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THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE,

VOL. XLII.
OCTOBER, 1885, TO MARCH, 1886.

NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO.,

9 Barclay Street.

1886.

H. J. HEWITT, PRINTER, 2/ ROSE STREET, NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

American Catholic University, The. Rev. A .

F. He-wit, 223

American Congress of Churches, The.* * * . 409

American Philosophy. R. M. Johnston, . gi

Answered at Last. A. M. Clarke* . . 765
Apology for John Brown, The. J. R. G.

Hassard, ....... 515

Baron of Cherubusco, The. Rev. J. Talbot

Smith, 35

Bergamo, The Fair of. John Augustus

O'Shea 75 6

Cablegram, A, and what came of It. Nugent

Robinson, ....... 458

Cardinal McCloskey, Archbishop of New

York. Rev. A . F. Hewit, . . .367

Celebrated and Common Friendships. R. M.

Johnston, 783

Chat by the Way, A..Conde B. Fallen, . 270

Churchman, The.* * * .... 831

Correction, A, 570

Dicky Doyle's Diary .Helen A tteridge, . 825
Divine Authority of the Church, The. Rev.

A. F. Hewit, .158

Doctor's Fee, The. Christian Reid, . 608, 732
Domenico's New Year. Thomas F. Galwey, 528
"Dude" Metaphysics. Rev. Henry A.

Brann, D.D., 635

Eleven General Elections of the Reign of

Queen Victoria, The. A . F. Marshall, . 666
Emperor Julian the Apostate, the Great

Spiritist of the Fourth Century. Rev.

John Gmeiner, 721

Emperor Maximilian I. Rev. William

Stang, 658

' English Hobbes ! " u Irish Dogges ! "

Charles de Kay, ..... 794

English Voices on the French Revolution.

Agnes Repp Her, 116

Extremity of Satire, The.-./?. M. Johnston, 685

Fair of Bergamo, The. John Augustus

O'Shea, 756

Fault of Minneola, The. William Seton, . 488

Francis of Guise, The Death of. J. C. B., . 254

French Problem, The. P. F. de Gournay, . 416

French Radicals, The, and the Concordat, . 135

French Reformatory, A. Louis B. Binsse, . 169

Hawthorne's Attitude toward Catholicism.

Rev. A . F. He-wit, 21

Human Authority in the Church. Rev. A. F.

Hewit, 324

In the Adirondacks with Rod and Rifle.

Martin Burke, .... .10

Ireland, The Prospect for. T. M. Healy,

M.P., 302

Irish Names, The Metamorphoses of. Thos.

P. Galwey, . . . . . . ."674

Irish Schoolmaster before Emancipation,

The.-C. M. O'Kee/e, . . . .243

Joost van den Vondel. Agnes Repplier,

595

Katherine. E. G. Martin, .... 103
Knickerbocker Ghost, The. E. L. Dorsey, 555

Light of Asia, The, and the Light of the

World. Rev. John Gmeiner, . . i

Maximilian I., Emperor. Rev. William

Stang, 658

McCloskey, Cardinal, Archbishop of New

York. Rev. A. F. He-wit, . . .367

Metamorphoses of Irish Names, The.

Thomas F. Galwey, .... 674

Much Ado about Sonnets. Appleton Mor-
gan, 212

Negro, The How Can we Help Him IRev.

C. A . Oliver, ...... 85

Normans on the Banks of the Mississippi,

The. C. Gayarre, . . . . .808
Novel-Writing as a Science. R. /*., . . 274

Old Galway. J. B. Killen, M.A.,

546

Plea for the Indian, A.//. V. J?., . . 848
Priest at Castle Garden, The. Rev. John J.

Riordan, 563

Prospect for Ireland, The. T. M. Healy,

M.P., 302

Protectory for Prodigal Sons, A. Louis B.

Binsse, 577

Reign of Queen Victoria, The Eleven General

Elections of. A. F. Marshall, . . 666

Relations between the English and Scotch Pi-
rates and the "Reformation Move-
ment. 1 ' Sarsfield Hubert Burke, . 124

" Saint Thomas of Canterbury " and

'" Becket." Maurice F. Egan, . . 382
Satire, The Extremity of.R. M. Johnston, 685
Slaughter of the First-Born, The, . . .589
Solitary Island. Rev. J. Talbot Smith, 63, 185,

340, 496, 645
Some Recent Italian Novels. Maurice F.

Egan, 5 2

Stamp of the Guinea, The. Charles de Kay, 395
Still Christmas, A. Agnes Repplier, . . 434

Tour in Catholic Teutonia, A. St. George

Mivart, 443 ^ 6 95

Trinity in Simple English, The. Rev. C. A.

Walworth, 289

Twins, The: A War Story. Thomas F. Gal-
wey, 227

Venerable Mary of Agreda and Philip IV.,

King of Spain, The. M. P. Thompson, 836

CONTENTS.

POETRY.

A Dewdrop on a Cobweb. Marian S. La

Puy, . .381

A Legend of Judea. M. H. Z,., . . 554

By Summer Seas. Wm. D. Kelley^ . . 763
Islam. Rev. M. W. M., . ?. if . . . 710
Rose of the Sacred Heart. Mary C. Croivley, 20

Sonnets. J. B. K., 62

Sonnet To St. Cecilia. Louis Mallory, . 588
St. Winifred's Well. Agnes Repplier, . . 184

The Days of Genesis. Rev. Clarence A.

Walworth^ . . . . . . .641

The Christmas Rose. M. F, E. t , . . 433
The Legend of St. Alexis. A ubrey de Vere, 145,

3i3i 474
The Satyrs. Edward Mclntyre, . . .339

To-Morrow. P., 242

Translations./?^. J. Costello, . . . 364
The Waltz, from the German of J. G.
Seidl Childhood, from the French of
Victor Hugo Immortality, from the
Italian of G. Prati A Fable, from the
Spanish of Samaniego.

What Earth's Traveller said to his Heart.

Edith W. Cook, 9

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Age of Lead, The, . . . . . .283

Almanach des Families Chre"tiennes pour 1'an-

nee 1886 425

America, and other Poems, . . . .428
Art McMorrough O'Cavanagh, Prince of

Leinster, 575

Boy Travellers in South America, The, . 431

Carols for a Merry Christmas and a Joyous

Easter, 713

Catholic Directory, Ecclesiastical Register,
and Almanac for the Year of Our Lord

1886, The 718

Catholic Home Almanac for 1886, The, 424

Catholic Family Annual for 1886, The, . 423
Catholic Life and Letters of Cardinal New

man, ....... 423

Chair of Peter, The, 714

Charles A. Giliig's New Guide to London, . 860

Child of Mary, A, 856

Cleopatra, 858

Clotilde, 720

Cremore : A Village Idyl, . . . .857

Daemon of Darwin, The, . . . .282
Decreta Quatuor Concihorum Provincialium

Westmonasteriorum, 1852-1873, . .716

De Deo Disputationes Metaphysics, . . 281
Defender of the Faith, The, . . . .715

Der Hausfreuad, 717

Effects of the Abuse of Alcohol on the Circu-
latory and Respiratory Organs, The, . 144

Elizabeth j or, The Exiles of Siberia, . . 576

Examination of Conscience, for the use of

Priests who are making a Retreat, . . 288

Exiled from Erin, . . . * . 575

Fabiola . . . 717

Facts of Faith, ... ... 432

Father Hand, Founder of All-Hallows, . . 143

Geschichtsliigen, 286

Histoire des Persecutions pendant la Premiere

Mpiet^ du Premiere Siecle, . . . 571

Historical Notes on Adare, .... 572

History of the Catholic Church, etc., . . 281

Italian Popular Tales, 573

Keys of the Kingdom, The, . . . .854

Life of Anne Catherine Emmerich, . . 286
Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of

Kansas and Martyr of Virginia, The, . 282
Life of Father Isaac Jogues. The, .
Life of Jean -Jacques Olier, Founder of the

Seminary ot St. Sulpice, The, . . . 285

Life of Father Luke Wadding, The, . . 283

Life of St. Philip Benizi, of the Order of the

Servants of Mary, 1233-1285, . . . 714
Life of the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, O.P.,

The 854

Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, The, 859
Literary and Biographical History, A ; or, A
Bibliographical Dictionary of the Eng-
1 sh Catholics from the breach with Rome
in 153410 the present time (Vols. I.-Ii.) 142, 856
Little Dick's Christmas Carols, . . . 720
Little Month of the Souls in Purgatory, . 432
Lives of the Irish Saints, The, . . . 144
Lives of the Saints and Blessed of the Three

Orders of St. Francis, . . . .<?7i8
Lost, 720

Mad Penitent of Todi, The, . . . .716
Mary Burton, and other Stories, . . . 720
Matilda, Princess of England, . . . 859

Meditations on the Mysteries of the Holy

Rosary, 432

Narratives of Scottish Catholics under Mary

Stuart and Jsimes VI., .... 283

Nativity Play, The, 716

Nine Months, The, 571

Odile : A Tale of the Commune, . . . 720
On the Study of Languages, considered in their
bearing on the Pastoral Office, and the es-
tablishing of Graded Catholic Schools, . 715

One Angel more in Heaven,

287

Poet 1 ? of America 425

Practical Instruction for New Confessors, . 288

Principles of Expression in Pianoforte-Play- .

ing, 430

Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, The, 426

Sadliers' Catholic Directory, Almanac, and

Ordo for the year of our Lord 1886, . . 719

Secret of Plato's Atlantis, The, . . . 144

Sixth Centenary of St. hhilip Benizi, . . 717

Stories of Duty, 576

Summa Ph losophica juxta Scholasticorum

Principia, ....... 280

Thirty Years, The. Our Lord's Infancy and

Hidden Life 853

Thought for Each Day of the Year, A, . 425, 288

Troubled Heart, A, and How it was Com-
forted at Last, 287

Truth about John Wyclif, The, . . .425

.* 432 Under the Pine,

576

Waifs of a Christmas Morning, and other

Stones, ... ... 859

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLII. OCTOBER, 1885. No. 247.

THE LIGHT OF ASIA AND THE LIGHT OF THE

WORLD.

IN more than one respect Buddhism deserves our attention ;
probably more so than any other now existing pagan religious
system, the Mohammedan not excepted. In the first place, pro-
bably about 500,000,000 * people that is, at least one-third of all
living mankind are claimed to be followers of Buddha. Sec-
ondly, that branch of Buddhism which is called Lamaism has a
hierarchical organization and religious institutions remarkably
similar to those of the Catholic Church.f The Grand Lama, or
Dalai-Lama, is the supreme head of the hierarchy of the greater
portion of the adherents of Lamaism. Next in rank, Chambers
Encyclopaedia states, are the Khutuktus, who may be compared to
the Roman Catholic cardinals and archbishops. The next, resem-

*John Caird, S.T.D. (Oriental Religions, chap, ii.), says: "Buddhism is, nominally at
least, the religion of 500,000,000 of the human race."

It is impossible to give exact statistics on this point. Dr. Hettinger (Apologte des
Christenthums, 3d edition, vol. ii., 3d division, p. 350) estimates the number of Buddhists at
more than 300,000,000 ; Chambers' Encyclopedia, published at Philadelphia, 1883 (see article on
"Religion"), assumes that there are about 483,000,000 Buddhists. F. Max M filler, in 1869
(Lecture on Buddhist Nihilism), even asserted that " Buddhism in its numerous varieties con-
tinues still the religion of the majority of mankind."

t Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S. (The Childhood of Religions, chap, ix.), observes: "When
the Roman Catholic missionaries first met the Buddhist monks they were shocked when they
saw that their heads were shaven, that they knelt before images, that they worshipped relics,
wore strings of beads, used bells and holy water, and had confession of sin. . . . The Tibetans,
on the death of the Grand Lama, who is their high-priest and regarded as infallible, like the
pope, elect his successor. . . . Monasteries for men and nunneries for women still exist,
and, especially in Tibet, vast numbers of monks are found."

2 THE LIGHT OF ASIA AND [Oct.,

bling somewhat Catholic bishops, are called Khubilghans, whose
number is very large. Besides these higher orders Lamaism pos-
sesses also a numerous lower clergy. All these make the vow of
celibacy, and by far the greater number of thena are said to live
in convents. At the head of every convent is an abbot, who is
chosen by the chapter of the respective convent, and appointed
either by the Dalai-Lama or by the proper provincial Khubil-
ghan. There also exist numerous convents for nuns among the
adherents of Lamaism.

No doubt the resemblance these Buddhist institutions bear
to some of the Catholic Church is both striking and of interest
to us.*

Still more we are surprised on learning that the followers of
Buddha relate of him facts strikingly similar to those related in
the Gospels of Christ, the Saviour.f Besides, it must be remem-
bered, Buddha lived about six centuries before Christ. :):

Edwin Arnold is said to have given in The Light of Asia an
essentially correct account of what the followers of Buddha relate
of him. The following quotations from the poem will show
how strikingly similar some facts related of Buddha are to facts
related in the Gospels of Christ.

The Gospels relate the Son of God descended from heaven
to assume human nature. His followers relate of Buddha :

"Thus came he to be born again for men.

... On Lord Buddha, waiting in that sky,
Came for our sakes the five sure signs of birth
So that the Devas knew the signs, and said,
' Buddha will go again to help the World.' "

The Gospels relate that the Saviour was of the royal house

* Mr. Clodd (1. c.) observes that monastic institutions, "which had been thought to belong
to Christianity only, had formed part of Buddhism two thousand years ago." And Dr. John
Wm. Draper (History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, revised edition, vol. i. p. 68),
commenting on Buddhism, remarks : "The singular efficacy of monastic institutions was re-
discovered in Europe many centuries subsequently."

t Bishop Bigaudet, Vicar-Apostolic of Ava and Pegu, quoted by F. Max Muller in the
lecture mentioned, observes in his life of Buddha : " In reading the particulars of the life of the
last Buddha Gaudama, it is impossible not to feel reminded of many circumstances relating to
our Saviour's life, such as it has been sketched out by the Evangelists."

J" All religions, like the suns, have arisen from the East," is a sweeping remark of Mfr.
M filler's perhaps intended to convey the idea that also Christianity is but a stream from the
great fountain of religions near the Himalaya Mountains.

Rev. George C. Lorimer, of Chicago (Isms Old and New, sd edition, p. 170), who has
given this subject a careful study, says : " The account . . . given by Mr. Arnold is, in all (if
its essential features, verified by recognized authorities, and may be accepted as substantially
correct."

1885.] THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 3

of David and conceived by the overshadowing power of the
Most High. Of Buddha is related :

*' ' Yea ! ' spake he, 'now I go to help the World.

I will go down among the Sakyas,

Under the southward snows of Himalay,

Where pious people live and a just King.'

That night the wife of King Suddhddana,

Maya,* the Queen, asleep, . . .

Dreamed a strange dream : dreamed that a star from heaven

Splendid, six-rayed, in color rosy-pearl, . . .

Shot through the void, and, shining into her,

Entered her womb upon the right. Awaked,

Bliss beyond mortal mother's filled her breast."

We read in the Gospel of St. Luke that angels rejoiced at the
birth of Christ, and that the aged Simeon, enlightened by a divine
revelation, came to worship the Infant Saviour. It is related that
many came to worship the new-born Buddha :

" 'Mongst the strangers came
A gray-haired saint, Asita, one whose ears,
Long closed to earthly things, caught heavenly sounds,
And heard at prayer beneath his peepul-tree
The Devas singing songs at Buddha's birth.
Wondrous in lore he was by age and fasts ;
Him, drawing nigh, seeming so reverend,
The King saluted, and Queen Maya made
To lay her Babe before such holy feet ;
But when he saw the Prince the old man cried,
'Ah, Queen, not so ! ' and thereupon he touched
Eight times the dust, laid his waste visage there,
Saying, O Babe ! I worship. Thou art He !

. . . Thou art Buddh,

And thou wilt preach the Law and save all flesh
Who learn the Law, though I shall never hear,
Dying too soon, who lately longed to die ;
Howbeit I have seen Thee. Know, O King !
Thtfs is that Blossom on our human tree
Which opens once in many myriad years.

. . . Ah, happy House !
Yet not all happy, for a sword must pierce
Thy bowels for this boy."

Whoever will compare these lines with what we read in the

* Maya, the name attributed to the mother of Buddha, is evidently very similar to the name
of the Blessed Virgin and Mother of Christ, the only difference being that there is an r in the
name of the latter. Omitting this r in the Greek or Latin name of the Blessed Virgin Maria
we have Maia, or Maya, as spelled by Mur. Arnold. Dr. Draper (1. c. p. 73) calls the mother of
Buddha " Mahamia" ; but, as on many other points, Dr, Draper is no great authority on this.

4 TH/ LIGHT OF ASIA AND [Oct.,

Gospel of St. Luke, ii. 25-35, cannot fail to find a striking resem-
blance between the two narratives.

Yet other passages could be quoted to show how the wor~
shippers of Buddha relate of him similar facts to those we find
recorded in the life of Christ ; I will quote only one passage
more.

We read in the Gospel of St. Luke, ii. 46-48, of the wisdom
the Child Jesus showed before the doctors of the law in the
Temple.

Of Buddha it is related that his teacher fell prostrate on his
face before the Boy.

" * For thou,' he cried,
Art Teacher of thy teachers thou, not I,
Art Guru. Oh ! I worship thee, sweet Prince !
That comest to my school only to show
Thou knowest all without the books, and know'st
Fair reverence besides.' "

These passages will suffice to show that the Buddhists claim
several important facts for their Buddha which bear a striking
resemblance to what we find related of the Saviour in the Gos-
pels.

Whence these strange resemblances between some institu-
tions of Lamaism and of the Catholic Church, and between the
narratives of the life of Buddha and of Christ? Did the Catholic
Church model some of her institutions after those of Lamaism ?
Is perhaps the history of the life of Christ, to a great extent, but
an imitation of what was centuries before related of Buddha
along the slopes of the Himalaya Mountains ?

At first sight this might seem quite plausible, as Buddha lived
about six centuries before Christ ; and the enemies of Christian-
ity and the church are not slow in taking advantage of such
seemingly significant facts.

II.

The first missionaries who, in the seventeenth century, pene-
trated into Buddhist countries were, as Father Hue relates,* " not
a little surprised to discover in the centre of Asia numerous mon-

* Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet, vol. ii. p. 13. Father fivariste Regis Hue
is no doubt one of the most reliable authorities on Buddhism. For three years he labored as
missionary in northern China ; he studied the Tartar dialects, remained for some months in a
Buddhist monastery, and, after having learned to some degree the Thibetan language, he made
his way even to Lassa, the capital of Thibet and the residence of the Grand Lama. Besides,
he most carefully studied the history of Christianity in Buddhist countries, as the learned work
mentioned above amply testifies. (See Chambers' Encyclopaedia, vol. v. pp. 445-6.)

1885.] THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 5

asteries, solemn processions, religious fttes, a pontifical court, col-
leges of superior Lamas electing their ecclesiastical sovereign
and the spiritual father of Thibet and Tartary in a word, an
organization closely resembling that of the Catholic Church."

The antichristian philosophers Voltaire, Volney, Bailly, and
others seized upon these striking resemblances with eagerness,
to show that the religious beliefs and institutions of Europe
had originated in the neighborhood of the Himalaya Mountains,
whence they were gradually introduced into India and Egypt,
from Egypt into Judea, and from Judea throughout the Catholic
Church. According to this view, Christ was but an ideal Jewish
fac-simile of Buddha, and the Catholic Church an occidental copy
of Eastern Lamaism.

No doubt there are still enemies of Christianity and the
church who endeavor to propagate such views ; hence the mat-
ter deserves to be examined more closely.

Cardinal Wiseman, in his famous lectures on Science and Re-
vealed Religion (lecture xi.), has shown that Lamaism was unknown
in Thibet before the thirteenth century after Christ.*

But how was it introduced ? It is well known that Nestorian
missionaries had penetrated early into central or eastern Asia.f
About the beginning of the eleventh century they even succeed-
ed in converting a Tartar prince and his people living north of .
China.J* From this time Christianity seems to have retained
some hold on eastern Asia. Pope Clement V. in 1307 appointed
John of Monte Corvino Archbishop of Kambula, the present
Peking, or capital of the Chinese Empire. Thus we see that

* Wetzer and Welte's Kirchenlexikon, latest edition, 1883, vol. ii. p. 1431, states: "The
Grand Lama institution of Thibet is of comparatively recent date, and by no means an essential
institution of Buddhism. The use of mitres, dalmatics, incense, and bells, as also genuflections
and the reciting of prayers, as Catholic monks do, are certainly late innovations and imitations.
That Christianity has exercised a powerful influence on the external development of the pre-
sent religious system of Lamaism is historically established. Public confession and the prac-
tice of continency confirm the former existence of Christian institutions."

t Father Hue (1. c. vol. i.) calls attention to the following facts : The Jews were dispersed
throughout Asia before the coming of Christ. They were not only scattered throughout the Assy-
rian and Babylonian empires, but also proceeded in numerous caravans to Persia, India,
Thibet, and even to China. Everywhere the Jews retained their religious traditions, and
c ould thus disseminate throughout Asia the doctrine of a coming Redeemer. After the founda-
tion of Christianity the Apostle St. Thomas preached in India. Again, Pantenus of Alexandria
went to India in 189 to propagate Christianity there. A Hindoo bishop was present at the
Council of Nice in 325, and put his signature to its acts. Another Hindoo bishop was present
at the General Council of Constantinople in 381. Between 714 and 728 the metropolitan sees of
Samarcand and of China were founded.

J This Tartar prince and his successors became well known in Europe under the common,
mysterious name of Priest John (Presbyter Joannes). See Dr. Johannes Alzog, Universalge-
schichte der christlichenkirche, 7th edition, p. 640 ; and Father Hue, 1. c. vol. i. pp. 91-104.

Dr. Alzog, L c. p. 641.

6 THE LIGHT OF ASIA AND [Oct.,

Christian and Catholic institutions were well known in eastern
Asia about the fourteenth century. As to the origin of the in-
stitutions of Lamaism, Father Hue, who has carefully investigated
this subject, states that the office of Grand Lama did not exist in
the days of Tchinguiz Khan, or Genghis Khan, who died August
24, 1227. Kublai Khan * adopted Buddhist doctrines which had
made considerable progress among the Tartars, and in the year
1261 he raised a Buddhist priest named Mati to the dignity of
head of the faith in the empire.

Such was the origin of the Grand Lamas of Thibet. It is
quite likely that the Tartar emperor, who no doubt had frequent
communications f with Christians, or Catholics, wished to or-
ganize the religious system of his empire after the model of the
Catholic Church, which then predominated over all western
Europe, and had there organized the Christian nations into one
great brotherhood in their struggle against the threatening
hordes of Islam. No doubt the Tartar emperor could find no
more perfect religious organization which might serve him as a
model in organizing the religious system of his empire.

To establish his dominion more firmly Kublai Khan divided
it into provinces,' which were to be ruled by an ecclesiastic, who
was again subject to the Grand Lama appointed by the emperor.

A hundred years later J Buddhism underwent other impor-
tant changes, and then the forms of worship were introduced
which present such a striking resemblance to Catholic liturgy.
The conquests of the Mohammedans, especially in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, gradually interrupted the communica-
tions between eastern Asia and western Europe, and Lamaism

* Although Kublai Khan favored Buddhism, perhaps for political reasons, he was probably
at heart as much a Christian as a Buddhist. " On the days of Christian festivals he ... de-
voutly kissed the book of the Gospels, after having perfumed it with incense. He said that there
were four great prophets revered by all nations Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Moses, Chakia-Mouni
(Buddha) and that he held them all in equal honor, and equally invoked their celestial assist-
ance " (Father Hue, 1. c. vol. i. p. 283).

Kublai Khan evidently tried to select what he considered best in all religious systems ; as to
organization, he could certainly find no more perfect model than that of the Catholic Church.

+ The famous Venetian brothers, Nicolo and Matteo Polo, visited Kublai Khan in Khan-
balik, or Kambula according to Dr. Alzog the present Peking. Among other things KuWai
Khan "questioned them about the pope, the general arrangements of the Roman Church, and
the customs of the Latins" (Father Hue, 1. c. vol. i. p. 284).

The fact deserves to be especially mentioned that soon or immediately after this interview

with the Venetian travellers, in 1261, Kublai Khan raised the Buddhist priest Mati to the dignity

i head of the faith (Buddhist pope) in his empire (Father Hue, 1. c. vol. ii. p. 14). Father

c adds (p. 15) : " Such was the origin of the Grand Lamas of Thibet, and it is not impossible

that the Tartar emperor, who had frequent communications with the Christian missionaries,

may have wished to create a religious organization after the model of the Roman hierarchy, with

which he was well acquainted."

J Father Huc.l. c. vol. ii. p. 15.

1885.] THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 7

was for a while forgotten in Europe. The first missionaries
who again became acquainted with it in the seventeenth century
were, of course, greatly surprised " to discover in the centre of
Asia a hierarchy and religious institutions so strikingly similar
to those of the Catholic Church."

III.

Having seen that Lamaism is but an imitation of the hierarchy
and institutions of the Catholic Church, we may expect that the
story of the life of Buddha also was gradually adorned with
legends copied from the real life of Christ and adapted to Ori-
ental taste.

As far as reliable history reaches, little is known of Buddha
personally. There is even still a great variety of opinion re-
garding the exact time of Buddha's life.* Mr. Arnold observes
in the preface to his poem : " The Buddha of this poem if, as
need not to be doubted, he really existed was born on the bor-
ders of Nepaul about 620 B.C., and died about 543 B.C. at Kusina-
gara, in Oudh." Mr. Arnold also intimates that " extravagances
. . . disfigure the record and practice of Buddhism." From all
this we see that the author of the poem believes that Buddha
really existed ; but as to the record of Buddha's life, probably
even he will admit that it has been " disfigured " by " extrava-
gances," and adorned with legends taken from the history of the
life of Christ, f

It seems probable, and perhaps certain, that there was a
widely-honored Hindoo sage, called Buddha, living about six
centuries before Christ. Gradually, after the history of the life
of Christ became known in India, such portions of it as especially
struck the Oriental fancy were incorporated in the legends con-
cerning Buddha ; and thus finally emerged from a chaos of le-
gends that life of Buddha which Mr. Arnold has so poetically de-

* Dr. John Wm. Draper (History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, revised edi-
tion, vol. i. p. 66) remarks : " Buddhism arose about the tenth century before Christ." Al-
though there exists some diversity of opinion as to the exact time of Buddha's life, yet no well-
known authority at present claims that Buddha lived about a thousand years before Christ. On
this point also Mr. Arnold is a by far better authority than Dr. Draper.

+ It will be seen from Cardinal Wiseman's seventh lecture on the Connection between Sci-
ence and Religion that the Hindoos relate similar legends, taken from the real life of Christ, of
their Krishna, or eighth incarnation of the Hindoo god Vishnu. (See Chambers* Encyclopedia,
vol. v. p. 822, and vol. ix. p. 468.) Dr. David Haneberg, the German translator of Cardinal
Wiseman's works, observes that Mr. Weber, in his Indische Studien, vol. i. p. 400, etc., has
proved that already at the time of the first propagation of Christianity legends taken from the
life of Christ were attributed to Krishna. Mr. Weber is inclined to consider the whole Hindoo
Avatara, or Incarnation, system as an imitation of the Christian dogma of the Incarnation.

8 THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Oct.,

scribed more than 1,850 years after the appearance of the real
Christ. But no one, before the coming of this real Christ, ever
thought of writing a life of Buddha similar to that depicted by
Mr. Arnold.

IV.

What will be the future of Buddhism ? Who knows whether
the remarkable Lama hierarchy, and its monastic and liturgic
institutions, as also the narratives taken from the life of Christ
and incorporated in the legends concerning Buddha, may not be
means in the hands of Providence to facilitate the victory of
Christ and his church over Buddhism ?

The following may be a dream, but it is a dream that may
some day be realized : The Russians are yearly gaining greater
influence over countries in which Buddhism prevails. If they
continue to do so for the next fifty years as they have done dur-
ing the past fifty, they may then control the greater portion of
the followers of Buddha. Moreover, the Russian Church could
easily be reunited with the Catholic Church, for the differences
which separate both are comparatively slight and could easily be
settled by the czar, the so-called Holy Synod of Russia, and the
pope. The pope is certainly always most willing to make all
reasonable concessions possible to reunite Russia with the Catho-
lic Church. The so-called Holy Synod, being but one of the de-
partments of government, would no doubt obey the czar. The
czar, finally, might some day be compelled or induced by politi-
cal or other circumstances to reunite Russia with the Catholic
Church.

Stranger things have happened in the past: after Diocletian
came Constantine ; and the northern barbarians who destroyed
the Catholic Roman Empire, and as Arians at first bitterly perse-
cuted the Catholics, became zealous Catholics afterwards. Be-
sides, the Russian people have been separated from the Catholic
Church without fault of their own. We have, therefore, good
reason for hoping that Providence may grant them the grace of
reunion.

Both Russia and the Catholic Church would gain immensely
by such an event.* The Russians could then more easily reunite

* I do not claim originality for these ideas. They will be found substantially in La Russie

ra-t-elle Catliolique, a work published in Paris, 1856, by the Jesuit Father J. Gagarin who

is a descendant of the noble Russian family of Prince Gagarin, already well known in the

eter the Great. Father Gagarin, no doubt, understood the relations between Russia

the Catholic Church eminently well, being both of Russian descent and a learned Catholic

priest. Hence these ideas are well worth reflecting on.

1885.] WHA T EARTH'S TRA VELLER SAID TO HIS HEART. 9

all Slav nations an object they most earnestly desire. The
czar would, like the Roman-German emperor of the middle
ages, at once stand at the head of all Catholic nations and gain
the sympathy of the whole Catholic world. And St. Peters-
burg might indeed become what its perhaps prophetic name
implies.

The effects of such a reunion of Russia and the Catholic
Church would not only be powerfully felt throughout all Chris-
tian nations, but they might also greatly accelerate the triumph
of Christ over Buddha, and the victory of God's one true church
over that caricature Lamaism.

WHAT EARTH'S TRAVELLER SAID TO HIS HEART.

DOST lose thy courage, heart ? The way is long,

The tangle deep :
Ere on the mountain height thou canst breathe free,

The path most steep.

Behind thee lies the music of sweet birds

That sing in spring?
Above thee soon shall cleave the unshadowed air

The eagle's wing.

With each step fainter grows the voice of streams

Art thou athirst ?
By the clear springs that shine on Alpine slope

Their life is nursed.

Seem unto thee the great woods sadly filled

With loneliness ?
Above the tree-line shall their silence deep

No more oppress.

Art tired, poor heart ? and find'st it hard to breathe

The rare, strong air ?
It feeds the frailest flowers of the heights

And keeps them fair.

Do the gray mists that sweep the barren peaks

Thy warm blood chill ?
In heaven the sun, above the wind-blown wrack,

Is shining still.

jo IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE. [Oct.,

Beat softly, heart: not swiftly to the east

The shadows creep ;
Patience, not less than strong desire, shall win

What great heights keep.

Take courage, heart : the night will come at last

And thou canst rest-
Soft is the pillow of the moss that lies

On high hill's breast.

And when morn comes it shall be earth no more :

Softly shall shine
The Paradise thy tears so long have dimmed

Its glory thine.

IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE.

WE were four General Criss, Fred Bailer, a stock-broker,
Bulger, a Danish chemist, and myself. We met at the New
York Central Depot at 6.30 P.M., and, taking train, we were to
be at Port Kent, upon Lake Champlain, next morning. From
this point we were to ride fifty miles and plunge into the wilder-
ness at Martin's, upon the Lower Saranac. Bulger was the
hunter, and he carried his new repeating-rifle with a military air.
Fred B. was the Walton of the party, loaded with rods and
landing-nets, and learned in flies and leaders and subtle ways to
lure the fish.

General Criss and I were to be instructed in woodcraft. We
bundle into our seats, the gong sounds, and we are moving up
the Hudson in the twilight. At the Highlands our game of
whist is interrupted by a most sublime thunder-storm. The
clouds, big, black, and swiftly tumbling in mid-air, seemed, as
they rushed down the river, to crush the everlasting hills ; but,
passing, they left but a pale moon and a breeze rich with fra-
grance of new-mown hay and wild flowers.

Five A.M. We awake to find the train two hours late ; but we
are compensated by the noble view of Lake Champlain, along
the shore of which the train is swiftly winding. We sat upon
the back platform and silently drank in the cool, beautiful land-
scape. It was to us a period of intense delight. To all it was
calm and rest after toil, and never did men enjoy it more.

1885.] IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE. n

We reach at last Port Kent, where the misty further shore of
the lake seems like a cloud-bank miles away. It is a lovely spot,
but scarce had we time to look around us when we were crowd-
ed into a primitive stage and rolled away through a barren
country to Keeseville, five miles beyond. We passed Ausable
Chasm, but so intent were we on going forward at once that we
refused to stop and view closely this wonderful gorge. We
took, however, a flying view from a bridge above the chasm, and
wonderfully beautiful must the scene appear from below. At
Keesevilie we are served with a good breakfast, and then off
again. The road winds along the Saranac River, now, alas ! a
mere stream compared to what it once was. The scenery is
bleak and the soil is not very productive, but the mountains in
the distance seemed to compensate for the immediate poverty of
the landscape.

At Mountain Fall we dine, and in a pelting rain we onward
drive, winding deeper and deeper into the mountains. The
country as we advance becomes more picturesque, but we all
look with disgust at the frequent barren hillsides, either covered
with blackened stumps or else so denuded of timber that the
dry brush made poor compensation for the loss of these primi-
tive forests. Talk as some writers may, the loss of forest must
tell in time ; and as I looked at the brawling river beside me,
whose broad bed was dry on each side for twenty feet, I felt
that the loss of trees was the sole cause of the withering of this
stream.

We smoke, we chat, we sing, we try to make the time pass
easily ; but driving in a narrow, ill-swung vehicle in a furious
rain for forty miles is no pleasure. As we drew up at Miller's
the clouds were dissipated for a moment's sun, and we descended
from our perches pretty stiff, but hungry as hawks and ready for
any sport. Miller's is finely situated upon the Lower Saranac,
and is a lovely place to idle away a few weeks. The genial pro-
prietor met us on the broad piazza, and after a hearty supper of
trout and venison, the first we had eaten, we met our guides, who
were awaiting our arrival.

Simple, kindly men are the guides, always ready to oblige,
never surly, and as keen for the sport which you enjoy as if they
themselves shot or threw the fly. Stores are collected, guns are
handled, fly-rods looked over, and after these important affairs
are settled we go to an early bed.

A cold, gray morning. Four picturesque-looking travellers
are standing in group upon the boat-house steps while the guides

12 IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE. [Oct.,

pack the boats. Rough we look : old hats and coats have been
resurrected, and our boots come above the knee and are most
fearfully oiled. Four whimpering hounds are secured to the
boat-house, and when loosed make a rush for the boats. We are
i n __ we are off and abreast we head up the lovely lake. There is
a feeling of rest and happiness in being swiftly pulled through
the Adirondack waters which I have felt in no other place. It
may be the high altitude of these lakes or the peculiar buoyant
feeling of the boat in which you ride, and which so readily yields
to every motion of your body ; the cause I cannot explain, but the
sensation is delightful and never tiresome. It is a morning of
alternate showers and sunshine, and this gives us an opportunity
of viewing the changing landscape in all its varied beauties. The
forests sweep away from these rocky shores until lost in the dis-
tance. To me the hush of the noble woods was more majestic
than the lonely murmur of the ocean upon a barren sand-hill.
The variety of nature in a forest is infinite, and the different
shades of green to my wearied eyes seemed like a glimpse of
paradise. In the distance dim, high mountains, ever changing
from deep black to light green as the clouds obscured the sun ;
beside me the rolling waters, over which the light boat floats
like a sea-bird. We pass through a brawling rapid, and after
winding through a narrow river, fringed with alder-bushes and
lined by lofty hemlocks and pine-trees, we reach a broad sheet of
water called Round Lake. Here the wind has rolled the lake
into great billows, and a driving rain prevents us from seeing
shore ; but on we toil, and when we had reached the upper
waters the sun burst forth again. We fall in line, and in a mo-
ment the boats strike the beach.

The first portage, or carry, is about a half-mile in length, and
while we walk along the river-bank our boats are carried over
upon a huge wagon. On we go again across another lake, and at
a primitive lakeside inn we are served with a good dinner. And
although a misty rain is falling, we can enjoy the distant view of
mountain and forest that stretches away from our very feet. An
hour's row has brought us to another three-mile carry ; and
after a muddy walk, at which even the general complains, old
campaigner that he is, we come to the Racquette River. You
all remember a scene in Gustave Dor6's Wandering Jew where
the wretched wanderer is passing through a forest of dead trees,
and one could scarcely imagine such a spectacle of desolation.
Yet the Racquette River is lined for miles with such a forest, and
of all the depressing scenes I ever viewed this is the most

1885.] IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE. 13

gloomy. A dam which has been built miles away to float timber
is the cause of this ruin. The overflowing; waters covered the
roots of the trees lining the river- banks, and for miles you see
nothing but mud and dead trees. I could scarcely believe that
in years gone by the Racquette River was the pride of the
Adirondacks. While I am speaking here of the destruction of
trees, let me remark that the whole Adirondack region is a vast
bed of mountainous rock, covered with a thin superstratum cf
soil which is held in place by the forests. To denude the rocky
mountain-sides of these forests is practically to have this soil
washed down into the valleys by spring rains, where, mixed with
stone and gravel, it is unfit for cultivation. The outskirts of the
Adirondack region prove this. The desolation of the cut-timber
tract on the edge of the wilderness is something to lament. A
twelve-mile row brings us out of this river and into Big Trout
Lake, and at a sporting inn some few miles up the lake we halt
for the night. We have come thirty miles and we feel both
hungry and tired. A good supper puts us in good-humor, and
then to dreamless slumber.

Big Trout Lake contains no brook-trout ; the savage pickerel
or equally relentless bass have driven poor salmo fontinalis
from these lovely waters. Lake-trout, however, are caught
weighing as much as twenty pounds ; but with the departure of
the speckled trout all interest in the lake is lost to me.

A long morning row brings us to another carry five miles
long. The general and I now push ahead, leaving Bulger and
Fred Bailer to have some lunch at a wayside sporting-house.
We have reached the last carry and what a carry ! The general
loses his temper for the first and only time, for his dog wishes to
go under trees when the general has to climb over them, and the
conflict of opinion is slightly energetic.

Another long row and we pass from a winding river into a
lovely little pond, near the mouth of which was killed the last
moose ever seen in the Adirondacks.

Beside a little rapid our camp is made, and soon the woods,
the silent woods, resound to the axeman's blows. The day is al-
most spent, and as the shadows deepen Frank, my guide, rows me
out on to the silent pond. Where a small brook runs into the lake,
by a quick stroke of his paddle the boat is held, and from my rod
is flung the artificial lure. The flies gently strike the water and
are pulled towards us with a trembling hand, leaving a long wake
behind. A splash ahead ! A trout has jumped, and the boat,
like a thing of life, moves slowly forward. I cast across the bub-

14 IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE. [Oct.,

ble on the water and draw it in. A tug I strike and away
glides my line.

" Play him gently," said Frank, who has skilfully kept the
boat away from the lily-pads. Soon the fish, slowly reeled to air,
rises gasping to the surface, when, with a sure sweep of the land-
ing-net, he is secured. How brilliant his coat, how firm his flesh,
his bold eyes how staring ! We take five more, when, night com-
ing on, the trout refuse to rise. Home to camp. The general
comes down to see my catch. Fred B. calls from the bank to
Bulger, who is walking around the camp, proud in the possession
of his new gun. Suddenly, while we are laughing, comes the
sharp, sudden bark of a deer from across the pond. Listening,
we hear it again, once, twice, thrice, and it is lost in the dis-
tance. " He was coming to feed," said Ernest, Bulger's guide,
" but the noise scared him." This sound of wild animal life elec-
trifies me. I go down in the darkness to a point running out
into the lake, and look out upon the black waters. The stars
twinkle over me, and the great trees lift themselves aloft until
they seem to reach out of sight ; behind me the camp with its
glare of burning logs shining through the spectral trees. Bulger
is going out to shoot a deer, and the boat with its headlight,
under which he sits, gun in hand, is balanced in the stern by the
guide who paddles him. The canoe moves out until nothing but
the great eye of the jack-light comes to the view. It turns, and
all is dark again. We sit and smoke and pile on more logs ;
loath are we to leave the enchantment of the fire. The general
tells tales of army life and " fights his battles o'er again." Fi-
nally we all retire. The tent-flap is closed. I see the fire-light
flare up and sink. Shadows come and go, and then I sleep.

Morning, six A.M. Bulger has returned with a yearling deer.
He tells us wondrous tales, but we see but one small deer a
poor thing with not much meat upon its little body.

Bailer and I are paddled out to the spring-hole. The sun is
overcast and the morning fog still hangs over the woods. Bailer
has begun casting, and his split-bamboo rod is sending the flies
hither and thither. Light as eider-down do they alight and with
a gentle motion are drawn across the dark water. A slight
breeze fans the lake. It is enough. A fish jumps, and with an
oily gurgle down goes the leader. Fly-fishing is the poetry of
motion. He who has fished with artificial flies prefers it to all
other kinds of fishing, and he who has never swung a fly-rod
knows not the highest type of angling. We take a few more fish,
and then back to camp. Our menu is varied venison, trout,

1885.] IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE. 15

potatoes roasted in their jackets, and cakes with maple-syrup.
We eat like " low churchmen," and then to smoke and loaf.

" We loaf and invite our soul," as sings Walt Whitman. We
all sit idly around and drink in the lovely breeze. I must
not say all, for the general is busily engaged in catching frogs.
A stout pole and line armed with a hook is all the general de-
mands. A worm is the bait. From having a weakness for frogs'
legs I encourage the general, and my larder is always supplied.

To-night I am to seek a deer, and my guide is busy arranging
his jack-light. A jack-light is simply a reflector, in front of which
a lamp burns. It is secured in the bow of the boat to a stout
pole, and under and in front of this reflector the hunter sits. He
is in darkness, but the lamp throws a lane of light in front of
the canoe and enables him to shoot a deer that is, if the deer
stands until he is near enough to shoot.

It is considered by hunters that jack-shooting is unsportsman-
like ; but, to. one who knows, jack-shooting, where the deer are
wild and they soon become so is as exacting as deer-stalking,
and gives the animals as much chance for their lives as they can
ever have if you hope to secure one. Deer, where they are much
hunted, will not stand until the light comes to them. Sometimes
they hunt " dark," and this requires not only coolness upon the
part of the hunter, but extraordinary skill upon that of the
guide.

To hunt " dark " is to cover the jack-light, and, merely by the
guide's sense of hearing, depend upon coming close to a feeding
deer, and then, turning down the lantern-slide, to shoot at once
before the deer can jump into the alders.

To paddle down a dark river without a light requires great
knowledge of the course of the stream, and not one guide in five
can do it successfully.

I am a novice in hunting, and so take a shot-gun. ' It is ten
o'clock and raining a soft, misty spray. The wind is blowing in
the tall pine-tops. I cannot see the lake from the camp-fire, but,
guided by Frank, I reach the boat. The boys wish me luck, and
we are off. Darkness, stillness, and rapid motion. Not a sound
from the guide. I cannot hear the paddle-stroke. The falling
rain ahead seems like snow. The weird sense of unreality^ about
it all is almost painful. I long to cry out. We are in a little
lake and carefully skirt the shore. The reeds about us are as of
silver, and outside of the light thrown by the lantern is a darkness
such as I never knew before. A splash in front makes me start, so
that the light boat rocks. A dark head swims away in the track

1 6 IN THE ADIRONDACK'S WITH ROD AND RlFLE. [Oct.,

of light. " What's the matter ? " whispers Frank" only a rat ; sit
still ! " I obey, but that rat made me quiver. " I hear a deer,"
again whispers the voice. The boat stops. I listen, and faintly
in the distance I hear, or think I hear, a splashing. I tremble as
if in a chill. The boat flies through the water. It halts, turns,
and the broad light revolves ; but though the lily-pads are bruised
and the reeds are broken, we see no deer. He may be watching
now from the bank ; but useless it would be to remain, and with-
out a sound the boat moves on.

A slow, trembling, rocking movement has the boat ; it fairly
quivers under the paddle. We have left the lake and are bearing
down the river amid the many voices of the night, the waving
trees calling from the high banks and the rustling reeds answer-
ing from the river. Sometimes a winged shadow falls across the
streaming light, like the wild bird with human soul that Renan
says he will be, seeking the church-door and finding it not. The
rain is now falling heavier, yet still it is not much worse than
mist. The river bends and we come to a broad, shallow bay.

" A deer! a deer! " whispers the guide. I feel my heart beat-
ing like a trip-hammer, yet my head is cool and I know that my
hands will obey my will. I strain my sight, and surely ahead a
gray mass is moving through the water. It springs forward,
then turns, rushing quickly, and moves noiselessly yet rapidly for
the shore. I cover my quarry steadily ; the boat is held fast ; I
pull the trigger a flash, a report, and something is struggling in
the water, but only for a moment, for as we reach the deer he is
dead. The wild stag will speed no more, and in spite of my tri-
umph I can feel a sorrow for the death of this noble deer. We
lift him in the boat and then to camp. No longer expectant, I
sit dreamily in bow and listen to wind rushing down the river ;
for the rain has ceased falling, and the wind has risen and is roar-
ing through the black trees. A dull gleam breaks out of the
darkness as we cross the lake. The camp is hushed, yet back of
the fire the gleaming eyes of the awakened dogs gleam outsat us.
Not a whimper escapes them as we drag the dead deer, past them
into the forest. I pile more wood upon the fire, and then to a
dreamless sleep. So pass the days. Now a float is built and we
plunge into the lake, and again we take long rows upon the beauti-
ful riveV. At night we sit around the camp-fire and hear the guides
tell of deer and wolves and panthers. The guide loves to tell of
the discomforts of men who come into the woods knowing every-
thing, and who leave it more ignorant than when they entered.
For without a good guide a man might be a month in the woods

1885.] IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE. 17

and never see a deer or catch a trout. To-day Frank and I go up
the river. We carry the light canoe around the rapids at whose
outlet we are encamped, and are soon miles away. Pool after
pool I fish, sometimes with success and again catching nothing.
How cool the morning! How lovely the dark green forest-trees,
rising from the river-banks and almost meeting above your head !
At places the lilies, white and yellow, almost fill the stream, the
beautiful white lilies looking like stars and filling the air with
their fragrance. Here is the place for contemplation. This is
the true spot to read De Imitatione Christi and feel the spirit of
the book. Thus dreaming I do not perceive that we have left the
river and have entered a little lake heavily wooded, and are
drawing near to a deserted camp. More in idleness than sport I
cast my flies even as the boat has almost reached the camp. A
splash, and before I can change hands the line is out forty feet.
A large fish and a strong one ; but, alas ! my leader is frayed, and
after a gallant struggle the gut parts and I lose my prey. I have
killed thirty fish, however, and I am satisfied. 'Tis the selfish
desire to kill more than enough that betrays the false sports-
man. To kill fish or shoot game merely for the pleasure of doing
so I have always refrained from, and, like other things in life, the
sooner one can become contentus parvo the happier he will be for
this resolve. The fire is kindling, and, having nothing to do, I sit
and watch a merry squirrel who sits chattering above my head.
The day is warm, but under the pines I feel it but little. A shout
below, and Fred B. -mounts the bank, rod in hand, and hungry as
a hawk. Soon the trout, on green and slender branches, are broil-
ing over the red embers. We had finished lunch and are enjoy-
ing a smoke when a noise in a deserted hut caused me to look in.
A little animal, which I recognized at once as a hedgehog, is try-
ing to crawl beneath some logs. The guides, at my alarm, rush
in to kill the creature, but in the confusion it escapes. The
hedgehog is the pest of the woods, as they eat anything contain-
ing th~ least suspicion of salt or grease. After a happy day the
sun is sinking, and, as old Virgil sings, " the lengthening shadows
fall from the high mountains."

So down the quiet river float the boats. We drink in the
beauty of the red sunset behind the tall tree-tops. The quiet
waters are black beneath the shelving banks, and a bird who only
sings at nightfall is piping from the forest. The stream flows
smoothly, save where it strikes a rock, and there it gurgles a soft
music sweeter in its gentle murmur than any other sound in na-
ture. We are met upon the bank by the general and Bulger,

VOL. XLII.2

i8 IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE. [Oct.,

who have spent a quiet day. Then to the mess-tent, where a
steaming pot of venison-tea exhales a fragrant smell. Two cups
apiece and we are content. The general and Bulger bid us
adieu, and, as the night has grown cold, we brew a milk-punch
beside the roaring fire. A storm is gathering, and the flames of
the great pine logs are flung hither and thither in the growing
breeze. A pipe, a chat, and, exclaiming with Sancho Panza,
" Blessed be the man who invented sleep," we leave the night-fire
just as the rain-drops commence to fall. Two hours later the
general and B., drenched, come in, and, after making lament for
a lost deer, are soon at rest. There is whispered among the
guides a rumor of a magic lake in woods where the trout grow
to a monstrous size. Fred B. is fired with enthusiasm, and he
and I are to seek it. So in the early gray of the morning we set
out. The lake is only five miles away, but the difficulties of that
trip make me ache still on thinking of them. This is the picture
we present : Frank, a guide, leading, carries a canoe upon his
shoulders ; I follow with shot-gun, landing-nets, and rods. Fred
B. has an axe and fly-rod ; Robbins, his guide, with an eighty-
pound pack on his back and rifle in hand. I think, as we tear
through the brush, of Strain's march across the Isthmus of Pana-
ma, and can imagine how men can be lost in trackless woods un-
til they sink from exhaustion and die. A five-mile trip that takes
almost an entire day.' What pulling and hauling! What hills we
climb, what swamps to wade ! We cross two lakes and have to
cut down many trees that prevent the boat from passing. Poor
Fred is tired, and I, who am accustomed to walking, feel like rest-
ing. We are nearing the famous lake, when suddenly the first
guide stops, holds up his hand, and whispers, "Partridges." I
rush forward, dropping rods and nets, and get a fine double shot
at some quiet, tame birds who go too slowly to avoid their fate.
At last the lake a noble sheet, and the scenery, of course, very
wild. As we cross the water to the spot selected for our camp
some wild duck fly across the boat. One in particular circles
with painful anxiety around the canoe until her little brood are be-
yond our reach, when she quickly rejoins them, and then the cries
of delight are laughable. The camp is made beside a cool brook,
the ground being almost clear of brush, and with huge old trees
rising grandly about us. Here, while the guides were busy
building a shelter, Fred B. and I sat and smoked, and watched
the gleaming waters of the silent lake not twenty feet away.
The stillness was delightful; not even a bird sang in the woods.
Surely I can imagine now the stillness of African forests of

1885.] IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH ROD AND RIFLE. 19

which Du Chaillu speaks. There is an enchantment in these
woods, and all kinds of quaint fancies seem born in this solitude.
The guides' task is done, and, evening coming on apace, we take
our rods and are paddled out upon the lake. Around us the fish
are rising. We have taken three, each averaging a pound, when
poor Fred breaks his rod, and so we are confined to one rod.
The fish here fight much better than the trout below, and we en-
joy the taking of fifteen fine fish, none weighing under three-
quarters of a pound. Having resigned my rod to Bailer, I can-
not fish, but am content to look at lake and sky and winding
shore. What can be more lovely than the silence of evening ?
The smoke of our camp-fire is the only sign of life, save where
the rising fish sometimes breaks from the lake. The shadows
deepen, and now the faint reflection of the western sky alone il-
lumines the lake. Quietly we glide past the solemn rocks, crested
with tall pines. How weirdly outlined against the evening sky !
No rustling wind comes from the shores. Nature is at rest, save
that mass of yellow that moves like some unreal thing from the
dark woods down to the silent lake. Breathless and expectant
we watch until the slow-moving boat draws near enough to see
the motions of the deer. How queerly it moves among the
rocks ! So silent does the guide paddle that we are coming close
to it, and still it gives no sign of alarm. Fred has taken the rifle
and holds it across his knees. Nearer, we drift. " Thy end has
come, poor thing! " I think. But no ; for as it lifts its pretty head
and the watchful Bailer is raising his rifle a duck starts from the
lake and with a doleful cry flies right at the deer. That wild
creature takes the hint, and with a few graceful bounds the dark-
green alders close about it and all is still again. Poor Fred
smiles dolefully at me and sighs. Frank, the guide, neither
smiles nor speaks ; he has resumed his paddle, and, with that
quiet, slow movement of his head peculiar to guides, and which
we cannot imitate, he is scanning the shore, dimly lit by the twi-
light. The silver moon has now come out, and the air is cooler,
but yet no breeze ruffles the dark surface of the lake. The west-
ern sky, in which the moon has risen, is streaked with a few pur-
ple clouds, whose old-gold setting is the last sign of the dying
day. A moment, and the moon alone shines in the sky, save
where a dim star commences to twinkle in the east. Back to
camp again, where around the camp-fire we huddle ; for the night
is cold, and warm tea is in great demand. Then I go out night-
shooting on this great lake, with the vapor rising from the waters
in misty wreaths; the solemn stars shining above me, and the

2O ROSE OF THE SACRED HEART. [Oct.,

great blackness of the lake are thing's to be remembered and trea-
sured for ever. Too soon had the days sped by, when, early one
morning, Fred Bailer and Bulger stood upon the bank and watch-
ed the general and myself pass from their view. Thus did the trip
end, but the memory is still recalled. To those who love nature
the Adirondacks seem delightful ; but let no one go who cannot
endure fatigue, for the toil and rough life would suit but poorly
the delicate or weak. The cost of this trip is another considera-
tion, not to mention the long journey before you reach a suitable
camp. However, I was satisfied, and I even think, with a few
weeks and a good guide, I would venture into the wilderness
alone and there seek a summer's rest.

ROSE OF THE SACRED HEART,

THUS the sweet legend saith
As Jesus hung in death
Upon the holy rood,
By crimson drops bedewed
The briers of Calvary's height
Did blossom in man's sight.
O peerless, 'priceless bud,
Dyed in the Precious Blood !
Thy ruby fires do shine
Like to the Heart Divine !
Love's symbol true thou art,
Rose of the Sacred Heart.

The briers of sin and care
O'ergrow the mount of prayer
Contrite 'mid suffering,
If to the Cross we cling,
As clung the thorny vine,
Round it our lives entwine ;
Bathed in the blessed flood
Of Jesus' Precious Blood,
All human joys and woes
Shall blossom as the rose.
Love's symbol true thou art,
Rose of the Sacred Heart.

1885.] HAWTHORNE 's ATTITUDE TOWARD CATHOLICISM. 21

HAWTHORNE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CATHOLICISM.

EMINENT literary men whose works are morally pure are de-
serving of great honor, and much gratitude is due to them. The
mischief of that stream of literature made turbid, nauseous, and
noxious by the moral filth mingled with its better elements is
more directly and efficaciously counteracted by wholesome liter-
ature than by any other natural and ordinary influence. Besides
the very great innocent pleasure which such writers furnish to a
multitude of persons, they do a great deal of positive good to
the readers of their works, in ways which it is needless to speak
about, they are so plain to the sight of everybody who has any
taste for letters.

We Americans may congratulate ourselves that writers of the
first rank in our literature, those who may be called its authors
and chiefs, have been so refined in their imagination and pure in
their moral sentiments. In the walk of the lighter prose compo-
sition, it is enough to mention the names of Washington Irving
and James Fenimore Cooper, and then to fix our attention ex-
clusively upon their worthy successor, the subject of our present
remarks, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne has been a growing
favorite, as a writer, both in America and in England, for the last
forty years. His personal character, and the way in which his
own individual, domestic and social reminiscences delightfully
blend with the texture of his writings, have made him likewise a
favorite and a common friend, as a man. Even the members of
his family have shared in this, and now that Mr. Julian Haw-
thorne, whom everybody had known as a boy, his father's con-
stant companion, and who in his manhood had earned fame by
his own writings, has given us the charming biography of Na-
thaniel Hawthorne and his wife, the universal regard for the
great writer and all his family with him, has been re-awakened
and increased.

For the first time, we have presented, in this biography, a
true and authentic picture of this illustrious literary man as he
was in himself, an authentic history of his lije from childhood to
old age. Romantic but incorrect legends have been heretofore
current about his early life and its events. We are glad to have
the truth about all these things, in place of distorted facts or fic-
tions. It is not only more satisfactory as being the truth, but

HA WTHORNE'S A TTITUDE TO WARD CA THOLICJSM. \ Oct.,

also much more interesting. Admiration of the genius which is
shown forth in excellent works, pleasure in contemplating beau-
tiful ideals set before the imagination in their pages, complacency
in the artist as an artist, and in his productions, are much en-
hanced when we learn to know the artist as a man, and find in
his personal character, in his moral conduct, in his whole life, a
counterpart of his works. In the case of Hawthorne there is a
daily beauty in the character and life of the man from his youth
up, an idyllic charm about his household with its domestic rela-
tions, filial, fraternal, conjugal, and parental, which, in the opinion
of the writer of these lines, surpasses, in a poetic as well as in a
moral aspect, any one of his romances taken as a whole, and pre-
sents individual characters and events equal, perhaps even su-
perior, to the best of their imaginary scenes and persons.

Hawthorne's life and writings have one particular aspect
which makes them especially interesting to Catholics, and also to
those Protestants who sympathize more or less with him, but
most of all to those among these classes of his admirers who are
of New- England origin.. It is the aspect of the religious, moral,
and aesthetic ideal in his mind toward the human side of Catholi-
cism. Turning away from Puritanism, yet not turning his back
on Christianity, he was during his residence and travels in Eu-
rope brought face to face with Catholicism, having his mind
freed to a considerable extent from Protestant prejudices. He is
a good representative of a large class, and it is an interesting
study to examine his attitude as he stands midway between his
ancestral religion and the ancient religion of Christendom, to
make an estimate of that which attracted him and that which
repelled him in Catholicism, as he viewed it, chiefly in its moral
and aesthetic human side. The strictly religious idea is not ex-
cluded from his theory of the natural and spiritual fitness and
order, symmetry, harmony, and splendor which are the elements
of the physically, intellectually, and morally beautiful. It lies in
the background, and veiled in obscurity, yet it appears in the
history of Hawthorne's life, and in his works, as a belief and a
predominant sentiment, even to a certain extent distinctively
Christian. Here is one passage which may serve as an illustra-
tion and a proof of what has just been said :

" In her present need and hunger for a spiritual revelation, Hilda felt a
vast and weary longing to see this last-mentioned picture once again. It
is inexpressibly touching. So weary is the Saviour, and utterly worn out
with agony, that his lips have fallen apart from mere exhaustion ; his eyes
seem to be set ; he tries to lean his head against the pillar, but is kep-

1885.] HAWTHORNE* s ATTITUDE TOWARD CATHOLICISM. [23

from sinking down upon the ground only by the cords that bind him.
One of the most striking effects produced is the sense of loneliness. You
behold Christ deserted both in heaven and earth ; that despair is in him
which wrung forth the saddest utterance man ever made : ' Why hast Thou
forsaken me ? ' Even in this extremity, however, he is still divine. The
great and reverent painter has not suffered the Son of God to be merely an
object of pity, though depicting him in a state so profoundly pitiful. He
is rescued from it, we know not how by nothing less than miracle by a
celestial majesty and beauty, and some quality of which these are the out-
ward garniture. He is as much, and as visibly, our Redeemer, there
bound, there fainting and bleeding from the scourge, with the cross in
view, as if he sat on his throne of glory in the heavens ! Sodoma, in this
matchless picture, has done more towards reconciling the incongruity of
Divine Omnipotence and outraged, suffering humanity, combined in one
person, than the theologians ever did. This hallowed work of genius
shows what pictorial art, devoutly exercised, might effect in behalf of reli-
gious truth ; involving, as it does, deeper mysteries of revelation, and
bringing them closer to man's heart, and making him tenderer to be im-
pressed by them, than the most eloquent words of preacher or prophet."*

In another place, describing a Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,
by Domenichino, he writes :

" I was a good deal impressed by this picture the dying saint, amid
the sorrow of those who loved him, and the fury of his enemies, looking
upward, where a company of angels, and Jesus with them, are waiting to
welcome him and crown him ; and I felt what an influence pictures might
have upon the devotional part of our nature. The nail-marks in the hands
and feet of Jesus, ineffaceable even after he had passed into bliss and glory,
touched my heart with a sense of his love for us. I think this is really a
great picture." t

There are some similar remarks in his notice of the impres-
sions he received from Raphael's Transfiguration :

" The face of Jesus, being so high aloft and so small in the distance, I
could not well see ; but I am impressed with the idea that it looks too much
like human flesh and blood to be in keeping with the celestial aspect of the
figure, or of the probabilities of the scene, when the divinity and immor-
tality of the Saviour beamed from within him through the earthly features
that ordinarily shaded him. As regards the composition of the picture, I
am not convinced of the propriety of its being in two so distinctly sepa-
rated parts the upper portion not thinking of the lower, and the lower
portion not being aware of the higher. It symbolizes, however, the spirit-
ual shortsightedness of mankind that, amid the trouble and grief of the
lower picture, not a single individual, either of those who seek help or those
who would willingly afford it, lifts his eyes to that region, one glimpse of
which would set everything right. One or two of the disciples point up-
ward, but without really knowing what abundance of help is to be had
there." \

* The Marble faun, vol. ii. c. 12. f Passages from Note Books in Italy, Feb. 15, 1858.
\ Ibid. Notes on April 25.

24 HA WTHORNE'S A TTITUDE TO WARD CA THOLICISM. [Oct.,

Again he writes :

"Occasionally to-day I was sensible of a certain degree of emotion in
looking at an old picture; as, for example, by a large, dark, ugly picture of
Christ bearing the cross and sinking beneath it, when, somehow or other,
a sense of his agony and the fearful wrong that mankind did (and does) its
Redeemer, and the scorn of his enemies, and the sorrow of those who loved
him, came knocking at my heart and got entrance there. Once more I
deem it a pity that Protestantism should have entirely laid aside this mode
of appealing to the religious sentiment. 1 '*

Hawthorne belongs to that class of whom Kenelm H. Digby
says :

" Ethereal subjects they would not reject,
As if theology did not reflect
The one thing needed by the poet's song
That type for which he, too, on earth must long
Of beauty absolute, the poesy
Of that which still invisible must be." t

Hawthorne's natural temperament and his early education led
his thoughts and imaginations toward the region of the preter-
natural. At the beginning of his literary career Puritan ideas
and associations furnished the theme to his musing, contemplative
spirit, which his imagination wrought into those, weird, fascina-
ting forms which crowd his earlier fictitious works. His, assthetic
sense is not earthly, sensuous, and immersed in the material, phy-
sical embodiment of the ideal of beauty. It is a vehicle of
thought and speculation, and all Hawthorne's imaginative works
which have themes taken from New-England life and history are
essentially in their inmost character and meaning a presentment
of the old Puritan religious idea of the visible and the invisible
world, of the present world and the world to come. This is a
common characteristic of modern New-England literature. Pu-
ritan theology has been judged and condemned in the literature
produced by the children of the Puritans. They have been,
however, generally unwilling to abandon rational and Christian
theology and to plunge into the abyss. After leaving the worst
dogmas of Puritanism, most have been desirous of seeking for a
more reasonable, a brighter, a better Christianity. It seems to
us that this was the case with Hawthorne, and that the beautiful
passages quoted above from his writings show how the Christian
belief which he had retained was brightened, his religious views
and sentiments made more vivid and elevated, by the influence

* Ibid. Notes on June 8.
\The Supernatural, in Last Year's Leaves. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1873. P. 15.

1885.] HAWTHORNE' s ATTITUDE TOWARD CATHOLICISM. 25

of Catholic art, and by the pervading atmosphere of faith, in Italy
and Rome.

These impressions were not limited to that part of the Catho-
lic religion which has been imperfectly retained in the theology
of New England, but they came also with considerable power
upon his mind from the general system of Catholicism and those
parts of it which are wholly unlike and opposed to Protestant-
ism, particularly in the naked and gaunt form of Puritanism.
This ugly counterfeit presentment of the lovely religion of Christ
appears especially unlovely and repulsive in Hawthorne's de-
lineations, and he everywhere shows his natural repugnance to
those features in it which are distorted. The symmetry, beauty,
harmony, and reasonableness of Catholicism, its adaptation to the
wants of the human heart, the superhuman quality of its ideal,
and the conformity to nature of its outward environment, though
only dimly discernible to him through a mist, found something
in his mind akin and responsive, awoke an echo in his heart,
charmed to a certain degree his imagination.

This comes out very distinctly in that beautiful romance The
Marble Faun. Hilda is the most charming of all Hawthorne's
creations. Correggio is said to have taken his wife and child as
models for his pictures. We cannot help thinking that some
features of Sophia Peabody and Una Hawthorne, of whom Mr.
Julian Hawthorne has given such a loving and attractive deline-
ation, reappear in the young artist from New England, surround-
ed by doves and trimming the lamp of the Blessed Virgin in her
high tower. That fine type of New-England girlhood and wo-
manhood of which Longfellow's Priscilla is an early specimen is
represented as it has become modified by the lapse and the
changes of time, under another sky, amid different surroundings,
in Hilda. The religious reverence, the fidelity to conscience,
the moral purity, the feminine loveliness inherited from the
olden time have doffed the garb of gloomy color and homespun
texture in which they were formerly clothed for brighter and
more costly raiment. The repressed aesthetic faculty has awoke.
Old prejudices have passed away. Instead of Priscilla spinning
on week-days and walking demurely to meeting on Sunday with
her Bible and hymn-book wrapped in a white pocket-handker-
chief in one hand and a bunch of fennel, sole solace of the senses
during the dismal service, in the other, we see Hilda copying the
old masters in Roman galleries, and hanging wistfully about the
Catholic confessional when her conscience is perplexed and her
heart heavy.

26 HAWTHORNE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CATHOLICISM. [Oct.,

One extract from The Marble Faun has been already given.
Short extracts cannot, however, suffice, after the manner of
proof-texts, as the basis of a comment which shall be a satis-
factory exposition of the ideas embodied in this unique product
of Hawthorne's genius. Only one who remembers distinctly or
will read attentively The Romance of Monte Beni can fully appre-
ciate the view we are taking of Hawthorne's attitude toward
Catholicism. The paragraph which comes nearest to a summing
up of his estimate of the Catholic religion is the following pas-
sage, extracted from The Marble Faun :

11 Hilda was anew impressed with the infinite convenience if we may
use so poor a phrase of the Catholic religion to its devout believers.

" Who, in truth, that considers the matter, can resist a similar impres-
sion ? In the hottest fever-fit of life, they can always find, ready for their
need, a cool, quiet, beautiful place of worship. They may enter its sacred
precincts at any hour, leaving the fret and trouble of the world behind
them, and purifying themselves with a touch of holy water at the threshold.
In the calm interior, fragrant of rich and soothing incense, they may hold
converse with some saint, their awful, kindly friend. And most precious
privilege of all, whatever perplexity, sorrow, guilt, may weigh upon their
souls, they can fling down the dark burden at the foot of the cross, and go
forth to sin no more, nor be any longer disquieted ; but to live again in
the freshness and elasticity of innocence.

*' Do not these inestimable advantages, thought Hilda, or some of them,
at least, belong to Christianity itself? Are they not a part of the blessings
which the system was meant to bestow upon mankind ? Can the faith
in which I was born and bred be perfect, if it leave a weak girl like me to
wander, desolate, with this great trouble crushing me down ? " *

Taking Hilda as a representative of a class of persons which
we have already sufficiently described, we ask why she does
not answer these questions with a decided affirmation for the first
two and a negation for the third. What is the repulsive force
counteracting the attraction of the Catholic religion ?

In so far as the attraction is aesthetic, it is an aesthetic repul-
sion which resists its influence. This is expressed in a very sin-
gular manner by Hawthorne when he is describing Hilda's vacil-
lating moods of feeling while she was visiting the shrines and lin-
gering before the images of the Blessed Virgin. " Here, per-
haps," he writes, " strange as it may seem, her delicate appre-
ciation of art stood her in good stead, and lost Catholicism a con-
vert." Her ideal was not fully satisfied, she looked for some-
thing more than she found. We find the same factitious discon-
tent and craving after an ideal of perfection in the outward

*Vol. ii. c. 14.

1885.] HAWTHORNE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CATHOLICISM. 27

environment of religion everywhere in those writings of Haw-
thorne in which he gives his impressions from what he saw in
Catholic countries. Wherever he finds that which corresponds
to his high and refined sense of the fitness of things, and gratifies
his love of beauty and order, he is profuse and eloquent in the
expression of delight and approbation, and his pages glow with
prismatic colors. But he cannot abide shortcomings, he is dis-
gusted with the obtrusion of the commonplace, shocked and dis-
appointed by the juxtaposition of vulgar, mean, and sordid ob-
jects to things which are pleasing to the aesthetic sense.

" The second observation is not quite so favorable to the cleanly cha-
racter of the modern Romans ; indeed, it is so very unfavorable, that I
hardly know how to express it. ... They spit upon the glorious pavement
of St. Peter's, and wherever else they like; they place paltry-looking
wooden confessionals beneath its sublime arches, and ornament them with
cheap little colored prints of the crucifixion ; they hang tin hearts and
other tinsel and trumpery at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels
that are encrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious ; they put
pasteboard statues of sainte beneath the dome of the Pantheon ; in short,
they let the sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not in
the least troubled by the proximity,"

Mr. Hawthorne expresses here quite mildly the sentiment
common to Englishmen and Americans in which the writer of
these lines shares fully. Yet he makes an excuse for all the dis-
order and incongruity which disgust him in a tolerant and phi-
losophical spirit which is very uncommon :

" After a while the visitant finds himself getting accustomed to this
horrible state of things ; and the associations of moral sublimity and beauty
seem to throw a veil over the physical meannesses to which I allude.
Perhaps there is something in the mind of the people of these countries
that enables them quite to dissever small ugliness from great sublimity and
beauty. ... It must be that their sense of the beautiful is stronger than in
the Anglo-Saxon mind, and that it observes only what is fit to gratify it." *

In the notes of his visit to the cathedral of Amiens the temper
of mind we are speaking of comes out quite in a characteristic
manner :

" While we were in the cathedral we saw several persons kneeling at
their devotions on the steps of the chancel and elsewhere. One dipped his
fingers in the holy water at the entrance ; by the by, I looked into the stone
basin that held it, and saw it full of ice; could not all that sanctity at
least keep it thawed ? [Certainly, by all means !] Priests jolly, fat, mean-
looking fellows, in white robes went hither and thither, but did not inter-
rupt or accost us."

* Italian Note-Books^ Feb. 15, 1858.

28 HA WTHORNE'S A TTITUDE TO WARD CA THOLICISM. [Oct.,

This provokes a smile, and is not very good manners. Per-
sons walking about in a cathedral in cassock and surplice are not
ahvays priests, but may be sacristans. Some priests, however,
in France and elsewhere, are fat and jolly, which, it appears, is
bad form. They should be tall, thin, grave-looking men to suit
the New-England taste.

However, Mr. Hawthorne was open to more favorable im-
pressions, and when he went in to see a solemn requiem Mass
celebrated at the Madeleine of Paris he was quite well satisfied :

" Glorious and gorgeous is the Madeleine. . . . The organ was rumbling
forth a deep, lugubrious bass, accompanied with heavy chanting of priests,
out of which sometimes rose the clear, young voices of choristers, like
light flashing out of the gloom. . . . All the priests had their sacred vest-
ments covered with black. They looked exceedingly well ; I never saw any-
thing half so well got up on the stage. Some of these ecclesiastical figures
were very stately and noble, and knelt and bowed, and bore aloft the cross,
and swung the censers in a way that I liked to see. The ceremonies of the
Catholic Church were a superb work of art, or perhaps a true growth of
man's religious nature ; and so long as men felt their original meaning,
they must have been full of awe and glory." *

Stately and noble-looking ecclesiastics satisfied his ideal of
sacerdotal dignity. And in the priest to whom Hilda opened her
griefs in the confessional Hawthorne has given a picture of a
spiritual father with " a mild, calm voice, somewhat mellowed by
age, ... a venerable figure with hair white as snow, and a face
strikingly characterized by benevolence. It bore marks of
thought, however, and penetrative insight; although the keen
glances of the eyes were now somewhat bedimmed by tears,
which the aged shed, or almost shed, in lighter stress of emotion
than would elicit them from younger men." Hilda went into the
confessional without knowing what the visage or figure of her
ghostly adviser might be. What would have been her disappoint-
ment if he had been fat, or unprepossessing in countenance ?
Probably she would have bidden him a civil good morning, but
not, as she actually did, " with a sweet, tearful smile " ; nor would
she have " knelt down and received the blessing with as devout
a simplicity as any Catholic of them all."

Yet Hilda was not a merely artistic soul, having nothing
deeper than aesthetic sensibility. She had a conscience also, and
a moral sense, a religious belief in which the bent it had received
from Puritan education was strong enough to resist the gentle
pressure of the venerable priest's persuasion. When he asked,

* French Note-Books, Jan. 9, 1858.

1885.] HAWTHORNE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CATHOLICISM. 29

" On what ground, my daughter, have you sought to avail your-
self of those blessed privileges, confined exclusively to members
of the one, true church, of confession and absolution?" Hilda re-
plied : "Absolution, father? Oh! no, no. I never dreamed of
that ! Only our heavenly Father can forgive my sins ; and it is
only by sincere repentance of whatever wrong I may have done,
and by my own best efforts towards a higher life, that I can hope
for his forgiveness. God forbid that I should ask forgiveness
from mortal man ! " Yet this did not hinder her from saying
also : " Surely, fcather, it was the hand of Providence that led me
hither and made me feel that this vast temple of Christianity, this
great house of religion, must needs contain some cure, some ease
at least, for my unutterable anguish. And it has proved so. I
have told the hideous secret ; told it under the sacred seal of the
confessional ; and now it will burden my poor heart no more ! "

Hilda stood at the threshold oof the church looking in wist-
fully, but there she stopped, and, " Father," she exclaimed, moved
but resolute, " I dare not come a step farther than Providence
shall guide me. Do not let it grieve you, therefore, if I never
return to the confessional, never dip my fingers in holy water,
never sign my bosom with the cross. I am a daughter of the Puri-
tans. But, in spite of my heresy, you may one day see the poor
girl, to whom you have done this great Christian kindness, coming
to remind you of it, and thank you for it, in the Better Land."

Hilda's reasons for resisting the persuasions of the good father
to step over the threshold into the church are extremely weak
and founded in ignorance. Any one of her intelligence and sin-
cerity could be easily convinced of their futility by an instruction
of half an hour from a competent teacher. And Mr. Hawthorne
appears to be aware of this. For he says that, " had the Jesuits
known the situation of this troubled heart (i.e., before she found
relief by telling her secret), her inheritance of New England Pu-
ritanism would hardly have protected the poor girl from the
pious strategy of the good fathers. Knowing, as they do, how
to work each proper engine, it would have been ultimately im-
possible for Hilda to resist the attractions of a faith which so
marvellously adapts itself to every human need."

We must not, however, identify Mr. Hawthorne with Hilda.
His language, when speaking in his own .proper person, proves
that, although he appreciated the attraction of the Catholic reli-
gion for such a person as Hilda was, he thought he had reason
to deny that it can " satisfy the soul's cravings " and vindicate its
claim to a divine origin and authority. Searching for this reason

30 HAWTHORNE 's ATTITUDE TOWARD CATHOLICISM. [Oct.,

below the aesthetic surface of Mr. Hawthorne's mind, we still find
it in that idealism of which we have before spoken. It is, name-
ly, his moral and spiritual ideal which he does not find satisfied
by a corresponding actual realization in existing Catholicism as
he sees it. There are a few passages in his writings where this
sentiment finds explicit expression, and these give the clue to an
understanding of the attitude of his mind toward the Catholic
Church.

"To do it justice, Catholicism is such a miracle of fitness for its own
ends, many of which might seem to be admirable ones, that it is difficult to
imagine it a contrivance of mere man. Its mighty machinery was forged
and put together, not on middle earth, but either above or below. If
there were but angels to work it, instead of the very different class of engineers
who now manage its cranks and safety-valves, the system would soon vindi-
cate the dignity and holiness of its origin." *

The words we have italicized are the most significant ones,
and they let us see that the one paramount argument against the
Catholic Church, in Mr. Hawthorne's mind, was just what has
been designated in a former paragraph.

He says the same thing in simpler terms in his account of a
visit to Siena :

" I heartily wish the priests were better men, and that human nature,
divinely influenced, could be depended upon for a constant supply of good
and pure ministers, their religion has so many admirable points. And
then it is a sad pity that this noble and beautiful cathedral should be a mere
fossil shell, out of which the life has died long ago." t

We are not going to make a plea against Mr. Hawthorne's
view. Something which his biographer has said about his dis-
appointment in respect to art can be applied to the matter of re-
ligion as well :

"He looked for the achievement of the impossible, and, not finding it,
failed to give due credit to what was actually accomplished." {

Mr. Hawthorne's judgment of the character of the Roman
and Italian clergy and of the Papal system has not much weight.
On the same page of his biography from which the last quota-
tion has been taken we are told that

" On the Continent he had neither felt nor known anything of the
national social life. Always inclined even in his own country to be rather
a spectator of society than an active participant in it, he had been more so
than ever in England, while in Italy his estrangement had been absolute ;
'and consequently he had been forced to confine himself almost exclusively
to the companionship of art and archaeology."

* Marble Faun, vol. ii. c. 13. ^Italian Note-Books, October 10, 1858.

% Biography, vol. ii. p. 220.

1885.] HA WTHORNE' s A TTITUDE TO WARD CA THOLICISM. 3 T

His residence and travels on the Continent were limited to
eighteen months. As he was leaving Rome he says :

" I looked at everything as if for the last time ; nor do I wish ever to
see any of these objects again, though no place ever took so strong a hold
of my being as Rome, nor ever seemed so close to me and so strangely
familiar. I seem to know it better than my birthplace, and to have known
it longer ; and though I have been very miserable there, and languid with
the effects of the atmosphere, and disgusted with a thousand things in its
daily life, still I cannot say I hate it, perhaps might fairly own a love for
it. But life being too short for such questionable and troublesome enjoy-
ments, I desire never to set eyes on it again." *

Hawthorne was, and remained to the end, the child of his
New-England, Puritan ancestry, a genuine, thoroughgoing son
of the soil of Massachusetts,, and he was at home nowhere else
on this earth, which was much less his real dwelling-place than
the ideal, ethereal realm of his own imagination. And, although
" the superb incarnation of religious faith which St. Peter's pre-
sented .powerfully fascinated him," f there is no sign of his hav-
ing attained a perception of the historical and theological evi-
dence that the Catholic Church is the one only church of Christ
and way of salvation for all men.

He says, in one place :

" Generally, I suspect, when people throw off the faith they were born
in, the best soil of their hearts is apt to cling to its roots." f

He had no doubt that the Catholic religion was one form of
Christianity, good, and even the best for many who believe in it
and practise its precepts. But, in his own case, although he was
a member of no church, he appears to have clung to the roots of
his own hereditary belief as a descendant of New-England Puri-
tans, and to have remained to the last what is called a Liberal
Christian, although his language does not indicate that he was a
Unitarian.

In Una Hawthorne the effect and fruit of the education she
received from her father and mother appeared in the manner of
her religious and practical life during the last few years pre-
ceding her death. After a period of doubt, questioning, and in-
vestigation her brother tells us that "the lofty religious bias of
her nature triumphed over all doubts, and she was confirmed in
the Church of England." *

After her mother's death in 1871, she devoted herself to
works of active charity in London, until her own death in 1877,

* Italian Note Books, May 29, 1859. t Julian Hawthorne, Biog. vol. ii. p. 178.

\ Italian Note-Books, October 10, 1858. Biog^ vol. ii. p. 378.

32 HAWTHORNE" s ATTITUDE TOWARD CATHOLICISM. [Oct.,

which occurred in a Protestant convent at Clevver. The inscrip-
tion on Mrs. Hawthorne's tombstone shows whither her mind
and heart were turned : " I am the Resurrection and the Life,
saith the Lord." Hawthorne had died, away from home, and
alone, thirteen years before the death of his daughter, the last
of this trio of rare and choice souls.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, with his wife and daughter beside him,
presents a specimen in some respects, indeed, unique and uncom-
mon in its beauty, but still typical and representative of a great
number of his immediate countrymen in New England, of other
Americans and of their English kindred. This is true of the one
particular aspect we have been considering-, his attitude toward
Catholicism. For ten who have been converted to the Catholic
faith there are a hundred who have come near enough to it to
exchange the old-fashioned notions and sentiments, once almost
universal among Protestants, for a certain respect, admiration,
and sympathy, varying indefinitely from the liberal views of
Unitarians to those of that considerable class of high-churchmen
or ritualists who are free from the anti-Roman venom with
which some are infected. Yet, they go no further than a certain
point, where they stop, and frequently it cannot be perceived that
they ever seriously deliberate on the question of becoming mem-
bers of the Catholic Church. Those who have been bred up
Catholics from childhood seldom understand what keeps such
people standing aloof. They ask in surprise why they do not at
once believe and obey the teaching of the church. In order to
know how wide and deep the chasm is which separates them, it
is almost necessary to have been on the other side and to have
crossed over. The prejudice which had its origin in the violent
passions of the English and Scottish schism and the polemics of
heresy during the disastrous period of the sixteenth century,
combining with and intensifying the spirit of nationalism, has
isolated the Protestant people of the British isles and their off-
spring in the colonies which they founded from the great com-
monwealth of Christendom. Elizabeth Hawthorne says of the
English people, that for them " there is no right or wrong, only
English and un-English." * There is a measure of justice in this
severe judgment. The people of New England and their kin in
other parts of our republic have inherited a full share of English
pride and all the prejudices of Anglicanism. Separated from the
mediaeval Christendom by a local tradition centuries old, isolated
from modern Catholic peoples by prejudices of race and reli-

* Biog., vol. ii. p. 325.

1885.] HA WTHORNE'S A TTITUDE TO WARD CA THOLICISM. 33

gion, nurtured in the belief that pure Christianity, morality, en-
lightenment, principles of good government, reasonable liberty
both intellectual and political, all the motive forces of genuine
progress and improvement in all directions toward the general
well-being of mankind, have their second fountain-head and
source in the Protestant Reformation the Catholic Church and
religion appear to them as antiquated and foreign. This is their
view, after being freed from their darker and more extreme pre-
judices. People are always more blind and insensible to evils
prevalent in their own country, to which they are habituated,
than they are to those of foreign countries. They have also
partly an artificial standard of measurement which is national
and peculiar, and, in the case of Protestants, sectarian. Thus,
even after their eyes are opened to some of the external beauties,
which are, so to speak, in the periphery of the Catholic religion,
they are still repelled from it as something alien, they fail to
make a correct estimate of its concrete reality, and their ideal is
unsatisfied.

A deeper cause of alienation lies in the fundamental altera-
tion which the original, genuine idea of Christianity has under-
gone in the minds of Protestants. The idea of the church as
the primary and immediate recipient of the doctrine, law, and
grace of Jesus Christ, the medium of their transmission to indi-
viduals, has been changed into that of a mere auxiliary to the
subjective faith and piety by which the individual Christian, in
his own private capacity, comes into an immediate relation to
God. All questions about the constitution of the church are
therefore relegated to a secondary place. The true notion of the
unity of the church is obscured, altered, or entirely lost. It is
no more a question of primary and practical importance, Which
is the one, true church established by Jesus Christ? because it is
not perceived that in this church one must find the faith, the law,
the sacraments of Jesus Christ, and thus the way of everlasting
salvation. That one may find them, that many have found and
do find them there, even that some cannot practically find them
anywhere else ; the admission, even, that the Catholic Church is
the best and most perfect form of Christianity, and that it were
desirable to have all Christians reunited under the pastoral pre-
sidency of the Pope, does not of necessity and always bring a
person to the conclusion that one must walk in the road of the
Catholic Church. Some who were far more learned in history
and theology than Mr. Hawthorne, whose convictions and sym-
pathies were to a greater degree, in respect to a greater num-
VOL. XLII. 3

34 HA WTHORNE' s A TTITUDE TOWARD CA THOLICISM. [Oct.,

her of subjects, in harmony with Catholic doctrine, than his half-
formed, imaginative perceptions, have finally stopped short of the
conclusion which was necessary to clinch and complete their in-
tellectual conversion. Besides recent instances of English and
American Protestants of this sort, there are the signal examples
in Germany of Leo in the present century and Leibnitz in the
eighteenth. There have been and are numbers among the
Greeks and Orientals who would wish to see the schism healed
which has cut them off from the body of the church, but who
have remained in the state of separation. All these, in pro-
portion as they recede from the true Catholic idea of the
unity of the faith, the law, and the church of Christ into
subjectivism and individualism, are affected by that alteration
of the genuine idea of Christianity just now defined some
more, others less. The individual, it is supposed, may work out
his salvation for himself, or by the aid of any one among several
churches. All are looked upon as being included in a kind of
universal Christianity. But if one, catholic and apostolic church
is acknowledged, it is one which tolerates great variations in
faith, and can subsist in separated parts. Holding such inade-
quate notions of the nature and office of the Church, persons who
have quite enlarged and enlightened opinions respecting Catholi-
cism, and warm, generous sympathies with all in it which they
can appreciate, may continue to live apart from any church com-
munion, or within the communion of any church they have been
bred up in or may select, never acknowledging any obligation in.
conscience to become members of the Catholic Church. It is
this conviction and sense of obligation which alone furnishes the
adequate and victorious motive for surmounting obstacles and
repugnances lying in the way of conversion. Experience proves
that the generating and maturing of this conviction is, in the
case of the majority, no easy process. The reconciliation of the
whole body of professing Christians to the true church, so that all
become one flock, in one fold, under one shepherd, is a great
work, a divine work, which must be gradual, and requires time.
We may hope for its ultimate accomplishment, and, in the
meanwhile, even remote and indirect and slow movements tend-
ing in that direction are to be welcomed. We feel grateful and
friendly toward Mr. Hawthorne, and take pleasure in express-
ing our high esteem of his character and works, and our ap-
preciation of the biography which his son has made a worthy
memorial of parents who deserve the best tribute which could
be rendered to them by filial piety.

1885.] THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. 35

THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO.

'. BY THE TOWN-CLERK.

IN some doubtful, untraced way history has left upon me the
impression that a baron of the early ages when barons began to
be was a hard, tyrannical, ignorant man, who drank great quanti-
ties of spirit, beat his wife and his daughters, was envious of his
growing sons, had a few streaks of generosity in him, and, above
all things, hated and oppressed the poor. Whether the ancient
average of barons justified this impression I have not yet had
time to discover. So much that was history twenty years ago
has since become fable that he would be an imprudent man who
would venture to defend the historical impressions of his youth
before examining the latest authorities ; but I always acted on
the impression when speaking or thinking of Mr. Turnham, of
Cherubusco, the principal citizen of our village, and the gracious
friend who had appointed me, a struggling lawyer and a pugna-
cious Catholic, to the position of town-clerk. It was not a very
high distinction, to be sure, to be principal citizen of Cherubusco
a hybrid, nondescript village on Lake Champlain but to the
people who dwelt there it was a deeply interesting position, and
had a considerable deal to do with their personal comfort, occa-
sionally also with their material prosperity ; and it was one rea-
son why I looked upon my patron as a modern type of ancient
baron that he made the common people of the town as miserable
as possible when the fit seized him, and sold them comfort at the
price of a degrading vassalage. It wquld not be charitable to
detail all the enormities, private and public, personal and distri-
butive, which he practised in a year. He was not such a monster
' as I considered an old-time baron. He drank spirits in quantity
and enjoyed an occasional " toot," as my neighbors name a pe-
riod of intoxication, but it was not a matter of scandal for any
one ; he swore in his office, among his cronies, and promiscuous-
ly in the absence of children and clergymen ; he had no religious
belief of any definite character in his own expressive language
being " a free nigger" ; and his morality was of a pattern with
his religion clouded, uncertain, wavering, leaving him no better
than he should be ; but he was the kindest, most indulgent house-

6 THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. [Oct.,

holder that ever lived, was deservedly loved by the members of
his family, and had an amiable wife and rather handsome chil-
dren in spite of a discouraging personal appearance. For Turn-
ham, briefly, had a stiff leg and a face all hair and spectacles. So
much of his skin as was visible above the tide of glass and hair
was either muddily pale or fiery with an erysipelas affection,
always shaded by the wide brim of a homely felt hat. A more
malignant-appearing face I had never seen ; a fiercer expression
no piratical pirate ever wore. As he walked the street, dragging
his stiff leg after him like an evil genius or a familiar spirit, and
bowed to the passing villagers, I interpreted the looks he gave
them to mean, " Be careful, now ; you know me : at any minute I
might cut the earth from under you " ; and the same look seemed
to say to strangers, " You don't know me ; but I'm a terror, and I
might cut the solid earth from under you if you said a cross
word." He had cut happiness out of so many persons' lives that
my interpretation was reasonable, and the title of baron, so far
as it represented my idea, was clearly applicable to him.

