a method of teaching the art of oratory to 
Greek youths would not be quite suited to classes of young Latins, and 
there are points of difference which the teacher must take note of between 
the best way to make orators of young Americans and the systems of the 
schools of oratory of England and France. The book before us bears 



860 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Sept., 1885. 

on its face the marks of what it really is the growth of a long expe- 
rience in training American pupils in the orator's art. Father Coppens, 
S.J., has been for over twenty years a professor of oratory in the Jesuit 
colleges of the West, and he is now one of the post-graduate profes- 
sors of St. Louis University, so that he brings to this book not only 
the full equipment of a master of the art. but all that invaluable skill 
in imparting his knowledge to be acquired only, and after long trial, in 
the rostrum of the teacher. It does not need much examination to per- 
ceive that Father Coppens' is perhaps the most practical class-book on 
the speaker's art that has been yet offered to American schools. It is 
peculiarly adapted to American pupils, and stress is laid on modern Ameri- 
can as contrasted with modern English and French ideals of oratory. The 
method of the book is most simple and lucid, and at the same time very 
attractive. Father Coppens, wherever it is practicable, lets the acknow- 
ledged masters of oratorical composition speak for themselves, so that the 
pupil is made familiar, and in their own words, with the leading precepts of 
the great writers on oratory among both ancients and moderns. 

A VILLAGE BEAUTY, AND OTHER TALES. London : R. Washbourne. 1885. 

It appears there may be a more wretched style still of Catholic tales for the 
3'oung than those translations from the French in which the inexhaustible 
little Savoyard never fails to come up smiling and frighten away the young 
Catholic reader. The French stories were at least harmless ; if their goody- 
goodiness was unreal they were, at any rate, goody-goody purely. Here is 
a book of " Catholic " tales which is palpably not from the French ; but if it 
is to be taken as a fair specimen of what the English are to give us as the 
alternative of the little Savoyard, we are forced to say let us keep on the 
little Savoyard by all means. All the stories in this volume (three) have 
for heroines young Englishwomen who were seduced and who repented their 
lapse from virtue. One is a village beauty who, making no resistance, be- 
comes the mistress of an artist and lives quite contented in her "gilded 
cage " until he, growing tired of her, casts her off. Another is a young lady 
who, similarly making no resistance, elopes with a military officer and 
lives as his mistress quite contented until he, having been ordered on for- 
eign service, ceases to send money to meet the tradesmen's bills. Both 
seem to be satisfied with their life until the supplies stop. Then, being 
outcast, they turn their thoughts to God and die holy and premature deaths. 
A third story relates to a young Catholic female servant of whom one of her 
fellow-domestics predicts that she is bound to be "either a saint or a devil." 
One day, in the woods, she " listens to the voice of the tempter." In a little 
while she catches cold and dies with a crucifix on her breast. We have out- 
lined these stories as the best way of pronouncing their condemnation. It 
was bad enough that the work of providing light literature for our Catholic 
boys and girls should have been so long in the hands of a race of amiable 
idiots; but it marks a more deplorable state of things in this department 
of the church's work still when we see pruriency masquerading as her ally. 
When shall we have the question of providing Catholic literature for the 
young squarely faced ? THE CATHOLIC WORLD has asked this question 
again and again, but its importance seetr,s as far from being realized as 
ever. 



vol.41 



The Catholic World