Still, barons are men in spite of their odd characteristics and
noble title, and are as apt to cry when pinched as better men.
Mr. Turnham had his good points. One of his best was the
fancy he took for me ; for this fancy, while not doing me much
good, brought him much annoyance from his brother-barons. It
was urged against my appointment that I was a Catholic, that I
was too young, that 1 could not be trusted to keep business se-
crets from the priest, that better men wanted the position of
town-clerk ; to which objections he replied, with his malignant
grin, that he loved Catholics more than hypocritical Protestants,
that he hated old men, that no secrets were entrusted by him to
any one, and that he didn't care a button if Bishop Potter was
after the office of town-clerk no one should get it that year but
me. By this declaration he unflinchingly stood. Furthermore,
he made me his confidant in most matters of business and poli-
tics a position which I, being a very young fool and having fif-
teen years before me in which to make up for present blunders,
accepted with confidence and courage. Behold me, then, on a
fine morning in the month of June, seated in confidential dis-
course with my patron, our heels elevated in a fashion plainly in-
tended to keep our brains from scattering, and he fairly glaring
upon me for the opposition which I offered to his plans concern-
ing the coming village election.

" So you don't believe in buying votes," said he. " On prin-
ciple ? Or are you one of these Young Men's Christian Associa-

1885.] THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. 37

tions, that shout for C. S. Reform in chorus, and in side-street,
dark-night solos buy up all the votes they can git?"

I omit the baron's profanity.

" On principle," I answered benignantly. " It's wrong. It's
against the constitution and the law. It's un-American. It's an
injury to the poor fellows who are tempted. George Washing-
ton wouldn't approve of it. Neither will I."

After sending the venerable Washington to a part of the
other world in which the baron seemed to have a vested interest,
judging from the authoritative way in which he assigned lots
there, and glaring at me several moments, he said :

" Do you mean to hold that principle all your life ? "

" I hope I shall," I replied, with the proper humility of man-
ner and an interior conviction that hope was utterly crushed by
certainty. I was only twenty-one.

" Then let me tell you," said he viciously, "you'll never git a
bigger office than town-clerk. You might as well git out now as
wait till yer kicked out to make way for men that have purer
principles."

" That's good ! " said I. " I'll wait till I'm kicked out, and it
won't be the men with purer principles that'll do all the kicking."

" And what do you propose to do at the election ? " irritably.
" Sit 'round, an' talk, an' stare, an' have old Whiting an' Stacy
an' the rest of 'em askin' what you're doin', and all the rest
of it?"

" Don't mind me," I said. " Let me have my own way, and
I'll do as much work as the best man among 'em, in my own
fashion. If they find any fault after election, I'll resign."

" Well, it's a satisfaction that all Catholics are not so strict in
their way of thinkin'."

" If they aren't they ought to be. They're not Catholics. It
must be a satisfaction to you to see most Protestants acting as
you do. I suppose you will have the usual whiskey-barrel on
tap in this room for the poor Frenchmen and the thirsty gentry
of the town. I can read the future of America in election
whiskey."

He glared for a few minutes and closed the conversation with
a laugh, muttering some indistinct thunders concerning papists
and flinging his books and papers through the room savagely.
I lost myself presently in a sad meditation on vote-buying as a
means of political promotion. There was little doubt of my in-
ability to hold even so inferior a position as that of town-clerk
long while my principles remained at variance with the uni-

38 THE BARON OF CHERVBUSCO. [Oct.,

versal practice of Cherubusco politicians. If Catholic morality
were not quite so stern on that and some other points of political
and business life, how rapid would be the rise of ambitious Ca-
tholic lawyers with a good stock of principle and little cash on
hand !

I " I think/' said Turnham after a time, " you had better hint
to Joe Miron he's a papist, you know that I don't like his talk
around town. He's restive. It looks as if he wanted to bolt the
straight ticket."

" He has a right to bolt."

" And if he does," continued the baron, " let him understand
that he'll get no more work in this town, if I can help it."

" He has a big family," I said "a good wife and five children.
They are not the kind to be left to starve on account of a vote."

" Just let him know how it will be," he replied indifferently.
"They won't starve, you kin bet, but they'll suffer some trouble.
That's good for papists. It's the only thing keeps the critters
down."

Two persons entered the office in succession, transacted some
business, and departed. One was a feeble, sickly woman in rags
pathetically clean, the other a nervous, well-dressed business man.

"Well, Henriette! Good-morning, Sol Dotler! Come to
pay the rent, Henriette?" he knew very well the day would
never come when the poor woman would be able to pay it. " Six
months due to date eighteen dollars. I'll let you off for ten,
seein* it's a hard time for the poor."

Henriette looked at the spectacles and whiskers, fumbled ner-
vously with her rags, and began to tremble.

" The same old story," he said after she had made a few vain
efforts to speak. " No money, not able to work ! Well, let it
go for this time, Henriette! I'll make it up out o' Sol Dotler."

The woman went out shedding grateful tears. The nervous
business man cursed the baron in a friendly fashion, and was
cursed in turn, as he asked for the note which he intended to
take up that morning. It was a small sum, one hundred dollars,
for the use of which one month the baron received the sum of
thirty-five dollars.

" Not a bad job," he said to me a moment later. " A little
business o* that sort would help you along, my boy, if you have a
few hundreds to loan."

" Thus runs the world away," and a heavy heart carries the
young Catholic who tries to run after it in our time, and I sup-
pose in any time. He must strip himself of every principle of

1885.] THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. 39

his faith, if he wishes to keep up with it, of love of his neigh-
bor, love of his country, and love of religion, carrying only in
his grip-sack the shirt of convenience and expediency, and the
trunks and hose of pharisaical morality. So the baron had often
told me ; nor could I doubt his word after a thorough examina-
tion of his and the wardrobes of all the other barons of the coun-
ty ! The items mentioned were not always to be found in their
entirety among these nobles, but I observed that when their
destruction left them morally naked public opinion drove them
either into retirement or into business in the city on a large
scale. The baron, being a family man, still held his scanty ward-
robe together by dint of much patching and darning, and with
the help also of a class of clients whose leader and mouthpiece
was just entering the office on the heels of the reflections which
had passed through my mind after the last remark of Mr. Turn-
ham.

He was a small man in working-clothes, wrinkled, rudely
jointed, and old. His thick gray hair was cut straight across his
neck by the domestic scissors. His whole appearance had the
home like finish peculiar to old brooms and well-used furniture ;
so that the natural dignity of his manner was the more remark-
able by contrast, and left an agreeable impression. His wrin-
kled face was weighted with an expression of sorrow. He bowed
to us both in a grave way, and, turning to the baron, opened his
mouth to speak, but the under-lip trembled so much that he sat
down suddenly and covered his eyes with his hand to hide the
tears that fairly spurted through* his fingers. The baron's face
grew a shade paler at this sight.

" Dupuy," said he, " your boy's dead."

" An' little gell, too," moaned Dupuy. " Bot' die las' night."

The baron started up with a groan, and hopped up and down
a few times in real distress. He, too, was the father of boys and
girls.

" It's too bad, too bad ! " he said. " This diphtheria is the
worst thing in creation. How did it happen, Cyriac? I thought
they were gittin' well yesterday. I could swear the girl was all
right."

He came to the Frenchman's side and sat down to listen to a
father's details of his children's death-struggle.

" M' ole 'oman," said Cyriac, with a visible effort, " watch
Leah ; I tek care o' Joe, me. I clean de t'roat one, two, tree,
much taime. She git bettair, poor Joe ; mais lit'le gell he no git
bettair. Vary weak all de taime choke. O seigneur, c'est ter-

40 THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. [Get,

rible ! " as the memory of her suffering came back to him.
mek him to dhrink de wine et de bif-tea, you see. All de sem
ma little gell no git vary sthrong weaker, weaker, 'n' I tink, me,
his bre't' stop, raight up. Two o'clock d' ole 'oman cry loud,
' O mon Dieu ! Leah die.' I run to him. It is so. Leah die,
easy, easy, easy, laike go to sleep no pain, no scream, no not'-
ing," finishing the description with a gesture of falling easily to
sleep. " Poor Joe hear her moder say he die, 'n' git frightened,
you see, 'n' call me raight off. ' Wot's de madder wid you, Joe?
You 'fraid ? ' , * No, p'pa, no 'fraid me. Mek de pr'ers fo' de soul.
I go after Leah.' * You go after Leah,/^V fou? Leah no die.
Moder 'fraid laike you, 'n' scream. You stay wid Leah, Joe.'
Mais no fool Joe. She say all de taime, ' Mek de pr'ers, p'pa,
mek de pr'ers.' Purt' soon she go after Leah easy, easy, too,
comme de raison. Ah ! seigneur, tout est perdu."

He spoke in broken tones, and with the last words burst into
a fit of sobbing. The baron pressed his hand and turned his
face away to hide the tears that moistened his fierce eyes.
When his eyes were dry again he turned to me,

" Mighty hard, isn't it ? " said he. " An* they were alone, too ;
no one with children 'ud go near 'em. It's the black diphtheria.
Did you git any one to lay the children out, Cyriac ? "

" I fix 'em tout seul," said Cyriac briefly, with an expressive
shrug of the shoulders.

" Well, I suppose it can't be helped, Cyriac. I'm sorry for
you very sorry. It's hard to lose your children after bringin'
'em to that age ; but it's the way things are done in this world,
an' we can't help ourselves."

" Mes enfants se reposent dans les bras du bon Dieu," said
Cyriac, clasping his hands tightly with a sincere but painful effort
at resignation. I translated the sentence for the baron, and was
rewarded with the usual glare. He could not presume to dis-
pute the existence of Heaven at that moment, and raged to have
me find him temporarily muzzled. Old Dupuy informed us that
the children would be buried that evening at sundown, and was
made happy at Mr. Turnham's promise to attend, as, owing to the
malignity of the disease, the ceremony would be private and no
services held in the church until the next morning. The baron
here saw fit to mention a little matter of business. It would have
been in better taste to leave poor Cyriac to his heavy misfortunes,
only that Mr. Turnham was not to be held back from any mea-
sure by the mere dictum of good taste. And, to tell the truth, the
matter was not calculated to interfere with Cyriac's sorrow. It

1885.] THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. 41

was as if one had said to him, Your hat is awry, or, Button your
coat and it will sit better, while he was wiping away his tears.

" To-morrow, Cyriac, if you don't mind," said the baron
casually, " we'll talk over that bolt of the Duquette boys. It
looks as if they mean to hold off till the other party buys 'em."

A deeper shade settled on Dupuy's face, and I saw that he
looked at his horny fingers, as if a new and startling difficulty had
sprung suddenly from the deformed brown joints.

" I t'ink, me, it is de pries'," he said slowly, with a long-drawn
sigh. The baron stared at him with his mouth open, and Cyriac
met the stare with a cringing smile.

" Purt' bad boy dem Duquettes, M'sieu' Tu'n'am," he said
gravely, seeing that the baron did not or would not understand
the smile, whose meaning was perfectly clear to me. " Bad Cat'-
lique, no go t' churc', all taime drunk, no spik French French no
nice, f'r dem. Las' mont' big change. Dey mek de confession,
tek pew in de churc', no drink no more big change. I think, me,
it is de pries'."

Now the baron understood, and his face showed some such
expression as must have rested on the face of the first Roman
emperor who discovered the presence and the power of the
pope in Rome.

" That's the new priest," he said briefly. Cyriac nodded.
" Has he said anything to you ? "

Cyriac shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.

" Tell me," shouted the baron, bringing down his fist with a
crash on the desk, " did he speak to you ? "

" Turnham," I suggested gently, " let me remind you "

"You " But it will not do to record his answer. Had I
said simply, Remember his dead children, and left myself out of
the suggestion, its effect would have cooled him instantly. Cy-
riac was frightened, but calm and polite.

" She say some word," he replied, " an' I t'ink, me, she no say
word. ' Cyriac Dupuy' " imitating the tone and manner of the
priest " * 'f you see de mans to buy 'n' sell de vote, tell me, tell
me all taime.' '

" That's all ? " said the baron, holding his 'wrath in check until
he was bursting like a boy in smothered laughter.

"All," replied Cyriac briefly, standing up to make his low,
old-fashioned bow, with his hat describing a circle in his hand.

"It's just as well, Cyriac," drawing a paper from his open
safe and shaking it at him with a most baronial air. " When the
priest comes foolin' around you an' talkin' o' the wickedness o*

42 THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. [Oct.,

buyin' votes, just think o' that an' you're safe." An extra shade
of humility lodged in Cyriac's wrinkles. " I won't stand no
cure's nonsense. He may keep you from voting as I want you
to, but he can't stave off a mortgage. I'll squeeze you, my boy
I'll squeeze you."

" Turnham," I said, disgusted, " remember his children." The
baron blushed. No one unacquainted with him would have no-
ticed the purple current stealing behind his hat, whiskers, and
spectacles. He hopped over to Cyriac, going out of the door,
and slipped a bill into his hand while gently patting his back.

"It's all right," he said gently; "we'll settle this another
time, and I'll surely be at the funeral."

My youth alone excused the antics in which I indulged after
the door closed on the Canadian. I gravely jumped over several
chairs, walked around them, stood on my head, and turned a
boyish cartwheel to the musical accompaniment of the baron's
profanity. On this occasion he swore more like an emperor than
a baron, if we suppose that felicity and fluency follow a person's
rank. If verbal electricity could be stored in a material atmos-
phere, the office would have exploded on the spot.

"That accounts," said he, "for the Duquettes "the only
words which were not pure exclamation in a five minutes' dis-
course.

" I'm glad of it," said I ; "I rejoice in it. I don't know much
about Father O'Shaughnessy "

" What ! " cried he, " is that his name ? "

" What's in a name?" said I. "Wait till you see the man.
He's so small that it seems ridiculous he should have so powerful
a name. I'll tell you what he did in Buckeye County two years
ago." The baron, who had been stupefied at the name, looked
interested. " A Democratic judge, who lived across the way
from him, had a sewer which emptied into the priest's garden,
and because it was cut off brought the matter into court, meanly
preferring that his neighbor should die of typhoid than to dig a
way for his sewerage. The judge was the county head of his
party. An election was near ; the priest went into it, and the
county, for the first time in sixteen years, went Republican. I'm
glad he's here. You won't buy any more Frenchmen. You
won't shake mortgages at them when they talk of voting as they
please. You won't see them running like chickens at the cluck
of a hen whenever you crook your finger. Best of all, you will
now need me and my methods to hold these people on your side.
Influence now is more than money. I can coax where you can't

1885.] THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. 4^

bribe or threaten. Do you see ? Do you understand your posi-
tion ? Father O'Shaughnessy will skewer you like a fly on a
pin, and I say again I'm glad of it."

" Oh ! you air" snapped he, with his most intense nasal
drawl. " You air glad of it, you son of a wild Irishman, you

ignorant papist, you ! Well, I'll show you just what that

priest amounts to ! I'll buy more Frenchmen than I ever did.
I'll buy your Irishmen ; I'll buy the hull town, if I need it. And
the barrel of whiskey '11 stand jest where you re, standin' ; and I'll
set every p'isonous Kanuck 's drunk as Noah, and I'll march 'em
up to the polls jest as usual, an' have 'em vote under my eye ;
an* if they don't, the niggers ! if they cut and run, the sinners !
I'll cut the earth from under 'em ; I'll fling 'em out of the town
into Canada as poor as they came into it. An' as for you an'
your notions, if you want to stand by Father O'Shaughnessy "

" That's my name, sir," said a thin, precise voice at the door.
The baron had been hopping about the office, and, being close to
the door when it opened, fairly bawled the name into the visi-
tor's face. The little man was not as much surprised as the
baron, and his keen gray eyes studied the stupid expression
on Turnham's face as calmly as though it were a brass door-
knocker.

" Come in," said Turnham feebly, as he hopped to his desk
and mechanically struck a business attitude. "Won't you sit
down ? "

" Thank you," said the precise voice. " I want a ton of coal
sent up to the house this afternoon, if possible."

" I'll send it up," said the baron briskly. At this point T
ventured to introduce the two magnates.

" You have a good work to do here," said Turnham roughly,
as a salve to his recent confusion, " in sendin' the children to
school. They don't go, the half of 'em."

" Pay their fathers decent wages," said the priest, " and the
children will attend. Can a dollar a day eight months of the
year support five persons decently ? If the school is all they say
it is, I don't blame them for remaining away."

" How is that ? " said the baron angrily, for the school was his
pet device and chief diversion.

" Another time I'll explain, sir. Briefly, do you believe in
teaching Latin and physiology in a town whose people are born
to labor hard all their lives? I wonder you never asked your-
self the question before. Excuse me now, as I am in a hurry.
I'll give you a chance to answer in a day or two."

44 THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. [Oct.,

He bade us good-morning and went out hurriedly, leaving
the baron to chew his pen-holder and to confide to me his im-
pression that the priest was a vain busybody and needed a good
fright in order to settle him in his proper position.

" Does he think," ,said he, " that priests only should study
Latin ? "

" Between you and his reverence," I replied, " Cyriac Dupuy
will be torn to shreds at election-time."

Poor Cyriac! As he stood looking into the double grave
which held the two bodies dearest to him in this world, the
fabled America of his childhood seemed as desolate and bleak as
Anticosti, and he sighed in his quiet and polite way over the
peace enjoyed in his native Canadian village, where death was
never so violent and unkind, where great disasters by land and sea
were heard of but once in a lifetime, where mortgages were
practically unknown, and where votes, voting, bribery, and
barons were institutions that concerned only the rich and had
little concern with the sorrows and joys of the poor. The peace
that Cyriac dreamed of, although he thought it a Canadian
possession, was really the natural peace of careless childhood ;
but because he had left Canada a child, to begin his apprentice-
ship to labor and sorrow in the States, it seemed to him happi-
ness was a growth of his native soil as it seems to all of us,
indeed, whether success or sorrow meets us in the last days.
And Cyriac, had he been compelled to return to Canada, would
have looked for it as naturally as for the roses which grew in the
front yard and the delicious peas that covered the paternal acre.
Candidly, America, in the person of the baron, had been kind,
and yet unjust, to him. He had reached Cherubusco in his fif-
teenth year, when the baron was a baby almost; but the baron's
father had given him work and encouragement and favor, and
had urged him to learn English well and to become a citizen of
the country. He did not succeed with the English, and, because
party spirit was not very warm in earlier days, was not hurried
to the other. As a matter of business, Turnham, junior, on suc-
ceeding his father, pointed out to him that were he naturalized
he might make a few dollars on his vote at each election ; where-
upon Cyriac went through the usual formalities, and, on receiv-
ing a certain sum for depositing a bit of paper in a box one elec-
tion-day, began to think that the American Constitution was a
great thing. He spread the news among his fellows, and imme-
diately after it became the French fashion to haggle on election-
day with politicians, and to return home in the cool midnight a

1885.] THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. 45

few dollars ahead of the world or full to the brim with bad whis-
key. You can fancy the astonishment with which I first heard
an honest and virtuous Canadian openly grumble on receiving
for his vote a dollar less than his neighbor, and the deeper aston-
ishment with which I listened to a committee of barons bemoan-
ing the treacherous designs of Catholics on the bulwarks of
American freedom. Yet this moral turpitude really existed, and
the defenders of the aforementioned bulwarks were deepening
it daily, adding to it, in fact, and were bound to hold the igno-
rant, innocent Canadians to their attack on the bulwarks, if they
had to send half their forces to the enemy's rear and bayonet
them into battle.

How it happened that Cyriac became the scapegoat of his
countrymen amid his bitter misfortunes is accounted for by two
circumstances : that he marshalled the hosts of bought voters for
the baron, and that he one day brought out the goose-pimples
of patriotic honor on Father O'Shaughnessy by artlessly men-
tioning how much he sold his vote for each year. From that un-
guarded admission dated Cyriac's woes. He had the duties of
citizenship sharply explained to him, and was made acquainted
with the criminality of his acts. The priest and the baron both
threatened him, the one with the terrors of the law, the other
with the mortgage ; and as he looked at the steady alternatives
he thought, with the poet, " In truth, how am I straitened ! "
However, the mortgage was such a fixed, dread certainty, and
Father O'Shaughnessy 's temper being a still unknown quantity,
Cyriac determined to appeal to the priest for a milder interpre-
tation of the law. He spoke to him after the funeral service was
over.

" M'sieu' le Cure." said he with grave politeness, " I laike to
spik de few word wid you, m'sieu', 'bout de vote."

Monsieur le Cure bowed with a very cold face so cold, in
fact, that Cyriac hastened to say :

" I know, me, you spik thrue, m'sieu'. I mek mysel' vary sorry
dat I sell de vote, mats I know nottin' f r de counthry, 'n' M'sieu'
Tu'n'am say, * All raight, all raight, Cyriac ; you mak' some monay,
I git some vote all raight, all raight, ALL raight.' I no t'ink, me,
all wrong. M'sieu' Tu'n'am big man fr de counthry, m'sieu',
vary big man. Mek de work f r poor pipple, mek de house,
len' de monay, git de job vary good neighbor, oh ! vary good
neighbor."

After this prologue Cyriac twisted his hat and waited for a
reply which might give him a chance to declare the object of his

46 THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. [Oct.,

visit. Monsieur le Cure O'Shaughnessy, however, was as dumb
as if he were born so. Cyriac came to the point then desperately.

" Purt' soon, m'sieu', dey mek de vote f r 'lection. Some
buy, some sell. No mattair fr de raight or de wrong ; buy, sell
all same. I t'ink, me, no harm " he hesitated for the right words
to express a delicate and embarrassing thought, and then said
in tumultuous patois : " If all others can buy and sell, why not I,
for this one time only for this one time ? " It was his last chance,
his last hope, and Monsieur le Cur6 knew it and laughed rather
heartlessly in his face. Not for that oh ! no but at his reason-
ing. He caught the emphasis on the last words and their piteous
eagerness.

11 Why for this one time, Cyriac Dupuy ? " he asked, and saw at
once by the expression on the man's face that it was the proper
question to put. " Why for this one time, Mr. Dupuy?"

More hat-twisting and hesitation ! It was so dead a certainty,
that mortgage, why need the priest be made acquainted with its
existence ? Cyriac looked out sadly on the green lawn where to
his mournful fancy the document which the baron had menaced
him with stalked like a sheriff outside Congress awaiting his
noble prey ; and as his gaze wandered up to the new-made graves,
and he compared the grief of that day with the new griefs that
priest and baron were making for him, a few resistless tears
streamed over his face. He was a man, and therefore ashamed
of them ; and because Father O'Shaughnessy took his emotion
coolly, being used to tears, he sat down and in mingled English
and patois explained his straitened position.

" It is too bad," said the priest when he had finished, " and I
consider Turnham a cruel man. But if worse were to happen
you, Cyriac, if you were to be thrown out naked, you could not
engage in this detestable traffic in votes. You must let your
fellows alone. You can vote as you please. But to sell your
vote, to buy others, to do this dirty work no ! no ! no ! Let
your house be sold, let everything go; but be honest, Cyriac,
and true to the teachings of your church."

Cyriac knew somewhat of those teachings, but saw no connec-
tion between religion and voting, and was minded to tell the
priest that the catechism said nothing about it. Yet why dis-
pute ? The priest, had pointed out the law and the right, and he
was bound to follow both at any cost. If there were no mort-
gage the cost would be trifling ; now it included his little posses-
sions, the savings of a lifetime. He rose to depart in silence,
with his despair and his resolution written on his seamed face.

1885.] THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. 47

" You will do as I have advised ? " said the priest kindly.

" Purt' hard, m'sieu' ; mais," shrugging the shoulders, " I
must."

" And if you suffer for it," added the priest, " never fear but
that I will do all I can for you."

Which was small consolation to Cyriac, whose business eye
saw the immense disproportion between his poverty and the
baron's wealth.

"I lose de house," he said briefly, and his reverence felt the
implied reproach without anger.

" Better to lose that than your honest name, Mr. Dupuy.
Better to be poor and to lose your dear earnings than to be a
shame to Canada and a danger to this country. Better to have
no house than to own one at the price you are to pay for yours."

His tone impressed the poor man, if his words did not.
Cyriac could not see the relation of vote-buying to shame and
danger and dishonesty, and felt no emotion on hearing these
stately sentences ; but he knew " f r sure " that the priest and the
church regarded it as a great crime and was therefore tied to the
necessity of avoiding it for ever. What a dull pain beat against
his heart all that day ! He thought with mournful satisfaction
that, while himself and his old wife would lose their home, the
children were never again to be in danger of losing theirs. Who
held a mortgage on a graveyard, or who would throw the dead
from their shelter ? Cyriac had riever read the annals of the
Gironde.

The baron had been present at the funeral, and had noted
sourly the interview with the priest. Was it that circumstance
which tightened his nervous, vicious grasp on Cyriac's arm at
their next meeting ? He dared not look in the baron's face, and
would have given much to be able to forget the many favors
father and son had heaped on him. They weighted him heavier
than the mortgage. Turnham was breathing hard, and the beads
of sweat started out on his forehead, as he came face to face with
his henchman and with a terrible thought which Cyriac's sad
face suggested.

" Cyriac " his voice shook like a leaf " my two boys have
the diphtheria. What if they should die ? "

" Mon Dieu ! " cried Cyriac as the remembrance of his own
suffering rushed upon him, " c'est effrayante. Git de bes' doc-
tor. Clean the t'roat vary much, V pray on de bon Dieu."

Pray to the good God! It was the very last remedy which
would enter the baronial mind ; but in his excited state, recalling

48 THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. [Oct.,

the number of faith-cures which had taken place in certain parts
of the country, and knowing the depth and strength of Cyriac's
faith, he said, and to this day denies that he said :

" Dupuy,you pray for 'em. If faith an' pra'er kin save, you're
the man for that business."

And his voice broke into a wail pathetic enough to veil the
ridiculousness of the remark from the humorous eye.

Cyriac volunteered his services in nursing the boys, and was
brought to the house by the grateful baron. In a village which
had suffered much from the ravages of diphtheria it was difficult
to secure the steady services of a neighbor. The baron, indeed,
would not have asked so great a favor. He was rather anxious
than otherwise that friends with children in their family should
remain away, and never opened his door to a knock until the
visitor was made acquainted with the fatal presence within. His
haggard face would then be thrust through the barely-opened
door and business transacted briefly. In four days he did not
once come to the office. Day and night he and Cyriac haunted
the sick-rooms of the children, sleeping fitfully, talking mourn-
fully of life's chances, working with might and main to fight off
the disease. In the critical moments when man and medicine
could do no more, and nature had hard work to assert itself, he
stood in silent agony, squeezing the old man's rough hand and
muttering :

" I know now what you suffered," with his hard eyes fixed on
the young faces. Meanwhile Cyriac was praying " on de bon
Dieu," and the baron was solicitous to know if he prayed still.

Occasionally pressing business of an unusual nature made it
necessary for me to intrude on his grief. I was struck with the in-
tensity of anguish and anxiety expressed in his face, never having
credited him with a human feeling so deep and sincere. He heard
my account listlessly, and in like fashion gave me my directions.

" How are the boys ? " I asked when about to go.

" Would you like to see them ? " he said, with a gesture of
hopelessness. It was the fourth day the day of the crisis.
" But I forgot. You have brothers and sisters. It is not the
place for you."

And although I protested, he would not permit me to enter
the sick-room.

11 I don't want any human being to suffer this way," said he,
unconsciously laying his hand on his heart, while his eyes wan-
dered drearily towards the inner chambers. He was suffering
in all truth, and I thought it best to defer some information con-
cerning the election until another time. Such tenderness ! such

1885.] THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. 49

affection ! I could not believe it. And yet in how many in-
stances of his life had I seen the baron as charitable and human-
hearted as he was often hard and cruel ! Ten minutes after I left
his house four day-laborers presented themselves before him to
protest against a wage of ninety cents a day.

" How much do you pay for your board? " said he.

" Three dollars a week," said the laborers.

" That leaves you a hundred dollars a year, boys, to dress on
and spend. If you had any more you'd drink it. You're all
single, an' it's quite enough for you. If you had women an'
children to look after I might raise you twenty cents."

Vainly they pleaded, argued, threatened. After cursing him
heartily for a stingy devil, and being cursed uproariously in
turn, they departed. It was my good-fortune to encounter him
later in the day. The information I held could not be longer
kept from him, humiliating as it was to my pride. The election-
eering processes were all disordered. Father O'Shaughnessy,
in a quiet way, had sat on vote-buying among the Canadians,
and there was a general break along the line. Nor could I, with
all my persuasiveness, after all my boasting, induce even a hand-
ful to promise their votes for the baron. I humbly explained the
situation to him. Cyriac happened to be in the room looking
for -a medicine-bottle.

" Do you hear that? " said the baron. The old man shrugged
his shouklers and smilingly shook his head. He was out of poli-
tics this year.

" You've got to straighten things out," said the baron boldly.
" I'll let you off duty. Go an' see the boys. Promise 'em any-
thing they ask. Git 'em all into line, an' after they vote we'll
settle with 'em."

Cyriac listened to these directions, given with old-time free-
dom and directness, as the condemned listens to the sheriff's
legal reasons for taking away his life ; then he shook his head and
continued his search for the bottle.

" Cyriac, sit down here," shoving a chair towards him. Cy-
riac sat down seriously. " What nonsense has the priest been
stuffin' ye with now ? You an't goin' back on us at the last
minnit without warnin', be you ? If you were goin' to do that,
why didn't you let us know days back when we could have filled
yer place? Oh ! no; you've got to come to time this onct, an*
next year, if you say so, we'll count you out."

" Counting-in is the fashion this year," said I, referring to a
recent political event.
VOL. XLII. 4

50 THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. [Oct.,

" Just so." And a smile glimmered for a moment on the waste
of beard. "You've got to count me into office this year, Cy-
riac," patting his knee kindly, "and after that stay at home.
Your priest is foolin' you. Everybody buys and sells votes.
It's the custom of the country. It may be wrong where the
priest comes from ; it is not wrong here. I won't ask you to buy
a vote. Go an' talk to the boys. Square 'em up ; straighten 'em
out. Git 'em to promise their votes ; see that they vote right,
an' I'll do the rest. An't that fair?"

It looked fair, but, as we all knew, the looks did not here in-
dicate the disposition.

" No use," said Cyriac nervously. " I no more buy de vote,
me."

" Well, well," said the baron, with a patient sigh and a curi-
ous inspection of the wrinkled face whose owner so stubbornly
defied him. " You don't see what I mean. You needn't buy.
Talk to the boys. Why won't you do that ? "

" To talk is to buy," answered Cyriac, with shrewdness and
dignity.

" It's the last time I'll ask you to do it, Cyriac. We can't do
without your influence now, an' if you go back on me I'm fixed
for this year. You won't be able to stand this town if I lose an'
the boys know I lost through you. The place '11 git too hot for
you."

Cyriac felt the force of this statement, which the baron pro-
ceeded to amplify, and his distress and anguish were evident.
He brushed his hair and fidgeted wofully, and once or twice I
thought he was about to surrender, for this year at least. So did
the baron, who, when he had worked up the old man's feelings
to a proper pitch, pushed him gently towards the door, saying,
as if the matter were settled :

" Do your best with the boys, Cyriac, an' the hull thing '11 be
forgotten to-morrow."

Houseless, childless, friendless, driven from the town which
had given him a home for forty years ! A more violent tempta-
tion was never thrust upon any man, and Cyriac was not to be
blamed for the momentary yielding before these terrible conse-
quences. He walked to the door in a dream, seeing on one side
his poverty and exile, his defiance of Monsieur le Cur6 on the
other. The thought of crime did not occur to him, for he could
see no crime in vote-buying. Nor did he know how wildly con-
sequences had been exaggerated by the baron, and how deter-
mined a friend he had in Monsieur O'Shaughnessy. His tempta-
tion was real, if its circumstances were not, and so he turned

1885.] THE BARON OF CHERUBUSCO. 51

submissively away, put on his hat, turned the knob, and hesi-
tated. It was a flash of baronial genius which prompted Turn-
ham to supplement that hesitation as he did. He drew from his
pocket the mortgage on Cyriac's house, showed it to him silently,
and tore it into bits so small that no art could ever make it again
a legal instrument. The old man shook as if with an ague,
stretched out his hand to protest, while the unwilling tears
streamed over his pallid face.

" M'sieu' Tu'n'am," said he brokenly, "your fader vary good,
you bettair. Me go back on Kennedy [Canada]. You 'ave de
house raight off, but no more buy de vote."

With these words he left the room, and the baron stood gaz-
ing now at the door, now at the litter of torn paper on the car-
pet, while the clock ticking on the shelf seemed hammering the
dead stillness into the very furniture.

" Beaten by a damned Frenchman!" hissed my patron as he
threw himself and his leg out of the room.

Beaten ! Yes, the baron was beaten, routed horse, foot, and
artillery, by the same power which had beaten imperial Cassar;
and he felt very sore over it. Being a shrewd politician, how-
ever, he was determined to make the most of altered circum-
stances, and my mock regrets at being compelled to rank him
with the judge of Buckeye County were received with equa-
nimity. His children were getting well, and when the election
came off matters went so very smoothly and prosperously that
he could afford to be chaffed about sacerdotal influence. Cyriac
came to the polls, deposited a vote for his some-time master, and
returned home to finish the packing of his household goods.
Quite enough votes for any purpose were still to be purchased in
Cherubusco, and the baron was elected by a reduced but still
handsome majority. Father O'Shaughnessy voted for him on
my recommendation a fact which made his first visit of cere-
mony to the baron's office an agreeable occasion. He talked
cordially on the questions of the day, read the baron a lecture on
bribery with a general application, and asked him to prevent
gentlemen who held mortgages on the property of the poor from
using said mortgages improperly ; which my patron promised
to do, and consequently Cyriac did not go to Canada. He re-
sumed in time the old affectionate relations with Turnham, but
no word was ever spoken to him of vote-buying. The baron
was content with legitimate service from him, and to this day
falls into a deep melancholy when reminded of the occasion of
his henchman's victory over him.

52 SOME RECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. [Oct.,

SOME RECENT ITALIAN NOVELS.

IN a recent article in the North American Review " Ouida "
the most popular and meretricious of living English novelists-
brings the charge against English fiction that it does not describe
what she calls " life." It is realistic, she admits, but its realism
is merely the faithfully-depicted interiors of the country hall, the
vicarage, or the doctor's house. " Ouida " thirsts for something
more. She wants the intrigues and the shameless double-mean-
ings of a certain portion of English high society put into print.
She has tried to do this herself. But she labors under the dis-
advantage of writing in a language in which thought, according
to her opinion, is hypocritically and habitually concealed ; there-
fore she points to the modern French literature of fiction as the
realization of her ideal. She points with admiration to the fact
that the modern French novelist does not write for young girls.
It is evident that he writes for a class of females of whose exist-
ence young girls are expected to be ignorant. M. Renan, how-
ever, regards French fiction in somewhat the same spirit in
which " Ouida " looks on English fiction. He sums it up in the
words, '* endless stories of middle-class life."

The realism which " Ouida " finds refreshing does not satisfy
M. Renan. Nevertheless realism is the order of the day so
-much the order of the day that an appearance of reaction to-
wards the romantic and preternatural has become visible of late.

The fashionable realism is not the realism of fine art, but the
realism of photography. Here, Mr. Howells has achieved it in
A Modern Instance and The Rise of Silas Lapham without bring-
ing a blush to the cheek of any young person. Anthony Trol-
lope achieved it in most of his novels. In The Warden and Bar-
chest er Towers he went above the limits of this soulless art. But
in all his photographs of life many of them are more like faded
daguerreotypes now we find none that would satisfy " Ouida's "
demand for the mention of the unmentionable.

English daily life, according to Trollope, is a stupidly mate-
rialistic life, in which to be " nice " and rich are the best rewards
for the living of it. The soul is as utterly left out of it as it is
out of De Goncourt and Zola's photographs. It is the boast of
modern realists that they do not recognize the soul. Our Ame-
rican realists do not make this boast ; they simply leave out the
soul altogether. Mr. Henry James' people have no souls.

1 885.] SOME RECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. 53

They have nerves plenty of quivering and sensitive nerves,
always ready to respond to petty emotions ; but as our novelists
have never seen the soul, they leave it out of their work.

English-writing novelists give us very good photographs of
life, choosing, according to " Ouida's " standard, only discreetly-
draped figures in their landscapes, though their photographs are
shadows of truth. From the advanced realistic point of view
they are ridiculously pure. It must be admitted that, whatever
be the ethical faults of the modern American novel, it hardly
ever contains an allusion which may be construed, even by the
most evil-minded, to be licentious. The English novel sometimes
touches the line over which the impatient " Ouida" urges it to
step. But decency is very seldom outraged. This reticence is
due to the fact that the great army of readers of English novels
is made up of young girls. The free language of dissolute men
in gambling clubs is not reproduced ; the coarseness of vice is
delicately touched up by the photographer with water-colors ;
and so, among English-speaking people, the novel lies near the
prayer-book or Thomas a Kempis on the sitting-room table, and
when young girls take it up it is not torn from them and thrown
into the fire.

We hope that the judicious Spanish or Italian parent makes
bonfires frequently of the popular light literature which finds its
way into his house. The works of Seiiores Galdos and Valera
are favorites in Spain. It is a sad commentary on Spanish lite-
rary progress that the religious school of great writers, like Fer-
nan Caballero, Zorrilla, and Antonio de Trueba, should be follow-
ed by imitators of Sand and the De Goncourts and apologists
for sensuality and heresy.

If novels have come to be what comedies used to be the
mirrors of society Italian society, as reflected by Italian novel-
ists, is in the last stage of decadence and corruption. The novel-
ists themselves have brooded so much over various " isms," psy-
chical, physiological, and physical, and over the novels of Zola,
that their morbid indecency and immoral audacity might please
" Ouida " herself.

A search for popular novels written in Italian for Manzoni
first made it possible to write in Tuscan and not in dialects, and
there are now novels written by Genoese and Venetians in a lan-
guage understood of all Italy brought to light the books of a
woman. She is as well known to novel-readers in Italy as
" Ouida " is to novel-readers in America ; and, in proportion, her
works are read by as many. She has been named " the little Ital-

SOME XECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. [Oct,

ian George Sand." She is the leader of the Neapolitan school
of realists, which, by the way, has the characteristics of our own
Milwaukee school of poetry. It is sensuous, sensual, emotional,
and morbid.

Circumstances rule the heroes and heroines of this novelist
Matilda Serao; they know only a blind fate which takes the
place of God. God and the devil and the soul went out with
the old order of things, and the deification of human passions
and the new dogma that no human being can resist sin, if it
tempts him alluringly, came in. Matilda Serao tries to teach
that what the old-fashioned believers in Christianity call virtue
is a mere lack of opportunity or the result of a combination of
circumstances. Her people do not ask, with one of William
Black's heroines, What is the use of temptation, if one doesn't
yield to it? They emphatically assert it in their lives. She ana-
lyzes every little feeling of her characters with tedious minute-
ness. Mr. Henry James himself could not divide the results of a
suppressed sneeze on one of his hero's nerves more fractionally
than Matilda Serao presumably Signora does. The mania for
microscopic analysis of character and emotion is found in mod-
ern writers of fiction side by side with the cynical and pessi-
mistic philosophy of unbelief ; in the works of the Italian writers
there is evident an affectation of scientific physical knowledge by
which all phenomena are explained. The editor who first brought
Matilda Serao before the Italian reading public was De Zerbi, a
journalist whose novels are elaborately " scientific." Matilda
Serao, like most of her school, has not escaped the influence of
Darwin, softened by De Zerbi. The moral tone of this writer,
of whom foreign critics say Italy ought to be proud, is below
that of any English female novelist even of Rhoda Broughton.
One of her most widely-circulated stories is called The Virtue of
Che c china.

Checchina is intended to be a study of the modern, emanci-
pated Italian woman. She has no scruple about vice, except the
slight fear which the members of a more scientific and progres-
sive society will soon laugh away that she may be found out.
Following the effete traditions that enslaved Italy before Gari-
baldi et aL liberated it, Checchina had foolishly bound herself in
marriage to a poor Roman doctor. A certain Marchese d'Ara-
gona dines with her husband. Pleased with her, and knowing
the character of the scientific and liberated Italian women, he
hints that he is a much richer man than her husband, and that it
would be to her advantage to change her abode. She thinks

1885.] SOME RECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. 55

about it. She weighs the pros and cons in a " scientific " way.
None of the scruples which the novelists of the past, believing in
Christianity, would have put into his heroine's mind trouble
this enlightened woman. Finally, assisted by an invitation in
writing from the marchese, she concludes to change. But she
finds a porter in the door of the marchese's house. She feels the
awkwardness of the position, for the porter may have the preju-
dice in favor of virtue formerly entertained by society and still
held by ultramontanes. Checchina does not like to go in. She
passes the door twice. The porter is still there. She is asham-
ed to enter and she goes home. Thus " virtue " conquers !

The writer tries hard to be natural, but she succeeds in what
the assthetes in Punch used to call " intensity." She is often
coarse and sometimes clever. She has talent, which she misuses
in the interest of that handmaid of the devil modern realism.
She is fond of what her admirers call physiological studies. One
of these is called Fantasia. It has had a great success. It is the
story of a woman called Lucia, who is worthy of the most scrofu-
lous of the French realists. The only substitute for religion in
this novel is a kind of spiritistic superstition ; and this, next to the
morbid sensuality of it, is saddening and disheartening. What
hope is there for readers of books like Fantasia, who turn from
the pure model of Manzoni to plunge into the fetid air of dis-
secting-rooms and the enjoyment of " realism " which might be
the dream of a morphine drunkard ? The literary father of
Matilda Serao seems to have been Flaubert. Not having read
his Madame Bovary, we take the statement of an Italian critic,
Giovanni Boglietti, that Fantasia is an imitation of that French
novel. It is one of the worst examples of that progressive Italian
school which some critics are hailing as the happy first-fruit of
"regenerated Italy."

Lucia and Catarina are pupils in a Neapolitan convent-school.
Lucia is a thoroughly " progressive " creature. She longs to find
all the harmonies of the universe most congenial to her nature.
She is all nerves one of the heartless, soulless, feverish worship-
pers of Venus taken from the French stage and transplanted to
Italian soil ; a creature whose idea of heaven is partly the Mo-
hammedan idea and partly that of the victim of opium, whose
idea of hell is the absence of excitement. No doubt such women
exist like gorgeously-colored fungi on the rotting trunk of an
irreligious civilization, but they are probably more often met
with in the literature of fiction than in real life.

Catarina is represented as a simple and confiding girl. She

56 SOME RECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. [Oct.,

adores her friend's mock-heroics, and when the latter tries to
commit suicide she interferes to save her. Lucia then breaks
her rosary of lapis-lazuli and gives part of it to her friend. Ca-
tarina and she promise to be faithful unto death. The adroit
Signora Serao makes a great deal out of this school-girl promise.
The fantastical Lucia leaves school, and later we find her and
her friend again together. Catarina has married Andrea, a
healthy, genial, honest man, with no sympathy with Lucia's ego-
tistical ranting. He jeers privately at her affectation of peculiar
mysticism. Catarina resolves to make her husband and her
friend like each other. She succeeds only too well. Lucia fas-
cinates Andrea, deceives his wife, and writes this charming para-
graph to her friend of the lapis-lazuli :

" My father would not consent to my becoming a nun, although I de-
sired it. I prayed to God, and one day, like St. Paul upon the road to
Damascus, a light dazzled me. The voice of the Lord spoke to me :
There is close by thee a sacrifice to be made, a work 'for thee to accom-
plish. Thy cousin, Alberto Sanna, loves thee. He is half-dead of consump-
tion. Marry him ; you will be his sister of charity."

Lucia, after her sacrifice to this exalted duty, takes her hus-
band to visit her friends, Andrea ^and Catarina. Catarina, who
is very domestic, devotes herself entirely to the comfort of Al-
berto, who is an invalid wrapped up in himself. The " slave of
duty," Lucia devotes herself to Andrea, and suddenly elopes with
him. She leaves a note for Catarina. What could she do ? she
asks; how could she resist her fate? She takes off with her
an image of the Madonna, which she holds fast to under all cir-
cumstances, and which she regards without any religious feeling.

Catarina, so good, so devoted, so confiding, sees Alberto die
comfortably, and, crushed by circumstances, does not resist her
fate. She recalls her vow to Lucia. She promised to die for
her happiness, if necessary. There is no religion in the world that
Signora Serao creates. As an example of what the world would
be in a time of " perfect progress " Signora Serao's Fantasia is as
horrible as it is instructive. Catarina arranges her household
affairs. She shuts herself into a room with a pan of charcoal, and,
clasping the lapis-lazuli rosary, she dies, suffocated, true to her
school-girl friendship. Nobody could help it all. " In my time,"
says one of the personages in a play of Augier " in my time we
had God ! "

In Signora Serao's time they do not have God. They have
fate, which is one word for the flesh and the devil. English crit-
ics have treated Signora Serao's Fantasia very leniently. A
writer in Blackwood's Magazine recently said of it : " The whole

1885.] SOME RECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. 57

book is written with great care, fine psychological perception
and poetic intuition, and is faithful to nature even in those por-
tions in which the writer brings a morbid complacency to bear
upon the descriptions of sensual gratifications/'

This is a damning verdict from a complacent critic. It might
be used to show that the Italian femme-auteur does not differ
from the French femme-auteur, and that the English femme-auteur
of the " Ouida " and Broughton kind is prevented only by the
" hypocrisy " of the English language from going as deep into
the morbid imaginings of corrupt minds as either of her sisters.
Another " great " novel of Signora Serao is Cuore Infermo. It is
unhealthy, noisome, intense, and physiological above all, phy-
siological. The heroine is the Duchessa di Sangiorgio, who, of
course, does not love her husband. If there were no connection
" between the physical and moral heart " she would love ; but, as
she has inherited heart-disease from her mother, she hesitates to
put her life in danger by unduly exciting her heart. She dis-
covers, to her horror, that, after having made a marriage of rea-
son, her husband actually adores her. Signora Serao excites the
sympathy of her readers for the afflicted woman. The duchessa
tells her husband that she must not be agitated. Since he loves
her, they must live apart. Marcello, her husband, still insists on
loving her. Beatrice her name is Beatrice has no understand-
ing of any duty to her husband. Her duty is to her heart. She
naturally feels that her husband has behaved very badly in mar-
rying the woman he loves. In the society depicted by the author
of Cuore Infermo this is really the only unpardonable sin. Mar-
cello, however, makes her love him. In the olden times, before
Italian progress was glorified, Beatrice's confessor would have
had something to say about the duty of a wife. But that has
been changed ; Beatrice astonishes Marcello, who has found con-
solation in the society of other ladies less careful of their hearts,
by appearing to him in her wedding-dress. " I am thy wife," she
says ; " I have on my white dress ; I love thee." But she is pun-
ished for loving her husband and breaking the rules of realistic
life in this school of fiction. Her heart avenges itself. " The
physical and psychic heart fought a battle," to use Signora Serao's
words, and the psychic heart triumphed. Beatrice died, and the
reader is expected to curse fate and weep over a maudlin and
sentimental episode which could only have occurred because of
selfishness and disregard of duty on the part of the heroine.

Another naturalistic novelist who counts many readers is the
Sicilian, Verga. Verga has a theory, like most of these novelists
of "progress," who do not tell a story for the love of it, but who

58 SOME RECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. [Oct.,

are propagandists and preachers of materialism. Verga holds
that materialism is at the root of modern civilization. Art, he
says, is the luxury of the rich and of the idle. The idle in Italy
are not necessarily rich. There are several thousand titled
young men in Italy who are too proud to beg and too honest to
steal. The prevalence of baccarat at the clubs under the rule of
the Quirinal opens new pitfalls; when the popes ruled Rome
games of chance were forbidden in the resorts of the young no-
bility. Verga writes for the new Italian society, for the rich or
the idle, for the new men of commerce who work that they may
enjoy animal pleasures. These pleasures, Verga teaches, are the
Alpha and Omega of civilization. He does not say that this
ought to be so, but he insists that it is so, and draws his pictures
accordingly. Like Matilda Serao, his novels are hopeless and
pessimistic.

Signora Serao is about thirty-five years of age ; Verga, who
was born in Catania, is about six years older. It would be hard
to find more trash, and vicious trash, than in his Tigre Reale and
other stories like it. His Sicilian novels have been declared
equal to Bret Harte's in some qualities ; the critic who ventured
this assertion did not deign to mention the qualities. He is a
lineal descendant of Theocritus, and has the love of that exquisite
singer of idyls for the life of herdsmen and tillers of the soil.
Malaria and Nedda are well-known stories in his pastoral manner.

In Liberia he gives a picture of the wretchedness of the Ital-
ian peasants under the new rule which Mazzini and Garibaldi
claimed for the people. The peasants, in Liberia, fought for the
boon promised by the Revolutionists ; but it did not bring them
meat, wine, or bread. Verga's / Malavoglia> a social study of pro-
vincial life, has been compared with the great I Promessi Sposi. I
Malavoglia the name of a family is an analysis of the restless
discontent, born of doubt and materialism, which makes " pro-
gress." Verga tells us that " progress," as a whole, is a magnifi-
cent thing. But there are some who are crushed in the race for
it. He describes the brutality of the conquerors, the wretched-
ness of those who have failed. The heroes of the book have been
infected by the prevalent diseases the wish to become rich with-
out exertion, and the feverish desire to rise above their fathers
that they may eat the fruits of luxury. The rich have fine wines,
white bread, and flesh-meat every day, says Verga's young fisher-
man; life is not worth living unless I can have these things.
Verga announces that he does not point a moral or even adorn a
tale. He observes and depicts ; he says that he has no right to
judge or to criticise the spectacle before him. He pretends to

1885.] SO ME RECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. 59

be a dispassionate observer, but his bias is always towards the
materialistic side.

De Zerbi, a Neapolitan, like Matilda Serao, and a fashionable
novelist, is highly thought of by the Italians who delight in
superficial science. A late novel of his is L } Avvelenatrice. The
Poisoner is a Darwinian romance. This phrase seems like a para-
dox ; it is not : romance and hypothesis are not really so far
apart. Tout passe p , tout lasse, tout casse, is De Zerbi's motto. Peo-
ple are made up of atoms ; given certain conditions, and the
atoms will certainly take certain positions, which the scientific and
Darwinian observer can infallibly forecast. If people are bad
although De Zerbi, strictly speaking, does not acknowledge the
existence of goodness or badness it is because nature wills it.
Human nature is a kaleidoscope. Circumstances or fate holds
it. It is turned, and behold ! you have a combination, which
may be good or bad according to the law of change. Evolution
is immutable ; evolution obliges human nature, under certain con-
ditions, to sin as the Clericals call a certain unhelpable combina-
tion. This is the philosophy of De Zerbi. Fuchsia, in- L Avve-
lenatrice, has chemical germs in her nature which her husband,
who is " scientific," wants to develop. He does so by letting
her participate in all the excitements of gay society.

Giovanni Boglietti, an Italian critic not blinded by the sickly
glare of the sensualists who cover their corruption with the
rhetoric of " science," says of L Avvelenatrice : u The truth is
that, so far from being a scientific work at all, it is the merest
work of imagination. Its people are nothing but vapor, flesh-
less, bloodless, bodiless."

Boglietti is inclined to consider De Zerbi brilliant. It is hard
to look at this novelist from his point of view, and therefore we
are unable to discover -why he is held to be brilliant. He pos-
sesses all the nastiness of Matilda Serao and more, without her
talent or anything approaching the talent of Verga.

A master of sensuous word-painting is Gabriele d'Annunzio
a Neapolitan and a painter of animals, like Matilda Serao, Verga,
and De Zerbi. He makes the fourth of the novelists most widely
read in Italy. He resembles Zola. He delights in showing how
brutal men may seem when their souls are forgotten. He wal-
lows in filth. He reduces his characters to sensuous idiocy and
surrounds them with nightingales whose marvellous notes float
afar over azure seas and beneath skies of lapis-lazuli gilded with
a softly-glowing sun. He is a dangerous apostle of voluptuous
animalism.

Naples is unfortunate in having produced writers whose self-

60 SOME RECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. [Oct.,

imposed mission is to make their countrymen hopeless, sensual,
morbid. The " progressive " world considers her fortunate be-
cause they are read and praised.

It is pleasant to turn to Salvatore Farina, the chronicler of
domestic life, whose name is making itself known abroad. His
short stories, delicate, humorous, a'rtistic, and natural, but not
naturalistic, are charming. // Signor lo, a delightful study, will
one day make him famous. It recalls Mr. Marion Crawford's
Roman Singer, although the latter is an excellent imitation of the
Roman dialect, while the former is Tuscan speech in a Sardinian
mouth.

Farina was born at Sorso, in Sardinia, in 1846. He married
happily. He at first attempted to imitate the worst class of
highly-wrought French romances, but happily, through his wife,
he found his metier. His Tesoro di Donnina was brought out in
1873. It was a promise of better things which has been steadily
kept until the latest, Corporal Silvestro, appeared. Farina is nei-
ther naturalistic nor sensational ; he does not paint hideous things ;
he is in love with beauty, the serene beauty of peaceful life. On
this he likes to dwell. His material, taken from real life, gets the
color of his mind. And a joyous, pleasant mind it is, if one may
judge of it by the delicious and naive Mio Figlio.

Corporal Silvestro is not read by Italians who adore the An-
teros of the Neapolitan school. It is too fresh and pure for
them too much like the every-day life of honest people in the
open air. They want the scent of noxious drugs and the gleam
of absinthe. Farina does not give these. His husbands and
wives are always true, although in one of his novels, Amore Ben-
dato, a tempter is introduced, but the* reader is not led to suppose
that Ernesta, the wife, although her husband neglects her for his
clubs, will for a moment forget her duty or be led away by the
cynical and infidel talk of Agenore. Agenore in the hands of De
Zerbi would probably have committed suicide under the most re-
pulsive circumstances that the novelist could evolve from his
scientific inner consciousness. Ernesta, too, who has longed for
the attention which her husband pays to his bachelor suppers,
and listened with amusement and curiosity to Agenore's plati-
tudes of " progress," would have been killed by remorse for hav-
ing been virtuous. Altogether Italian literature would have
been enriched by one of those studies like the Fidelia of Colantti,
another naturalistic star. Of this book a friend whose literary
duty as critic compelled him to read it said : " You notice I always
smoke a great many cigars when I have to read such books as
these ? It is to kill the stench of the dissecting-room."

1885.] SOME XECENT ITALIAN NOVELS. 61

Farina's art is healthy. His books would not please " Ouida " ;
they are without violence or sensuality. He is poetical, with, at
the same time, a gentle irony. One turns in delight from the
horrible pessimism of Verga to the delicious humor and the
careful and artistic strength of Farina, who recognizes duty.

Farina, like the Venetian Castelnuovo, protests against the
" sensuous quarter of an hour*' that the mockers of God enjoy.
These two are not religious novelists ; but their very faults seem
like virtues in comparison with the bestialities of their successful
rivals the " animalists." Signer Boglietti, in a recent article,
gives a graphic sketch of Farina's delightful Corporal Silvestro.
Here it is :

" Corporal Silvestro is a retired fencing-master. He and his wife Lucia
have a little house on the coast near Genoa, and they sell it to a certain
Dr. Massimo for a fixed pension of a few pounds per month which, to
them, means ease, not to say opulence. Apart from the many charming
pictures, delightfully fresh and vivid, which embellish the book, the in-
terest of the story lies in the contrast between the feelings and interests of
the doctor, who, though not a bad fellow at bottom, naturally does not
expect his pensioners to live unnecessarily long, and those of the lively
and cheerful old couple, now quit of all care and able to live on a more
liberal scale than heretofore, who go on growing haler and heartier than
ever, and bid fair to last out a good many prosperous years. It is even
worse than this, for as they grow better the doctor grows worse ; and as
the two parties live in close proximity, the state of the case becomes abso-
lutely obtrusive. The good old people get positively uncomfortable at
being so well ; they would be glad to disappoint the doctor's just expecta-
tions a little less roundly, to look just a little infirm ; while the sickly doc-
tor, considerably 3'ounger than themselves, feels something like a personal
taunt in the irrepressibly buoyant health of his pensioners. The intrinsic
whimsicality of the situation the irony of fate in thus upsetting the well-
founded calculations of the doctor is brought out by the author in the
most natural and amusing way. Nevertheless, the story is not simply
humorous. It has an element of pathos."

There are other novelists in Italy, good, bad, and indifferent.
We have tried to give a sketch of the tendency of the novels
most in vogue. For the present in Italy, as in other countries
once Christian, the literature of hopelessness, of unbelief, of
materialism has its day. It is almost a misnomer to speak of
" Italian" novels. There is nothing Italian in Italy. There is
yet no Italian language, in spite of Manzoni. There is Tuscan
and Genoese and a dozen dialects. These the novelist, each ac-
cording to his own, strives to weave into Italian with the help of
the dictionary of Fanfani. A writer in Blackwood's Magazine,
who is rather too complacent to the pseudo-realistic school of

62 SONNETS. [Oct.,

fiction in Italy, says of Farina that he may .be regarded as the
lineal descendant in Apollo of Manzoni.

It is too true that in Italy the devil seems to have possessed
the cleverest writers. But there is hope that the taste fostered
by Farina may lead to a reaction perhaps a Catholic reaction
in literature after the " sensuous quarter of an hour " has passed.

SONNETS.

WHY should we fear that Death whose kingly power

Will make us brethren with those great of old

Whose thoughts and deeds are time's most valued dower,

Whose names are with Eternity enrolled ?

Him, Wisdom's prince, who made his dying hour

God-like by his great virtue ; him, of mould

More than heroic, who in th' immortal Pass

Gave his high soul to Heaven ; him who was

The last, the brightest, purest star of all

That o'er their falling country shone divine,

And made its ruin splendid Hannibal ;

And many more whose names it is not mine

To tell aright, whose noble virtues died

In unknown graves, or live to be belied.

II.

Why should we fear thee, Death ? Yet though I long,

With rev'rent yearning, to behold their face

Whose names the world's philosophy and song

Have turn'd to holiest altars for their race,

Yet rather should I see the face of Him

Who o'er Judaea's plains with feet unshod,

Veiling a light that awed the cherubim,

For man's dear sake 'mid thorns and thistles trod ;

And rather than the hero's battle-cry,

Grand though it be, I'd hear the voice that gave

Mercy to her who wept so lovingly

At His bruised feet, and from out the grave

Call'd forth the four days' dead, that He might prove

The power and grace of God's redeeming love.

1885.] SOLI TAR y' ISLAND. 63

SOLITARY ISLAND.

PART THIRD.
CHAPTER XIII.

Ontario.

FATHER AND SON.

NOWHERE as in quiet Clayburg did the coming- election
excite such interest that fall. In the various parts of the State
the Democracy was considered to have it pretty much its own
way, and such doubts of Florian's success as were expressed
were of a shady and disreputable kind and rarely took an in-
jurious form. Clayburg, however, was enthusiastic. Florian's
anti-Catholic utterances had been extensively circulated by the
squire, much to the candidate's advantage. Mr. Buck was used
as a living illustration of his liberal ideas on the subject of reli-
gion, and the fact of his being a Clayburg boy was strenuously
insisted on.

" I tell you," said the squire to Ruth, " ten years make a big
change in a man. You ought to see Pere Rougevin grin when
he read Florian's letters, and snort as he took in the meaning.
' That man,' says he, * would sell his soul for a big place.' * All
talk, pere,' says I ; ' he's got sense and liberality now, which he
hadn't before. The boy is sharp for the main chance, and he's just
as good a Catholic as you are.' ' Oh ! ' says the pere, ' no one
should be afraid to vote for him on account of his religion. He's
a Catholic, of course, but he is a greater thorn in our side than if
he were an out-and-out Protestant.' Do you know, Ruth, I was
prouder to hear him say that, under the very noses of Hubbard
and Simmons and those fellows, than if I was governor myself.
It just floored them. And the pere was so worked up against
him that it was as good as an argument."

" The pere was right," Ruth said, flushing. " Florian is a
Catholic at heart, but he would sell his soul for place. He will
not be a Catholic much longer."

" Of course you must side with Pere Rougevin. That's
natural. You belong to his church, and his word is law. I've
seen the day, Ruth, when it would take a good deal to make you
turn on Florian."

" That was at a time," said Ruth slyly, " when it would have

64 SOLITARY ISLAND. {Oct.,

taken more to make Florian turn on his own as he did in that
last open letter. As you say, ten years make a great change in a
man."

" And just as much in a woman. You've swung round con-
siderably, Ruth gone back completely on your training."

" There isn't as much expected of a woman, papa. Men say
we are naturally fickle. Miss Standage said the other day she
hadn't a doubt but I'd swing another way in ten years more."

" Miss Standage be hanged ! If I was her papa I'd padlock
her tongue. Anyhow, shell not live to see you change, and I'll
tell her so the next time I meet her."

The squire was assorting the morning mail, and he came
across a New York postmark.

" Now, who can that be from ?" he said. " I don't know that
I ever saw that handwriting before."

Ruth suggested that he should open it. He did, and read the
name subscribed with a shout.

" Carter, by all that's amiable ! Wants another invitation, I
suppose." And he tossed the letter aside, while Ruth blushed furi-
ously. The squire looked at her, puzzled. " That reminds me,
Ruth. Did that young fellow ever turn up that you were look-
ing for? I kept a sharp lookout for him, but never heard of any
strangers in the vicinity."

" I have heard nothing of him," said Ruth faintly.

" Now, this letter," said the squire, taking up Peter's epistle,
" might have something about him. It's pretty short for a
spouter like him to write : * Dear Squire ' (just so; we're deeply
in love with each other), ' I have the honor to announce my suc-
cess in breaking off the match between Florian and Frances.'
Ha ! ha ! he's at that business yet."

Ruth trembled with apprehension.

" ' It's a clean break/ " the squire continued to read, " ' and I'm
proud of it ; but I'm sorry, too, for I let the blackguard off too
easily. The divine Barbara had a hand in the game. But for
her I don't think it would have been such a success. She want-
ed him pretty bad, and I hear they are going to make a match of
it. She has tight hold of him, anyhow, and a worse pair never
walked. So the thing is done at last, and I've kept my word
almost to the letter. Of course he will not marry your daughter,
but since he marries a Clayburg girl it's the next best thing.
What do you think?'"

The squire said " um " two or three times after reading this
remarkable bit of news, looked it over once or twice in a dazed

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 65

sort of way, and then walked around the house to the stable,
where he could indulge in such liberty of expression as was con-
sistent with his feelings. He found Billy there, and sat down in
front of him with a face of such awe and astonishment that the
old gentleman trembled involuntarily.

" Do you remember," said the squire slowly and in an impres-
sive tone, " Harry Spelman's daughter old Harry, who always
forgot a story before he got to the end of it, and earned his liv-
ing by "

" Pshaw, man ! " Billy interrupted, " I can go back further
than that. He never earned an honest penny, the divil ! It was
cheat from night till morn with him. Why, I mind "

" Just so," the squire said. " You mind his girl a bold, pret-
ty piece that married a fellow from Brooklyn ? "

" Pretty ! There wasn't any prettiness about her."

" Not then, but afterwards she got to be the prettiest woman
in Brooklyn. Billy, you're her father-in-law ; you've got the
whole Spelman tribe into your family. She's nabbed Florian,
and they are to be married, let us say to-morrow."

But Billy would not believe this misfortune until he was
taken to the veranda and shown the letter, which Ruth, with
moistened eyes, was studying. As usual, he tore his hair until
occurred to him the consoling thought that Florian was not his
son.

" Let him go on," said Billy ; " I don't care."

" I can't get over it," said the squire, still dazed. " It's worse
than sunstroke. She was always so smart, I know, and so deep ;
but I had an idea Flory was deeper and smarter. We mustn't
let this get round the town ; it would ruin the boy's chances in
this county. O that smiling, darned Barbara! She turned
Catholic just to snare him, and she's got him, she's got him ! I
tell you, Billy, she's got him body and soul, for that's her way."

Ruth had slipped away sick at heart and ran out into the
open air. She saw very clearly the meaning of Fiorian's new
alliance and his reason for rejecting Frances, and her heart was
filled with a sort of loathing for the man who could play so poor
and shabby a part. Against Barbara her soul rose up in horror.
She dared not think of her at all, and turned her thoughts upon
the sweet, gentle, and pious woman who had been made the
victim of this unscrupulous pair. The day, though cold, was
clear and beautiful. There was a soft murmur from the long
beach where she stood, and the shores all about were aflame with
the colors of autumn. A single canoe was visible. on the bay,
VOL. XLII. 5

66 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

and she recognized as its occupant Scott, the solitary. She
waved her hand to him, and he came ashore.

" I have news for you, Scott. Florian is to be married to Bar-
bara Merrion."

The hermit looked unusually old and worn as- he stood beside
her in his averted, slouching manner, and there were deep lines
of care or age on his brown face which had escaped her observa-
tion. He received her information with his ordinary indiffer-
ence.

" Poor fellow ! " said he quietly, and waited silently for her to
speak again.

" You are looking old," she ventured to say in sympathy.

" I am old," he replied curtly, and started when a swallow .flew
close to his face with a sudden whirr of its wings.

" Have you lost all interest in Florian?" she said, nettled by
his manner.

" He has lost so much interest in that part of him which I
best liked," he answered gently, " that I can see no use in think-
ing or talking about him. I suppose this woman is no honor to
him."

" Not much. He threw up one that would have been."

" So, so every step is down. God help him, and us!" he
added, with a long, weary sigh that surprised and touched her.
It was plain to see that he was suffering, and less stoically than
usual. A closer look at his red curls showed that they were
thickly twined with gray ; there were circles around his keen
eyes, and the bearded mouth was tremulous from hidden feeling.
She longed to comfort him, and knew not how to begin. It was
a new and astonishing phase in his character to see in him such
evidences of the weaker man.

"I thought perhaps," she said hesitatingly, " that you might
do something for him. He always thought so much of you, was
ever so willing to do as you recommended. I would dare to say
that in the beginning you might have saved him."

" I hope you don't mean that," he said. " I'm sure you don't.
I wouldn't think for a fortune I hadn't done my share in keepin'
a man from evil. I knew him well. I saw there was no use.
Don't you think I would have tried hard if there was ? You
know I would."

He was so vehement that the astonished Ruth could hardly
believe it was Scott who talked to her, but she dissembled her
amazement.

" I suppose you would have helped him if you knew, Scott.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 67

But people see farther than you know simple people, I mean.
And he talked so much of you that we saw, Linda and I poor
Linda! that you had great influence over him. You did not
use it at least we thought you did not. He spoke with pain of
your indifference. Now he is almost lost ; this last act has com-
pleted his fall. I do not think you could benefit him any, yet it
might do to try."

" We are all fools," said Scott, with self-bitterness. " I thought
I did my best ; you had better eyes. No, there is no use now ;
but if you think it would do any good I will see him when he
comes again."

" Thank you, Scott. He needs friends now, if he ever did,
and he has but you and me and Frances."

" And one other never mind who. But he is driving his best
friends from him."

He fell into a reverie, and they both stood silent, with the
plash of the water mingling with their thoughts. The hermit
was excited more than ordinary, and had permitted it to be seen ;
but, as if regretful for his mistake, the old reserve began to settle
over him again. He picked up his paddle suddenly and entered
the boat without a word.

" I shall see you again ?" she said, knowing he could not be
detained.

" I s'pose I dunno," he answered absently, and pushed off
from the shore.

With a sigh Ruth returned to the house, where Billy and the
squire still wrangled over Barbara Merrion and Peter's letter.
Pere Rougevin was now one of the disputants, and rapped squire
and politician over the knuckles with indiscriminate zeal.

" His career from first to last," said the pere, " reminds
me"

"Just so," the squire interrupted; "you are always reminded
of a story by any ridiculous trifle that a man mentions. But you
won't tell that story on this verandah nor in my presence if you
lived for forty years."

The pere laughed softly and called Ruth to his assistance.

" I saw you talking with Scott a moment ago. How is he ? "

" There is something strange about him," Ruth said. " He
seemed worried or disturbed, and acted queerly for him."

" He's probably just learned the alphabet," said the squire.
" Talk about women learning nothing from experience I don't
believe it. But that man, dull, placid, stupid as a pine-tree,
hasn't learned anything in twenty years. If he's getting worked

68 * SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

up now it must be because he's found out that he's alive, or that
Florian is running for governor, or some other new fact."

"Oh! he knew about Florian," said the pere; "and, more-
over, he foretells his utter defeat."

" Oh ! he does, does he?" snorted the squire in leonine mock-
ery. "Do you hear that, Billy? This muskrat of the islands,
this wild squash, this unhatched egg, stands up and tells me and
all the men who know anything about politics in this State that
the old ticket will go down because he knows it will."

" Papa," suggested Ruth, " Scott was a good friend of yours
at a time when you needed one."

" And I've paid him back all I owed him, my girl, long ago.
I let him live. I never said anything about his foolishness to
strangers. I upheld him in his idea of living alone when he
ought to have been married. But let him keep his place. I
can't stand ignorance, and when he shows it before me I'm going
to stamp it out every time."

" He has a right to his opinion," said the pere, " and I rather
think you wouldn't dare to wager a very large sum on yours."

" I'll put my best horse against your ancient cob," said the
squire, " that Florian is governor of this State on the 5th of No-
vember. Come, now. You're pretty obstinate on your own
side ; let's see you stand up for it."

Pere Rougevin laughed and said nothing.

" I know what you are thinking," continued the squire. " You
are ready to swear that these Methodists and their kind will
scratch his name on the ticket. I don't believe it. Our people
have religion enough, but they're not so mean as to do that.
What do you say, Ruth ? You've known both parties, for you
belonged to 'em."

But Ruth shook her head dismally, and he appealed to Billy.

" I'm afraid," said Billy, who rarely deserted his friend in an
argument, "there'll be some of it done, but not enough, of
course, to beat him oh ! no, not enough for that."

"Precisely; that's what I mean. Of course there will be
some mean enough to do it. I believe Buck will, and I mean
to watch him. He's awfully disappointed to think Sara wasn't
the prince's daughter as well as Linda, so that he might come in
for a share of the money."

" Florian, I suppose," said the priest, " has said nothing about
paying you a visit after the election."

" I mean to invite him. He hinted it in his last letter, and
the fatigue of a campaign will drive him here to rest."

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 69

" I wish he would think it worth his while to call on me
when he does come, or shall I meet him, at your invitation, here ? "

"You can come with the crowd, I suppose," the squire re-
plied jokingly, "and make what you can out of him. He's away
beyond you, pere, now. My ! but he's a smart lad."

" Too smart," murmured Billy, in spite of Pendleton's frown.

" Lemme see," said the squire, " this is the 2/th and Wednes-
day is the 3Oth. Yes, exactly. Now, pere, you come over
Wednesday evening 1 , and I'll see you through a little game of
checkers or block until four o'clock in the morning, if you want
to. I'm not going to sleep from now till after election."

Pere Rougevin accepted and was going down the steps when
an after-thought stopped him. The pere always had an after-
thought of this kind, and it was usually as important as Padgift's
postscript in Armadale.

" By the way, Pendleton," he said. " you have not seen or
heard anything of that Russian lately the fellow, you remember,
who "

" Oh ! I remember him," said the squire, " and he'll remember
me should I lay hands or eyes on him. What would he be doing
in this town, I'd like to know ? "

" It's hard to say," the pere replied lightly as he started off ;
" but he has been seen as late as yesterday in this vicinity, and
means mischief."

The squire swore a little at this information, but Pere Rouge-
vin was beyond hearing.

Wednesday night was boisterous and stormy and had a win-
try odor when the three old gentlemen, under Ruth's superin-
tendence, sat down in the cosey parlor to a game of dominoes.
" The wind was howling in turret and tree," and there was a
mighty roar from the waves on the beach, while the distant light-
houses twinkled weakly through the thick darkness. But these
evidences of an ugly night without made the scene within only
the more delightful, and the party prepared to pass a merry
evening.

" It would be just like some old grandmother to take ill/'
said the squire, " and call you away. There's one thing, though
no mortal man can cross the bay to-night, and you're safe from
that direction. It puzzles me " and he looked at Pere Rouge-
vin's round, cheerful outline humorously " to know what there
is in you that sends people rushing after you, at all hours and
under all circumstances, to doctor their sick souls. Can't a man
die comfortably and quietly without you, and is it necessary that

70 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

you must shout him into heaven or pray him in, or what do
you do, anyway ? "

" Why, papa " Ruth began deprecatingly.

" Just so, girl. It's a fair question, and he's going to answer
it ; and you needn't look daggers at me for asking it."

" He reminds me " said the pere, smiling.

" No, I don't! " the squire roared. " Keep clear of your anec-
dotes. You don't spin any more yarns on me. Why, Ruth, he
has me posted all over the county at the tail-end of forty stories."

Pere Rougevin was silent for the moment, fairly weighed
down by the force of Pendleton's lungs, and before he could
speak there was a knock at the outside door.

11 There it is," said Billy" the sick-call."

The servant brought Pere Rougevin a card with a few pencil-
marks upon it. He jumped up without much ceremony after
reading it, and ran out into the hall. They heard a few hurried
remarks from him and the stranger, and immediately he returned,
bringing his visitor with him. His face was quite pale, but no
one save Ruth noticed it, for all eyes were turned on the new-
comer. The latter bore a curious resemblance to Scott, the her-
mit. He was dressed in the hermit's manner, had much of his
silent, stern reserve, and wore his light beard in the same fashion ;
but over his eyes the peaked cap threw such a shade as to leave
his face a mystery. He stood quietly at the door and neither
removed his hat nor took a chair.

" Pendleton," said the pere in some excitement, " I have a bit
of bad news for you. Scott has disappeared. This man lives
near him and says he has not been home since Friday. That
Russian has been in the neighborhood, and foul play is feared."

Only Ruth saw the revelation that lay behind the p&re's
words and manner, and she burst suddenly into a fit of uncon-
trollable sobbing. A thousand insignificant incidents of the past
ten years rushed before her mind.

" Oh ! " she cried, " I see it all now. It is terrible ! "

Her father stared.

" If any harm has come to Scott," said he, " that's enough.
We'll avenge him. But what's the use of being frightened? If
a man stays from home three or four days there's no harm in it.
So dry your tears."

" O papa! don't you see? Scott is Floriari's father."

" Yes," said Pere Rougevin with emotion, " he is the lost
prince, and we fear this Russian has been hired to injure him,
and may have done it."

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 71

The silence which transfixed the squire for a half-minute was
so deep that the ticking of the clock sounded like the strokes of
a hammer. The roar of the storm beat up against the house.
He sat there with his heavy face void of expression, his eyes
turned on the priest in a vacant stare, while he tried to realize
all that those astonishing words meant.

" Good God ! " were his first hushed words. Billy could say
nothing, and Ruth was still sobbing. Pere Rougevin and the
stranger grew impatient for practical suggestions.

" I'm beat," said the squire ; " but I've got my breath again. I
suppose it's so, and I don't doubt but that if we had our eyes
open we might have known it before. And now when he's most
wanted he's gone, and that sneak is after him and means him
harm. Well," said the squire ponderously, rising, " we'll look
for 'em both, and deal with 'em according to law. Young man,
what have you to say about it? "

" The islands ought to be searched," said the stranger, " and
a watch set on the waters, so that if foul play has done away with
him his body may be found."

" And word should be sent immediately to Florian," said
Ruth.

" I don't know about that," Pendleton remarked. " To-mor-
row will be a busy day for him, and he can't do any more than
we can do."

" Not the slightest need of sending for him," Pere Rougevin
said hastily. "It will be time enough to notify him when we
have found Scott or what has happened to him."

Ruth said no more on the matter, but when the squire had
put on his great-coat she was in the hall ready to go with them
and prepared to put in action some ideas of her own. They
raised no objections to her company, and all rode up together to
the village, where the squire began his search for a boat able to
stand the fury of a southwest wind. Ruth in the meantime had
sent to Florian the following telegram : " Come at once, if you
would save your father's life." By the time she reached the pier
again Pendieton had engaged a tug for the search, and the vessel
was getting up steam. A crowd stood about, curious to know
the reasons of a water-journey on so tempestuous a night; but
the squire sailed away with his party in lofty silence, giving only
a hint to his hungry neighbors that it was concerned with the
coming election. Once on the water he called a council in the
small cabin.

'i We're going this thing rather blind," said he, " and I would

72 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

like to hear your opinions and get a little more reason and cer-
tainty into it. I suppose we can search all the small islands to-
night by ourselves with lanterns ; but if we don't find him we
must get help to-morrow, if we mean to do the business tho-
roughly."

" There are certain places," said the stranger, " which Scott
frequented, and it might be worth the trouble to examine them.
I know them all. But it is more likely that he avoided them when
pursued by the Russian. You must know that Scott expected
his identity to be some day discovered, and had provided hiding-
places among the islands. The principal of these was under his
own house ; but its secret the Russian discovered a few days ago,
and he abandoned it. If he fancies that the others are known he
will not go near them."

" Ah ! " said the squire, " now you have given us a fair start,
young man. We must begin with his own house and island first,
then take the others in succession."

He went out to the pilot-house and the pere followed him,
leaving Ruth and the stranger alone in the cabin. The boat
rocked and plunged uncomfortably in the heavy sea and the
great waves dashed against the windows. Nothing was visible
outside save the twinkling lights on the shore.

" You will pardon me, Mr. Rossiter," she said, giving to the
stranger her hand after a moment's awkward silence, " that I did
not recognize you until you spoke this evening. I am very glad
to meet you and to see that you are well."

" Thank you," said Paul nervously, and was silent. Not a
word was uttered concerning his long and mysterious absence
from the world, and both were glad of it, for the greatness of the
calamity which seemed to threaten them overshadowed minor
things completely. A sudden quieting of the waves and the
rushing of wind through tree-tops signified that they had enter-
ed the tortuous channel leading into Eel Bay, and in a half-hour
more they were sailing opposite the hermit's cabin. All went
ashore save Ruth, who felt that she would be a hindrance in the
search, and she remained leaning against the deck-rail, watching
the movements of their lanterns as they walked over the small
island. They returned to the boat unsuccessful and steamed to
another spot, which was searched with the same result ; and so
through the whole stormy night they continued their vain pur-
suit of the lost prince, returning to Clayburg by sunrise for
breakfast and additional help.

By this time a great portion of male Clayburg had begun to

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 73

take a deep interest in the squire's mysterious proceedings. The
crowd which had gathered the preceding evening on the wharf
to see him depart re-collected itself in the morning to see
him return, and was swollen to treble size by new recruits from
the curious of the town. As they could get no information from
the party, the pilot and the engineer were assailed by a shower
of questions as numerous and irritating as mosquitoes; but here,
too, curiosity was baffled, for these knew no more than that their
employers had sought among the islands for somebody or some-
thing they knew not what and did not care. When the squire
and his friends had breakfasted and made ready for another start
by bringing loads of provisions to the boat and fitting it out for
as long a stay as possible on the water, a mob of men and women
were standing on the dock in the cold November morning, fairly
eaten by curiosity. From among them the squire made a selec-
tion of ten good fellows to aid him in the search. They went on
board indifferent to the direct and indirect questions fired at
them, and sailed away mysteriously, to the utter disgust of the
crowd. Ruth did not accompany them. She had been over-
come with weariness, she said, and did not feel equal to the
fatigue of a twelve hours' journey which was strictly true, but
her real reason for remaining was the telegram which Florian
sent her that morning announcing his arrival in Clayburg for
that evening.

It was a dull, stolid day. The winds had died away, and the
sun was buried in thick clouds before he had been two hours
shining, and such a bitter suspicion of snow was in the cold,
heavy air ! At ten it began to rain, and the thick mists shut out
the river and brought a deeper chill to the atmosphere. Time
hung the heavier on her hands. She could not read, and thought
was distressing. A few old gossips came in to hear the news of
the day and discover the cause of so much mysterious running
about in the quiet town, and she replied in dark and secret lan-
guage, with many hints of greater surprises yet in store for them,
and sent them away satisfied and yet unsatisfied. In the stores
and saloons and kitchens that day the squire's movements were
thoroughly canvassed. A mystery so important as to require a
tug and fifteen men to carry it out was a delightful morsel in
dull November, and the peaceful citizens enjoyed it ; but when
the telegraph messenger passed the word that a special train was
due in Clayburg at four o'clock that afternoon, nearly three
hours ahead of the regular train, the excitement spread to the
highest grades of town society, and even the ministers trotted

SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

down to the depot under the same umbrella to examine into this
second wonder of the day. But Florian knew his native village
well. Half a mile from the depot Ruth met him with the car-
riage, and the train moved into the station without a soul save
the employees on board. So with every disappointment the
mystery grew.

A more wretched man than Florian Ruth had never seen.
His proud bearing was gone, his proud self-possession had melted
from him like snow, and his pale, drawn face and listless manner
showed what he had suffered since receiving her telegram and
what he was suffering. He took her hand gratefully as he enter-
ed the carriage. She tried to speak, but her own sobs were too
powerful.

" You need not tell me," he said. " We are too late. I know
that, and I might have saved him ; I -might have known long
ago."

He repeated the last words over and over like one in deli-
rium. When she had grown calmer she told him all the circum-
stances of the last few days, beginning with her last talk with the
hermit, and he sat with his head bowed, listening, nor made any
comment for a time.

" Where were our eyes," she said, crying, " that we did not
see through this loving imposture long since ? A spy could dis-
cover him, and we could not."

" The spy had exceptional resources," he answered ; " and yet
it would have been so easy to have reasoned. You remember
the interest he took in me, and I recall the dreams I had of him
kissing me, poor father ! in my sleep ; and how in the graveyard
here one night he held me in his arms with his cheek against my
own ; and the time he came to New York, risking so much for
love of me. Then his behavior towards Linda on her death-bed.
I believe she knew it, for she looked from him to me so strangely
I see it now ; I could not see it then. And my mother's behavior
when he was present or spoken of. What a life ! " and he added
after a pause, with a shudder of horror and grief, " and what a
death, after so much self-denial and love ! " .

" Oh, be patient ! " said she, attempting cheerfulness. " They
are searching for him bravely, and he is so cunning and active
that it will take an expert woodman to overmatch him."

" His pursuer," said Florian gloomily, " is by profession an
assassin. He has but one instinct, that of death, and he will fol-
low, follow, follow like a hound, never wearying, never stopping,
cunning as a devil, pitiless as hell, until his victim is dead. I can

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 75

see him now crawling through some lonely patch of timber in
the rain with that white face of his shining in the gloom."

She had to admit that the picture was not overdrawn, and
they came to the house in silence.

" I will not go in," he said ; " I must get a boat and join in
the search. I am going mad, I think."

" But there is no wind, Florian, and you can get no tug, for
there is none here. Better wait until the rain stops ; there will
be a wind then strong enough to make the boat of use."

He held up his hand in the air.

" There is wind enough," said he. " I could not stay ; I must

go."

She went into the house and brought out some oil-cloths for
him to put on as a protection against the rain. With a servant
to manage the boat they started, taking a course straight down
the river in order to meet the tug j but the wind soon died away
almost entirely when they were opposite the well-known channel
leading into Eel Bay, and Ruth proposed, seeing how impatient
he grew, that they would go to the hermit's cabin and wait there
for a favorable wind. It was done, and for the first time in years
he entered his father's house.

" What a palace for a prince ! " he said, and a great bitterness
filled his heart as memory after memory connected with the old
cabin rose before him.

Darkness came on, and the servant lighted the old candle, and
the fire was started in the fire-place. He sat reading Izaak Wal-
ton or wandering uneasily to the shore, while Ruth, wearied, lay
down to sleep in the inner room. The night passed in a dead
calm. At four o'clock in the morning the clouds parted in the
northwest and the first suspicion of a wind stirred the water.
He waked her, saying gently : " We must be going."

It was cold and unpleasant in the damp morning air, but a
few stars shone faintly overhead. As before, they went straight
down the river, taking the wider channels in order to intercept
the tug if she should be returning. At daylight they had reach-
ed Alexandria Bay, and in the distance later on, as the sun was
rising, they saw the tug steaming farther down the river.

" They have not found any trace of him yet," said Ruth.
"They are searching still, or they would be returning."

" Why do they take the islands below instead of those above ? "
he asked.

" I believe they have a guide on board who lived for some
time with your father," she replied, " and he thinks he must have

76 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

fled in that direction. When I last saw him he was going down
the river."

They sailed on, the wind still cold and feeble as before, and
in two hours had reached the island. Florian would not go
near the tug or make himself known to any one, but went ashore
in his oil-cloths and silently joined in the search, while Ruth
sailed to the tug for information. No success yet and no clue !
When she returned Florian was waiting for her on the shore.

" They will never make anything of this," he said. " It is too
wild and they will have to cover too much ground. Let us go
back and search the islands above."

To Ruth this seemed even a more hopeless task, but she did
not feel it necessary to tell him so. The wind was freshening
from the northwest, and with frequent tacking for the channel
in places was narrow they arrived at Solitary Island a little
after noon. On the Canadian shore stood a farm-house, where
they ate dinner, and afterwards they landed at Grindstone and
began preparations to search that island through its entire length
of seven miles or more. Florian seemed unwearied, but Ruth
was half-dead from fatigue. Obstacles of every sort began to
fall in their way. They had endeavored to secure horses from an
island resident and help, which he was disposed to give only for
enormous pay, and his petty delays wasted the precious time
until half past three. When at last they were almost ready Ruth,
with beating heart, pointed out to Florian a canoe with a single
occupant making for Solitary Island ; and he, pale as death,
watched it for a moment, and then, seizing her hand, ran down
to the boat and bade the servant hoist the sail. His eyes did not
for an instant leave the figure in the canoe, and a flush of deep
excitement and tender feeling spread over his face as Scott
stepped leisurely from his boat and walked slowly to his cabin.
He had taken the pains to pull up his canoe on the beach, and
after entering the house closed the door. Evidently no harm
had happened to him, and the noise which had been made over
his accidental disappearance was premature. It was a few min-
utes past four when their boat touched the shore. Four o'clock
in the afternoon of the ist of November was a moment which
had scarred Ruth's memory years back so badly that the hour
never struck without bringing the tears to her eyes. At that
hour on that day Linda died. She wept now with a violence
that surprised Florian as he handed her from the boat and led
her joyfully to the cabin. He pushed open the door with some
difficulty because of a heavy movable obstacle on the other side.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 77

When he saw and recognized the object he stood quite still for a
moment, then pushed Ruth gently back and, calmly as might be,
knelt beside the fallen form of his father and put his hand over
the heart. It was for ever stilled. The pallid face and half-
closed eyes were evidence enough without the bullet-wound and
the blood-stains on his garments. Scott was dead. In his hand
he held a small crucifix, and the tears which he had shed in his
last moment still lay on his cheek.

PART FOURTH.

CHAPTER I.
THE GRAVE ON SOLITARY ISLAND.

IT was a rare day in Clayburg rare for November. The air
had a golden, fine-spun clearness, and the blue river was bluer
than ever, although the islands, no longer green, showed their
gray sides over the sparkling waters like faded tombstones in a
spruce forest. The village, busied with its usual routine of la-
bor, was not one whit less dull than usual. Villagers shook their
heads over the burst of unexpected sunshine. It was like a gold-
miner's dream and foreboded a bitter awakening. The late
tragedy which had taken place in their midst, and now lent a
dark and melancholy interest to the romantic islands, had ruffled
for a few hours the placid stream of existence. The affair was
nobody's business in particular. There was no widow, no chil-
dren, no property, no relatives. Scott had lived and died a lone-
ly man, and the violence of his taking-off concerned only society
in general and the officers of the law. Had he been a popular,
sociable fellow there might have been great excitement ; but it
being a case of nobody's funeral, nobody minded it after the
shock was over and all had been said about it that could pos-
sibly be said. Clayburg had a public calamity to grieve about
without troubling itself with small misfortunes. Florian's defeat
had hurt it to the quick. It could not understand the counties
lying to the south and southwest. Were 'they or were they not
dreadfully ignorant of the merits of the candidate, or had they
been practised upon by designing rivals or office-seeking Whigs?
The Democrats had deserted their candidate by hundreds. The
rest of the ticket had been elected. Florian alone, the pride of
Clayburg, had been " scratched " by his supposed friends and

78 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

left a total ruin upon the battle-field. What was the murder of a
solitary, sour fisherman to such a crime !

However, the villagers did not, in their deep grief for their
candidate, forget neighborly duties to the dead. On the second
day after Scott's death a fair number of the fathers, in blue swal-
low-tails, black chokers, and white felt hats, stood on the dock
awaiting the vessel which was to carry them to Solitary Island.
A few roughly-dressed fishermen and a scattering of young
folks and idlers made up the crowd. The conversation was
evenly divided between the late murder and the late election.

" Not but whut I edmit Flory wuz a Ketholic," an ancient
supporter of the defeated candidate was saying with mournful
slowness and resignation ; " but I swow ef rz/ligion is to take the
fust place in a country made on pu'pose for ail on us, it's abeout
time we wuz emigratin'. Whut say, Sam ?"

" Ruther tew late fer us to think o' movin'," Sam replied ;
" but gosh be derned ef I don't feel like p'ison every time that
'lection 's mentioned. I've cussed more 'n the last two days then
I hev in my hull life. Them fellers whut cut an* run over to
t'other side ken't hev many lookin'-glasses this mornin'."

" How's that, Sam ? " said a curious one.

"'Cos no decent lookin'-glass 'ud stand the sight o' ther
derned faces more 'n once 'thout bustin' ; thet's heow," said Sam,
with some heat. " Twouldn't be a bad speculation, Israel, fer
you to trot daown thar with forty thousand glasses, more or less
more, I reckon, fer thet must hev been the number of the derned
crew. I'd like to hev the buryin' on 'em. I'd put 'em daown so
deep thet none o' ther idees 'd ever sprout on this side o' the
globe."

11 They say Flory's goin' to be et the funeral," said one of the
fathers.

" Ya-as," drawled Sam ; " he an't got nawthin' else to do, an'
he allus hed a likin' fer Scott, though whut enny one saw in the
red-headed curmudgeon I never could find out."

" Hev we all got to wait fer you to find somethin' in us"

" No," said Sam, turning sharply on the speaker ; "you an't.
You've been found out, an' sold out, an' shut up long ago."

" Mighty queer, the shootin' o' Scott. He wasn't one to hev
many enemies, fer he hed so few friends," said the first speaker.

"Who knows what he was 'fore he got this far?" said Sam,
about whom the group had gradually clustered. "This may be
the doin' o' some feller thet's been a-follerin' an' a-follerin' him
fer years like a spy, waitin' for a square chance to git even with

i88sJ SOLITARY ISLAND. 79

him. Some folks wuz mighty frightened fust an' took to loadin'
guns an' double-barrin' doors. All nonsense. S'long's ther an't
no odd strangers abeout town ther won't be a murder here in the
next fifty years."

" She's comin' round th* island," yelled a small boy suddenly.

" It's the Juanita" said an observant one ; " but she won't git
here for a quarter of an hour. 'N' so you think, Sam, ez how
this shootin' might be an old matter ? "

" Thet's my idee," said Sam. " Scott was an odd critter. I
took to him, an' I didn't take to him. One o' thet kind hez allus
a page in his diary thet nobody reads, but wed like to read it."

"The squire hez the charge o' the funeral," said a white hat
shrewdly. " Mebbe he found papers 'n' things."

" Ef he hez," said Sam dogmatically, " it '11 all come out in
time. Squire Pen'l'ton can't keep a secret no more 'n he kin keep
from eatin'."

" It jest depends o' what size the secret is," said the white
hat. " I mind when Minister Buck wuz married, 'n' Billy Wal-
lace wuz a-tellin' us all how he went for the minister on his own
stoop, 'n' nobody could believe it, 'n' we all went fer the squire
on the p'int, we couldn't git a word from him. Nor he an't
spoken to this day nuther."

Sam defended his expressed opinion of the squire until the
Juanita was steaming up to her moorings, with Pendleton him-
self seated in majestic prominence and funereal gloom on her sin-
gle deck. Billy's wrinkled features were visible in the cabin.

" Good-morning, neighbors," said the squire solemnly. " Just
make haste in gettin' aboard, for the folks are waiting on the
island to proceed with the ceremony."

" Whut folks? " said Sam, taking a seat beside him.

" Neighbors," said the squire indifferently.

" Is there to be services 'n' a minister ? "

" We don't bury people nowadays without both."

" Who's the offish -e-a-/z;/ parson ? " said persistent Sam.

" There's no parson present."

" No parson present ? Then whar air your services ? "

" Wait till you get there and you'll see."

" Jes' so, squire. Thank you for remindin' me of it," said
Sam, with an irony intended to smoothen the sense of his own
humiliation; but, in spite of the satisfaction it gave him, he felt
some doubts as to the strength of his late remarks on the squire.

The passengers of the Juanita made the pleasant journey
across the river and through the islands with a deep sense of the

80 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

favor they were conferring on the dead man in taking so much
trouble to pay him funeral honors. They were severely taken
aback on finding, when the boat landed them on Solitary Island,
that they formed a very respectable minority of the people there
assembled. Boats of all kinds lay along the shore. Their owners
were scattered about the island in holiday clothes as fresh and
stylish as those which came from Clayburg. The old white
hats walked up to the cabin with muttered " I-had-no-idees," and
paid their respects to the man whom living they had rarely pre-
sumed to address. He lay in the little kitchen which for twenty
years had been his living room. The brown habit of the scapu-
lar was his shroud and was the source of much speculation to
the Protestants and of some wonderment to the Catholics. For
no one had been precisely aware that Scott had held any religious
opinions. The serene, meditative face had a new expression
which few had ever before seen. The close-fitting cap was gone
and the bushy whiskers trimmed neatly. Was this really the
face of the common fisherman ? Around a reverential forehead,
white as snow, clustered the yellow locks. The regular and
sweet features were Florian's own, but less stern, more exalted,
more refined in their expression. The people looked at this
unexpected countenance in astonishment and awe, feeling ob-
scurely that there was more in this man than they had fathomed.
Izaak Walton was in his place on the table. Candles burned
there around a crucifix. An altar stood beside the bed-room
door, and on it lay the black vestments for the Mass. Scott was,
after all, a Catholic ; and while the neighbors owned to a sense
of disappointment at this discovery, they also acknowledged a
deeper respect for the character of the dead. Beside the coffin
sat Ruth weeping, her veil down, her hands clasped in prayer,
her eyes rarely turning from the face of Linda's father. Thus
had she sat since with her own hands she had prepared him for
his rest. Linda's father ! Oh ! the wasted years which had been
spent in ignorance of this rich treasure. Now she knew why
her heart had gone out to him, and she wept again and again as
every old incident of memory showed the father's love for his
children and his children's friend. She could not understand it !
How could any one have been so blind ? How could love have
felt no thrill from this magnetic presence, when hate discovered
and destroyed it? A rough costume, a tight-fitting cap, a silent
manner had hidden him from his own and not from his enemies.
She wrung her hands and wept anew as this sharp reflection
pierced her heart. But what need to trouble the mind now with

1 88 $.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 81

conflicting thoughts? It was all over. In a strange land, among
a strange people, the exile had died ! In a poor hut the Russian
prince, dead and cold, received from the hands of plain citizens
those rites which kings would have been proud to give ! In a
free country he had fallen as helplessly as in the land of the czars !
Its laws had been no protection to him. Little he cared now,
indeed, for what had been or for ail his wrongs ; what he asked
was a grave and a prayer for his soul !

In the closed bed-room reclined the lately defeated candidate
for the chief magistracy of the State. His costume was not one
of mourning, but such as he had been accustomed to wear, cor-
rect and gentlemanly, with a smack of over-polish. His face was
a trifle pale and wearied. No evidence of any deep disappoint-
ment for his defeat or of any shock at the violent taking-off of
his father was visible. For a man in his unique position he bore
himself very well. His philosophical disposition was nearly per-
fect in its stoicism. He had not exempted himself from the
chances of defeat, and had long since prepared himself to meet'it
in such a way that he would not lose more than a week's sleep.
He had lost more owing to the sudden discovery and death of
his father, and was likely to suffer still longer ; but the facts them-
selves were too recent to make much impression on him. Look-
ing at the dead hermit, and saluting him as his father after they
had followed him to his cabin, Florian accepted the hard condi-
tions which Providence had placed upon him, as he had taught
himself to accept all welUestablished, unchangeable facts. He
did not suffer uneasy thoughts or tumultuous feelings to rack his
brain, nor did he repel them, holding himself as a sort of neutral
ground where they might wander free from any restraint. Had
he the power he would have that day despatched his dinner and
slept at nine o'clock ; but the control of those natural appetites
was beyond him, and he was fain to be content with broken
sleep, capricious appetite, and absent-mindedness. Yet people
said how well he bore his defeat, admiring his pluck and prophe-
sying great things for him in the next election, while those who
knew the secret of his life the squire, Ruth, Paul, and Billy
inwardly wondered at his manner. No tears, no excitement, no
curious questions, but a complete acceptance of the state of
affairs that was marvellous. There was a show of irritation occa-
sionally against two persons, Paul and Pere Rougevin so faint
that only the latter perceived it because he suspected its exist-
ence. These two men had been favored with the hermit's inti-
macy. They had, as it were, supplanted the heir in his father's
VOL. XLII. 6

82 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

affections, being, as Florian well knew, better conformed to his
father's ideas of what men should be. Almost mechanically the
irritation showed itself. Pere Rougevin kept himself and the un-
conscious Paul out of the great man's way. For this reason they
were rarely seen in the dead-room, whither Florian often came
to gaze quietly on the prince's face.

Paul was an object of curiosity to the neighbors. His re-
semblance to Scott was not so marked as to attract attention, and
his city costume lessened it to nothing. He had been heard of
as a young man staying with the hermit. In the hope that he
knew something about the hermit many plied him with questions,
which he answered very indifferently. The sharper ones thought
he might be arrested as the murderer of Scott, with a good
chance of proving the charge against him. He was very silent
and moody on many accounts. The longing eyes which he often
cast at the dead man showed that Scott's death had wounded
him. With Pere Rougevin and the squire he had charge of the
funeral arrangements ; but the latter left him nothing to do, save
to stand at the cabin-door and see that order was kept in the
death-room. Occasionally there was a consultation. There had
been a series of them in the last two days. It had been decided
to bury Scott on the island, as he had often desired to be buried,
and that all concerned would show no signs of mourning which
would lead the neighbors to suspect anything like the real state
of affairs. The grave was dug among the pines on the highest
point of land on the island, and Pere Rougevin had brought
over the requisites for the Mass of requiem. Ruth had gently
hinted the propriety of laying the prince beside Linda, but
prudence forbade. It was never to be known save to the few
who this poor lonely fisherman had been.

Near noon the crowd assembled in the room and about the
door at a signal from the squire. The singers from the Clay-
burg choir were intoning the first notes of the " Kyrie Eleison,"
and those at the window looking in could see Florian sitting be-
side Ruth at the coffin. Their proximity looked suggestive.

" That match '11 be a go yet," said one unguardedly.

The squire turned an awful look on the offenders, and there
was silence for an indefinite while. The singing rose and fell on
the clear air in that beautiful solitude like the*sound of weeping.
The incense floated through the door, the holy water was sprin-
kled, and the tones of the pere were heard delivering the sermon.
Then came the shuffling of feet and the outpouring of the peo-
ple. The squire gathered them all before him in order to select

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 83

the bearers, but in reality to give the mourners time for an un-
observed parting 1 with their dead. It was done very quickly.
The pere and Paul and Billy looked for the last time on the
handsome face. Ruth kissed the forehead with an involuntary
moan. For a moment as the son pressed his cheek to his father's
his features were twisted by an internal anguish more intense
than physical pain. It was a premonition of what was to come !
They screwed down the coffin-lid, and, the bearers entering, a
procession was formed. Fiorian offered his arm to Ruth. To
the singing of the psalms they moved down the slope in front of
the house and up the opposite hill. Here was the grave. All
around were the islands, with no human habitation in view. Be-
low were the placid waters. The voice of the priest blessing the
tomb arose : " Lord, in the bosom of whose mercy rest the souls
of the faithful dead, bless this grave and give it into thy angels'
charge. Loosen the bonds of sin which press the soul of him
whose body is here buried, that for evermore with thy saints he
may rejoice in the possession of thee, through Christ our Lord.
Amen." The clods rattled on the coffin with a sound familiar
both to Ruth and Fiorian. Ten years ago that very day they
had buried Linda ; sooner or later the world would listen to the
same sound on their coffins ! The crowd broke up respectfully
and yet with relief, and were not down to the shore when the
laugh followed the joke and the healthy concerns of life banished
the mists of death. Thank God, the world on this gloomy day
was not all gloom ! The white hats and blue coats boarded the
Juanita with hilarity, a fleet of skiffs and sail- boats fluttered out
into the bay, and very soon the island was left to the squire and
his party.

An awkward restraint was in the air. The squire had no one
to praise him for the glorious manner in which he had carried
out the programme, and, warned by the preoccupation of the
others, dared not sound his own trumpet.

" I think we had better be going," he said to Ruth.

" Wait until Pere Rougevin speaks," said Ruth. " He is to
return with us."

Thus rebuked, the squire turned to Fiorian.

" You'll stop around for a few days, Flory ? You can have
the run of the house, and I'll take it upon my shoulders to keep
off the crowd, unless you go to Buck's."

" I shall stay here for a time," said Fiorian. They all looked
at him, and a glance from Ruth kept the squire silent. " My
lawyer can attend to whatever business there is in New York.

$4 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

Let me thank you all for your kindness during these few days.
I am deeply grateful."

The priest came in from the bed-room with a serious face and
eyes that rested anywhere but on Florian. Neither did the latter
turn towards him when he spoke.

" I presume," said the priest rather hurriedly, " you prefer to
remain here until you return to New York?" Florian nodded.
" There are some matters which you would probably like to be
acquainted with before your departure. When you find it con-
venient I am ready to tell you all that I know concerning your
father. Mr. Rossiter can furnish you with some facts, perhaps "

" I am the bearer of a message from the prince to his son,"
said Paul. " It is best to defer its delivery for a few days, how-
ever. Whatever I know about him I am most willing to tell."

The faintest irritation showed itself in Florian's manner, and
his eyes blazed with some hidden feeling which the pere alone
observed.

" I thank you both," said Florian. " In a few days I shall
hear you ; not now, if you please not now."

" Mr. Rossiter, you are my guest for the present," said the
pere, " and you will accompany us to the village. There is no
need to delay longer."

The squire went out to get ready the yacht in a dazed way,
for he could make nothing of all these arrangements. They were
not down in the programme, and he could not see what would
keep Florian alone on the island.

" The boy has less nonsense about him than the common," he
said to Billy, " and it's no sickly sentiment that keeps him here.
Who'd think^to see him, that he was defeated in a 'lection two
days ago, and lost his father before he found him?"

" I'm glad he's not my son," said Billy, with a snuffle. " I'd
rather have nobody at my grave, nobody, than such a stick.
He's worse than Sara."

This assertion led to an argument, during which the whole
party came down to the boat.

" It seems like the old times," Ruth said, smiling sadly. " Are
you going on another retreat ? "

" I don't know," Florian answered absently. " See that my
letters are sent over by a safe messenger."

The yacht sailed out of his sight and left him sitting on the
boulder over the spot where Linda had received the fatal wet-
ting. He thought of that and of many other incidents of the time.
He felt on his hot cheek the cool breezes of that first night on

1885.] THE NEGRO How CAN WE HELP HIM? 85

the island, when his dreams awoke him and sent him rambling
along the shore. Those dreams of his had been a wonderful
reality. His father had really kissed him in his sleep. It was
pleasant to recall those kisses. He was first in his father's heart
in spite of his sternness and secrecy. Then there was the night
in the graveyard, when for a moment he lay in his arms and felt
his cheek lovingly against his own. Accident then, now the
purpose was visible. And Linda knew it before she died. Hap-
py Linda, whose innocence merited such a reward, and to whom
it was not given to know him first when death had claimed him,
and to suspect that Again that spasm of mental agony twist-
ed his features shapeless for an instant, but passed away beneath
his wonderful self-poise. " That way madness lies," was the
thought which shaped itself in his mind. He sat there all the
afternoon, and when night came, heedless of the change, he
walked up the hill and sat down on the grave the first grave on
Solitary Island !

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE NEGRO HOW CAN WE HELP HIM?

THE negro question, already an important one before the elec-
tion of Mr. Cleveland, has been unprecedentedly agitated since
the triumph of the Democratic party. Whether this be due to
the growing interest of the question itself, or to a kindly spirit of
warning on the part of those who feared that party might be un-
just to the negro, we are not able to answer. We would not toe
greatly mistaken, we think, were we to assign it to both causes at
once; and perhaps less mistaken should we assign it primarily
to the Democratic triumph, and secondarily to the question's
continued growth. Undoubtedly among the negroes themselves
the fear was strong and wide-spread that a Democratic victory
meant their re-enslavement. We have heard instances, from un-
questionable sources, of former slaves approaching their one-time
masters and begging, if slaves they must be, a renewal of the old
ownership. The greater part of this impression was due, no
doubt, to the efforts of political demagogues ; yet, in a certain
measure, it must be ascribed to the negro's long-standing, deeply-
rooted mistrust of his former master whensoever there is ques-

86 THE NEGRO How CAN WE HELP HIM? [Oct.,

tion of his freedom. Let the white man I mean the former
slave-holder inveigh with howsoever much of sincerity against
the institution of slavery, his most vehement protestations will
be received by the negro with only an incredulous smile. More
intelligent friends of the negro knew perfectly well the absurdity
of such fears, yet were they none the less apprehensive, not so
much for the rights as for the untrammelled, free exercise thereof,
and the full enjoyment of whatsoever social privileges the negro
might thence acquire.

But whatever line of policy may be wisest to nurture and
perpetuate amicable feelings between the two races in the
South, there still remains a question of much greater impor-
tance one in which Catholics bear a tremendous responsibility.
It is the question of religion, and particularly of the negro's re-
ligion. Shall the negro ever come to the light of the true reli-
gion, or shall he continue for ever in the night of error? Protes-
tantism, a kingdom divided in itself and never commissioned to
preach the Gospel of Christ, has signally failed, from its very
cradle, in the conversion of peoples. By the great perversion of
the sixteenth century nations did not gain but lost the true
faith, until the continued centrifugal force of schism and heresy
to our day has left them little beyond scattered and shattered
remnants of the integral faith. What they have not they cannot
reasonably be expected to give. Since the first importation of
the negro into the United States, wealth, position, power, and
education, as an overwhelming majority, have been favorable to
Protestantism. With such resources and the most reasonable
amount of zeal every slave in the land at the close of the war
might have been, we will not say a literary public-school gradu-
ate, but at least a Christian, well informed in the articles of his
faith and the obligations of his duty towards God, his neigh-
bor, and himself. Yet what has Protestantism actually done for
them ? To-day, according to Father Slattery's computation,
there are six and a half million negroes in the United States, of
whom, in round numbers, six million are in the Southern States.
How many are there who make even no profession of religion ?
About three million. Excepting a small percentage, what kind
of religion have the other three million ? Let the reader remem-
ber these are professed members of the Baptist, Methodist, or
some other Protestant sects. Father Slattery tells us, and from
actual observation we know it to be true :

" They have but the vaguest notions of the most fundamental truths,
such as the Trinity and Redemption. Not seldom we meet them with

1885.] THE NEGRO How CAN WE HELP HIM? 87

scarcely any idea of God at all, and ignorance of even the Ten Command-
ments may in many districts almost be called general." *

In a recent number of the Century the Protestant Episcopal
Bishop of Kentucky, Right Rev. Dr. Dudley, uses much stronger
language :

" Their religion is a superstition, their sacraments are fetiches, their
worship a wild frenzy, and their morality a shame."

This, we hold, is a sad showing for Protestantism. We do not
contend that Protestants are now doing nothing for the negro :
we give all praise to their latter-day zeal displayed in his behalf.
But this we do maintain : that, considering the length of time and
number of opportunities it has had, Protestantism in evangeliz-
ing the negro, if weighed, would be found wanting. True, it
has built numerous churches for the negro since the war; but
to give him a church, and afterwards to leave him to practise
therein a species of Voodooism miscalled Christianity, would
seem to us like offering him a stone, whereas he asked for the
bread of life. And for our public-school system to enlighten his
intellect whilst allowing his moral nature to drivel in a nutshell
we cannot but consider criminal. These are the two greatest
evils with which the negro is threatened godless education
and such a knowledge of Christianity as to make enlightened
Christians blush.

But, it may be asked, what have Catholics of the South done
for the negro? We reply that before the war, in Maryland,
Louisiana, Kentucky, wherever they had Catholic masters, full
spiritual care was bestowed upon them. In those States were
then to be found numerous well-instructed negroes, and their
falling away from the church since has been the effect, not of
dislike to their holy mother, but of the political antagonism
between white and black developed since the war. This, of
course, should not have been so, yet such is the fact. They were
estranged from the church and from Mass on Sundays by what
was then an extraordinary temptation to the negro politics as
expounded on Sundays by recently-liberated preachers of his
own race and color. Negligence on the part of the parents left
to their children the bane of ignorance and indifference in regard
to matters religious, and the Catholics of the South and the
Catholic Church in the South had now become too much impov-

* Rev. J. R. Slattery, THE CATHOLIC WORLD for April, 1885, ' Facts and Suggestions about
the Colored People."

88 THE NEGRO How CAN WE HELP HIM? [Oct.,

erished to supply the defect. Even for the whites many missions
would have been abandoned but for the charitable donations of
the Propagation of the Faith. Yet we would not create the im-
pression that the church in the South is doing nothing for the
negro at present. Let us see. The various Protestant denomi-
nations, holding the wealth, numbers, and influence of the South,
aided entirely and powerfully by well-organized bodies at the
North, were educating, in 1880, fourteen thousand colored stu-
dents ; whereas Catholics, having as a body neither wealth nor
influence, with a membership of only one-tenth of that of their
separated brethren, receiving scarcely any aid from the North,
were then educating about one-fifth that number. This, we con-
tend, is comparatively a commendable showing for the church in
our States. We do not mention the fact as a matter of self-com-
placency, or as if we are satisfied with what has been thus far
done or is now doing, but that our brother of the North may
judge it is not zeal but means we lack in evangelizing the
negro. Besides, an assurance of this fact may prompt generous
friends to be more liberal in their donations.

Compared with the entire negro population, it cannot be de-
nied that this result is lamentably small. The church in the
South has been censured for this. Yet in the conversion and
education of the negro we must contend with difficulties of
which our critics can have little idea. We have already spoken
of those arising from our impoverished state ; on the part of
the negro there are also serious difficulties. Thrown in contact
with a superior race and holding no social status, morality in the
female, as a rule, is not so much as expected. And even more
rigorously must this be said of all those who have congregated
in the towns and cities. At least in this respect we have found
the influence of the white for worse, not for the better. Besides
whether it be the effect of his former condition or long neglect
since, we are unable to say the negro seems lacking in stability
of character, and is consequently more easily influenced by bad
example. And then, too, by association, by early prejudice and
ignorance, he is strongly inclined to Protestantism, and, unfortu-
nately, to that lower type which places the essence of religion in
mere animal emotionalism. And again must we repeat the utter
inability of the church in the South, unaided, to do any conside-
rable work among the negroes.

We shall, therefore, in suggesting what appears to us the best
method of evangelizing the negro, advance two propositions by
way of axiomata :

1885.] THE NEGRO How CAN WE HELP HIM? 89

First, that we must commence with the young in the school-
room.

Second, that for this end a large amount of money is neces-
sary, which we expect from the charity of the North.

Let teachers well trained be distributed here and there, prin-
cipally in the country, where morality is at a higher ebb ; both
school and teachers to be under the supervision of a priest, who
should visit them regularly. On such occasions the school-room
could serve as chapel. Few negroes would object to their chil-
dren learning catechism, and thus, by thoroughly instructing the
children, both they and, through them, their parents might with
the grace of God be prepared to receive baptism. In order to
cope with the public-schools such schools should be free, the
teacher drawing his salary from a general fund collected for this
purpose.

Now, very naturally it may be asked, Whence are the teachers
to come ? We reply, From the colored people themselves. If
we wish to do something permanent for the negro we must com-
mence with a permanent foundation. We must not look upon
the negroes as wards of the nation, as mere children ever to be
treated as such, but as a self-existing, independent race, under-
standing its own value, and with laudable aspirations to all the
higher positions of education and religion. In the beginning it
will be difficult to have such teachers, yet daily experience shows
that the public-schools of the South are in a very great and in-
creasing measure taught by colored men and women. Religious
orders are strongly in demand for white congregations, and con-
sequently could not (we doubt whether all of them would be
willing to) devote themselves to the service of colored schools.
The nature of the work, as well as its magnitude, preclude the
hope of our getting a sufficient number of white teachers, reli-
gious or secular, for the undertaking. Certainly, by the ties of
association and race-kinship, negro teachers may be well pre-
sumed to understand better than the white the characteristics of
their own race, its qualities good or bad ; or at least such work
would be more congenial to them. Such teachers (we assume
that they are good, well-instructed Catholics) should be well re-
munerated. By thus creating a new, ennobling, and lucrative
field for the rising colored Catholic youth we feel they would
not be long in availing themselves of the opportunity.

Should an immediate call for such teachers be made we are
unable to say how many might apply, and still less how many
upon examination might be found competent. Still, presuming

90 THE NEGRO How CAN WE HELP Hiri? [Oct.,

the Accessary fund to have been established, a sufficient number
might be found to make a beginning. And this leads us to the
most important and vital suggestion we beg leave to submit
the founding of a normal institute for the training of Catholic
colored teachers (and why not priests ?) to aid us in this work.
It will be at least ten years before a colored seminarist could be
ordained to the priesthood. In the twenty years since the war
many race-prejudices have disappeared. This diminution will
certainly continue. Negro and slave are ceasing to be synony-
mous terms. In ten more years a generation will have sprung up
which never knew the negro as a slave, and to which, therefore,
this association of ideas will be unknown. If well educated and
grounded in piety (who can deny the reasonable hope of this?)
he may do more good among his own race for the very fact that
he is of their own kith and kin.

Maryland seems to us the most propitious field for such an
institution. Nurtured in faith and morality for generations, the
Maryland negro offers better hope of perseverance and devotion
to duty. Not unfrequently have we been edified at the stanch-
ness of his faith and the purity of his morals, even where for
years he had been far from church and priest.

Such, then, according to our idea, is the best practical man-
ner of aiding the negro a normal school to train the Catholic
African youth as teachers and catechists for the negro ; such
teachers to be located within a circuit not too vast for super-
vision of missionary priest, and both priest and teachers to de-
rive support from a uniform, regular, and voluntary fund coming
principally (for reasons already assigned) from the Catholics in
the North.

The elevation, moral and intellectual, of the negro is so plainly
demanded by every argument of reason, patriotism, and religion
as to make their repetition useless. An intelligent being no less
than we, his very nature pleads for the cultivation of his nobler
faculties ; unlike the Indian, who has disappeared before the on-
ward tread of the white man, the negro is already a citizen, will
remain a citizen, and consequently must the national progress be
indissolubly linked with his ; and, lastly, our Blessed Lord died
alike for all men, wishing all to come to the knowledge of truth
and share the blessings of divine grace, without distinction of
Jew or Gentile, Greek or Roman. The negro has been freed
from the shackles of temporal slavery, but those of ignorance
and sin are as fast as ever.

1885.] AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 91

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY.

AMERICA has been in the possession of civilized man for three
hundred years. Among its numerous varied products is one
philosopher. His influence upon the generation that was con-
temporary with him and with some that succeeded was very
great. Of his life, private and public, t the world knows more
than of those of any of his predecessors. His public belongs to
the history of his times ; his private has been recorded by him-
self with a circumstantiality that shows how important he re-
garded it that the world should see to what vast heights a man
can rise from lowest beginnings with no other helps than his own
energy, thrift, and sagacity. When, not long ago, we read over
again his Autobiography, we would have thought that we should
regard this curious work as a record of confessions but for the
evidence of the pride that he took in inditing it.

In the article named " Pre- American Philosophy "we referred
to the modesty, the earnestness, and the sometimes sadness that for
the most part characterized the wise men of old. We saw that,
however various were their speculations upon human happiness,
they believed it to be made mainly of intellectual and moral ele-
ments that were noble and pure. Some of them went to the
length of despising the pleasures that result from the possession
of material benefits ; others, not despising, disregarded them ;
while others yet pursued them with moderate quest and indulg-
ed only in their temperate use. Even the gay Horace, favorite
at the greatest court of the world, wrote to the opulent Pompeius
Grosphus :

" He who enjoys nor covets more
Than lands his father held before

Is of true bliss possessed :
Let but his mind unfettered tread
Far as the paths of knowledge lead,

And wise as well as blessed."

The acrimonies among the various sects were often pronounc-
ed. By the Stoics the garden of Epicurus was called a pig-sty,
while by many Diogenes and his associates were saluted Cynics.
Nevertheless all of them had aims and counsel for the noble and
pure, and not one of them taught that the way to happiness lay
through prosperity that comes from the mere possession of

92 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Oct.,

wealth. This precept had been reserved for the philosopher of
the New World.

It was said of Diogenes that while but a youth, having been
suspected of complicity in the crime of his father, a banker of
Sinope, who had been convicted of debasing the coin, he fled to
Athens, where Antisthenes was teaching the virtue of poverty,
and thereupon became his disciple. Franklin began his philo-
sophic career much younger, even at the age of ten years. The
question was argued between himself and his father whether the
utility of a " wharff " which had been constructed by himself, at
the head of a band of urchins, on the edge of a quagmire at the
margin of a mill-pond in which they were wont to angle for min-
nows, was greater or less than the crime of stealing the stones
for its construction. The old gentleman got the best of the argu-
ment with the help of a rod of sufficient firmness. The conces-
sion then made, that " nothing was useful which was not honest,"
had to be deviated from some time afterwards in the case of
what he admitted to be one of the errata of his life his availing
himself of a fraudulent change in the indentures by which he had
been bound to a brutal elder brother, and running away from
him.

One of Franklin's ancestors had been a poet, a specimen of
whose verse here follows (written in behalf of liberty of con-
science) :

" I am for peace and not for war,

And that's the reason why
I write more plain than some men do

That used to daub and lie.
But I shall cease, and set my name

To what I here insert,
Because to be a libeller

I hate it with my heart.
From Sherburne town, where now I dwell,

My name I do put here ;
Without offence your real friend,

It is Peter Folgier."

While apprenticed to his brother, who was a printer, he be-
stowed temporary attention to the cultivation of the hereditary
vein, at the instance of his brother, who sent him around hawking
(in Boston, their native place) his Lighthouse Tragedy and a sailor's
song on the capture of Teach, the pirate. But his father again
diverted him by telling him that " verse-makers were generally
beggars."

It is curious to follow the youthful philosopher along his

1885.] AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 93

career of endeavors after what were the best things ; his eager-
ness for the knowledge to be gotten from books; his debating
with himself about whether or not he ought to spare the time he
had for reading on Sundays by going to church, and deciding for
the negative ; his adopting a vegetable diet in order to save both
time and money, and other employments judged likely to be use-
ful after a while. Let^us hear some of his comments on dispu-
tation :

"There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name,
with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and
very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one an-
other, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad
habit, making people often extreamly disagreeable in company by the con-
tradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice ; and thence, besides
souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts, and per-
haps enmities where you may have occasion for friendship. I had caught
it by reading my father's books of dispute about religion. Persons of good
sense, I have since observ d , seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university
men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough."

The harm of disputatious reasoning appeared to him quite
early, as we notice in the following :

"And being then " (after studying Greenwood s English Grammar and
Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates), " from reading Shaftesbury and
Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I
found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against
whom I used it ; therefore I took a delight in it, practis d it continually,
and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior know-
ledge, into concessions the consequences of which they did not foresee,
entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate them-
selves, and so obtaining^ victories that neither myself nor my cause always
deserv d . I continu d this method some few years, but gradually left it,
retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence,
never using, when I advanc d anything that may be possibly disputed, the
words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness
to an opinion ; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so
and so ; It appears to me, or / imagine it to be so, if I am not mistaken. This
habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occa-
sion to inculcate my opinions and persuade men into measures that I have
been, from time to time, engag d in promoting," etc.

The escape from his brother by means of the false indentures
troubled him little to remember, especially since that brother, by
his representations concerning the fraud, hindered him from get-
ting other business in that community :

" It was not fair for me to take this advantage, and this I therefore
reckon one of the first errata of my life ; but the unfairness of it weigh d

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Oct.,

little with me, when under impressions of resentment for the blows his
passion too often urg d him to bestow upon me, though he was otherwise
not an ill -natur d man ; perhaps I was too saucy and provoking."

The fugitive, now a boy of seventeen, was landed in Phila-
delphia with a cash capital of a Dutch dollar and about a shilling
in copper. The philosopher develops. " The shilling," he says,
" I gave the people of the boat for my passage, who at first re-
fus d it on account of my rowing ; but I insisted on their taking
it. A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a
little money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro' fear of
being thought to have but little."

We cannot but feel much of some sort of respect for a phi-
losopher of seventeen years who, with his Dutch dollar less
three pennyworth spent for bread confident and cool, strolled
along Market Street, gnawing away at one of the huge loaves,
while the other two^were tucked beneath his arms, looking about
him leisurely for the living that he was sure would come, not
minding the while the smiles of Miss Read at his awkward and
ridiculous appearance, who is to think so much better of him ere
long. Employment with one Keimer, one of the pretended
prophets from the Cevennes who " could act their enthusiastic
agitations," but was very ignorant of the world, gave opportuni-
ties to the thrift and cunning he possessed. That was an event-
ful day when Governor Keith called at the printing-office, and,
instead of stopping with the French prophet, who ran down to
meet the distinguished visitor, asked for the workman, whose mas-
ter " star d like a pig poisoned " ; and it was a day of triumph of
its kind when, six months afterwards, full of promises from the
governor, whose letter he bore to his father bespeaking the lat-
ter's help to set up his son in business so that he could realize
these promises, " having a genteel new suit from head to foot, a
watch, and my pockets lin d with near five pounds in silver," the
brother from whom he had run away " receiv d me not very
frankly, look d me all over, and turn d to his work again." It
did seem hard, however, when, the brother " still grum and sul-
len," he spread a handful of silver before the wondering eyes of
the printing boys, and, going to the length of giving them " a
piece of eight to drink," thereby "insulted him in such a manner
before his people that he could never forget or forgive it." Yet
from the fond parent he could get nothing but a promise to help
him when he should reach the age of twenty-one years, and ad-
vice to " endeavor to obtain the general esteem, and avoid lam-

1885.] AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 95

pooning and libelling, to which he thought I had too much incli-
nation."

It reads like a moderately good novel when the philosopher
tells of how, on the voyage back to Philadelphia, he soothed the
qualms of conscience for the " unprovoked murder of taking
fish," when a cod came " hot out of the frying-pan, smell-
ing admirably well " ; of how he rose in Keimer's estimation by
his adroit use of the Socratic method, and

"Trepann d him so often by questions apparently so distant from any point
we had in hand, and yet by degrees lead to the point and brought him into
difficulties and contradictions, that at last he grew ridiculously cautious,
and would hardly answer me the most common question without asking
first,' What do you intend to infer from that?'' However, it gave him so
high an opinion of my abilities in the confuting way that he seriously pro-
pos d my being his colleague in a project he had of setting up a new sect.
He was to preach the doctrines, and I was to confound all opponents.
When he came to explain with me upon the doctrines I found several
conundrums which I objected to, unless I might have my way a little too,
and introduce some of mine."

It is proper to note here that the philosopher was not yet
fully prepared to originate and propound theological doctrines.
They must remain in abeyance until those more important for the
government of this mere mortal existence were sufficiently ascer-
tained and settled. For the present he would content himself
with a temporary quasi-coalescence with the prophet from the
Cevennes, destined to be snapped suddenly by the latter's vio-
lation of one article of their creed (the abstaining from animal
food) by eating the whole of a roast pig at his own table before
the time of dinner, to which his colleague and " two women-
friends " had been invited. Yet he admits to have unsettled the
faith of Charles Osborne and James Ralph,* two young men of
his acquaintance, " for which they both made me suffer " in his
pocket. As for Ralph, who was destined to be kept from ob-
livion by the Dunciad of Pope, the philosopher's advice to him
reminds one of the chiding of Xenophanes upon Homer, and
Plato's exclusion of poets from his Republic : " I approv d the
amusing one's self with poetry now and then, so far as to improve
one's language, but no farther." The recollection of his father's
criticism upon the Lighthouse Tragedy, and his name for the fol-
lowers of the gat science, doubtless assured him of the whole-
someness of this counsel.

* Ralph went back to England and became somewhat noted as a political pamphleteer.
Pope silenced him as a poet with the following in the Dunciad:
" And see ! the very Gazetteers give o'er,
' Ev'n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more."

96 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Oct.,

All varieties of philosophers, excepting probably the Cynics,
and certainly those bound by celibate obligations, have not been
insensible to the goods, real and imaginary, of married life.
Even Socrates must have a wife, selecting, as some said, the
most shrewish he could find, not with the hope of taming her,
like Petrucchio, but of subjecting his patience and endurance to
perennial tests. But for the printed words from his own manu-
script it would be incredible that Franklin, then old, rich, and re-
nowned, should have written with such shocking indelicacy re-
garding the woman whom he was to marry, and some of the in-
centives that drove him thereto. Some love-passages had been
between him and the Miss Read before mentioned, with whose
parents he took his first board, but on his sailing for England
these (though he was confident of her reciprocation of his feeling)
were suspended. Stung by her lover's long neglect, she had
married a potter, whom, having found him to be a worthless fel-
low and reputed to have another wife, she had forsaken. He
confesses to the shame he felt, upon his return from England, on
meeting the forlorn woman, his treatment of whom he names an-
other of his errata one, however, which several conditions (some
not to be repeated by us) rendered capable of correction. We
can afford to give the following specimen :

" I piti d poor Miss Read's unfortunate situation, who was generally de-
jected, seldom cheerful, and avoided company. I consider* 1 my giddiness
and inconstancy when in London as in a great degree the cause of her un-
happiness, tho' the mother was good enough to think the fault more her
own than mine, as she had prevented our marrying before I went thither,
and persuaded the other match in my absence. Our mutual affection was
revived, but there were now great objections to our union. The match was
indeed look d upon as invalid, a preceding wife being said to be still living
in England ; but this could not easily be prov d , because of the distance ;
and tho' there was a report of his death, it was not certain. Then,
tho' it should be true, he had left many debts, which his successor might
be call d upon to pay. We ventur d , however, over all these difficulties, and
I took her to wife September ist, 1730. None of the inconveniences hap-
pen 4 that we had apprehended ; she proved a good and faithful helpmate
assisted me much by attending the shop ; we throve together, and have
ever mutually endeavor d to make each other happy. Thus I corrected
that great erratum as well as I could."

The principal element in the being of Franklin as a man and
as a philosopher was selfishness. It was the magnitude, it was
the scope, it was the cool imperturbability, it was the never-sleep-
ing watchfulness towards what would gratify this selfishness that
carried him to such a height. His great doctrine was that the

1885.] AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 97

road to human virtue and happiness was wealth. This doctrine
was already in his mind when he was a child in his father's house,
grown stronger when he went about the streets of Boston hawk-
ing his own ballads, and living upon vegetables in order to have
money with which to purchase books. Whatever came within
view of that spirit, the most watchful and persistent of mankind,
was appropriated or rejected according as it was found or be-
lieved to be a help or a hindrance in the way of the kind of happi-
ness that he sought. The disputes he had had with his father
about the need of the wharf, that he held with himself a little
later upon the question of attending religious services or stay-
ing home with his books on Sundays, were prophetic. It was
utility, personal utility, that he was to study and to take wherever
he could. The consequences of the wharf business convinced
him that dishonesty was not useful. Therefore he will practise
it no more, at least after just such a style as pilfering another's
goods. But the world must not expect from him delicate balanc-
ings along the border-line between the questionable and the un-
questionable things in 'human conduct. Some of the things that
he tells us exhibit an audacity of vanity that none except a very
great man could feel or dare to avow. One has learned to rather
pity the poor crazy prophet, so unthrifty, so friendless, so unapt
in hiding his poverty and his numerous infirmities in fine, so
much of a child, an orphan-child at that. Yet for years the
employee has been foreseeing the end of a sure decline and
silently counting upon rising upon his fall. It was at the time
of beginning the famous The Universal Instructor in all Arts and
Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette -, the intention of whose estab-
lishment, long concealed, was made known to Keimer by another
workman, one Webb, that the failing printertried to improve his
own sheet so that it might compete with the one now projected.
The friends Franklin had made had assured him often that it was
only a question of time, ever rapidly diminishing, when the thrift-
less creature must get out of his way. Now, this last spasmodic
effort was too much for the man who had been waiting " long,
too long already." Let us listen to what he says:

" I resented this, and to counteract them, as I could not yet begin our
paper, I wrote several pieces of entertainment for Bradford's paper, under
the title of Busy Body, which Breintnal continu d some months. By this
means the attention of the publick was fix d on that paper, and Keimer's
proposals, which were burlesqu d and ridicul d , were disregarded. He
began his paper, however, and, after carrying it on three-quarters of a year,
he offer d it to me for a trifle ; and I, having been ready some time to go
VOL. XLII. 7

98 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Oct.,

on with it, took it in hand directly, and it prov d in a few years ex-
treamly ' profitable to me."

The poor insolvent got away somehow and emigrated to the
Barbadoes. Now Franklin, taught by the results of the quagmire
" wharff " and other experiences, doubtless would have regard-
ed it verv unwise to have practised on the " novice," as he some-
times named him, actions bold as the stealing of a builder's
stones; for such conduct had been proven at least not useful.
We may not reach forth and pluck with our hands the fruit,
though overripe, that hangs upon another's tree ; but we may
eagerly watch the bough upon which it hangs leaning over our
side of the wall, and receive it when fallen into thankful laps.
The useful, the useful is that for which we must seek in order for
the obtainment of the happiness we desire. Dishonesty is bad,
honesty is good policy. Let us consider how the argument was
carried into religion. After telling of how he once became a
deist he thus proceeds :

" My arguments perverted some others, particularly Collins and Ralph ;
but each of them having afterwards wrong d me greatly without the least
compunction, and recollecting Keith's conduct towards me * (who was an-
other free-thinker) and my own towards Vernon t and Miss Read, which at
times gave me great trouble, I began to suspect that this doctrine, tho' it
might be true, was not very useful."

That conclusion must settle the business with deism. Deism had
to go out of his creed, and it went.

But a religion of some sort was necessary to man in the long
run, and in emergencies it must even be pronounced and clamor-
ous, and sometimes, for a desired purpose of utility, put on sack-
cloth and sit amid ashes ! There is an undertone of humor in his
account of the fast " the first ever thought of in the province "
whose proclamation he had advised. As no precedent could be
found, the mover had to draw up the document.

" My education in New England, where a fast is proclaim 4 every year,
was here of some advantage. I drew it in the accustom* stile ; it was
translated into German, printed in both languages, and divulg d thro'
the province. This gave the clergy of the different sects an opportunity
of influencing their congregations to join in the association, and it would
probably have been general among all but Quakers if the peace had not
soon intervenV

* Keith had broken his promise of letters of introduction to persons in London.

t He had collected some money for Vernon, used it, and been tardy in its payment. ' ' Mr.
Vernon about this time put me in mind of the debt I ow* him, but did not press me. I wrote
him an ingenuous letter of acknowledgment, cravd his forbearance a little longer, which he al-
lowd me, and as soon as I was able I paid the principal with interest and many thanks ; so that
erratum was in some degree corrected."

18850 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 99

But the vanity of Franklin becomes gigantic when we see him,
after become illustrious throughout the world, meditating the
foundation of a new sect. In his old age he indulges in charita-
ble regret that his other engagements kept putting off and finally
hindered so benign an intention. In the history of mankind we
believe that there is nothing to be found in its kind equal to the
following :

"My ideas at that time were that the sect should be begun and spread
at first among young and single men only ; that each person to be ini-
tiated should not only declare his assent to such creed, but should have
exercis d himself with the thirteen weeks' examination and practice of
the virtues, as in the foremention d model; that the existence of such
a society should be kept secret till it was become considerable, to pre-
vent solicitations for the admission of improper persons, but that the
members should each of them search among his acquaintance for in-
genuous, well-dispos d youths, to whom, with prudent caution, the scheme
should be gradually communicated; that the members should engage to
afford their advice, assistance, and support to each other in promoting one
another's interests, business, and advancement in life ; that for distinction
we should be call d The Society of the Free and Easy?' etc., etc.

Herein have we put down a few things in the career of the
one philosopher whom the New World has produced thus far.
They are taken from his own writing, recorded when he had -be-
come old and the world was filled with his fame. Other things
are in this curious book which could not be reproduced without
offending others as well as ourselves, and others yet were decent-
ly suppressed by the editor from the author's manuscript. That
Franklin was, in some respects, what is usually known in the
name of a great man is undeniable. His confidence in his own
powers, his patient biding of his times, his sagacity in the pursuit
and compassing of the ends which he proposed, his ready percep-
tion and self-satisfactory corrections of the mistakes he had made
from time to time, his steady endeavors for the possible, his keep-
ing his eyes away from the visionary, his calm lead of mankind,
his freedom from temptation for the quest or indulgence of
whatever would injure his health or his name, or would retard
the projects he had extended all these show him to have been
what is generally understood in the name of a great man.
But remembering of what sort of men were the wise of an-
cient Greece, can we justly style a philosopher such a man as
Franklin? The wise men of ancient Greece, heathen though they
were, made their aim for the highest good that was possible to
human nature. That highest good was virtue. Whatever else
that word might include within its meaning, neither wealth nor

ioo AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Oct.,

mere utility was among them, but the fear of God and kindness
to mankind were, and were chiefest constituents. Some despised,
many disregarded, but none ever sought riches as the means
of leading to happiness, and especially to virtue. The wisest
among them did not withhold becoming respect for those who
had become rich by industry or inheritance, whenever these did
not magnify the importance of their possessions in the sum of hu-
man existence. Industry, frugality, temperance they counselled,
because they were promoters, to the extent of their importance,
of virtue by the health of body and the peace of mind which
they induced, not by the mere accumulation of lands and goods.
Franklin was the first to exalt Plutus among the superior gods
indeed, to put his throne at the summit. With him wealth was
both virtue and happiness. In the pursuit of wealth a man's con-
stant aim must be to search for the things that will be useful for
his purpose, and evade everything that will not. He must not
steal, nor lie (that is, on a very great scale), nor be debauched,
nor gluttonous, nor intemperate, nor be a deist. Why ? Because
these and their likes will be found useless in the matter he has in
hand. For the first time in lexicography honesty is defined or
made synonymous with policy; rather, good policy. As for reli-
gion, that is a harmless thing in general, of which a leader of
men, on occasions of great perturbation of the public mind, may
avail for the end of inducing the clergy of all sects (except
Quakers, who are comparatively weak) to incite their congrega-
tions to co-operation in action necessary to the common weal.
But a distinct, definite, reasonable, true, unerring creed the phi-
losopher, in the multifold engrossments with public and private
business, could never obtain leisure to propound. In the retire-
ment of age he kindly, yet without pain, regrets that a scheme
so generously conceived was hindered in its execution because of
so many matters of more importance having devolved upon him.
It would have been curious to see the poor, the weary, and the
heavy-laden knocking at that church from which were specially
to be denied admittance all who owed money. Such as these
could not be expected to keep themselves in view of that standard
of virtue which in the "Almanac by Richard Saunders, Philomat,
printed and sold by B. Franklin," was exalted as high as, even
above, the Labarum of Constantine.

" I therefore filled," he says in the fulness of the sweetness of remem-
bering Richard's prodigious success in his venture" I therefore filled all
the little spaces that occurr d between the remarkable days in the calendar
with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and fru-

1885.] AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 101

gality as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue ; it
being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, as, to use
here one of those proverbs, it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright"

It would have been curious, we repeat, to see the result of
a poor man's application for membership in a church whose
founder had assembled and formed such proverbs " as the ha-
rangue of a wise old man to the people attending an auction."
We imagine the applicant to be dismissed with some such words
as lago employed with the rejected Roderigo :

"Put money in thy purse : . . . I say, put money in thy purse. Defeat
thy favor with a usurped beard. Put but money in thy purse. . . . Fill
thy purse with money. . . . Traverse ! go ; provide thy money."

How fallen such a creed below not only the behests of Chris-
tianity, but of the very ancientest and crudest philosophies! To
say nothing of what Franklin thought of Christ, how he must
have imagined himself to compassionate all others who had pre-
ceded him in quest of the true paths of wisdom ! How useless
to him must have seemed their solemn meditations on God and
the best good of mankind, their yearnings for immortality, their
despondent searchings for truth, destined never certainly to be
known not to be a phantom until her hiding-place should be dis-
covered by the great philosopher of the West ! That a man with
such views and maxims, with extraordinary powers for their en-
forcement, should have exerted an immense influence upon a
heterogeneous people in their formation of a government in a
country so new and so vast, may not be wondered at, but only
deplored. No other philosopher ever had so numerous a follow-
ing. With Poor Richard s Almanac in his hand, and with his own
persistent, tireless, endless commentings, he made himself an
apostle to the multitudes whose minds he led away from concern
for spiritual things and directed to the pursuit of the one impor*
tant material. The dullest understanding comprehended his doc-
trine as well as the brightest. Reduced to logical form it would
read thus :

All virtuous men are happy ;

But, none but the rich are virtuous ;

Therefore, none but the rich are happy.

In such a discipline how many thousands upon thousands in
our country have spent lives of varying lengths in that search for
happiness! What contrivances have been invented for that end !
What simulations of justifiable means that were often but the
" index and obscure prologue to the history of foul thoughts " !

102

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [Oct.,

Alas ! how many have been led away from Christianity, and even
from the development of manhood! How many have been de-
stroyed whilst endeavoring to reconcile those two proverbs so
vastly apart, Honesty is the best policy and It is hard for an empty
sack to stand upright.

Of all teachers whom the world has yet produced, Franklin,
to us, seems least like Christ and most disrespectful to him.
Christ ennobled poverty by being born into its estate. In it he
chose his mother, his brethren, his friends. In it he lived and
died. He had said, " Blessed are the poor." Franklin, rejecting
this, elected some others of his precepts, and cunningly diverted
them from the chiefest purposes for which they had been pro-
pounded by the Great Teacher. Yet he hesitated not to advise
the weaker in his school and those outside to call upon Christ on
occasions of public emergency, in order to obtain universal co-
operation in endeavors of pressing public importance. In his
old age, while retrospecting his long career, the full gratification
of his mind must express itself in the words of that Autobiogra-
phy, a thing unique in its kind. Too wise to lament in vain the
dwindling of strength and desires, he yet professed his willing-
ness, if such could be, to live over his life, even including the
errata, all of which he had moderately regretted, and of some of
which he had been ashamed.

Had Franklin been a Christian, or had he not sought to med-
dle with and pervert Christian ethics, and kept his speculations
within the fields of legitimate philosophical inquiry, the great-
ness of his career would have been far more excellent. We
would not subtract from his renown in these fields, wherein we
endorse the praise of Jeffrey : " He was the most rational, per-
haps, of all philosophers. No individual perhaps ever possessed
a juster understanding, or was so seldom obstructed in the use of
it by indolence, enthusiasm, and authority.'

1885.] KATHARINE. 103

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER XLIII.

Louis GIDDINGS went slowly up the stairs after his friend's
departure, and entered a private sitting-room, beyond which lay
the nursery. The door between the two was slightly ajar, and
he could see the crucifix hanging on the wall and hear the
splashing of water, the crowing of baby in his bath, the voices
of Katharine and the nurse, and the childish laughter of Lilly
Kitchener, who had begun to divide her allegiance between the
father and the son, and was the latter's most devoted subject.
At any other time he would himself have passed on into the
farther room, as Katharine doubtless anticipated now ; for though
she heard his step she neither spoke nor rose to go and meet
him. But to-day the familiar scene was more than he could bear.
He stood a moment near an open window, and then dropped
into an easy-chair beside the table and buried his face on his
folded arms. The night had been a bitter one, and the thought
of what yet lay before him taxed his strength almost beyond
endurance.

Katharine, approaching the open door a moment later and
seeing his unusual attitude, shut it behind her, and, coming close,
knelt down beside him. She slipped her arm beneath his, and
kissed the hand which was nearest her and then the cheek
against which she nestled her own. He neither moved nor
spoke, and presently she began half- whispering in his ear.

" It is hard, Louis, but I think God will be good to us. It
will not be for very long." /

" No," he answered, with a sigh that was almost a groan ; " at
worst life is not endless."

" We did well to ask for fortitude this morning," she went on
after a little, seeing that she had failed to rouse him from his de-
spondent mood ; " but why did you tell me to beg the fear of the
Lord as well?"

He turned at that and took her in his arms. " I did you an
injustice, dear. It has penetrated all your bones, arid I know it."

Then for a while they looked into each other's eyes without
more words; a vague dread slowly rising in hers to meet the
anguish and tenderness and exceeding pity that were in his.

104 KATHARINE. [Oct.,

" You stayed up too late with Richard," she said at last, try-
ing to shake off her new anxiety, yet going straight to its occa-
sion by an unerring instinct. " I was glad to see him, but I wish
he had not come just now."

But he could not force himself to take the opening she gave
him.

" Do you remember, love," he said, closing her eyes with a
caress, "the day we saw each other first? Such a little time to
count up by years, and yet it seems to stretch back into eternity
and go forward to it. Do you know what you have been to me
since then ? "

" Yes," she whispered, " for I know what you have been to
me."

" The life of my life," he went on, " the heart of my heart,
even before you became all to me that you are now. If we were
to be torn utterly apart it seems to me that my soul, too, would
languish and die within me. Come what may, that can never
be, I think ? "

" No," she answered softly ; " could we let each other go
even for a little, if we did not know that for us there is no such
thing as parting? As it is I can hardly bear it. What shall I
do without you? When I know you are in danger I shall die
daily."

" And yet death would be so easy, and I am so great a cow-
ard that I am tempted to pray for it on the first battle-field.
Don't look at me like that ! You unman me, and I need all my
courage."

Presently he began again, seeing that she kept silence.

" Think how much I need it when I say that, seeing what lies
before us, I could find it in my heart to be sorry that we ever
met or loved each other. Do you know what I have done to
you, poor motherless little mother, whom I must leave to bear
her burdens and her sorrows all alone?"

She burst out then, speaking with a quick, vehement passion,
and drawing back from his encircling arms.

" Yes," she cried, " you have made life sweet to me and holy !
You opened the way to God for me ! You gave me your child !
You have given me infinite happiness and but one single pain,
and that you give me now when for any reason you can say you
regret that it has ever been ! What have I done to deserve a
stab like that? "

" Good God ! " he said, " I don't regret it not one hour of it,
not one minute ! I can give you up, and know you suffer, and

1885.] KATHARINE. 105

live to feel the sharpest sting of every pain that you will have to
bear, but I can't be sorry that you have been mine ! I shall re-
joice in it till the day I die."

Then he told her. The blood surged up to her temples as
she began to comprehend, and then sank back again. He saw
the life going out in her eyes and on her lips ; she grew cold, and
for the first and last time she fainted outright and lay in his arms
like one dead. He rose and laid her down upon a sofa, and for
a little while made no effort to revive her. The thrust of a pain
which was half-pleasure smote him.

" My God ! " he said beneath his breath, " how sweet it would
be to kill her with a blow like that, and die myself in giving it ! "

Once afterwards in the course of the interrupted day, broken
by the pressure of so many imperative duties, he told her that
for months he had been dimly conscious that some heavy grief
awaited them.

" Not this one," he said. " As God sees me, the possibility of
it has never once crossed my mind in all these years. What I
feared I did not know, but the dread followed me like my shadow.
That is what lay at the bottom of my enlistment. There were
other reasons, sound enough, plausible enough to offer even to
you, and yet I have wondered many times how you could accept
them as sufficient. Did you think me made of stone that I could
leave you, suffering still from your mother's death, with the
child still hanging at you* breast, to assume a duty not absolute-
ly laid upon me ? I must have been trying, with a vain instinct,
to avert one evil by going to seek another."

" It is better as it is," she said, lifting her sad eyes to his. " I
can be more reconciled to lose you this way. *The other cut me
deeper than I could ever bear to show you. I am glad you
thought to tell me that."

He made a movement as if to take her in his arms, but stopped
again, looking at her in silence.

" Good God ! " he groaned, " how close you are, and yet how
far away ! "

" We never can be far away from each other now," she an-
swered. *' Don't you feel how this blow which has sundered us
outwardly has welded our souls together once for all ? It seems
to me that I have passed out of myself and become you."

" You are an angel," he said. " The dross is burned clean
out of you, but the leaven of humanity works still in me."

The baby was sleeping in its mother's arms, and he took up
the little hand which lay, relaxed and with limp fingers, at its side.

106 KATHARINE. [Oct.,

" See here," he said, " one chief ingredient in my bitterness.
What will you tell him on the day when he asks why he has no
father?"

" Poor little lad ! " she said, looking down at him with infinite,
tenderness. " I think he feels it, too. He has not been like him-
self since I nursed him after his bath. There is no bitterness in
him for me. He is the one treasure which has no alloy. I shall
never tell him he has no father. He is yours, and he is mine.
Do you think he will not be proud of his lineage the day he
comes to know and understand it?"

" You put me to the blush," he said. " I might have known
I did know that there is no room in you for pride, or shame,
or anything but pure and perfect love. You are not sorry to
have known it ?"

"Ah! no," she said, with a smile that filled his eyes with
tears. "I am glad I am glad from my heart!"

" Tell me, then, if you know and yet I know so well myself
that I need not ask you but for the bitter pleasure of hearing it
from your lips would anything but the one Cause which parts
us have sufficed to do it?"

" No," she answered, " there was no need to ask that ques-
tion. What but God could have lifted us to the height where
we can see nothing but him beyond us, and feel nothing but that
all sweetness comes from him and can be fulfilled in him only?"

" It is worth while to lose you, love," he said. " I never
should have known you wholly but for that."

CHAPTER XLIV.

DOUBTLESS the least to be envied of these three was Richard
Norton. He had been unable to resist the gibe with which he
parted from his friend, but no one could be more sensible than
he of the self-regarding irony of such a taunt issuing from
his lips. Sympathy gave him understanding concerning the
inaction and silence of Giddings in the past; there were al-
ready moments when he had no regret more intense than that
arising from the fact that circumstances forbade his thorough
imitation of them. For more than one substantial reason he
would have been glad never to see again the woman who had
duped him, and to content himself with dismissing her from his
life with a warning which he felt sure she would not disregard.
As he turned the matter over in his mind, recoiling alike from
every aspect it presented, he reflected often that the facts proba-

1885.] KATHARINE. 107

bly tallied with his friend's understanding of them ; that, at least,
he was not imperatively called upon to doubt it, and that there
was, therefore, no necessity for his further interference. Nothing
could be more simple than the case would become, so far as he
was concerned, if Giddings not only persisted in his incompre-
hensible determination to sacrifice himself and Katharine, but
showed no intention of bringing the woman to justice. If they,
who were the chief sufferers, chose to remain passive, why should
he also not wash his hands of it and disclaim all responsibility ?

Motives are very mixed, even with the least selfish, the least
complex of us, and Richard Norton belonged to neither cate-
gory. If his first emotion had been the horror excited by his
friend's position, his second, lasting, and more natural feeling
had been that of relief concerning his own. Nothing disturbed
it but the uneasy suspicion that Giddings lay under a mistake,
which, having once entered his mind, stubbornly resisted every
attempt he made to dislodge it. But, having suggested it, was
it obligatory on him to go further, in the face of his friend's well-
reasoned incredulity ? He knew that he would be willing to ex-
tricate him in that way, and even more than willing, since it
would untangle complications which did not exist in his own
case. But he knew also that he had good reason to shrink from
further personal investigation. He knew it by the very strength
of the impulse which urged him to make it an impulse which
he sometimes looked at obliquely and called quixotic, and half-
persuaded himself to be proud of, but which at others he ex-
amined coolly and put down at its just value. His knowledge
of the woman he had married, incomplete before, yet rounding
to completion, seemed to have suddenly expanded into fulness
under the light just thrown upon it. He felt persuaded that he
knew what she would do if pushed to an extremity, and the
thought excited him much as the prospect of a skilful vivisection
might have done. Were he in a position like that of Giddings,
he was certain he would be unable to resist the temptation, since
it attracted him so almost irresistibly already. And yet it had
an undeniably ugly look. He cursed his friend's passivity, which
in a manner challenged his own sense of justice to undertake the
task. Why should not Giddings share, at least, in the responsi-
bility by facing the whole situation ?

He passed the day in solitude, torn by a violent internal con-
flict from which he emerged at last a conscious victor. He as-
sured himself that his questionable impulse, having matched its
full strength against a better prompting, had given way. There

io8 KATHARINE. [Oct.,

remained, of course, the possibility that Giddings had found his
self-imposed burden too heavy for him, and in that case he would
still be ready to assist him in the way he first proposed; but if
not, he would simply notify the woman by letter that her game
was up and drop out of the affair entirely. Some further steps it
might be necessary to take hereafter ; he would be obliged to
give his parents some inkling of the real facts when he returned
after the fighting was over, but even that unpleasantness time
and circumstances might possibly smooth away unaided. It was
a dismal episode in his life, but one that would be quickly ended.
He should doubtless look back upon it in future as the source of
some not otherwise attainable and extremely useful experience.

At the station he met Louis Giddings and found opportunity
for a few words with him. He saw at a glance that his friend
had adhered to his determination, but could not refrain from put-
ting the direct question and following it with another which re-
garded Katharine.

" Don't speak of her ! " Giddings answered. " She is alive,
and so am I. There is not much more to be Hiid about either
of us."

" You are suffering frightfully and are not fit to start. Can I
do nothing to relieve you ? "

" I am well enough physically," Giddings answered, with a
rather dreary smile. " You don't look over-cheerful yourself. I
know of nothing you can do, unless you will undertake either to
verify, or to put me in a position to dismiss entirely, the sugges-
tion you made this morning. It persists in recurring to me
within the last hour or two in spite of my better judgment. I
can't help hoping for a reprieve, you see, even after the drop has
fallen. If I live to come back I shall look it up myself, unless
you have previously done so. You seem to be in a better posi-
tion than any one else to undertake it. It is not necessary to
question her, or, at all events, to rely upon her testimony. There
must be a record of her marriage with Lloyd, and you have all
the particulars in reference to mine."

" Have you mentioned it to Kitty? "

" No ; the chance is too slender to build, a hope on. To
speak the truth, it never took even the slightest consistency in
my mind until after I left her."

" Very well. In case the result is unsatisfactory to you, will
you empower me to act for you in the manner I proposed ? "

" No ; all I can do in either event is to instruct you to have
criminal proceedings instituted against her on my behalf. Under

1885.] KA THARINE. 1 09

the circumstances that would be a necessary preliminary even to
a civil action for divorce. The latter I will not take, but the
former I cannot in conscience dispense myself from taking."

" My own predicament, if I have to assume the other horn of
the dilemma, is a pleasant one to consider," said Norton grimly,
and yet with a look of relief which his friend saw and misinter-
preted. " If you are not her husband, I am. Have you no sug-
gestion to make with regard to that contingency ? "

" You are a good fellow ! " Giddings said, taking the other's
hand. " No; I have none, except the one I made just now. It
is as applicable to your case as to my own. Neither of us wishes
to punish the woman, of course, but I am not quite so oblivious
of my duties to society as your rebuke this morning showed you
to suppose me."

" I was a fraud this morning," the doctor answered as he re-
turned the pressure. " You ought not to need telling that I
recoil from the whole thing with an utter loathing, and would
be only too glad to turn my back upon it without more words.
I have been considering the possibility of doing so ever since I
left you. You are very sure it will not answer ? "

Giddings shook his head.

" There are some crimes and some criminals," he said, " that one
may safely leave to go scot-free of human justice, or may, at least,
absolve one's self from denouncing to it. This is not one of them. ' '

" All right ! I had been halting between several inclinations,
but I see my way at present. When I have anything definite to
say I will let you know."

Dr. Norton started for Montreal that night and arrived there
an hour or two after noon the following day. Entering a car-
riage at the station, he drove to Mr. Rector's office, where he
passed some time in consultation, and then went on to the bureau
of registration. He found some little trouble in getting at the
marriage records of nine years back, but they were finally pro-
duced on the payment of double fees, and a certified copy of the
one he wanted made out and given him. He forwarded this at
once by mail to Giddings at Washington, and preceded it by a
telegram. One other business call he made, and then went into
a hotel and ordered a dinner, for which he had small appetite, and
during which he drank more wine than was his custom. Then
he set forth to interview his wife. He was conscious of a cer-
tain trepidation of the heart which made his gait somewhat less
brisk than usual, but he assured himself that his brain was cool
and his determination like a rock.

KATHARINE. [Oct.,

Mrs. Norton was within, the clerk informed him, and, refusing
to be announced, he passed up the stairs. The thought crossed
his mind that he would have preferred to enter in her absence
and let her find him unexpectedly on her return. That, how-
ever, was a mere detail ; he even reflected further that the pres-
ence of the young man in the office below would naturally have
taken off the edge of her surprise in that case. Then he hesi-
tated whether or not to rap at her door before entering, and
finally concluded to try the handle first. It yielded to his pres-
sure and he went in. The room was a long one, connecting, at
the end furthest from the door, with a chamber which also stood
open. She was in the latter, sitting with her back to him before
a mirror, apparently about to fasten up her hair. It nung to
the floor beside her, a dark auburn mass, rippling in loose waves
from the crown to the extremities, and shining like burnished
copper against her white peignoir where the afternoon sun fell
on it.

He closed the door softly and turned the key. The carpet
was thick, and the sound of his steps did not attract her atten-
tion, though he made no special effort to tread lightly. ' But be-
fore he reached the entrance of the room where she was sitting
she caught sight of his reflection in the mirror, and for a mo-
ment they looked at each other before she turned. He said to
himself that if fear were unmistakably written in her dilated eyes
and on her parted lips, it yielded almost instantaneously to an-
other emotion not less genuine. On one point at least she had
not duped him. So much the worse for both of them !

As for her, her heart stood still an instant. Her thoughts,
which for days had been concentrated on the same subject as his,
scattered suddenly and left nothing but a blank. She was con-
scious only of the present. What it held for her was a mystery
to which Richard's impenetrable face gave her no clue. What-
ever it was, he was there .to administer it in person. She rose
and cany toward him, seeing that he made no movement to ap-
proach her, and offered a kiss, which he accepted.

" How you startled me ! " she said. " Is anything the matter ?
Is your father worse ? Is he dead ? "

11 No," he answered, " he is much the same as when we left
him. I came back to make some inquiries which I had stupidly
forgotten, and which require exact answers before I can make
the necessary legal arrangements for you. I might have written,
I suppose, but I still had a little time at my disposal and pre-
ferred to come."

1885.] KATHARINE. in

" That is pleasant," she said, dimpling into a smile of relief
and satisfaction. " You don't need to put them right away, do
you ? Sit down and ask your questions at your leisure. Why
are you so stiff and cool ? "

" Suppose we get our business over first. I want simply the
date of your first marriage. Have you got a certificate ? "

'' I think it is in my desk there by the window. Do you want
to see it, or will it be sufficient to tell you the day ? "

She named it as she ended. It was that which he had learned
already.

" The certificate will be the proper thing, I fancy. Shall I
look for it ? "

" Yes, unless you want me to save you the trouble. The key
is in the lock."

He went over to the desk and sat down in front of it, and pre-
sently she followed and stood, half-fronting him, between the
window and the chimney-piece. The desk, which stood on a
small table, had little in it : a tiny bundle of notes he had written
her in London before their marriage, packets of envelopes and
paper, a large photograph of himself apparently nothing more.

" It is not here," he said, looking up at her.

" There is a false bottom," she answered, showing him the
trick of it. Like the upper part, it was nearly empty. The
paper he sought lay there, folded into small compass, and beside
it was that she had received in London. There was a small dag-
ger also, in a sheath, with a fine, thin blade, which he pulled out
and looked at with a curious smile, and did not replace. He
picked up a tiny vial, too, with a tightly-fitting stopper, which
being opened gave out a pungent, familiar odor. He laid it back
again without a comment and without refitting the false bottom,
and bent his head over the certificate. Then he took up the other
and read it over. She was still nearly fronting him, and, finding
he did not speak, she asked him after a little interval :

" Well, is that all right ? "

" Not quite," he answered, speaking slowly and as it consid-
ering, his eyes bent upon the papers in his hands ; "your collec-
tion does not seem to be complete." He lifted his head now and
looked straight at her. " Did you not get one the day you went
over into New York with Louis Giddings ? It ought to come
between these two, I think."

She turned deathly white and sick, and would have fallen if
he had not caught her. He saw, nevertheless, that she was not
fainting, and took no further pains than to put her in an arm-

112 KA THARINE. [Oct.,

chair that stood nearly in the middle of the room, before the
mantel, against which he placed himself and stood looking at her
in silence.

" Before God," she said at last, speaking in a thick, agitated
voice, " I have been trying to get my courage up to tell you. If
you do not believe me you may look in my portfolio for the
letter which I began writing you last night."

" I don't think I care to see it. Your repentance comes a
little late. The fact is that you mistook your line in life, my
dear. You put too high a value on your charms. The market
rate is lower than that represented by these papers." He had
them still dangling between the fingers of his right hand as he
stood with both elbows resting on the low chimney-piece. She
turned scarlet, but said nothing.

" What I don't quite understand," he went on again after a
pause, " is your motive for exacting one from Giddings also.
You were quite aware, doubtless, that you had no right to do it.
Wouldn't he take you otherwise ? "

"I was not certain I had no right," she said, speaking in the
same smothered voice. " I married Burton Lloyd the very day his
ship sailed, and news came that it was lost and nearly all on board
with it. I thought he might be one of them I hoped he was."

" Yes ? You must have been a comfort to him. You seem to
have a genius for confession, if I -may take your word about the
letter yonder. Did you ever tell Lloyd about your little esca-
pade in his absence? "

She made no answer.

" The trouble with your confessions," he went on, " seems to
be that they are not sufficiently complete. When you owned up
to Giddings, why did you not tell him the whole truth? "

;< So I did, and more than really was true. I have been sorry
for it ever since, but I thought" She stopped again.

Dr. Norton gave a bitter little laugh.

" More than the truth is less than the truth. You might at
least have put him out of the torture of supposing that he had
first been swindled into marriage and then deserted. Do you
know what an honest man does in such a case? If he cannot find
the woman and wring her neck, he waits for her death to release
.him in some less satisfactory way. You ruined five years of his
life for him, and now your lie has well-nigh broken it again, and
with it the heart of a woman whom your ears are not fit to hear
named. Why did you not have the honesty to tell him you were
not his wife ? Why did you pretend to marry him at all ? "

1885.] KATHARINE. 113

" Because for the same reason that I married you. You
know very well what that was."

" You flatter me immensely," he said, mocking 1 . " I think I
do. What I don't know, and should like to hear, is your motive
for not releasing- him. Why did you not tell him you had never
been his wife? "

" I thought I did. I don't know what I said to him more
than was true, as far as Lloyd was concerned. I meant to go
away and say nothing at all, and then the thought of him came
over me just at the last, and what misery he would be in, and I
could not bear to. I did tell him he was entirely free. How
could he be if he were married to me ? I should think he would
have known that any way."

She was speaking the truth, and Norton knew it.

" God ! " he said, "it is a pity that your lying is not as clumsy
as your truthtelling. Do you mean that the thought never
crossed your mind, then or afterwards, that your little addition
to the truth a sweet, fragrant invention it was to occur to the
mind of a young girl ! would have the effect of shutting his
mouth, and that it might be just as well that he should consider
himself bound? "

She was silent.

" Come ! " he said roughly, " I want an answer and a straight

one."

" Yes," she said, hardly above her breath, " it did, but not
then."

" But after you learned the fact from me it did ? What cal-
culations did you base upon it? You thought, perhaps, that you
might ring him into your present little game and blindfold me
completely?" He laughed unpleasantly. "Jove! it was a pro-
found, deep-witted scheme that does credit to your knowledge
of human nature ! I should like to have been by and overheard
you broach the subject to him ! "

" I did not mean to," she said, flashing into resentment at his
scoff. " I meant to throw myself upon his mercy, if I appealed
to him at all ; and I wish to Heaven I had done so ! He is not
like you ! He is a man, at all events, and would have put me
out of my misery without taunting me into desperation first ! "

" Yes," he said, watching her with a cool, scientific interest,
as if taking note of how many nerves were writhing beneath his
scalpel, " he is a man you are quite right and a singularly up-
right one into the bargain. I am grateful, for my own part, that
you fell into the hands of such a one as he, and not of a wiser

VOL. XLII. 8

ii 4 KATHARINE. [Oct.,

one who would have taken you at his own valuation and not at
yours."

" As you did ? "

The veins stood out like cords on her tormentor's temples and
along the sides of his neck.

" You are a wise woman ! " he said in a voice that betrayed, in
despite of him, some heat of passion. " Just as I did, if you like - f
Nothing could be better, so far as we are concerned, since it places
us in the only position where we could put a stop to your career.
Do you know what I came here for to-day ? To determine which
one of us should have the satisfaction of sending you to pick
oakum for the next ten years. Your merciful, high-minded man,
who stands so much above me in your estimation, was the first
one to suggest it, and I am merely carrying out his instructions."
She rose from her chair, her eyes dilated, and made a step
toward him.

" What do you mean ? " she gasped.

" What I say. He proposes to indict you for bigamy, and I
intend to aid him. When you come out into free air again there
will be no fear of your betraying more men into the trap where
you put him and me. You will have been branded dangerous."

He had relapsed again into apparent composure, although the
flush had not yet quite faded from his face. She came nearer to
Jhim, her eyes wild, like those of a hunted animal, her clasped
hands raised, her voice thick and half-suffocated with the panting
of her heart,

" For God's sake, Richard, don't do that ! Take a man's re-
venge on me, at least. Kill me and be done with it. God knows
I am tired enough of living!"

" I thought it would come to that," he said in a cutting, de-
liberate voice. " You think, then, that it would be worth an
honest man's while to get his neck stretched for you ? "
He drew out his watch and looked at it.

" If I were you," he said, his eyes running over her carelessly
from head to foot, " I would put up all that hair and change my
dress. I have had a warrant made out, and left word at the
police station as I came up to have an escort sent to attend you to
your temporary quarters until permanent ones can be found for
you. It can't be long now before they are here."

She came close up to him and put both hands upon his shoul-
ders. He stood immovable.

" Have pity on me!" she begged. " If not on me, take pity
on your child ! Will you let it be born in prison?"

1885.] KATHARINE. 11-5

His face underwent a sudden change, and she saw it and took
hope again. His lips trembled and he hesitated. She dared not
risk another word, so evenly poised did she feel the balances to
be in which her fate was hanging. She only turned again and
looked in his eyes with an appealing gaze under which his own
sank for a moment. There came along the long corridor at the
'end of which the apartment was situated the tread of heavy feet,
and the voice of an attendant giving directions about the number
on their door. Norton bit his lip and then sighed heavily.

" Poor little wretch ! " he said in a voice penetrated with a
bitter, unavailing anguish, " it must bear the penalty."

At that moment he had forgotten alike his purpose and his
premonition. Nothing spoke in him but the instinct of pater-
nity. He saw himself in the near future rescuing what was his
from this wreck of humanity, and perhaps finding in it hereafter
some compensation for the broken dreams of his young manhood.
He looked at her with eyes full of compassion, but she read in
them that his resolution was unshaken.

He left her standing near the chimney-piece and went to the
door, which had resounded twice already under the knuckles of
the officers. She retreated further toward the window with the
cowering gesture of a creature which feels itself at bay and seeks
hopelessly for a refuge or some instant of delay. Her eyes fell
on the open desk, and she put her hand out toward it. Her hus-
band had his back to her. He stood at the half-open door, be-
yond whose aperture she saw the faces of the men, and she heard
with distinctness the words in which he instructed them as to
their duty. Suddenly one of the officers made a quick move-
ment forward, as if to rush past him into the room ; but the doc-
tor, whose right hand was already resting on the jamb, tightened
his hold upon it and resisted the impetuous pressure.

" No violence 1 " he said. " There is no occasion for it. You
will remain here at the door while she changes her dress, and
then she will go with you quietly."

There was a fall behind him, and at the same instant the man's
efforts ceased. He seemed to grow suddenly flaccid.

" She won't go at all, sir," he said in a low, horror-stricken
voice. " You shouldn't have stopped me. I saw she was going
to do for herself."

THE END.

ii6 ENGLISH VOICES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [Oct.,

ENGLISH VOICES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

IF the capricious Muse of History wears as many colors as a
chameleon and as many shapes as Nereus, it is, perhaps, because
we are so seldom able to view her from a proper distance. Either
we stand too far off and find her vague and misty of outline, or
we venture too close and her vast proportions looming up before
us refuse to be contracted into the necessary coup d'ceil. During
the onward rush of events there are few visions large enough to
embrace the whole area of action, and fewer minds serene enough
to record an impartial verdict for the benefit of. posterity ; and
when the struggle is over and the combatants vanished the field
of their exploits becomes a wrangling-ground for ever. Caesar,
indeed, could both make history and write it ; but the force by
which he bound the world in fetters was no rarer than the skill
with which he tells us how he did it. Generally speaking, we
who look back with a certain degree of equity are amazed, not
so much by the character of events as by their influence over
those who lived and wrote during the tangle we are seeking to
unravel.

Especially is this the case when we read the records of those
Englishmen who from 1789 to 1794 watched with intentness the
storm that gathered and broke over dissolute and profligate
France. We who judge the French Revolution by the light of
its wanton cruelties, its savage blunders, and its pitiful failure
can hardly realize the superb promise with which it sprang into
its career. It seemed to those who looked and listened, as well
as to those who bore a helping hand, that the time had come at
last when humanity would raise itself from the dust and upon
the grave of a dead tyranny would lay the strong and sure
foundations of freedom and fraternal love. When the Bastile
fell there rang throughout all Europe a cry of joy and exulta-
tion, and good men drew a long sigh of relief that this monu-
ment of shame was wiped from the face of God's earth. Words-
worth, then young and impetuous, crossed over to France and
gathered from its ruins a fragment of fallen stone as a precious
relic of liberty ; Blake walked the streets of London wearing the
bonnet rouge, and Godwin and the coterie of younger men who
listened to him as to an oracle lent their voices with one accord
to swell the paean of applause.

1885.] ENGLISH VOICES ON THE 'FRENCH REVOLUTION. 117

Then followed in quick succession those acts that proved too
plainly what manner of power this was that, born of violence and
oppression, avenged the past by drenching a land with blood. His-
torians like Taine have stripped from the Revolution every shred
of glamour and have laid it bare before our eyes in all its moral
hideousness ; but at that time, when the devotion of the Gironde
and the undaunted courage of the Republican army could not
fail to awaken some responsive enthusiasm in the breasts of Eng-
lishmen, the guillotine's grim work was apt to be forgotten.
When the September massacres thrilled the world with horror
Blake, in despairing fury, tore from his head the emblem of lib-
erty ; but Wordsworth, agitated and a trifle dismayed, yet con-
ceived the visionary plan of uniting himself with the Girondists
and working hand-in-hand with them for the regeneration of
France. He even appears to have imagined, this young enthu
siast of twenty-two, that they would receive him in some sort as
a leader a fancy which reminds one irresistibly of Maggie Tul-
liver's youthful ambition to figure as queen of the gipsies.
With this purpose in view he went to Paris, and remained there,
a witness of its daily terrors,until his relatives in England, not shar-
ing either in his sympathies or his hopes, concluded very wisely
to stop his allowance, and so compelled him to reluctantly return
home.

Dowden explains this curious phase in Wordsworth's career
by assuring us that while

" As a concrete historical movement the Revolution could not justify it-
self in his eyes, it was through a haughty ideality of youth, to which mere
pain and blood-shedding seemed worthy of slight regard, that he Words-
worth for a time sustained his courage in presence of the dark facts of
contemporary history. . . . Coleridge," he adds, " was in possession of a
philosophical doctrine which enabled him to accept the same facts with a
certain equanimity.''

This " haughty ideality " is aptly manifested in the Apology for
the French Revolution, where we find Wordsworth singularly un-
moved either by the king's execution or by the humbler trage-
dies that preceded it.

" It is to be lamented," he says, " that any combination of circum-
stances should have rendered it necessary or advisable to veil for a mo-
ment the statues of the laws, and that by such emergency the cause of
twenty-five millions of people, I may say of the whole human race, should
have been so materially injured. Any other sorrow for the death of Louis
is irrational and weak."

When England took up the gauntlet thrown by France to the

ii8 ENGLISH VOICES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [Oct.

world, and declared war in 1793, Wordsworth regarded his coun-
try's action with horror and humiliation :

" No shock

Given to my moral nature had I known
Down to that very moment."

It was, in his eyes, a deed which tore away

" By violence at one decisive rent
From the best youth in England their dear pride,
Their joy in England."

And though it may seem to most of us that the events which
had transpired in France during the past three years might have
afforded a series of shocks to any tolerably sensitive nature, yet
we cannot overlook the fact that the Revolution furnished Words-
worth with the one passionate outbreak in his evenly-regulated life,
the one overmastering impulse to join hand and heart with his
struggling fellow-men. That his sympathy was in a great mea-
sure speculative, and the result of study and meditation rather
than of enforced conviction, made the inevitable reaction less
painful in his case than with many others who had flung them-
selves into the cause of liberty, only to recoil from the excesses
committed in her name. It was his calm common sense more
than his love for justice or humanity that finally opened his eyes
and weaned his heart away from its early enthusiasms. He
looked to France for the new laws which should enfranchise
mankind and usher in the reign of universal equity ; and all
that he saw was

" Perpetual emptiness I unceasing change !
No single volume paramount, no code,
No master-spirit, no determined road ;
But equally a want of books and men."

So he settled down without much trouble into a tranquil,
healthy English life, and Nature took him to her heart and
comforted him. Instead of dying on the guillotine with Dan-
ton and Herault de Seychelles, he wisely lived to enrich the world
with " The Excursion " and the " Ode on Immortality/' Yet
there is a regretful pathos in the lingering look he casts back
on those days, when even his cool blood was fired with heroic
and unselfish aspirations :

" Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven ! O times
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways

1885.] ENGLISH VOICES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 119

Of custom, law, and statute took at once

The attraction of a country in romance !

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,

When most intent on making of herself

A prime enchantress, to assist the work

Which then was going forward in her name."

Coleridge, the happy possessor of that serene philosophy
which enabled him to look unmoved on violence and bloodshed,
took the revolutionary fever after a fashion befitting his charac-
ter that is, with very alarming symptoms, but no great depth of
disorder. He truly says of himself:

" My feelings and imagination did not remain unchanged in this general
conflagration ; and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed than
proud of myself if they had. I was a sharer in the general vortex, though
my little world described the path of its revolution in an orbit of its own."

He, too, when war was declared,

" Hung my head, and wept at Britain's name,"

and he, too, reacted suddenly and violently, without much of
Wordsworth's real sorrow, not being in the habit of feeling any-
thing with great strength or persistence. With him it was
happily but a matter of " feelings and imagination " ; deep-rooted
convictions of any sort were foreign to his loosely-strung moral
nature. Robespierre, the " arch-chemist of liberty," presently
became Robespierre the arch-enemy of mankind; a growing
hatred of Bonaparte swept from his soul every vestige of sym-
pathy with France, and Coleridge, always ready for fresh emo-
tions, turned his thoughts to love and matrimony. Yet at least
his fitful dream has left us as a heritage the exquisite " Ode to
France," in which he tells us, with a melody unsurpassed, the
story of his aspirations and their downfall :

" Then I reproached my fears that would not flee ;
'And soon/ I said, ' shall Wisdom teach her lore
In the low huts of them that toil and groan !
And conquering by her happiness alone,
Shall France compel the nations to be free,
Till Love and Joy look round, and call the earth their own.' "

When France, instead of compelling the nations to be free,
submitted to the authority of Napoleon and contented herself
with wearing

" The name
Of Freedom graven on a heavier chain,"

Coleridge regarded her with sorrow and anger, and Shelley
poured forth his indignation in torrents of melodious but rather

120 ENGLISH VOICES ON THE PRENCH REVOLUTION. [Oct.,

bewildering verse. It is a curious thing- that the latter poet,
born and bred in the days of reaction, should have been one of
the few who kept alive within his soul the dying spark of revolu-
tionary fire, and who, while deploring the excesses of the Com-
mune, maintained to the end that these excesses were but a pass-
ing phase, out of which would have risen in due time the fair
fruit of universal liberty.

"The panic/' he writes in 1817, "which like an epidemic transport
seized upon all classes of men during the evils consequent upon the
French Revolution, is gradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased to
be believed that whole generations of mankind ought to consign them-
selves to a hopeless inheritance of ignorance and misery because a nation
of men, who have been dupes and slaves for centuries, were incapable of
conducting themselves with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon
as some of their fetters were partially loosened. That their conduct could
not have been marked by any other characters than ferocity and thought-
lessness is the historical fact from which liberty derives all its recommen-
dations, and falsehood the worst features of its deformity."

This is a logical setting of a profound truth ; but Shelley, be-
ing one to whom all law savored of oppression and all constraint
of tyranny, could but ill-appreciate the feelings of those who,
after tossing for years on the billows of anarchy, were ready to
welcome any rock, however sterile, that might afford them a
secure footing. He himself had cast aside the just restraints of
social life, and, writhing under its inevitable reprisal, took refuge
in a vague sympathy for " the people," while writing at the same
time for a purely esoteric audience. His revolutionary poems,
richly imaginative and fantastically unreal, bear about the same
relation to the grim law-makers of La Montagne as did the
Jacobin principles to the wants and needs of 'the English popu-
lace, who manifested their horror of French excesses by the
anti-revolutionary riots in Birmingham, in which the house of
the " philosophic Priestley " was razed to the ground.

There is not lacking a certain irony in the fact that while
France declared war against the rulers only of Europe, and an-
nounced herself at peace with the people, the lower and middle
classes in England were precisely those who regarded the Re-
volution with unmixed terror and aversion. From the begin-
ning its appeal was successful only with statesmen, thinkers, and
literary men ; the toiling millions declining with one accord to
be delivered from their burdens after so radical and sweeping a
fashion. The English " Revolutionary Society," a club which
applauded to the echo each new report from France, was com-
posed, Morley tells us, of Dissenters, with a sprinkling of church-

1885.] ENGLISH VOICES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 121

men, a few peers, and a good many members of the House of
Commons. Southey, who in after-years became the most sober
and contented of Tories, figures in his youth as an ardent sup-
porter of the Girondists. It was the judicial murder of Brissot
more than any other act of violence that drove him sorrow-
stricken from the cause. " I am sick of the world," he writes
soon afterwards, " and discontented with every one in it. There
is no place for virtue." Holcroft, a less scrupulous adherent,
embodied his views in the now almost forgotten novel, Anna St.
Ives ; and Arthur Young, in his Travels in France, laid before his
readers a plain, unvarnished statement of the intolerable wrongs
beneath which the French peasants had groaned through cen-
turies of oppression.

On the other side one resonant voice was lifted to predict the
speedy downfall of law and order. Burke, who from the begin-
ning had looked across the Channel with ever-deepening mistrust,
published in 1790 his Reflections on the Revolution in France a
book which was received with a perfect tornado of abuse and
praise. Its circulation was something unprecedented for the
times ; high dignitaries, from George III. to Catherine of Russia,
lent it their unqualified approval, and sober-minded Englishmen
found voiced in its pages a clear expression of their own growing
doubts and apprehensions. Morley, while frankly confessing his
regret at Burke's determined hostility to France and the cause
she represented, ranks him with Sir Thomas More as the two
great and logical conservatives in history, and admits that his
mournful predictions were fulfilled to the letter. " What is still
more important," he adds, "for the credit of his foresight, is
that not only did his prophecy come true, but it came true for
the reasons he had fixed upon." " When a separation is made
between liberty and justice," wrote Burke as early as 1789,
" neither is, in my opinion, safe"; and in answer to a storm of
reproaches he stoutly maintained that he, too, loved " a manly,
moral, regulated liberty " a phrase which might have fallen from
Ruskin's lips, and which breathes the spirit of Tennyson's most
pointed utterances :

" Some sense of duty, something of a faith,
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,
Some patient force to change them when we will,
Some civic manhood firm against the crowd."

If the Reflections were hotly supported on one side, they were
bitterly denounced upon the other. Sir James Mackintosh re-
plied with much ability in his Vindicice Gallica, and Paine in his

122 ENGLISH VOICES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [Oct.,

Rights of Man declared that " at a time when neither the people
of France nor the National Assembly were troubling themselves
about the affairs of England or the English Parliament, Mr.
Burke's conduct was unpardonable in beginning an unprovoked
attack upon them." In fact, the vehemence with which Burke
sustained his views divided him for ever from many of his former
associates, noticeably from Charles Fox, who nevertheless con-
ceded that it was a lucky thing his old friend took the royalist
side, inasmuch as his violence would certainly have gotten him
hanged had he undertaken to flaunt the less popular standard of
the Revolution.

In sharp contrast to the figure of Burke, with his practical
foresight and his love of moderation and order, stands that of
William Godwin, the father-in-law of Shelley, and the man of
whom Mr. Leslie Stephen says that " he resembles more than
any other English thinker those French theorists who represent-
ed the early revolutionary impulses. His opinions were rooted
too deeply in abstract speculation to be affected by any storms
raging in the region of concrete phenomena. . . . He remained
a Republican Abdiel throughout the long, dark winter of reac-
tion." But then Godwin's views were peculiar to himself and
provided liberally for the destruction of all that society is prone
to consider of most value. Every form of government was alike
objectionable in his eyes. He abjured a despotism, hated consti-
tutional monarchies, and largely mistrusted republics. He op-
posed himself vigorously to all law and constitution, yet, theo-
retically at least, declined to put faith in any species of revolt.
He condemned all forms of punishment, yet emphatically disap-
proved of pardons. He advocated the freest sexual intercourse,
and regarded the marriage-tie as a selfish bar to happiness ; ob-
jected vehemently to wealth, rank, and titles, and thought it
radically wrong that any government official should be paid a
salary or receive any compensation for his services.

" Bottled moonshine which does not improve with keeping "
is the verdict of a modern critic on Godwin's misty philosophy ;
but at least it explains to us why the Reign of Terror should
have had no particular significance in his eyes. Life was, with
him, not worth the preservation. " Human society," he assures
us, " is a rank and rotten soil, from which every finer shrub
draws poison as it grows." Kings and priests, as Mr. Stephen
acknowledges, represented to him the incarnation of evil ; reli-
gion was not worthy even of respect ; and while regarding the
Catholic Church as the embodiment of selfish tyranny, he likens
the Anglican clergy to " the victims of Circe, to whom human

1885.] ENGLISH VOICES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 123

understanding was preserved entire, that they might more ex-
quisitely feel their degraded condition." " We can scarcely
hesitate," he writes again, " to conclude universally that law is
an institution of the most pernicious tendency " ; and, like Shelley,
he was prepared to include almost every condition of moral
restraint in this sweeping denunciation. The steady and con-
sistent adherence of such a man to the principles of the French
Revolution is as explicable, in its way, as the short-lived enthu-
siasm of Coleridge or the flame of generous sympathy that burned
in Wordsworth's breast.

One more famous Englishman is connected with this stormy
period, after a fashion so harmless and amusing that it is cheer-
ing even to contemplate it. On the list of a forgotten revolu-
tionary club in Normandy appears the name of " Citoyen Smit,
Membre Affilie au Club des Jacobins de Mont Villiers"; and
we draw a long breath in trying to realize that this is Sydney
Smith. Sent to France by his parents to study the language, he
was, for his better safety, enrolled in a Jacobin club, and, from all
that we can gather, made no other use of his position than to
once extricate Captain Drinkwater and his brother from the
likelihood of being hung on the next lantern-post when those
gentlemen persisted, against his advice, in sketching the fortifi-
cations of Cherbourg. What he thought of the fast-withering
hopes that fell one by one beneath the Revolution's burning fin-
ger it is hard to say. Doubtless to him, as to Byron, it seemed a
huge political failure. Practical judgment and a delicate humor
were his great gifts through life, and both were conspicuously
absent from harried and desperate France. No men with even
the smallest sense of the ridiculous could have sat gravely down
amid the wreck of social life and the fierce pangs of a frenzied
nation, and solemnly ordain that a week should henceforth hold
ten days instead of seven ; that Primidi, Duodi, and Tridi should
take the place of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday ; and that
even the very months should change their names to prove to all
mankind that the new era had dawned upon the earth. Frimaire,
Nivose, Floreal, Messidor, words that the Convention bestowed
so proudly on the world, have by the world been most ungrate-
fully forgotten. When the great wave of the Revolution had
washed over France, Liberty, its offspring, base-born and nursed
on blood, submitted tamely to a new dictatorship ; and they who
had watched the promise of its youth and its inglorious fall with-
drew their eyes in shame and sorrow, and turned, like Words*
worth,

" To measure back the steps which they had trod."

124 RELA TIONS BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND SCOTCH [Oct.,

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND SCOTCH
PIRATES AND THE "REFORMATION MOVEMENT."

THE ARMADA PROVOKED BY PIRACY.

IT is not to be forgotten that barbarous punishments were in-
flicted in Spain upon English sailors and travellers. Some were
hanged and others sent to the flames as heretics. The prison
discipline of Spain during Philip's reign was marked by a species
of scientific cruelty. The Spanish government at that period
cannot, however, be wholly condemned for their conduct to
English prisoners, many of whom were pirates of the worst class
that infested the Spanish waters. Whenever it suited their pur-
pose those daring men traded upon the name of Protestantism in
Catholic countries, and frequently raised difficulties for Elizabeth's
ambassadors as to how they should act in relation to such per-
sons when seeking protection as English subjects. The position
of affairs may best be understood from the candid statement of a
distinguished advocate of Elizabeth's and Cecil's policy.

The needy sons of Lord Cobham, who had earned some no-
toriety in Wyatt's rebellion, had grown up, after the type of their
boyhood, irregular, lawless Protestants. One of them at this
time (1563) was roving the seas, half-pirate, half-knight-errant of
the " Reformation," doing battle on his own account with the ene-
mies of the truth wherever the service to God was likely to be repaid
with plunder.

Thomas Cobham was one of a thousand whom Elizabeth was
forced to condemn and disclaim in proclamations, and whom
she was as powerless as she was probably most unwilling to in-
terfere with in practice. What Cobham was, and what his com-
rades were, can be gathered from a brief narrative of his ruthless
exploits.

Here is one instance. A Spanish ship was freighted in Flan-
ders for Bilboa. The cargo was valued at. eighty thousand
ducats. There were also on board forty prisoners, who were go-
ing to Spain to serve in the galleys for various crimes. Thomas
Cobham, who was cruising in the Channel, caught sight of the
vessel, chased her down into the Bay of Biscay, fired into her,
killed the captain's brother and a number of men, and then board-
ing, when all resistance had ceased, sewed up the captain himself

1885.] PIRATES AND THE "REFORMATION MOVEMENT" 125

and the survivors of the crew in their own sails and flung them over-
board.

The fate of the unfortunate prisoners who were intended for
the galleys is not related ; but it is supposed that they were de-
spatched by the dagger, or perhaps thrown overboard. The
ship was scuttled, and Thomas Cobham sailed away with the
booty, which the English ship-agents admitted to be worth fifty
thousand ducats, to his retreat in the south of Ireland.

Eighteen bodies, with the main-sail for their winding-sheet,
were washed up on the Spanish shores.*

" This fierce deed of young Cobham," writes Mr. Froude,
" was no dream of Spanish slander. The English factor at Bil-
boa was obliged to reply to Sir Thomas Chaloner's eager in-
quiries that the story in its essential features was true, and he
added another of the audacity of those English pirates. A Span-
ish ship had been cut out of the harbor at Santander by an An-
glo-Irish pirate and carried off to sea. The captain, more merci-
ful than Thomas Cobham, spared the crew, kept them prisoners,
and was driven into another Spanish port for shelter, having
them at the time confined under hatches. They were discover-
ed ; the pirates were seized, and quickly met the fate awarded to
people of their desperate mode of life."

Thomas Cobham was tried for piracy in London, but ulti-
mately escaped punishment. In fact, the queen and her council
merely coquetted with the prosecution against the " roving Re-
former." A terrible sentence was, however, passed upon him,
which is thus described by De Silva, the Spanish ambassador :

"Thomas Cobham being asked at his trial, according to the form used
in English law, if he had anything to say in assent of judgment, and an-
swering, nothing whatever, the English judge, with awful solemnity, con-
demned the said Thomas Cobham to be taken to the Tower, and to be there
stripped naked to the skin, and there to be placed with his shoulders resting on
a sharp stone, his legs and arms extended, and on his stomach a stone too heavy
for him to bear, yet not large enough immediately to crush him. There he is to
be left till he die. They will give him a few grains of corn to eat, and for
drink the foulest water in the Tower" f

This sentence was terrific enough, but it would have been far
worse for the exemplary Cobham if it had been executed. The
words of the judge were truly " winged words," for Elizabeth

* Sir Thomas Chaloner's Despatches to Queen Elizabeth. I may here remark that Chaloner
was the first ambassador appointed by Elizabeth. As a diplomatist he was prudent and con-
ciliatory.

t See De Silva's Despatches to King Philip, August 16, 1565.

126 RELA TIONS BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND SCOTCH [Oct.,

set her roving subject free to plough the seas again after his
olden mode.*

Mr. Froude denies that the above sentence was ever passed
against Cobham " The description of which," he observes,
" might have been brought from the torture-chamber of the In-
quisition, but which was never pronounced in an English court of
justice." There may never be a correct record extant of the judg-
ment delivered by a sanguinary judge of Cecil's creation against
Thomas Cobham or many others of the condemned in Eliza-
beth's reign. I have seen, however, amongst the list of punish-
ments ordered to be inflicted in the Tower, one instance exactly
similar to that of Cobham namely, the case of Father Wake-
field, an old " seminary priest," who was entrapped by the agents
of Walsingham. The unfortunate priest died during the opera-
tion. He was eighty-three years of age and an eminent Greek
scholar. The old traditions of the " priest-hunting days " fur-
nished many extraordinary cases, the records of which have long
since disappeared. Some fifty years ago 'the ancient Catholic
families of Kerry possessed many curious documents concerning
the English priests who found an asylum in the Galtee Moun-
tains in the terror-stricken days of Queen Elizabeth.

The Cobham family rendered much service to Elizabeth in
the previous reign ; and it is probable that the severe sentence
was passed upon Cobham to pacify the Spanish government, who
were loud in their complaints against English pirates. Lord
Pembroke and other influential Englishmen were engaged in
the traffic of negroes "on foreign waters." It is stated that
Pembroke cleared sixty per cent, on one cargo of black slaves. f

Occasionally Mr. Froude expresses his indignation at the
conduct of English mariners in " Spanish waters." Here is a
remarkable passage : " English Protestants, it was evident, re-
garded the property of papists as a lawful prize whenever they could
lay hands on it ; and Protestantism, stimulated by these inducements
to conversion, was especially strong in the seaport towns." \

" Your mariners," said the Spanish ambassador to Elizabeth,
" rob my master's subjects on the sea and trade where they are
forbidden to go ; they plunder our people in the streets of your
towns ; they attack our vessels in your very harbors and take
our prisoners from them ; your preachers insult my master from

* The real name of the Cobham family was Brooks, once an honored old stock in Kent,
who gave to the church several distinguished clerics in the fifteenth century,
i Helps on the Spanish Conquest of South America.
J Froude's History of England, vol. viii. p. 467.

188$.] PlRA TES AND THE "REFORMA TION MO VEMENT." 1 2/

their pulpits ; and when we apply for justice we are answered
with threats. We have borne with these things, attributing
them rather to passion or rudeness of manners than to a delibe-
rate purpose of wrong ; but, seeing that there is no remedy and
no end, I must now refer to my sovereign to know what I am
to do." *

Elizabeth affected utter ignorance of what had been a noto-
rious fact, and pledged "her honor" to make an immediate in-
quiry into the conduct of English mariners and all others of her
subjects who had violated the laws of nations and brotherly love
against her kinsman, ally, and friend, the King of Spain.

Notwithstanding the queen's "regrets and promises," Haw-
kins and men of his occupation pursued their felonious courses
unmolested by the English council. Whatever might have been
the despotism of Philip of Spain a despotism partly forced upon
him by circumstances it is certain that, like his great father, he
was not inclined to tolerate free trade in negroes. True, many
of the commercial communities of Spain carried on a traffic in
slaves on the coasts of Africa and South America, but were never
sanctioned therein by their sovereign. During the reigns of
subsequent monarchs Spain entered freely into the abominable
slave-trade, and only now prepares for the manumission of her
slaves in Cuba.

The causes which ultimately led to the Spanish Armada were
at work for many years. The connection between the queen,
her council, and the English pirates was as plain as noonday.
It has been contended by a few admirers of Sir William Cecil
" that his high sense of honor made these transactions odious to
him, and that he was only able to protest against them." I
have, however, searched in vain for this " marvellous protest."

In the year 1575 the spy system was carried on to a fearful
extent by Elizabeth. From the pages of Mr. Froude's work we
learn the history of several of Cecil's " honorable correspondents
on the Continent men who were quite willing to assassinate,
poison, plunder, or entrap honest men, provided they were sup-
plied with money to live in luxury and profligacy."

The foreign traffic in slaves was also carried out under the
management of men .like Hawkins, who, by his conduct, disgraced
the naval character of England nay, its reputation for the com-
mon code of honesty which is supposed to exist between man
and man in civilized states. Hawkins, however, became the
hero of the day. He is represented as " brave, pious, and God-

* De Silva, the Spanish ambassador, to Queen Elizabeth, October 6, 1567.

128 RELA TIONS BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND SCOTCH [Oct.,

fearing" as respectable, indeed, as any sea-robber could well
be. With truth it may be added that he was the legalized
pirate of the Queen of England, holding his predatory commis-
sion from the Sovereign Lady, who shared plentifully in his
plunder.*

The love of adventure attracted many young Englishmen in
those times. A navigator named Thomas Cavendish sailed from
Plymouth on the 2ist of July, 1586, and it is stated that he ac-
complished a voyage round the world " in two years and three
months. He plundered without much resistance the towns on
the coast of Chili and Perue. On his return home he visited the
Cape of Good Hope."t The plunder made by Cavendish was
publicly boasted of in Plymouth and Bristol, so his name may be
ranged amongst the English pirates of those days. The strong-
est evidence connecting Elizabeth and her council with the law-
less pirates of England is to be found in the pages of her most
enthusiastic biographers writers that can in nowise be suspect-
ed of attributing any dishonorable action to their heroine, unless
when an overwhelming sense of truth compels them to do so.
Here is a passage which I commend to the admirers of a mon-
arch whom English history has hitherto, almost without excep-
tion, described as bordering upon perfection: "Great interest
was excited by the arrival in Plymouth harbor in November,
1580, of the celebrated Francis Drake from his navigation of a
great portion of the globe. National vanity was flattered by the
idea that this Englishman should have been the first by whom
this great and novel enterprise had been successfully achieved ;
and both himself and his ship became in an eminent degree the
objects of public curiosity and wonder. . . . The wealth which
Hawkins had brought home from the plunder of the Spanish
settlements awakened the cupidity which in that age was a con-
stant attendant on the daring spirit of maritime adventure, and
half the youth of the country were on fire to embark in expedi-
tions of pillage and discovery. . . . Drake's captures from the
Spaniards had been made, under some vague notion of reprisals,
whilst no open war was subsisting between England and Spain.
The Spanish ambassador, not, it must be confessed, without some
reason, branded the proceedings of Hawkins, with the reproach
of piracy, and demanded restitution of the booty. Elizabeth
wavered for some time between admiration for Drake mixed

* On one occasion the Spanish government seized upon and confiscated a cargo of negroes
which Hawkins valued at forty thousand ducats,
t Thomas' Historical Notes, vol. i.

1885.] PlRA TES AND THE "REFORM A TION MO YEMEN T." 1 29

with a desire of sharing- in the profits of his expedition, and a
dread of incensing the King of Spain. At length the queen de-
cided on the part most acceptable to her people that of giving a
public sanction to the action of Drake." *

In a few months subsequent Elizabeth accepted a banquet
from this double-faced pirate. The entertainment was given on
board his ship off Deptford, on which occasion the queen con-
ferred the order of knighthood on her naval freebooter. These
proceedings took place some seven years before the Spanish Ar-
mada sailed from Lisbon. Meanwhile the English pirates be-
came more daring, and the amount of wealth plundered from
Spanish ships was immense. The truth is that the Spanish Ar-
mada owed its birth to the cruel wrongs inflicted by English
corsairs upon the people of a state then at peace with England,
and whose sovereign had been a generous friend to that queen
who now so treacherously and ungratefully abetted those out-
rages. Here, again, the reader must recognize the truth and
aptitude of Mr. Froude's description of Elizabeth's " honor "
11 a stained rag."

The history of the English pirates whom Elizabeth sustained
is now very imperfectly known. The silent ocean, it may well
be judged, holds many of their secrets, and will continue to re-
tain them till the great accounting- day.

PURITAN PIRATES IN SCOTLAND.

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth Scotland produced some des-
perate pirates, who fought under the assumed flag of the Re-
formation when it suited their purpose. One of the most re-
markable of those men was James, Earl of Bothwell. He was
born with those perverse and unruly instincts which drive men
from exploit to exploit or from crime to crime, " to a throne or
to a scaffold." Impetuous in every impulse, in ambition and in
enterprise, Bothwell was one of those desperadoes gifted with
superhuman daring who in their developments, and as their de-
sires expand, seek to burst the social bounds within which they
exist, to make room for themselves, or perish in the attempt.
When some seventeen years of age Bothwell commenced a
wandering life. In Denmark he joined a band of pirates who
became the terror of the Northern seas ; robbery and murder
quickly followed. This young noble assumed various names
sometimes a Stuart, a Graham, or a Macpherson. His fierce

* Aikin's Court of Elizabeth^ vol. ii.
VOL. XLII. 9

130 RELA TIONS BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND SCOTCH [Oct.,

courage in boarding ships soon made him " a man of mark"
amongst the pirates. The " Pirate Council " elected him to
the command of a ship. The pirates had a well-fortified place
of retreat to conceal plunder ; they had also an arsenal for
their vessels in a rocky fortress on the coast of Denmark.
The crimes of Bothwell and his exploits among those murder-
ous pirates 'lie hidden in the shadow of the past. Amongst sea-
men his name struck terror along the shores of the Northern
seas. Goodchylde, his lieutenant and faithful follower, relates
that he thought little of life and soon disposed of his victims.
Joshua Morgan, a Welsh doctor, who knew him for many years,
represents him as " humane and kindly." But such a character is
quite inconsistent with the calling of a pirate chief of those times.
Some years having been spent in this dreadful occupation, the
death of his father recalled him to take possession of the family
estates and to govern the unruly and half-wild clans who pro-
fessed allegiance to the house of Bothwell. He now joined
the political adventurers of Edinburgh. He appeared as a Re-
former, but was more feared than respected by the Kirk con-
gregations. When Mary of Lorraine (the regent) was surround-
ed with difficulties Bothwell came forward to aid her. With all
his crimes he was chivalrously attached to the Stuart dynasty.
On more than one occasion Bothwell and his followers played
the part of highwaymen in carrying off large boxes of gold which
were sent by Queen Elizabeth to Lord Moray and the Scotch
rebels. This incident, as a matter of course, tended to embar-
rass Moray. It is, however, uncertain whether Bothwell retained
the gold himself or sent it to the queen-regent. His conduct in
the districts of Spynie Castle proves him to have been a heartless
plunderer. He robbed the aged bishop of Moray and took pos-
session of his house, after which he instigated his followers to
murder two of the bishop's domestics. He soon became a terror
on land as well as on sea. His bodyguard were well mounted and
a reflex of their master. For many years Bothwell kept up a
system of plunder. Still his popularity remained unchecked. . . .
The assassination of the Earl of Darnley, the husband of the
Queen of Scots, became the turning-point in the life of Lord
Bothwell. Many innocent persons were accused of the murder
of Darnley and paid the death-penalty for it. Such was one of
the results of the large rewards offered by the queen's admiring
friends. It is now well authenticated that the Earl of Bothwell
had in his possession the bond which was signed by the ma-
jority of the Scotch peers for the assassination of Darnley. One

I885-] PlRA TES AND THE "REFORM A TION MO VEMENT." I 3 1

of the assassins (Archibald Douglas), writing in after-years,
says : " None of us hesitated there was neither fear nor con-
science to interpose. The * boy-man ' was the enemy of the Pro-
testant cause ; so either party should soon perish." It is certain
that Bothwell and Moray arranged the murder; yet neither was
present. This was, perhaps, a matter of accident. The evidence
to connect Lord Moray with the murder of Darnley is now be-
yond question.

Whilst the public mind was agitated by the assassination the
Earl of Bothwell entertained at a supper the " nobles who had
recently attended the convention of the Three Estates of Scot-
land." The supper took place at a celebrated inn known as
Ainsby's Tavern, in the neighborhood of Edinburgh. Lord
Bothwell was the most jovial person at this memorable gather-
ing. He entered the supper-room half an hour before his guests.
His dress was suited for knights or peers of the first rank. His
doublet, of cloth-of-gold, glittered in the light of the setting sun ;
his ruff buttoned by diamonds, his shoulder-belt and mantle stiff
with gold embroidery ; while his sword, dagger, and plumed
bonnet were flashing with precious stones.

Lord Morton appeared next. His sinister eyes, his long
beard and fashionable English hat, his black velvet cloak and
silver-headed cane, all appeared neatly arranged, and his jewelled
hand was several times put prominently forward with an air of
studied affectation.

Lord Huntley entered the dining-hall playing with his dag-
ger and in a dull humor.

Maitland, with his bland smile and flute-like voice, sauntered
into the room.

Lord Cassilles, who once half-roasted an abbot, marched
into the supper-room " armed at every point, from head to
foot."

It was evident that the company feared one another or ex-
pected an enemy from without, for they were all fully armed, and
beyond doubt there were several "red- handed men" amongst
them. At this gathering a bond was executed and signed, de-
claring "that the Earl of Bothwell had no knowledge whatever
of the murder of Darnley ; that Lord Bothwell was a pious, God-
fearing man " ; and again, " that they would espouse his cause
against all slanders." This bond was signed by the Earl of Mor-
ton, who held the office of chancellor at the time of Rizzio's mur-
der. Then followed the names of the Earls of Huntley, Argyle,
Glencairn, Cassilles, Rothes, and eight other earls, also eleven

r 3 2 RELA TIONS BE r WEEN THE ENGLISH AND Sco TCH [Oct.,

barons who were peers of Parliament.* The declaration of the
peers assembled recommended the Earl of Both well as a suitable
husband for their widowed queen; whilst all present were at
that moment aware of the fact that Both well was a married man
at the period named.

In the English State Papers of the time Both well was charged
with the murder of the queen's husband, and he was also pub-
licly accused of aiding in the murder. And, more strange still,
Lord Moray was entertaining Bothwell at his house in Edin-
burgh and " advising his marriage " with the Queen of Scots.

From the highest to the lowest circles there was nothing but
venality and wickedness of the foulest description. " Honor
among thieves " was a sentiment never entertained by the as-
sassins of Henry, Earl of Darnley .f

The space allotted to the contributors of a magazine will not
permit the student of history to go into many important details.
I therefore refer the reader for minute proofs of Lord Moray s
forgeries against Queen Mary in the case of the " Casket of Let-
ters" to Goodall's Examination, 1574; Tytler, Sr.'s, Inquiry,
1560-70; Whitaker's Vindication, 1789-90. I further refer the
reader to Mr. Hosack's two volumes, for which the lovers of
fair play and historical truth must, in the present and future
generation, feel grateful. . . .

Bothwell was soon deserted by his former friends, and, after
a career of infamy, he again put to sea as a pirate. Many terri-
ble crimes have been attributed to him upon the high seas, and
his companions were red-handed robbers who destroyed life and
property without compunction or one grain of pity for youth or
beauty when in their power. Time rolled on, and the pirates
and their fearless chief still continued upon the troubled waters ;
but a dreadful storm arose which caused the pirate bark to be
driven into a Danish port, where the authorities inspected the
" ship's papers," which they justly suspecte.d to be forged. The
king of Denmark ordered Bothwell to be detained a prisoner at
Copenhagen Castle. \

Bothwell offered to purchase his liberty and to procure ships
for the service of Denmark, but the king would not hear of such
propositions. Bothwell renewed his statement with regard to
the murder of Darnley and the " part he had taken in arranging

* The nobles assembled at the supper in question had all signed the bond for and in ap-
proval of the murder of Darnley.

t Secret Despatches of Sir Henry Killefreud, the English ambassador.

J Report of Bothwell's examination at Bergen as signed by the mayor and magistrates.

188$.] PlRA TES AND THE "REFORM A TION MO VEMENT" 133

it." He avowed that the queen had no part whatever in the
doings of the terrible night at Holyrood. The king of Den-
mark caused Bothwell to be removed to Melmoe Castle. In this
fortress Bothwell was closely confined for many years, and it is
stated that " his friends and kindred knew not of his where-
abouts." He was allotted " the well-barred and locked chamber
where the deposed tyrant Christian II. of Denmark had been
placed to reflect upon the past and the present."

It is stated that long sickness reduced Bothwell to a misera-
ble condition, and his mind was frequently affected by it. The
Lutheran bishop attended him, and " he made confessions to him,
but declared at the same time that the queen and her immediate
friends knew nothing of the murder of Darnley."

Bothwell died in 1577 and in his *' perfect senses." A true
copy of his death-bed confession, witnessed by four officials of
the Danish government, was specially sent by the King of Den-
mark to Queen Elizabeth, who suppressed it in the same manner
as she caused the confession of George Buchanan to be removed
from the shops of the London booksellers. Buchanan wished
posterity to know that he had returned to the religion he had
abandoned, and " hoped that God Almighty might forgive him
for all the deliberate injury he had inflicted upon the Queen of
Scots."

Buchanan has been styled a " literary dagger-man." And, to
make his conduct more sad, it is affirmed by Fraser Tytler that
he was " the most remarkable genius of the age in which he
lived." He was, indeed, the most intelligent man amongst the
slanderers of Mary Stuart.

A Scottish writer who visited the last resting-place of James,
Earl of Bothwell, observes: " Bothwell's grave lay under the
castle- wall. of Malmoe, in a lonely little dell. It was shaded by
the light leaves of the dwarf birch and the purple flowers of the
lilac-tree ; the blue forget-me-not, the white strawberry, and the
yellow daisy were planted there by some kind-hearted Swedes
in memorial of the stranger."

It is traditionally related that in 1577 an old Scotch friar
visited Bothwell in his dungeon, but the wretched man was near
the death-agony at the time. The confessor held up the crucifix
before him, when he wept and sobbed and became excited. . . .
The priest is supposed to have been Roger Bolton, an early
friend of Bothwell's family and his sister's confessor. The good
father was not able to induce the outlaw to return to the faith of
his family. So he died as he had lived, varied only by a suppli-

ENGLISH AND SCOTCH PIRATES. [Oct.,

cation with uplifted hands to heaven, crying out for " Mercy !
mercy ! " He referred, in pathetic words, to his mother and the
sunny days of childhood. Perhaps in the solitude of Bothwell's
heart he had some intervals of feeling which carried him back
to the long-forgotten piety of boyhood, when his good mother,
Agnes Sinclair, taught him first to raise his tiny hands in prayer
before the high altar in Blantyre Priory, where she daily knelt
and prayed to the Virgin Mother to protect her little children
from the world's temptations. To a troubled spirit such reflec-
tions were almost beyond endurance.

Perhaps another Scotch tradition is near the fact :

" The outcast Bothwell died repentant, and listened seriously to the ad-
monitions of an old priest who travelled far to change his heart and bring
him once more within the ancient fold. It is alleged that the dying man
addressed the friar in these words : ' Old friend, I am dying ! Oh ! let me
think that you will stand by my grave and say one prayer for my wretched
soul, and, in memory of the happy days of my early youth, you will re-
member me with pity and forgiveness.' "

The following passages are of some interest :

"On St. Bothan's Eve,'for many a returning year, a wandering priest
was seen to kneel beside that lonely grave, with eyes downcast and a
crucifix in his clasped hands, and, after praying for a time, he departed,
but no one knew from whence he came. He was uncommunicative and
sad-looking. Year after year the priest came and departed again. His last
visit was paid in 1622. His form was then bent With extreme old age (about
ninety-three) ; he leaned upon a staff ; his hair was white as snow, his
cheeks hollow, and he wept as he repeated the Catholic prayers for the
dead. Giving a farewell look at the grave, the unknown priest departed,
never to return again."

In 1624 the grave of Bothwell was visited by a Scotch gentle-
man. It was then flattened and effaced, and its whereabouts was
with difficulty pointed out by the " finger of tradition."

No hand ever raised a stone to mark where that strange in-
stance of uncontrolled ambition and turbulence, the last earl of
the old line of Hailes and Bothwell, lay commingled with the
dust of a foreign clime.

1885.] THE FRENCH RADICALS AND THE CONCORDAT. 135

THE FRENCH RADICALS AND THE CONCORDAT.

ONE of the principal planks in the platform of the French
Radicals is the separation of church and state. As, with the aid
of the Bonapartists and other irreconcilable enemies of the re-
public, they are likely to return a majority of their candidates
and to control the policy of the government more openly than
they have done heretofore, it may be interesting to study the
difficult problem they have undertaken to solve.

The advantage accruing to either party from the contemplat-
ed measure if we look only at the principle of separation
would be in favor of the church. She is, undoubtedly, more free
and independent where she is not subsidized by the stale, and,
judging from her condition in the United States, one would say
that her prosperity is only the greater. It is quite natural, then,
that Americans should look on this question as one of minor im-
portance and which should not alarm the Catholics. But the
case is very different in the two countries : to declare that there
shall be no union between two parties, and to proclaim that the
union already existing shall be dissolved, is not at ail the same
thing. That union must have been made upon certain condi-
tions ; certain interests must be involved which it is difficult to
adjust, even with the mutual consent of the parties still more so
if it be the will of one party only, with total disregard for the
rights of the other. Now, in France such a compact exists, and
the charges or responsibilities assumed by the state are of such
a nature that it is difficult to see how it can cancel them without
making compensation, or how it can make such a compensation
as is demanded by justice and equity. This compact is what is
known (by name, for its character is little understood) as the
Concordat. Ere we examine the origin and provisions of this
instrument let us first do away with certain false impressions
that exist in the minds of many people who have not given the
subject serious attention. Catholicism is represented as the
state religion of France that is, a religion possessing exclusive
privileges and whose clergy is supported by the government out
of the national treasury. The learned leaders of the anti-church
party strive to impress this last point on the popular mind, and
protest indignantly against the iniquity of compelling people to
pay taxes for the support of a religion they don't profess. Now,

136 THE FRENCH RADICALS AND THE CONCORDAT. [Oct.,

the truth is that the Catholic Church enjoys no exclusive
privilege in France ; she is merely the oldest and consequently
the first among the five religious denominations recognized by
the state and which receive government aid. The others are
the Reformed Church, or Calvinists, the Lutherans, the Israelites,
and the Mussulmans of Algeria. Furthermore, the Catholic
Church is the only one which does not receive gratuitous aid.
She is a creditor of the state, and the infidel taxpayers, like all
other citizens, are bound to help pay the public debt.

In the early ages of the Christian Church the name Concordat
was given to the articles of agreement by which differences aris-
ing between the bishops or the superiors of monasteries were
adjusted. Subsequently, and until the present time, it has been
used exclusively to designate the treaties made by the popes
with the various governments of Christendom, for the purpose
of determining the respective rights of each in the organization
of the clergy and the ecclesiastical discipline. No questions of
faith could be or have been involved in these transactions.
They were intended to define clearly the relations of the church
with civil authority, so as to avoid any clashing of interests or
power. Four Concordats have been passed between the Holy
See and France. The first was signed in 1516 by Leo X. and
Francis I. to settle the differences arising from the Pragmatic
Sanction of Bourges an edict of Charles VII. rendered in 1438
with the sanction of an assembly of prelates and nobles, and
against which Popes Eugene IV. and Pius II. had protested with
varied success, the edict having 'been alternately repealed by
Louis XL and revived by Louis XII. at the instance of the
French parliament. By this act the French king undertook to
settle the following important points: the authority of general
councils in matters of faith was held to be superior to that of the
pope, and the latter was bound to call a general council once at
least in every ten years ; the churches and chapters were given
the exclusive right to elect the bishops and other great benefi-
ciaries ; and, lastly, the king assumed the right to correct certain
abuses alleged to be committed by the court of Rome, especially
the taxation of the French clergy. Francis I. gave up the pre-
tension of making the popes subordinate to the councils and of
dictating when and how these assemblies should be held. On
the other hand, the King of France obtained from Leo X. the
right to appoint the French bishops, subject to the canonical in-
vestiture, which could only emanate from the spiritual power.
The question of taxation was settled by a compromise, the Sove-

1885.] THE FRENCH RADICALS AND THE CONCORDAT. 137

reign Pontiff conceding some points that had been in dispute for
a long time. The French parliament raised many objections to
this solution of a vexed question, and some of the clergy were
dissatisfied ; yet the Concordat of 1516 remained in full force un-
til the Revolution of 1789.

The National Assembly of 1790 assumed the right to establish
a new ecclesiastical organization in France. It gave the election
of the bishops and parish priests to the laymen, abolished all
benefices and fees, and charged the state with the expenses inci-
dental to religious worship. An annual sum of 77,000,000 francs
was voted for this purpose. The salaries of the clergy were
based on the population of the sees and parishes. The bishop of
Paris was allowed 50,000 francs ; the bishops of cities of 50,000
inhabitants or more, 20,000 francs ; those of less important sees,
12,000 francs; the parish priests in Paris, 6,000 francs; those in
the departments, from 4,000 to 1,200 francs, according to the size
of the parish. The great majority of the French clergy refused
to recognize the right of the National Assembly to interfere with
the discipline and organization of the church. They were dis-
possessed, but continued to discharge, in secret, the duties of
their sacr.ed office until, tracked by the Jacobins of the Revolu-
tion, they forfeited their lives on the guillotine, were massacred
in the prisons, or sought safety in exile. The few, the very few,
who accepted the situation and took the oath of fidelity to the
constitution were known as the constitutional clergy. The radi-
cals of the present day should remember that the first republican
government, while it took upon itself to dispossess the church
and to regulate her affairs, saw the justice and necessity of mak-
ing compensation, at least for the material damage inflicted.
They cannot call themselves faithful to the " immortal " princi-
ples of 1789, which were carried into effect in 1790, and repudiate
such acts of the founders of the republic as do not suit their pur-
pose. Their alternative is to denounce those patriots, as they do
the moderate republicans of to-day, and date their own republi-
canism from 1793.

They should also learn from that first experiment of a free
church what a hold the Catholic religion had upon the French
people, notwithstanding the efforts of the demagogues to eradi-
cate every vestige of the hated cult from the land. No sooner
was the Reign of Terror over than the voice of afflicted France
called aloud for the consolations of religion. As early as 1796
that is, during the Directory 32,214 parishes had resumed public
worship and 4,571 were claiming the right to do likewise. And

138 THE FRENCH RADICALS AND THE CONCORDAT. [Oct.,

a fact worthy of note, which M. Thiers, among other historians,
has observed, is that the religious services held by the unsworn
priests who had returned from exile or left the places of conceal-
ment where they had abided near their suffering spiritual chil-
dren, during the era of persecution, were far more largely at-
tended than those conducted by the " constitutional" priests.
So true is the popular judgment when left free to follow its in-
stinct. Whether the braying of the modern apostles of infidelity
will have more influence on the people than the terrorism of
their Jacobin predecessors remains to be seen.

In 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, but dreaming
already of the imperial purple, saw what an important card
would be to him the solemn and complete restoration of the
Catholic religion in France. Besides the prestige it would give
him in the eyes of Europe and the claim on the gratitude of the
French Catholics, would not such an act secure to him an influ-
ence on the Sovereign Pontiff that could be turned to account
when the time came? Such may have been the motives of Bona-
parte ; at all events, in making overtures to Pope Pius VII. for a
new Concordat he did an act of sound statesmanship. He saw
that the -social edifice, terribly shaken by the revolutionary earth-
quake, needed to be reconstructed, and he knew that the only
cement that will give strength and cohesion to society is religion.
He therefore called religion to his aid ; but his conduct through-
out the negotiations shows clearly that he was not prepared to
do anything for the sake of religion. He wished to have every-
thing his own way, and even threatened to detach France from
the church if the project of Concordat he had sent to Rome was
not signed within a stated, brief delay. The pope, of course,
could not submit thus to the will of the First Consul, whose
object was apparent enough. On the other hand, the sufferings
of the French church commanded his earnest solicitude. The
French ambassador was instructed to return to Paris if the Con-
cordat was not signed within the period assigned five days. The
Sovereign Pontiff, unwilling to see the negotiations broken so
suddenly, yet determined to not surrender the rights of the
church and his own dignity, sent Cardinal Gonsalvi to accom-
pany the ambassador to Paris and there to resume negotiations.
The history of the diplomatic comedy that followed, and in which
Bonaparte showed his wiliness and arrogance alternately, cannot
be told in the limits of an article. It will be found in the works
of Thiers and other historians, and with still greater details in
the Memoirs of Cardinal Gonsalvi. In short, the cardinal made

1885.] THE FRENCH RADICALS AND THE CONCORDAT. - 139

the best bargain he could without sacrificing principle and the
spiritual authority of the pope. That it was but a lame compro-
mise and not very favorable to the interests of the church is
generally admitted, but, such as it is, it has remained in force
until the present day. The second Concordat, signed by Pius
VII. while a prisoner at Fontainebleau, was null and void, the
Holy Father, as soon as he was free, having protested against
a document wrested from him through fraud and violence. The
fourth Concordat was signed by the same pope and King Louis
XVIII. in 1817. The French Chambers rejected it and it never
became a law. The document which binds the republic of 1885
is therefore the Concordat of 1801, hemmed in as it is by the
Organic Articles- an act to regulate the ecclesiastical policy of the
various denominations then existing, and which the wily Bona-
parte caused to be promulgated simultaneously with the Con-
cordat, as though it were an integral part of that instrument.
The pope protested in vain. The Organic Articles were not re-
pealed, but in course of time they were greatly modified in their
application.

The Concordat of 1801 (promulgated in April, 1802) contains
seventeen articles. We shall only quote here the most impor-
tant. The preamble reads as follows :

" The government of the French Republic acknowledges that the Ca-
tholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion is the religion of the great majority
of French citizens. His Holiness acknowledges likewise that the said reli-
gion has received and still expects to receive the greatest good and the
greatest lustre from the establishment of Catholic worship in France, and
from the particular profession made of it by the consuls of the republic.
In consequence thereof, after this mutual acknowledgment which is for
the good of the church and the preservation of interior t tranquillity, they
have agreed upon what follows :

" i. The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion shall be freely exer-
cised in France j its worship shall be public, by conforming with the police
regulations which the government may deem necessary for the public
peace."

Nos. 2 to 1 1 provide for the new organization of the dioceses,
nominations, etc.

" 12. All the churches, metropolitan, cathedral, parochial, and others
not previously alienated, that are required for worship, shall be placed
again at the disposal of the bishops.

" 13. His Holiness, for the good of peace and the happy restoration of
the Catholic religion, declares that neither he nor his successors shall in
any manner disturb the purchasers of alienated ecclesiastical property, and
that in consequence the ownership of the said property, and the rights and
revenues thereto attached, shall remain incommutable; in their hands or
those of their assigns.

140 . THE FRENCH RADICALS AND THE CONCORDAT. [Oct.,

" 14. The government shall provide suitable salaries for the bishops and
priests whose dioceses and parishes are comprised in the new circum-
scription.

*' 15. The government shall also adopt measures to enable French Ca-
tholics, if so inclined, to make foundations in favor of the churches.

" 16. His Holiness concedes the same rights and prerogatives to the
First Consul of the French Republic as the former government enjoyed.

*' 17. It is agreed by the contracting parties that, in case any of the suc-
cessors of the present First Consul should happen to be a non-Catholic,
the rights and prerogatives hereinabove mentioned, and the right to ap-
point bishops, shall be, so far as he is concerned, determined by a new con-
vention."

In principle the pope wished to have the Catholic religion
recognized as the religion of the state. This he could not
obtain, but had to be content with the declaration embodied in
the first article, that it was the creed of " the great majority of
French citizens." The second article stands in the way of those
who wish to close the Catholic churches. A frail barrier, cer-
tainly ; for the religious orders, Sisters of Charity, and Christian
Brothers, who have been driven away by a government which
must appear benevolent by the side of the anarchists, were
simply exercising a right implied in this second article.

But Articles 13 and 14 establish clearly the claim of the Ca-
tholic Church in France against the state. We have seen that
the National Assembly of 1790, having confiscated the church
property, had deemed it but just to make compensation by
voting a liberal allowance to the despoiled clergy. Bonaparte's
first project of a Concordat was simply the revival of the decree
of 1790 and its recognition by the court of Rome. This, of
course, the Holy Father could not consent to ; for, leaving aside
this question of spoliation, most of the provisions of that decree
were an encroachment upon the spiritual authority of the church.
In the Concordat, as finally agreed upon, the questions of disci-
pline and prerogative were adjusted, if not to the entire satisfac-
tion of the church, at least with due regard for her spiritual
authority. That of the temporal interests was likewise settled
by the two articles referred to. The pope renounces all attempts
to recover the unjustly-confiscated property, and in consideration
of this renunciation- the French government pledges itself to
provide a suitable maintenance for the Catholic clergy of France.
That the words we have italicized do not appear in the document
is of little importance. Common sense and common equity both
tell us that the two articles are to be taken together, the one
being but the consequence of the other. A fifth-rate lawyer

THE FRENCH RADICALS AND THE CONCORDAT. 141

would win a case like this between private individuals before
any court in the land. The French government, therefore,
simply pays a perpetual annuity for a capital sunk (unwillingly)
by the clergy. The ecclesiastical property was sold as national
property ; the government pocketed the proceeds, and was there-
fore responsible for all future claims. Upon the same principle
the government of Louis XVIII. voted the indemnity of a thou-
sand million francs to the absentees whose estates had been con-
fiscated by the republic. It mattered not that this confiscation
was the act of a government which he did not recognize, and
that the majority of the purchasers were revolutionists ; the
choice was between numberless prosecutions disturbing the
peace of the kingdom and affecting the prosperity of the nation,
or paying a just debt so far as the creditors were concerned
out of the finances of the state. But the case of the church was
stronger than that of the dmigrts ; the confiscation decreed by
the National Assembly was not intended as an act of persecution,
but as a measure of reform dictated by a mistaken spirit of jus-
tice ; some ecclesiastics cumulated several benefices and rolled in
wealth, while others had barely enough to live on ; the Assembly,
by adopting the relative population of the various dioceses and
parishes as a basis to calculate the salaries, showed a desire to
deal fairly with the clergy. Its mistake was that it had no
right to reorganize the ecclesiastical circumscription.

Now, how will the anarchists settle this vexed question ?
Will they tell the Catholic clergy : " Here is a sum of money,
a tithe of the capital taken from you in the years past ; take it,
take your churches, and manage your own affairs ; we will
have nothing more to do with you " ? It would be a sensible and
honest move, of which they are incapable. They don't want
to get rid of the alliance of church and state ; they want to get
rid of the church, of the priests who preach a code of ethics dif-
ferent from their own, of everything that keeps awake that trou-
bled conscience of theirs. What then? Refuse all subsidies?
wipe out the name of religion from the French code ? refuse the
church that mere " right of way " that Bossuet claimed for her?
add another disgrace to the shame they have already heaped on
that once proud France, and make her name a by-word among
nations? Have Messieurs Clemenceau, Paul Bert, Rochefort,
and others of that ilk, who so industriously put their shoulders
to the wheel of radicalism and infidelity, pondered over this prob-
lem ? Have they found the ways and means to carry out their
programme, and have they calculated the consequences?

142 NEW FUBLICA TIONS. [Oct.,

The Catholic religion cannot be driven out of France. Since
Voltaire, more than a hundred years ago, gave the war-cry, //
faut dttruire finfame ! what persecutions the church has suffer-
ed in that fair France with whose history her name is so closely
linked! Mockery, slander, violence, every weapon, has been
used against her. As a crowning glory she was selected to give
martyrs in this highly-civilized nineteenth century. What more
can her enemies do ? Other sufferings may be in store for her
we know not the secret designs of Providence but even though
infidelity should prevail in the present struggle, and we should
see every French priest take up the pilgrim's staff and turn his
steps sorrowfully towards another land, we would think of La-
cordaire's prophetic words : " France is Catholic by the triple
force of her history, her spirit of self-sacrifice, and the clearness
of her genius ; she will only cease to be so when the grave opens
for her."

NEW PUBLICATIONS,

A LITERARY AND BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY; or, A Bibliographical Diction-
ary of the English Catholics from the breach with Rome in 1534 to the
present time (A-C). By Joseph Gillow. London : Burns & Gates ;
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. Vol. L

This is one of the most important and valuable works which has
issued from the Catholic press in England for many years, and should find
a place in the libraries not only of all English Catholics, but of all who
take an interest in the ecclesiastical or secular history of the post-Refor-
mation period. It will surprise many to see how great is the number of
those who were faithful to the church in all positions in life, and the record
of the sufferings so many underwent for the faith is of the deepest interest.
The work is not confined, however (as the motto on the title-page would
lead one to conclude), to recording the lives of those who have done honor
to their faith, but, while giving the first place to these, it embraces within
its plan all who, in spite of legislative restrictions, rose to eminence in the
legal, medical, military, naval, and scientific professions and as statesmen.
Artists of any renown find also a place painters, sculptors, architects,
musicians, and actors. Booksellers and printers are included, who in past
times, and indeed, in some instances, in our own days, have rendered such
great services to religion. And, of course, the schoolmasters who at the
peril of their lives devoted themselves to the education of the young are
not only included, but special care has been taken to make the list and
account of them complete. But lives, of course, in a work of this kind, must

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143

be brief, and consequently we are inclined to think that the most valuable
feature of the work is the bibliographical portion. Appended to each of
the lives of those who have written at all is a list, with full titles and place
and date of publication, of all the works they wrote. This list will form, as
far as possible, a complete catalogue of all the works written by Catholics
since the Reformation. At the end of each life the authorities on which it
is based are given, and so it will be easy for any one wishing for a more
detailed account to learn where to go for it. In some cases we would wish
that a fuller list of these authorities had been given ; for example, in the
life of Edmund Campian, where the only authority is Mr. Simpson's work.
Another fault we have to find is that there is a want of uniformity in the
references to the lives of noblemen ; sometimes their lives are given under
their titles, as the Earls of Arundell and Lord Castlemaine, and sometimes
under their family names, as the Earl of Arlington under Bennet and Lord
Baltimore under Calvert. Are there not also too many paragraphs ? Mat-
ters which have involved much controversy and caused much trouble
have had to be gone into, but, so far as we can judge, Mr. Gillow has
approached these heart-burning questions in a fair and judicious spirit, and
has given none, even though they may differ from him, reason to com-
plain of his way of treating them. We notice that the life of Charles II.
has not been included in this volume; is it because Mr. Gillow is not con-
vinced of his reception into the church ?

OF ADORATION IN SPIRIT AND TRUTH. By John Eusebius Nieremberg, of
the Society of Jesus. With a Preface by Peter Gallwey, of the same
society. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publica-
tion Society Co. 1885.

The translation of this little book appeared first in 1673 and was re-
printed in 1871. This is a new edition of the same work. Of a work
which has been so long before the world, and which has held its own so
well, the verdict of those competent to judge has already been formed
and enunciated with sufficient clearness to dispense us from giving here
any opinion at all. We must say, however, that the old translation is
delightful, although the pleasure we take in it is somewhat diminished by
the inharmonious newness of the print, paper, and spelling.

FATHER HAND, Founder of All-Hallows Catholic College for the Foreign
Missions. The story of a Great Servant of God. By the Rev. John
McDermott, D.D., All-Hallows College, Dublin. Dublin : M. H. Gill
& Son ; New York : Fr. Pustet & Co.

There is scarcely any place where the life of the founder of All-Hal-
lows will not be eagerly read. For throughout the English-speaking
world priests may be found who have received from him and his teaching
more than they can ever say. To these the life of Father Hand will be
more than interesting, and to their flocks, we have no doubt, no less so
than to themselves.

This " faithful servant " was indeed a martyr to his zeal ; he sacrificed
his life for the good of the institution he founded. And when we consider
the great amount of good the college of All-Hallows has been instrumen-

144 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct., 1885.

tal in doing, when we recall that it has sent out eleven hundred priests,
we cannot but rejoice that the patience, the labors, the virtues of Father
Hand have received even in this life a reward, but a reward bearing no
proportion to that his Heavenly Father has bestowed upon him.

THE SECRET OF PLATO'S ATLANTIS. By Lord Arundell of Wardour.
London: Burns & Gates. 1885. (For sale by the Catholic Publica-
tion Society Co.)

Lord Arundell has undertaken to refute a theory proposed by Mr.
Ignatius Donnelly respecting what has been generally regarded as a fable
or legend respecting Atlantis which is found in Plato's Critias. He also
proposes a theory of his own concerning the foundation of this myth of
Plato's. His conjecture is that Plato made a relation of a voyage of
Hanno which took place about B.C. 500 the basis of an idealized narrative
that is, of his Atlantis. His reasoning is ingenious, and in this, as all
Lord Arundell's works, there is much curious erudition.

THE LIVES OF THE IRISH SAINTS. By the Rev. John O'Hanlon, M.R.I.A.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

THE CATHOLIC WORLD has again and again called the attention of its
readers to the Lives of the Irish Saints by Rev. J. O'Hanlon. If it had not
done so it would have been gravely remiss in one of its chief duties. And
now, since a good thing cannot be done too often, it calls attention to this
important work once more. The traditions of a race, whether natural or
supernatural, should never be lost or forgotten either by those of the same
race, or by their descendants, or by mankind. How much men toil, dig,
and labor to rescue the traditions of the Egyptians, the Grecians, the
Latins, and others of past history ! Father O'Hanlon is engaged in a simi-
lar noble work. We bid him God-speed, and earnestly recommend his
work to the sympathies and support of all men. What we learn from the
agents of this work in this country, however, is most astonishing and re-
grettable namely, that there are not more than five copies sold by them in
the United States.

THE EFFECTS OF THE ABUSE OF ALCOHOL ON THE CIRCULATORY AND RE-
SPIRATORY ORGANS. A paper read before the meeting of the American
Institute of Homoeopathy, Session of 1884. By J. W. Bowling, M.D.,
Professor of Physical Diagnosis and Diseases of the Heart and Lungs,
and Dean of the New York Homoeopathic Medical College. Pittsburgh,
Pa. : Press of Stevenson & Foster.

The above pamphlet of sixteen pages contains much valuable informa-
tion. Dr. Dowling states very clearly the symptoms which are produced
by excessive drinking, and takes special care to give satisfactory proofs for
his conclusions.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLII. NOVEMBER, 1885. No. 248,

THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS.

IN Rome long since upon Mount Aventine
There stood a marble palace vast and fair,

'Mid gardens rich in mulberry and vine,
With columned atrium and Parian stair,

Statued by godlike forms at either side,

Ancestral chiefs, a Roman noble's pride.

That stock was ancient when great Csesar fell ;

Ancient when Hannibal with gloomy brow
From Zama rode, till then invincible ;

Ancient when Cincinnatus left his plough ;
Ancient when Liberty in crimson dyed
Leaped forth, re-virgined, from a virgin's side

Virginia's bleeding 'neath her father's knife :
And when the state in days of Gracchus reeled,

By rapine torn or fratricidal strife
111 fruit of that Licinian Law repealed,

And Rome's free peasant, famed in peace and war,

Gave place to slaves, base scum from realms afar,

Then too the Euphemian race held high its head
Above the custom new and mist of error ;

The native husbandmen with freedom's tread
Walked still its fields ; in gladness not in terror

Their young, fair daughters, rising from the board,

Greeted the entrance of an unfeared lord.

146 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Nov.

He came not only, when the flocks were shorn
To claim his half; when corn-clad slopes grew fat;

When russet sheaves to golden barns were borne ;
When olives bled, or grapes made red the vat:

He stood among them when the son was wed ;

He followed to his grave the grandsire dead.

Centuries went by ; they brought the great reward :

That Senate-order of a later day,
Fooled by their flatterers, by their slaves abhorred,

Reaped as they sowed each upstart anarch's prey,
Successively proscribed. 'Mid seas of blood
The Empire by the dead Republic stood.

In time that Empire tottered to its fall ;

Awhile the princely hand of Constantino
Sustained it. Faithful to a heavenly call,

He linked its glories with that Conquering Sign
Inscribed, " Through me is Victory." But, within,
Still lurked that empire-murdering poison Sin.

The Christian Truth, held truly, had sufficed
Even then to save that Empire : naught "availed

The Name invoked but not the Faith of Christ,
Or Faith that made its boast in words, but failed

To rear on Pagan wrecks of sense and pride

The Christian throne of greatness sanctified.

The imperial sceptre to the East transferred

Left prouder yet the West. More high each day

The pomp up-swelled of Rome's great Houses, stirred
By legendary lore and servile lay,

And hungry crowds contented long- to wait

The bread-piled basket at the palace-gate.

" My Lord receives his clients." In they throng,
Freedman and slave, Greek cook and Syrian priest,

Wizard and mime, adepts in dance or song ;
The perfumed patron, recent from the feast,

Or drunken slumbers reddening still his eyes,

Enters ; and plausive shouts insult the skies,

1885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 147

Startling a score of scriveners, forms grotesque

That bend lean foreheads, seamed by fevered veins,

Across the ledger's breadth or mouldering desk;
For then each Roman noble held domains

By Rhenus, Rhodanus, and every shore

That hears or viol's sigh or panther's roar.

Those nobles seldom rode to battle-fields ;

They steered to distant ports no ships broad-sailed ;
But well they knew that gain which usury yields ;

Or, borrowing oft, when tricksome fortune failed
Pawned their best plate and many a gem beside,
Knee-crooked to soothe some upstart lender's pride.

The gilded barge is launched : a score of slaves
Drag back the flashing oars ; a second score

With incense charge each wind that curls the waves,
Or harmonize blue Baise's sea-washed shore

With strains that charmed Calypso's halls ere while,

Or lured Ulysses f ward the Siren's isle.

They trod the marbles of the Thermae vast,
Their skirts aflame with legend-broideries ;

Bull-born, Europa here the Bosphorus passed,
The Idean shepherd there adjudged the prize ;

Or Venus, fisher turned, with bending rod

Landed a wet-winged Cupid on the sod.

Their litters borne by sweating slaves, they clomb
On August noons Soracte's steepest ridge ;

Or, pinnace-cradled, pushed the creamy foam
Onward through dusk Avernus' waving sedge;

They turned not there great Maro's page, yet oft

Alike the Poet and his Sibyl scoffed.

Temples and shrines adorned their palaces ;

Syrian the rite, once Roman, later Greek :
Old libraries remained : they sought them less

For song heroic than for tale lubrique ;
There sophists warred in turn on body and soul ;
There dust lay thick on Plato's godlike scroll.

148 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Nov.,

Travelling, a troop Numidian cleared their way ;

Their carrucse were silver, gold-embossed ;
In festal barge they coasted Cumae's bay :

If there a keener gust the ripple crossed
They shook like some sick child that sees in dream
Ixion's doom or rage of Polypheme.

Harp, lyre, and lute for ever dinned their bowers ;

But witless, loud, or shrill was every strain :
They feared the incense-breath of innocent flowers,

Yet quaffed their wine-cups near the uncovered drain ;
Feared omens more than wrath divine, and fled
The fevered child, the parent's dying bed.

The poison root of those base ways was this :
Self-love had slain true love. Each human tie

Was hollowed. Sense had smirched the nuptial kiss ;
Child-birth was tribute paid to ancestry ;

Rottenness reigned : the World, grown old, stripped bare,

More ruled than when the Witch was young and fair.

Need was there that the Lord of Love should burst
Once more on man as in man's prime estate,

And, teaching that the " First Command " is first
The " Second " second only, vindicate

For human ties that greatness theirs alone

When Love's far source and heavenly end are known.

Ages of Sin had heaped on high a debt

Heroic abstinence could alone defray :
The limb ill-joined could never be reset

Till broken ; Love, till cleansed, resume its sway.
Conventual cells that seemed to spurn the earth,
And hermit caves, built up the Christian Hearth.

Fire-scorched Thebais, lion-tenanted !

'Twas in thy lion's abdicated lair
Ascetic Virtue laid its infant head !

The heart, dried up, found waters only there !
That Faith burnt in upon it from above
By pain sent up at last Faith's offspring Love.

1885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 149

Rome caught the sacred flame. Brave men, and those
Infected least with wealth and popular praise,

Could walk in strength, in dignity repose,
In part were faithful to the old Roman ways :

Matrons there were on whom Cornelia's eye

Had dwelt ; and youths well pleased like Regulus to die.

Pagan were these, most part, but less revered

Venus than Pallas, Plutus less than Pan :
The Gods " Pandemian" they nor loved nor feared :

In nobler Gods the noblest thoughts of man
Looked down, so deemed they, from the Olympian throne,
Or types or delegates of that God Unknown.

Others, incensed at priestly conjuring trick,

Reluctant bade the fane profaned adieu,
But with the Sophist's godless rhetoric

Their own hearts wronged not. Far as truth they knew
They lived it ; wrought for man and peace ensued,
Shunning the 111, and cleaving to the Good.

An exhalation of celestial grace

Moved o'er the Empire from the Martyrs' tombs :
Christians, oft slaves, were found in every place ;

Their words, their looks, brightened the heathen glooms:
Such gleams still hallow Antoninus' page,
The saintly Pagan and Imperial Sage.

Prescient of fate the old worship lay in swoon,
Helpless though huge, dying and all but dead ;

The young Faith clasped it as the keen new moon,
A silver crescent hung o'er ocean's bed,

Clasps that sad orb whose light from earth is won :

Its youthful Conqueror parleys with the sun.

The Poor came first, and reaped the chief reward ; j
Old Houses next: Truth loves Humility:

Humility is humblest when most hard
To reach the lowliness of high degree :

Such bowed to Christ: in turn He gave to them ,

The stars of Truth's whole heaven for diadem.

150 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Nov.,

The thought of greatness in them long had dwelt :
The difference 'twixt the greatness counterfeit

And genuine greatness plainly now they felt :

Eyes had they ; and they saw it. Henceforth sweet

Was every sacrifice that Vision brought :

No wish had these to purchase heaven for naught.

They knew 'twas sense and valor, not the hand

In unguents drenched, that won the world for Rome :

Sublimer ends sublimer pains demand :
A spiritual kingship, country, hope, and home

Shone out and hailed them from the far-off shore

" To sea, though tempests rage and breakers roar I "

Piercing remorse was theirs whene'er they mused
On all which God to Rome in trust had given ;

The majesties profaned, the rights abused :
What help to earth, what reverence to heaven,

Had these bequeathed ? What meant her realm world-wide ?

Injustice throned, and Falsehood deified I

Through all that boundless realm from East to West
Had Virtue flowered ? Had Wisdom come to fruit ?

Had Freedom raised to heaven a lordlier crest?
Had household Peace pushed down a deeper root ?

More true were wives, were maids more pure that day

Than Portia, Clelia, or Nausicaa ?

Behold, the flowering was of vices new ;

The fruitage fruits of hate and self-disgust ;
Knowledge had bathed her roots in lethal dew :

If higher now her branching head she thrust
The Upas shade spread wider than of old ;
And wealth had bound man's heart in chains of gold.

The Christian noble spurned the old Roman pride ;

Whatever the Christian prized the Pagan hated,
And clasped, his zeal by wrath intensified,

Rome's basest boasts with passion unabated ;
Their homes stood near : for that cause further still
Their inmates were estranged in thought and will.

1885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 151

The Christian ofttimes sold his all, and gave
The poor its price; another kept his lands,

But spent their increase freeing serf and slave,
Himself sustained by labor of his hands :

Thus each renounced himself, for others wrought,

Yet found that personal good he never sought.

Married were some, and reverently to Christ
Upreared a race to Him obedient. Some

For His sake hearth and household sacrificed ;
Others, in that fresh dawn of Christendom,

Though wedded, lived in vestal singleness,

Young chastity's severe yet sweet excess.

Of Christian homes the noblest and the first
Was that huge palace on Mount Aventine.

Fortune and Pagan spite had done their worst :

They maimed it, yet not marred. The time's decline

Made it but holier seem. The Christian Truth

Shone, starlike, from its breast in endless youth.

Three hundred freemen served there as of yore,
Bondsmen whilom. The clients of old time

Walked there as children, parasites no more ;
Mastery and service, like recurrent rhyme,

Kissed with pure lip : for one great reverence swayed

Alike their hearts who ruled and who obeyed.

The beast that drew the water from the well

In the near stream had earlier quenched his thirst,

Nor labored over-burdened : placable

Was each man : vengeance there was held accursed :

By the same altar knelt the high, the low ;

Heard the same prayer : it rose for friend and foe.

Euphemian was the name far-known of him

The lord of all those columned porticoes,
Those gardens vast with ilex alleys dim,

Those courtways lined with orange and with rose :
Happy in youth ; thrice happier since his bride,
Aglae, paced those halls her lord beside.

152 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Nov.,

f She was a being beautiful as day,

Tender and pliant to her husband's will
As to the wind that flower each breath can sway

While branch and leaf and blade close by are still,
And therefore " wind-flower" named. On her Christ's Poor
Looked ever with moist eyes and trust secure.

One thing alone was wanting to this pair
The sound of children's feet patting the floor,

The ring of children's laughter on the air,
Their clamorous joy at opening of a door

To see, to clasp their parents newly come

Once more from Ostia or from Tusculum.

The Poor pray well : at last the prayer was heard
From countless hearths ascending eve and morn

From countless hearts. The joy so long deferred
Was sent at last ; the longed-for boy was born.

That day all Rome kept festival ; that night

Each casement shone, and every face was bright.

The months went swiftly by : the Seven-Hilled City
Well loved that Babe ; the poor man's boast was he,

The theme of poet, and the minstrel's ditty :
Maiden and matron clasped him on her knee :

And many a saintly mother said and smiled

" Christ died a Man : but came to earth a Child ! "

Once as he slept his mother near him knelt :
She prayed as never she had prayed before,

And, praying, such an inspiration felt

As though some breeze of hope o'er ocean's floor,

Missioned from Bethlehem's star-loved crib, came flying

O'er her and him in that small cradle lying.

It passed : then in her memory rose that word
Simeon to Blessed Mary spake erewhile,

" Also through thine own soul shall pierce the sword " ;
She mused, like those who weep at once and smile,

" The Mother of a Saint how great soe'er

Her joy in Mary's sacred grief must share ! "

1885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 153

Years passed : a Monk, that child at vespers singing,
Stood silent long; then down a tear-drop stole :

He spake, while still with song the roofs were ringing,
" That voice is music of a singing Soul !

That child shall live on earth as lives a spirit;

When dead, some crown seraphic shall inherit ! "

The child became the boy, but never lost

That charm which beautified his childhood's ways

Skilful the most of those the quoit who tossed
Or chased the boar, he nothing did for praise,

Nor e'er in feast or revel sought a part ;

Rome was to him pure as a forest's heart.

Raptured he read her legends of old time
The Father-Judge who doomed his sons to die;

The Wife that, sentencing another's crime,

Pierced her own heart, then sank without a sigh.

High deeds were all his thought : not then he knew

That oft Endurance wins a crown more true.

A youth, the meditative wore for him

Greatness than action's ampler and more dear :

In musings while he walked, unmarked or dim
Were ofttimes flower and tree ; all objects near

Lost in far lights of sunset or sunrise :

His chief of passions was Self- Sacrifice.

His guides in Christian as in classic lore
Boasted untired the youth's intelligence :

Ere long he marked these twain were still at war,
The prophets one of Spirit, one of Sense :

" I will not serve two masters," thus he cried,

And pushed the flower- decked pagan scroll aside.

Was it that sacred moment shaped his life,

Keeping it flawless ? Thousands safeliest pace

Faith's lower roads, dusty and dinned with strife ;
Not so the man elect to loftier place,

For sins in others small are great in him

Whose grace is large that grace least stains bedim.

154 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Nov.,

Thenceforth his " eye was single." Loss was gain
To him, since Suffering had the world redeemed ;

For that cause still he sought the haunts of pain ;
Still on the sufferer's couch like morning beamed,

And in his father's house with wine and bread

Served still God's Poor, or with them sat and fed.

He lived a life all musical, for still

Discords of earth in him grew harmonized ;

He lived in a great silence, spirit and will

Hushed in his God. Because naught else he prized

Loud as that first, great world-creating word,

God's " small, still voice " within him, still he heard.

Nothing in him was sad, nothing morose ;

The serious face still tended to a smile,
As when, 'mid climes where eve and morn sit close,

Twilight and dawn meet in some boreal isle.
Bad actions named, sad looked he and surprised ;
But seldom strove, rebuked, or criticised.

There were who marvelled at his piercing thought ;

There were who marvelled at his simpleness:
High Truths, and Inspirations rapture-fraught,

Came to his mind like angels : not the less
Where lesser men walk well his foot oft erred ;
He heard the singing spheres, or nothing heard.

His father loved the boy with love and pride ;

There, and there only, pride regained a part ;
He who had spurned the world, its scorn defied,

Now gladdened that his son had won its heart.
He smiled when kinsmen said : "This boy shall raise
Waste places of his House in later days."

" All that is ours Alexis must inherit/'

He answered. Then the mother, " Who is she

Worthy by race, by beauty, and by merit
To be to him true wife as I to thee ? "

Such maid they sought long time ; when hope was o'er

They found her found on earth's most famous shore.

1885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 155

Her race had dwelt in Athens ere it wrestled
With Sparta for the foremost place in Greece ;

Earlier, in Colchian vales, less known had nestled
Ere Jason thence had filched the Golden Fleece.

Thus to his mates on wintry nights her sire

Had boasted oft, beside the fir-cone fire.

Euphemian and that sire were ancient friends
So far as Greek and Roman friends might be,

Friends in their youth ; but though unlikeness blends
Natures cognate with finer sympathy,

So diverse these, men said 'twas memory's tie,

Not love's, that held them still, through severance, nigh.

Not less, ere died the Greek, that friend of old
Had sought him out, and, standing by his bed,

Had vowed to nurture in his own fair fold
His daughter, lonely left. Her father dead,

And sacred mourning days expired, the twain

Spread sail for Rome across the wine-dark main.

At sea, to please the maid, her guardian took

The sweet and venerable name of Sire ;
Her winsome grace, her wit, her every look
V But few could witness such and not admire :
Sadly Euphemian marked them, sadly smiled,
Yet loved her as a father loves his child.

Likewise, as up and down his musings swayed,

This thought recurred : " The girl is light of wing !

What then? Alexis is too grave and staid :
Christian she is ; to each the years must bring

Fit aid by friendly difference best supplied :

Ere three months more Zoe shall be his bride/'

Zoe, the loveliest of Athenian girls,

Was prouder thrice to bear the Athenian name

Than if the East had rained its gems and pearls
Knee-deep about her path. To Rome she came

Curious, yet spleenful more. The world's chief site

To her was sceptred dulness, brainless might

1 56 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Nov.,

The ship that bore her thither smiled to waft

Creature so bright; smooth seas revered their charge:

Cythera's uplands, as she passed them, laughed :

The ^Etnean heights, Trinacria's wave-washed marge,

Gladdened; they sang, " Our Proserpine again

Is come to gather flowers on Enna's plain ! "

She, as she neared the soft Campanian coast,
Where Pestum's roses redden twice a year,

Reddened for joy its valleys seemed almost
As Tempe soft, its streams as Dirc6 clear

But frowned on tawny Tiber with raised fist,

Mocking, half-Maenad and half- Exorcist.

When Zoe entered Rome, she turned, heart-sick,
From arch and column flattering regal pride,

From cliff-like walls up-piled of sun-burned brick, .

From courts where beasts had fought and martyrs died,

From alien obelisks, hieroglyph-o'ergraven,

Long centuries glassed in Egypt's stillest haven.

That mood went by : sudden the cloud she spurned,
And, shaking from lashed lids an angry tear,

To that grave man beside her, laughing, turned
And spake: " The trophies of all lands are here !

Rome conquered earth : but why ? Too dense her brain

For better tasks, the victories which remain !

" They boast their Heroes : but they love them not !

Lo, there ! An Emperor stands yon column's crown !
What Greek would strain his eyes to scan a spot

Jet-black in sun-bright skies ? No Attic clown !
There Trajan towers, and, eastward, Antonine :
O brains Beotian, fatter than your kine ! "

Lightly thus spake that beaming creature hard,

Nor noted that, as one in still disdain,
Her comrade silent rode. A fixed regard

He bent upon a cross-surmounted fane :
A Grecian temple near it stood : his eye
Saw but that small, low church, that sunset sky.

1885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 157

The Roman spake : " Your Grecian pride of Art,
Daughter, and Rome's old pagan pride of arms,

Alike stand sentenced here. For Christian heart
No greatness, save of heavenly birth, hath charms.

In Rome the Faith found martyrs three long ages :

She won but audience from the Athenian sages ! "

The beauteous one looked up ; her sensitive lip
And tender cheek asked leave, it seemed, to smile ;

Then, as a bud that frosts of April nip,

That smile, discouraged, died. Pensive awhile

She rode ; her palfrey nearer drew to his :

She raised his hand, and pressed thereon a kiss.

" Forgive," she said, " the petulance of youth !

Wisdom serene, and Virtue proved by years,
Note not its freaks." She wept ; but soon in sooth

Her penitence was drowned in its own tears,
And livelier than before her critic tongue
This way and that its shafts of satire flung.

At times the unbending Roman smiled perforce ;

At times the patriot stern essayed to frown :
She noted either mood ; and her discourse

Accordant winged its bright way up or down
Like those white-pinioned birds that sink, then soar
O'er high-necked waves that shake a sandy shore.

The sun had set ; they clomb Mount Aventine,

That Augur-haunted height. There stayed, she saw

Old Tiber, lately bright, in sanguine line

Wind darkening t'wards the sea. A sudden awe

Chilled her. She felt once more that evening breeze

Which waves that yew-grove of the Eumenides

Where Athens fronts Colonos. There of old

Sat Destiny's blind mark, King CEdipus ;
And, oft as she had passed it, shudderings cold

Ran through her fibred frame, made tremulous
As the jarred sounding-board of lyre or harp :
So thrilled the girl that hour with shiverings sharp.

158 THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. [Nov.,

" I know it ! This is Rome's Oracular Hill !

Dreadful it looks ; a western Calvary !
A sacrificial aspect, dark and still,

It wears, that saith, ' Prepare, O man, to die !'
Father ! you house not near this mount of Fate ? "
Thus as she spake they reached his palace gate.

There stood, still fair tenderer than when more young
She who had made her husband's youth so bright :

Long to her neck the Athenian Exile clung,
Wearied and sad. Not less that festal night

The gladsomest of the radiant throng was she,

Centre and soul of Roman revelry.

END OF PART I.

THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.

THE authority which is the theme of the present exposition is
not jurisdiction, but power to teach truth in such a way as justly
to command assent. The predicate " divine " distinguishes this
authority of the church from all lesser authority such as is no
more than human. It denotes the source whence the church as
a medium receives the truth it teaches, and the ultimate motive
justifying and commanding assent, which is the authority of God.
The power of God to teach truth so as to give the human mind
a motive justifying and commanding assent is, essentially, his
absolute truth, in being, in knowing, and in making known his
true being and true knowledge. These are combined in the one
expression the veracity of God, which is the motive of belief in
divine revelation, or assent to truth on divine authority.

It is plain that all divine authority in the church is the autho-
rity of the revelation which God gives through the church as the
organ which he has chosen to make the ordinary (though not the
only) medium of teaching to men, by a supernatural mode of
communication, truths ; which they are commanded to believe by
faith on the divine veracity. The divine authority of the church
is, therefore, correlated to the contents of the divine revelation
of which it is the medium. It is also correlated to the assent of
the intellect, which is justified, made obligatory, qualified, and

1885.] THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 159

determined by the motive of the divine veracity in revealing.
That is, whatever the faithful are commanded by God to be-
lieve, when proposed by the church, for reasons which rest ulti-
mately on his own divine veracity, the church has power to
teach by divine authority. And the whole sum of such truths
which the faithful could possibly be bound to believe with an
assent of this kind, on the proposition of the church, are contain-
ed in the divine revelation, or at least made certain by virtue of
a necessary and evident relation to revealed truth.

The church herself declares that the divine revelation com-
mitted to her was bequeathed by her founders the apostles, to
their successors, in a complete and perfect state. This is the
" deposit of faith " which the church has received, to be kept
intact, without taking- from or adding to it anything. The divine
authority of the church consists, therefore, in a power received
from God to preserve, to bear witness to by preaching, to expli-
cate, define, and defend by censure against all errors, this divine
and Catholic faith, contained in the revelation of the written and
unwritten Word of God. The canonical Scripture and divine
apostolic tradition are its exterior, local depositories ; the belief
and profession of all the faithful and the perpetual doctrine of
the teaching church are the living act and form by which the
organic Christian body is vivified.

The church, having been founded by God, and instituted to
be and to remain until the end of the world the medium of the
divine revelation, having moreover its life and subsistence in the
Catholic faith, must necessarily be indefectible in its belief and
profession of the faith. The multitude of the faithful being de-
pendent in this respect on the teaching church, this chiefest por-
tion of the church, the hierarchy, and its supreme head, must be
indefectible in teaching. That it may be indefectible that is,
that it may not be liable to fall into any defection from the office
of keeping, bearing witness to, and proclaiming the faith, by fail-
ing to teach any part of it, by adding something which is not
contained in the revelation, or by teaching what is false and
noxious the teaching church must be infallible as a whole, and
in its head upon which its unity depends. Moreover, because
God has sanctioned in advance all its teaching in matters of faith
and morals as divine, has delegated to it his divine authority, has
commanded all men to give an undoubting and irretractable
assent to all which it defines and proclaims in his name, his
veracity is pledged to the unerring truth of all the testimonies,
declarations, and judgments which emanate from the church

160 THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. [Nov.,

when it is exercising its divine authority. The motive of the
assent of faith must always be the veracity of God ; therefore
this assent can only be justifiable and due to dogmas proposed
through the church, by the certainty that the divine veracity
always underlies and sustains them.

The divine authority of the church resides in a supreme man-
ner in the Roman Church, the Mother and Mistress of churches,
to be exercised by the head of that church, who, as the successor
of St. Peter and the Vicar of Christ, is the supreme head of the
universal church on the earth. When he exercises that divine
authority, by decreeing what all the faithful to the end of the
world must believe as Catholic doctrine founded on the divine
revelation, or reject as an error opposed to some revealed truth,
in the name of God and by virtue of the supreme power given
by Jesus Christ to St. Peter, he is said to teach ex cathedrd.
That is, he teaches from the chair or throne of Peter a metapho-
rical expression denoting that he exercises the plenitude of power
which resides in him as the successor of Peter, the Supreme
Head and Doctor of the church, including the pastors as well as
their flock.

It is the same when an oecumenical council makes its defini-
tions of faith. It is convoked, sits, deliberates, pronounces its
judgments, formally and avowedly as the supreme tribunal of
the church, intending and professing to act by divine authority,
to make irreformable decisions, and to command the assent of all
the faithful through all time. The bishops who compose it rep-
resent the entire episcopate, which pronounces through them
its judgment, made final and valid by the concurrent or subse-
quent judgment and ratification of the supreme bishop. These
dogmatic decrees are therefore made ex cathedrd Petri, and are
the most solemn and important acts in which the infallibility of
the collective church and of its head is exercised.

It is the prerogative of the supreme power possessing divine
authority to determine the extent of its own infallibility and the
objects upon which it is qualified to exercise it. Whenever it
actually makes a judgment it implicitly determines that the
object of the same is within its province. Being supreme, there
is no appeal from it, and no lawful way of refusing submission
to its authority. Mr. Mivart has well said: " What is or is not
within the supreme authority's province to decide must be known
to that authority. An infallible authority must know the limits
of its revealed message. If authority can make a mistake in de-
termining its own limits, it may make a mistake in a matter of

1885.] THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 161

faith."* One effect of the gift of infallibility is to make the
church unerring in respect to the province within which it can
exercise its divine authority. We must look, therefore, to the
church's own explicit definition, or to its implicit definition in its
acts and judgments, for a correct notion of the object of its
infallible teaching authority.

.It is, moreover, the office and the duty of the pope, when he
intends to promulgate dogmatic decrees and judgments ex cathe-
dra, whether with or without the concurrence of an oecumeni-
cal council, to make known to the universal church, in a suffi-
cient and sure manner, that such is the purport and quality of
these acts of supreme power. God does this when he makes a
revelation. He does not exact the assent of the human mind to a
doctrine which must be believed on his own divine veracity, with-
out giving certain signs and evidences. In this supernatural mode
of teaching truth to mankind by revelation, he acts by the same
law which regulates the natural mode of giving understanding
and knowledge by the light of reason and the book of nature.
Those truths which compel assent do not exert a physical coer-
cion, but determine the intellect and reason by evidence. Other
truths which are known with certitude are known by their evi-
dence. That which is true in itself, but not certain in respect to
us, because of obscurity in the object or a deficiency in the fac-
ulty of apprehension, does not legitimately determine the mind
or the conscience to an absolute, unqualified assent.

In like manner God gives evidence that he has made a reve-
lation, that he has committed it to the Catholic Church, that all
the dogmas of Catholic faith are really contained in the revela-
tion. He does not require any one to receive his revelation un-
til he has a reasonable certainty that it is God's revelation ; or to
receive any truth contained in it, and therefore in itself pertain-
ing to the sphere of divine faith, until he has a reasonable cer-
tainty that it is revealed, and it is brought into the sphere of di-
vine faith in respect to himself.

The most perfect criterion of certainty respecting matters of
divine faith, the ordinary and the best means of attaining a rea-
sonable and sure faith in revealed truths, is the authority of the
Catholic Church. God has made the church infallible, and has
commanded us to hear and obey the church. In doing this he
has acted according to the law which regulates the natural and
the supernatural order. He has made the testimony and the

* Article on " Modern Catholics and Scientific Freedom," in the Nineteenth Century r , July,
1885.

VOL. XLII. II

162 THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. [Nov.,

teaching of the church credible to us as reasonable beings. The
dogmatic decrees of the church do not proceed from the will of
ecclesiastical rulers. They find and proclaim the truth, but do
not make it, and they are as completely subject to it and bound
by it as are children in a catechetical school. Since they do not
receive any new revelation, are not inspired, and cannot declare
the sense of the Scripture and the apostolic tradition by imme-
diate revelation of this true sense directly given to them by the
Holy Spirit, they must ascertain it by evidence which makes it
certain, and thus qualifies them to decide in a reasonable man-
ner, from motives which are sufficient and conclusive. God
fulfils his promise of giving infallibility to the church by fur-
nishing the means of keeping, proclaiming, defining, and defend-
ing the deposit of faith, by providing rulers and teachers who
are sufficiently intelligent and conscientious to make use of these
means, by a supernatural providence which secures the due
execution of this office, and by a supernatural and efficacious
assistance in its fulfilment which secures it from failure or error.
The great facts of the Christian religion, its fundamental
articles of faith, its essential moral laws, its substantial princi-
ples of organization, its written and unwritten code of doctrine
and order, its divine and perpetual sacraments, have been mat-
ters of testimony so clear, certain, and abundant that the first
solemn and formal acts of infallible authority in the church,
those on which all subsequent acts have been based, were a col-
lective utterance and promulgation of this testimony by wit-
nesses from all parts of the Christian world. The famous rule
of St. Vincent of Lerins, Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus,
sufficed for the detection and condemnation of every uncatho-
lic error, and was so easy of application that it was enough to
make a simple appeal to it. When authority proceeded further,
to make formulas, explicit and minute definitions, to explicate
and evolve the implicit sense of revealed doctrines, the method
followed was scientific and accurate. It was the collective judg-
ment of the wisest and most learned, founded upon an intimate
knowledge of Scripture and tradition, supported by proofs, and
sustained by conclusive arguments ; a concurrence and agree-
ment of the most competent, with all the means for arriving at
certainty ; which was the source from which proceeded the dog-
matic decrees of the great councils of antiquity. The same is
true also of later councils, and of similar judgments of the Holy
See for instance, in the definition of the Immaculate Concep-
tion. The judges in the supreme tribunal of doctrine judge,

1885.] THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 163

therefore, upon evidence by which they are convinced before
proceeding to make a judgment. They are determined by testi-
mony and by reasons. Any well-instructed Catholic, especially
any competent scholar in history, Scripture, and theology, can
understand and be convinced by the same motives which have
determined tHe decisions of popes and councils. But since error
is an accident to which men and bodies of men are more or less
liable, from various causes, the authority of the church is secured
in immunity from error by a supernatural assistance, making it
infallible, by virtue of which the faithful are enabled to believe,
on the divine veracity, ail the dogmas proposed to them as re-
vealed truths by the teaching church.

Facts and truths which are outside of the sphere of revelation
and are purely objects of natural knowledge are not, as such,
within the scope of the divine authority of the church, and cannot
be denned, on their natural evidence, as dogmas of Catholic and
divine faith. God has not made the church a medium for teach-
ing in his name mathematics, physics, or history, and therefore
has not given to her infallibility in respect to these matters, or
any others in respect to which a similar reason runs. On the
supposition that some things naturally knowable or known, by
philosophical reasoning, monuments of history, or scientific
observation and investigation, are also explicitly or implicitly
contained in divine revelation, they are in the domain of faith by
reason of this inclusion and so far as they are included, and then
they come within the scope of the divine authority of the church,
which is the final and infallible judge of the fact of their being so
contained. The church is the custodian and interpreter of the
canonical Scriptures; it is her province to judge and define in
questions concerning the nature and extent of their inspiration,
and to declare what it is which the Holy Spirit intended to teacK
through the inspired writers as truth credible on his own divine
veracity. Within this common domain of divine and human in-
telligence the human is necessarily subject to the divine, human
testimony must cede the precedence to divine testimony, human
reasonings and opinions to the divine reason. The divine au-
thority of the church being co-extensive with the domain of
divine revelation, and infallible, whatever she proposes to belief,
by her teaching x cathedrd on the authority of this divine tes-
timony or divine reason, is certainly known and credible as
actually verified to us by the divine manifestation of the truth.
That is, we know that this is not only ostensibly but actually the
word of God,

164 THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. [Nov.

But, more than this, some things which come under the de-
nomination of facts or theories, though not the object of even an
implicit revelation, can be known to be true or false by virtue
of the light which some revealed truth casts upon them. The
divine revelation being true, these particulars must be thus or
otherwise, as the case may be. If not, then the revealed truth
must logically be denied.

'I can know with certainty that I have baptized the newly-
born infant John. It is of faith that every baptized infant is re-
generate. I can know with certainty that John died within the
hour. It is of faith that every regenerate soul, entirely pure
from sin, attains immediately upon its separation from the body
the beatific vision. I know, therefore, by the light of faith that
John is regenerate and has gone to heaven. I cannot deny
either proposition without, by logical conclusion, denying the
Catholic faith. My affirmation of John's regenerate and beati-
fied state is a logical conclusion from the faith. That is to say, it
is virtually though not formally contained in it, in the way that
all logical conclusions are virtually in their major premise.

When matters of this kind involve general and important in-
terests, doctrinal and moral, in such a way that divine authority
in respect to truth formally revealed would be nugatory or
grievously deficient, unless the same authority were delegated in
respect to what is virtually revealed, we must affirm the exten-
sion of infallibility to these matters also.

For instance, the church must be infallible in respect to the
fact that the Council of Nicsea, the Council of Trent, the Coun-
cil of the Vatican were oecumenical, and that she possesses their
authentic acts; in respect to the fact that Pius IX. was the law-
ful successor of St. Peter, and actually defined the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception. Otherwise there is a fatal flaw in the
solemn definitions which make a large part of the rule of Catholic
faith.

It may be also of great importance to define a truth deduced
from a dogma by a theological conclusion, either directly by
affirming its certainty as virtually revealed, or indirectly by
condemning an error which is its contrary or its contradictory.
The truth is necessary as a support or bulwark of the faith ; the
error is dangerous as undermining or threatening some part of
the fabric of Catholic doctrine or morals. The church needs in-
fallibility in determining the truth in questions of this kind, in
order that she may efficiently exercise her office of teaching and
defending the faith. In, point of fact, popes and councils have

1885.] THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 165

decided that they possess this authority by exercising it fre-
quently and without hesitation, and the church, in the ordinary
magistracy which she perpetually exercises, proceeds on it, as a
maxim and principle universally admitted and reduced to prac-
tice.

The whole sum of the solemn, ex cathedrd doctrinal decrees of
popes and councils is contained within a very moderate compass ;
it is known and received by universal and notorious consent of
all bishops and doctors, and easily to be ascertained by the in-
structed clergy and laity. If any individual, in his private capa-
city as a theologian, claims infallibility for any official acts of the
teaching authority which are not certainly and clearly authenti-
cated as ex cathedrd judgments, he is only expressing a private
opinion which does not make law. The opinions of single theo-
logians, or of entire schools of theology, do not make Catholic
doctrine. The dogmas of divine and Catholic faith can be easily
ascertained by consulting any one of the best and most approved
text-books. Let any look for the propositions which are noted
as de fide catholica, and he will obtain a complete summary of all
the solemn judgments and definitions on the matter of revealed
truths which the teaching church has ever made.

It is true that what the church dispersed through the world
teaches by her ordinary magistracy as of divine faith has an
equal authority with her solemn teaching. Active infallibility is
always in the teaching church, passive infallibility in the body of
the faithful. The principal dogmas defined by the solemn acts of
the church were explicitly taught and believed as of divine faith
before the first oecumenical council was convoked ; and all the dog-
mas defined or definable have been objects of implicit faith from
the days of the apostles. But the definitions which have been
promulgated during the long series of Christian centuries have
so comprehensively embraced the totality and the component
parts of the deposit of faith, that it is difficult to say what the
church now actually teaches by her ordinary magistracy, as of
faith, which is not more formally and clearly declared and de-
fined by her solemn judgments. That which still remains in an
implicit, undefined state, obscurely contained in Scripture, tradi-
tion, or the decrees of councils, in fact the whole contents of the
divine revelation down to its minutest details and. most remote
consequences, though it all in itself pertains to faith, is not of
faith in respect to us. It must be made explicit in order that it
may be understood in its true and certain sense as revealed
truth, and this cannot be, in an unerring manner, by a universal

i66 THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. [Nov.,

and sufficient criterion, unless the infallible authority makes new
explications and definitions.

A Catholic fulfils his whole duty in the matter in hand when
he holds explicitly, by an undoubting, unreserved assent, what-
ever the supreme authority of the church proposes to him ex-
plicitly and clearly, under the sanction of her infallibility. He
must also implicitly believe all that is worthy to be defined, be-
cause it is contained in, or follows from, that which is certainly
and explicitly manifested by the church as revealed doctrine.
He must hold his mind and will in readiness to receive any
future definitions in matters of faith and morals which the church
may promulgate to the faithful, even if he have to give up private
opinions or tenets of some school which he is at liberty to hold
on probable reasons at present, and until the church has pro-
nounced her infallible judgment.

There is no hardship in this, because a Catholic is certain,
a priori, that the church can never lead him into error, but may
lead him out of error, if he is in it, and will always lead him into
the truth.

Moreover, there is no such thing possible as subversion or
weakening of natural knowledge, of science, of certitude acquired
by the exercise of the faculties of cognition, of the authority of
reason or conscience, by supernatural faith and knowledge.
God cannot contradict himself, truth cannot contradict truth.
The human intellect participates in the light of the divine intel-
lect ; sensible and intelligible objects within the realm of nature
are works of God, conformed to his ideas, expressing his thought
and intention. He manifests truth to the human mind by the
natural revelation, and it is he who has written the book of
nature, and by his providence directed the course of history.
There is a criterion of truth in the mind of man and in evidence.
Error is an accident, a defect, a result of some disorder or misuse.
Ignorance is* a limitation. There is a certitude resulting from
the right use of the criterion. These are prior to, and concomi-
tant with, the certitude of faith and the use of the supernatural
criterion. They are not either ousted by, or held, as tenants at
will of, revelation or ecclesiastical authority. There they are,
holding inalienable possession by endowment of the Creator.
They not only subsist harmoniously together with revelation and
faith ; they are their preamble and school of preparation. Facts
and truths in the realm of nature are the constituents of the soil
on which the foundations of faith are built and rest. Undermine
this soil ai>d you endanger the whole edifice which has been.

1885.] THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 167

raised upon these foundations. Sink it into the abyss of scepti-
cism, and the whole building is crumbled and submerged in the
same catastrophe.

An authentic revelation can never teach anything which is
absurd or which contradicts a known fact. If any such evident
falsehood is proposed under pretence of revelation, there is an
illusion in the case. Either the professed revelation is no reve-
lation or its sense has been misrepresented. Such notions as
these : that human nature is essentially depraved, that human
acts determined by an intrinsic necessity in the will are imputa-
ble for demerit, that the souls of deceased infants may justly be
condemned to everlasting torments for Adam's sin, that the
moon slid down through Mohammed's sleeve, that the sun is a
hundred miles from the earth, could not reasonably be received
as divine revelations.

It is one negative criterion of the true religion which distin-
guishes it from false ones that it does not contradict either rea-
son or facts. Its written and oral tradition may, nevertheless,
be so misunderstood and misinterpreted that, in the sense which
is ascribed to the Scripture, or in that which is ascribed to
divine tradition, there may be in plain view, or lurking in con-
cealment, something contrary to reason or to facts. Neither one
by itself, not even the two taken together, are completely suffi-
cient as a rule of faith, without the living voice of the church.
Private, purely human, fallible interpreters of Christian doctrine
are liable to mistakes and errors, which can be detected and
proved to be incredible or so extremely improbable as to be un-
tenable, by human science, by history, by conclusive reasons of
various kinds.

Here lies the great advantage which Catholics derive from
the possession of an infallible criterion in the divine authority of
the church. They may be left in doubt or in a merely human
probability about many matters which are not essential. But if
the progress of knowledge justifies or requires their laying aside
their doubt for a reasonable conviction, or changing their opin-
ions, they are free to do so, and may take advantage of all means
for the acquisition of new science, and even, through science, ob-
taining a better understanding of the inspired documents of Holy
Scripture. In respect to the essential and the most important
matters which pertain to faith, they are secured from all error
and fully instructed in the truth.

Just at present the most practical and momentous aspect of
the question concerning the relation between the authoritative

168 THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. [Nov.,

teaching of the church and the domain of natural science relates
to some parallel but hostile theories founded respectively on the
interpretation of the book of nature by scientists, and of the
Bible by some theologians. Thus far there has been no decision
of ecclesiastical authority on these recent controversies. Neither
has there been, in the past, any judgment, ex cathedra, which
brings the divine, infallible authority of the church into conflict
with anything which can be called with justice by the name of
human science. It is not every official act of the Holy See
which is a judgment ex cathedra. There is an authority in the
church which is not identical with, but inferior to, the divine
authority of the church, and although possessed jure divino,
like the power of jurisdiction and discipline, may be called
human authority. Questions about mistakes, errors, misuse of
power, which make matters of controversy relating to this
kind of ecclesiastical and even papal authority, are wholly irre-
levant to the subject of the infallibility of the church and the
pope. Infallibility is not claimed, in this extension, by the Holy
See or oecumenical councils. A tribunal not infallible may err ;
and if it is proved to have erred in certain cases, no prejudice
can accrue against the inerrancy of a higher tribunal.

Pope Honorius, acting in his ordinary official capacity, wrote
letters of direction to the other patriarchs concerning their con-
duct in respect to a matter of faith, which incurred for them-
selves and their author severe censure by oecumenical councils
and by his own successors in the see of St. Peter. His infalli-
bility is in no way compromised by this censure, because he gave
no ex cathedra judgment. A tribunal of the Holy See con-
demned Galileo and the Copernican system by an erroneous
judgment, which was not only erroneous in respect to astronomy,
but also in its interpretation of Scripture. This decision was
first allowed to become a dead letter, and finally erased from the
statute-book by Pius VII. Honorius erred, and the congrega-
tion erred ; and if there are other errors in official documents of
popes, then they have erred. Infallibility shines out in bolder
and brighter relief, its necessity is made more clearly evident, by
the exhibition which has been made in some few cases of the
liability of the highest human authority in the church to err in
its decisions. It is manifest that in their judgments ex cathedra
popes and councils have been guided and assisted by a super-
natural, divine gift. If they had been destitute of this divine
gift of infallibility they might and probably would have erred,
and the fact that they had erred would be patent to the world by

1885.] A FRENCH REFORMATORY. 169

the contradictions into which they would have fallen, and the
changes to which the doctrine of the church would have been
subjected.

For the present we have only barely indicated the broad in-
terval which divides the divine authority of the church from all
grades of human authority in the church. This is a matter
which needs to be handled separately. What are the obligations
and what is the freedom of good Catholics in respect to ecclesi-
astical decrees which are excluded from the category of infallible
judgments ; in respect to patristic tradition; and in respect to
the common teaching of theologians? These are questions of
great and pressing interest at the present moment.

A FRENCH REFORMATORY*

SEVERAL years ago a very dear friend, who had a country
residence in the department of Indre-et-Loire (which is in-
cluded in what was formerly the province of Touraine), invited
me to pay him a visit, offering the inducement of a tour among
the historic chdteaux of- that fertile and lovely country, deserved-
ly called the garden of France. I gladly availed myself of his
hospitable offer, and went with him first to Blois and afterwards
to Chambord, Chenonceaux, Loches, Amboise, and Chaumont.
After showing me these interesting monuments of the past he
insisted that before separating we should visit the reformatory
for boys at Mettray, near Tours, which has been a great suc-
cess and is known as the " Colonie Agricole de Mettray," to
which the " Maison Paternelle " has since been added. When
we arrived there we were informed that the venerable founder
of the institution, Mr. de Metz, was sick in bed ; but nevertheless,
after learning that I was from the United States, he expressed a
desire to see me in his room, and, after I had been shown very
completely through the establishment, I had the pleasure of a
short conversation with him. What I saw impressed -me so
favorably as the result of the union of intelligence, excellent
judgment, and a spirit of the most devoted charity that I pro-
mised myself to write an account of Mr. de Metz's excellent

* The facts stated in this narrative that have not come under the writer's personal observa-
tion have been obtained from four published pamphlets : Colonie Agricole et Maison Paternelle
de Mettray, par M. Berlin, Avocat a la cour d'appel de Paris ; Une Visite a Mettray, par Ch.
Sauvestre, Paris, and the triennial reports for 1880 and 1883, published at Tours.

i/o A FRENCH REFORMATORY. [Nov.,

work as soon as I could find time and a good opportunity for
publication, and thereby do what lay in me to spread a know-
ledge of it at home. Mr. de Metz died on the 2d of November,
1873, several years before my friend, who was also his, and who
appreciated him highly. I feel, in writing the following lines,
as if I were discharging a duty which I owe to the memory of
both.

Mr. de Metz was bred to the law, and in due course admitted
to the French bar. His talents and industry were such that, on
the 2ist of August, 1821, at the early age of twenty-four years,
he was appointed to the initiatory judicial position oijuge supptt-
ant, or assistant judge, of the Tribunal de la Seine ; and in less
than fourteen years afterwards he was promoted through all the
higher grades of the judicial hierarchy, and in 1835 attained
the elevated one of conseiller, or consulting judge, of the Cour
Royale. He was a man of remarkable intelligence, most delicate
feelings, and a chivalrous spirit ; and having achieved what is
so very difficult in France the attainment, early in life, of great
professional success and the wealth following from it there
seemed to be every human inducement for him to enjoy his
present prosperity and distinguished social position, and work to
make both greater.

But besides his other qualities Mr. de Metz had also the spirit
of devoted charity. The grave questions involved in the differ-
ent penitentiary systems had taken an early and strong hold of
his ardent imagination. He resolved, after he had been first
appointed to the bench, to devote himself to the criminal branch
of his judicial functions, in order to study practically the causes
of crimes and delinquencies and the different degrees of crimi-
nality, and also, what was of the highest importance in his eyes,
to seek to strengthen the weak and rescue the perverted from
the possession of the spirit of evil.

Under the French penal code any minor under sixteen years
of age, who, after having been tried and convicted, is declared
by the judge that presided at his trial to have acted in the of-
fence sans discernement, may, according to circumstances, either
be restored to parental care and authority or be committed
to a house of correction for a term of years named in the sen-
tence, but not in any event extending beyond his twentieth
year of age. Prior to 1850 this law worked very badty. The
delinquent minors not restored to their parents were sent, not
to special reformatories, but to prisons, where they mingled with
adults either accused, awaiting trial, or even convicted. The

1885.] A FRENCH RE FORM A TOR Y. 171

natural consequence of these deleterious influences upon youth-
ful first offenders was that seventy-five per cent, relapsed into
crime. Mr. de Metz's solicitude and investigating efforts were
specially directed towards finding out the best means to reform
this class of minor delinquents ; and, being a man of deep reli-
gious convictions, he had got the fundamental idea that what he
sought was to be found in a system of training both religious
and paternal, having, moreover, an agricultural character. This
last feature he had defined in a maxim publicly expressed by him
in 1839: amttiorer la terre par I'komme, et fhomme par la terre (" to
better the soil by means of man, and man by means of the soil ").
In 1838 he was sent by the French government to study the
various penitentiary systems followed in the United States.
Thence he went to England, Germany, Belgium, and Holland
to see what he could discover in those countries, looking par-
ticularly for the pattern of an agricultural reformatory institu-
tion such as he had conceived the idea of. He first came across
the agricultural reformatory established in 1835 on Thompson's
Island, in the harbor of Boston. This institution was connected
with a House of Refuge for vagrant and destitute children, and to
it were sent such of these as it was judged would be benefited
by a transfer from the latter. Mr. de Metz ascertained that the
moral and material results had both been successful and better
than what had been expected. In England he visited the Park-
hurst Agricultural Reformatory in the Isle of Wight, established
by act of Parliament in the second year of the present reign, for
the reception of young delinquents in whose case either sentence
had been suspended or sentence to transportation had been com-
muted. Here the labor of the inmates had proved satisfac-
tory, and there had been numerous instances of reform among
them. Mr. de Metz found a very different state of things in the
institutions of a similar character which he visited in Holland
and Belgium. In the former country they were getting along
poorly, showing mediocre results obtained at an enormous cost ;
and in the latter they were as badly off as they could be. But,
as he afterwards stated at the Reunion Internationale de Charite,
he never expected to learn from either aught but lessons of ex-
perience, which proved so useful in pointing out to him where
the dangers of failure lay that he considered himself almost as
much indebted to the Dutch and Belgian establishments as to
that one by which he was directed to the right path, which he
found at last in the Rauhen Haus agricultural colony established
at the village of Horn.

172 A FRENCH REFORMATORY. [Nov.,

At this spot, in a fertile and picturesque country, on the slope
of a hill overlooking the beautiful valleys of the Elbe and the
Bill, Mr. Wichern, a man of most respectable character, had
founded in 1833 a reform school for reclaiming children either
perverted or in danger of becoming so from previously-acquired
vicious habits. This enlightened founder had sought his saving
moral forces in good family influences, and his method was to ex-
cite in the young hearts the sweet and salutary emotions pro-
duced by a good, kind home, which these unfortunate waifs had
either never known or from which they had become entirely
estranged. The colonists were divided into groups of twelve
persons, designated as families. Each family was separated from
the others by gardens or orchards, and was under the direction
of a head-man, or rather a guide, called " father " by the children ;
the whole forming, as it were, a little hamlet. The discipline of the
colony was firm and severe, but tempered by paternal tenderness,
aiming at moral reform. Mr. de Metz was deeply impressed by
what he saw at Horn and by the excellent results realized from
the plan followed there, which he studied attentively, and which,
he became convinced, derived its efficacy from the principle upon
which it had been founded, of reviving sound family influences
and surroundings. Having thus discovered the practical realiza-
tion of his idea of reforming juvenile delinquents by means of a
system paternal and religious in its character, he returned home
determined to found-there an agricultural reformatory, to which
he would devote all the resources of his intelligence, his wonder-
ful activity, a part of his fortune, and the remaining years of his
life. Being convinced that the setting on foot and organizing of
such an undertaking would be incompatible with a proper atten-
tion to his judicial duties, he sent in his resignation, with an ex-
planation of his reasons therefor, to the Minister of Justice, who
at first refused to accept it, but subsequently, after a personal in-
terview, consented. Mr. de Metz had a schoolmate, Mr. de Cour-
teilles, who had entered the army, and who, from a similarity of
tastes and sentiments, had become later in life his close friend.
The magistrate and the military man, sympathizing with each
other in their deep interest in penitentiary systems, had kept up
an active correspondence, in which they exchanged ideas on the
subject. On his return to Paris Mr. de Metz informed Mr. de
Courteilles of what he had seen at Horn, of his design to estab-
lish in France a similar agricultural colony large enough to ac-
commodate three hundred children, and proposed to him to take
part in the undertaking. At first Mr. de Courteilles hesitated ;

1885.] A FRENCH REFORMATORY. 173

but, overcome at last by the ardent and clearly-demonstrated
convictions of his friend, he too resolved to give up the world and
devote his life and energies to the foundation, development, and v
perfecting of the contemplated work. Both proved true and
steadfast, both struggled courageously to overcome the difficul-
ties of their task, and both died superintendents of Mettray.

After thirteen years of incessant toil Mr. de Courteilles died
on the loth of September, 1852. Although his strength had been
failing for some time before, he would not allow his labors to be
lightened in the least, and fell, in consequence, into a long and
dangerous illness. Just as it seemed he was getting convalescent
he happened to hear that one of the inmates was about to undergo
an operation. He promptly requested to be taken to the infirmary.
There he found the patient under the influence of chloroform
and insensible to pain ; nevertheless tears were trickling down his
cheeks. This sight reminded Mr. de Courteilles of a passage
from Lacordaire, quoted in a work of his own, Condamnts et
Prisons. He asked to have the book brought him, and read as fol-
lows aloud : " Prenez un homme qui ait passe" par tous les degre"s
du crime. ... Eh bien, un jour, sans cause apparente, il se for-
mera dans ce coeur d6sespere une seule larme ; elle remontera le
long du coeur ; elle passera par les chemins que Dieu a faits, pour
aller jusqu'a ses yeux fletris ; elle tombera sur ses joues et lavera
en une minute toutes les souillures de cette ame." * The last of
the above poetically eloquent words had scarcely left his lips
when the book dropped from his hands and his voice was hushed.
To the assistants, who hastened to him and asked what was the
matter, he made sign that the trouble lay in his heart. Then he
raised his eyes to heaven with a look of hope, and in a few mo-
ments breathed his last. He was buried in the humble cemetery
at Mettray, in accordance with his express desire, referred to in
the following last words of his will : " J'ai voulu vivre, mourir, et
ressusciter avec eux." f More touching in their simple and over-
flowing expressions of grief and gratitude than the eloquent
funeral orations delivered at his grave were in particular two,
out of many, letters of condolence received by his colleague from
former inmates of the institution. His young and fondly at-
tached wife, the Countess of Courteilles, after his death entered
the convent of the Dames de la Presentation at Tours.

* " Take a man who has gone through every stage of crime. . . . Well, some day, without
any apparent cause, a single tear will be formed in his despairing heart, and, rising through it
and upwards through the ways which God has provided, will reach his dishonored eyes ; then it
will fall down his cheek and wash out in an instant all the defilements of his soul."

t " I have chosen to live, die, and arise from the grave with them."

i74 A FRENCH REFORMATORY. [Nov.,

Mr. de Metz survived him twenty-one years, and bore alone
during that entire period the burden of responsibility of the
management. He displayed wonderful activity and energy in
the discharge of his duties and of the good works necessarily con-
nected with them. He found time to attend to everything, even
to frequently call on his friends, but he rarely allowed his visits
to exceed five minutes. He founded another institution, which
grew out, as it were, of the first one the Maison Paternelle de
Mettray for the reclaiming of wayward and disobedient sons with
whom nothing can be done at home by their parents or guar-
dians. Even in his seventieth year he dictated to his secretary
reports and letters which he was no longer able to wrtie himself.
He frequently travelled long distances solely to be of service to
former inmates either of the Colonie or of the Maison Paternelle ;
and the time spent in railw a) 7 -carriages he devoted to reading
pamphlets and reports sent him and to noting his remarks on them.
His friends, and relatives in vain entreated him to consider his
advanced age and to spare ^is strength. On the 2d of Novem-
ber, 1873, ne died, after an illness of only a few days and nearly
thirty-four years of incessant toil. Great honor was rendered to
his memory at the funeral services, which took place at Mettray,
Dourdan, and at Paris. The Court of Appeals there, of which
he was an honorary member, happened to be at that time open-
ing a term ; the Avocat Gen6ral, Benoist, in the usual discours de
rentrte, paid a most eloquent tribute of homage to the worth of
his deceased colleague ; the Chief-Justice, Gilardin, felt himself
called upon to add to the solemnity of the occasion by express-
ing most forcibly in behalf of the court similar feelings of regret
and admiration, and reminded his hearers that an illustrious Eng-
lish chancellor had pronounced the deceased to be a glory to
France. Numerous letters of condolence and of strong affection
and gratitude were received from former colonists reformed by
his care.

For the sake of convenient arrangement I have made a bio-
graphical sketch of these two heroes of charity precede a de-
scription of the work which they founded, which I shall now
designate as " the Colony," and its juvenile inmates as " the
Colonists."

Mr. de Metz, in a pamphlet published in 1839, gave an account
of the institutions abroad which he had visited, and announced
his design to copy their best features in the one which he was
about to establish, and which was to be not a prison, but a re-
forming asylum. In it the children were to be brought under

1885.] A FRENCH REFORMATORY. 175

family influence ; religion was to be made the basis of their edu-
cation, having as its constant aim to develop in their young
hearts correct sentiments, love of country, family affections, hab-
its of order, and a relish for labor. He selected a site at Met-
tray, about five miles from Tours, and in a country where the
soil is fertile and easily cultivated. On the 4th of June, 1839, a
board of managers was appointed, in which some of the most
prominent men of that time consented to serve. Mr. de Metz
and the Vicomte de Courteilles were appointed superintendents.
Both were perfectly aware that the success of their undertaking
would entirely depend on what kind of men they could get to be
head-men over the families ; these had to be intelligent, devoted
men, that could be relied upon to take a parental care of the chil-
dren confided to them. Accordingly, on the 28th of July of that
same year, seven months before any boy was admitted, they es-
tablished a training-school for head-men, and twenty-three young
men, respectably connected, applied to be trained in it. Mr. de
Metz explained to the applicants his plans, what was needed to
carry these out successfully, and what co-operation he expected
to find in them. He pointed out the difficult and laborious na-
ture of the position which they had applied to fill, and advised
such as did not feel possessed of the self-denial and devotedness
needed for the task not to undertake it. Out of the whole
number only a few were found suitable ; one of these, Mr.
Blanchard, was appointed, after Mr. de Metz's death, super-
intendent, and another, Mr. Arnould, was made inspector-general.
This training-school has been kept up ever since and has done
very well. During 1839 f ur cottages for the future colonists
were built, and in one of them is to be seen the room, with
white-washed walls, which for five years served Mr. de Metz as a
bed-room and office. By the /th of June, 1840, the colony had
taken in eighty-two boys ; after the lapse of two years it had
overcome the great difficulties in the way of inception. In the
years following, gifts of money and in other shapes flowed in and
enabled the managers to build a church and enough more cot-
tages to accommodate at first four hundred, and later on eight
hundred, colonists, together with the numerous employees need-
ed to provide for their wants. On the 2ist of January, 1853, the
then imperial government by decree conferred on the institution,
as a mark of appreciation and sympathy, the title of " Establish-
ment of Public Interest," in virtue of which it became legally
authorized to receive gifts and legacies.

The buildings of the colony lie in the midst of a field, and

176 A FRENCH REFORMATORY. [Nov.,

form, as it were, a quadrangle enclosing a large open square,
with a basin in the centre and four large lawns around it. There
are no walls and no enclosures other than live hedges. In front,
on each side of the entrance, is a house standing separate ; in the
one to the left the superintendent resides, the other is the train-
ing-school for head-men. Behind these buildings are two rows
of cottages facing on the quadrangle, five in either row ; each
cottage being 12 metres long by 6.66 broad say 40 feet by 22
and isolated from those next to it. Each is the habitation of a
family of about fifty boys under the direction of a head-man, called
chef de famille, who has under him a foreman and two subordi-
nates, called " eldest brothers," who belong to the family and are
elected by its vote. The ground-floors of the cottages are used
as workshops, and the two stories above for refectory and dor-
mitory purposes, which are managed in this wise : There are
three supporting wooden pillars in a row on each side, and be-
tween these and the side wa'lls hammocks to sleep in and tables
to eat on are set up and taken down in no time. Crucifixes are
on the walls of the two stories above mentioned, as also of the
school-rooms. The cottages are respectively named after the
donors who have paid either the whole or a large part of the
cost of erecting them. Five, accordingly, bear on their fronts
the names of the cities of Paris, Tours, Orleans, Poitiers, Li-
moges ; and four the names of Count d'Ourches, Benjamin De-
lessert, Madame Hebert, of Rouen, Mr. Giraud. The last-
named was a payeur, or government paymaster, with a large
family, who, having faithfully completed his full term of years of
service, had been placed on the retired list. But rather than rest
from his labors he chose to serve the institution as cashier with-
out pay. He seems to have thought that his children would be
as much benefited by the blessing which his gift would draw
down on them, and by the good example set them, as by getting
the money in his estate. The tenth cottage, which is inhabited
by the youngest children, is placed under the protection of the
Blessed Virgin, whose statuette is to be seen over the front door,
adorned with flowers and foliage, which, as they become faded,
are renewed by the inmates. In the rear, and in the centre fac-
ing the entrance-gate, is the church, and on either side of it the
school-rooms and lodgings of the numerous employees. Be-
tween the residence of the superintendent and the training-school
for head-men there have been erected the fore, main, and mizzen
masts, completely rigged, of a square-rigged vessel ; these were
presented by the Minister of Marine. The discipline adopted at

1885.] A FRENCH REFORM A TOR Y. 1 77

Mettray is somewhat of a military form, which has been found
by experience best conducive to regularity and order. The time
for rising, going to bed, to meals, to work, and all other occupa-
tions whatsoever, is made known by sound of bugle. The boys
sleep in the hammocks and eat off the movable tables of which
mention has been already made. After rising each family stows
away its hammocks, forms in two rows to say prayers in com-
mon, and afterwards files out by sections, and in silence, into the
yard to attend to the morning ablutions. Then they return to
their cottage, and after the roll has been called they march off in
silence, and led by their head-man, to the workshops or elsewhere,
as the case may require. When the bugle sounds for bed-time,
after family prayers have been said, each boy stands by his ham-
mock, at a signal slings it, undresses himself, puts away his
clothes carefully, and turns in. The infirmary, kitchen, and
clothes departments are under the care of Sisters of Chanty.

The colonists are mainly trained to agriculture, horticulture,
the raising of vegetables of all kinds, with and without irrigation ;
they are taught farm- work and how to take care of horses, cattle,
live stock, and poultry. They are besides taught those trades
which are in demand in the country, such as carpentering, black-
smithing in all its branches, framing, wooden-shoe making, tool-
making, horseshoeing, stone-cutting, house-painting, tailoring,
shoemaking, and baking ; the colonists also assist in the laundry,
the bakery, the kitchen, and the infirmary. There is also a sail-
making loft for the instruction of boys born in seaports and who
have a taste for a seafaring life ; these are exercised, under the
direction of a boatswain, on the masts referred to above.

The colony has also several outlying farms, each inhabited by
a family of forty boys, subject to the same discipline under the
direction of a head-man, who is morally responsible for their man-
agement, and who has a foreman under him to direct all the farm-
work. Since the institution was started five-sixths of the colo-
nists have taken to agricultural pursuits, and the trained ones are
much sought for by farmers. In the school, which is held daily
and which all must attend, the colonists are taught reading, writ-
ing, spelling, elementary arithmetic and its application mentally
and practically, the principles of the French language, weights
and measures, an elementary knowledge of geography, geometry,
sacred history, and the principal facts in the history of France.
Linear drawing is also taught in cases where it is thought it will
be required in after-life.

Lessons in vocal and instrumental music also form part of the

VOL. XLII. 12

178 A FRENCH REFORMATORY. [Nov.,

course, and are given twice a week; the colony is thereby pro-
vided with a band of musicians, which performs on Sundays and
feast-days, plays marches, and helps to add to both the solemnity
and cheerfulness of the occasion. The privilege of belonging to
the band is eagerly sought for, but is conferred, as a reward, only
on those who, besides being fully qualified, have earned it by as-
siduity to their duties and by good conduct.

As Mr. de Metz was deeply convinced of the essential efficacy
of religious teaching and practice in all moral reform, he would
have as co-operators in his work only moral and religious men
faithful, as he was, to the practice of their religious duties.

Mr. de Tocqueville, in his work on penitentiary systems, says :
" Nulle puissance humaine n'est comparable a la religion pour
op6rer la r6forme des criminels, et c'est surtout surelle que re-
pose 1'avenir de la reforme pnitentiaire " ; and another writer
on the same subject has tersely expressed the idea in these
words : " Sans la religion on pourra arriver a la r6forme des
prisons ; mais on ne parviendra par a la reforme des prison-
niers." *

An ingenious contrivance is in use at Mettray for the return,
secretly and to avoid disgrace, of stolen articles. At an appro-
priate spot affording facilities for the purpose is a large, square
box with an opening to it. On this box is written, Lost Articles.
If the article found missing turns up the next day in the box, no
one is permitted to scrutinize how it got there.

The discipline at Mettray is, of course, severe. Every infrac-
tion of the rules of the colony, be it ever so slight, is punished.
Punishments consist of a reprimand in private or publicly ; depri-
vation of recreation ; confinement in the punishment-room ; dis-
missal from an employment of trust or the loss of the grade of
elder brother, if the offender holds either; having one's name
stricken from the tableau cT honneur ; confinement in a light or a
dark cellar, with or without, as the case may call for, the addi-
tional penalty of being fed on bread and water only ; and, last of
all, being transferred to a correctional colony. In each cell the
cross is hung on the wall over the inscription, Dieu vous voit
" God sees you " and these others invite the culprit to reflection
and a purpose of amendment : " Dieu est bon pour ceux qui es-
perent en lui " (God is good for those who hope in him) ; " Dieu
ne veut pas la mort du p6cheur, mais sa soumission et sa vie " (God

* " For bringing about the reform of criminals no human power is to be compared with re^
ligion, and on it specially rests the future of penitentiary reform." " The reform of prisons,
but not of the convicts confined in them, maybe accomplished without the means of religion."

1885.] A FRENCH REFORMATORY. 179

wishes not the death of the sinner, but his submission and his
life); " II est toujours temps de bien faire " (It is always time to
do well) ; " La priere est la ressource de toutes nos miseres **
(Prayer is our resource in all our troubles).

Punishments are never inflicted on the spot, but only after
very careful and deliberate inquiry, during which the offender
remains in a room called the Salle de Reflexion, where the super-
intendent has a talk with him ; excited feelings have thus oppor-
tunity to cool down, and the boy to feel that he is in the wrong.
Confinement in a cell is never entirely solitary. The culprit has
to learn his lessons for the teacher, who calls to see him every
day ; he receives frequent visits from the head-man of the family
to which he belongs, from the chaplain and the superintendent,
and he is made either to break stones or split wood. Some
boys have said, if they were allowed to have their choice, they
would rather take a flogging than do that work. Good conduct
and obedience to rules are rewarded as follows: The colonist
who, by his exemplary conduct during three months, has incurred
neither reprimand nor punishment gets his name placed on the
roll of honor, called tableau tTJwnneur. The banner of the colony
is confided to and borne by that family which for a week has had
none of its members reprimanded or punished. Boys who dis-
tinguish themselves by their good conduct and assiduity to their
work receive small sums of money, which are invested for them
so as to earn interest, and they get the aggregate sum when they
leave Mettray. There are, moreover, good marks, represented
by little squares of pink pasteboard, which in the institution are
the equivalent of five centimes, or one cent, and are available for
the purchase of the articles allowed to be sold in the can teen, 'or
to offset punishments incurred by the owner or by a comrade.
Statistics which it is not necessary to insert here have demon-
strated the steadily progressive good results derived from the
above-explained system of rewards.

On Sundays, after Mass, which, with an instruction on the
gospel of the day, lasts only three-quarters of an hour, at which
the choir-singing and accompaniment on an orgue-harmonium are
both performed by colonists, the latter are all assembled in the
large study-room to hear read aloud an account of the work done
in the week just ended, and the roll of rewards and punishments.
The superintendent takes his place on a platform at one end of
the room and reads aloud the reports of the head-men about the
labors and behavior of their respective families during the past
week. Then, after making general remarks, if the occasion calls

i8o A FRENCH REFORMATORY. [Nov.,

for any, he recites aloud the rewards and punishments due, and
who have deserved them. The proceedings are closed by award-
ing the banner, on which is inscribed " Colonie de Mettray Hon-
neur & la famille" to the family which has become entitled to it,
and which immediately delegates its elder brother to receive it.
He advances to the platform, ascends the steps, and, after the
superintendent has placed the banner in his hands, the band out-
side strikes up a martial and victorious air. The flag-family files
out first and forms by platoons behind the band, and the other
families, with their different colored guidons next in order. The
family of youngest boys, from six to ten years old, bring up the
rear. (I regret not to find in my sources of information how con-
flicting claims are settled if it happens that more than one family
have deserved to have the banner.) Then the band strikes up a
march and the column marches through the walks on the grounds,
the very juvenile rearguard having all they can do to keep up and
in line. After this review comes dinner, then recreation, after-
wards Vespers, and next in order games and gymnastic and other
exercises. The colony has a fire-brigade of its own, of which those
alone can become members who have distinguished themselves
by exceedingly good conduct. At six the families belonging to
outlying farms who have come to spend their Sunday at Mettray
leave for home. In winter, when the days are short, the colo-
nists spend Sunday evening in the school-room, drawing, and on
week-days they attend evening classes.

Mr.de Metz's heart overflowed with gratitude to God for
having blessed his labors with so great success, and given him
on this earth so much happiness in its attainment. So conscious
was he of this that he used pleasantly to say : " Lorsque Dieu
me rappellera a lui je n'aurai rien a lui demander, il m'a pay6
comptant." * Feeling the need of means to watch over and as-
sist the colonists after their return to the outside world, he or-
ganized the patronages, which are of two parts, one for the
departments and the other for Paris. The former consists of
associations of honorable men who have in charge, to look after,
direct, and personally assist, the boys put under their supervision.
They report every six months, and are reimbursed for their ad-
vances. In Paris this business is attended to by a salaried agent.
Before going into statistical figures to show how successful Mr.
de Metz's work has proved, a few general facts and one or two
isolated anecdotes demonstrating it are in order.

* When God will have summoned me to him I shall be without claim for any reward
from him, for he has paid me in cash.

1885.] A FRENCH REFORMATORY. 181

There are no walls and no way to prevent boys from escaping,
and yet of 4,500 boys admitted from the beginning only one
eloped. The attempts to elope were only 1.8 per cent, in 1877,
1.75 per cent, in 1878, and .69 per cent, in 1879.

After the revolution of 1848 a band of insurgents came to
Mettray and urged the boys to leave, but could not get a single
one to join them.

The fire-brigade is always expected to run to fires occurring
in the neighborhood, and they always do so upon the first alarm,
with great celerity, and render valuable assistance. One mem-
ber caught his death from exposure in winter, cutting a hole in a
frozen pond to get a supply of water.

The colonists turned out during the inundations of the Loire
in 1856, worked for two days and one night, and rendered such
valuable services that the city of Tours had a gold medal struck
in honor and commemoration of the event. It bears this inscrip-
tion : " A la Colonie de Mettray, la ville de Tours reconnaissante.
Inondations de 1856."

One of the colonists employed on a farm in the vicinity was
kicked by a horse and felt that he was going to die. Although
in great pain, and certain to suffer greater from the fatigue and
jolting of the journey, he asked to be carried immediately to
Mettray. Two days after his arrival he died, having received
the last sacraments and edified his comrades by his fervor and
resignation. He feelingly told Mr. de Metz : " I know I have
put you to a great deal of trouble by coming here, but I was
loath to die among strangers."

A boy was sent to the institution who, at the instigation of
his step-mother, had killed his own sister by a blow with a
wooden shoe. Neither prayers nor threats seemed to have any
effect on his obdurate, sullen, and violent disposition. One
night ^n alarm of fire was heard, and Mr. de Metz assembled all
those strong enough to be of assistance, and led them off to the
fire, having first ordered the tough case to be locked up because
he could not be trusted. After a little while he returned, went
to the boy's cell, and gently reproached him for being unworthy
to accompany his comrades. The poor fellow burst into tears
and said he would gladly go with them, if allowed. " Well, then,
come along with me/' said Mr. de Metz; " we shall see how you
will behave." And off they started across the fields to the fire.
Next morning, after the fire had been put out and the colonists
had returned home, the boy was missing. Everybody at once
took it for granted that he had improved the opportunity to run

1 82 A FRENCH REFORMATORY. [Nov.,

away ; but all were much surprised to see him brought back on
a stretcher, very severely hurt in consequence of his bold en-
deavors, regardless of danger, to be of service. He recovered
from his injuries and underwent a complete moral transforma-
tion ; was a model boy while in the colony, and, after leaving it,
became an honorable man and a worthy father of a family. He
often visited the institution with his wife and child, and was pro-
fuse in his expressions of grateful remembrance of his stay there.

The board of twenty managers of the colony reports to the
membres fondateurs, or subscribers contributing 100 francs say
$20 only once every three years. In their latest report, made in
April, 1883, I find no general statistics; so that I am obliged to
take them from another source made up to a much earlier date.
From 1839 to tne Ist f January, 1880, 5,300 boys were taken
care of in the colony, the average during 1879 having been 722.

Up to the 31 st of December, 1872, covering a period of 32
years, 4,396 boys were sent to the colony. What their parental
influences had been may be judged from the following statistics :
859 came from parents found guilty of crimes or misdemeanors ;
380 came from parents living together in concubinage ; 689 were
illegitimate; 293 were foundlings or abandoned children; 584
were born from a second marriage; 831 were whole orphans.
Many of the children belong to more than one of the above clas-
sifications.

The statistics of reform foot up as follows : Up to December
31, 1872, 3,104 boys had been discharged; 1,593 became agricul-
turists, 707 mechanics, 694 soldiers, no seamen. Four have
earned the decoration of the Legion of Honor ; 24 have earned
the military medal ; 5 have become officers ; very many have be-
come non-commissioned officers or leading privates premiers sol-
dats ; 344 have married, and nearly all of these have families to
support.

During the first years after Mettray was opened the cases of
relapsing juvenile delinquents fell from 75 per cent, to 14 per
cent., and afterwards successively to 12, 10, 9, 6, and 5^ per cent. ;
in 1871, as the criminal statistics of that year show, it was as low
as 4^ per cent.

The daily average cost of maintenance per capita was 1.44
francs in 1877, 1.35 francs in 1878, and 1.32 francs in 1879, to "
wards which the government contributes 70 centimes about 14
cents. The certificate for a high degree of proficiency in pri-
mary studies must not be very easy to obtain in France, since
at the examinations which took place at Tours in 1877, out of 33

1885.] A FRENCH REFORMATORY. 183

candidates from the canton to which Mettray belongs, only 17
were successful, and of these 12 were from the colony, and 3 of
same highest on the list. The excellence and success of Mr. de
Metz's work seem to have been duly appreciated in the United
States, for in the report of 1880 are quoted words of strong
praise written by a Mr. Randall, Vice- President of the Inter-
national Penitentiary Congress ; and from Mr. White, President
of Cornell University. The Reform School near Amboy, in New
Jersey, is managed, as I am informed, on the family system. At
Studzeniec, near Warsaw, in Poland, a colony has been estab-
lished On the Mettray plan, is doing very well and turning out
good results. The Emperor of Brazil, while in France some
years ago, went from Paris purposely to Mettray to visit the
colony, and expressed great satisfaction with what he saw there.*
In December, 1882, a committee of the Conseil General of the
department of the Seine visited Mettray, in order, by a de visu in-
spection, to be better enabled to report on the expediency of
making it an appropriation, which they recommended after they
had seen with their ,own eyes that the management deserved
naught but the warmest praise. But they were somewhat sur-
prised at finding crucifixes on the walls of the school-rooms and
dormitories, and were specially struck at the sight, in each cell, of
the cross and the inscriptions mentioned in a preceding page.
The committee concluded their report by observing that al-
though the Conseil Gen6ral had on several occasions expressed a
desire for the removal of the sisters who have charge of certain
departments, and the employment of laypersons in their stead,
yet the request had not been complied with. They seemed not
to comprehend that the managers, who have had experience
of those services for so many years, are better than outsiders
able to appreciate their worth and the inexpediency of substi-
tuting others ; the change being without any reason other than
to carry out the plan of turning out religious whenever and
wherever possible, without regard to consequences.

* In the lists of foreign correspondents published in the reports for 1880 and 1883 appear the
names of several persons in the United States either very well known or in some honorable public
capacity.

184 ST. WINIFRED'S WELL. [Nov.,

ST. WINIFRED'S WELL.

'* There sprang up on the spot a crystal stream, with sweet-smelling mosses around it, and
red stones beneath the water." Legend of St. Winifred.

CARADOC, son of Alen, the king,

Hath loved, and loved in vain.
He planneth a day of reckoning :
" Give heed, O maid ! till thy death-knell ring !

Short shrift ere thou be slain."

Winifred's hair is yellow as corn,

Her eyes as the corn-flower blue ;
She stood erect in the windy morn,
Baiting her lover with words of scorn,

Her heart to its kingdom true.

A prince's bride, or the bride of Death ?

Scant time to make reply

She hath flung his pearls on the bare brown heath,
And offered to Christ her latest breath,

And knelt on the sward to die.

The blow is cruel, and the blade is keen :

Her pure white soul hath fled.
By Bruno's altar on the green,
A blood-stained strip of moss between,

The martyr-maid lies dead.

Swift gurgled from the holy ground

A stream all silver-clear ;
While whispering grasses gather 'round,
And strange-hued flowers bedeck the mound,

And song-birds hover near.

And still above the water's breast

Lingering the grasses wave,
And still beneath in tranquil rest
The blood-red pebbles closely pressed

Reveal a martyr's grave.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 185

SOLITARY ISLAND.

PART FOURTH.
CHAPTER II.

A PRINCE OF THE BLOOD.

THREE days passed days of some anxiety to the friends of
Florian. What was he doing on the island ? His letters were
sent to him daily, and there were many of them, while the mail
sent back by him was voluminous enough to show that his idle
hours were few. Yet Ruth was apprehensive. About what she
could hardly say ; but she fidgeted until the squire from the
depths of his serenity called out :

" Ruth, will you give me some peace? Will you stop your
demd fixin' and movin'? What's the matter with you, any-
way?"

" I was thinking of Florian."

"I wish you'd think to some advantage, then," he growled.
" It's a round dozen of years since "

" Now, papa, don't be bearish. I pity the poor fellow, alone
with his sorrow on that island. I was afraid what if of course
I suppose "

" Keep right on," said the squire, with comfortable irony.
" You dassent say it, you know you dassent. I pity him, too ;
but he'll get over it. He's just the boy to stand Such knocks
like a wall. No give to him. I don't see what you're afraid of,
unless that he'd go and drown himself; but his head's too level,
too valuable to do that, even if there was need. He's worth
more than his father ever thought o' being, and there wouldn't
be any sense in having the family die out so sudden. Gosh'l-
mighty ! " said the squire, suddenly straightening up, " what am I
talking about ? "

" I don't know," said Ruth absently. " I think I will go up
to Pere Rougevin's and see him about Florian."

" You needn't," acrimoniously ; " Flory don't want nothin' at
all to do with that party. They've completely busted the part-
nership. You might see him, though, about the other feller."

A burning flush rose to the roots of her hair.

1 86 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

" He's the gentleman, I suspect, that you and Peter Carter
were looking after. You see, Ruth, the old man isn't dead yet.
He's got eyes. I don't admire your taste. He looks like Flory
with the starch and the color knocked out of him. Another
washing would leave him like chalk. However, you're in the
thirties, and I han't got nothing to say or do in the matter."

" In what matter, papa?" said Ruth, with recovered self-pos-
session.

" Oh ! in this matter of well, you know what. I don't care
to"

" Keep right on. You dassent say it, you know you dassent,"
she broke in, mimicking him. " There is no matter to be dis-
turbed about, and your hints are all misplaced. Will you walk
up with me to see the pere? It is nearly dark, and we'll surely
find him at home."

" Don't care if I do. I'll shame you right to his face." But
the threat did not frighten her.

They found the priest comfortably reading in his study, his
easy-chair between the table and the stove.

"You haven't got any masculine furniture here, have you,"
said the squire, after a glance round, " with which to furnish a
young but rather stiff lady's parlor something portable, pere,
and protective ; something that will wash the dishes while she
goes visiting, and hold an umbrella over her when it rains, and
something, above all, that's masculine and warranted not to run
away? Ruth's looking for just such an article, and we heard you
had one to sell cheap."

" He's not in now," said the pere, " but you can see him later."

" Don't attend to his nonsense," said Ruth calmly. " Have
you heard anything from Florian ? "

" He will be here to-night, probably. I received a note from
him to that effect. He is coming to learn what I know of his
father."

" Ah ! " said the squire, " that must be a good deal."

" I am so glad that well," and she stopped abruptly, " after
all, I do not know that he is well."

" There is nothing to disturb him particularly," said the priest,
with the faintest touch of scorn, which the squire took for praise.
" He remained on the island partly to investigate the cabin where
his father lived, and partly to enjoy quiet and retirement after
an arduous campaign. Sentiment does not enter largely into
Florian's make-up."

" He's too much of a Yankee for that," said the admiring

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 187

squire. " There's nothing in this world can put Flory down,
unless death. I just dote on that boy."

The sharp ring of the door-bell sounded at the moment.

" This is he/' said the pere. " I invite you both to remain
and hear what I am to tell about this so-called Scott. It is a
curious history and contains nothing that you may not know."

" If Florian does not object "

" Don't you fret," said the squire, cutting off Ruth's polite
remarks, for he was eager to stay. " Don't you fret, I say.
Flory has no family secrets from me us, I mean."

When Florian entered the squire saved any one the trouble
of replying to his grave salutation by at once taking the position
of chairman of the meeting. Ruth was satisfied to note in silence
the changes which a few days had made in the politician's face.
It was paler than usual, and the eyes seemed sunken and weary.
The evidences were that Florian had not passed as quiet a time
at the island as the pere believed, but in the hurry and gentle
excitement of an animated conversation the paleness and hollow-
ness disappeared to a great degree.

"As you intend to return to-night," said Pere Rougevin by
way of preface, " I suppose you are willing to have me begin my
narration. I wish that Miss Ruth and her father should hear it,
if you have no objections."

Of course Florian had none, and the squire was delight-
ed. The room was comfortable, curiosity was sharp, and the
pere's story-telling powers were above the average. To-night
he had no intention and no desire to do more than tell a brief
tale.

" I became aware of the facts which I tell to you," he said,
" not by any favor on your father's part, but through an accident.
In the ordinary course of my parish business the prince found it
necessary to confide in me. If he was more precise in his ac-
count of his life to me than to any other, it was because I insisted
on knowing the whole story, with every shade that time had cast
upon it.

" You know the title which belonged to him, and how he lost
it. He was a Catholic and favored a poor relation of no princi-
ple. He lost his position, and almost his life, through this relation,
who, by intrigues quite possible in Russia, convinced the czar that
his relative, your father, was conspiring against him. A friend
laid before the unfortunate prince the state of affairs. He saw
at once that nothing short of a miracle could save him. He was
young and practically friendless, for a Catholic noble of the blood

i88 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

royal was unique and stood alone. With his two children he
hurried into France.

" The fate of his wife, the princess, was particularly sad. She
was a woman of mind and will. When the prince spoke of exile
she refused to leave her country. On good and reasonable
grounds, however. Her family was powerful. She, at least, was
safe, and she was bent on doing her utmost to save her husband's
estates and name. But for safety's sake she urged the prince to
depart with the children, which he did, without misgivings, yet
without hope. His brave wife returned to the home of her
father, made many efforts to save the estates, and gained so many
important favors from the emperor that the scheming relative
saw his plotting in danger of coming to naught. In her father's
house the princess died suddenly, of poison.

" There was no crime, it seems, at which this relative would
stop. The prince and his children his name was Florian, like
your own, sir shortly felt the sting of his unscrupulousness.
Tracked to Paris, to Madrid, to Genoa, to London, they had
many narrow escapes from death at the hands of his agents. The
wilds of America offered him a refuge, and to them he fled.
Hope was dead in him. Henceforth his one effort was to hide
himself and his children from the assassin. He could not do it,
as you have seen, but all that man could do he did, and, if he fell
himself, probably saved you. The rest you know."

It was abrupt, concise, unsympathetic, this recital of an unfor-
tunate man's life, and it left as many points unsettled as if it had
not been told. Florian, however, was prepared with a bristling
array of questions. He burned to discover the spirit of his father's
strange life, and could not be content with these dry bones.

" Much of this information was contained in the letters and
documents held by Mrs. Wallace," said Florian.

" I do not know," replied the priest. " I never saw the let-
ters. Your father fondly preserved them as mementoes of a
time for ever gone. Mrs. Wallace removed them to her secret
closet without his permission."

" I thought my father of no religion," said Florian. " I had
never seen about him in all the time that I knew him a single
evidence of his faith. Was he a "

" No," said the pere, with a touch of generous feeling, " he
was a fervent Catholic, such a Catholic as misfortune makes ; but
it was part of his plan to let little be known about him. In an
obscure village miles eastward from here he went to Mass and
confession."

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 189

" Yet his whole speech had a certain coloring," Ruth said
earnestly " a spirituality which only a Catholic could feel and
show. We thought it was philosophy backwoods philosophy."

" He was a great philosopher, too," said the pere. " His edu-
cation had been thorough. He was a finished scholar."

" Then the Izaak Walton was a blind," blurted out the half-
indignant squire, " and his talk about governments meant more'n
/thought."

" It was his deep and sincere and simple piety that thrilled
me most/' Ruth said, with glowing eyes. " However else he
deceived us, he could not hide that, and I loved him for it. He
was like a child."

" Of that there is no doubt. Suffering of the severest sort
had chastened him beyond belief. For one so tossed about and
so brought up as he, his simplicity was as sweet as unexpected,"
the priest said feelingly.

To this compliment Florian gave no apparent heed.

" Before Linda died," he said, " I suppose, from what I recall
of that time, that he told her his secret."

" On the very day of her death he told her. He found it hard
to make her see the wisdom of keeping it a secret still, from you
at least ; but with my aid he succeeded."

" Poor Linda ! poor child ! "

Ruth glanced from the priest to the politician regretfully.
There was very little in the manner of either to warrant a suspi-
cion of mutual dislike, but the p&re's deliberate mention of his
connection with the task of keeping Linda silent was a simple
declaration of war. Passing over the hermit's visit to New
York, he came to the events immediately preceding the late
tragedy.

" The letter which I received from an unknown friend warn-
ing me of the Russian's designs against me was probably penned
by my father ? "

The pere shrugged his shoulders. " He did not know of the
letter, nor had the hermit told him of it."

" Was he apprehensive, after the visit of the spy, that trouble
was coming upon him?"

" Well, yes," said the priest slowly; "yes, he was. But he
had so much confidence in his disguise that he feared only for
you. When he heard how you arranged the matter he was thor-
oughly satisfied, and said, ' Now the danger is over.' "

" Did he have any occasion to lose this confidence after-
wards ? "

igo SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

" Not until two weeks ago, when a heavy sadness disturbed
him which he could not shake off. At that time he was not
aware of the presence of his murderer. He must have discov-
ered it suddenly and frightfully, for his usual prudence and sa-
gacity seem to have deserted him at the critical moment His
end is wrapped in mystery, as was his life, and I believe he pre-
ferred to have it so."

There was for a short space a little solemn thinking.

" I found a handkerchief in the old cabin the time the Count
Behrenski and I were here together," said Florian. " It had a
faint monogram, ' W ' "

" It was Mrs. Wallace's," interrupted the priest. " She stole to
the island that night to warn him of the presence of the count,
and to bid him beware of meeting your friend."

" And there is nothing further known of this hidden life ;
no letters, no scraps, no familiar insights, nothing to show what
the man was under all his misfortunes, to make one feel that he
was a father."

The last words came hesitatingly, and were answered by a curt
nod from the pere.

" I have his last letter," he replied ; " it was written for you
to read in the event of his death. And Paul Rossiter may tell
you things which he has not told to me. More than that "

A shrug of the shoulders finished the sentence.

" Linda had some idea of it," continued the pere, " and it
made her very happy in dying. Perhaps his old confessor might
be able to give you a glimpse of his interior life. I doubt it,
however. It seems to have been a sanctuary into which angels
only could enter."

" You have, then, so high an opinion of his life," said Ruth
gratefully. The pere bowed and said nothing for a few minutes,
but, as if regretting his moroseness, he went on to say :

" He was a martyr to his religious convictions, of course. He
could have easily won the favor of his emperor by embracing
the Greek religion, and, had he been a less tender father, might
have lived in comparative comfort. The fear of bringing upon
his children the Bufferings he had endured made him self-for-
getful."

" If you will let rne have the letter you spoke of," said Florian,
who had been indulging in a reverie, " 1 will be going. The hour
is late, and the island is a good distance off."

The pere silently handed him a thick package, and rose as if
to end a rather distasteful interview.

I885.J SOLITARY ISLAND. 191

" I hope," said Ruth, " that you are not going to bury your-
self in that dreary solitude. Before you return to New York
we would be happy to have you stop with us a few days."

"And now that the cold weather is here," said the squire,
who felt himself on familiar ground for the first time that even-
ing, " you'll be apt to stick there if the ice came on too thin to
bear ye and too thick for a boat. So you had better make a
move on the double-quick. And now see here, Flory, you an't
doing the right thing by the party and by yourself. You ought
to be in New York making cover for what's left of your hay.
Your father was a good man, but the best man that ever died
wasn't quite worth half the fuss made over him."

Florian received this lecture as pleasant badinage, nor did
he make any reply to Ruth's kindly invitation, but, wishing them
all a good-night, politely withdrew. The squire snorted as the
door closed after him, and looked severely at nobody.

" The idea of a dead man having such influence over a living
one!" he said angrily. " I believe you're all to blame for it, too.
He'll die on that island, poking over the remains of that red-
headed prince, and persuading himself of nonsense of all sorts.
And if he doesn't his affairs in the city will all go to smash.
Now, Ruth, see here. We can't stand this sort of thing any
longer, and to-morrow to-morrow, I swear it and I vow it we'll
go over in a body ; we'll advance on that island like an army,
and we'll forcibly remove him to the village. Come on home.
There's no use in talking to the pere. I suspect he would be
glad if Flory took a dose of poison."

" It might not do him as much harm as he has done hun-
dreds of people since he came into the world," said the pere with
some heat. " Do you know what he sat in front of the whole
evening, Ruth? A framed copy of his famous letter sent out in
the campaign."

" Go it, you infernal papists ! " said the squire fiercely ; " the
whole American people defies you, the Constitution of these
United States"

" Papa," said Ruth gently, " you're not on the stump now.
You're in the priest's study, and I think we had better go."

" Jes' as you say," the squire murmured as his voice sank
out of hearing under this reproof. " I forgot, Ruth. But how.
about that young Mr. Ross? "

Ruth arose with some haste and bustled the squire through
the door, promising the priest to call again, and fighting down
her father's voice until she had forced him into the street.

192 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

Florian made his way across the river in a dreamy, unsettled
way, as if he had started for no place and forgotten the harbor he
had left. He was very eager to know something of the real life
of his father, and somewhat bitter at finding himself left out so
regularly in the cold. This one knew and that one knew some
trait or incident of the hermit, and Linda had received a full
measure of knowledge at the last moment. He alone knew
nothing. His thirst and it increased every day was always
unsatisfied. His father spoke to him only through the cold, un-
sympathetic channels of dead letters or of outsiders who cared
little for him. It was a hard condition. He accepted it in his
usual matter-of-fact way, but it hurt him nevertheless.

When the island was reached and the door closed on all the
world on all his cares and disappointments, on all his ambitions
he pulled the curtains over the window, replenished the fire,
and, with Izaak Walton at his elbow, sat down to read his father's
last communication to him. Just as his father had sat often dur-
ing the nights of twenty years ! The old charm of the place was
not yet lost to him ; it had increased, rather, because of its pa-
thetic associations. Here he had slept and dreamed that his fa-
ther kissed him ; here the hermit had made a last attempt to
keep him in Clayburg ; here he had tried to discover, without
much if any help from God, what his vocation in life might be.
The warning which the prince had given him still haunted his
memory, but he had not gotten over his old scepticism on that
point, and recalled it with a smile. By the light of the old tal-
low candle he opened his father's letter and read it reveren-
tially :

My son, my most dear son : I have little time to speak to
you. I fear, I am sure, our enemy is on my track. I thought
you had for ever averted the danger. It is not so. These peo-
ple will not be satisfied until they have killed me. God's will
be done ! When you read this I shall be dead. Much ob-
scurity hangs over my life. It will never be removed in this
world. It will pain you, but it was ordered so for your good.
Believe me, your father, every moment of my life was a study
to save you from what will befall me, every word that I have
said to you dictated by the strongest love. Be content with
what you may learn of me from strangers. I give you my love
and bid you adieu. I return to you, according to promise, a
well-known document. My most dear son, a stranger to me all
my life, your father hopes and prays to meet you in heaven.

FLORIAN. "

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 193

He read it over three, four, ten times, with a more vivid pic-
ture each time of the circumstances under which it was written,
until the long-suffering of his father's life and the condensed
agony of that farewell was tearing his own heart into shreds,
until sobs and tears came to shake to its foundations his infernal
stoicism and eternal self-analysis, and to show him that he was
no more, after all, than a son of man. He felt humiliated, but
only before himself. When self-possession returned he glanced
idly at the other document a bit of writing signed, as his fa-
ther's letter was, " Florian " ; but the handwriting was his own,
and a more careful scrutiny discovered the manuscript to be that
famous declaration of his views on everything which the hermit
had received from him ten years ago. He read it with a sad yet
tender curiosity. His father had preserved it so carefully, had
read it many times, no doubt, and pondered as a father would
over the workings of the young soul which God had given to
him ; had kissed it many times, and wept and prayed over it for
him, and besought a daily measure of blessings on his son.
Therefore he read it considerately, smiling at the boyish en-
thusiasm which every line displayed, and frowning at the decla-
ration of beliefs and practices some time discarded. The con-
trast which it showed to exist between the boy and the man he
did not see, or, seeing, did not take heed, but put it away between
the leaves of the Izaak Walton and gave himself up to hours of
profitless thought. In these moments of meditation that pe-
culiar twisting of the features took place which had been noticed
during the funeral, as if his very vitals had been seized by the
grasp of intolerable pain. With his strong will he reasoned its
cause down, but still the shadow haunted him night and day.

CHAPTER III.
A WOMAN SCORNED.

AFTER a defeat the vanquished naturally hides his head for a
short time, the quicker to restore his bruised features to their
natural shape and color. This very just reflection did not at all
soothe the anxiety of Barbara over her dear, devoted Florian's
absence. Twenty times a day she tried to read between the lines
of the passionate letters he sent her from Clayburg, and because
she found nothing her anxieties increased tenfold. Ruth was
there, and who could tell what would happen? He had deserted
VOL. XLII. 13

194 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

one woman. Such a man was not to be trusted ; and if the old
love were still strong after ten years of absence from its object,
what would it not be in her presence, what might it not dare if
Ruth said, I am willing ? Finally Barbara packed her trunk and
started for Clayburg to pay her old friends a visit. She was a
little fearful of the effect of her appearance upon Florian, but
trusted to luck and her own charms to allay his anger.

No one in Clayburg knew of her engagement to Florian, but
the sight of her stepping from the train sent a cold chill along the
squire's spine, and Ruth's first glimpse of her coming up the walk
to the house produced a serious misgiving in that lady's heart.
She was going to stay with them, of course. The city was so
dull that she could no longer endure it, and it was so long since
she had been to Clayburg. While she was removing her bonnet
and preparing to make herself comfortable the squire found op-
portunity to whisper to Ruth :

" Not one word about Flory. That's who she's after."

And Ruth, now that her obtuse father shared her suspicion,
became more than ever certain of the object of Barbara's visit.
Barbara was unusually entertaining and very frank.

" And you have had that very god among men, Mr. Wallace,
with you, and you let him go so easily ! What happy mortals, to
be the favored friends of so charming a man ! "

" Barbery," said the squire solemnly, as he sat down before
her, " don't you attempt to tell me you came all the way from
New York jest to see your old friends. You don't care two cop-
pers for us. You've got an object in coming here, and I want to
know it. Because if you're after me I may as well give in at
once and save the trouble of a long courtship. If you're not,
then I can rest satisfied and you can stay here as long as you
wish to."

" The vanity of an old fellow," said Barbara, " is as violent as
it is curious. Now, what could I possibly want with an antique
like you ? "

" An antique ! " said the squire, dazed. " Ruth, can you sit by
and hear your father called an antique by a mere strip of a
widow ? If you can you have no more notion of your duty than
any other woman."

" Well, papa, you are the sheriff put Barbara in *41c"

11 1 wish I could," said he gloomily. " She's not safe even in
jail, though : she'd bewitch the jailer, the chief of police, lawyers,
judges. There an't nothing, in fact, to hold her. Barbery, speak
right out. Are you after me ? "

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 195

And the squire groaned in mock anguish of spirit

" No, I'm not after you, you poor man ; I have nothing to do
with you, except to eat your dinners and make myself expensive
and troublesome for a few days/'

" The hull house is yours, my girl, and all that's in it. If you
say the word you can have any man in the town that you're fish-
ing for brought right here into the parlor, and I'll help you do
the courting. I will, by Jupiter! " shouted the squire joyfully.

" Thank you ; but I am engaged already, squire."

" Jes' so/' said Pendleton dubiously ; " but you're not safe, en-
gaged or married."

" Don't be too hard on me, please ; and do go away, like a good
man, until I have a chat with Ruth. You need not fear any
trouble from me. As far as I am concerned, you will die un-
bound by matrimony."

" I'm really obliged to you," said the squire, going out, with a
warning look at his daughter.

" And so Florian Wallace was here again," said Barbara, with
an arch look at Ruth. " O Ruth dear ! was there ever a man
more faithful to the love of his youth ? And tell me, tell me truly,
did you refuse him a second time why, no, a third time, is it not ?

" Barbara," said Ruth sternly, " you have sense enough to
know the bad taste and impertinence of your question. Florian
has long ago given up his intentions with regard to me, and is
engaged to a noble woman in the city. You do him wrong in
talking thus of him and me."

" Yes, indeed, a great wrong," said Barbara scornfully, " to
him in particular, for he is the soul of honor. If you said ' Come '
to-morrow, no woman, no honor could hold him from you, and
you know it. That is just what Florian Wallace amounts to."

" I would be sorry to know that any one could say that of him
with the appearance even of truth."

" Well, have patience and you will see. When did the great
luminary leave here?"

"That I'could not say," Ruth replied evasively. " I saw him
for the last time at the priest's house five nights ago. I bade him
good-by and urged him to remain with us a few days before
leaving. He declined. I have not seen him since."

" He had not arrived in New York when I left, so that I must
have passed him, or he may have stopped at Albany. How did
he seem to bear his late defeat?"

" It did not seem to trouble him much, but he was very som-
bre in his manner. I felt sorry for him."

196 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

" Did he not say that he was going to New York direct ? "

" He left us that impression."

" I wonder if she knows anything," Barbara thought, " and,
suspecting my errand, is hiding it? Never mind; there are a
hundred places to inquire."

She changed the subject to other matters, but it required all
Ruth's watchfulness to avoid the traps which the cunning witch
laid for her in the most unexpected places. But for her aid the
squire could not have helped giving her the information she so
eagerly sought, and it intensified Barbara's anger to see how tho-
roughly she was kept in the dark.

" I'll get even with Miss Prim, if I can," she said bitterly,
"and I shall not spare her when my time comes.'

She went up to visit the pere the next afternoon towards
evening, but, owing to the squire's foresight, failed to get any
information from him. In fact, no one knew anything concern-
ing Florian, and the towns-people believed he had returned to
New York the day after Scott's funeral. She had received letters
from him later than that date, so that during the intervening time
he was actually in hiding. Intense alarm now seized her, and she
came to the determination to force the truth from the Pendletons
by any means that came to hand. Sitting quietly in the parlor
after dinner with the squire and Ruth, she flung down her gage
of battle to them with disconcerting suddenness.

" I suppose you are both aware of the object of my visit here,"
she said ; "at least your manner shows that you are."

" Well, Barbery," said the squire coolly, " Flory's high game,
and I don't blame you, but you'll never get him ; mark my words
you'll never get him."

'* You know where he's hiding, both of you. Why do you not
tell me what I want to know ? " she snapped, and all her evil self
displayed itself in her coarse manner.

" 'Tisn't fair, my dear. Flory must have a show," the squire
said, with much gravity ; " and as he's somewhat cast down now,
it wouldn't do to let you go cooing around him. You'd have him
married to you in a wink. Your cooing doesn't suit as well after
marriage as before, and I'm going to save him from you, if 1 can."

" At least you might have some gratitude," turning suddenly on
Ruth. " When your love-affair was hanging fire I assisted you."

" Without any wish on my part," said gentle Ruth, flushing
painfully. " Your interference was of more harm than benefit,
I never knew you were what you now show yourself to be."

"You didn't? "snorted the squire. "Then you've had your

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 197

eyes shut since you were born, girl. You didn't know Barbery ?
She isn't one bit different from what she was twenty years ago,
for all her turning papist like yourself! Do yqu know what I
said ? "

" Oh ! yes, squire," with a charming smile. " Every one knows
what you say, and even what you think, or are going to say or
think. You're a dear, soft-headed old idiot ! "

" Jes' as you say," murmured the squire, for lack of words
to express his feelings, while Ruth listened in amazement.

41 You might as well know," she said, with heightened color,
" that I am Florian's promised wife. Will you tell me now where
he is ? "

" Don't you do it, Ruth," gasped the squire. " It's quite
likely she's"

" O papa ! " said Ruth, " don't insinuate that. If you are
what you say, Barbara Merrion, what has become of Frances
Lynch ? "

" Thrown aside like a toy. What did Florian want with her
a dainty nonentity ? " And she laughed.

" I think I fear you are a bad woman, Barbara," said Ruth,
with the courage peculiar to her on such occasions. " If he has
wronged that sweet girl it was because of you and at your in-
stigation. How could you, a Catholic, think of such a wicked
crime? "

" She donned the Catholic rig to catch Flory, as I said at the
time," said the angry squire. " You did, Barbara. Your face
confesses it."

" I have nothing to do with these things. Can you, will you
tell me where is Florian?"

" If you're engaged to him," the squire remarked wickedly,
" you ought to know where he is."

"I have a batch of letters which he has written to me every
day since he came here, and I know that he is here, and that is
all."

" You'll have to find him yourself, then/' said the squire ;
" and, as we don't care to mix ourselves up in your doings, per-
haps you wouldn't mind going to stay with your friends in the
town."

" I have already decided on that, you funny old man, for it
would be too much to accept of your hospitality farther."

Ruth rose and left the room without a word, hurt beyond
measure at the vulgarity and wickedness of Barbara's character.
That it was light and insincere she well knew, but she had always

198 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

given her credit for a certain refinement and natural pride suffi-
ciently strong to prevent such behavior as she had just shown.
It was bitter for her to recall that she had confided the tenderest
secret of her heart to this woman, and that nothing might hinder
her from publishing it to the world. Barbara looked after her
with light scorn, and the expression in her face stung the squire
into a rage.

" You've done enough for one day," he said, purpling, " to
give you a chance at a ten years' penance. That good girl sees
what you are to the core, and if she doesn't make it known I will."

" That good girl ! " said Barbara, with a sneering laugh. " She
was always so good ! Yet she encouraged Florian into offering
her marriage, and then threw him off. She went to a convent in
a streak of gushing piety, and when the gush stopped came run-
ning down to New York after a dandy little poet upon whom her
heart was set, and, if she had found him, would have proposed to
him and married him. That modest girl ! I'll make her modesty
known through this town ! "

" And if you do/' roared the squire, " I'll publish your char-
acter to Flory in all the colors of the rainbow. How will he like
to know that the woman he's going to marry came up to Clay-
burg and made a circus of herself and him to everybody, run-
ning here and there with a story of an engagement ? O Bar-
bery ! you're a bad one, and I always knew it, in spite of your
dainty ways and your perfumed trickery."

The dainty one burst suddenly into a fit of sobbing, and left
the squire with his anger suddenly congealed in his swollen
veins. The last threat had struck home. More than once the
fear of such an event had chilled Barbara's confident heart, but
she had persuaded herself that if it came to Florian's ears a few
charming sentences would smooth the matter over. Now that
the idea was put into speech by another, and that other the
stupid, go-ahead squire, the enormity of her conduct burst upon
her like a storm. There was nothing to do but propitiate the
great dragon into silence, and this was her method. Pendleton
was disarmed instantly. He looked at her suspiciously, coughed,
twisted, and finally began to implore.

" I can't help it," said Barbara, with a sob for every word.
" I know I've made a fool of myself, but who could help it ? I
was dying to see him, and you would not tell me, and I grew
angry and impertinent. And now you threaten me, to calum-
niate me you, my own father's relative, and to do such dreadful
things. Why wouldn't I cry ? "

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 199

"Jes so, Barbery; you have a right to. I don't blame you.
But let up now, and let us call bygones bygones. You haven't
done anything awful, not any more than I would expect from
you, and I've been rather hard in looking for you to act like my
Ruth. There, now, do stop, and I swear you can marry Flory
twenty times over before I open my mouth. Oh ! tarnation,
this is terrible. See here, Barbery, jes' hear me one minute, will
you?"

But Barbara would not hear, and her sobs increased in vio-
lence until the squire was temporarily insane. Peeping out from
her handkerchief, she saw that she had brought him to the proper
point.

" I'm going," she said, rising, " dishonorably ejected from the
house of my own father's relative "

"No, no ! " moaned the squire.

" Threatened with disgrace and shame "

" O Lord, no ! " moaned the squire.

" Then what do you propose to do, squire? " turning sudden-
ly upon him with her tearful, imploring face.

" I propose to do nothing, say nothing, think nothing, see and
hear nothing in your connection now and for evermore."

" You dear old fellow ! is it possible you will be so kind ? And
I'll go home this very night, and wait like a good girl until Flo-
rian comes to me."

" That's sensible, Barbery. You're not a bad girl, after all."

" And you're the sweetest, dearest old man," putting her lips
to his rough cheek and patting his shaggy head. " Good-by,
squire. Be at the depot and see me off. Now I'll go make peace
with Ruth."

.The squire sat in his chair a long time, thinking profoundly.
There was the coming or going of light feet all around him for a
long time, and the banging of many doors, but he never moved
from his thoughtful position until Billy came to bring him out
for the usual constitutional. Then the squire arose with a solemn
disgust written indelibly on his face, and looked first at himself,
then at his crony.

" You're not tall enough," he said mournfully, " or I would
give you permission to kick me back into my senses."

"What! kick you, you divil ? " said Billy. "I can do that,
tall or short. What's the cause of it all ? "

" A woman, old boy. She kissed me and petted me, and I
caved in. A woman, and, I may add it, a widow."

Barbara transferred her effects and herself to the hotel in

200 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

much distress of mind, although forced to laugh often over her
supreme conquest of the squire. She had gotten herself into a
difficult} 7 , and saw no easy way of escape as long as she held to
her determination to discover Florian. To it she was bound to
hold in spite of fate, confident that her old luck would not de-
sert her. But matters had a gloomy look, and her orders to
the landlord that she be taken to the depot for the night train
was a sort of submission to fate which might not come amiss
later. Sitting in the shabby hotel parlor idly touching the keys
of the consumptive piano, to her entered Paul Rossiter. He
was not aware of her presence. A wild, glad sparkle lit up her
eyes at sight of him. Here was a chance to attain her object ;
here was an opportunity to stab Ruth Pendleton to the heart.
She stood up shaking her finger at him as Lady Teazle would at
Sir Peter, and the amazed poet, astonished first at such behavior
in a stranger, was next overcome with sudden delight.
" Mr. Rossiter O Mr. Rossiter ! is it really you ? "
" It is, Mrs. Merrion, and I am delighted to meet you."
" And where is Florian Mr. Wallace? Why are you in the
same town and not together? "

" I suppose he is loafing on his island still," said the thought-
less poet. " He spends most of his time there and rarely comes
to the village. And may I ask what fate has cast you at this un-
happy season on the shores of the St. Lawrence?"
" My native place receives me at any time."
" Ah ! your native place? "

" You, I suppose, are soon to make your home here ? "
" I return to New York in a week, Mrs. Merrion."
" Where you are hopelessly unknown by this time, as most
people think you have drowned yourself. And is Ruth to "go
with you ?"

"Ruth ! " stammered'the poet. " What has Ruth to do with
me? Do you mean Miss Pendleton? .1 have not addressed her
twice since I came to the town. For a long time I was not
aware she had left her convent."

" And yet she left the convent for your sake."
He flushed a little, ignorant as he was of the motive of her
boldness. She had, as she thought, an opportunity for belittling
Ruth, and if the poet could not suspect it he could feel an un-
easiness at her frank communications.

" Do you remember a bit of bristol-board," she continued,
"scribbled upon by you in the convent-grounds last year? "
He did remember something of the sort.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 201

" It was found and given to Ruth. Romantic, wasn't it ? They
could no longer hold her in the convent. * She went by hill, she
went by dale,' until she came to me in the city, showed me the
card, and implored me to aid her in finding you. When you
were not to be found she was nearly frantic, and fled to the se-
clusion of Clayburg to hide her grief. Worse than a convent",
isn't it? And I thought you had settled the matter, and would
take Ruth with you to the city ! Well, there's bashfulness for
you ! And so, Flo Mr. Wallace is on the island. Which island,
I'd like to know ?"

" Solitary Island I think they call it," said Paul absently, his
whole body hot with mingled feelings of shame and delight.

" Mr. Rossiter," she said suddenly, " you must do me a favor.
I want to see Florian. I must see him to-night. The last train
leaves at ten, and I must be on that train. Will you take me to
Solitary Island?"

" I have to go there myself," the poet said, surprised some-
what, " and you may come with me."

" Thank you thank you a hundred times ! " so earnestly that
Paul had a sudden misgiving as to the prudence of granting the
favor.

"And now, Mr. Rossiter," pleadingly, with sweet confidence,
"you will not go without speaking to Ruth? You will not
leave her and yourself to pine "

" Thank you," said Paul hastily. " Please do not say any
more about that. I will call for you at seven o'clock. Three
hours will be more than sufficient to take us to the island and
back again. With your permission I will go now, as I have
some business to attend to."

The look of triumph, of delight on Barbara's countenance as
he left the room was spoiled by the baser feeling of satisfied re-
venge. She had, in spite of her enemies, discovered Florian,
and, at the least, wounded Ruth's sterling modesty, if not alto-
gether destroyed its existence in the mind of the sensitive Paul
Rossiter. Paul went out into the open air in a daze of happi-
ness. Ruth loved him ; his fate was no longer uncertain, but
he was sorry that her tender secret had found a resting-place
in Barbara's bosom. He could not see the motives of the latter's
coarse revelation of it to him. He was sure, however, that
malice prompted both the coarseness and the revelation, and he
had a dim suspicion that something might have happened since
Barbara's arrival in town to bring it to pass. Perhaps Ruth
knew, and dreaded that Barbara would do something of the kind.

202 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

How would she ever look in his face again, suspecting that Bar-
bara had so ruthlessly exposed her ? The more the poet looked
at the matter the stronger his suspicions grew, and alongside of
them grew the determination to leave Clayburg that night as
quietly as he had entered it months before. Ruth would then
feel easier in the belief that her shame had not been made public,
or even whispered to him. In time he could come himself to
press the suit in which he had altogether despaired ; and if it
was hard to forbear flying to her then and soliciting a surrender
of the secret which rightfully belonged to him, its compensation
was that 'the delicacy of his wife-to-be would not be so cruelly
injured. She loved him and had sought for him, and was grieved
at his absence. He did not want more ; but he walked near the
house just after twilight, and saw her sitting at one side of the
parlor-table, with the squire at the other, her calm, peaceful face
as sweet in its repose as if the nun's veil hung about it.

After all, revenge is not so sweet. Barbara began to have
misgivings directly the first glow of triumph faded. What if her
behavior should reach Florian's ears? And how would he take
her appearance on the island ? She had confidence in her ability
to do many things, and one of them was not to wind him about
her finger. She might wind occasionally, but not always. One
thing was certain as death : that if she made but one misstep the
lost point could never be recovered. Still, she set her face
against all obstacles. When seven o'clock came she stood shiver-
ing, not from cold, on the veranda. It was a sharp and gusty
November night, but the wind was not strong and the bay was
quiet.

" One hour to go, one to come, one to stay, is the programme,"
said Paul, as, with her on his arm, he made his way to the wharf;
" but that allows no time for unforeseen delays."

She did not speak, and he was glad she did not, for he had
taken a natural disgust for her. At the dock the Juanita was bob-
bing on the water, all steam up. A yacht was stealing carefully
in to her moorings at the stern of the steamer, and drew Paul's
attention for an instant.

" What are you waiting for? " she said impatiently.

He led her to the yacht, and they came face to face with
Florian just stepping from it in a secret way, as if he wished
none to recognize him.

" Here is a lady wishes to see you, sir," said Paul simply.

Barbara gasped as she pulled up her veil and held out her
hand.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 203

" Is it you, Mrs. Merrion ? " said the great man indifferently,
not able to refuse the offered hand. " I am glad to see you."

But the calm words were belied by the look of his face, which
Paul would have understood had he known of his new engage-
ment to Barbara, and which made the woman's stout heart beat
with terror. She was too frightened to utter a word.

" I am going to New York to-night," he continued ; " do you
journey that way? I shall be glad of your company, if you do."

" Yes," said Barbara feebly, and, strive as she would, she could
not speak.

" If you are going away," said Paul then, " I have something
connected with the island which you might like to know.''

The great man waved his hand impatiently.

" Thank you. I can save you any trouble. I know all I need
to know, and were I looking for information I would scarcely
apply to you. Are you going to the hotel, Mrs. Merrion, or are
you at Miss Pendleton's ? "

Paul did not hear the mumbled reply, having retired modestly
out of range of the great man's heavy guns.

Two villagers passing along the sidewalk some distance off
were shouted at by the pilot of the Juanita.

" I say, Sam, what are you in for to-night ? "

" Inquest," returned Sam lightly, " over the murder of old
Scott. It's goin' to be at the hotel. Twelve on us air goin' to
sit on the body."

" Keep Squire PenTton off," replied the pilot, " or he'll not
leave any corpse for the rest o' you to sit on."

There was a laugh from both parties at this joke, and Paul
saw the two he had just left stop suddenly and turn away in the
opposite direction.

" Warnings everywhere," he said aloud, " and all unheeded.
God help him, for man can't."

All three took train a few hours later for New York.

CHAPTER IV.
THE ATTIC PHILOSOPHER.

IN the whirlpool of city life again ! Paul realized it with a
sense of delight as unexpected as it was pleasant ; for he had
never a great love towards the metropolis, and his many sorrows
there had embittered him against it for ever. Not quite for ever,
as he now felt. He had the secret of his misfortunes in his

204 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

grasp, and nevermore could Russian spies go about whispering
slanders and bribing the managers of theatres because of his like-
ness to the Prince of Cracow. There was a fair field before him.
He would haunt the old dens of misery where his poor lived,
without being compelled to live in them, and the aristocratic
seclusion of the famous boarding-house would open to him again.
A few months' absence had banished the mists that once hung
round him. One manager was glad to have him back, and an-
other, and a third. Then the mighty Corcoran was extremely
cordial, and had so far forgotten being called a " dim my John " by
Peter Carter as to invite him to send in a series of articles. In
fact, a few calls in the course of the day filled the poet with in-
ordinate vanity ; and it was with a very light head that he en-
tered a restaurant to have an early supper. It was a cheap
place, cheap even for that time, but the eatables were plain
and good, with a country sincerity in the bread and meat and
potatoes and butter. An immense quantity was served to each
customer. Paul was intoxicated enough to have withstood a
weightier meal t'han was set before him, and was half-way
through it when

" It's his ghost ! Lord be merciful to me that sees it ! " cried a
stout but shaking voice at a distant table; and, looking up, Paul
saw the rubicund, rotund Peter, red in the face from weakness
and fright even in physicals Peter was contrary staring at him,
fascinated and groaning deeply.

" O God, help me ! " cried Peter again and again, beating his
breast. " Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ! O Lord ! "

Paul cruelly proceeded with his meal, while astonished waiters
gathered around the suffering man in wonder and sympathy.

" There he is. Don't you see him ? " said Peter in answer to
their inquiries " the boy that went and drowned himself be-
cause of my folly. You can't take him away. He'll be always
before me, and eating like that. It's awful ! "

To prevent the waiters taking Peter for an idiot the poet,
laughing at the fun arid delighted to meet this rarest of old
friends, came forward to the journalist's table. The start which
Peter made as he saw the apparition moving towards him scat-
tered the waiters in a twinkling, and his tragic grasp of the
table-cloth would have ruined the crockery but for the restraining
hand of Paul.

" I am real flesh and blood, Peter," said he ; " drop your non-
sense, and shake hands in memory of old friendship."

" Paul," said the old boy, with a little soprano squeal of de-

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 205

light" Paul," squeezing* and wringing the young boy's hand un-
til it became a shapeless ache at the end of the poet's wrist, while
the tears chased one another over the round cheeks " O Paul,
Paul, Paul!"

And that was the only word which the gentleman could speak
for three minutes. The memory of all he had endured since
Paul's departure, and the joy of seeing his favorite, were too much
for the excitable Bohemian,

" Let us go home to the famous attic," said Paul as he pock-
eted a flask for Peter's benefit, " and we shall review old times
through the flashing of the tears of Erin."

Peter shook his head and uttered a groan of such agony as
really touched the poet's heart.

" I'll take you to an attic, me b'y," said Peter, when his voice
appeared; "but it's me own yes, yes, me own, and no other's."

" You are not, then, at De Ponsonby's?" said Paul.

"Oh! that heaven of delights," squealed Peter. "No. I've
been kicked out of it by me own hand, like the first Adam out of
paradise. Here I am, in me old age, eating cabbage and pork
when roast fowl or lamb would suit me better. Did ye order
lamb, b'y ? They do it well here/'

"Never mind the lamb," said Paul, " but come on to your
lodgings. I have much to say, and something to give you."

" I hope it's what I need, then. Come along and hear the
woes of a gentleman of rank elevated to the sky bad cess to it !
I never knew how close it was till I lay next to it. There I've
been, I don't know how long, because of a rascal wid a gizzard
instead of a heart, and the lovely Merrion oh ! that dainty crea-
ture, that butterfly. Twice she deceived me. I don't know as she
did the last time, but anyway it was the next thing to deceiving,
which is worse than the real out-and-out, since it has a better
appearance of truth. Well, here we are, b'y, at the door. Up,
now, and don't stop as long's there's a stair to be climbed, till ye
hit your head against the rafters or the sky. This is my Pegasus,
this stairway. Are ye writin' poetry yet, Paul ? Ye are, of
course ; it's good to have all the nonsense out of ye while ye're
young, not be carryin' it like poor old Peter in his fifties."

A poky room was the philosopher's garret, tossed and turn-
bled out of all semblance of order, ridiculously small and badly
furnished. The single bed boasted a silk counterpane.

" That's pretty, now," said Peter, jerking it into the chilly
sunlight and wrapping it about him, while he took a turn to the

206 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

window and back; "come here and tell me, Paul, do ye know
where we are ? "

" That row of houses yonder has a familiar look," said Paul,
gazing thoughtfully at them, " and there is one why, if it isn't
De Ponsonby's, sure enough ! And there's the old garret, and
that's Frances, as I live, at the window, and she's making signs
to me. I'm sure she knows me."

" Back ! " yelled Peter suddenly, as he tossed the poet aside
and took his place at the window, where he began to answer the
signals of the lady opposite. When he was done he closed the
window and sat down, suddenly moody, the silk counterpane in
his lap.

" She made it," he said sadly. " Oh ! God help me, Peter. I
know what Adam felt in looking over the paradisial fence."

Paul was brushing himself after an accidental tumble over all
the furniture in the room.

" Couldn't you manage to toss a visitor out of the window
once in a while to vary the thing? " he asked. " It would be
more simple for him if other people had the trouble of picking up
the pieces and putting him together."

11 Just so," said Peter, with an unrestrained roar ; " but ye had
no right interfering wid my girl."

" Peter Carter"

" Not Peter Carter, but Parker Charles. Never mind me ;
go right on, b'y, and say your word. I haven't looked at ye
since I came in. My 3 but your pretty face is prettier than ever.
Your clothes are not in style, though, and have a hang-dog look
about them. And are ye comin' back to stay ? And so ye
didn't drown yerself, after all ? Well, well, and all me tears
wasted for nothing ! And sure Frances and her mother wept for
ye like two cherubs; and I tell ye, b'y, people don't always like
to see people that ought to be dead alive again. Suppose ye had
left a will, now, and I got five hundred dollars ; d'ye think I'd
hand it back to ye now ? Not at all, man. It would be all spent
anyway. Oh! God help me, Peter. It's little I made out o' me
intriguing."

" So you've been intriguing? " said Paul.

" Yes, I tried a bit of it here and there," Peter answered so-
berly, as if the recollection might have been more pleasant.

" And how came you to leave De Ponsonby ? "

" Put out, of course. What more could an old fool expect?
Isn't it a shame to think an old gray head hasn't more sense than

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 207

mine ? It was Barbara began it the sweet, entrancing Barbara.
Ye didn't know I was Frances' father, did ye, Paul?"

" No," said Paul, who understood this only as the usual
vagary.

" Did ye ever hear them talk of old Lynch that was, b'y ? "

" Somewhat. I believe he was a disreputable bummer, and,
though of a good family, had no instincts but for a bar-room.
De Ponsonby was well rid of him."

" Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ! " groaned unhappy Peter.
" I am the man Parker Charles Lynch, known to bis journalistic
brethren as Peter Carter, a gentleman once, and now a jolly old
reprobate waiting for a taste of what you have in your pocket,
me b'y. Come, out with it."

" Not until I hear an explanation of those words," said Paul,
across whose mind a thousand remembrances flashed the truth
which Peter had declared. "Are you in earnest in what you say ? "

" Let us drink, Paul, to the reinstatement of a gentleman in
his rights. I spent an estate on De Ponsonby, and now she
wouldn't spend the tenth of the boarding-house revenues on
her husband me, Peter Carter, alias P. C. L."

Here Peter executed the inevitable single step. Paul, in hope
of having the mystery explained, filled up a glass for him. which
the journalist glanced through with watery eye. There was a
vast change in him from that distant night when in Florian's
rooms he had saluted the liquor as the tears of Erin.

" The sunlight never looks so warm as when I see it through
this color," said Peter huskily. " Here's joy to me own Frances,
and confusion to all boarding-house mistresses ! "

" Ye see," he began, without any invitation, " I was bound
the man wid a gizzard would never marry Frances, and so I let
out on madame. I told Wallace, right to his face, and madame
was present and Frank, that I was the only and original Lynch.
Madame didn't deny it, and Frank ah ! she's the dear little crea-
ture threw her arms about me and hugged me as if I was the
most aristocratic Lynch in Ireland."

" What did Merrion have to do with it ? " said Paul shrewdly.

" Wasn't she after Florian " Paul gave a great start " and
wasn't Florian after her, the mean hound, taking her to operas
and balls while his promised wife was left at home ? "

The shock of this information was very great to the poet, but
it did not prevent him from observing how, in the flush of feeling,
Peter's speech insensibly lost its oddities of brogue and expres-
sion.

208 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

" I wasn't sorry to know he was anxious to be rid of the girl,"
Peter went on drily, " and I made it up with Barbara to give
him this excuse of leaving Frances. Of course he couldn't marry,
the daughter of a bummer. I tell ye, b'y, I never felt prouder of
being disreputable than I did standin' beside the low fellow with
Frances' arms around me. He felt his own meanness, and show-
ed it."

" Peter," said the poet earnestly, "don't for a moment think
that I share in the opinions which the world has had of P. C.
Lynch. I have always seen through the veneer which fate and
his own oddities put upon him, and, in spite of his errors and
blunders, I am convinced that a truer gentleman than he never
breathed. Frances will bear me out in that."

"Just so," said Peter, with his eyes fixed on the ground.
After a little he went on.

" I tried hard to make a match between you and the dear girl,
but I see I can't. She will never love any one but him, and you
are claimed in another quarter. I was commissioned to look for
ye by Miss Pendleton, the foolish squire's daughter. I bothered
her some in doing it, but I hope she'll forgive me and invite me
to your wedding."

" And how does Frances bear it? "

" Poorly, poorly," said Peter moodily; " her heart was so set
on the man. And then madame would have me in the house no
longer, and that grieved her ; and threatened to get a public
divorce if I made myself known, which grieved her more. So
you mustn't speak of me other than Peter to her when you go to
see her."

" I don't know that I will go to see her."

"Oh! you must, because she is sorry to think of the wrong
she did you, and I rather think she wouldn't object to you for a
son-in-law, now that she's lost her great politician. Oh! Maria
has a heart in the right place, for all the style she puts on. The
tears ot Erin, b'y."

" And are you not allowed in the house at all ? "

" Not allowed in the house ! Indeed I am once a month to
see Frances ; and sure I see her every day, for that matter. It
was I she was signalling when you saw her. Oh ! God help me,
Peter"

" No, P, C.," interrupted the poet, laughing.

" The old name '11 stick to me, you may be certain," Peter
growled, with a fond recollection of his right to the family cog-
nomen. " What's the use, though, of bothering one's brain about it ?

I885-J SOLITARY ISLAND. 209

With a smile banish sorrow,
Have no thought for to-morrow.

Hoop-la ! "

And the genial eccentric rose to pirouette and bow with his
old vivacity, but his heart failed him, even while the laugh was
bursting from his throat, and he sank gloomily on the bed.

" Oh ! I can't raise it, this sadness," he groaned ; " it'll never
be raised till Frances is happy again."

Paul could say nothing, for Peter was really suffering, and his
lively spirits were unable to cope with his sorrow.

" I'll go over and see Frances and her mother," said he.
" Have you any message to send to either?"

Peter waved him off loftily and in silence, and, with only a
light intimation that he would call again, the poet went away.
He had only closed the door when the Bohemian's face, like a
purple cloud, appeared in the doorway.

" Paul, b'y," said Peter slowly, " if you see Frances don't mind
telling the poor thing how cast down I was. But if she asks ye
well, ye might hint at it slyly, so as not to disturb her too much ;
that is, if ye think it wouldn't be botherin' her, for ye see oh !
God help me, Peter," he concluded, with a groan, as he slammed
the door, without extricating himself from the muddle in which
he was involved. Paul, half-laughing, went down the stairs with
some serious thoughts about Peter's dealings with his daughter.
It might have been that money was at the root of Peter's troubles
for he was still a spendthrift and that Frances was supplying
him from her own resources, which the poet felt was an imposi-
tion, since the journalist made quite enough out of his profession
to support him in comfort.

Madame De Ponsonby Lynch gave him a generous welcome.
She was still madame, reserved, exclusive, and good-hearted, and
very handsomely apologized for her treatment of him, nor did the
faintest trace of feeling appear on her smooth face at mention of
an incident which brought her exiled lord to her mind. Frances,
she said, was probably about the house somewhere most likely
in the famous attic which he had so queerly deserted and she
begged him not to be surprised at anything in the young lady's
manner or appearance, for she had lately met with a severe dis-
appointment. The disappointment he had probably heard of,
since it was, in a quiet way, the talk of metropolitan society. The
poet, after engaging his old attic from madame, climbed the stairs
to look for Frances. There was a burning indignation in his
breast against the heartlessness of the man who could inflict so

VOL. XLII. 14

2io SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

cruel an insult on a woman so gentle and good as his promised
wife.

" For promised wife she is yet," thought the poet, "and not
at all deprived of her rights by his treachery. It would be a
deserved punishment to have him suffer at Merrion's hands what
she has suffered from him."

She came to the door in answer to his knock, and for a few
seconds there was a hush of astonishment as the two met face to
face. " Mr. Rossiter, or his ghost ! " she exclaimed.

" And the substantial Miss Lynch," said he, offering his hand.
" I have engaged the garret for a long term, and am not likely to
lose it by any more misunderstandings."

" How can I ever "

" Your mother has done it ; don't say a word."

" And my poor father, that made all the disturbance "

" I just came from him," said Paul, smiling, " so do not let
bygones trouble you. I know you have enough of unhap-
piness."

Her lip trembled and she could tiot trust herself to speak.
While talking the poet took a quick inventory of the changes
sorrow had made in her. She was still the gentile, sprightly girl
of a year past, but his practised eye noted the trembling lip,
the melancholy shadows around the mouth and eyes, and the
nervousness of her manner.

" I have seen him so late as yesterday," Paul said, " and I
thought you ought to know. There have been so many strange
things happening in his life. Who has a better right than you to
know? "

" I gave up all my rights to him," she said bravely, while the
memory of his shame brought a flush to her cheek and an angry
sparkle to the poet's eye.

" But he had no well, never mind. I was in Clayburg, and
he was there. He discovered his father in the person of an old
fisherman that he had known for years. Think of it a prince of
royal blood, with a Yankee dialect and a Yankee look, leading a
solitary life on an island of the St. Lawrence ! "

" I am so glad," said Frances ; " his happiness will now be com-
plete."

" I suppose," the poet said cynically, but recollected himself
in time. " Alas! Frank, there never was a more unhappy meet-
ing of father and son. The father was dead, shot fatally by a
sneaking assassin, and it was only a corpsejwhich death handed
to Florian."

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 211

" Oh ! " she murmured, with clasped hands, and the tears be-
gan to fall.

" I think it was a punishment on him," said Paul calmly,
" No, don't look at me so. We only buried the prince two weeks
ago, and in telling you all about him I must say some hard things
of Florian. You know I met him, Florian's father, by a mere
accident. He took me into his cabin, made a favorite of me, and
let in some light not only on his own life but on mine, Frank,
he was a saint. I never believed our country could produce
such a miracle of holiness and penance. Florian was unworthy
of him. He deserved to lose him, and to lose him as he did, for
he died as much from a broken heart as from a bullet-wound. I
wanted Florian to know that, but he suspected me and kept
away."

" Paul," said she through her sympathetic tears, " what has he
ever done to you that you should talk of him so?"

" Nothing more than he has done to any true man in his treat-
ment of you. God sent him one punishment, and he got no sense
or grace from it. I doubt very much if he will gain anything
from another. But I shall present the fact for his conside-
ration."

" You will not," she said sharply, in her excitement. " My
wrongs are my own, and I do not look for any knight-errantry
from you or any one. Paul, you must promise me that you will
never mention to him that suspicion of yours. He has enough
to bear now without that."

" I won't promise," said the poet stoutly.

" O Paul Rossiter ! what have they been doing to you in
Clayburg to change you into so hard and cruel a man? ''

" They gave me a great longing for justice," was his reply.

She began to weep again, and he pretended to enjoy it ; but no
man can endure woman's tears long.

" I can't see why it makes you uneasy," he said, " but I will
promise. No, you needn't thank me. It is not a great favor,
since I suspect he knows it partly already. I only wished to
make his knowledge emphatic by showing him how it looks to
strangers. He needs to have his soul taken out and held up to
him in a good strong light. If he saw it so I fancy he would see
his excuse me, but I am too talkative and too personal; but in
the joy of return, in the hope of so cheery a future as I look for,
in my anger at his ill-treatment of you, I am excited. So you all
thought I had committed suicide ? "

That remark brought the smiles to her face.

212 MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. [Nov.,

" Well, you know what a despairing poet is apt to do," she
replied. " But we hoped you had merely changed your residence.
Grief does not drive a good Catholic to suicide. It makes him
better. But let me ask you, Did you meet in Clayburg that
lovely Ruth Pendleton?"

It was more than the poet could do to keep the blood from
his fair face. It rose to his collar, over it, to his ears, to his
eyes, to the roots of his hair, nor could his glib chatter hide it
from her eyes.

" It is more than I expected," said she, ignoring his talk and
fixing her eyes on the tell-tale blush. " How did you get so well
acquainted with Ruth Pendleton ? "

" You know how it is with some acquaintances, Frank. Yet
I loved her for eight years, and I haven't spoken a word of love
to her yet. But I hope, at least I think"

" She couldn't resist a poet, the dear girl, and I believe you
two were assuredly made for each other."

" Thank you for that," said he, " but not more so than you
and Florian."

" And, by the nine gods," he added in secret, " this thing shall
be accomplished yet ! "

TO BE CONTINUED.

MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS.

WHATEVER the date of its first appearance, it is very evident
that when the idea that the Shakspere sonnets were expressions
of hidden and cipher meanings, of unique or interwritten phi-
losophy, mystic or erotic relations between personages contem-
porary with their composition (were anything, in fact, but some
one hundred and fifty-four desultory rhymes in sonnet form),
came into English literature, it came to stay. For, often as it has
been dismissed and discarded, it is still to the fore ; and even
now, within this current year of enlightenment, when most other
mundane things not responding to the touchstone of nineteenth-
century scrutiny have been discarded as rubbish, when even on
the stage and in decorative art the romantic, rococo, and purpose-
less have disappeared even here are one stout volume and two
ponderous essays in as many phlegmatic reviews, which thresh
the old floors once more, reread once more the alleged crypto-

1885.] MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. 213

gram of these everlasting- sonnets, and construe it a different way
each time.

In following- these hermetic essays ordinary criticism is im-
pressed not so much with their ingenuity (for there is no limit
to human ingenuity) as with the facility with which not only
Shakspere's sonnets, but any other literary matter not historical,
scientific, or didactic, may be so hermetically and allegorically
treated. After all, what poem or prose romance exists which
cannot be tortured into a set of symbolic types or allegories ?
Up to date there has not been lavished .upon these sonnets any-
thing like the literature, for example, once so popular with what
we Americans call " cranks," devoted to that most ominous co-
significance between the names Apollyon and Napoleon, and the
consequent danger to this planet of ours, of which almost any old
book-shop will be sure to yield plentiful treatises. The last Na-
poleon, however, has passed out of sight without leaving so
much as a sulphurous aroma in the ether, and it is just among
the possibilities that even these tremendous sonnets are not her-
metic, allegorical, or even to what base uses may we come !
biographical at all !

The really surprising thing, when one comes to think of it, in
Mr. Gerald Massey's immense octavo,* is that he, a poet him-
self, should have insisted on referring these Shakspere sonnets to
an identified love-affair of the Elizabethan day, when an ideal
love-affair would have answered just as well. If Mr. Massey had
not been a poet before he became a Shaksperean commentator
we should have perhaps wondered why he selected Southampton
as the lover instead of Pembroke (for whose name, by grace of
baptism and good nature, " W. H." might perhaps have stood).
But, being a poet, why should not any one man for love-affairs
are, after all, pretty much alike, and involve a good many sec-
ondary rivalries and friendships have done as well as any other,
or why should we not consider the sonnets as representing the
uneven and tortuous course of any ordinary love-affair, when,
to a poet, ideals are so much nearer and nicer than actual hap-
penings ?

Supposing that it should only.be granted for argument's sake
that these one hundred and fifty-four sonnets are just one hun-
dred and fifty-four anonymous poems of the Elizabethan era a
catena (to borrow George Eliot's irreverence anent the Faerie
Queene] in which " you see no reason why it should not go on

* Shakespeare's Sonnets, never before Interpreted : The Secret Drama of Shakespeare's
Sonnets unfolded^ with the Characters identified. By Gerald Massey. London ; Longmans.

214 MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. [Nov.,

for ever, and you accept that conclusion as an arrangement of
Providence rather than of the author," granted that, what
would be first to strike a critical eye ? We think it would be
could hardly fail to be THE EXTREME INEQUALITY OF THE SON-
NETS THEMSELVES.

I. Could anything be more marked, more apparent, than this
inequality ? Here, for example, against the tenderness and
pathos of sonnets xxx. and cvi., in which scarcely a quaint or
archaic phrase marks them of their century, we must offset son-
net Ixxxvii., in whose every line occurs an old term of court or
musty chancery catchword, making it altogether about as signal
an adaptation of old saws and modern instances to complimentary
purposes as one can find in the Law Burlesques :

*' Whereas, in sundry boughs and sprays
Now divers birds allege to sing,
And certain flowers their heads upraise,
Hail, as aforesaid, coming spring ! "

Is this burlesque any worse than

" Farewell ! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy .estimate :
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing ;
My bonds in thee are all determinate " ?

Or still more extreme example of this law-letter pedantry, the
cxxxiv.:

"And I myself am mortgaged to thy will, ]
Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine
Thou wilt restore or be my comfort still.

He learned but surety-like to write for me
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take . . /'

And so on, with "patent/* " misprision," " judgment," and the
like, employed as a lover's symbols to his mistress. Mr. Casau-
bon might have written something in this strain had he been a
Chancery practitioner and attempted a sonnet to Dorothea ; or
old Tulkinghorn, or Mr. Vohles. But is it not rather hard to
imagine merry Will Shakspere scribbling this sort of thing on
the banks of Avon, among the primroses of sunny Stratford,
and with the bibulant temptations of Bidford, Pebworth, and
Marston within easy hailing distance ?

Then, again, we have the " though rotten, not forgotten '" of
the Ixxxi. Sonnets cxxxv. and cxxxvi. are plays upon the word

1885.] MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. 215

" Will," the name recurring once or twice in about ever)'- line
of them. This is another mood. Whether the name refers to
*' Will Shakspere," or to " W. H.," or to a "willy" (which is
said to have been the slang- for " poet " in those days) is what
nobody can find out. But how it has, in any case, anything to
do with Lord Southampton's particular love-affairs only Mr.
Massey knows.

Is it not a fact to go without cavil that the sonnet form in
which most of these are written (for cxlv. appears to be the only
one not in that form) is the principal reason for binding them
up together? Has any other reason been discovered, or any
other relation between them not purely visionary and fanciful ?
Most of us have smiled, we suppose, to fancy what Shakspere
would say could he rise from his seventeen-foot grave (it was too
deep for a well, even if not wide enough for a church-door) and
encounter^ some of the "readings" which have been assigned to
him during these last one hundred and fifty years. Mr. Bouci-
cault said lately with more asperity, perhaps, than the subject
demanded that he thought, on revisiting the glimpses of the
moon and being asked which of certain "readings" best ex-
pressed the thoughts in his mind, Shakspere would have an-
swered: " What on earth does it matter? Either interpretation
will serve. I cannot remember which I intended. My dramas
were written under the spur of necessity, to meet the crying
need of the theatre of which I was one of the managers. They
will be found to contain errors and blemishes. Let them be so,
and do not encourage infatuated worshippers to turn defects into
beauties. Nature is full of imperfections ; and if it pleased the
great Author to leave his work so to eternity, why seek to find
perfection in every miserable little heap of dust? These trivial
details you bring to my notice do not affect the purpose and
shape of my play ; and if they concern neither the action nor the
passion nor the characters, why make so much ado about no-
thing ? I am neither honored nor flattered by the blind worship
bestowed on my works by some writers. If my existence had
depended on these text-grubbers I should have been shelved two
centuries ago between Ben Jonson and Massinger, or buried with
Beaumont and Fletcher. I owe my existence to the stage, to the
actor. No dramatic poet has any existence in the closet." And,
the dramatic dialogue and purpose removed, h fortiori, what
would the author of these sonnets say to the guesses of their sot
disant interpreters ?

As to the rage to find in earlier or contemporary literature

216 MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. [Nov.,

the sources whence Shakspere procured this or that or the other
phrase, some hint, perhaps, of William Shakspere's own treatment
of that feature of commentary, could he only come back again,
may be gathered from a case quite in point. Last year a Cana-
dian gentleman, a Mr. S. E. Dawson, wrote a little essay upon
Baron Tennyson's Princess. Mr. Dawson sent a copy to the poet
and received a reply, a portion of which as showing how a liv-
ing poet must feel towards voluntary and dilettante commentary
upon his work is worth reprinting. Says Baron Tennyson:

" I do not object to your finding parallelisms. They must always recur.
A Chinese scholar some time ago wrote me that in an unknown, un-
translated Chinese poem there were two whole lines of mine almost word
for word. Why not ? Are not human eyes all over the world looking at
the same objects, and must there not, consequently, be coincidences of
thought and impressions and expressions? It is scarcely possible for any
one to say or write anything, in this late time of the world, to which, in the
rest of the literature of the world, a parallel could not somewhere be found.
But when you say that this passage or that was suggested by Wordsworth
or Shelley or another, I demur; and, more, I wholly disagree. There is, I
fear, a prosaic set growing up among us, editors of booklets, book-worms, index-
hunters, or men of great memories and no imagination, who impute themselves
to the poet, and so believe that he, too, has no imagination, but is for ever pok-
ing his nose between the pages of some old volume to see what he can appropri-
ate. They will not allow one to say ' ring the bells ' without finding that
we have taken it from Sir Philip Sidney, or even to use such a simple ex-
pression as that the ocean ' roars ' without finding the precise verse in
Homer or Horace from which we have plagiarized it (fact !) . . . Here
is a little anecdote about suggestion : When I was about twenty or twenty-
one I went on a tour to the Pyrenees. Lying among these mountains, be-
fore a waterfall that comes down one thousand or twelve hundred feet, I
sketched it (according to my custom then) in these words :
" ' Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn.'

When I printed this a critic informed me that ' lawn ' was the material
used in theatres to imitate a waterfall, and graciously added: 'Mr. T.
should not go to the boards of a theatre, but to Nature herself, for his sug-
gestions.' And I had gone to Nature herself."

Is it speaking too harshly would the commentators have any
warrant to themselves complain of the harshness of the charac-
terization to apply the sentence we have italicized in the lau-
reate's criticism of his critics to the legions who advertise
themselves as Shaksperean cicerones? The trade began about
the days of Malone 1780-1790. Of those ten years Sir James
Prior * writes vividly : " Editors and commentators appear at
every turn in all societies. In the club-house we meet three or

* Life of Edmund Malone. Lor.don : Smith, Elder & Co.

1885.] MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. 217

four of a morning : in the park see them meditating by the Ser-
pentine or under a tree in Kensington Gardens ; no dinner-table
is without one or two ; in the theatre you view them by the dozens.
Volume after volume is poured out in note, comment, conjecture,
new reading, statement, rnisstatement, contradiction. Reviews,
magazines, and newspapers report these with as little mercy on
the reader and give occasional emendations of their own." And
if this was true one hundred years ago, how much truer is it of
these days ! Mr. White was ";:cently able to show that an inci-
dent in "Romeo and Juliet" which some of our most superses-
thetical modern editors had pitched upon as displaying Shak-
spere's " deep moral purpose " was about the only one in the
play that happened to be taken without the slightest alteration
or embellishment from the prior story. If this sort of thing is
not "imputing one's self to the poet," it would be hard to find a
name for it. But the process, which requires considerable inge-
nuity and periphrasis when applied to the plays, is clear sailing
and simplicity itself when worked on the sonnets, which stand
alone, sui generis, with no ancestors, antitypes, or prototypes,
with no sources to reconcile and no references to be consulted.
Anybody can do it. There is not a rock in the channel. All we
have to do is to forge ahead !

II. In the second place, I think the student of these sonnets
would very quickly become satisfied that they are not either
autobiographical of their author or biographical of anybody
else. The proposition that certain lines in sonnets ex., cxi., and
cxii., such as

" And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts made cheap what is most dear " [ex.]

" That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand " [cxi.]

"Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow " [cxii.]

" So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite " [xxxvii.]
" Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt" [Ixxxix.]

and others, when torn from their context, are autobiographical
of William Shakspere, or make the whole bewildering series

218 MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. [Nov.,

autobiographical, cannot, in my judgment, be supported by the
facts. Those facts are that William Shakspere was far too
manly a man to be ashamed of his chosen calling; that, if he
penned these lines, he penned them long before he had been
enough of a public character to have imagined himself as being
" branded " to the extent of some thousands a year by popu-
larity, or to have been in a position, barring his theatrical con-
nections, for something illustrious in the state. I leave again
to Mr. Massey the task of weaving any such autobiographical
matter, should it be proved to be so, into Southampton's af-
fairs ; or, if already biographical, to Mr. Massey or anybody else
choosing to assume it the labor of bringing them to bear upon
the author's career, be he Shakspere or anybody else. Shak-
spere may have been lame. We have no means of knowing
whether he was or not, but we must remember that the mean-
ing of words has changed since his day. I doubt if " lame "
then, when applied to the writer, meant anything more than
any other of a hundred words used in the course of these
sonnets in self-disparagement; or, least of all, had any refer-
ence to any such physical disability as we understand to be re-
ferred to by the word to-day. Similarly, Shakspere was fami-
liarly known among his comrades of the theatre by the sobri-
quet "gentle," in allusion to his weakness for being considered
of " gentle " birth (as shown, among other things, by his ex-
travagance in bribing the officers of the Heralds' College to issue
a grant of arms to his father). I think the word " lame " had, in
Elizabeth's day, no more reference to physical deformity or acci-
dent than the word " gentle " had to a man's temperament, dis-
position, or social qualities. And yet, so far as I can discover, no
student of the sonnets, however much he may insist that they be
read as a whole, but has felt at perfect liberty to isolate lines
anywhere and apply them as he pleased. What commentator
yet has failed to take from sonnet Iv. the first lines,

'* Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme,"

or the next,

" Since, spite of him [Death], I'll live in this poor rhyme '' [cvii.],

and quote them as evidence that William Shakspere believed
that the sonnets were, either as a whole series, or this or that
one in particular was, to make him immortal ? Exegi monumentum
cere perennius !

1885.] MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. 219

I am, I hope, not insensible to the delicious poetry which, in
lines or couplets, is scattered here and there among these son-
nets, and which in some (like the vii., xviii., 1., lx., Ixxi., and
others) predominates and readers the disappointment at sudden
relapses into commonplace all the more dreary. But I feel less
and less confident that the best and most satisfactory way to re-
gard the sonnets is the unitary method of Coleridge, Armitage
Brown, and Massey, and have a surmise amounting to a strong
suspicion that we will yet hark back to consider them as frag-
ments merely (as Meres did), whether Shakspere's or somebody
else's.

Mr. Halliwell Phillipps formulates the resultant of an entire
lifetime of Shaksperean research when he says : " Those who
have lived as long as myself in the midst of Shaksperean criti-
cism will be careful not to be too certain of anything." And, in-
deed, not only the most wonderful theories but the most as-
tounding of facts pass without comment seem to be taken as
matter of course if only translated to a Shaksperean vicinity.
The Rev. Francis Gastrell not a billionaire who once lived in
New Place, instead of selling out and leaving Stratford town
when annoyed by relic-seekers, actually demolished stone by
stone that substantial tenement (the first case on record, we be-
lieve, of a man wilfully demolishing his own real estate in a
pique at a handful of rustic neighbors !) They dug a grave
seventeen feet deep (deeper than most Stratford wells) under the
pave of Trinity to receive William Shakspere's coffin ! * These
and a hundred other remarkable tales, that in any other connec-
tion would be accounted " yarns/' seem to be reasonable and pass
without question because pertaining to Shakspereana! But of
them all, surely the most wonderful story is that a village lad, of
scant training in a country grammar-school, engrossed in London
in theatrical pursuits, should rewrite into hermetic English verse
an entirely original system of Platonic philosophy, as the author
of the New Study f proposes to demonstrate, or exchange halluci-
nations and premonitions with Dante, as the Blackwood paper

*The particular absurdity of this story is that the Avon runs close to the walls of Trinity,
and at the lowest its surface is scarcely two (or, at the most, three) feet lower than the pave-
ment of the church ; so that to dig a hole to that depth strong- pumps must have been used in-
side the edifice itself.

t A New Study of Shakespeare : An Inquiry into the Connection of the Plays and Poems
with the Origins of the Classic Dramas, and with the Platonic Philosophy through the Mys-
teries. London : Trubner & Co. 1884.

{"New Views of Shakespeare's Sonnets; The 'Other Poet' Identified." Black-wood's
Magazine, June, 1885,

220 MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. [Nov.,

insists, or compose a nuptial poem to Southampton in cipher, as
Mr. Mackay * would have us believe !

As to the group of sonnets Ixxviii., Ixxxvi. (from which the
existence of a rival poet to Shakspere is evolved), it seems to me
more involution than evolution as if this " other poet " was con-
jured into, instead of being conjured out of, the text. Would an
average reader that is, an average of those who read these son-
nets all notice, in passing to that group, a sudden change in the
"you" addressed? that, whereas it has been a "dark beauty,"
a " lovely boy," a patron, a successful rival in his lady's favor, it
all of a sudden becomes a "rival poet"? Why not test it?
Would this average reader ever extract, for example, from the
lines (Ixxxii.),

" I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore may'st without attaint o'erlook
The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book,"

that this poet had " dedicated a book to Shakspere's patron," or
pick out of other lines in the group such clues as that this poet
" had a familiar spirit," was " visited by a ghost," and the like ?
We urge once more, why not test it? For, while commentators
might quarrel with the proposition that the less one studies writ-
ings as isolated as these sonnets are (of which we cannot find
author, subject/ date, circumstance, or occasion) the more one
knows ; it appears to be yet scarcely a figure of speech to so assert
in this particular instance. To the myriads of other suggestions
as to the study of these sonnets I respectfully add this one. The
reverse has led to all sorts of theories. The particular theory ad-
vanced in that ponderous paper in Blackwood's appears to me
no more extravagant than hundreds that have preceded it. If
any poet is alluded to in the course of thirty-nine of the sonnets
and then abruptly dismissed, it is, to my mind, quite as likely or
unlikely to be Dante as to be Chapman or Spenser. (Why not
Tennyson or Longfellow? for we must remember Shakspere's
" prophetic soul.") Perhaps Dante may have written these very
sonnets. Somebody must have written them. Perhaps, if these
sonnets are a record of Southampton's love-affairs, his lordship
himself may be the " poet " meant. The language of compliment
is always rather under than over guarded. To be a poet one
need not write verses (or perhaps Southampton, like most noble-

*A Tangled Skein Unravelled: The Mystery of Shakespeare's Sonnets. By Charles Mac-
kay. The Nineteenth Century^ August, 1884.

1885.] MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. 221

men of his day, did write verses). Southampton may have had a
" Beatrician Shade " to visit him in the night-watches, as well as
Dante. Anyhow, most lovers and poets have dreams. And
while it is never unsafe to poetically accuse a poet or a lover
of being visited by familiar ghosts, isn't it very nearly the height
of, shall we say, craziness, or only zeal, to identify the particular
poet or lover, or the visiting ghost, from the use of the hyper-
bole? But, for all that, this very laborious writer of the Black-
wood paper will have it, not that these sonnets are a record of
Southampton's love-life or dedicated to him, but that they are
" the song of William Shakspere's new life " ! A right to charac-
terize the Blackwood paper can only be earned by laborious pe-
rusal. But, having earned that right, we forbear its exercise.
Perhaps, however, we may venture the hope that another name
is not to be enrolled in our Shakspereana Lunatica.

If only William Shakspere could have had a Boswelf or a
Moritz Busch ! We are getting to appreciate those worthies in
days when most men are too lazy to write biographies, even of
their own ancestors, justifying themselves instead with empty-
ing chests full of old letters upon a shuddering and book-ridden
age. But so it is that of the man concerning whom we query
most we have neither letters nor Bos wells. Libraries of theo-
rems as to the madness, the "subjection," the "lassitude," and
even the sex of his Hamlet ; acres of ambling and exasperating
minutiae as to Shakspere's indebtedness to earlier bards for such
wild extravagances as " the roaring sea," the " ringing bells,"
" the lashing waves," etc., we have in plenty (and it is wonder-
ful how cheaply they can be picked up at the old book-stalls and
how uniformly they are found with uncut leaves). The copy-
righted commentator he of crux and ending, " period " and
"group," who stands the comma of distortion eternally between
the amities of commentary and common sense is always on
hand with his. wheelbarrow-load of dusty and archaic notes.
Large attention is paid to the dramatist's political and moral
purposes in the plays, and to their chronological order of com-
position (as if, granted the purpose, the order is of any conse-
quence ; or, granted the order, the purpose would suffer), and all
these things somehow get themselves into print.

There is more of English that to-day is a dead language than
of Greek and Latin put together. There are long rolls of names
which the compilers of our literature manuals get into the habit
of including, but which are mere echoes ; which may have repre-
sented readers once, but represent them no more, nor any mate-

222 MUCH ADO ABOUT SONNETS. [Nov.,

rial for which readers have any use. But among these names
that of the man we call Shakspere does not occur. There is a
glamour about that name like the whisper of the spell which
bound the Lady of Shalott to an ever-weaving and an ever-grow-
ing web. Those to whom it speaks cannot choose but weave and
speak in turn, passing ever and always onward the message they
themselves have heard. O terque quaterque beati who, reading
by sunlight instead of rushlight, can so prolong the legend that,
like the wedding guest, .the world cannot choose but stop to lis-
ten ! And yet, blessed as these are, it is not to be forgotten that
that way also madness lies. Among the names mentioned in
Mr. Wyman's diligent bibliography of one minor branch of
Shaksperean controversy (aside from the alleged innocuous lu-
nacy of all the protagonists participant therein) are those of
two who, by means of the controversy itself, have been driven
mad, besides that of one suicide !

It behooves everybody, then, to guard himself vigilantly
against excessive and exclusive poring over any material where-
in no bank or basis of solidified fact exists upon which to cast a
kedge whereby to draw when all bearings have been lost in
foggy and. bewildering space back to moorings. One of the
seven wise men of Greece bases his credentials entirely upon his
saying, " Let there be too much of nothing." To his sentiment
let us add the rider, " even of Shaksperean criticism."

But, heeded or not, of one thing we may be sure. We may
open William Shakspere's grave. We may find the inventory
of all the world's goods of which he died possessed the cata-
logue of his library, the disposition of his first-best bed. We
may even dispose for ever of the Bacon-Shakspere controversy.
But neither with any nor with all of these may we lay the ques-
tion as to what these sonnets mean. That catena will go on for
ever ! As to every other human tangle there is somebody some-
where to be subpoenaed. We can dive to find the submerged
Atlantis ; trace the successors of the lost tribes ; supply the mat-
ter of the stolen books of Livy ; we can import experts from
Siam to testify as to the color of white elephants ; but the son-
nets will yet and for ever remain mere sibylline leaves. As to
the thread that will tie these together neither ghost nor Daniel
shall ever rise to depose !

1885.] THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. 223

THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY.

An Appeal to the Catholics of the United States in behalf of the
University which the late Council of Baltimore resolved to create.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.

THIS Appeal is signed by the archbishops of Baltimore, Mil-
waukee, Boston, Philadelphia, and Petra; the bishops of St. Paul,
Richmond, Peoria, and Dakota ; Mgr. Farley, the Revs. J. S.
Foley, D.D., T. S. Lee, and P. L. Chapelle, D.D., and Messrs.
Eugene Kelly, Michael Jenkins, Bernard N. Ferren, Thomas E.
Waggeman ; who constitute the Board of Trustees of the new
university. We learn from their Appeal that Washington has
been selected as the site of the university, and sixty-five acres of
land bought for the location of the buildings, at the head of Lin-
coln Avenue, opposite the eastern gate of the Soldiers' Home.
Miss Caldwell's munificent donation of $300,000 has been paid
over to the board, and it is announced that the work of the con-
struction of the first buildings is likely to be begun in November.

The first department of the university to be inaugurated will
be the School of Philosophy and Theology for advanced clerical
students. It is proposed to establish eight professorships in this
department, some of which will be given to laymen. We infer
that two or three of these will have physical sciences as the object
of their teaching. The necessary endowment of each chair to be
filled by a layman will amount to $100,000, and of each one to be
filled by an ecclesiastic to $50,000, requiring, for the first eight
chairs to be founded, at least $500,000. It is also desired that
scholarships, each having a fund of $5,000, may be founded. We
suppose that a much greater sum than one million of dollars will
be required in order to place even this first department of the
university on a sufficiently ample and solid foundation. We trust
that the example given by one young lady will not lack imitators
among those who are able to emulate it, and that a much larger
number will prove themselves to be generous contributors in
proportion to their means.

We are glad to see that the Appeal repudiates the comment
of those who have taken occasion to cast a slur on the actual
state of education among the Catholic clergy. The very least
that is required for ordination is, thus far, besides the most

224 THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. [Nov.,

essential part of an undergraduate course, three years of strictly
professional studies. Hereafter the course of philosophy and
theology will be, by an ecclesiastical law, extended to six years.
Young men who have been admitted to the bar, or who are
nearly or quite ready for ordination as Protestants, are some-
times obliged to study for five or six years before they are ad-
mitted to holy. orders. Those who have bee^n admitted to orders,
and who may have been rectors of parishes, as Protestants, are
always obliged to study three years before receiving Catholic
ordination. There are many grades of education as well as of
talent among the Catholic clergy, between the minimum on
which a bishop can prudently ordain a candidate and the op-
posite extreme. We must say that some of the best and most
efficient priests we have known nave had only the minimum of
learning, and that others, who have had the best advantages and
attained distinction in the seminary, have turned out to be of
little or no worth in the sacred ministry. It is not necessary or
possible that in any profession the majority should rise above a
respectable mediocrity. Inequality in respect to accidental en-
dowments is a law of nature and of every human society. An
education as much above the average as can be attained is
requisite for a certain number, some in one branch, others in an-
other, so that every one may have its adepts, and a learned body
be formed which cultivates the complete encyclopaedia of science.
The school of philosophy and theology in the new university is
for this purpose ; it is intended to furnish a post-graduate course,
to be a school of higher, more advanced studies for students who
have finished the ordinary curriculum of college and seminary.

We suppose, therefore, that instruction will be given of the
most thorough kind in metaphysics, dogmatic theology, pa-
tristics, canon law, the Oriental languages, and some departments
of physics. Modern languages, the arts which subserve religious
purposes, history, archaeology, etc., certainly all deserve a place
within the circle.

We may remark here that the improvement of the ordinary
course in seminaries is quite as much an object of attention in
the highest ecclesiastical quarters as the provision for extraor-
dinary studies. In order to effect this a corresponding improve-
ment in the course of colleges and minor seminaries is necessary,
which again exacts great care in providing for the instruction
given in preparatory schools for boys. Deficiency in the educa-
tion which properly belongs to the period of boyhood and early
youth is one of the greatest practical hindrances to the due edu-

1885.] THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. 225

cation of young ecclesiastics in the higher studies. The founda-
tion must be well laid, if the superstructure is to be well built.
The sugar-cane is thrown in on the lower story of the factory ; in
the upper stories the molasses runs and the sugar rolls out. Put
a boy of twelve into a good school, and promote him regularly
through college and seminary, he will be twenty-five or twenty-
six years old when he is prepared for ordination, and thirty or
more when he has finished his course at the university. Life is
short, and art is long.

It is obvious that even those who take the longest and most
thorough course can be well grounded and fully instructed in all
branches only which are of common necessity for all members of
the clerical profession. In the more advanced and collateral
studies a selection must be made. We do not speak of those
rare exceptions which are prodigies, such as, e.g., was Leibnitz.
The rule must be to learn thoroughly all the common branches;
in special studies, to prosecute one or two, and at most to aim at
a rudimental knowledge of others in so far as that belongs to a
liberal education in general, or to one which is professional.
Just here the wisdom and tact of directors of studies need to be
specially exercised, both in colleges and seminaries. The ar-
rangement of obligatory and optional studies is no easy matter.
The proportion to be kept between different studies for instance,
classics- and mathematics is a serious problem. To attempt too
much and too many things is to hinder the attainment of the end
education and instruction in view of a particular state in life
just as surely as it is so to attempt too little. More depends on
quality than on quantity. Some common things are the most
necessary and useful in themselves, and are, moreover, requisite
for excellence in those which are special. For instance, with all
the time and attention bestowed on foreign languages, it is most
important that all pupils should be taught the knowledge and
use of the English language. It is equally important that they
should not be overtasked or hurried, but led along at a moderate
pace, having leisure enough for exercise, play, eating, sleeping,
and growing up strong and healthy as well as studious men.

This is rambling from the direct subject of the university.
But the whole matter of education is one general subject, and
its parts are closely connected. Students who are prepared to
profit by a university course must be prepared by the lower
schools, and each one of the series depends on the one next be-
low it for the due preparation of its pupils, so that the requisite
improvement in its course can be gradually and successfully
VOL. XLII. 15

226 THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. [Nov.,

effected. It is, therefore, for the advantage of the ; ,university, as
well as for more general interests, desirable t5 liaVe a revised
and uniform Ratio Studiorum for all the schools, from the pre-
paratory grammar-school up to the seminary. And then, what
is more difficult and more practically necessary than this deter-
mination of a theoretical scheme, the instruction and training of
the pupils must be carried on in a thorough and solid manner ;
free from everything like a patent process, a method of quick
and easy learning, which makes a school resemble a shop where
wood is painted and varnished into a poor resemblance to
marble.

The remarks upon the due cultivation of the physical sci-
ences, as well as those upon literature, which we find in the Ap-
peal, are especially to be recommended to the perusal of all
thoughtful readers. There can be no doubt that all the bishops
in the world would endorse them, and they but echo the voice of
the Sovereign Pontiff, Leo XIII. They are worthy of attention
not only for their sound and enlightened wisdom, but also for
the extreme beauty of the language in which they are expressed.
The whole pamphlet, indeed, is redolent with eloquence similar
to that with which the cause of higher education was advocated
before the late Plenary Council.

As for objections and forebodings, they are only the refrain
of an old song we heard thirty years ago when the project of
a university was first talked about, and which we then feared
would result in nothing else but talk. The time for action has
come at last, and the prospects are favorable for the inauguration
of a great work, which we hope will command universal sym-
pathy and general co-operation. Waiting for absolute unanim-
ity, for the cessation of all objections, for the removal of all
difficulties, would bring us to doomsday with nothing done. We
do not expect that a great university can be brought to its full
development and perfection in a day or a year. The work will
be arduous and gradual ; but a beginning must be made, in fact
has been already made in such a promising way as to surprise
and delight all who have been wishing to see founded a great
American Catholic University. The highest and most universal
ecclesiastical authority in the country, the Plenary Council, has
decided the question ; and it is now the part of all the clergy
and laity to follow up and make successful the initiative action of
the hierarchy by their hearty support and co-operation.

TWINS: A WAR STORY. 227

T*jfj- '

iiiarto

THE TWINS: A WAR STORY.

THE day in St. Louis had been extremely warm for the month
of March. As evening fell the round moon hanging in the sky
over the east bank of the Mississippi cast a splendor on the Pres-
byterian church at the corner of Fifth and Walnut Streets such
as that structure had never known by day. Crowds swarmed
about the corner, and the merry chatter and husky laughter of
the negroes showed that these were caring little for the hopes
that might be founded on the civil war that was believed to be
at hand. A wedding was to take place, the bride a beauty, and
a favorite of the whole city, and the groom an active, genial
young man, who was deemed a fitting partner for the bride.
The marriage of Phcebe McCutcheon and Tom Jeminy was of
more immediate importance to the colored folk of St. Louis than
the possible outcome of Lincoln's recent inauguration.

The negroes flocked up the hill from Frenchtown and down
from the region about the Calaboose, while carriages, open and
spacious most of them, made their way with much cracking of
whips and let out their loads of handsome, well-dressed men and
women. Men on horseback, followed by their grooms, added to
the vivacity of the scene. A stout, fair-haired gentleman, unat-
tended, rode up and dismounted in the shadow of the trees across
the way. AH was expectancy as a group of little darkies on the
lookout scampered up through the middle of the street shouting,
" H'yer dey comin', right now ! " and the crowd opened a pas-
sage. The bridal party alighted from their carriages, mounted
the church-steps, and disappeared through the wide-opened
doors.

" Dey an't no use talkin'," earnestly argued an old house-
keeper in a flaming bandana to her dignified, grizzle- woolled hus-
band, " strikes dis chile Missy Phoebe 'd a heap better marry boff
o' dem Jeminys, or not. marry nudder o' dem."

" Yo' des better take car' o' one ole man. Dat's 'bout all yo'
got to do," was her husband's rebuke. But the old negress' re-
mark was the means, nevertheless, of setting the tongues around
her wagging.

For a neat-looking mulatto girl declared it to be her opinion
that before Tom Jeminy had been long married something

228 THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. [Nov.,

dreadful would happen, as, according- to her honest belief, it was
unlucky for a twin to marry unless the other twin married at the
same time. " Den," she went on to remark, " w'at's Mars'r Jack
Jeminy to do? He 'fused to come to de weddin'. Dem two
brudders an't done been away f 'om one anudder befo' sence dey
was nussed. Tell yo' w'at, Aunt Rachel's got a heap o' sense
in her ole head. Yo' don' cotch me marryin* a twin brudder, on-
less de udder brudder marry my sister ; an' I an't got no sister
fo' him to marry/' And she burst out into a loud guffaw.

The front of the edifice, the eager, merry throng filling the
pavement adjacent and scattered in knots beyond, and the entire
street on that side were bathed in the white moonlight. In the
shaded strip under the line of trees opposite, the yellow glare of
the gas that beamed out from the church lit up one spot, where
the fair-haired man all alone stood behind his horse. His elbows
rested on the animal's back, and he was peering over the saddle
up the aisle of the church. Everything was hushed, and then
the triumphant notes of the wedding-march reverberated from
the doors and all the windows of the church, and raised the wait-
ing crowd on tip-toes.

The bridal procession slowly issued from the vestibule and
descended the steps. The groom was a strongly-built young
man of medium height and light complexion, with an amiable ex-
pression of countenance, though his eyes now had a singularly
intense regard as they searched the upturned faces to the right
and left. One glance at the bride explained the affection with
which she was scanned by all there, black and white. t There was
no mistaking the mixture of strong will and kindness of heart in
her nature. Her beautiful gray eyes were modestly downcast
now, but whenever they rose and caught a glimpse of some fa-
miliar black face her mouth would be wreathed in a smile. After
the newly-married pair came the bride's father, giving pleasant
nods of recognition in all directions. The well-dressed company
followed two by two down the steps.

Near the curb-stone there was a jostle, a piercing shriek came
from the midst of it, and then a mass of white lay on the pave-
ment at the carriage-door, in danger of being trampled by the
feet of the surging crowd. What a minute before was an orderly
assemblage of friends and well-wishers had become an excited
mob. Part gathered around the swooning bride, but the rest
pressed over the curb into the street as a horseman in full even-
ing dress galloped off towards the north. It was the bridegroom
fleeing.

1885.] THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. 229

The bride's father, having seen his daughter placed in the
carriage, broke his way through the yielding throng into the
street.

" Mars'r McCutcheon," spoke a negro, pointing to where
the fair-haired man stood under the trees, gazing after his disap-
pearing brother, " dar's de udder Mars'r Jeminy ober dar."

"Jack Jeminy, what does this mean?" asked McCutcheon in
a voice shaking with anger. " Where has Tom gone ? "

" I declare to God, sir," was the reply, " I don't know any
more about this strange affair than you do. But the man that
harms my brother is a dead man." And the speaker, talking to
McCutcheon but eyeing the exasperated mass that was consult-
ing in the middle of the street, put his hand to his pocket.

"But you brought the horse here for this purpose," per-
sisted McCutcheon, laying his hand heavily on Jeminy's arm.

11 1 tell you again, sir, on the word of a gentleman, I don't
know anything more about this than you do," said Jeminy,
loosening himself from McCutcheon's grasp. And, as he saw
that the crowd was pressing in upon them, he went on hurriedly :
" I came to take a last look at my brother after his marriage, in-
tending to ride off then out of St. Louis and go back to Ken-
tucky. I am not sure that I realize it all yet. When Tom broke
through that crowd yonder and galloped away on my horse I
thought I must be dreaming."

There was no mistaking the honesty of the Kentuckian's
words. He sat down on the strip of grass that grew at the edge
'of the sidewalk and sobbed aloud.

Phoebe in the carriage, surrounded by friends, revived. She
looked at the anxious faces about her, but as her hands played
with her bridal dress the disappearance of the groom flashed
across her mind and she fell back fainting again into the arms
of her father, who had just returned to her.

" Drive home," he called out to the coachman, and the car-
riage rolled away toward Olive Street.

There was a rumbling of disappearing vehicles, and the
mystified crowd dispersed.

II.

St. Louis in 1861 was a very different place from the enter-
prising "Future Great" familiar to this generation. It was then
distinctively a Southern city, not in latitude only, but in the
character of its citizens and their manners and institutions.

230 THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. [Nov.,

The houses generally were low, seldom more than two
stories in height, except in the more ambitious neighborhoods
in and about Olive, Chestnut, Pine, and Walnut Streets. The
oldest settlers and richest inhabitants were either of French
origin from Louisiana or Canada, or were from the Southern
States, with a sprinkling of Pennsylvanians. They were an af-
fable, off-hand, hospitable people, free from affectation, but in-
stinctively polite. An insult was resented on the spot, and in-
sults were consequently rare. Horse-racing and gambling were
very popular, and a bet was paid with as much promptness as a
commercial debt.

Of the solid men who used to gather in the Planters' House
at mid-day for refreshment Sam McCutcheon was one of the best
known. He was tall and raw-boned, with a well-formed head
poised on a strong neck. His gray eyes were set under bushy
brows, and shone, in spite of his sixty years, with keen intelli-
gence. He was dreaded in a bargain, and had the reputation of
liking to "squeeze'* an enemy when opportunity offered. But
he could be very generous on the rare occasions when the im-
pulse seized him. He was emphatically a hard man, but not a
narrow one, and some of the great speculations he had originated
and successfully carried through pointed to the Celtic imagina-
tion derived from an Irish ancestry of which he was wont to
speak.

It was a boast of his that he had come to St. Louis from his
native Tennessee when he was a stripling, without a picayune to
his name. Just how he had accumulated his wealth was no-
body's business but his own. The public generally were satisfied
to know that he had a great deal of money, and that he kept a
tight grip on whatever came to his hand. He was a widower,
and idolized his only child, Phcebe, but he was ready at any
time to meet a party of friends for a game of cards where there
was a good stake. There was a story that a fine row of houses
known as the " McCutcheon Block " was won by him years be-
fore at a game of poker on a Mississippi River steamer. Sam
and the captain, so the story went, were having a friendly game
in the cabin, surrounded by an interested circle of gentlemen,
when the betting began to be worthy of these two determined
men. Sam owned the steamer, and the captain ran it for a salary
and a percentage of the profits. The captain had shortly before
invested the earnings of his lifetime in the erection of a row of
houses that was the wonder of the St. Louis of that day. The
game became exciting and Sam raised the captain's bet with the

1885.] THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. 231

steamer. The captain called with the new row of houses. Sam
held the better hand and won, and on the arrival of the boat at
St. Louis the captain loyally executed the transfer of the row to
McCutcheon. But the next day the captain's body was found
floating in the river near Carondelet. He had paid his " debt of
honor," yet he could not make up his mind to live as a poor man
again.

The " McCutcheon Block " was to have been Phoebe's wed-
ding gift from her father.

Tom Jeminy was regarded as having been very lucky indeed
in this match. He and his twin-brother had come from Kentucky
only a few months before, and, besides taking a good deal of in-
terest in horse-racing, the' two had in the meantime been reading
law. They were of a good family, but were orphans, with barely
money enough to pay their modest board to a widow from their
own part of the Blue Grass region.

Tom had met Phoebe, had made love to her, been accepted,
had married her and now where was he?

Phoebe ranked among the beauties of St. Louis, and those
who knew her best said there was not a better girl either. Her
goodness was so superabundant as to suffice for some of her
flinty father's shortcomings in the popular estimation, and, indeed,
the old man always softened whenever his daughter was near.

The days went on and the months. Since the night of the
wedding nothing had been seen or heard of the twin-brothers.
Phoebe's lovely eyes seemed to grow larger. She could have
died cheerfully ; but death avoided her. Her father, the very
impersonation of restless energy formerly, became listless, and
would sit by the hour at a window of his house, playing solitaire
and keeping anxious watch over his daughter.

III.

There were lively times along the Rappahannock in the
spring of 1863. The battle of Chancellorsville had been fought,
and the pickets had grown tired of shouting taunts about it
across the river. The long, severe winter had broken up into
the soft, balmy season of buds. When the early morning hours
were past the sun's rays freshened the blankets which the sol-
diers spread out to dry on the grass in every glade near their
picket-line. Woodpeckers hopped vertically up the tali trunks
of the trees, and, high over all, mocking-birds were making fools
of themselves and of all the feathered tribe. Across the sky

232 THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. L Nov -

thin streaks of cloud passed from north to south and from south
to north, resting now above the Confederate, now above the
Union encampments. All out-doors was as gay as a picnic. The
quarters of the armies were a mile or more back from the river
on either side, and a turn at picket-duty was looked forward to
with great pleasure, for the off-reliefs could lounge in the woods
arid play cards, write letters, or stretch themselves out at full
length on the turf with a satisfaction none but tired soldiers in
active service have ever enjoyed.

The peaceful haze of the atmosphere had so settled into
men's minds that there gradually came to be a tacit truce be-
tween Federals and Confederates. Both sides ceased firing.
Songs were sung on one bank and the chorus answered from
the other. Trading went on. Odd little craft were rigged and
their sails trimmed so as to carry them to and fro across the
river loaded with coffee or tobacco, each plentiful on one side
but sadly lacking on the other. Strict orders from the head-
quarters of both armies had been issued against this, but Ameri-
can soldiers understand everything and hate formality. So mat-
ters went on, in spite of orders, in the same free-and-easy way as
before.

Banks' Ford, a fe w miles above Fredericksburg, was picketed
by cavalry. About- the ford on the northern shore the ground
was open, and rose in a gradual, grassy slope to a wood in which
the horses of the Federal outposts were secured under cover.
Within a few yards of the ford a strong post of dismounted
Federal cavalry usually kept themselves out of sight behind an
earthen redan. But the Confederates had the advantage, for on
their side the woods came clear to the river's edge, so that they
had been able to make it very dangerous for the " Yankee "
cavalry at the redan. But now, with the tacit cessation of hos-
tilities, the Union reliefs came as jauntily down the hill to the
little earthwork as if they were not in range of Southern rifles.

The Illinois cavalrymen who held the ford for the Union this
afternoon were nearly all lying down on the shady side of the
redan, sleeping off the effects of the preceding night's vigil.
The sentinel on guard, however, and the lieutenant commanding
the post were awake keeping good watch. The sentinel, with
his carbine clutched in both hands, rested his elbows on the
parapet, and his eyes systematically swept the opposite bank of
the river from right to left and from left to right. He could see
the gray and butternut uniforms of the Confederates moving
about in the woods, and could plainly hear the tread of their

1885.] . THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. 233

horses' feet. The lieutenant, too, standing beside the sentinel,
was curiously watching- the " graybacks." Their voices, which
sounded thicker and softer than Northern voices, evidently inte-
rested him.

" I reckon the Confeds over there are Kentuckians," he re-
marked to the sentinel.

" I reckon they are," answered the man, a Kentuckian him-
self. " I tell you, lieutenant," he continued musingly, " you and
I wouldn't have believed two or three years ago that we'd be
fighting old Kaintuck now."

"Yes, but we are not fighting Kentucky," was the officer's
somewhat absent-minded reply ; " we are fighting for her, to
preserve her from secession and ruin. But what's this?" he
muttered, as a Confederate on the other side of the Rappahan-
nock, carrying on a rapid conversation with the sentinel there,
spurred his horse into the ford and made straight through the
stream for the Union earthwork.

The Confederate sentinel discharged his carbine at the man
on horseback, and a dozen other Confederates along the river-
bank did the same, all immediately after seeking the shelter of
the trees that hung their boughs over the water. The shots
aroused both sides.

" Fall in ! " shouted the lieutenant, and the dozen men of the
redan sprang to the parapet and aimed their pieces at the ap-
proaching horseman, who came on at a furious speed, though his
horse was floundering dangerously through the stony bottom of
the ford. The lieutenant, who had been restraining his men,
now raised his sabre and cried out : " Fire ! " But he had no
sooner spoken the word than an exclamation of astonishment
from him caused them to hesitate.

In a second the air about the ford was full of flying bullets.
The Federals, who at first supposed that the horseman they saw
was leading an attack upon them, now perceived that in reality
he was trying to make his escape from his own side, and that it
was upon him particularly that the Confederate fire was directed,
though many of the shots began to fall around the redan.

The truce was at an end, for the time at least. The alarm
spread. On the ridge behind, where the Union reserve pickets
were stationed, as well as in the woods on the Southern side of
the river, the bugles were sounding " Prepare to mount ! "

The horseman came on. His hat had fallen off, and his long
hair streamed down his back as he pushed his horse through the
foaming water. He was bent forward, with his head almost touch-

234 THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. [Nov.,

ing the animal's neck, and he held up his right hand to the Union
men in token of amity.

The fight became general. The puffs of smoke which shot
out from the ground were now almost the only sign of a human
being from one side to the other, except the Confederate horse-
man plashing through the ford and the Federal lieutenant crouch-
ing at the river's edge. With every plunge of the horse's fore-
hoofs the spray rose up in front so as nearly to hide the rider.
The friendliness that had for several days prevailed between the
lines was gone ; the blood was stirred now, and the air was full of
hatred and death.

As the horseman came nearer, the lieutenant, with a wild yell,
began to wade out. " Dismount, for the love of Heaven, Jack ! "
he cried, as he struggled, against the current, into the river up
to his waist.

" My God ! " exclaimed the gray-jacketed horseman, sliding
down from the saddle into the water. " O Tom ! I didn't ex-
pect to see you so soon." As the two embraced, the shells of
the Federal battery whirred across the river to explode at the
Confederate side of the ford. The Confederate artillery behind
the wood awoke at the sound of the Yankee guns, and the valley
was wrapped in a broad scarf of chalky white smoke. The
crack of rifles, the hiss of musket-balls, the roar of cannon, the
rush of shrapnel through the air, and the cheers and shouts of
Federals and Confederates took the place of the peaceful tran-
quillity of an hour before.

Out from the cloud of bursting shells emerged the men the
lieutenant and the Confederate whose flight across the river had
brought about this renewal of hostilities. The Federal officer
limped, but was supported by his brother, around whose neck his
arm was entwined. With much exertion the two climbed up the
steep, gravelly bank. Nothing but the smoke which interposed
saved them from a more accurate aim of the Confederate bullets
that whizzed spitefully near them. Lieutenant Jeminy could go
no further and sank upon the grass.

What agony was here ! Without help it would be impossible
for the Confederate to remove the long boot from his brother's
leg so as to stanch the wound ; and the flying missiles made it
necessary to act without an instant's delay. Stooping down he
gently raised Tom until he was in a sitting posture.

The sun had just set behind the ridge, and the dark forms of
the Federal cannoneers stood distinctly out against the red west-
ern sky, for there was breeze enough at that height to carry off

1885.] THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. 235

the smoke. But down in the hollows the shadows were deep, so
that at every discharge of the carbines at the redan a streak of
fire was seen to issue from the muzzles.

After several endeavors Jack succeeded in raising his brother,
and, taking him on his back, he toiled up a ravine towards the
redan, balancing with difficulty his precious load. A Federal ser-
geant and private from the earthwork came to his assistance.
The firing gradually ceased on both sides with the disappearance
of its cause from the sight of the Confederates, and the crippled
lieutenant was tenderly laid on the ground in the shelter of the
redan.

The Federal outpost were amazed. Between their wounded
officer and this Confederate deserter they could nowise distin-
guish except by the uniform. Word was sent to the reserve post
behind the ridge for a surgeon and stretcher-bearers, and mean-
while the boot was cut off from the injured limb and- the hurt
was bathed and temporarily dressed. The officer, comforted by
the skilful treatment of the rough but intelligent cavalrymen, fell
into a healthy sleep, which was npne the less refreshing for a
mouthful of stimulant from a ready canteen.

To the inquiry of the sergeant, now commanding the outpost,
the Confederate explained in whispers who he was and how he
came to be a deserter. " You can imagine how I love my bro-
ther," he said, " when I have deserted from the cause I believe
in, in order to see him. When I learned some time ago that he
was in an Illinois cavalry regiment attached to this army I deter-
mined to find him or die in the attempt."

. The sound of the speaker's voice came gratefully to the
wounded officer's ear ; he heaved a long sigh, expressive of great
relief, opened his eyes for an instant, and, closing them again,
stretched out his feet towards the watch-fire and slept once more.

As the Confederate sat by his sleeping brother's side his
countenance seemed to be rapt in contemplation of a far distant
vision.

" Why ! the risk I have just taken is nothing to the sacrifice
he made for me," he continued, half to himself and half to the
group of cavalrymen who sat about the fire, nursing their
sheathed sabres across their laps. " Poor Tom ! I lost sight of
him for a while, and when the war came on I didn't reckon I'd
see him soon again. But the Lord is good, I tell you, boys, to
bring us together, after all." And he watched with a loving so-
licitude his brother's face, now pale from the loss of blood.

The Union men were still perplexed, even after Jack's narra-

236 THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. [Nov.,

tion. But with soldierly hospitality they forced him to eat of
their hard-bread and salt pork, and to drink a big tin cup of
their coffee a treat such as the Confederate had not had for
many a day.

An officer from the reserve arrived to take command of the
redan, and with him came men and a stretcher to bear the wound-
ed lieutenant back to the camp, where he could have the proper
surgical attendance. The Confederate was allowed to accom-
pany his brother, and the little procession disappeared up the
ridge into the darkness, the group around the fire at the redan
gazing after it in silence.

IV.

" I tell you, Phcebe, Tom Jeminy is dead, and I cannot bear to
see you wasting your life any longer for him."

" But, father, he cannot be dead, or we would have had some
account of it," was Phoebe's languid reply to this suggestion,
which she was accustomed of late to hear often repeated.

Old McCutcheon stood at the window of his residence drum-
ming against the glass pane, watching the loiterers, many of them
soldiers, that sauntered along Olive Street. He was still a rug-
ged man, but his hair was whiter than it was three years before
when he led his daughter to the church to marry Tom Jeminy.

" He had better be dead than ever to fall into my hands," he
growled, and the angry set of his determined features was in har-
mony with his thoughts. " Halloo ! there goes another lot of
prisoners," he went on, as a squad of forty or fifty sunburnt,
long-haired fellows, with hollow, hungry-looking cheeks, but still
sufficiently stalwart frames, marched with a defiant bearing along
the middle of the street, surrounded by a single line of Federal
soldiers with fixed bayonets. " There is no use in my spending
more time hanging around Gratiot Street prison," McCutcheon
continued. " We have heard all we are going to hear about Tom
Jeminy. He must have gone to his reckoning long ago."

" Even if he was unable to reconcile himself at the last mo-
ment to be separated from his brother, I shall always believe
that he loved me," mildly protested Phoebe, who sat between the
windows, a beautiful young woman still, as she smoothed her be-
coming garb. " But, father dear," said she, noticing that the
old man's sorrow was deepening at her words, "you have not
told me what Captain Dudley said."

" Those Union soldiers don't give a man a chance to have a

1885.] THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. 237

satisfactory talk with the Southerners. But as the prisoners
were halted on Gratiot Street in front of the prison, I recognized
Dudley, though he didn't look quite so spruce as when he and I
used to make deals in cotton together at Napoleon. He had a
seedy old blanket wrapped around his shoulders. The only
thing that looked bright about him except his buttons was the
gold lace on his collar. I concluded he was an officer, so
I called out, 'How are you, general?' to attract his atten-
tion. And as the Union fellows were beginning to be uneasy
at people talking to the Southern prisoners, I made up my mind
what to say and to get an answer before they could interfere. So
I shouted : ' General, what about the Jeminys ? Have you seen
or heard of them ?' Dudley knew me at once and he sang out:
" I am Captain Dudley, of the Third Kentucky Infantry, C. S. A.
Two years ago I saw Jack Jeminy in Virginia. He was a pri-
vate in a Kentucky cavalry regiment. I have not seen or heard
of him since. He told me then that he had not seen his brother
Tom for a long time, but had heard that "he was in the Yankee
army. There seemed to be something wrong, but I couldn't tell
what it was.' Just then the Union officer ordered 4 Forward ! '
and the Southerners were marched into the prison. But I am
glad there is one man of my acquaintance who does not know
about that affair of yours. But then Dudley scarcely ever did
read the newspapers, and down there at Napoleon they wouldn't
have heard of it for an age, and he was always a hot-headed fel-
low, and probably joined the army right at the first."

Phoebe was as lovely as ever, and all the more so for the
melancholy that dwelt in her eyes. During the war she had been
active in good works. Her father was a Southerner, through
and through, and she herself resented any interference with what
she believed to be the rights of the Southern people. She knew
slavery well, or thought she did, and she had never been able to
understand why the Northerners should want to come between
the Southerners and " their black people/' Her own colored
servants were always kindly treated, and so were those of her
friends and neighbors. Her father, too, rough and imperious as
he was by nature, had never been known to abuse a slave, and,
in fact, like many other Southerners, was more tolerant of a
negro than of a poor white person.

But if Phoebe did not like the Abolition idea, she had no ill-
will for the " Abolitionists," as she called those who supported
the Union cause.

238 THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. [Nov.,

She found plenty to occupy her in helping to look after the
comfort of the great numbers of refugees who flocked into St.
Louis from the interior of Missouri, leaving burning homes and
devastated fields behind them, the work of guerrillas and strag-
glers from both armies. With other women of her acquaintance
she had lightened the sorrow of many families whose men were
in the field wearing the blue or the gray.

The old medical college at the corner of Gratiot and Cerre
Streets, which, almost from the beginning of the war, had been
used as a military prison, had a curious fascination for her.
Often she would find herself passing the prison, or standing
among the concourse that was always gathered there when Con-
federate prisoners were arriving from the battle-field. She would
scan the faces of the captives, and then turn hurriedly away.
She was brave enough even to visit the Charity Hospital when-
ever there was a new arrival of wounded, and the sweet- faced,
patient Sisters of Charity were always glad to see her and to have
her assistance. What s.he had lost of her former gayety she had
gained by gentleness of manner. A few weeks after her father's
conversation with Captain Dudley the exhausted South surren-
dered and the war was at an end.

It was a time in the Border States for counting losses, for as-
certaining the fate of the missing.

Jack Jeminy, it was learned, had deserted from the Southern
army, and there were various conflicting stories as to the end of
his adventure, though a belief prevailed in St. Louis among the
former friends and acquaintances of the brothers that Tom had
joined the Union side and been wounded, and had resigned his
commission, and that somehow he and Jack had met and must be
together now. But where? No one knew.

Poor Phoebe ! The hope she had harbored in silence during
four long years, and that had occasionally put color into her
cheeks, grew fainter as she listened to the rumors about her miss-
ing husband which her father daily brought home to her.

Lost friends were found again, lost loves restored but not for
her.

The" Vegetable Sure Cure "did a thriving business in a small
territory. That territory was the interesting part of New York
extending from University Place to Hudson Street and Eighth
Avenue, and from Bleecker Street up to Fourteenth. The capital

1885.] THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. 239

of the Sure Cure territory was at Jefferson Market, or there-
abouts that is to say, wherever the inventors, proprietors,
and manufacturers of the potent remedy happened to take
their stand. But they were not often seen far from Jeffer-
son Market, and most of their sales of the Sure Cure were
made directly from their pockets. The Herb Doctors, as they
were called, were sometimes seen together, and it was very
seldom that they were far apart. If one of them were observed
at the market in close consultation with a possible old lady
customer amid the fragrance of her cabbages, carrots, and
parsnips, the other, perhaps, was in Bleecker Street " talking
up " the remedy to an active young sidewalk dealer in cheap
glass-ware.

The Herb Doctors were not at all particular about their
dress, yet somehow they always dressed alike, from the " plug "
hats which were of that form that is always in fashion with
decent mediocrity, without ever having been in any prevailing
style down to the solid, flat-heeled, broad-soled boots. They
took a vacation during the heated term of the year, though it
was uncertain where they went ; and their customers never saw
them without overcoats, of a dingy black, threadbare and shabby,
the ample side-pockets sagging down and bulging out with the
load of little cubical packages that contained the Sure Cure.
The doctors' full beards and their hair were dyed of the same
purplish brown, showing the venerable gray at the roots. They
were so much alike that a market woman seeing one of them for
the first time and then the other would be perplexed between her
wonder " which was which," and a superstitious dread of the
four pale, faded blue orbs which looked out upon her from the
Herb Doctors. They spoke always in a low tone, and seemed to
have no friends. Even the sociable policemen, who knew every
one on their beat, and loved to have a bit of badinage with who-
ever was not too dignified, were not on intimate terms with them,
though some of the force in that precinct had used the remedy,
they said, with complete satisfaction, and were always ready to
recommend it to the ailing. It was good for coughs, colds, and
rheumatism ; a weak decoction of it was a splendid liniment for
sprains, sores, or bruises. A saloon-keeper's wife on Varick
Street had repeatedly mixed a little of it with her husband's own
" constitutionals" unknown to him until " the old man " began
to have less and less relish for the toddy. It was perfectly harm-
less, too, for a child in McDougall Street had one day swallowed

240 THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. [Nov.,

a whole package of it, all but the wrapper, without any visible
deleterious effect.

The Herb Doctors were well thought of in a general way, as
they never meddled with any one else's business and never told
anything about their own. Their modest apartment of not more
than two rooms was on the second floor of a house on Bleecker
Street that in old times was the residence of fashionable people.
The front was stuccoed in imitation of stone, but the stucco was
cracked now and blistered. The basement floor was occupied as
a Neapolitan restaurant, and its odors of garlic and Parmesan
cheese were sniffed with desire by the hungry sons of sunny Italy
who passed. The stone steps that led up from the hall-door fell
off a little to one side, so that the doctors, on going or coming,
were careful where they set their feet, especially when there was
ice on the steps, for the iron guard-rails had long ago disappeared
into a junk-shop.

Above the second-floor windows a long signboard, black with
white letters, announced " Vegetable Sure Cure," and a small
upright sign at the jamb of the hall-door gave the list of ills, al-
phabetically arranged, which the Sure Cure assuaged. A paint-
ed hand at the top of the sign pointed the way up to the doctors'
office, where a slate hung at the door to " leave orders." But
most of the " orders " were facetious ones written by the sharp-
faced youngsters whose families had the rooms above. The
office-hours of the doctors were not many, as they negotiated
most of their sales in the open air, and their prescription was
uniformly the Sure Cure.

It was dusk, and the fine drizzle of rain was beginning to make
the sidewalks and roadways in South Fifth Avenue black and
shiny. Drivers were whipping up their horses to get home after
the day's work, before the storm should grow worse. Men and
women trudged hurriedly along under umbrellas to the elevated
station at the Bleecker Street crossing. Under the staircase of
the uptown side stood the Herb Doctors, who never carried um-
brellas. They were dividing the shelter with the burly news-
woman, who was calling out her papers and industriously chang-
ing her pennies for nickels and silver dimes.

The doctors were communing together in their usual low
tone, when one of them grew suddenly pale and fell face forward
on the wet, hard flag-stones.

" Tom ! Tom! O God, Tom ! what is it?" murmured the

1885.] THE TWINS: A WAR STORY. 241

other as he stooped beside the fallen man and tried to lift him
up. The newswoman flung- her papers down in the slush and
gave him the help of her brawny arms.

" Lave go of him, docthor dear," said she ; " the cop and me'll
take care of him. Ye don't look well yourself." And she called to
a policeman who stood close by, in a doorwa} 7 of a neighboring
building, watching the throng that surged on towards the stair-
case. " It's the heart that's throubling him," she said.

Before the ambulance could come in answer to the police-
man's summons the glare of the electric light suspended in front
of the cigar-shop on the corner showed that a ghastly tinge was
settling around the mouth and nostrils of the sick man as he re-
clined in the newswoman's arms. Beside him knelt the other
doctor, chafing his hands.

" Good people," he sobbed, " this is my brother. Don't let
him die."

" What's this he has in his pockets that's hurting him ? " the
policeman remarked, as he began to remove the hard little pack-
ages of Sure Cure that were pressing against the patient's side.

The ambulance surgeon, after a hasty examination, shook his
head significantly at the policeman. At the hospital the ailing-
man was gently carried out of the ambulance and laid on a cot.
He still breathed. A sweet-faced Sister of Charity tried to ad-
minister a draught ordered by the ambulance physician, but in
vain. The man was too far gone. Dr. John, who knelt by the
side of the cot, bent down his head and murmured, " Don't leave
me, Tom."

The sister touched him kindly on the shoulder and whispered :
" Pray for your brother. He is in the hands of God alone now."
And the glazing eyeballs of the motionless form confirmed what
she said.

But Dr. John would not believe. " Give me a spoon and some
water, sister," he demanded; "the Sure Cure will revive him."
The attendants looked at one another and understood. With
much difficulty he was led away to another room. What skill
and Christian charity could do was done. A week later the
twin-brothers were together once more, in one grave.

From Tom Jeminy's pocket the sisters took out a letter ad-
dressed and ready for an emergency, and they forwarded it to its
destination.

Dear Mrs. Jeminy, whom every one loves, still lives. Her
hair is snowy white, and her countenance beams with affection
for all humankind, but there is a note of sadness about her that
VOL. XLII. 16

242 TO-MORROW. [Nov.,

strikes even the passer-by. Sam McCutcheon went to his rest
long ago. Her husband she has never seen since her marriage,
but she learned, from the almost indecipherable letter that reached
her from him through the sisters of St. Vincent's Hospital, that
he had always loved her and that he hoped to see her again, not
in this life, but where he might be near her and Jack.

She is one of those who believe firmly in another life after
this. And then? In heaven do we know our own?

TO-MORROW.

IF I but thought to-morrow
Would never come for me,

My heart were crushed with sorrow,
My soul in misery.

For all my life's endeavor

Is but to live for ever

To find a rest that never
Shall pass away from me.

To-morrow, O to-morrow,
Oh, come, come soon to me !

It is of thee I borrow
The present joys that flee.

To-morrow, never ending,

day of perfect blending,
When ceaseth all heart-rending,

Oh, how I long for thee !

Oh, sweep me on, wide ocean ;

Thou'rt speeding me from night !
Give me my heart's devotion,

Give me to-morrow's light.
Oh, haste, ye lagging hours !

1 breathe the breath of flowers,
I see the gleaming towers :

The land the land's in sight !

1 88 5 .] IRISH SCHOOLMA s TER BEFORE EMANCIPA TION. 243

THE IRISH SCHOOLMASTER BEFORE EMANCI-
PATION.

PREVIOUSLY to Catholic Emancipation the state of popular
education in Ireland was the most extraordinary in the world.
At least the Continental countries of Europe contained nothing
like it. The novelist, dramatist, and popular song-writers of
England found in the Irish schoolmaster of that period ample
material for popular amusement. He was sui generis, a most
astonishing phenomenon ; and if Emancipation rendered no other
service to the Irish except to relieve them from the presence of
those impostors, they could never be too grateful to their eman-
cipators. A remarkable feature in the character of the school-
master of that period was that he could often read and even
write Latin without knowing English, and it was hardly an exag-
geration to say that he often taught the best of Latin in the
worst English ever pronounced. Gerald Griffin gives us an in-
stance of this which is very amusing.

On one occasion, he says, two rival teachers, who regarded one
another with mutual and " mortal mislike," happened to meet at
a social gathering a wedding or christening celebrated in the
thatched mansion of a " strong farmer.'* In the early part of the
evening the rivals prudently avoided one another ; but as the
night wore on, one of them, stimulated by strong drink and the
whispered suggestions of mischief-loving cronies, suddenly called
on his rival in a loud tone to translate a quotation from Horace,
which he repeated with little regard to prosody. The other,
who, for a schoolmaster, was rather a modest man, deemed it in-
cumbent on him to uphold his character in the presence of the
guests by translating the quotation.

" That's purty well," exclaimed the challenger, " that's purty
good ; but you're no more to me you're no more to me" he re-
peated, while dipping his finger into his tumbler and holding up
to the light the drop which pended from its extremity " you're
no more to me nor that drap is to the ocean ! "

The vulgarity and impudence which distinguished this man
were characteristic of the whole tribe. The still greater igno-
rance of the peasantry who surrounded them their only asso-
ciatesfilled them with indescribable conceit and arrogance.
They regarded no man as their equal, and were prodigies of

244 IRISH SCHOOLMASTER BEFORE EMANCIPATION. [Nov.,

learning in the estimation of their indigent patrons. The fact
that they had been prohibited, as Catholics, from keeping
school, by the laws of England, endeared them to the hearts of
the peasantry by associating them in some degree with their
priests, who were still more cruelly persecuted :

" When, crouched beneath the sheltering hedge

Or stretched on mountain fern,
The teacher and his pupil met
Feloniously to learn."

^ Not content to delineate the Irish schoolmaster with these in-
separable characteristics, O'Keeffe, in his Agreeable Surprise, goes
a step farther. To make him supremely ridiculous the dramatist
converts him into a lover ! He terms his schoolmaster Lingo a
very appropriate name. " A more comic creation than Lingo/"
says Cumberland, " never issued from the storehouse of modern
wit His pedantry is exquisitely ludicrous, his misquotations
sublime. His courtship of Grace Cowslip has no parallel for
quaintness and humor " !

Horace Walpole affirms that O'Keeffe, in the chorus which he
has attached to Lingo's song, " has got beyond the limits of non-
sense." But Lord Thurlow vindicated him by affirming that
Shakspere placed similar choruses in the mouth of his clowns,
and that what " the learned counsel might deem nonsense was in
fact character." Lingo is well described by his master in the
play, who says :

" Lingo has been a schoolmaster here in the country ; taught
all the bumpkin fry what he called Latin, and the droll dog so
patches his own bad English with bits of bad Latin, and jumbles
the gods and goddesses and heroes, celestial and infernal, to-
gether at such a rate, that there is nothing like it in the world."

" The man who can preserve his gravity," he adds, " when
this Irish schoolmaster makes his appearance, should have the
privilege of appearing surly and morose all the days of his life."
The following are verses of Lingo's song, which in the last cen-
tury, when the originals were still in existence, has " made the
welkin roar " a thousand times :

" Amo, amas,

I love a lass,
And she's both tall and slender ;

Sweet Cowslip Grace

Is her nom'native case,
And she's of the feminine gender.

1885.] IRISH SCHOOLMASTER BEFORE EMANCIPA TION. 245

" Chorus Rorum, corum, sunt divorum,

Harum, scarum divo !

Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hatband.
Hie, hoc, horum genitive.

" Can I decline

A nymph divine?
Her voice as a flute is dulcis,

Her oculus bright,

Her manus white,
And soft, when I tacto, her pulse is.

" Chorus Rorum, corum, sunt divorum,

Harum, scarum divo!
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hatband,

Hie, hoc, horum genitivo," etc.

One of these pedagogues, when a respectable visitor entered
his " noisy mansion," was found in a prodigious hurry, with his
pupils, equally hurried, swarming round him in a mob, all busily
engaged in putting up the shutters and barring the windows.
They were, one and all, unable from their breathless haste to
make any reply except that they were going master and all to
witness a prize-fight which happened to take place somewhere in
the neighborhood, and which all were solicitous to see.

" We'll be late for the fight we'll be late for the fight ! And
it's what I have no time to discoorse you till it's over," exclaimed
the accomplished teacher, as he hurried with his pupils out of the
house to witness the demoralizing spectacle of a pugilistic en-
counter.

In engaging such men to instruct their children the people
were not to blarne. The enormous wealth of the Protestant
clergy and the landed proprietors, extorted from their misery,
brought them so near the nadir of existence that, unable to lift
their heads, they could not look around them and estimate the
incapacity of their pedagogues. They had no standard by which
they could measure them. They were only certain of one thing
that these pedagogues were not Protestants. They might not
enlighten the mind by their learning, but they certainly would
not imperil the soul by heretical teaching. This was a consola-
tion in the midst of unexampled wretchedness.

To this consolation they clung in the darkest hour of their
national martyrdom while cherishing the memory of the past and
hoping for better days in the future. For

" Still beside the smouldering turf

Were fond traditions told
Of heavenly saints and princely chiefs,
The power and faith of old."

246 IRISH SCHOOLMASTER BEFORE EMANCIPA TION. [Nov.,

When America had shaken off the yoke of England, and
while the ruling- classes of that country stood cowed and morti-
fied by their discomfiture, the penal laws of Ireland, " calculated
for the meridian of Barbary," were feebly enforced or partially
neglected. Taking advantage of this twilight of freedom, a
swarm of educational impostors arose and pawned themselves
on the credulity of the rural classes as capable of expatiating de
omnibus rebus quibusdam aliis.

At the same time it must not be supposed that the govern,
ment failed to supply the people with means of education.
Schools were invitingly opened in nearly every part of the
island, in which an education was given free. The only draw-
back was that the stream of knowledge in these schools was
mixed with an element that rendered it more abhorrent than
poison to the main body of the people. Each child in those
schools was required to study a catechism containing such pas-
sages as the following :

" Q. Is the Church of Rome a sound and uncorrupt church ? A. No ;
it is extremely corrupt in doctrine, worship, and practice.

"Q. What do you think of the frequent crossings on which the papists
lay so great a stress ? A. They are vain and superstitious. The worship
of the crucifix is idolatrous."

Animated by an irresistible desire to see their children edu-
cated in a proper manner, and " loving learning to a fault," as an
English writer expresses it, some Catholic parents allowed their
offspring to frequent these proselytizing schools, but always
with the palpitating terror with which the Asiatic traveller draws
water from fountains frequented by robbers, over whose limpid
spring the startling words are inscribed : " Drink and away."

Owing to all this, but above all to their indigence, the Catho-
lics saw themselves obliged to be satisfied with such teachers,
whose system a popular song thus delineates :

" The master by the fireside,

And Paudeen on his knee,
All roaring out together

Great big A B C."

(Spoken :) " C a n agus a Con ; s t a n agus a Constan ; / agus a
Constanti ; n a agus a Constantino \p I e agus a Constantinople, the great
Turk.'*

In this song the master is seated by the fireside. The fire has
its history, the fuel being accumulated on what may .be termed
the co-operative principle each boy bringing a turf. But this

1885.] IRISH SCHOOLMA STER BEFORE EMANCIPA TION. 247

teacher, thus luxuriously seated by the fire, enjoys an enviable
lot compared to the teacher of the " hedge-school," who has
no fire at all. The hedge-school was an institution peculiar
to Ireland, which originated in a passion for learning on the
part of the people, and a mania for oppression on the part of
the government. Assembled under the hedge, with the lark
carolling above them and the hawthorn bushes waving play-
fully in the wind, they studied their Reading Made Easy, their
" Gough," or " Voster," or Latin Grammar, with an assiduity
which contrasted strangely with the poverty they were plunged
in. To pursue learning under greater difficulties would be well-
nigh impossible, and perhaps no other race in the world ever
adopted more desperate expedients to gratify the thirst for
knowledge. One thing is certain, however the academies of
the Grecian philosophers were held in the open air, and in
this respect the hedge-school resembled the Grecian academies.
The hedge-school was often enriched with a library of lighter
literature a collection of books more select than improving.
Foremost was The Irish Rogues and Rapparees, a book which de-
tailed with great appreciation the ingenious expedients adopted
by knaves and swindlers in the last century. Then there was
the Life of Freney, the Robber, an Irish highwayman, written by
the highwayman himself, in which he describes with undisguised
satisfaction his success in compelling mail-coaches to halt in the
highway, and forcing the trembling passengers, with cocked pis-
tol and loud threats, to deliver up their watches and purses. The
chivalry of rapine was embodied in this highwayman, as he rob-
bed the rich to lavish gifts upon the indigent. He gives a pic-
turesque description of the long line of cars creaking along the
narrow roads which he repeatedly stopped and plundered.
Thackeray, in his Irish Sketch-Book, dwells with much gusto on
this curiosity of literature. It sometimes happened in the hedge-
schools, as in the palaces of kings, that pale death penetrated and
carried away the schoolmaster. In that contingency the pupils,
silent but not despairing, sometimes took counsel together, and
breathlessly determined, if a schoolmaster was to be had in the
county, they should procure him. In short, they resolved to steal
a preceptor. With this view the pupils have been known to
assemble in the dead of night, to appoint a leader and form a
phalanx, and set out in military order and surround a cabin which
contained a pedagogue. They carried him out cautiously, si-
lenced him by alternate threats and promises, and finally bore
him away in triumph to the residence of their former teacher,

248 IRISH SCHOOLMASTER BEFORE EMANCIPATION. [Nov.,

where he was installed. Moore, in his Life of Captain Rock, tells
the following story :

"A few miles from our village, at the other side of the river, there was
a schoolmaster of much renown and some Latin, whose pupils we had long
envied for their possession of such an instructor, and still more since we
had been deprived of our own. At last, upon consulting with my brother
graduates, a bold measure was resolved upon, which I had the honor to be
appointed leader to carry into effect.

" One fine moonlight night, crossing the river in full force, we stole
upon the slumbers of the unsuspecting schoolmaster, and, carrying him off
in triumph from his disconsolate disciples, placed him down in the same
cabin that had been occupied by the deceased Abecedarian. It is not to be
supposed that the transfluvian tyros submitted peacefully to this infringe-
ment of literary property ; on the contrary, the famous war for the rape of
Helen was but a skirmish to that which arose on the enlevement of the
schoolmaster, and, after alternate victories and defeats on both sides, the
contest ended in peaceable possession of the pedagogue, who remained
contentedly among us many years, to the no small increase of Latin in
the neighborhood."

In one of his tales Gerald Griffin describes perhaps the very
best of the schools of which rural Ireland could boast before
Catholic Emancipation. He says :

" The school-house at Glendalough was situated near the romantic river
which flows between the wild scenery of Drumgoff and the Seven Churches.
It was a low stone building, indifferently thatched; the whole interior con-
sisting of an oblong room, floored with clay and lighted by two or three
windows, the panes of which were patched with old copy-books or alto-
gether supplanted with school-slates.

" The walls had once been plastered and whitewashed, but now partook
of that appearance of dilapidation which characterized the whole building.
In many places which yet remained uninjured the malign spirit of satire (a
demon for whom the court is not too high nor the cottage too humble) had
developed itself in sundry amusing and ingenious devices. Here, with the
end of a burnt stick, was traced the hideous outline of a human profile pro-
fessing to be a likeness of Tom Guerin, and here might be seen the ' woful
lamentation and dying declaration of Neddy Mulcahy,' while that worthy
dangled in effigy from a gallows overhead. In some instances, indeed, the
village Hogarth, with peculiar hardihood, seemed to have sketched in a
slight hit at ' the master,' the formidable Mr. Lenigan himself. Along
each wall were placed a row of large stones, the one intended to furnish
seats for the boys, the other for the girls ; the decorum of Mr. Lenigan's
establishment requiring that they should be kept apart on ordinary occa-
sions for Mr. Lenigan, it should be observed, had not been furnished with
any Pestalozzian light. The only chair in the whole establishment was
that which was usually occupied by Mr. Lenigan himself, and a table ap-
peared to be a luxury of which they were either ignorant or wholly regard-
less.

1885-1 IRISH SCHOOLMASTER BEFORE EMANCIPATION. 249

"On the morning after the conversation described in the last chapter
Mr. Lenigan was rather later than his usual hour in taking possession of the
chair already alluded to. The sun was mounting swiftly up the heavens.
The rows of stones before described were already occupied, and the babble
of a hundred voices like the sound of a beehive filled the house. Now and
then a schoolboy in frieze coat and corduroy trousers, with an ink-bottle
dangling at his breast, copybook, slate, voster, ,and 'reading-book' under
one arm, and a sod of turf under the other, dropped in and took his place
upon the next unoccupied stone. A great boy with a huge slate in his
arms stood in the centre of the apartment, making a list of all those who
were guilty of any indecorum in the absence of 'the masther.' Near the
door was a blazing turf-fire, which the sharp autumnal winds already ren-
'dered agreeable. In a corner behind the door lay a heap of fuel, formed by
the contributions of all the scholars, each being obliged to bring one sod of
turf every day, and each having the privilege of sitting by the fire while his
own sod was burning. Those who failed to pay their tribute of fuel sat
cold and shivering the whole day long at the farther end of the room,
huddling together their bare and frost-bitten toes, and casting a longing,
envious eye towards the peristyle of well-marbled shins that surrounded
the fire.

" Full in the influence of the cherishing flame was placed the hay-bot-
tomed chair that supported the person of Mr. Henry Lenigan when that
great man presided in person in his rural academy. On his right lay a
close bush of hazel of astounding size, the emblem of his authority and the
instrument of castigation. Near this was a wooden 'stroker,' that is to
say, a large rule of smooth and polished deal, used for ' sthroking ' the lines
in the copybook, and also for ' sthroking' the palms of refractory pupils.
On the other side lay a lofty heap of copybooks, which were left there
by the boys and girls for the purpose of having their copies set by the
' masther.'

"About noon a sudden hush was produced by the appearance at the
open door of a young man dressed in rusty black and with something
clerical in his costume and demeanor. This was Mr. Lenigan's classical as-
sistant; for to himself the volumes of ancient literature were a sealed foun-
tain. Five or six stout young men, all of whom were intended for learned
professions, were the only portion of Mr. Lenigan's scholars that aspired to
those lofty sources of inspiration. At the sound of the word ' Virgil ! ' from
the lips of the assistant the whole class started from their seats and crowd-
ed round him, each brandishing a smoky volume of the great Augustan
poet, who, could he have looked into this Irish academy from that part of
the infernal regions in which he had been placed by his pupil Dante, might
have been tempted to exclaim in the pathetic words of his own hero :

" ' Sunt hie etiam sua premia laudi,
Sunt lachryma rerum et mentem mortaliatangunt.'

" 'Who's head ? ' was the first question proposed by the assistant after
he had thrown open the volume at that part marked as the day's lesson.
"'Jim Naughton, sir.'
" ' Well, Naughton, begin. Consther, consther* now, an' be quick.'

* Construe.

250 IRISH SCHOOLMASTER BEFORE EMANCIPA TION. [Nov.,

" ' At puer Ascanius mediis in vallibus acri

Gaudet equo ; jamque hos cursu, jam preterit illos :
Spumantem dari '

" ' Go on, sir ! Why don't you consther ? '

"'At puer Ascanius' the person so addressed began 'but the boy
Ascanius ; mediis in vallibus, in the middle of the valley ; gaudet, rejoices '

" ' Exults, ara gal exults is a better word.'

" ' Gaudet, exults ; acri equo, upon his bitther horse '

" ' Oh, murther alive ! his bitther horse, inagh ? Erra ! what would make
a horse be bitther, Jim ? Sure it's not of sour beer he's talking ! Rejoicin'
upon a bitther horse ! Dear knows, what a show he was ! What raison had
he for it? Acri equo, upon his mettlesome steed ; that's the construction.'

" Jim proceeded :

" ' Acri equo, upon his mettlesome steed ; jamque, and now ; preterit, he
goes beyond '

" ' Outstrips, achree.'

" ' Preterit, he outstrips ; hos, these ; jamque illos, and now those ; cursu,
in' his course ; que, and ; optat, he longs '

" ' Very good, Jim ; longs is a very good word there. Did any one tell
you that ? '

" ' Dickens a one, sir ! '

" ' That's a good boy. Well ? '

" ' Optat, he longs ; spumantum aprum, that a foaming boar ; dari, shall
be given ; votis, to his desires ; aut fulvum leonem, or that a tawny lion '

" ' That's a good word agen. Tawny is a good word, betther nor yallow.'

" ' Decendere, shall descend ; monte, from the mountain.'

" ' Now, boys, obsarve the beauty of the poet. There's great nature in
the picture of the boy Ascanius. Just the same way as we see young
Mister Keiley of the Grove, at the fox-chase the other day, leadin' the whole
of 'em right and left ; jamque hos, jamque illos an' now Misther Cleary an"
now Captain Davis he outstripped in his course. A beautiful picture, boys,
there is in them four lines of a high-blooded youth. Yes, people are always
the same ; times and manners change, but the heart o' man is the same now
it was in the days of Augustus. But consther your task, Jim, an' then I'll
give you an' the boys a little commentary on its beauties.'

"The boy obeyed, and read as far as pratexit nomine culpam, after which
the assistant proceeded to pronounce his little commentary. Unwilling to
deprive the literary world of any advantage which the mighty monarch of
the Roman epopee may derive from his analysis, we subjoin the speech
without any abridgment :

" ' Now, boys, for what I towld ye. Them seventeen lines that Jim
Naughtin consthered this minit contains as much as fifty in a modhern
book. I p'inted out to ye before the picture of Ascanius, an' I'll back it
agin all the world for nathur. Thin there's the incipient storm :

" ' Interea magno misceri murmure coelum
Incipit : '

Erra ! don't be talkin', but listen to that ! There's a rumblin' in the lan-
guage like the sound of comin' thundher.

" ' . . . insequitur commista grandine nimbus.'

1885.] IRISH SCHOOLMASTER BEFORE EMANCIPA TION. 25 1

D'ye hear the change ? D'ye hear all the s's? D'ye hear 'em whistlin' ?
D'ye hear the black squall comin' up the hill-side? That I mightn't sin,
but whin I hear thim words I gather my head down betune my showldhers
as if it was hailing a-top o' me. An* thin the sighth of all the huntin'
party ! Dido an' the Throjans, an' all the great coort ladies, and the Tyrian
companions, scatthered like cracked people about the place, lookin' for
shelther, an' peltin' about right an' left, hether an* thether, in all directions,
for the bare life, an' the fluds swellin' an' comin' an' thundherin' down in
rivers from the mountains, an' all in three lines :

" ' Et Tyrii comites passim, et Trojana juventus
Dardaniusque nepos Veneris, diversa per agros
Tecta metu petiere : ruunt de montibus amnes.'

" * An' see the beauty o' the poet, followin' up the character of Ascanius ;
he makes him the last to lave the field. First the Tyrian comrades, an
effeminate set that ran at the sighth of a shower, as if they were made o'
salt, that they'd melt undher it ; an' thin the Throjan youth, lads that were
used to it in the first book ; an' last of all the spirited boy Ascanius him-
self. (Silence near the doore !)

" ' Speluncam Dido, dux et Trojanus eandem
Deveniunt.'

" Observe, boys, he no longer calls him, as of ould, the pius dEneas, only
dux Trojanus, the Throjan laidher, an' 'twas he that was the laidher and
the lad. See the taste of the poet not to call him the pious ^Eneas now,
nor even to mintion his name, as if he were half-ashamed o' him, knowin'
well what a lad he had to dale wid. There's where Virgil tuk the crust out
o' Homer's mouth in the nateness of his language, that you'd gather a por-
tion o' the feelin' from the very shape o' the line an' turn o' the prosody.
As formerly, when Dido was askin' ^Eneas concernin' where he corned from
and where he was born, he makes answer :

" ' Est locus Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt :
Terra antiqua, potens armis atque ubere glebae.
Hue cursus fuit.'

" ' An' there the line stops short, as much as to say, Just as I cut this
line short in spakin' to you, just so our coorse was cut in goin' to Italy.
The same way when Juno is vexed in talkin' o' the Throjans, he makes her
spake bad Latin to show how mad she is. (Silence !)

" ' Mene incepto desistere victam
Nee posse Italia Teucrorum avertere regem ?
Quippe vetor fatis ! Pallasne exurere classem
Argivum, atque ipsos potuit submergere ponto ? '

" ' So he laves you to guess what a passion she is in when he makes her
lave an infinitive mood without anythin' to govern it. You can't attribute
it to ignorance, for it would be a dhroll thing in airnest if Juno, the queen
of all the gods, didn't know a common rule in syntax ; so that you have
nothing for it but to say that she must be the very moral of a fury. Such,
boys, is the art o f potes an' thQJam'us o' languages.

" ' But I kept ye long enough. As for ye,' continued the learned com-
mentator, turning to the mass of English scholars, * I see wan comin' over

252 IRISH SCHOOLMA STER BEFORE EMANCIPA now. [Nov.,

the river that will taich yez how to behave yerselves, as it is a thing ye
won't do for me.'

" The class separated, and a hundred anxious eyes were directed toward
the opening door. It afforded a glimpse of a sunny green and a brawling
stream, over which Mr. Lenigan, followed by his brother David, was pick-
ing his cautious way. At this apparition a sudden change took place in
the disposition of the entire school. Stragglers flew to their places, the
impatient burst of laughter was cut short, the growing bit of rage was
quelled, the uplifted hand dropped harmless by the side of its owner, merry
faces grew serious and angry ones peaceable ; the eyes of all seemed poring
over their books, and the extravagant uproar of the last half-hour was
hushed on a sudden to a diligent murmur. Those who were most profi-
cient in the study of ' the masther's ' physiognomy detected in the expres-
sion of his eyes, as he entered and greeted his assistant, something of a
troubled and uneasy character. He took the list with a severe counte-
nance from the hands of the boy above mentioned, sent all those whose
names he found on the fatal record to kneel down in a corner until he
should find leisure to ' haire ' them, and then entered on his daily func-
tions.''

From these quotations the reader can gather some idea of the
nature of the schools which previously to Emancipation formed
the mind of Irish youth. And it is right to say that the remark-
ably fine criticism of Mr. Lenigan's assistant, above given, was
characteristic of very many of the better class of Irish school-
masters of that day.

These educational straits were not the effect of chance, but
the result of deliberate design. " By the seventh William III.
no Protestant in Ireland was allowed to instruct a papist. By
the eighth Anne no papist was allowed to instruct another pa-
pist. By the seventh William III. no papist was permitted to be
sent out of Ireland to receive instruction. Owing to these acts
the darkest and most profound ignorance was enforced under the
severest penalties in Ireland " (Jonah Barrington's Rise and Fall
of the Irish Nation, p. 132).

The moment Emancipation was granted an educational revo-
lution took place in Ireland. "National schools" supported by
government grants were established in every parish not from
love of the Irish people, but from fear of the Catholic clergy.
The ruling class in England feared lest the education of the
entire population should fall into the hands of the Chris-
tian Brothers and religious orders. This is what they most
dreaded. The religious orders, during ages of persecution, had
saved money in their several convents. For when a friar died
his little savings whatever their amount went into the com-
mon fund, and swelled it, slowly and gradually, into something

1885.] IRISH SCHOOLMASTER BEFORE EMANCIPATION. 253

considerable. The Augustinian friars of John's Lane, Dublin,
were said to have 80,000 when Emancipation took place, which,
of course, was a gross exaggeration. The Jesuits, too, possessed
a considerable sum, which Father O'Callaghan bequeathed to
Father Kenny a sum which enabled the latter, even before
Emancipation, to purchase Mount Brown, which is now known
as Clongdwes College. Sir Robert Peel, astonished at his au-
dacity, sent for the Jesuit. " Don't you know," said the Irish
secretary, " that we can confiscate your money?" " Yes," said
Father Kenny, who had consulted Catholic lawyers, " but I also
know that Lord Chatham said, ' If the devil put money in the
English funds it should be held sacred.' '

The government were apprehensive lest in such resolute
hands the education of the Irish should become the most Cath-
olic in the world, and this dread opened the public purse and
founded the " National " schools. These schools were at first
the admiration of American travellers who happened to visit Ire-
land. The school-books were excellent and the teachers regu-
larly trained. But the Catholic religion was carefully eliminat-
ed at this time cast out of doors. Hence the vehemence with
which Dr. MacHale denounced the system, Unable to inculcate
Protestantism, Lord Stanley was determined that no religion
should be taught in " National " schools which assuredly were
not national. The history, the topography, the name of Ireland
were- likewise shut out. Maps of every country in the world
were found hanging on the walls of the " model schools " in
Marlborough Street, Dublin, but you would search in vain as
we have searched for a map of Ireland, while each pupil was
taught to sing a song in chorus in which he declared himself
" a happy English child." Archbishop Whately was to be seen
in the lecture-room seated beside Archbishop Murray, who
equally patronized the schools. Whately was persuaded that
the cultivation of the popular intellect would be fatal to the
claims of the Catholic Church. Hence the system was emi-
nently intellectual and aimed at the evolution of the reasoning
powers rather than the memory. He hoped that the pupils
would not only become Protestants, but renounce their nation-
ality and become Englishmen. In his Life and Correspondence -,
by his daughter, Jane Whately, this hope takes the form of
expectation and is openly avowed. Hence that secular excel-
lence in the " National " system of education which elicited
the admiration of foreigners.

Nothing was more extraordinary than the sudden revolution

254 THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. [Nov.,

of feeling which the government of England exhibited on this
subject so soon as Emancipation was wrung from their grasp.
That government which for ages, in the most tyrannical manner,
sternly suppressed education, made it a legal offence to teach, a
misdemeanor to learn, and placed Catholic education under its
heel and exerted every legal means to eradicate it, became sud-
denly the most energetic of all governmental educationists. Its
zeal in promoting education in recent times can only be equalled
by the fury with which it crushed it a few centuries ago. Not
only did it labor to surpass the Christian Brothers by its " Na-
tional " schools ; it sought to nullify or supersede the Catholic
University by means of the "godless colleges." As informer
times it had no object so much at heart as to degrade the Irish
into ignorant barbarians, it seemed now to desire nothing so ear-
nestly as to make them learned philosophers. This was owing to
its profound consciousness that the Catholic Church, the benefac-
tress of the world, is the greatest of all educationists ; that, in
strict compliance with Christ's command, " Go teach all na-
tions," it not only imparts a knowledge of divine truth, but
spreads human learning wherever it prevails. It was this con-
viction that stimulated the government to found " National "
schools in every parish and " godless colleges " in every pro-
vince in Ireland, and to labor a labor that has happily been
in vain to make a monopoly of education and get it alto-
gether into its own hands.

THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE.

THE year 1563 opened with bright hopes for France. Co-
ligny's reiters, who had been promised the plunder of the capital,
were forced back, baffled, and had to content themselves with
pillaging and murdering the inhabitants of the villages in the
neighborhood, according to a custom that had almost a religious
sanction in their eyos, consecrated as it was by the tacit permis-
sion of the austere hypocrite who led them. At Dreux the Duke
of Guise had set the crown on his splendid military qualities,
plucking victory out of the very bosom of disaster, and driving
the ambitious traitors who claimed to impose their will on the
immense majority of Frenchmen pell-mell into the city of Or-
leans, If the Huguenot leaders were not'to surrender all their

1885.] THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. 255

hopes of dismembering France and partitioning it again among
the great houses from whose grasp it had been rescued by pain-
ful and laborious efforts of consolidation, they should make a
stand now. Coligny and his brother Dandelot threw themselves
into Orleans.

But the bulk of the rebel army, now as always, was composed
of German soldiers of fortune. The reiters were clamorous for
their pay. He calmed them for a time by the assurance that the
money for which he had sold the towns in the north of France to
the English would shortly arrive, and, as a slight satisfaction of
their demands, they were allowed to massacre and pillage the
people of Sully and other little Catholic towns in the neighbor-
hood of Orleans. But they were insatiable. This English gold
had been dangled before their eyes so long that they were begin-
ning to doubt of its existence. They threatened to desert if the
admiral did not make good his engagements. So Coligny saw
there was nothing for it but to lead them into Normandy and
join his English friends at Havre, leaving Dandelot to defend
Orleans.

This march of Coligny's reiters was long remembered in the
north of France. It was as if a column of locusts had swept
over the land. The rich country between Caux and La Beauce
was a desert after their passage. Writing after the event to
Elizabeth, the Earl of Warwick says that those who survived the
swords of these murderous fanatics would have perished of fam-
ine but for the efforts of the people of Picardy, who supplied
them with provisions.

The austere virtue of Coligny has been as much celebrated by
a certain school as that of Robespierre was during the Terror.
The admiral on one occasion had the hand of a soldier struck
off for swearing, and we know that Robespierre resigned a judi-
cial office because his functions compelled him to sentence a mur-
derer to death. But necessity is inexorable, and just as the gen-
tle nature of Robespierre found itself confronted by a crisis that
left no alternative except copious blood-letting, the rigid severity
of Coligny was tempered by lack of money, and he was forced to
let his followers rob and murder at their ov^ sweet wills.

But the appetite of the reiters grew by what it fed upon.
When they reached the sea at Saint- Pierre-sur-Dive there were
no English ships in sight. Coligny could only point in eloquent
dismay to the Channel, tempest-tossed with winds. Clearly no
English vessel could put to sea in such a storm, and the hopes of
the German mercenaries were again dashed to the ground, to be

256 THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. [Nov.,

revived, however. For was not the coast lined with splendid
churches enriched by the piety of the simple Norman sailors ?
And were there not abbeys in the neighborhood, wealthy and de-
fenceless, capable of recompensing- a pious free-lance for his suf-
ferings in the cause of the Gospel ? The plunder of the churches
and monasteries of Normandy amply consoled them for their dis-
appointment, at least for the time.

But the money so long delayed arrived at last. Elizabeth
had, for a wonder, been liberal, and Coligny was able to glut the
avarice of his followers to the fullest extent. He set out on his
return march with high hopes, for Elizabeth had promised that
if the Huguenots would recognize her as their sovereign she
would recognize him as her lieutenant-general.* Indeed, to such
want of patriotic spirit, to such degradation had fanaticism and
ambition brought the once proud houses of Chatillon and Conde
that there was nothing they would not promise Elizabeth to at-
tain their ends. They had already surrendered Havre and Caen
into her hands. Calais and Boulogne were to follow. The pub-
lic spirit and patriotism of the Catholic aristocracy of England
when the Armada of Spain threatened their shores forms a plea-
sant contrast to the disloyal treachery of the Huguenot nobility
of France.

However, while using every effort to get the English to in-
vade France, Coligny did not neglect to avail himself of another
aid to his own ambition and his country's ruin. He had written
to Elizabeth in January that he had given three strong places of
safety on the Cher into the hands of the Germans, and he eagerly
pressed her for the money to pay them. France was to have a
semicircle of fire closing in on her, the English on the north and
the Germans on the east. So in February the Duke of Holstein,
who had been taken into the pay of Elizabeth, was to invade the
country from the Rhine, while an English army co-operated in
Normandy.

But there was one drawback in the reckoning of Coligny.
The armies might not arrive in time, for Guise had Orleans al-
most in his clutches, and with the capture of the last refuge of
the Huguenots thegr cause was hopeless. And it looked as if
Guise would carry Orleans and take, as he tersely expressed it,
the foxes in their burrow.

But years before there had been sinister prophecies in the
temples that at the moment when the fortune of Lorraine would
be highest his fall would be lowest. Occidite nobis vitulum was a

* Instructions to Throckmorton, izth of February, 1563. Record Office.

1885.] THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. 257

text often on the lips of the ministers and had ominous signifi-
cance when pointed at the great commander who troubled Israel.
It was no secret among the Huguenot leaders that if all failed
they would better their fortunes by assassination. His death had
been decreed by a secret tribunal in Germany. According to
Chantonnay, it was at Heidelberg that a meeting of Protestant
princes determined on his murder, but the disapproval of the
Duke of Wiir tern berg, a loyal gentleman whose simple and down-
right honesty of character forms a pleasant relief to the baseness
of the age, was an effectual bar to the success of the conspiracy.
In London his death by violence was reported again and again,
months before it took place, showing that the statesmen of Eliza-
beth were not strangers to the crime mooted among the fol-
lowers of Coligny. Guise had already been a mark for the as-
sassin's bullet. After wresting Rouen from the English a month
before, a Huguenot fired a pistol at him as he was walking along
the ramparts, and missed him. Bonnegarde was the name of the
would-be murderer. He was an enthusiastic Calvinist intimately
associated with Coligny.

" Did I ever do you wrong that you should attempt my life?"
said the duke when Bonnegarde was brought before him.

" No," he replied. " But you are the deadly enemy of my re-
ligion, and my zeal for the Gospel justified me in killing you."

" Well," said the duke, " if your religion teaches you to kill
one who never did you harm, mine orders me to forgive you.
Begone ! I give you your liberty. Judge from this which of our
religions is the better."

But Guise had to do with enemies who were not to be dis-
armed by generosity or heroism.

The ministers were especially vigorous in calling down the
vengeance of Heaven on the great leader who had smitten the
army of the Lord at Dreux. Beza had taken part in the battle,
and " dared to preach Christ," exclaims Ronsard indignantly, " all
blackened with smoke, bearing a morion on his head, and in his
hand a broadsword red with human blood." His fury was not
lessened by the failure of his warlike efforts in the field. He gave
full scope to it in his sermons after, and thundered forth impious
demands that Heaven should find a way of relieving the people of
God from the Lorraines. Theodore de Beza was a choice speci-
men of the Renaissance. He could turn from inditing lays mark-
ed by an elegant Latinity and an ineffable grossness worthy of his
model, Catullus, to dabble his effeminate hands in blood, with
easy grace.

VOL. XLII. 17

258 THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. [Nov.,

There was murder in the air, and, as often happens, the object
of it was the last person to have a clear perception of his danger.
Francis of Guise was fond of saying that the blade was not yet
tempered which would slay him. But the Huguenot leaders
knew better. There was one among them who, notwithstanding
a whole life stained with profligacy and treason, still entertained
some sentiments worthy of his birth. Conde shrank with horror
from participation in the criminal designs of his confederates.
When taken prisoner after the battle of Dreux he frequently
wrote to his brother, the Cardinal of Bourbon, begging him to
warn the Cardinal of Lorraine that an attempt would be made to
assassinate the Duke of Guise. Conde was sent to the strong
castle of Louches, and his first words to his attendant every morn-
ing for a fortnight were, " Has not the Duke of Guise been killed
or wounded? "

But the Duke of Guise is besieging Orleans with the same en-
ergy with which he besieged Rouen ; indeed, with prospect of
such success as must for ever ruin the future of the Reformation
in France. With Dandelot sick, with the admiral at such a dis-
tance that no relief can be expected from that quarter, the only
dread of Guise is that, in spite of his moderation and personal ef-
forts, he may not be able to repress the ardor of his soldiers, and
that the assault, which is to take place during the night-time, may
be followed by pillage. " You see," he said to Castelnau, who
had been sent by Catherine to watch him Catherine, whose sole
interest in these weary wars was a purely selfish one, and who
declared she was as ready to sit under the preachers as to go to
Mass, if thereby the authority of herself and her children could be
kept intact "you see," he said, " Dandelot is sick, and I have a
good medicine to cure him. A part of the garrison is beaten ;
they have not four hundred good soldiers. I will shut up the
river so well that all the country up to Guienne must remain safe
and free, and, with the help of God, we shall bring about some
good pacification in this realm."

Clearly the attempt that failed at Rouen must be renewed, if
the money scattered so lavishly by the miserly hand of Elizabeth
is to have any result, if Coligny be not forced to loosen his grasp
on the throat of France. But who is to be the Judith who is
ready to smite this Holofernes and free the church of God from
its oppressor? The sermons of the preachers and the songs of
the Huguenot soldiers teem with allusions to the Jewish heroine
and her victim, both before and after the death of Guise.

The hour had arrived and the man was ready. The spirit of

1 885.] THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. 259

Judith had become incarnate in the breast of a fiery young strip-
ling, scarcely nineteen, named Poltrot, Lord of Mere. He had
been a page of Catherine and had served in the army of Philip of
Spain. A true type of the fanatic he, brown and dark-eyed, fa-
miliar with bloodshed already in these cruel wars, and ready to
take desperate risks if thereby he could free the cause he had at
heart from an enemy. The sincerity and constancy of the poor
boy was manifested afterwards under the awful strain of torture,
when abandoned by his high-placed accomplices to the horrors
with which the barbarous judicial system of the age visited such
crimes.

He served in the bands that acknowledged the Vicomte
d'Aubeterre for their commander, and his boyish animosity to
Guise was often a subject of raillery to his fellow-soldiers. He
was frequently heard to exclaim, " Oh ! if I could only kill him ! "

But the Vicomte d'Aubeterre saw in the boy something more
than the extravagance of a youthful boaster. He believed he had
found a useful instrument to accomplish the crime which he and
others had long premeditated. He sent Poltrot to his brother-
in-law, the. Sieur de Soubise, who had already had some experi-
ence in training assassins. If anything could add to the pathos
that surrounds the death-bed of the great Catholic chief, it would
be the damning ingratitude of his murderers. D'Aubeterre had
been an accomplice in the plot of La Renaudie at Amboise ;
Soubise had been prosecuted for peculation. Guise saved the
life of the one and the honor of the other. He rescued Coligny
from death at Montmedy, and Poltrot he treated as a son while
the young assassin was living in his tent and watching for an
opportunity to slay him. In his kindly nature and generous
graciousness his enemies found the aids to his murder.

Soubise sent Poltrot to Coligny. " I have been informed,"
said the admiral, " that you have a great desire to serve the
religion. Serve it well, then."

This was the countersign agreed on between Coligny and
Soubise to show Poltrot that his design was known and his offer
accepted. For the admiral was true to his reputation for pru-
dence, and was careful to adopt the least compromising methods
to attain his ends. He, however, gave him three hundred, crowns
on this occasion, we are told by Smith, Elizabeth's ambassador,
and bade him seek the Duke of Guise and offer him his services.
" Then," says Etienne Pasquier, who was very unfriendly to the
house of Lorraine, " Poltrot came to Orleans to find Monsieur of
Guise, and, having made a profound reverence to the said lord,

260 THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. [Nov.,

declared that, being ill-advised, he had followed Monsieur the
Prince of Cond6, but that, being moved by a just repentance, he
was come to surrender himself into his hands, with a firm pur-
pose of doing good service to the king. Monsieur de Guise,
esteeming that these words came from the depths of his heart, did
receive the said Poltrot with a favorable eye, and even gave him
such access to his house that oftentimes they drank and ate at
the same table. They say that the gentleness of this prince had
such power that for the time Poltrot lost heart and returned
quite abruptly to the admiral, much less resolved than before, and
would have even abandoned the enterprise had he not been con-
firmed in his purpose by a minister full of understanding and per-
suasion."

The minister " full of understanding and persuasion " was
Beza. It was true that Poltrot felt for the moment the influence
that Guise's greatness of heart and soul exercised on every one
who came within its sphere, and surrendered to it. His heart
failed him and he returned three times to Coligny, begging to
be discharged from his task. The admiral was at a loss how to
deal with the scruples that had suddenly sprung up in this ten-
der conscience. What annoyed him most, he had to shoiv his
ihand too plainly. Here was a case where he would have some
difficulty in planning an assassination and afterwards discarding
his instrument. It was a case which he could not deal with alone.
He sent Poltrot to Beza. Beza was an adept in casuistry, and
such troubles of soul presented no difficulty to his keen spiritual
insight. He assured his young disciple that such scruples were
suggestions of the devil, and he could act with safety of con-
science. " The angels would assist him, and if he died he would
go straight to paradise."

Poltrot was no match for the subtlety and persuasiveness of
the great Reformer. He returned to Coligny. What passed at
this interview we do not know. We dp know that the admiral
gave the assassin one hundred crowns with which to buy a horse,
that he promised to reward his zeal and make him " the richest
man of his lineage " if he should succeed.

Meanwhile Guise was pressing the siege of Orleans. His
dread of the sufferings to which the inhabitants might be exposed
from a night assault led him to change his purpose of carrying
the city on the night of the i8th of February, and he deferred his
attack to the next day. It was the noble and womanly habit of
the Duchess of Guise, whenever she heard her husband was likely
to capture a city, to visit his camp with the object of moderating

1885.] THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. 261

the horrors of war and saving- the inhabitants from the fury of
the soldiers. She was now at Corney, a village situated on the
other bank of the Loire, and the duke prepared to visit her.

But he was delayed in the camp later than usual. He had
sent the bishop of Limoges and the Sieur d'Oyselles to Orleans
to try to bring about some accommodation with Dandelot which
would save the city and put an end to these fratricidal wars, and
now awaited their return anxiously, perhaps hoping that he would
be the bearer of tidings to his wife that would rejoice a devoted
heart saddened by the horrors of civil strife. Seeing that it was
growing late, his friend, De Crenay, left him with the object
of reassuring the duchess, who would naturally be alarmed at
the delay, knowing that the animosity of the Huguenots, exas-
perated by defeat, would shrink from no means of compassing
the destruction of her husband. De Crenay crossed the Loire in
a little boat. He could discern the dim outline of a figure walk-
ing slowly up and down the opposite bank. The stranger, whose
features were hidden from him, addressed him : " Is it long be-
fore the duke passes?" he said. " He is coming," returned Cre-
nay, and continued his journey.

A boat containing the duke and his two constant companions,
Rostaing and Villegomblain, put off from the bank immediately
afterwards and glided rapidly to the opposite shore. The duke
found a horse ready for him on landing, and, with Villegomblain
in front of him and Rostaing mounted on a little mule behind
him, he proceeded on his way. Some distance before them two
walnut-trees showed their outlines, blurred by the thick fog.
Behind a hedge that lay between them stood Poltrot, cold and
resolute. He had prayed to God that day to tell him if it was
the time to strike, and the answer from heaven had been satisfac-
tory. He stepped forward until he was within seven paces of
the duke, and then fired. The assassin, who had calculated every
chance, aimed at the arm-pit, judging that Guise would wear a
coat of mail on such an occasion. Three balls of copper shat-
tered the duke's shoulder, and he fell forward on the neck of his
steed. He straightened himself and tried to grasp the hilt of his
sword, but his arm fell lifeless by his side. Rostaing pursued
Poltrot, who disappeared rapidly in the darkness, brandishing
his sword and acting as if he was himself riding after the assas-
sin. The Spanish horse which he had bought with the gold of
Coligny soon outstripped the mule of Rostaing. He was not
fated to escape, however. He rode all night, dazed and stupefied
by the magnitude of his crime, to find himself at dawn near the

262 THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. [Nov.,

very camp from which he was flying-. He turned rein and
spurred his horse furiously, but flight was hopeless. He took
refuge in a peasant's cottage, offering the owner all the money
he possessed if he would hide him from his pursuers. The pea-
sant either feared or scorned to become his accomplice, and de-
livered him up to the soldiers who were searching for him.

Meanwhile the Duke of Guise was being carried to the pre-
sence of his wife and son, who little imagined that they were to
meet, pale and blood-stained, the great leader who an hour ago
had expected that another day would set the seal on his achieve-
ments for France and be the crowning triumph of his own glori-
ous career. Rostaing's cry for help was the first intimation the
duchess received of the fate of her spouse. Followed by her
son, the Prince of Joinville, she rushed into the hall, pale with
horror and despair, and threw herself half-fainting into his arms.
" Ah ! my God ! my God! " she stammered, *' I am the cause of
his assassination ! "

Amid the sobs of the young prince and the cries of the pages
and soldiers Guise preserved the same serenity he was accustom-
ed to display on the field of battle.

" They have long been preparing this stroke for me," he said,
" and surely I have deserved it for not having been more on my
guard." Then, turning to console his wife in her anguish, he
continued : " Truly I bring you piteous news, but, such as it is,
you must receive it from the hand of God and comply with his
holy will. As for me, little regret I have in dying, but much that
one of my nation should have done such a deed."

Addressing the Prince of Joinville, who was weeping by his
side, he said: "God grant you the grace to grow up a good
man, my son ! " All night the castle was surrounded by the offi-
cers of the royal army anxiously awaiting news of their leader's
condition. Those who were admitted to his presence had fresh
cause to admire the elevation of soul that never deserted him.
Worse than physical pain, worse than the agony of his wife and
son, was the thought that a Frenchman had done this thing.
This haunted him to the last. " Great is my grief that such an
act should be committed by a Frenchman," he said to the officers.
"But do you serve loyally God and your king."

At first the surgeons hoped that the wound would not be
mortal. The balls had pierced the shoulder, but without break-
ing any bone. And, indeed, it seems impossible to explain the
iatal termination which resulted from a mere flesh-wound, and
that not very deep, except on the theory that the balls had been

1 885.] THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. 263

poisoned. This method of warfare was not unknown to the
Huguenots, and was believed to have been adopted by them at
the battle of Dreux. All the efforts of medical skill to' save the
illustrious victim, however, proved unavailing, and his family
had to resign themselves to see the faint hopes vanish that at
first upheld them.

When all chance of human aid failed it was proposed to call
in the service of the occult arts in which the age believed. An
adept in cabalistic science was summoned, who, in the opinion of
even the most enlightened minds of the time, could effect a cure
by the application of certain cabalistic forms and words handed
down in Jewish tradition. Guise was not in advance of his age,
and believed that his life could be saved by methods which God
and holy church condemned. But even in his terrible agony
he rejected the offer with horror. " No," he replied ; " I do not
doubt your science, but your science is diabolic. Rather than
be saved by sorcery I prefer to die uprightly, as I have lived.
God is the master ; be it done according to his will."

At length the hour approached when the Christian soldier
was to complete a noble life by the most heroic of deaths. The
touching simplicity and humility which had never deserted him
in all the temptations of his magnificent career remained with
him to the end, shedding a tender light on his last moments.
The Cardinal of Guise approached the bedside of his brother and
told him that he must now prepare for death.

"Ah!" the duke returned, with a glad smile, " you do me a
true brotherly turn in urging me to think of the salvation for
which I long. I love you the better for it." Then he confessed
to the Bishop of Riez and received the last sacraments from his
hands.

He had not always escaped the temptations to which his rank
and the dangers of a voluptuous court exposed him, and, in the
final scene of all, the errors of his youth drew from him touching
expressions of repentance and regret. His fever increased dur-
ing the night to such a degree that he could not expect to live
many more minutes. The duchess and her son were summoned
to hear his last words.

" My dear companion," he said to the afflicted lady, " I have
always loved and esteemed you. I do not wish to deny that bad
counsels and the fragility of youth have led me sometimes to do
things which must have offended you. But for the last three
years you know with what respect I have lived with you, care-
fully avoiding every occasion of causing you the least annoyance

264 THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. [Nov.,

in the world. I leave you of my goods the part you may wish
to take. I leave you the children whom God has given to us. I
pray you be always a good mother to them."

" And now, my son," he continued, looking at the Prince de
Joinville, who was mingling his sobs with his mother's, "you have
heard what I said to your mother. Always have, my darling boy,
the love and fear of God principally before your eyes and in your
heart. Walk ever in the straight and narrow path according to
his voice, avoiding the broad and crooked road that leads to per-
dition. Never abandon yourself to vicious society. Seek not
advancement by bad courses, such as court gallantry or the favor
of women. Hope for honors from the generosity of your prince
and from your own labors ; and do not seek for great charges, for
they are hard to administer. Nevertheless, in those that you may
hold, employ your power and life wholly in acquitting yourself
worthily, according to your duty, to the satisfaction of God and
the king. If the goodness of the queen permits you to share in
any of my governments, do not attribute this to your own merits,
but rather to my laborious services. And do not neglect to con-
duct yourself with moderation in all. Whatever good fortune
may happen to you, be careful not to trust to it; for this world is
deceitful, and better assurance you cannot have of this than seeing
me lying here. And now, my dear son, I bequeath to you your
mother, whom you will honor and obey as God and nature di-
rect. Love your brothers as if they were your children, and
preserve union amongst them, for that will be the bond of your
strength ; and may God give you his blessing, as I give you
mine!" The little prince knelt beside the bed weeping, and,
clasping his hands, said, with a firmness that was the harbinger of
his future greatness rather than what might be expected from a
boy of his years :

" Father, I will obey you ; I swear it."

The duke took him in his arms, clasped him to his bosom, and
kissed him tenderly. Then, resting his hand on the shoulder of
the child, he addressed his brothers, the Cardinals of Guise and
Ferrara :

4< And you, messieurs my brothers, who have always loved me
vSO much, I have received many and great benefits at your hands,
which I desire that my children may return by obeying you and
doing you service ; I beg you to have_them in your care, and be
a father to them and protectors of my wife and house."

" Messieurs," continued the duke, addressing his friends and
dependants, who stood around listening in mingled admiration

1885.] THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. 265

and grief, " when God calls me to the other life, remember to
have all my family recommended to the queen's protection. As
to me, you see the state to which I am reduced by the wound of
a man who knew not what he did. 1 conjure you to persuade the
queen to pardon him in honor of God and for love of me. And I
am greatly obliged to those who have been the cause of what has
happened to me, whatever be their part in it, for I am, through
their means, near the hour when I hope to approach God and en-
joy his presence. It is the time when I should think of the of-
fences I have committed and recollect the faults of my past life."

Then he spoke of the great offices he had held, and solemnly
protested his honesty in the administration of his charges. He
expressed his heartfelt sorrow that he sometimes had been forced
to use severity in time of war. In the campaign which he had
just nearly conducted to a brilliant close he declared that no pri-
vate interest, no ambition or thought of revenge, influenced his
actions. " I desire peace," he declared, " and he who does not
desire it is no honest man nor faithful servant of the king. Shame
on him who does not wish peace ! And you, my friends, who
have done so much for my sake, I have not done much for you.
Anger has sometimes moved me to show you a want of consider-
ation. Forgive me."

These devoted friends had very little to forgive to a master
who rewarded their passionate attachment with the sympathetic
interest of a father and friend. Their very affection, however,
led them to thwart him in one of the most anxious wishes of his
heart. He wished to see Poltrot before he died, to exhort him to
repentance, to assure him of his forgiveness, and then dismiss
him in safety to treat him, in fine, just as he had treated the
Huguenot gentleman who attempted his murder at Rouen. But
a natural desire of vengeance on the part of his family eluded
the satisfaction of the generous impulse that would have softened
the dying agony of the hero.

The grandeur of this death has inspired many great writers,
but never did the last moments of Guise find a more eloquent
eulogy than that from the pen of the rigid Calvinist, Guizot. His
lofty and impartial narrative is worthy of the author and of the
hero. " I make it a duty," he says, " to retrace with fidelity that
pious and sincere death of a great man at the term of a brave and
glorious life, mingled with good as well as with evil, but without
the evil ever stifling the good. ... It is a spectacle worth gaz-
ing at in an age in which doubt and moral weakness are the com-
mon diseases even of good minds and honest men."

266 THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. [Nov.,

The duke had entered on his forty-fourth year at the time of
his death.

Crime calls for punishment. The assassination of Guise, so
coldly plotted and so darkly accomplished, was to have bloody
reprisals. "A day shall come," wrote Elizabeth's ambassador
from the scene of the tragedy, " when Coligny, in his turn, shall
be assassinated to expiate the murder of the Duke of Guise."

Meanwhile Coligny was calmly awaiting events in the Hu-
guenot camp at Blois in company with Beza and Throckmorton.
A letter came to him from Dandelot on the 28th of February, in-
forming him of the murder. Coligny treated the matter coldly,
and transmitted the note to Elizabeth, accompanied by a letter in
which the event was mentioned casually, as if an incident of
slight importance. He thought his absence from Orleans at the
time would remove any distrust that his relations with Poltrot
might have excited. Thus by his crafty removal from the city
he would accomplish two important objects he would receive
into his own hands the gold which Elizabeth had sent through
Throckmorton, and he would divert suspicion from himself. His
anticipations of the good results that would follow his politic
attitude were deceived. When the news reached the camp there
was an explosion of joy among the soldiers. They did not care
to dissemble their delight at a murder that freed them from the
terror with which the invincible leader of the Catholic army in-
spired them. Coligny was alarmed and indignant at finding that
he was admiringly pointed at as the assassin of Guise. Then
came the confession of the unhappy boy whom he had corrupted
and made the instrument of his own fanatic hate. And then
came his defence.

Stripped of its plausible affectation of rigid principle for this
Pecksniff of the sixteenth century overflowed with virtuous sen-
timents on every occasion, or had them manufactured for him by
his biographers this defence would hardly commend itself to a
jury of the present day, accustomed to weigh the details of cir-
cumstantial evidence. Those of his admirers who dismiss the
subject contemptuously with some such platitude as " The whole
life of the man is against it," as Mr. Besant does, exhibit a dis-
cretion which, if disingenuous, is at least prudent.

In spite of his protestations, or rather because of them, there
does not remain the shadow of a doubt that he was an accom-
plice in the murder. No one heard him give the order to Pol-
trot to slay his enemy, but he supplied him with the means of
executing the crime, furnished him with a horse, arms, and

1885.] THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. 267

money, and never made any concealment before him and others
of his feeling that whoever would kill the Duke of Guise would
confer the greatest benefit on the cause of religion. All the ad-
vantages of the deed were his, and just as he abandoned the vic-
tims of his ambition to the cruelty of Catherine after the failure
of the conspiracy of Amboise, so this felon knight, dead to all the
instincts of chivalry, surrendered to torture and death the poor
wretch whom he had trained to murder his enemy. The three
lengthy and awkward pleas in which he attempts to maintain his
innocence swarm with proofs of his complicity. Well does
Etienne Pasquier remark regretfully : " Coligny defends himself
so badly that those who wish him well have much sorrow there-
at."

Coligny drew up his first memoir at Caen on the I2th of
March. It bore the joint signatures of himself, Beza, and La
Rochefoucauld. It commences with a protest in the name of
God and his conscience against the assertions of "'the soi-disant
seigneur of Mere." " Without doubt," says the admiral, " I was
acquainted with him and employed him to discover secrets. I
confess that since that time when I heard him say he would kill
my Lord of Guise in his camp if he could, I did not dissuade him
from it ; but, on my life and honor, I neither urged nor approved
the crime of the sieur of Mere."

There was no need for Coligny to be more explicit with the
desperate young fanatic. When he sent Poltrot into the camp
of the duke, all aflame with religious excitement, after his pas-
sionate threats of murder, it is mockery to assert that he was
ignorant of the intentions of his agent.

But he did not deny that on several other occasions he had
also given Poltrot money, sometimes a hundred crowns and some-
times twenty. He acknowledged that at one of their interviews
" he remembered that Poltrot went so far as to say to him that
it would be easy to kill the Duke of Guise," but he paid no atten-
tion to the proposal, " deeming it quite frivolous."

All this time Poltrot was living in the camp of the duke, din-
ing at his table and the object of his special affection. Yet when
he proposed to assassinate his unsuspecting host the admiral
thought it a proposal " quite frivolous." Such innocent simpli-
city was by no means a characteristic of the sour and gloomy
Calvinist leader. It was more like the artful scheming of a con-
spirator who did not wish to show his hand.

Beza is more reserved in his admissions. He confesses that
he had " an infinite number of times desired and prayed God to

268 v THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. [Nov.,

change the heart of the said Lord of Guise, or rid this realm of
him, but had never spoken to the said Poltrot." However, he
applauded the crime itself, recognizing that " it is a just judg-
ment of God, menacing with like and greater punishments all the
sworn enemies of his holy Gospel."

Taken in connection with admissions and half-hearted denials,
the depositions of the gloomy and desperate but sincere and, in
a sense, honest fanatic who murdered Guise have a convincing
significance. In the interrogatories which he underwent before
his torture he declared firmly that Coligny, Rochefoucauld,
Theodore de Beza, and another Protestant minister, whose name
he refused to mention, urged him to the deed. He had sought
the will of Heaven in prayer. The voice of God in his heart
told him the time to strike. Why should he not admit the ad-
miral and the minister to a share of the glory, which, in his over-
wrought enthusiasm, he thought awaited the slayer of an enemy
to God and the Gospel? It was in no spirit of hostility that Pol-
trot proclaimed their participation. And in his testimony he
never varied. In the hour of hideous torture, with his poor body
racked and mangled, he persisted in his statements. His torturers
could not wring from him the names of Conde or Dandelot, but
with his dying breath he accused the admiral.

The contemporaries of Coligny would have laughed at the
notion that he had nothing to do with sowing the seed from
which he and his party reaped such a rich harvest. There is,
however, a kind of grim though unconscious humor in the way
in which his eulogists of to-day at least such of them as do not
embrace the whole problem in a few vague generalities deal
with this damning blot on the fame of their hero.

Explaining how it was that the admiral did not try to dis-
sijade Poltrot when the latter informed him of his intention of
murdering the duke, Dargaud gives this singular solution of the
difficulty :

" Coligny did not doubt that (Guise was plotting against his
life, and, in this persuasion, he did not believe himself bound to
save one who wished to kill him. Under the obsession of his
resentments, he heard, without reproval, Poltrot declare that he
would sacrifice the duke as soon as opportunity should offer.
Perhaps Coligny thought they were idle words, the mere boast-
ing of a soldier. But it cannot be contested that he was dumb.
This is his fault. His fault was his silence. He did not encour-
age the crime, but neither did he discourage it. This is a stain
on the renown of Coligny."

The account given by Sismondi, in his Memoires de Cond/,

1885.] THE DEATH OF FRANCIS OF GUISE. 269

is interesting, if only for the curious moral obliquity that marks
the writer's ethical position. An act which, done in the nine-
teenth century, would bring- the perpetrator to the scaffold, did
not, in the sixteenth, interfere with a man's title to be considered
"one of the most virtuous and religious of men."

" The Catholics," he says, "named the murder of the Duke of
Guise assassination ; the Huguenots, tyrannicide. Theodore de
Beza declared that he recognized in it a just judgment of God,
menacing with a like or greater punishment the sworn enemies
of the Gospel. Poltrot in his deposition had formally accused
Coligny of having urged him to commit this murder, and of hav-
ing furnished him with money for this purpose. In our actual
ideas we cannot conceive how a great man, one of the most religious
and virtuous men that France has ever possessed, should descend
to an action so base and criminal. Lacratelle declares that history
should not hesitate to acquit him ; a more intimate acquaintance
with the spirit of the times, however, does not confirm this de-
cision. Private war was, as much as public war, among the
habits of the gentlemen of the time. Murder was one of those
acts to which he believed himself called by his rank and which
did not inspire him with any repugnance. Coligny, in his reply,
article by article, to the deposition of Poltrot, tries to establish
that he did not seduce him, that he did not entrust him with a
mission of assassination ; but he lets it be understood that he was
aware of all of the threats of Poltrot, that he gave him the means
of fulfilling them, and that their mention did not inspire him
with any horror."

The question of Catherine's connivance at, or participation in,
the crime would form an interesting subject of discussion. The
attitude of this terrible woman to the men and movements of her
time has baffled even the analytical genius of Balzac to solve.
Undoubtedly she hated Guise, as she hated Coligny and Mont-
morency and Cond6, as she hated every one who seemed likely
to be a danger to the authority of herself and her children. She
was a tigress possessed by one instinct the desire of saving
her cubs at any expenditure of cruelty and craft. Some say she
wrote letters to the admiral, encouraging him in his project.
Poltrot had once been a favorite page of hers, and there was rea-
son to suppose that she did not lose sight of him after he left her
service. Two years later she said to Tavannes, " Those Guises
wished to make themselves kings, but I kept them from that be-
fore Orleans." Tavannes, at least, does not conceal his belief
that Catherine was a consenting party to the crime.

270 A CHAT BY THE WAY. [Nov.,

A CHAT BY THE WAY.

THE most awkward moment of an acquaintance is when you
first make it. What are you going to say ? Nine cases out of
ten you take refuge in the " weather," and, hav-ing launched the
ship of conversation upon those familiar and ordinary waters,
you begin to steer into less-frequented channels. At its best,
however, I believe there is not one out of every thousand people
who knows what a conversation should be. Some talk altogether
with their mouths ; these I would call inflationists. They are all
words, lip-movement, and lingual oscillation. Some talk with their
hearts in their mouths, and bespatter you regardlessly with all the
sympathies of human nature until your weak nerves tingle under
the irritation. There are jesting, smiling talkers, serious, frowning
talkers ; but the most exasperating of all conversationalists is the
perpetual listener. A simple "yes" and "no" is the substance
and refrain of his converse. You begin to feel as if you were
giving a lecture to a very stupid audience. A pause comes
about. What in the world shall you next say ? You set about
cudgelling your brains for some topic to fill up the breach without
seeming to force matters. You wait for some reply, some little
suggestion, that may open a loophole of escape; you are as
anxious for this reinforcement as Wellington was for Bliicher at
Waterloo. If you could only rouse the slightest little flame to
set the fire burning and kindle the slowly-dying embers once
more into a glow ! But in vain you forage through the fields of
memory, art, science, and literature. Your dumb companion
blows the chilly breath of silence over the warm glow of enthu-
siasm which you have just managed to excite in your own mind.
His apathetic "yes " or " no," like a gust of cold wind in a dreary
passage-way, extinguishes your dimly flickering candle and
leaves you once more in the dark. A conversation like that is as
bad as the rack and thumb-screw. Not so bad, but bad enough,
is the infliction of the perpetual talker, who glibly and, it seems,
conscientiously pours forth an uninterrupted stream of perennial
converse. You manage to edge in a remark, such as " Well, I
do not altogether think " when, at a leap displaying a verbal
and vocal agility which might do credit to an acrobat were it in
the physical order, our friend jumps into your remark, topples it
over with a few hasty, well-delivered epithets, and is off at a

1885.] A CHAT BY THE WAY. 271

break-neck speed a hundred yards ahead, not even deigning to
look back to see if you are hurt by the fall. If he talks well and
intelligently, this sort of thing can be tolerated once in a while,
for excellence is admirable, even at your own disadvantage; but
if he be flippant and of little weight I close my ears and dream
of pleasanter things afar off.

A conversation in its proper meaning is a mutual, equal inter-
change of ideas and opinions, one successively suggestive of the
other. Conversation should be a ball, tossed from hand to hand
gracefully and without violence, neither endangering the players
nor the object of their play. I say something which throws a
spark into your imagination or memory, and then you deliver
yourself according to your calibre, which in turn suggests some-
thing else to me ; and so a conversation is generated, whereby
you and I become better acquainted and maybe stancher friends.
A good conversationalist is one who talks suggestively ; he does
not cover the whole subject in a single peremptory sentence, nor
does he appropriate all the time to his own vocabulary. He
likes to hear you as well as himself; you are fuel to his fire.
He likes to shake*you mentally by the hand, and feel what sort
of grip you have, and he neither runs away nor intrudes upon
you. He neither talks much nor little. If a man must have one
of these faults let it be the first; for man was made to be a
social being, to communicate his thoughts and not hide them.
If a great talker bore you, still you have refuge in his very
loquacity by remaining heedlessly silent to what he is saying ;
whereas with one who does not talk at all or very little the
burden of the whole conversation is thrown upon your own
shoulders.

Speaking of conversation calls to my mind a kindred subject.
Have you ever accurately noticed voices? I think the voice is
an epitome of the whole character. It is a sort of abridged edi-
tion of the man, in which he is summed up in little, at least to
one who has had any practice in estimating voices. Of course it
requires a good and a skilled ear to do this, just as it requires a
musical ear to determine the quality of an instrument from its
tone. The voice is the tone of the character, whose quality is
made known by it. This I would call the moral philosophy of
the voice. There is as much difference in voices as in faces, and
for the same reason the complexion of both results from the cha-
racter. I never heard two voices exactly alike, just as I never
saw two faces exactly similar. Even if the features be built on
the same model, you will always find that indefinable difference

272 A CHAT^BY THE WAY. [Nov.,

of expression which flows from the individuality. Individuality
always diversifies even common matter. The voice is the speak-
ing expression. The difference will as surely be found there as
in the face. There are high, shrill voices; deep, full voices;
harsh and smooth voices ; abrupt voices ; staccato voices ; flow-
ing, well-modulated voices ; voices whose syllables snap out like
the crack of a whip ; voices that drawl their words, and 4< like a
wounded snake drag their slow length along " ; cheery voices ;
sad voices ; serious and flippant voices ; passionate and cold
voices ; dissipated and fresh voices ; vigorous, hearty voices ;
weak and frightened voices in short, as many voices as indi-
viduals. There is, however, a certain kind of voice which I
never heard except in two people. It was a voice velvety, soft,
and caressing ; it seemed to put arms around about you, stroke
you gently, and fondle you as a mother does her child. Strange
to say, one of these two was the most uncouth, shock-headed,
cross-eyed, ungainly-looking individual I ever had the fortune to
come across. He was a child of Hibernian parentage, a college
mate of mine, and went under the generic name of " Pat " amongst
his companions. Well do I remember the first time these eyes
looked upon that wild visage. I had just entered upon my uni-
versity course, and was one day standing in the mam entrance of
the class buildings, in doubt whether to enter, for I was uncer-
tain if my recitations were being held there at that hour or not.
As I stood hesitating "Pat" emerged from the interior. His
mouth was a wide, straight cut above the expanse of a heavy,
bony jaw ; above it, turned upwards poking towards the stars,
curled a determined, broad, snub nose, on either side of which
two little, piggy eyes, decidedly crossed, gleamed from under
huge, shaggy eyebrows, and over all straight, coarse, unkempt
brown hair straggled down a forehead bulging and low. I was
startled at this apparition, which I scarcely believed human.
What a bloodthirsty villain he would make ! Such a man would
not hesitate to blow up two or three parliaments, a dozen czars,
and murder babes for sport. No doubt this was the college
bully. I made up my mind to avoid him. " Are you looking for
anybody? Can I assist you?" These words came intoned in
the sweetest and gentlest voice that ever struck my ear. To my
utter astonishment they issued from the cavern beneath that
ascending nose ! For a moment I could not reply, but, recover-
ing myself as quickly as possible, I told him what I wanted, and
he conducted me to my class-room. I felt as if I had been gently
caressed, petted, soothed, and consoled. Pat and I afterwards

1885.] A CHAT BY THE WAY. 273

became fast friends, and the many sallies of true Hibernian wit
which I have heard issue in those gentle, velvety tones from his
lips yet echo in the memory and bring back the hearty laughter
and those happy college days of old. As I call up that face, which
seemed to me so monstrous at first sight, it becomes invested
with the beauty of a voice whose sounds are sweeter music than
symphonies and nocturnes. Where art thou now, soft voice ?
Many years ago didst thou leave me far back in the vistas of
time, and the shadows have closed around thee, as fainter and
fainter thy sweet sounds grow in the distance. Peace be with
thee ! and mayest thou find this world's hard way full of all gen-
tleness and softness, even as thou thyself wert in the days gone
by when thou and I were boys together.

Who was the other person with that peculiar voice? I will
tell you if you promise never to speak of it to anybody else. It
was a woman's voice, and I fell madly in love with it. I never
heard such a voice before or since, and never again expect to,
even to that time when the soul shall be

" On the low, dark verge of life,
The twilight of eternal day."

It was low and soft and tender, yet full and clear, and as mel-
low as an autumn day golden with the yellow wheat and all
the glories of the turning leaf. It had to a wonderful degree
the caressing quality. When she spoke I felt that I was like a
child being caressed and soothed. If you have ever thrown a
pebble into very deep water, and followed it in imagination as it
sinks down into the quiet depths, very far down, until it rests
on the bottom peacefully and serenely, far below the tumultuous,
riotous waves above, you may form some idea how the tones of
her voice sank into my soul. What became of her? Married
now, I believe. It is some years since I have seen or heard of
her. It is strange how we meet people, learn to love them, and
then Fate snatches them away from us. As we sail down the
stream of Time we meet with many a craft in whose company we
would like to make the voyage of life. But, alas ! they are swifter
or slower sailers than we are, and we have only time to smile a
greeting, wave a hand in farewell over the broadening waters,
and then pass on, for ever lost from the parted ones, only know-
ing them as memories, mere phantoms of the past, which bring a
purple pain into the heart and a sigh for the good we have lost.
"We are such stuff as dreams are made of." I once watched a
thistledown as it was borne along on the currents of air now
VOL. XLII. 18

274 NOVEL-WRITING AS A SCIENCE. [Nov.,

here, now there ; now in the sunshine, now in the shadow ; at one
moment falling to the earth, and then borne lightly and swiftly
upward as a fresh puff of wind would catch it and it occurred to
me how like this thistledown is our life, blown hither and thither
on the breath of circumstance ; how the winds of fortune carry us
around and around in their eddies, now letting us down to earth,
now lifting us aloft into the sunshine of prosperity, and mean-
while we are drifting, drifting on to the portal

" Where sits the Shadow feared of man."

NOVEL-WRITING AS A SCIENCE.

MR. HOWELLS, in The Rise of Silas Lapham* takes several oc-
casions to give vent to his theory of novel-writing. He does
well. What he and his kind are really driving at when they
write novels is something that many people have been puzzling
to find out. It is a good thing that at last he should formulate
his purpose in more or less plain black and white. In the fol-
lowing conversation about novels Mr. Howells gives us many
hints of his belief :

" ' It's astonishing,' said Charles Bellingham, * how we do like the books
that go for our heart-strings. And I really suppose that you can't put
a more popular thing than self-sacrifice into a novel. We do like to see
people suffering sublimely.'

"'There was talk, some years ago,' said James Bellingham, ' about
novels just going out.'

"'They're just coming in ! ' cried Miss Kingsbury.

'" Yes,' said Mr. Sewell, the minister, 'and I don't think there ever was
a time when they formed the whole intellectual experience of more people.
They do greater mischief than ever.'

'" Don't be envious, parson,' said the host.

" ' No,' answered Sewell, ' I should be glad of their help. But these
novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them excuse me, Miss
Kingsbury are ruinous! . . . The novelists might be the greatest possible
help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true pro-
portion and relation ; but for the most part they have been, and are, alto-
gether noxious.'

"This seemed sense to Lapham; but Bromfield Corey asked: 'But
what if life as it is isn't amusing ? Aren't we to be amused ? '

" ' Not to our hurt,' sturdily answered the minister."

* The Rise of Silas Lapham. By William D. Howells. Boston : Ticknor & Co. 1885.

1885.] NOVEL-WRITING AS A SCIENCE^ 275

We cannot help fancying the similarity of the names Sevvell
and Howells seems to favor the notion that in the character of
this minister Mr. Howells himself aspires to enact the part of
Greek chorus to his story. At any rate, it is plain from the
above passage that Mr. Howells regards the profession of
the novelist as quite missionary ; and his minister confirms this
conclusion by several other dogmatisms. In fact, he uses a crisis
of the story to point the moral of his theory, and one of the most
vivid impressions taken from The Rise of Silas Lap ham is that of
the Rev. Mr. Sewell, with the air of a Boston Chadband, de-
livering a severe homily to a pair of old people on the part play-
ed by the novels of the old fashion in creating the love-tangle be-
tween their children that they have come to consult him about.

It is really very commendable of Mr. Howells to take this
high and severe view of his mission in life. And there are many
reasons why it is important that we should watch with interest
how he proceeds when he sets out to teach the world the way
novels ought to be written. There is no use denying it, light lite-
rature forms an enormous share perhaps, with the newspapers,
the entire amount of the reading done by a large mass of our
people ; and it is useless to pretend that such constant dropping
does not wear an impress on the minds and consciences on which
it falls. The fact may be deplored, but it is a fact nevertheless
and should be recognized. And since it is ever the aim of the
church to seize the weapons of the enemy and turn them against
himself, there is no reason why light literature should form an ex-
ception. The novelist who can handle his art so as at the same
time to delight and to better his readers performs a mighty and a
good work. Mr. Howells' minister is almost right in placing his
influence as next to that of the clergyman.

Mr. Howells has never hesitated to roundly express his con-
tempt for the methods of all the novelists that preceded him.
It is not very long ago since he wrote that he and Mr. Henry
James, Jr., were the only novelists who understood their busi-
ness ; all others, even Thackeray and Dickens, were only tinkers
at the art as compared with these accomplished craftsmen. He
goes still further now, and declares in effect that what the others
wrote were not novels at all. " Novels are only just coming in,"
says one of his characters, meaning the novels of Mr. Howells
and Mr. James.

This is a great deal to undertake ; but Mr. Howells means what
he says. His method of writing novels is certainly revolutionary,,
and we have seen that he writes them with the hope of serving

276 NOVEL-WRITING AS A SCIENCE. [Nov.,

a praiseworthy end. Let us take a glance at Mr. Howells'
method, and see whether it is calculated to serve the end he
has in view.

The revolution attempted by Mr. Howells is as simple as it
is great. He regards novel- writing as science and not as art.

This is, perhaps, a natural outcome of what Mr. Spencer would
call heredity and environment. The Puritan mind is scientific,
analytical. It is too severe and cold and suspicious to fuse into
the constructive enthusiasm of art. And the last thing it would
dream of would be to pursue art for art's sake, or even science
for the sake of science alone. It must have an object in view,
some useful end to serve. Thus it is curious to note how the
Puritan mind in Mr. Howells, finding itself, by a freak of circum-
stance, working at an art, takes it strongly in its hands and
transforms it into a science, and a science intended to have a
useful application.

Two men study some object in nature, say a plant. One of
them will drink in with his eye all its visible beauty, its form,
its color, the stirring of the wind and the delicate play of light
.and shade among its leaves. He seizes a brush and with a few
bold strokes reproduces all these traits upon a canvas. That is
Art. The other observer plucks up the plant by the roots and
brings it home to his herbarium. There he makes minute and
careful diagrams ot it, probably with the aid of a camera. He
measures it and weighs it. He cuts it up into sections and
makes drawings of the sections. He analyzes the clay at its
roots, he counts its juices and tests for acids in them. That is
Science ; and therein lies the difference between the novel-writing
of, say, Nathaniel Hawthorne and novel-writing as Mr. Howells
pursues it.

?- In this way Mr. Howells has produced the most scientifi-
cally realistic novel that has yet been written. M. Zola's books
are as the awkward gropings of an amateur compared with this
finished treatise. The field that Mr. Howells takes for his inves-
tigation is, he tells us, " the commonplace." By studying " the
common feelings of common people " he believes he " solves the
riddle of the painful earth/'

P.--S? Silas Lapham is a type of the self-made American. He has
.grown rich through the instrumentality of a mineral paint of
which he is the proprietor. He lives in Boston and entertains
social ambitions for his wife and two daughters. Bromfield
Corey is a Boston aristocrat with a wife, two daughters, and a

1885.] NOVEL-WRITING AS A SCIENCE. 277

son. The Laphams and the Coreys are thrown together in con-
sequence of a contemplated misalliance between young Corey
and one of the Lapham daughters ; and in the contrasts and de-
velopments that appear among all these " types " is supposed to
consist the main interest of the story. There are no incidents
that are not sternly commonplace, but everything connected
with these incidents and their psychological effect on the actors
is analyzed and detailed with microscopic accuracy.

The realism of Mr. Howells has been compared to photo-
graphy, it is so exact and so minute. We do not think this is a
fair criticism. Exactitude and minuteness are not to be quar-
relled with on the score of art. They are admissible, and have
been admitted, into the finest art. No photograph can be more
exact and minute than the little canvases of Meissonier, and the
undue rendering of detail does not offend critics in the works of
pre-Raphaelite artists. If Mr. Howells adhered to the principles
of art, placing- the details in their proper perspective, and so
forth, we think he should be welcome to as many of them as he
pleased. Tourguenieff, in some of his scenes, manages not to
omit a single detail, but he manages it with such artistic feeling
and skill that the effect is like that of a picture by Meissonier.

Photography is too near akin to art even though it be a
relationship by the left hand to be used as a comparison for
any work of Mr. Howells'. Photography, as generally under-
stood and practised, aims first of all at the picturesque. Art
is the sun that warms its horizon ; to be as close an imitation
of art as possible is its highest aspiration. Now, Mr. Howells,
though a mechanic an anatomist, shall we say ? of exquisite
skill, despises art. Therefore his work should be compared rather
to a series of scientific diagrams than to photographs. It is not
Mr. Howells' details that offend the artistic eye ; it is the plans,
the sections, the front elevations, the isometric projections he
gives of his subjects.

He studies men and women as a naturalist does insects. We
read his book on the manners, habits, sensations, nerves of a cer-
tain set of people as we might a treatise on the coleoptera. And
he investigates and expounds his theme with the same soulless-
ness and absence of all emotion. Even Mr. Henry James, beside
this chilly savant, appears quite a child of sentiment. He is capa-
ble of receiving " impressions " which, in Mr. Howells' eyes,
would be a most unscientific weakness and he manages to retain
some smack of art about the work he does.

Is this kind of novel-writing an elevating pursuit? and is the

278 NOVEL-WRITING AS A SCIENCE. [Nov.,

reading- of it beneficial? To* these two queries the answer must
be emphatically, No.

Novels like Silas Lapham mark a descent, a degradation. Of
course art is debased when it has fallen so low into realism. Art
is ever pointing upward, and the influence of true art upon man
is to make him look upward, too, to that vast where his Ideal sits,

" pinnacled in the lofty ether dim,"

where all is beautiful, but where all .is immeasurable by him until
he beholds it with his glorified intelligence. Science points
downward, and when science is unguided by religion it leads its
followers lower and lower into the mud beneath their feet. And
even as we see some scientists making a distinct "progress"
downward from the study of the higher to that of the lower
forms of animal life, so in the novel-writing of Mr. Howells we
can already mark this scientific decadence. He began with peo-
ple who were not quite commonplace, whose motives and acts
and ideas were a little bit above the common. He now declares
that nothing is worthy to be studied but the common feelings of
common people ; and having begun Silas Lapham with people
who were inoffensively commonplace, he was unable to finish
the book without falling a stage lower. Towards the end he in-
troduces a young woman who speaks thus of her husband : " If I
could get rid of Hen I could manage well enough with mother.
Mr. Wemmel would marry me if I could get the divorce.
He said so over and over again." He introduces a scene
in which this young woman, her tipsy sailor-husband, her
drunken mother, and Silas Lapham as the family benefactor,
figure a scene that, for hopeless depravity both in the author
and subject, out-Zolas Zola. The old woman, who has a bottle
in her hand, complains- of her son-in-law not giving the daughter
an opportunity to obtain a divorce. " ' Why don't you go off on
some them long v'y'ges?' s'd I. It's pretty hard when Mr.
Wemmel stands ready to marry Z'rilla and provide a comfortable
home for us both I han't got a great many years more to live,
and I should like to get more satisfaction out of 'em and not be
beholden and dependent all my days to have Hen, here, blockin'
the way. I tell him there'd be more money for him in the end ;
but he can't seem to make up his mind to it." Again says this
old harridan : " Say, Colonel, what should you advise Z'rilla do
about Mr. Wemmel ? I tell her there an't any use goin' to the
trouble to git a divorce without she's sure about him. Don't
you think we'd ought to git him to sign a paper, or something,

1885.] NOVEL-WRITING AS A SCIENCE. 279

that he'll marry her if she gits it ? I don't like to have things
goin' at loose ends the way they are. It an't sense. It an't
right." Before Mr. Howells reaches the end of the book he
makes even the worthy Mrs. Lapham suspect her husband of
infidelity and make a scene, accusing him, in the hearing of her
children. It has seldom been our duty to read a book whose
moral tone was so unpleasantly, so hopelessly bad ; it is a book
without heart or soul, neither illumined by religion nor warmed
by human sympathy. This is all the more astonishing that Mr.
Howells seems convinced that he is fulfilling a high moral pur-
pose in writing it. It might be explicable on the theory
that it was the legitimate outcome of the doctrine of total de-
pravity ; but it is more probably the logic of the downward
progress of godless science. We shall not be surprised if the
next book of Mr. Howells deal with characters and feelings that
shall be so far below the commonplace from which he has already
fallen that even M. de Goncourt will not enjoy reading about
them. It is the progress from man to the apes, from the apes
to the worms, from the worms to bacteria, from bacteria to
mud. It is the descent to dirt.

But the consolation in regarding Mr. Howells' work is that it is
bound to sicken of its own poison. It cannot do any appreciable
damage to the novel-reading public, for the very good reason that
the novel-reading public, when the present access of curiosity has
subsided, are not likely to read it. The force of the novel consists
in its popularity, and the popularity of the novel depends on cer-
tain well-defined elements, all of which Mr. Howells discards from
his work. Dramatic action, surprising plot, thrilling and unusual
incidents, interesting and uncommonplace characters, breadth of
scene all of these, among many other things, people look for in
their novels, for they look to their novels to take them out of them-
selves, out of their everyday lives, and to lead them into other
worlds for the time being. In these and similar things lies the
novel's mighty and subtle spell ; and the only way the reformer
can succeed in this field is by snatching this spell from the hands
of the evil-worker and using it himself as a beneficent power.
Mr. Howells seems to have as great a horror of such sorcery as
his Puritan forbears had of the arts of the witches of Salem.
Therefore he can never hope to reach the class he expects to
benefit by his new style of literature. People read novels to be
amused, and he hotly repudiates the intention of amusing them.
People read novels because they are " light literature." Mr.
Howells offers them heavy literature. Instead of reforming the

280 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

novel he has transformed it, so that what he produces is not a
novel at all. Consequently the people who want novels will not
want Mr. Howells' ; and this is surely a relief to know. Mr.
Howells will be read only by a species of scientific and hard-
minded people, which we are led to understand flourishes best
in Boston ; and this species is past harming. But such a class
of readers would be just as well, if not better, satisfied if Mr.
Howells called his work by its right name a treatise and not
by its pseudonym ; and it would simplify matters if the scientific
school generally were to label their books " Treatise on Com-
monplace People," " Treatise on Drabs," " Treatise on Drunk-
ards," and so on, as they went through the catalogue.

NEW PUBLICATIONS,

SUMMA PHILOSOPHICA JUXTA SCHOLASTICORUM PRINCIPIA. Complectens
Logicam et Metaphysicam. Auctore P. Nicolao Russo, S.J., in Bos-
toniensi Collegio Philosophic Lectore. Bost.: Apud T. B. Noonan et
Soc. 1885.

It is very difficult to make a good compendium, especially so in philoso-
phy. Such a compendium is, however, necessary as a text-book for stu-
dents who must complete their course in one year. Father Russo's reason
for preparing his new compendium is, that he has not found any one of the
existing ones to suit him in teaching his class. Some, he says, are only
the large text-book of some author condensed, so that in respect to matter
and method they are equally ill-adapted to the juvenile mind with the
uncondensed work ; we should add, even more difficult and unsuitable.
Others, again, do little more than make an index of questions treated in
text-books an analytical abstract, from which the pupil learns what topics
should have been but are not treated of in his little philosophical sum.

Father Russo's plan is to treat of the topics of greater moment and ne-
cessity in a somewhat diffuse manner, in a style made as plain and simple
as possible, omitting or barely noticing others. Thus he has made a text-
book which can be finished in one year, containing the results of his own
personal experience as a teacher. We think he has succeeded very well in
accomplishing what he wished and intended. His philosophical doctrine
is in most respects the same with that of the famous and admirable text-
book of a three years' course by Father Liberatore. Directors 'of studies
in colleges where a course of one year in philosophy is made with a Latin
text-book will do well to examine carefully this compendium.

An English compendium of the same kind is very much needed. A
mere translation of a good Latin compendium would not, however, perfect-
ly answer the purpose.

We must not omit to praise the excellent and creditable manner in
which the publishers of Father Russo's book have fulfilled their work, so

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 281

as to add much to its value as a text-book for practical use. There are,
however, some errors of the press needing correction.

DE DEO DISPUTATIONES METAPHYSICS. Auctore J. M. Piccirelli, S.J., in
Urcesiensi Coll. Max. ejusdem Soc. Theol. Dogm. Prof. Lut. Paris. :
Lecoffre. 1885.

Father Piccirelli has prepared this text-book, not as a part of the course
of theology, but for the third year of philosophy. It is a bulky octavo of
nearly six hundred pages, laying out very heavy work for a class which is
to master its contents in one year. The reason for thus amplifying the
treatise on natural theology is that more time may be gained for certain
abstruse and difficult questions in the class of theologians. The author's
treatment is very rigidly logical and scholastic. A dissertation on St. An
selm's argument in the Prologium, in which he takes a different view of it
from the common one, is the part of the work which will first awaken the
attention of a reader of theological treatises, and be looked at with the
greatest curiosity and interest. The author maintains that St. Anselm did
not intend to present his argument as a pure and independent a priori
demonstration of the existence of God, but as a supplement and completion
of the argument which proceeds from data given either by faith or by a
conclusion of natural reason from effects to the First Cause. The author
seems to have laid himself out especially to discuss thoroughly the ques-
tion of the Concursus Divinus. The volume is one which we think will
prove to be of great utility to teachers of theology and to those students
who can read it understandingly.

HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, ETC. By Dr. H. Briick. Translated
by Rev. E. Pruente. Vol. II. Benzigers. 1885.

We have noticed the first volume of this history, now complete. It is a
compendious manual intended as a text-book. The Right Rev. Mgr. Cor-
coran, in an introduction prefixed to this second volume, says of the his-
tory " that it fulfils all the conditions of a good, substantial church his-
tory, which will be satisfactory both to students and to ordinary readers."
There is no more competent judge of such matters in this country than Dr.
Corcoran, and his opinion may safely be taken as final and conclusive. We
concur in it after having made a sufficient examination to warrant a de-
cided judgment of our own on its merits, and recommend it to students and
to readers in general as the best book of its kind thus far published. Dr.
Corcoran's introduction is admirable. He presents some very just views
on the requisites and qualities of a truly impartial and trustworthy histor-
ian, with a refutation of the calumny against our best Catholic historians
that they have not written history, as it ought to be, with truth and know-
ledge. In that connection he alludes to Janssen and the advantage which
would accrue from an English translation of his History of the German
People. We are glad to be able to state that a translation is in course of
preparation in England.

We note among the good features of Father Pruente's edition of Dr.
Briick's history the convenient chronological table of popes, emperors,
kings, and important events, the separate tables of popes and councils, and

282 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

the index of titles. We are pleased to see that the Pisan popes are rele-
gated to their proper position as intruders a matter in which some respect-
able Catholic writers have fallen into mistakes. So, also, we like the ac-
count given of the scholastics and mystics much better than the one given
in some other histories. In respect to the much-disputed question of the
Templars, the author leans very decidedly to the side which in great mea-
sure exculpates them, although he is not very positive in his judgment.
In respect to recent ecclesiastical persons and events in Germany, this
book is an authority of the greatest weight, because of its author's minute
knowledge and his very clear and correct statements. We look to see it
very soon universally adopted as a text-book.

THE D^MON OF DARWIN. By the Author of Bzogen. Boston : Estes &
Lauriat. 1885.

We are obliged to confess that we have been very much disappointed
in this little essay of Dr. Coues'. His former brochure, Biogen, contained
much that was of value and importance, and was besides pleasant reading,
written, as it was, with brightness and strength. The Dcemon of Darwin, on
the contrary, is verbose, grandiloquent, even bizarre, both in its diction and
its form ; and it has called into exercise all our patience and all the respect
due to Dr. Coues' name to induce us to read it through. And when
we have read it we do not find in all this cloud of words anything more
than a statement of the theory of] evolution developed so as to include
spiritual substance. Verily, to use the author's expression, we have here
" homuncular vibratiunculations " with a vengeance, offering nothing, so far
as Dr. Coues' contribution goes, to criticise, argue with, or refute. The
Third Part is the only one which has any value, and that but little. If all
propagators of erroneous notions in theology, philosophy, or science would
wrap them up in diction similar to this, the Congregation of the Index
might cease to exist, for such works would do no harm.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOHN BROWN, LIBERATOR OF KANSAS AND
MARTYR OF VIRGINIA. Edited by F. B. Sanborn. Boston : Roberts
Brothers. 1885.

John Brown had worked himself up to the idea of absorbing the au-
thority of the state and the church in himself. Thence and then his career
in Kansas, and " the foray in Virginia," and the gallows. John Brown
was, in other words, a logical Puritan a fanatic. And this man is held up
by a certain class of New-Englanders as the ideal American ! And why
not, if one has been trained to give up or deny all standard of right and
wrong except his own interpretation of things? It is only a question of
disposition or temperament whether such a training will turn out a John
Brown, or a Freeman, or a Guiteau, or a free-lover Bennett. By this it is
not meant that the soul may not become the true interpreter of the Holy
Spirit. To become this interpreter, however, requires a training which
these folks ignore and pretend to contemn. These men were logically
consistent ; they drew the practical conclusion from the premise furnished
them by Puritanism. No wonder John Brown was praised by the logical
descendants of the Puritans by such men as Emerson, Thoreau, and Al-
cott, and that F. B. Sanborn edits his life and letters.

1 885.] NEW PUBLICA TIONS. 283

THE AGE OF LEAD : A Twenty Years' Retrospect. In three Fyttes. " Vse
Victis." Second edition. Edinburgh : David Douglas. 1885.;

In form this is a poem. Some of it is poetry, and certain parts are very
good poetry ; but it is carelessly written and occasionally borders too
closely on doggerel rhyming. It is a clever and ingenious jeu d' esprit, as
a whole*; as an historical retrospect extremely interesting and instructive.
We quote the closing lines as an average specimen of the style of the poem,
and because we heartily concur in their sentiment :

" To strike the fetters off the slave,

To soothe and succor the distressed,
More heartfelt joy to Gordon gave

Than all his triumphs East and West.
Weep not for him, for he sleeps well,

Entombed by yonder mighty river,
The dwellers on whose banks will tell

Of his heroic deeds for ever.
But weep, ye Britons, one and all,

Weep on ; your tears are shed in vain.
You never can the past recall,

You ne'er shall see his like again.
Intent alone on place and power,

You left your hero to his fate,
Wasting away each precious hour

In never-ending, dull debate.
And can you for the past atone

By heaping honors on his name ?
Vain monuments of brass or stone

Will but perpetuate your shame.
And when the records of the age " j

Are writ in blood, as they must be,
Their brightest and their blackest page

Shall still be Gordon's history."

These last four lines are fine, and show ^what the author could do if he
would take more pains.

NARRATIVES OF SCOTTISH CATHOLICS UNDER MARY STUART AND JAMES
VI., now first printed from the original manuscripts in the secret
archives of the Vatican and other collections. Edited by William
Forbes-Leith, S.J. Edinburgh : William Paterson. 1885. (For sale by
the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

It was Always a puzzle to us how a people so tenacious and clear-
sighted as the Scotch should become Protestant, having been once
Catholic. Books such as the above-named give us- insight and help
greatly to solve this riddle. We thank both editor and publisher of this
and similar volumes. Let us hope this will be patronized and give encour-
agement for more. By and by we shall have the material to write what
is indeed a desideratum, a true and complete history of religion among the
Scots.

THE LIFE OF FATHER LUKE WADDING, Founder of St. Isidore's College,
Rome ; author of Scriptores Or dints Minorum, Annales Minorum. By
the Rev. Joseph O'Shea, O.S.F. With portrait. Dublin : M. H. Gill &
Son. 1885. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co., New

, York.)

It is rather strange that Irishmen, who are exceptional in the honor

284 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

they pay their heroes and martyrs, should appear to have neglected the
memory of Father Luke Wadding. No good biography of him exists,
nor indeed any book devoted especially to his life and work, except the
volume under notice. A monograph by D'Arcy McGee in his Gallery of
Irish Writers, and an obituary by his nephew, Harold, are the only publi-
cations dealing expressly with the career of this illustrious Irish ecc"lesias-
tic and patriot, who died more than two hundred years ago. True Mr.
Gilbert and Father Meehan, in their histories of the Kilkenny Confedera-
tion, have given Luke Wadding his proper place in connection with that
event, but they illustrate and that not entirely but one episode of his
life, and one side of his character.

r Luke Wadding, born in Waterford in 1588, of a good old family, became
one of those Irish exiles who, on the persecutions of Elizabeth, transferred
the lustre of Irish genius to the pulpits, courts, and armies of the European
continent. After an excellent early education in Kilkenny, on the death
of his parents, he entered the Irish College at Lisbon, Portugal, where
he spent a few years. His brother Matthew, a man of wealth and ranked
as a grandee of the Spanish court, then took Luke to live with him, and
sought to make a match for the brilliant young Irishman with one of the
daughters of the Spanish nobility. But Luke discovered a pronounced voca-
tion for the religious state, and insisted on joining the order of St. Francis.
After a severe training at Salamanca and at Rome he was duly ordained. His
superior had early noticed in him the signs of remarkable genius and piety,
and he was not many years on the mission before his renown had spread
over Italy and Spain as the foremost preacher and confessor of the
Franciscan Order. He became a profound scholar, and he was one of the
first in Europe to point out the paganizing tendency of the renaissance
that was then in bloom in Southern Europe, and was extending its witche-
ries in all directions from the palaces of cardinals to the courts of kings.
Luke Wadding was overwhelmed with honors at Rome, but he modestly
shrank from them. He set himself to establishing a college for the training
of Irish Franciscans in the Eternal City and, with the liberal aid of the
Holy Father, he succeeded in founding the celebrated college of St. Isidore
on the site of the villa of Lucullus, on the Pincian hill. This college be-
came the seat of his dearest labor, and here, in addition to devising and
carrying out a masterly curriculum, he completed several important lite-
rary works, the best known being the Scriptores Ordinis Minorum and
Ann ales Minorum.

But the side of his career that will most attract the secular historian
was that in which he manifested his extraordinary devotion to his native
land. In fomenting and aiding the Catholic rebellion of 1641 in Ireland
no one took a more active or efficient part than the exile Father Luke
Wadding. The bishops and clergy of Ireland having in synod declared
that the war the Irish people were engaged in was justified, it was Luke
Wadding, their agent, who obtained for the cause the blessing and aid of
the pope. But he was not content with rendering spiritual and platonic
assistance. He set forth on a mission through the great cities of Italy and
Spain, like another Peter the Hermit, preaching an Irish crusade, exhort-
ing Irish officers and soldiers in the service of foreign armies to go to the
rescue of their mother country, and begging aid in money and arms from the

1885.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 285

merchant princes of Venice and the grandees of Madrid. There is hardly
in history a more touching episode than this tour of Father Wadding's.
He comes to Florence ; for days the people have been flocking in to hear
this great preacher whose renown is on every tongue and whose magic
words have thrilled them more than once before. What does he come now
to say with such special emphasis ? In front of the grand Duomo, where
Savonarola stood, he stands, the cardinal bishop and his gorgeous re-
tinue by his side, and with the pathetic foreign burr upon his speech he
tells the mighty multitude of the wrongs and woes of the island of his
birth! Qn Pentecost Sunday the doge and. municipal council of Ve-
nice, with deputations from all the public bodies, societies and confraterni-
ties, assembled around him to listen to a similar story on the square of St.
Mark. In this way was Father Luke Wadding able to send thousands of
crowns to the Irish treasury, with arms and munitions of war under the
charge of expert officers who had won their spurs in Flanders and France.
The pope himself contributed sixty thousand dollars and sent a nuncio,
John Baptist Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo, to represent him at the Con-
federation of Kilkenny. One of the last acts of that Confederation was in
its great gratitude, at the suggestion of Lord Ormond, to pass a resolution,
which the Catholic prelates and nobility signed, petitioning the Holy Fa-
ther to create Father Wadding a cardinal. But Wadding at Rome inter-
cepted the messenger bearing this petition and bade him return, wishing, as
he said, to die, as he had lived, in the habit of St. Francis. How the Kil-
kenny Confederation failed of its object history tells, but its failure detracts
nothing from the lustre of the services Luke Wadding so heroically ren-
dered it.

He died a most saintly death in 1657, in the college of his own founda-
tion, St. Isidore's, Rome, surrounded by the priests of his community.
The book under notice will be read with avidity by all who cherish the
memory of this noble Irish priest, although it is rather a glowing eulogy
than the exact and detailed biography that yet remains to be written. It
is adorned with a fine engraving of the portrait of Father Wadding painted
by Carlo Maratti.

THE LIFE OF JEAN-JACQUES OLIER, FOUNDER OF THE SEMINARY OF ST.
SULPICE. By Edward Healy Thompson, M.A. New and enlarged
edition. London: Burns & Oates ; New York: The Catholic Publica-
tion Society Co. 1885.

In these days, when holy church is casting about for efficient means
wherewith to ennoble and sanctify her priests, it is fortunate that the
labors and words of a great authority should be published for their im-
provement and consolation. There is a pernicious notion prevalent that
interior perfection concerns only religious, and that seculars living in the
world are in a measure bound to adapt themselves to their surroundings in
order to be the more agreeable and useful to those under their charge.
This is an error that has wrought grievous harm to the church of God. It
is not necessary for us to prove that the piety of the people depends, if not
entirely, yet to a very large extent, on the personal holiness of every pastor,
and where it is a case of the blind leading the blind the result is always un-
desirable. We have read this fascinating volume with genuine pleasure,

286 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

and judge it inferior to none of the author's other deeply interesting
biographies. The style is fresh and buoyant, and it is written in easy and
idiomatic English.

Its subject is the life of a man who, from his conversion to his death,
spent himself in the task of correcting abuses by founding institutions
where young men could be suitably trained for the solemn offices of the
altar. In our opinion the clergy would do well to make this book a vade
mecum. Mr. Healy Thompson states that any profits that may be derived
from the sale of this work will be applied in aid of ecclesiastical seminaries.

LIFE OF ANNE CATHARINE EMMERICH. From the German of Very Rev.
K. E. Schmoger, C.SS.R. (2 vols.) New York : Pustet & Co. 1885.

This carefully-edited and well-published edition of Sister Emmerich's
Life is the first complete account of her life and revelations in English.
The whole is so extraordinary that it requires the most satisfactory attesta-
tion and the highest sanction to make it worthy of credit. It has these, as
the reader may satisfy himself by consulting the work itself. The original
author of the Life was the celebrated Clement Brentano, and the German
editor was a highly respectable priest of the Redemptorist congregation in
Bavaria. A fine portrait by Steinle, from sketches taken by Brentano, is
prefixed to the first volume.

Anne Catharine Emmerich was one of the ecstatic virgins, like Maria
Mori and Louise Lateau, who received the stigmata and other singular su-
pernatural graces. The narrative of her life and visions is one of wonder-
ful fascination, and in remarkable contrast to the mimetic phenomena of
spiritism, which are anything but celestial in their character and origin.
Perhaps the greatest general utility of such a biography is to be found in
its counteracting effect to the baleful influence of mesmerism and spiritism.
The predominant effect and impression which it produces in the mind is
cheerful and pleasing. It is safe and wholesome reading, interesting in the
highest degree to all who have any love of the marvellous, and can be
made profitable and edifying by those who will endeavor to get some good
out of it beyond the mere pleasure of the imagination.

GESCHICHTSLUGEN. Eine Widerlegung landlaufiger Entstellungen auf
dem Gebiete der Geschichte, mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung der
Kirchengeschichte. Aufs Neue bearbeitet von drei Freunden der
Wahrheit. Vierte Auflage. Paderborn : F. Schoningh. 1885.

Whoever can read this title will find this small duodecimo of six hun-
dred pages to contain as many items of valuable information as it has sen-
tences. The authors are learned men, though they write briefly for a class
of readers who could not make use of a more extensive work. We per-
ceive from it that the non-Catholic portion of the German people are be-
hind the English-speaking world in knowledge of Catholic history and
liberality of sentiments toward the Catholic Church. Numbers of the his-
torical falsehoods which it appears are still current in Germany no longer
need exposure among ourselves. Another thing is plain, that German in-
fidels, rationalists, and violent anti-Catholics of all sorts expend a great
deal of energy in Schtmpf-, Schmdh- imd Spott-Reden. Not only do they pour
them out upon Catholics, Christians, and all others who believe more than

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 287

they do, but also upon one another. Their vituperation would make a
Dublin fish-wife weep more bitterly than the one who was called by O'Conj
nell a parallelopipedon.

We found the first section of the book, entitled " Das Christliche Alter-
thum," the most interesting and valuable. The others are excellent and
satisfactory, but we have already what they contain in other books. The
first section gives us such a thorough though succinct account of the va-
rious theories of the destructive school of criticism on the New Testament
and the earliest documents of Christian history, that we esteem it to be, as
we have said, of peculiar value and interest.

This volume is one well adapted for circulation among our German
population.

A TROUBLED HEART, AND How IT WAS COMFORTED AT LAST. Notre
Dame, Ind. : Joseph A. Lyons. 1885, (For sale by the Catholic Publi-
cation Society Co.)

This sweet little prose-poem tells the story of a conversion. There is
no argument in it, and only a slender thread of narrative. It is an unveil-
ing of a heart, a psychological history^of dim, painful struggles out of dark-
ness into the light of Catholic faith. The subject of it was an innocent,
sensitive, dreamy boy of a poetical temperament. His spiritual experiences
were among New England Puritans, Univ&rsalists, various other kinds of
Protestants, Spiritists, and Nothingarians. Those who have had some simi-
lar experience will recognize the truthfulness of his delineations, and others
will find them curiously interesting. It is a volume which addresses itself
rather to the imagination and feelings than to the logical understanding.
Primarily Christianity addresses itself to man's intelligence, to reason, be-
cause it is the solution of the problem of his destiny, which all other
religions have sought after in vain. But the imagination and feelings are
also guides to truth, and, when pure, as sure as the logic of the under-
standing. Is not this what the Incarnate Truth said when he promised,
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God"? Christianity is
primarily addressed to man's intelligence, but its ethical side is equally
legitimate, and this must not be forgotten. It must be said that the book is
very sentimental, but it is not silly or sickly. Many readers will be charmed
by it, especially young people. The description of an ideal private sanctuary
which the imaginative religious boy was preparing to arrange when he un-
expectedly found his true sanctuary in the Catholic Church, reminds us of
a similar incident in Goethe's boyhood. There are a great many of our
young friends to whom we would like to send this little book as a present.
We hope it will get to them somehow, and that it will have a wide general
circulation.

ONE ANGEL MORE IN HEAVEN. With Letters of Condolence and of Con-
j^solation, by St. Francis de Sales and others.. Translated from the
French by M. A. M. Benziger Brothers. 1885.

There is, perhaps, no greater los.s than that of the first-born child. In-
deed, the bereavement of children is one of the deepest and keenest pangs
Almighty God can in his wisdom inflict upon parents of an affectionate dis-
position. And, therefore, such parents need a spiritual consolation that

288 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov., 1885.

comes from above. They must be convinced that the divine Hand which
strikes belongs to One who knows how to mingle the sweetness of honey
with the gall of bitterness. They must be taught to recognize the ador-
able will of God in the separation by death of children from their parents.
They must learn how to bow their heads and to humble their hearts in
submission to their Creator and Father. They must be ready to say with a
heartfelt sincerity, "Thy will be done." And these lessons of a humble
obedience to the decree of God in visiting parents with so hard and trying
a cross as the loss of children could not, we think, be exposed with more
simplicity and encouragement than they are in the little book entitled One

Angel more in Heaven.

EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE FOR THE USE OF PRIESTS WHO ARE MAK-
ING A RETREAT. From the French of Gaduel, Vicar-General and
Superior of the Ecclesiastical Seminary at Orleans, France. Translated
and adapted by Rev. Eugene Grimm, C.SS.R. Benziger Brothers.

The title of this little book seems to indicate that it is of utility only
during the few days of a retreat. But the perusal of it is a sufficient proof
that it is at all times highly profitable. For besides pointing out the duties
which have an application to all priests generally, and the vital necessity of
their attending to their own progress in virtue as well as to that of the
people entrusted to their care,* it specifies briefly the particular obligations
of pastors and curates, and enumerates in order the books which should
form the library of every priest. Its hearty reception and wide circulation
in France and Germany are evidence of its merits, and cannot but recom-
mend it to the consideration of the priests of our own country.

PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION FOR NEW CONFESSORS. By Father Philip M.
Salvatori, S.J. Edited by Father Anthony Ballerini, S.J., and trans-
lated from the Italian by William Hutch, D.D., President of St. Cole-
man's College, Fermoy, etc. London : Burns & Oates ; New York :
The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1885.

Dr. Hutch has done good service to English-speaking priests by trans-
lating this excellent little work. It is full of instructions and suggestions
which cannot fail to be profitable not only to new priests but to all who are
employed in the sacred tribunal of penance. The instructions are not
taken up with abstract speculations, but are plain, practical suggestions of
how to deal with such penitents as commonly come to our confessionals
every day. We warmly commend it to all the reverend clergy, feeling con-
fident that each one will find in it much that is useful.

A THOUGHT FOR EACH DAY OF THE YEAR. By P. Maria de Boylesve, S.J.
Translated from the French. London: Burns & Oates; New York:
The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1885.

This is an excellent book of meditations, well translated, and published
in good style. These meditations are well adapted for persons living in the
world who can spare but little time for mental prayer. Besides making us
familiar with Holy Scripture, they point out for us exactly the fruits which
are to be derived from it.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL. XLII. DECEMBER, 1885. No. 249.

THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH.

THE doctrine of the Trinity is generally regarded as the most
mysterious of Christian mysteries, as drawing the most severely
upon the Christian's confidence, as one which for these reasons it
is best to pass over with little explanation, leaving the popular
faith to struggle with it as best it can. I do not share in this
opinion. To my mind it presents itself as a nearer view of God,
and one, moreover, so dear to the loving heart, so inwrought with
necessary daily devotion, so fruitful to contemplate, that it is an
unwise and ungenerous economy to lock up any part or point of
it. Of course it is a mystery. No mystery can be loftier or
deeper. But it seems to me that, if simply treated, if divested of
all mere show of learning, if stripped of all unnecessary techni-
calities of language, it is a mystery which of all others offers
the least difficulty to an intelligent faith. It is a mystery the
rational grounds for which can be so far explained as to be per-
fectly intelligible, and to render the doctrine, even to the nak-
ed reason, more tenable than the contrary.

Profoundly convinced of this as I am, and considering how
much the literature of our age is disposed to discard all that it
cannot immediately and thoroughly comprehend in religion, I
hazard this new atterhpt to develop a time-honored belief. I
approach it on the rational side. I found no argument upon
revelation, and shall only refer to Scripture authority for the
purpose of showing how reason and faith agree. I use thank-
fully the experience of Christian philosophers, but adopt as

290 THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. [Dec.,

much as possible the forms of expression which are familiar to
the unprofessional.

In point of fact, the less we deal in abstract terms the more in-
telligible the argument becomes, and the sounder. It is the very
trick of modern infidelity to avoid the name of God and take
refuge in abstractions. But there can be no abstract God. An
abstract being is no being at all. When we talk about the infinite,
the absolute, etc., we may mean God, but we are only talking
sideways. Why is it necessary to skirmish around the real sub-
ject of our discourse, especially when dealing with those who
already believe in God? Why should we thus vaguely feel our
way when a straight path is before us? By this kind of language
we only perplex the minds of readers whose intelligence is un-
trained to it. They become wearied and discouraged. They
begin to think themselves unable to grapple with the argument.
Perhaps they distrust the value of it. Perhaps they suspect us of
not understanding our own words any too well. In any case they
give it up, and so we lose our labor. But when we change our
mode of speech from the abstract to the concrete ; when, like the
Bible, we speak of God directly as a being belonging to actual
life, having intelligence and will, and using and enjoying both
why, then the difficulty vanishes ; we are understood at once.
And why? Because our language now is true to the subject.
What we speak of now is no longer an intangible attribute
stripped from the life to which it belongs, but a real being who
is, and lives, and is full of action. What child is unable to seize
and retain my meaning when I tell him of an all-powerful God,
who knows all things, who always was and always will be, who
sees us at all times, who reads our very thoughts, who loves us
more than tongue can tell ? The merest infant will brighten with
intelligence at such discourse. My language is no longer difficult
or dry. It responds to something which always underlay his
thoughts from the beginning, the greatest and earliest endow-
ment of his soul.

Let this, then, be our first station in the argument. God is no
abstraction. He is a real being, actually existing, and holding all
that belongs to his being in full and conscious possession. Such
a being must necessarily be made up of certain elementary con-
stituents or principles of life which make him what he is. The
search after these constituent principles will lead us to the Trinity.
Now, when inquiring after the constituents of anything, we do
not mean all that goes to characterize it, all its properties, facul-
ties, or attributes, not even all those which are inseparable from

1885.] THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. 291

it. We mean those characteristics only which are so essentially
identified with it, so constitute it, so compose it, so unite to make
it up, that if taken away there is nothing left. With this in view
let us begin first with man. Let us analyze the human soul.
What are the constituent elements of a soul like ours? And what
are the relations which these constituents bear to each other?
Since man is made in the image of his Maker, being, like him, a
spiritual and rational being, these inquiries are most pertinent.
So far as natural reason can go, such inquiry ought to lead towards
the end and aim of this article. A philosophic poet tells us and
there is more than poetry in what he says

" There was never mystery

But 'tis figured in the flowers ;
Was never secret history

But birds tell it in the bowers.''

Such analogy runs through all life. Surely, then, we may
hope to find in rational, loving, and so far godlike man some
shadow of that great mystery of life which constitutes the being
of God.

The human soul is endowed with various intellectual faculties.
These, however, are only secondary gifts or powers, and not, like
the intellect itself, fundamental. The soul is also characterized
by various moral qualities, passions, or faculties, w which cannot be
regarded as its primary constituents. Under them lies the will,
which is something more elementary, in which they have their
seat and centre. We may, then, as well at once select the intellect
and the will as constituent principles of the soul. But do these
two complete the number? Do they embrace all there is of it, or
is there still something wanting to make up the concrete whole?

Call it what you please, there is in the human soul, there must
be in every rational spirit, something which thinks, something
which is prior to thought and parent to it. It is the primary
principle of all. It goes necessarily before thought, as thought in
turn precedes desire. Before its action thought can have no ex-
istence, nor can .there be any act of will. Whether you say that
the soul itself begets the thought, and that directly, or that it is
born out of the soul's mind or consciousness, I care not. Let each
one choose his own philosophy. Let conscious mind (or memo-
ry *), reason, and will be three constituent faculties of the soul, or

* That faculty by which man is conscious or mindful (mentor) of himself, and of the move-
ments of his own life as a whole, is obviously the memory. Philosophically, a poor analysis of
the soul is that which narrows the memory to a mere power of recalling its former acts, making

292 THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. [Dec.,

say that there are only two ; in either case we shall arrive at the
point I seek. In either case we shall have the example of a mul-
tiple life in a single soul. In either case we shall find the soul
productive. In either case three distinct factors or agents are
shown in that activity which constitutes its life. For the moment
I confine myself to the production of reason, or reflective thought.
The production of thought is a true generation. The soul is
essentially intelligent, and out of its own intelligence it produces
offspring in the likeness of itself. And here comes in a mystery
which all must admit as a fact, but none of us can explain. When
thought is born it takes its place as something distinct from the
parent mind not apart but distinct. It is the soul's interior word,
spoken within itself and to itself, and secluded from all that is
outside of itself. The soul, the conscious principle, the mind, or
whatever that is which begets thought, is able to contemplate its
own child when begotten, to discuss it, criticise it, handle it, fondle
it, love it. And thought in turn, by a wonderful reaction, is able to
examine and contemplate the parent from which it springs. We
think, and then we use our new-born thoughts to examine the
thinker. Within the soul a child is born to companionship with
its father. It challenges him to discussion. It says to him :

" I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow ;
Of thine eye I am eyebeam."

A poem which appeared in the Century magazine for May last
was entitled " My Thought and I." This title is no wild fancy,
nor does it involve anything difficult to apprehend. In an earlier
composition by another writer, entitled " Night- Watching," the
same plurality in one spirit is indicated with still greater distinct-
ness :

"Already three ! Ah, well-a-day,

Myself and I here meet at last

After estrangement, and the past

Has much to say."

The discord so constantly coming in from the soul's fickleness,
and her entanglement with things outside herself, confuses but
does not break up this plurality and unity of which we are speak-
ing. It always exists. We must accept the fact as unquestion-
able ; but who can account for it ? Does not this enigma of
thought and thinker, word and speaker, child and father, all com-
prised in one human life, already make luminous that mysterious

it thus later in action than thought and will. Rightly considered, the memory is the principal
and parent faculty. It argues simply a feebleness of this faculty in us that we are obliged to
recall any part of our lives by new acts of consciousness.

1885.] THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. 293

fact in the great life of God so simply and sublimely presented to
our faith by John the Evangelist : " In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God " ?

We find, then, in that part of our nature which is spiritual a
unity in which reflection can distinguish a multiplicity or plu-
rality. That plurality does not consist of parts, for a spirit is
simple and has no parts. It does not consist of mere faculties
which if taken away from the soul would impair its powers but
still leave it what it was, a soul. It is a necessity, without which
we could not conceive of it as the same being. By a mystery of
life two constituent factors reveal themselves within the soul,
and yet are all one with it. They do not rise to the dignity of
distinct personalities like the Father and the Son in the mystery
of the Trinity ; but they are really distinct, and really one. If,
examining my own reason, I call upon the inborn thought to
show me the Father, it might well answer in the words of our
Saviour to Philip : " Have I been so long a time with you, and
have you not known me?"

Unity, plurality, paternity. Within its deepest life-chamber
each single human soul develops an activity which is plural.
This plurality is due to a certain productiveness or fruitfulness
which is an essential quality of all rational life. Intellect begets.
Ideas are begotten. The nativity of thought is a true generation,
a reproduction of one thing by another, and within the limits of
its own kind. " Increase and multiply " is a blessing which
reaches beyond the physical world. It is the universal law of
life. It governs souls. It governs mind. Fecundity that is,
productive activity in the order of its own being is a characteris-
tic necessity of everything that lives, and the highest act of life.
Is it not also a characteristic of the living God? Since the
power to reproduce itself is a perfection in every creature, since
we can trace out its action in the deepest movement of our own
souls, shall we not look for a corresponding perfection in that
great Spirit who is both Creator and Archetype of all things? Is
God alone childless? Can he produce nothing in his own kind,
nothing but what is infinitely beneath himself? A longing after
offspring in the childless Rachel wrung out that desolate wail :
" Give me children, or I die ! " Is there no longing like this in
the infinite Breast which must be met ?

Of course God cannot produce outside of his own life another
being equal to himself or in all respects like himself. That would
suppose two gods, two infinities, two eternities, two lives, both
supreme and independent. But within the circle of his own life,

294 THE TRINITY JN SIMPLE ENGLISH. [Dec.,

and constituting the very circulation of that life, such a genera-
tion involves no absurdity, but only a mystery. We have seen
already existing as a fact a like mystery, inferior in dignity but
not in difficulty. The rational spirit in man can generate thought,
which, although assuming a distinct status of its own, yet remains
within the mind which conceives it, and goes to constitute its
life. Is there nothing in the infinite mind like this? Is there no
interior Word generated there, no infinite Child " the express
image " of the Father ? Is it only the utterance of a wild dream,
or is it revelation speaking the language of true philosophy, when
the Evangelist tells us : " In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God " ?

But the activity of a rational spirit is not perfected by the
generation of thought. The soul breathes a twofold atmosphere
of thought and will. Both these are necessary to make its in-
terior life complete. First we know, and then we love. After
having brought to light irom its own womb an object of contem-
plation the soul is drawn to it by a second act of love or desire.
The will is an essential constituent of our spiritual being, and its
presence must be shown in every analysis of the soul's life-action.
We love by necessity that which is good or seems good. But, in
addition to this, by a parental instinct the soul loves especially
that which itself has generated. It is a law of life. The father
loves his own child, and is loved by it in turn. In fine, a second
movement thus takes place in the soul between the two terms of
the first. Mind and thought Stand face to face in close relation-
ship. They become objects of mutual desire each to the other,
and kindle a fire which we call love, but the proper name of which,
when considered as an abiding constituent of the soul, is Will.
The product of this second act becomes a third term of interior
relationship. It owes its origin to the other two, and, though
something distinct, is essentially the same thing with both, consti-
tuting one same life. It proceeds from the mind of which it is
clearly the act. It proceeds also from the thought without which
the mind would not see, and so would fail to find, an object for
its love. And yet the same living spirit includes all three, and
they are its components. Behold in our own souls faintly but
truly foreshadowed to reason the great mystery of heaven, a
threefold life in one divine Being !

I do not wish to claim too much. The marvels of thinking
and loving which develop within our own souls cannot ade-
quately represent the parallel mysteries in an infinite Spirit.
But do they not suggest them ? Do they not throw upon them

1885.] THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. 295

some additional light? Does not the morning begin to break?
Can we not already catch a glimpse, albeit faint, of those neces-
sary interior relations which constitute in God a single, but never
solitary, life ? Have we not here, furnished by our own natural
reason analyzing our own souls, a light which harmonizes won-
derfully with the light of revelation ? Cannot a loving and hun-
gering spirit find here unveiled to contemplation a God who is
one, not by any vague and barren conception of unity in the
abstract, but a single, active, moving, living, life-breathing Being,
a Being whose self-consciousness, thoughtfulness, and will are as
real and as really distinct as they are infinite and eternal? If
so, we have only one task left. We have only to learn how to
assign to each constituent principle of the divine life a true per-
sonality of its own, and then we shall have the Christian Trinity.
Come, let us now advance to this.

Hitherto I have endeavored to establish an analogy between
the rational creature and that rational life which is infinite and
uncreated. Both being spirits, man must have on his spiritual
side some characteristics in common with his Maker. It is now
time to consider how they differ in these very characteristics ;
that is, how and where the analogy fails. By doing this I shall
not destroy but fortify and develop my argument. Much that is
hitherto obscure will be cleared away ; and that trace of trinity
which in man is imperfect and perplexing will grow up in our
view of God to a distinctness and perfection which shall show a
threefold divinity in one life, and make, perchance, even the cold
bosom of philosophy give forth a rhythmic hymn, the Christian
trisagion : " Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the
Holy Ghost!"

In the first place, it must not be forgotten that ours is a mixed
nature. We are spiritual, but we are also animal, physical,
material. By force of this degrading alliance our spiritual na-
ture, which would otherwise be angelic, is so interlocked with
the material world that we cannot even think without material
help. We think by means of images supplied by the senses, pre-
sented to the mind in material mirrors, and stored away in mir-
rors for after-remembrance. The process of thought, therefore,
in us, although spiritual, is not purely so, as it is in the angels.
It is only partially or imperfectly an interior act of. the soul.
Even before being uttered to the air, before being spoken or
written to our fellows, it is already a spoken and pictured lan-
guage to ourselves. It has passed beyond its native realm and
become embodied. The mind surveys it as an object which is at

296 THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. [Dec.,

once interior and exterior to itself, and has no independent sub-
sistence without or within. This to all analysis of thought is
confusing. In order to make our argument from analogy more
clear and complete we must endeavor to discriminate between
what is spiritual and physical in the process of thinking. We
must try to conceive what would be the operation of our minds
if, like the angels, we were pure spirits, or if we could disencum-
ber them from the body. Thought would then generate in the
parent womb in a more perfect likeness to the mind itself, and
more nearly equal to it. It would subsist in a more perfect
seclusion within it. It would be held permanently by it in a
possession which no weariness of the brain, no necessity of sleep,
no crowding or distracting images from the material world, could
ever disturb.

Again, another difference must be noted between the human
mind and the divine where our analogy fails. This difference
would still exist even were we bodiless spirits and perfectly
capable of reflection without clothing our thought, as now, in
forms supplied by the imagination. All created minds must
think, so to speak, by piecemeal that is, by a succession of
mental efforts or acts. Each thought begotten is only one of a
multitudinous brood. The mind must go on, step by step, in its
progressive reflection ; and could it for ever retain all it acquires,
still will it never be able to advance so far that all truth possible
to it will lie at once within its grasp. Not so with the mind of
God. No deficiency of knowledge is ever, was ever, can ever
be there, and consequently there can be with him no such thing
as thinking by successive acts. One thought in his mind com-
prises all that can be known, and comprises it all in one act. His
first, his last, his only thought is all one great infinite birth.
The eternal mind cannot beget more than one interior word.
That word is an only, an eternal child. That word always was,
always is, and endures for ever. Even this language is incorrect
and does injury to that word. We may represent it to ourselves
as something that is, and was, and is to be ; but this is only our
feeble and incorrect expression of the reality. In speaking of
things which are eternal it is necessary to borrow our expres-
sions from the vocabulary of time, always inadequate, sometimes
misleading. The incarnate Word himself, when on earth and
walking in two worlds, seemed sometimes to think and speak in
both at once. He spoke the language of both worlds when he
said : " Before Abraham was I AM." This little sentence begins
in time, but closes in eternity.

1885.] THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. 297

Following up the differences already noted, we are brought
to a third which is the pivotal point of our argument. By means
of it the imperfect type of trinity which we find in our own souls
is made to assume in the soul's divine Archetype that perfection
of threefold life in unity which the Christian revelation claims.
The mind of man (as we have seen) produces a thought which
is something distinct from itself. Yet this distinction is imper-
fect. The mind can contemplate its own thought as an outstand-
ing object of regard, and by a wonderful process of introspection
it can change places with that thought, and become to it in turn
an object of contemplation. But this distinction, though real
and wonderfully suggestive of greater perfection, can be carried
no further. The child in such case is a true image of its father,
but not in all respects commensurate nor co-equal. It has no real
subsistence of its own. If it had, being rational it would be, like
the soul itself, a person.

It is not so, however, when the infinite mind of God generates.
A true child is there begotten in the full likeness of the father.
This single life-act, this thought, this interior word of God, is,
like God himself, infinite, eternal, and self-subsisting. It is dis-
tinct from the womb which gave it birth, with a perfect distinc-
tion. It goes so far as to assume a subsistence of its own. It
lives with a true activity which belongs to itself, distinguishable
within the parent life, although moving ever in the same life-
current. It is no subordinate power, quality, or attribute. It
takes to itself all the characteristic powers and attributes of that
personal Godhead to which it belongs, and within which it is fully
qualified to hold its place as an aboriginal life-constituent. It is
itself a true Person, to whom a personal Father, speaking in eter-
nity, speaks thus : " Thou art my son ; to-day have 1 begotten thee.'

The same reasoning by which, in the divine nature, we show
thought elevated to a divine personality must have a like force
when applied to the divine will. In man the will (or heart) acts
by a succession of impulses, all finite, and all partial and feeble.
Therefore love in us is short-lived, changeable, fickle, and even
when truest must be maintained by a repetition of the same acts
of desire which constitute its flame, and the same motives of rea-
son which first called that desire into existence. It is the imper-
fection of our finite nature which makes this so. But in the in-
finite will of God no such feebleness or imperfection, no such
successive action, can take place. Our New England poet Lowell
draws largely on poetic license when he sings of

" the next beating of the infinite heart."

298 THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. [Dec.,

The first beat of that heart is eternal and knows no second beat-
ing. Love in God is one, single, eternal, and exhaustive life-act.
It cannot die away. It cannot be diminished. It cannot be aug-
mented. It cannot be reinforced. It cannot be renewed. It
cannot be repeated. It succeeds to no other desire. It can have
no successor to itself. In fine, it is in all respects commensurate
to that infinite mind and its infinite thought which are the joint
sources of its own being. It rises thus with both to the dignity
of a distinct personality. It becomes that Holy Ghost, that liv-
ing breath of love, whose home lies, like that of the eternal Son,
"in the bosom of the Father."

What have we gained, then, by this analysis of the human
soul? It has furnished us an analogy by means of which we
have been able to study to some extent that great Soul which we
call God. We find in the latter what we found in the former
namely, a trinity, or three terms of interior relationship. These
three, in God as in man, belong essentially to his life. We can-
not rightly conceive of a rational life without them. They are
consubstantial with him, being indeed his constituents by his
very nature as a concrete, living, active, intelligent, moral Being.
I do not profess to have carried out this argument to an actual
demonstration by reason alone, unaided and unguided ; nor do I
think that it can be so carried out. Nevertheless, receiving with
faith, as we do, the New Testament revelation, and finding there
the account of a wondrous being clothed in humanity but claim-
ing also divinity; who styles himself the Son of God; who
speaks at the same time of another personage distinct from him-
self and from the Father, but proceeding from one and both, and
whose very name of Holy Ghost is divine; who unites together
the authority of all three in the great commission to teach, bap-
tize, and rule given to the apostles I say, when, thus compelled
by testimony from heaven, our faith accepts the Trinity as a fact,
then true philosophy steps in also with a graceful contribution
to the same truth. She subscribes to the Catholic creed, and
repeats with us now in language which long ago she furnished
to Catholic faith : " I believe in God the Father almighty ; and in
Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord ; born of the Father before all
worlds; true God, of true God; begotten, not made; consub-
stantial with the Father ; and in the Holy Ghost, who proceeds
from the Father, and together with the Father and the Son is
adored and glorified."

Gentle reader, in this article we have canvassed two trinities.
Both are mysteries too deep to be sounded. Both, however, are

1885.] THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. 299

facts which we cannot wisely deny. The first fact is revealed to
us by our experience in the world of nature. The second has been
revealed to us by God himself, but accords well with what we
find in nature. Have I failed to show this ? Then I have failed
in my argument. You may be already learned in this matter,
more learned than I. If so, do not criticise too closely the Ian-
guage used, if from the argument honest reason may gather
light.

"My principal object in this article has not been to prove the
doctrine of the Trinity to non-believers. I have had more espe-
cially in view a Christian public of believers and worshippers.
These receive the dogma, but practically are familiar only with
that side of it which looks out upon the dealings of God with
man. Their view of the Trinity extends to a horizon within
which lie the Creation, the Incarnation, the Redemption, with
grace and the sacraments. In all these the Persons of the sacred
Trinity take a various part, an especial prominence being given
sometimes to one, sometimes to another. When we think of the
creation and of divine providence, our thoughts are most natur-
ally turned to the Father, though we must not exclude the sec-
ond and third Persons of the divine Family. The Son of God
moves to the front when we dwell upon that scheme of grace
which is developed in the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the
foundation of the church. The sanctification of the soul through
the sacraments, and all those secret inspirations which prompt
to prayer and duty and fill the heart with divine love, we at-
tribute especially to the Holy Ghost.

But it is good sometimes to go behind all this. It is fruitful
to lift up our thoughts above all this; to remember that all this,
important and dear as it is to us, is but a by-play in a great
drama; that, in point of fact, it all takes place outside of God's
own true and proper being. We, and all this world of which we
form a part, are but creatures of yesterday, while behind that
yesterday lies eternity. It is good to ask ourselves betimes :
What was God doing before he created the world? Was God
alone in eternity, a giant hermit in a vast solitude? Was he
without society there ? Was he without occupation there ?
And at this present is the care of the world his only or chief
occupation? The study of this great primary doctrine of the
Trinity gives us the answer. It presents us with the idea of a
divine Family dwelling in a home-circle of its own. There a Fa-
ther and Son are always together. And, sprung from the mutual

3oo THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. [Dec.,

gaze and love of both, but distinct from either, another august
inmate there, the Holy Ghost, makes his abode with both. These
three cohabit in one life. In that life they maintain a busy inter-
communication which is simply infinite. These three are drawn
together by the ties of a kinship inconceivably close, for they con-
stitute one being. How happy is such a life, how sweet such a
love, where all the attractions which can hold heart to heart are
infinite in each !

Such a circle as that can never be a solitude. Time can never
hang heavy there. It needs no outside world to furnish occupa-
tion to it. On the contrary, the world outside can never suffice
to occupy it. What can give employment to mind ? Is it not
thought? In that lively circle the field of thought is unlimited
and inexhaustible. What can ravish the gazing sight? Subli-
mity, beauty, order, variety? In each and every member of this
divine Family are seated all these attractions. And they can
never fail to furnish joy, for, being infinite, they are equal to the
infinity of desire.

Such a life is not a rest from action. It is a boundless activity,
a rush of ceaseless motion, a whirl of circulation which only in-
finite thought can follow. The church's doctrine of circumin-
cession teaches that each divine Person of the Trinity dwells, and
dwells actively, within the other. They act together as one
being. They are only distinct from each other in respect to
their mutual relations within that being. The thoughtful Father
alone generates a Son. Only the Father and Son breathe that
productive breath of love whose evolution is the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost, taking form and life in that breathing, reacts
upon both breathers in a flood of joy. But such mutual relations
in an infinite life imply an infinite activity which can have no rest.
This mutual indwelling, therefore, is not by way of repose. It is
beyond conception stirring and glows with life. It is the main-
tenance of an intimate tie of kinship which admits of no relaxa-
tion. It involves a mutual recognition and conversation which is
always constant, an expression of love which can never expend
itself, never weary. Does all this intensity of inner life seem to
us like something at rest? It is because our limited minds can
only follow motion by its progress from station to station. A
movement which is infinite must needs seem to our loping con-
ception like a halt, as a top seems motionless and is said to sleep
when its rotation is too rapid for the eye to follow. It is our
mind that halts, or moves by little leaps. These little leaps mark
time, but cannot mark the life of God, which is spaceless eternity.

1885.] THE TRINITY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH. 301

To me it seems that any mind once become accustomed to the
idea of a God, so single in his being and yet so rich in the
interior relations which constitute that being, should never again
be able to accept any other. What sort of a God is he who out-
wardly is productive and inwardly barren and desolate? The
mind revolts at the -thought of a lonesome God, a God who can
have no society in his own degree, nothing to love but what is
infinitely beneath himself, and who can receive no love that is an
adequate return to the outpouring of his own great heart. Love
has been well defined as Ens extra se in alio vivens the dwelling
outside of one's own life in that of another. Strip God of his
trinity, and where can such love find place? What love worthy
of himself is then left but self-love? Such a God could not feel
the joy of parentage, or of filial piety, or of friendship in any
sufficient sense of these words. To my mind the Christian doc-
trine removes an oppressive difficulty. What matter, then, if it
develops a deeper mystery ? The mystery neither distresses my
reason nor weighs upon my faith. I delight to think of 1 God as
one who leads an inner life all worthy of himself; who had no
necessity to create the world that he might no longer be alone ^
whose love, necessarily seeking for an equal, finds something more
than self to love. Is the injunction laid upon us to love each one
his neighbor as himself ? This is no new virtue invented to fit
our condition as creatures. It existed from eternity in the fel-
lowship of Heaven. We find its supreme and sublime type in
the dear Master who enjoins us, in the mutual love of the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost. And so a sweet and holy light is thrown
upon that earnest prayer of Jesus for his disciples : " Holy Fa-
ther, keep them in thy name whom thou hast given me ; that they
all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee ; that they
also may be one in us."

302 THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. [Dec.,

THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND.

To American readers who depend on their morning paper for
information as to the Irish movement and the policy of the Irish
leaders the situation with us is not easy to explain. The cable-
man hashes, jumbles, and distorts everything Irish in a style
which presents about as accurate a picture of our affairs as the
scenes in a pantomime bear to the realities of the world outside.
For instance, one day the New York Herald announces that Mr.
Shaw, the Munster Bank wrecker, is a leading Parnellite M.P.,
and that in consequence of his conduct Mr. Davitt has been
obliged to fly hastily from Dublin in order to escape the infu-
riated depositors ; while the next he tells you that a deadly war
is raging between Mr. Davitt and Mr. Parnell, which is smashing
up the entire National movement. Daily driblets of poisonous
untruths and half-truths, cabled with incessant vigor, leave the
American mind in a state of bewilderment, and it is almost as
hopeless to try to counteract continuous falsehood by isolated
statements of fact as it would be to get a European to-day to un-
derstand from a magazine article the merits of the Cleveland-
Blaine campaign, which occupied the thousands of your newspa-
pers last fall. Such knowledge of the doings and objects of the
Irish leaders as Americans possess through their daily instructors
they have, therefore, acquired mostly from prejudiced sources.
The telegraph is in the hands of English correspondents, who, of
course, only present their own side of the story, and take care, as
Dr. Samuel Johnson observed of his own Parliamentary reports,
that they do not "let the Whig dogs get the best of it"! Any
one who will engage in the task of piecing together such scraps
of the history of Ireland as have been allowed to reach America
by telegraph since the Atlantic cable was laid will come to the
conclusion that the daily business of the Irish nation consists in
the commission of murder and outrage. Most persons, therefore,
would be greatly surprised to hear that statistics prove Ireland to
be one of the least criminal countries on the face of the globe.
The system by which this defamation is promoted is easily ex-
plained. The Irish news that is sent by the Associated Press to
America is taken either from the London papers or is supplied by
the London press agencies. The London Times is purveyed to
from Dublin by the editor of an Orange newspaper, the Express

1885.] THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. 303

an organ so unscrupulous that, having some time ago invented
the murder of a landlord, it refused to insert a contradiction of
the " outrage" from the person it assassinated until driven to do
so by the threat of legal proceedings. The London Daily News,
the Liberal paper, has for its Dublin correspondent a Tory Scotch-
man, who never loses an opportunity of showing his hatred to the
country by which he earns his living. His veracity may be
judged from the fact that when, in July, 1883, some twenty labor-
ers were poisoned in County Wexford by eating the flesh of a
diseased cow which their landlord had slaughtered and given to
them, this truthful chronicler, without a shred of evidence, at once
telegraphed the calamity as a Land League outrage. So it sped
all over the world, and, though the facts were fully established at
the inquest, no one outside Ireland was ever informed of the truth.
The correspondent of the Tory Standard is a Freemason em-
ployed in Dublin Castle, which is saying sufficient for his impar-
tiality ; while the Dublin representative of the principal news
agency is an Englishman who, like his confederates, is in bitter
enmity to the National cause. From such sources comes the news
on which the ordinary reader of American newspapers is obliged
to form his opinions, and it would, therefore, be remarkable if a
very favorable view were taken of the character and proceedings
of the Irish agitators. Once in a way an enterprising journal
keeps a " special " on this side of the water who is independent
enough to think for himself. At present the New York Times is
brilliantly served by its famous " cholera " correspondent, a gen-
tleman of whom it is not too much to say that he knows Ireland,
as well as England, by heart, and is only anxious conscientiously
to state the facts on both sides of the account. The work of
the others speaks for itself. But it must be admitted that it is
extremely hard for a foreign journalist in London not to be anti-
Irish. If he wishes to be "in the swim " where news is going, he
must belong to the Savage or one of the press or artistic clubs;
and there the slightest expression of sympathy with the Irish
movement would, of course, get him quickly boycotted.

Engaged as we now are in the midst of an electoral struggle
more momentous than any this generation has known, the tales
that reach the United States from Ireland will probably be more
lurid than usual. For anything I know, the Irish party as I
write is being for the hundredth time smashed to fragments by
the devoted cableman, just as its failure has been a thousand times
foretold. Following the cue of the English press, Mr. Parnell's
recent speeches have no doubt been represented as being a revo-

304 THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. [Dec.,

lutionary demand for complete separation from England, and the
replies of Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Gladstone
will have been triumphantly quoted as showing the hopelessness
of his tactics. Let me therefore explain in a few words the posi-
tion, policy, and prospects of the Irish movement.

Ireland's demand for a separate legislature is as old as the
destruction of Grattan's Parliament in 1800. It was started by
O'Conneli the year after the Union, was renewed by Butt later
on, and is continued in our own day by Parnell. The struggles
of the present Irish leader, however, are backed up by forces
which none of his predecessors could command. O'Conneli,
surrounded one day by half a million men at Tara, could not the
next day control the election of a member of Parliament for a sixth-
rate borough ; while the men who acknowledged his leadership in
the House of Commons elected, as they were, under a limited
franchise were, for the most part, a gang of knavish place-hun-
ters whose sole idea was personal advancement. Mr. Butt was
more fortunate in his Parliamentary following, but he neglected
to secure the indispensable support of an out-door agitation. The
franchise, however, had been slightly extended before his move-
ment was started ; but, above all, the Ballot Act of 1872 freed his
supporters from intimidation, and voters were no longer driven
like sheep to the polls by the landlord's armed guards, and could
cast their suffrages against his nominee without the fear of being
expelled from their homes. Nevertheless, Mr. Butt's timidity in
organizing the country behind him led to the backsliding of many
of the representatives on whom alone he had taught the people to
rely. The masses, moreover, had been left entirely unacquainted
with the forces which Parliamentary action can bring into play.
They had been accustomed to hear constitutional agitation de-
nounced by the Fenian leaders as the game of a number of dis-
honest tricksters ; and this for a long time it undoubtedly was.
At first sight, therefore, the difficulty of getting that game hon-
estly played seemed one which they could not hope to over-
come. Even supposing that reliable candidates could be found,
what hope was there of returning them in a majority of the
representation? The corrupt condition into which many of the
limited electorate had fallen, and the despair of the remainder
that any good could be done by a constitutional movement,
were a formidable obstacle. Still, Mr. Butt succeeded in 1874
in electing for the first time a majority of the Irish members
pledged to Home Rule, and in subsequently inducing these gen-
tlemen to promise to remain aloof from English parties and to

1885.] THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. 305

form an independent Parliamentary organization of their own.
The country then recognized how much could be effected by an
honest representation which could neither be bribed nor bullied.
Few of Mr. Butt's party, however, remained sternly faithful,
and though a number of them were re-elected in 1880, after his
death, their conduct has been such that the Irish people the mass
of whom will for the first time exercise the franchise at the gen-
eral election are determined to return men of a different stamp
to act upon the policy which Mr. Parnell has so successfully car-
ried out. The Irish cause, therefore, will soon have the dual ad-
vantage of being represented in Parliament by an overwhelming
majority of the total number of members returned, and of having
a vigorous organization kept up behind them in the country to
strengthen their hands in the House of Commons. Moreover,
the province of Ulster will now be able under the extended fran-
chise to return a majority of Nationalists, and this will, to a large
extent, dispose of the cry that this province stands aloof from the
popular movement. The change wrought in the north by the
reduced suffrage may be gathered from the fact that at present
out of twenty-nine Ulster members only two are Nationalists ;
whereas we calculate that out of the thirty-three seats allotted to
the north by the Redistribution of Seats Act, at least eighteen
will be won by the Parnellites. From end to end of Ireland, ex-
cept in the four counties of Antrim, Down, Derry, and Armagh,
no candidate opposed to the Home Rule demand will be elected,
and in three of these Nationalists will be returned in certain dis-
tricts. The two members for Trinity College, however, whose
graduates are still absurdly allowed to constitute a pocket bor-
ough, will remain Tory. The three southern provinces Lein-
ster, Munster, and Connaught will not return a single opposef
of Nationalism, and five out of the nine Ulster counties will
follow suit. The only county which will remain solid against
the Nationalists is Antrim, which is in future to elect four mem-
bers ; but in Belfast, which is situated in that county, the Parnell-
ites will capture a seat. The other three seats in Belfast will go
to the Tories ; but with this exception all the boroughs will
elect Nationalists. Had the boundary commissioners appointed
to redistrict the constituencies under the Seats Act behaved
honestly, several additional seats in the north could have been
won ; but the most shameful gerrymandering was carried on by
the Castle officials, and the surprise is that it will be possible for
the Nationalists to return a majority in Ulster at all. The single-
member system, universal throughout America, has for the first
VOL. XLII. 20

3o6 THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. [Dec.,

time been adopted for Great Britain and Ireland, with the ex-
ception of a few borough constituencies, and in the division of the
northern counties for that purpose the government gave every
advantage to the Orange and Whig parties. Again, in the revision
of the voters' lists in the north the most notorious opponents of the
franchise -were appointed to play havoc with the Nationalists, as
we suffer from a cumbrous and intricate registration law which not
one man in a million understands. Despite all these disadvantages,
the Irish party expect to carry a majority of the Ulster constitu-
encies, and when registration work is better understood further
gains in that province can be made. In England two seats only
are expected to be won by the Nationalists, as, though the num-
ber of Irishmen in large centres like London, Glasgow, Birming-
ham, Manchester, etc., is sufficient to entitle them to a much
larger representation, their strength in all these towns is so scat-
tered that, under the new single-member system, they do not
command an absolute majority, and outside Liverpool no Par-
nellite will be elected from Great Britain. The highest estimate
of the strength of Mr. Parnell's party in the next Parliament puts
it at eighty-eight men ; but it will certainly number eighty-five,
and such a force properly handled will be practically irresistible.
It is not, however, merely the formidable numbers which Mr.
Parnell will command that make English politicians anxious. It
is the character of the men who are likely to be elected that
gives them pause. If the new party consisted of eighty or ninety
amiable gentlemen of the ancient school, neither Mr. Gladstone
nor Lord Salisbury would care very much about them, as they
would soon be either bribed or frightened into quiescence. Mr.
Parnell's influence will depend on the fact that he will control
a party utterly contemptuous of British opinion, British conve-
nience, and British traditions, and that he himself is the most
coolly determined, implacable, and tenacious Parliamentary
leader that has appeared at Westminster since the Union.

The Irish constituencies are now looking out for the stamp
of candidate likely to be most obnoxious to the English Parlia-
ment ; and every British politician knows that unless conces-
sions are granted they will have to face inside Parliament the
constant warfare of a number of men who are prepared to be
just as " ugly " as the occasion requires, while outside an angry
agitation must be dealt with. To guard against treachery and
desertion, every candidate for a popular constituency, from
Mr. Parnell downwards, will be required to sign a declaration
pledging himself to " sit, act, and vote " with the Irish party, and

1885.] THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. 307

to resign his seat should a majority of his colleagues declare that
he had failed in his duty. Few of the new representatives will be
wealthy ; and as members of Parliament receive no remuneration
from the state, and are not even allowed for railway fares, their
expenses will be defrayed by the subscriptions of their country-
men. The procedure of enabling the constituencies to select can-
didates in conventions, as the Irish counties are at this moment
doing, is an entirely novel one with us, and very probably the ex-
ample which Ireland has set in this respect of adopting the Ame-
rican system will before very long have to be imitated in Eng-
land. This in itself would greatly democratize the British repre-
sentation and would lead to a minor but useful reform in our
electoral practice viz., the abolition of the absurd custom which
obliges each candidate to issue an individual address to his con-
stituency, for advertising which a fancy rate has to be paid to
the newspapers.

In addition to all this to the purification of the Parliamen-
tary representation, the organization of the people, and their
growing strength of purpose the movement headed by Mr. Par-
nell has another element of strength the importance of which
cannot be exaggerated. This is the formal adhesion of the
Catholic hierarchy and clergy to the National cause. It was
natural that the heads of the church in Ireland should have
watched with jealousy and apprehension the growth of a move-
ment whose leader was not of the national faith. Coincidental
with the introduction of democratic ideas into Ireland by the
Land League, democratic ideas in France, for example, seemed
to be taking the form of hatred of religion. And on the Conti-
nent of Europe generally democracy, in place of being the whole-
some thing it is known to be in America, seemed only a synonym
for infidelity and anarchy. Was this to be the outcome of those
new movements in Ireland which did not offer to the church
even the guarantee of a Catholic leader ? That the bishops of
Ireland should have so long hesitated before making up their
mind, that they should have narrowly watched the progress of
agitation for more than four years first, gives their sanction now-
all the more value. Their first formal recognition of the fact
that religion had nothing to fear from the National movement
took the most significant shape possible. The Irish bishops as-
sembled in council resolved to entrust to the Irish Parliamentary
party the entire conduct of a certain question in which they were
interested and that question was no other than the Education
Question. This confiding to the hands of Mr. Parnell such vital

308 THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. [Dec,,

interests as those concerning the education of the Catholic youth
was an announcement not merely that Catholicity had nothing to
fear from the growth of Parnellism, but that the growth of Par-
nellism was to be reckoned a distinct gain to the cause of the
church. A further notable assurance of this is to.be found in the
fact that the Irish party have invited the clergy to attend the
conventions for nominating Parliamentary candidates as dele-
gates ex officio, and that the clergy are responding gladly to the
call, thus insuring that Mr. Parnell's next party will be the choice
not only of the people but of the priests and people. There is
no country in the world to-day where such a spectacle could be
witnessed. From the see of the metropolis to the remotest
chores, bishops and clergy are solid for the National movement ;
priests and people are knit together as they never were before
not even in O'Connell's day. Indeed, the solidification of the
people could hardly be more complete ; for the fact that Mr.
'Parnell is a Protestant is a sign to our Protestant brethren that
their interests will not be jeopardized by the success of the Na-
tional cause.

As to the prospects of Home Rule being speedily won, much
will depend on whether the English electors return a majority,
be it Whig or Tory, large enough to prevent Mr. Parnell from
wielding the balance of power. That the Tories should get such
a majority even their most sanguine supporters dare not hope.
They will lose something like twenty seats in Ireland alone,
they will be practically obliterated in Scotland, and in Wales
they do not expect to return more than one or two candidates.
England remains, and there the counties which had hitherto
been their great strongholds will in future be turned by the vote
of the laborers ; but no one can as yet forecast whether this class
will continue to be influenced by the squire and the parson, or
whether they have been dazzled by Mr. Chamberlain's promises.
The calculation of the Liberals is that Scotland and Wales may
be paired off against Ireland, and that they, in England, will have
a majority of twenty. If so, this would enable them to form a
government against any combination ; but how long would it
last against the shock of Irish opposition, unless concessions were
made ? Moreover, we must not leave out of count the effect of
the dissensions which have been caused by Mr. Chamberlain's
insistence on his programme, and his declaration that he will not
go into a cabinet with Whigs who refuse to accept it. If he
persists in his threat, either himself or Lord Hartington must be
sacrificed, and the retirement of one or the other would greatly
hurt the party. Sir Charles Dilke, of course, could not take

1885.] THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. 309

office until acquitted of the charge that has been made against
nim ; and therefore, if only a small Liberal majority is obtained,
Mr. Gladstone would decline, on the plea of age, to connect him-
self with it. The absence of Gladstone, Dilke, and Chamberlain
from a Liberal government would make it impossible for it to
hold together, fronted by a venomous Tory Irish opposition. A
large majority, however, if such a thing is possible, would float
Whigs and Radicals together over all their difficulties ; and this
is not impossible. Yet, near as we are to the dissolution, neither
side seems inclined to boast about the chances, and it is only in
Ireland that calm and .confidence prevail.

For both countries admittedly the result of the ballot will
have consequences more important than those which have ac-
crued from any previous dissolution in this century. For Ireland
it will decide whether Home Rule is or is not to be quietly con-
ceded, or whether we must once more repeat the weary round of
agitation and outcry, to be followed, perhaps, by repression and
imprisonment instead of by conciliation and reform. For Eng-
land it will determine whether the masses are prepared to trust
themselves to the new class of Radical statesmen who offer the
establishment of free schools, the destruction of the state church,
the taxation of the land, the compulsory acquirement of ground
by local bodies, a graduated income-tax to hit the rich, and the
simplification of the laws affecting real estate, or whether they
will continue to place confidence in the hereditary ruling power
of the aristocratic classes. It is only out of the necessities and
weaknesses of English parties that we can ever hope for justice.
Neither Whig nor Tory statesmen have ever attempted anything
for Ireland until it became inconvenient for them to turn a deaf
ear to Celtic clamor. Catholic Emancipation was granted in
1829, as Wellington confessed, " for fear of civil war." The
Tithes were abolished in 1832 after the massacre at Carrickshock
and the open resistance of the people everywhere. The Pro-
testant Church was disestablished in 1869 because, as Mr. Glad-
stone declared, the mind of England had been opened by the
Clerkenwell explosion. The Land Act of 1881 was passed be-
cause, in the words of the same statesman, the " chapel bell " ot
the Land League had been rung throughout a fiery agitation.
Tame demands are met by insolent refusals, and powerless prayers
by mocking sneers. O'Connell for fifteen years before his death
kept up a vast and imposing movement which ended in nothing,
because he missed no opportunity of convincing his enemies of
the sincerity of his opinion that " the liberty of mankind was not
worth a single drop of blood." No human explanation is possi-

3io THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. [Dec.,

ble of that extraordinary ingredient in the British character which
refuses to yield anything except to violence or power. It is as
strongly developed to-day as it was in the days of George Wash-
ington, and none of the correctives that have been applied in the
meantime have produced the smallest effect. The Irish party
regard the declarations of English statesmen refusing Home Rule
as mere surplusage. They were absolutely unnecessary, for
certainly it will not be granted so long as they can help it.
Only a lunatic Irishman could suppose that an Englishman
would surrender any right or power exercised by him so long
as he is able safely to hold on to it. So far as Ireland is con-
cerned, appeal, argument, or logic is entirely thrown away on
the ruling classes ; for, as Sydney Smith declared, the moment
one of his countrymen hears the very name of the " sister isle "
he immediately acts as if he had lost his reason. These things
being so, what hope, then, have the Irish party of achieving the
objects which they have set themselves to win? If it were simply
a question of four millions against thirty-four millions, as Mr.
Chamberlain declared, no doubt the minority would get only
"Drogheda quarter." It is too late, however, at the end of the
nineteenth century, to talk about extermination as a specific for
the settlement of the Irish difficulty, and Mr. Chamberlain,
besides, would make a very poor Cromwell.

But the real safety and hope of Ireland is the dishonest sys-
tem of party government by which the British Empire is ruled.
Whatever incident occurs throughout the world affecting British
policy or possessions, the party out of office endeavors to wrest
it to the discredit of the government, without the smallest re-
gard to candor, patriotism, or decency, so that it is absolutely
impossible for England to sustain a united front on any ques-
tion for any length of time. The moment it suits the ambition
or the convenience of one of her numerous statesmen to start
a new policy, that moment he will cut athwart the lines of
all his predecessors. Success in "dishing" opponents is the
only test by which his actions will be tried ; and no matter
how obliquely they may stray from the path of justice or pa-
triotism, a copious vocabulary will be always ready to deck
them out in the guise of morality and lofty statesmanship. Of
course the effect of party government in every country is much
the same, but England is the only one in whose parliament
there will in future be a powerful and determined band of
outsiders absolutely indifferent to the issues raised by either
party, except in so far as they can be turned to their own advan-
tage, and determined to watch every opportunity for the purpose

1885.] THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. 311

of playing off one side against the other. The knowledge of this
has already induced Mr. Gladstone to offer, like Col. Crockett's
'coon, to "come down" on the Home Rule question. With him
the principle of the demand of Ireland to manage her own af-
fairs much as an American State within the Union has already
been conceded, subject, he announces, to the preservation of the
integrity of the empire and the supreme authority of Parliament.
When, before 1800, Ireland possessed a native legislature, neither
the " integrity of the empire " nor the authority of the English
Parliament over it was at all impaired any more than is the unity
of the American Republic by a couple of score of independent
assemblies. The next stage in the controversy, therefore, so far
as Mr. Gladstone is concerned, will turn on the extent to which
the concession of this or that detail of the Irish claims would in-
fringe the "authority of the Imperial Parliament " or threaten
the "integrity of the empire." The Tories, on the other hand,
keep more or less " on the fence " in the matter. They profess
themselves anxious for an extended system of " local self-govern-
ment " for the kingdom, but neither from their speeches nor their
silences can it be inferred whether they are prepared to go as far
as the Liberal leader in this direction. Indeed, it may well be
supposed that they only refrain from denouncing Mr. Gladstone's
" truckling to rebellion " because they cannot afford to alienate
the Irish before the elections. Without the help of the Parnell-
ites in the English towns at the polls, and the help of the Irish
party in Parliament afterwards, they have no hope whatever of
obtaining a majority. They are, therefore, "on their good beha-
vior" at present. No doubt also, whatever their secret enmity
may be, if the Tories should, with the aid of Mr. Parnell, be able
to form a ministry in the next Parliament, they, too, would be
willing to take a "generous" view on Home Rule.

Americans, however, will naturally inquire why, if it is admit-
ted that Mr. Gladstone goes further towards Home Rule than
Lord Salisbury, the Irish leaders should have any hesitation in
recommending their followers in the English cities to support
him at the elections and in co-operating with him in Parlia-
ment themselves. The answer to this is that the existence of
the House of Lords with its standing Tory majority forbids any
such alliance, and makes it much more the interest of Ireland
that a Tory administration should be in power, provided it is de-
pendent for its existence on Irish support. The reason is clear.
Grant Mr. Gladstone a majority, and while he would have no
trouble in carrying out a coercion policy or in further muzzling
debate in the House of Commons, should he wish to do so,

312 THE PROSPECT FOR IRELAND. [Dec.,

he could only carry just as much beneficial Irish legislation
as the second chamber chose to allow ; and once the Tories
had failed at the election, they would, for party reasons, de-
nounce the smallest measure of self-government for Ireland as
a plot to disintegrate the empire. When the Lords take up an
obstructive attitude on English questions they are easily reduced
to reason, after a session or two, by a vigorous agitation in Eng-
land or the threat to dissolve Parliament ; but how is similar pres-
sure to be applied on the rejection of Irish reforms ? The English
masses do not care what" Hirish " bills the Lords throw out; and
as for dissolving Parliament, the Tories would then have the great
advantage of going to the country on an anti-Irish cry which is
also an anti-Catholic one and nothing more potent could be in-
vented to rally ignorant voters to their side. Whether Mr.
Gladstone, therefore, promises a big or a little Home Rule
scheme, his power to carry it through the Lords will be exactly
the same. If, however, the Tories came into power, their Lord-
ships would become most complaisant, and would pass whatever
measures the necessities of their party in the Lower House in-
duced them to send up. For these reasons, if the two British
parties are left nearly equal by the general election, policy would
seem to incline the Irish to promote the formation of a Conserva-
tive ministry. Were we to help the Liberals to office the Lords
would at once declare that the fact that the government was
only kept in power by the " rebel " vote disentitled its proposals
to any consideration. The existence of the hereditary chamber,
therefore, must exercise a continual influence on the course of
Irish policy, and, on the principle that it is wise to " make friends
with the mammon of unrighteousness," it would be more prudent
to coalesce with the party which could control the action of the
Peers, in case the choice rests with Mr. Parnell as to whether a
Whig or a Tory administration is to be formed. Of course, if the
Liberals gain a majority over both, the Irish party would have to
play another game, and the Tories would instantly revert to their
traditional policy of opposition to every measure of Irish reform.
Both parties are so utterly dishonest in their dealings with Ire-
land that principle will never be allowed to influence them, and
on this account much that will be obscure to Americans in Mr.
Parnell's policy is certain to arise. He has, however, behind him
in Ireland a practically united country, and in Parliament he will
control a force hitherto unknown in British politics ; and I am
much mistaken if, whatever happens at the polls in England, he
does not before long succeed in winning the full recognition of
his country's rights.

1 835.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 313

THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS.

PART II.

" ALL hail to Rome! She lords it o'er the world
From Ganges' flood to Atlas' snowy crown :

Heavenward from cape and coast her praise is hurled :
She lifts the nations up and casts them down :

Like some great mountain city-thronged she stands,

Her shade far cast eclipsing seas and lands.

" She flings that shade across the tracts of Time
Not less than o'er the unmeasured fields of space ;

Processional the Empires paced sublime;

Her heralds these ; they walked before her face :

Assyrian, Persian, Grecian what were they ?

Poor matin streaks, wan preludes of the day !

" The Pyramids that vault Egyptian kings
When near her legions drew bowed low their heads;

Indus and Oxus from their mountain springs
Whispered, ' She cometh.' Dried-up river-beds

From Dacian plains to British cried aghast,

' This way but now the Roman Eagles passed ! '

" She fells the forest, and the valley spans
With arch o'er arch : the mountain-crests she carves

With roads, till Nature's portents yield to Man's :
Wolf-like the race that mocks her bleeds or starves ;

Alike they lived their lives, they had their day :

Her laws abide ; men hear them and obey.

" Beyond the far sea-limit of old Tyre

Her gold fleets waft earth's harvest through the storm
Carthage, Tyre's daughter, crossed her path : the fire

Went o'er her walls; in blackening heaps deform
Her league-long ruins ridge the desert grey ;
Above them pard and tiger chase their prey.

3 H THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Dec.,

" All hail to Rome ! Her mighty heart serene

Houses at will all nations and their gods
Content to know herself of all the Queen.

Who spake that word ; ' The old Religion nods ' ?
Ah fools ! at times, but gathering heat, the levin
Sleeps in Jove's hand. Yet Jove reigns on in heaven."

Such was the song that from beyond that wall
Girdling the palace pleasaunce swelled what time

Zoe awoke, till then sleep's lovely thrall,

And marked the splendors of the dewy prime

Brightening the arras nymphs beyond her bed ;

Upright she sat, and propped a listening head.

She listened as the choral echo rang

Lessening from stem to stem, from stone to stone ;
Then rose, and, tossing wide the casement, sang

In briefer note a challenge of her own :
" Ye honor still the old Faithwhen dead condole it
That Faith was Greek, my masters ! Rome but stole it ! '

That Faith was hers in childhood ; threads thereof
Still gleamed 'mid all those golden tissues woven

Which decked her fancy's world of thought and love :
Her conscience clung to Truths revealed, heart-proven

Her fancy struck no root into the true,

A rock-flower fed on ether and on dew.

She had a pagan nurse and Christian mother :

That mother taught her girl the Christian Creed ;

She learned it, she believed : yet scarce could smother
Memories, first learned, of heathen race and breed

Which, claiming to be legend only, won

Perchance more credence as exacting none.

Circled by pagans, she their rites derided :
The Christian Faith, that only, she revered ;

Yet oft, at Christian hearths, with sceptics sided :
Sacred Religion less she loved than feared,

Still muttering sadly ; " Easy 'tis, I wean,

To dread the Unknown, but hard to love the Unseen."

1 885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 315

Stronger she was in intellect than spirit ;

In intellect's self less strong than keen and swift :
Immeasurable in beauty, interest, merit

To her was Nature's sphere ; but hers no gift
To roam through boundless empires of the Soul :
She craved the definite path, not distant goal.

Seldom the girl's unlovelier moods looked forth
When first she housed in that Euphemian home

So rich in loftiest reverence, lowliest worth :
The stately ways of Apostolic Rome

Still met her there, and steadied and upraised:

A part of heaven she saw where'er she gazed.

And deeplier yet her better spirit was moved
When, by Aglae led, she trod those spots

Where bled the martyrs. Oft, torch-lit, they roved
Those dusky ways, like sea-wrought caves and grots,

Rome's subterranean city of the tombs,

This hour her noblest boast the Catacombs.

The soundless floors with blood-stains still were red :

Still lay the martyr in sepulchral cell,
The ensanguined vial close beside his head,

" In pace " at his feet. Ineffable
That peace around: the pictured walls confessed
Its source divine in emblems ever blessed.

Here the " Good Shepherd " on His shoulder bare
The sheep long lost. The all-wondrous Eucharist

Was symboled near. Close- bound in grave-clothes, there
Lazarus stood up beneath the eye of Christ:

Below his gourd the Prophet bowed his head,

Prophet unweeting of the Three-days-Dead.

Among the Roman martyrs two there were
Whom most the Greek in wonder venerated,

Cecilia and her spouse, that wedded pair

Who lived their short, glad life like spirits mated

And, hand in hand, passed to the Crucified:

" Oh, how unlike Aspasia! " Zoe cried.

3i6 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Dec.,

Yet to her heart dearer Saint Agnes was,

That lamb immaculate of the Roman fold,
So happy to her Lord, so young 1 to pass,

By Him so fenced from stain ! Ah ! meek as bold,
With fleece of lambs before thine altar blessed
The shepherds of God's flock this day are dressed !

One morn, from these returned, Aglae spake ;

" Husband, bestow this maiden on thy son !
She loves our martyrs: that high love will make

Their marriage blest and holy ! " It was done :
By parents at that time were bridals made
In Rome. Alexis heard them and obeved.

Zoe at first felt angry : thus she mused :

" Unsued, and scarce consulted, to be wed ! "

She mused again ; this marriage, wisely used,
May lift once more my country's fallen head :

That was my dream since childhood : till I die

There stands my purpose : now the means are nigh."

Such was the leaning of her deeper nature ;

To some she seemed a Muse : to sterner eyes
A Siren to be dreaded : but the creature

Beneath her sallies gay and bright disguise
Was inly brave and serious, strong and proud :
A child of Greece, to that sad mother vowed.

Betrothed they were what time the earlier snows
Whitening Soracte's scalp were caked with frost :

The marriage was postponed till April's close,
Then later till the Feast of Pentecost.

Meantime they met not oft. The youth had still

High tasks he loved all duties to fulfil.

Zoe thenceforth was welcomed more and more

In all the Roman houses of old fame ;
Welcomed by pagans most : they set great store

Upon her thoughtful wit and Attic name,
And learned, with help from her, to read with ease
The songs of Sappho and Simonides.

1885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 317

Among- them ranged a dame right eloquent

On all the classic myths of ancient days :
In each she found unrecognized intent

Occult, and oft her jetty brows would raise
Much wondering how a child of Academe
Could slight Greek wisdom for a Hebrew dream.

Her spouse had been a Flamen sleek and soft,
Rome's chief of heathen priests. " His prison-bars

Are burst at last ! " that widow clamoured oft :

" Released, that great one walks among the stars ! "

Light-fingered thus, the well-trained Sophists stole

From Truth a part; assailed therewith the whole.

With her the Athenian strove that perilous season,

Most confident belike when certain least.
A perilous staff, for such, is boastful reason ;

On that whene'er she leaned her doubts increased ;
The Catacombs propped best a faith unstable :
She said, " Those dear ones died not for a fable."

A help beside 'gainst unbelieving sin

Illumed her pathway. 'Twas the heaven-lit face

Of him, her destined husband. None therein
Might gaze nor gather thence a healing grace ;

Round him he breathed Faith's sweet yet strengthening
clime,

Like sea-winds sent o'er hills of rock and thyme.

He spake : at once the girl with instinct keen
Felt that he told of things to him well known,

And for an hour through God's high worlds unseen
She walked as one who sees. But when alone

Faith lacked what Love Divine alone can lend her:

Her nature, though impassioned, was not tender.

Her mental powers were wide and far of gaze ;

Ardent her heart, profound, but yet confined :
Her sympathies walked firm on solid ways

But cast no gladsome pinions on the wind,
Felt not the gravitation from above :
The depths they knew, but not the heights of love.

318 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Dec.,

Not less huge powers of love in her had dwelt

Unknown, long checked like tarns on hillsides stayed

By bars of ice no April airs can melt :
In vain her country's sons their court had paid :

She spurned them : Greece lay bound, a spoil, a jest ;

They in her degradation acquiesced.

Her Roman suitors she had spurned yet more,
Save one : she saw in each her country's foe.

That one, strange nurseling of a mystic lore,
Was brave as wise, and just to high and low:

The ice had burst : the torrent took its way :

" How slowly comes," she thought, " this marriage-day ! "

She loved Alexis well : he loved her better ;

Better, not more. She loved with all her heart ;
He with a portion, for he brooked no fetter

That bound his spirit to earth. To her a part
He gave in his large being not the whole ;
'Tis thus they love whose love is of the soul.

Ofttimes when most she loved she scorned to show it,

Deeming her love repaid by his but half:
Ofttimes she wept ; but, fearing he should know it,

Drank down her tears, or praised with petulant laugh
What least he loved ; or curtsied in her spleen
Passing the fane, still thronged, of beauty's Queen.

Sometimes, approaching Constantine's huge piles
That lifted o'er vast courts their shadowing span

As o'er dusk waters frown Egean isles,
The Lateran Mother-Church, or Vatican,

She seemed to see them not; but stooped and raised

A violet from the grass, and kissed and praised.

He judged her not, yet mused in boding thought:
" This marriage will it help this orphan maid?"

The answer followed plain : " I never sought
The tie. My parents willed it: I obeyed :

If they have erred, in time a hand more high

Will point my way. Till then no choice have I."

1 83$.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 319

More seldom still they met : but when they met
Airs as from heaven played on her spirit's chords ;

And seldom if he spake, with eyes tear-wet

She sighed : " A man is he of deeds, not words ! "

Poor child ! She guessed not 'twas her wayward will

Slighting the themes he loved that held him silent still.

She knew him not ; his parents but in part :

They wist not this, that, though to seats divine

Great Love at times can lift the earthly heart,
To hearts enskied as oft it means decline.

Their course was well-nigh run, their heaven nigh gained ;

One sole temptation and its cure remained.

The marriage morn had come. At faith's high call
Ere sunrise yet the dewy groves had dried

The youth was praying in a chapel small

That stood retired by Tiber's streaming tide ;

Though dull the morn, the boats with flags were gay:

A pagan Feast they kept Rome's natal day.

Returning from that church, the youth observed

That 'mid these boats white-winged, and by the bank,

A bark lay moored where Tiber seaward curved ;
It bore no flag ; its sails were black and dank

A stern sea-stranger, silent, sad, alone ;

A raven 'mid bright birds of dulcet tone.

Down from that sable bark there moved a man

With sun-burnt brow, worn cheek, and sad, dark eyes :

He to the youth made way, and thus began :
" A sailor I, and live by merchandise :

I seek Laodicea : from her shore

Edessa may be reached in three days more.

" There, in her church who bore the Lord of all,

Abides for aye that ' Venerable Face '
Which, like those shadows Apostolical

That healed the sick, fill all that land with grace.
Thou know'st not of that mystery. Give ear !
Elect are they who hold that picture dear.

320 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Dec.,

" When Christ, Who died for Man, by slow degrees

Bearing His Cross ascended Calvary,
O'er-spent at last He sank on both His knees :

Then of the Holy Women clustering nigh
One forward stept. Above that Face, bedewed
With blood, she pressed her veil, and weeping stood.

" Since then abides upon that Veil all-blest

The Sacred Image of that Face Divine
Thereon that hour by miracle impressed :

Some see it not. Who see it never pine
Thenceforth for earthly goods. True merchant he
Who all things sells for one. This night embark with me ! '

" This is my wedding-day," the youth replied :
Then round them closed seafarers loud of cheer,

And severed was that Stranger from his side :

Through all their din thenceforth he seemed to hear

Sad memory's iteration wearisome,

" Wedded am I : therefore I cannot come."

Entering his ancient home in troubled thought,

Once more he heard, " He who great wealth hath won,

Let that man live as pilgrims who have naught;
The wedded man as he who wife hath none "

Words heard at Mass the morning of that Feast

Whereon that bride had landed from the East.

He raised his eyes: changed was his Father's house:
Euphemian thus had sworn : " For one day more

Let vanished times return ; the frank carouse ;
The harps and dances of our Rome of yore.

Rome reverenced marriage once: this marriage long

Shall record boast in Roman tale and song."

Where was it now, that rust which long had covered
The arms of Consuls famed in days that were ?

Banners as old as Cannae swung and hovered
Shifting with gusts of laughter-shaken air;

And on the walls hung faded tapestries old

Still Greek in thought though dimmed by moth and mould,

1885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 321

Here shone the Huntress Maid : the crescent gleam
Brightening her brow, the Radiance disarrayed

Whitened with imaged shape the forest stream :
There Galatea with sea-monsters played *

The self-same breeze that landward o'er the rocks

Waved the dark pine blew far her refluent locks.

Not far stood Pallas wrought in stone. That eye
Levelled beneath strong brows and helmed crest

Though stern, looked forth in wisdom clear and high :
The Gorgon Mask lay moveless on a breast

That ne'er had heaved with love or shook with fear;

High up her hand sustained that steadying spear.

The art was Christian oft. The Martyr Boy
Blessed Sebastian, pierced by arrows, stood

In maid-like and immaculate beauty. Joy
Illumed his front, though dying, unsubdued :

And well those lifted eyes discerned in heaven

That Face the Proto-Martyr hailed Saint Stephen.

Tables there were of sandal-wood carved quaintly

By fingers .lean of cedar-shaded Ind,
Embossed with emblems, shapes grotesque yet saintly;

And gods Egyptian, taloned, winged or finned ;
And ivory cabinets with ebon barred,
Musk-scented, pale with pearl, and opal-starred.

Here glittered caskets, gifts of Afric kings;

Gold goblets, pledge from satraps of the East;
Huge incense-burning lamps on demon wings

Suspense, for rites of funeral or feast ;
And shells for music strung and bows for war,
Fantastic toys, tribute from regions far.

Mosaic pavements glistened, deftly studded
With Sphinx, or Zodiac-Beast, or Hieroglyph,

As oft with Lotos blossom. Leaned, new-budded,
The April Almond from his shaggy cliff,

Or rained red flakes on Ocean's blameless daughters

Oaring their placid way o'er purple waters.
VOL. XLII. 21

322 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Dec.,

The nuptial rite was brief; the banquet long,
For many a gray-haired noble told his tale,

And many a youthful minstrel sang his song ;

Some marked a trembling in the bride's white veil r

But on her long-lashed lids there hung no tear ;

Flushed was her cheek ; her voice was firm and clear.

Within a tent upon that bowery level

Whose tallest palm grove crowned Mount Aventine,
Hour after hour rang out that ardent revel,

While flashed above it many a starry sign ;
Untired that Bride danced on ; beneath the shade
The night-bird sang to listening youth and maid,

Alexis moved amid the throng, heart-sore,
Yet courteous to each guest. Pastimes like these

His eyes had never looked upon before ;
Now seeing, he misliked them. Ill at ease,

One voice he heard 'mid all that ceaseless hum ;

" I have a Wife ; therefore I cannot come."

Far down, where Tiber caught the white moonshine,
He heard, though faint, that hymn at morning sung.

More near, the opprobrious verses Fescennine
Trolled by boy pagans as their nuts they flung :

He sought the house, passed to its farthest room,

Lit by one lamp that scarcely pierced the gloom.

Within that room was one sole occupant j

He stood beneath that lamp ; its downward shade

Clasped the tall form, and on him seemed to plant
A dusky cowl. Half-wondering, half-dismayed,

The youth gazed on him : recognized at last

The Stranger seen that morning near him passed.

Alexis stood as stands a man in trance :
Then dawned on him a vision sad, sublime :

No more the marriage pomp, the feast, the dance,
No more that sable bark and matin prime :

Centuries rolled back ; there hung before his eye

The Saviour, crowned with thorn, and Calvary.

1885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 323

That Saviour looked upon him. In his heart
Plainly he heard : " Edessa meet Me there ;

There bide with Me alone ; and thence depart
When I that sow, My harvest home shall bear.

Those three thou lov'dst on earth in days of old

Shall then be thine and Mine in love tenfold."

The Vision faded ; lightest steps he heard,

And, wreathed with rose, the Bride before him stood

Warm from the dance, and blithesome as a bird.

He spake : " Fear naught ! What God decrees is good."

Within her hand he placed a ring, and said :

" Farewell ! Wear this till many years are fled.

" Farewell ! Live thou in Faith and Innocence :
Farewell ! God calls me to a far-off land ;

But He will lead me back Who bids me hence,
And draw us near; and yet between us stand.

Farewell, poor child ! " He passed into the night,

And soon was hidden wholly from her sight.

When the next morn had changed dark skies to grey
They found her with wide eyes and lips apart

Standing, a statue wreathed, in white array ;

One wedded hand was pressed against her heart ;

One clasped a ring. " 'Tis time to sleep," she said ;

" Lay the poor Bride 'tis late upon her bed."

END OF PART II.

324 HUMAN A UTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. [Dec.,

HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH.

UNDER the term " human authority " we include everything
of the nature of testimony or doctrinal teaching not covered by
the divine warrant of infallibility, co-existing and subordinate to
her divine authority, in the church ; and worthy, in some sense,
to determine in accordance with the dictates of reason and faith
the mental assent of the individual believer and the common
assent of the faithful.

The authority is human, because the credibility which belongs
to it is founded on human testimony and other reasons lying
entirely within the scope of human faculties of cognition. It is
authority, not because of a legitimate dominion over free voli-
tions and outward acts, but because it furnishes a criterion to the
judgment of an individual mind on the truth, which criterion is
external to the individual himself and superior, in some respects,
to any interior, private criterion of his own. It does not sup-
plant the interior criterion, but in certain respects supplements,
extends, gives increased sanction to, and liberates from many
accidents causing error in the use of, this inward, personal rule
of judgment and intellectual assent. The trustworthiness of the
external criterion is, however, dependent from the unerring ac-
curacy of the interior criterion, considered as it is in ideal human
nature, and in individual men so far as their condition and opera-
tion are natural and normal.

This criterion is a principle of certitude according to which
the intellect operates in making judgments. It is evidence that
is, the intrinsic intelligibility of truth apprehended by the mind.
" Objectively, it is the universal criterion of truth."* Being uni-
versal, necessary, infallible, in itself, when, and in so far as, it is
apprehended by an intelligent subject, it is in him, an infallible
rule, and judgments made by its exact measure are unerring,
^niay be known to be true without any fear of error. Subjec-
tively, it is a criterion of truth universal in respect to the think-
ing individual that is, an actual measure of all the truth he does
know, and a possible measure of all he can know, in a natural
way Ignorance of some truths may affect the minds of men, as
a limitation or as a defect. In such case the criterion is, so far,
unavailable. But error is an accident. It is true that the human

*Russo, S.J., Summ. Philos., p. 112.

1885.] HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. 325

mind is fallible, in this sense : that being limited, and, in respect
to things whose evidence does not necessarily determine its as-
sent, subject to the influence of the will, which may pervert its
action, it can in some things err by making imprudent and false
judgments.* But judgments based on sensible cognition, when
the senses are in a due condition and rightly used, cannot be, of
their own nature, erroneous. The intellective faculty is exempt
from all error in immediate judgments, in strictly logical deduc-
tions from known truths, and in acts of reflective consciousness.
There is, therefore, a kind of immunity from error which is a
proper quality and perfection of the human mind, giving it a
limited participation of the limitless infallibility of God, yet not
excluding an accidental liability to error, which often results in
actual errors of many kinds.

It is not altogether incorrect to call this limited, human par-
ticipation in the divine infallibility by the name of human infalli-
bility. It is, however, better not to use this epithet excepting in
respect to the supernatural immunity from all accidental error
within the sphere of divine revelation, which is a grace and gift
of the Holy Spirit.

Such as it is, and by whatever name it is called, it breeds
science, in the strict and proper sense of that term. From science
proceeds human faith, which is an assent of the mind crediting
what is attested to it as the science or knowledge of other minds.
Authority is something resulting from the science and veracity
of those to whom credence is given, which conciliates the assent
of those who give this credence. All society rests on this sort of
credence given to credible attestation of facts and other verities,
knowable in themselves and known to some directly, but received
on their authority by others, even, to a great extent, by mankind
generally. The physical sciences, among other things, rest on
this basis. It is in respect to facts and truths which are disclos-
ed by the testimony of God that the highest and most absolute
belief-worthiness is justly and necessarily to be affirmed, and
these are the objects of divine faith.

We may here repeat what has been already once said : that
the belief-worthiness of God springs from his essential truth in
being, knowing, and making known as much as he chooses to
testify by revelation. The criterion of truth in God is evidence.
His infinite being is in itself intelligible in an equal ratio to its
real existence, in the act of infinite intelligence. That is, God,
who is the origin and measure of all the knowable, is evident to

* Ibid. p. 102.

326 r HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. [Dec.,

himself, and this evidence includes all the real and the possible,
the truth of which has its foundation in the divine essence and
intelligence. That which God makes evident to a created mind,
by giving it an intellect after the likeness of his own intelligence,
and setting it face to face with its proper object, is not received
by faith in God's veracity, but by a light which gives a certain
participated vision of truth in the eternal divine reasons them-
selves. Here, also, the criterion of truth is evidence. That
which God discloses by revelation is apprehended, first, by the
motives of credibility, then by evidence of the true sense of the
revelation, finally by perception of the truth of what is revealed,
not in itself, as self-evident, but in the veracity of God. In this
case the rational motive for the judgment that it is reasonable to
give absolute assent to a truth, even though in itself it be inevi-
dent to the mind, is, that it is certainly known to be evident to
God who reveals it.

In the case of human faith, the belief-worthiness of the human
witness, whether an individual or a collection of individuals con-
sidered as a moral person, consists in the qualification of the wit-
ness as one who has evidence of something, which he is known
to attest veraciously.

That evidence is the criterion of the truth which the mind
knows by the operation of its own faculties of cognition, is a
statement needing no further explication.

The point we make is, that evidence is always the criterion of
truth, in respect to every kind of undoubting assent. It is evi-
dence, either immediately to the mind which assents, or mediate-
ly by the appropriation of the evidence which is immediate to
one or more other minds, human or divine. In the latter case,
that of mediate evidence, the appropriation of the science of an-
other mind is by evidence that the science exists in its own
proper subject and is truly communicated. Evidence is there-
fore, objectively, the universal criterion of truth, and it is the
subjective criterion either immediately or mediately. In the
last analysis it is the interior criterion which is the measure and
test of subjective truth that is, of the correspondence of the in-
tellectual concept to the objective reality.

The object of all this reasoning is to show how all the kinds
of knowledge we possess are indissolubly bound together, and
must stand or fall in company. It is to show how dangerous the
diminishing or questioning of the certitude of either the direct
and immediate knowledge of the mind, or its knowledge through
human testimony or through divine testimony, is to the certi-

1885.] HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. 327

tude of the other, terms ; how science, human faith, and divine
faith are all shaken and undermined when any one of them has
its foundations weakened. At whatever point the principle of
scepticism is applied, it is evidence, the universal criterion of
truth, which is attacked ; and if this rule is weakened or broken
in any part it has lost its value, wholly or partially, throughout.
Scepticism logically tends to become from partial universal, and
to subvert everything in the order of pure reason, of human and
of divine faith. Reason and revelation, science and faith, human
testimony and divine testimony, cannot therefore be dissociated,
set in mutual opposition, separately established and defended, or
separately assaulted and overthrown, as if their causes were in-
dependent of each other or in conflict one with the other. An
effort to demolish rational science and leave faith standing is a
chimerical project. For reason is the soil or rocky substratum
on which the foundations of the whole structure of faith rest.
An endeavor to overturn the Cyclopean edifice of faith, and leave
rational science immovably secure, is an equally futile purpose.
For its foundations are so vast and solid that a force mighty
enough to dislodge them could only be a subterranean convul-
sion, rending in pieces and submerging the strata of science and
history, from the highest to the lowest.

Evidence and authority cannot, therefore, be set in absolute
contrast to each other as two perfectly separate and different
criteria of different kinds of truth.

Authority, in the sense in which we are using the term, is not,
we must repeat, a right of command proceeding from dominion,
but " that which conciliates faith to the witness is called author-
ity, which results from the knowledge and veracity of the wit-
nesses, otherwise expressed, from the fact that the witnesses know
and speak the truth."* God is the author, and his intellect is
the measure, of all our intellectual and rational cognitions. He
gives the law to our minds by giving them light, and vision of intel-
lectually visible that is, intelligible objects. He is the author
and the giver of our faith, and he makes the objects of our faith
belief-worthy by giving light to the intellect. This light makes
the objects of faith sufficiently intelligible for an act of rational
assent. Morale est omnibus , ut qui fidem exigit fidem astruat.
Whoever exacts faith must furnish a reason for faith. God ob-
serves this rule, and, of course, men, whether divinely-commis-
sioned witnesses and teachers or not, must observe it.

* Russo, p. 117. This compendium is referred to in respect to this whole matter, as the
latest and most convenient.

328 HUMAN A UTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. [Dec.,

But how, then, are intellectual and rational beings responsible
to God for any mental acts of assent or dissent? For those
which are involuntary and necessary they are not, since these
have no moral quality. But for those which are voluntary and
not necessary that is, in some way depend from free acts of the
will the creature is responsible to the Creator, by reason of his
absolute dominion over him. He may be responsible also to
men who have a delegated and limited dominion over him. The
will is directly subject to dominion, and indirectly the intellect,
within the sphere of the moral order and moral law. There are
many obligations and duties respecting the right use of the in-
tellect, and in relation to truth which is known or knowable,
springing from the natural law, and others springing from posi-
tive divine law. Those which are terminated to the divine, in-
fallible authority of the Catholic Church, and to every other
authority lawfully constituted in the same, begin with the first
proposition of the church to the mind which suffices to make
inquiry into her claims obligatory on the conscience. They are
perfected when an individual has a sufficient rational motive for
the judgment that the church has the divine authority which she
claims. As soon as the rational motive is perceived, the recogni-
tion of the infallible authority becomes strictly obligatory, even
by virtue of the natural law. When the infallible authority is
recognized, it is plain that assent to everything which it is cer-
tainly known to propose, within the sphere of its authority, is
demanded by reason and conscience, and is instantly obligatory,
without any further examination of the reasons and grounds of
credibility which is dubitative ; though examination for the con-
firmation of belief and clearer understanding of its objects may
be pursued indefinitely.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the only human Teacher who is in-
fallible in all things, without limitation, by reason of his divinity.
One who knew him to be so would want no other reason for as-
senting to whatever he might affirm in regard to any matter
whatsoever, other than his simple word. To refuse or suspend
assent would be foolish as well as morally wrong. He did not,
however, make use of his universal knowledge in teaching, ex-
cept to a limited extent, in accordance with the intention and
scope of his divine mission. He it is, present by his Holy Spirit
in the church, who is the source of her infallibility, given and
brought into exercise in a certain measure determined by his own
wisdom. Enough for our present purpose has been said in a
former article respecting this infallible authority of the church.

1885.] HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. 329

At present we are only paving the way to a consideration of
authorities not infallible. In view of this it is important to ob-
serve that infallibility is not always and absolutely necessary to
belief-worthiness. It is not necessary to the certitude of imme-
diate judgments or rational conclusions that the mind should be
endowed with such a perfection of intelligence and knowledge as
to secure its immunity from all limitations of ignorance and every
accident of error. Neither is it necessary to possess this immu-
nity in order that an individual person, or a collective moral per-
son, may be a belief-worthy witness. In certain instances we
can know that we are not ignorant and not in error. Others
may be sure of the same in respect to our knowledge, and may
also be sure of our veracity, and thus sure of our belief-worthi-
ness and secure in their assent to the truth which we attest.
Thus we can be sure of the primary truths of natural theology, of
the motives of credibility of Christianity, of the divine institu-
tion and authority of the church, of the actual contents of the
creed, of the purport of the decrees of the Council of Trent. We
may be sure that the church teaches infallibly, and sure that
she teaches certain doctrines as articles of faith, without being
ourselves infallible.

Revelation is not absolutely necessary for teaching doctrinal
and ethical truths which are not above and beyond reason ; but
only morally necessary for teaching them completely, easily, and
to all men ; and in respect to some truths, either in general or in
respect to some persons, with more certainty. Revelation is
absolutely necessary to the knowledge of mysteries, or truths
above and beyond reason. The original source of revelation
must be an absolutely infallible authority. The revelation itself
must be attested and accredited in such a way that those to
whom it is proposed can have a certitude excluding all reason-
able doubt or fear concerning all which they are required to be-
lieve on the veracity of the divine testimony.

It is not essentially and absolutely necessary that dogmas ol
faith should be received through the medium of a teaching
church which is known to be infallible. The infallibility of the
Catholic Church is morally necessary for the fulfilment of the
purposes for which it was established. Its infallible teaching is
the ordinary medium through which the minds of men are
brought into contact with the veracity of God, which is the for-
mal motive of assent to revealed truths as revealed.

The entire contents of God's word to men, as contained in
Scripture and tradition, are not, however, explicitly declared, de-

330 HUMAN AUTHORITY IN- THE CHURCH. [Dec.,

fined, and taught by the teaching church either by her ordinary
magistracy or by her solemn decrees and judgments as they
exist in their formal essence of revealed truth, or a fortiori as
they are virtually a criterion of doctrinal and moral truths of an
inferior order. God has made his revelation, from the time of
Adam to the time of the Apostle St. John, in such a way that
the manifestation of the truth which is either necessary or highly
important, according to the difference of times, in respect to the
chief end of man, has always been clear. Some parts of it, how-
ever, which did not become matters of general explicit faith dur-
ing the pre-Christian period, remained obscure until Christ and
the apostles made them clear. The clearly-revealed truths have
been in certain respects more distinctly and in others more con-
fusedly manifested, but never so fully as to give an adequate
knowledge of all that is explicitly and implicitly contained, much
less of what is virtually contained, in the entire word of God.
This divine word, which received continual augmentations until
the series of inspired prophets was completed, is in part a dis-
tinct but inadequate, in part a clear but confused, in part an ob-
scure testimony of God to men in respect to a vast system of
truth, whose lower portion is within, while its higher region is
above the scope of natural knowledge and reason. It is all, to its
minutest parts, in itself, of faith that is, worthy of absolute, un-
doubting belief, on the veracity of God. But it is of faith, in re-
spect to us, only in so far as its meaning is understood and known,
or may and ought to be understood and known, with certainty.
That which the church teaches and imposes upon all the faithful
as of faith, and that alone, is of Catholic faith. If one be other-
wise certain respecting some part of it which is not of Catholic
faith, it is to him of divine faith, though it is not so to others who
are not certain. Beyond the region of certitude there is another
more extensive domain of probability, whose outermost bounds
insensibly fade away into the conjectural and the unknowable.

It would be impossible that the magnificent concepts given
to the human intellect by revelation should remain in it as mere
formulas, propositions closed by their own terms, and handed
down, like precious heirlooms, from generation to generation.
The light which Jesus Christ cast upon the mind, and the sparks
of divine fire which he dropped into the heart, of regenerated
humanity, awakened the Christian intellect and inflamed the
Christian will to a superhuman activity. Faith informed by love
was a vital, energizing principle, rousing up the soul to pursue
wisdom and virtue with untiring ardor. Faith seeking under-

1885.] HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. 331

standing, for the sake of the knowledge itself, and for the sake of
convincing, persuading, enlightening mankind, vindicating and
defending the truth, refuting error and overcoming unbelief, has
made the church and a great number of her members quick with
intellectual life. This vitality has produced growth, develop-
ment, progress in faith and science. The original principles,
articles, dogmas of the faith, clearly revealed and explicitly be-
lieved, always, everywhere, and by all, have developed into more
distinct formal concepts, or at least more precisely-defined ver-
bal expressions. Implicit doctrines of divine faith have been de-
fined as dogmas of Catholic faith. Determinations of Catholic
doctrine in matters connected with and related to the faith have
been made as a protection to its dogmas. Thus the great struc-
ture of the solemn, infallible teaching of the church has been
erected and augmented, and is capable of still greater augmen-
tation, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, controlling and
assisting successive popes and councils in the exercise of their
supreme office.

All this is to be said of Catholic faith and doctrine as taught
and held through the ordinary infallible magistracy of the dif-
fused episcopate under its supreme head, so far as this is identi-
cal with that which is taught and held through solemn declara-
tions and judgments of the same authority, or preceding and giv-
ing rise to them, or being more extensive and comprehensive
than they are. Active infallibility in teaching, passive infalli-
bility in holding and professing, either explicitly or implicitly, all
truth manifested through divine revelation, under the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, are perpetual and universal endowments of
the Catholic Church, always in exercise, producing continual
progress and development in the divine wisdom.

We come now to the principal question of discussion and its
principal difficulty. For, namely, as the teaching church in its
diffusion has no universal organ distinct from the Cathedra Petri
in the Roman Church and oecumenical councils, its ordinary in-
fallible magistracy has only the medium of particular organs
through which it can be exercised. These are not endowed with
infallibility. Particular churches, among which the great apos-
tolic sees are pre-eminent; bishops, each of whom is pastor,
teacher, and judge in his own diocese ; provincial and still larger
particular councils ; the Fathers and Doctors of the church none
of them, singly and'by themselves, are infallible. It is, therefore,
necessary to admit that there are authorities in the church, sub-
ordinated to the divine authority of the church, to which not

332 HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. [Dec.,

only exterior respect but interior submission of the mind is due.
We have already said and the saying- is borrowed from theolo-
gians and philosophers of the highest character that the media
through which the mind apprehends with certainty the teaching
of infallible authority, even the teaching of God himself, and
bases its assent finally on the divine veracity, need not be infal-
lible that is, exempt from all liability to the accident of error.
It is enough that we know by faculties which do not err by their
own nature, and which we can know in particular cases not to
err actually from accidental causes, or through the testimony of
witnesses evidently competent and veracious and therefore be-
lief-worthy, that the infallible church teaches some doctrine, that
God has revealed some truth. The individual judgment can be
unerring, the testimony or judgment of the witness, or collec-
tion of witnesses, can be unerring and known to be so ; so that
reasonable doubt or fear of the contrary is excluded by the ex-
clusion of the causes and occasions of error. I am not exempt
from all liability to fall out of window. But I am not in danger
of falling out while I sit here. I am not exempt from all liability
to error, but there are many things in respect to which I know
there can be no danger that I may be in error in respect to my
judgments. Some of these are wholly or in part beliefs on testi-
mony that is, on authority. It has been said above that the ex-
terior criterion of truth found in authority, in some respects and
in relation to some things, liberates the mind from accidents
causing error in the use of its interior criterion ; which is equiva-
lent to saying that we sometimes have better evidence from au-
thority than we can have in these cases from our personal cog-
nizance of the thing. The accidental causes of error are differ-
ent in separate individuals, in diverse times and circumstances.
Some one person, for particular reasons, may be a witness who
cannot be supposed to be deceived or to practise deception, in
such a way that his testimony is better evidence of truth than
that of a crowd of witnesses not so competent and credible, or
any evidence which can be had by personal investigation.
Generally speaking, a collection of such credible witnesses makes
a stronger authority than one, an authority more entirely belief-
worthy.

To apply this to the matter of the authority of the Fathers
and Doctors of the church. One of them may have, as a witness
to the Catholic faith and teaching, in some* respects, a kind of
dominant authority, exceeding that of a number of others. In
general their concurrence in testimony gives it the greatest pos-

1885.] HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. 333

sible weight. For it cannot have any other cause and sufficient
reason except the universally-diffused teaching and belief of the
church. It is based on the infallible doctrine of the prophets
and apostles, contained in the Canonical Scriptures and in Catho-
lic tradition. In it the teaching of the church by her ordinary
magistracy finds a voice and an expression which takes a scien-
tific form in the writings of the great Doctors and of the eminent,
standard theologians who elaborate and arrange in systematic
order the matter which is furnished by the Fathers and Doctors.
The science of theology draws also from every natural source of
knowledge, from philosophy in particular ; it makes inferences
and deductions, constructs arguments and theories, investigates
all the traces of truth in every direction ; and on the basis of faith
it erects a vast structure which is continually enlarging its di-
mensions, finishing more minutely its details, and decorating its
spaces. It is a human work, having a human authority. Its
authors, even though they be popes and bishops, are private doc-
tors, not having the infallibility of prophets, apostles, popes
teaching ex cathedra, and the collective episcopate, or even a di-
vine commission to teach in this particular way. Their works
have, however, the approbation of the Holy See and the church
in general, or at least some official approbation which suffices to
give them less or more credit up to the very highest which
uninspired human writings can deserve. They have also as their
substance the doctrines of divine revelation contained in the
written and unwritten word of God. Catholic theology is not
the word of God, but it may be called, to use a rabbinical expres-
sion, " the daughter of the word." We cannot accommodate
the rabbinical saying, " Water is all Bible-lore, but Mishna is
pure wine," to Catholic theology ; but we may say that Bible-
lore and apostolic teaching are pure wine, and Catholic theology
wine and water. There is divine and there is human doctrine in
it. The divine doctrine is, of itself, of faith. The human has
certitude or probability, and a proportionate authority.

The doctrinal teaching of bishops, of particular councils, of
the Roman congregations, of the Sovereign Pontiffs when they
are not judging or teaching ex catktdrd, may be only a repetition
and an inculcation of that which is manifestly pertaining to faith
or Catholic doctrine. Or, especially in the case of decisions
emanating from the Holy See, such official doctrine, though not
manifestly beforehand pertaining to the infallible teaching of the
church, may become manifested as such by tacit or express con-
sent and adhesion of the universal church.

331- HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. [Dec.,

Of themselves these dogmatic decrees are not final, irreform-
able, infallible judgments, though they are authentic and possess-
ed of official authority.

The duty of all Catholics in respect to these ecclesiastical de-
cisions is thus explained by Hurter, who follows in the main the
leading of Cardinal Franzelin :

" The assent to be rendered to a judgment either of an infallible teach-
ing authority which nevertheless is not exercising its infallibility (for some
one who possesses some kind of power does not and need not always use
it according to its whole intensity}, or of an authority not infallible, is not
required to be absolutely undoubting and in the highest degree firm. But
it does not therefrom follow that it is lawful for the faithful to indulge at
pleasure an interior doubt, to withhold interior assent, to observe merely a
respectful silence ; for unless we wish to subvert the entire moral and so-
cial and even the rational order, we must admit several kinds of internal
assent which can hold a position between the assent which is indubious,
firm above all things, infallible, and the state of doubt.

" Of what kind the assent ought to be cannot, however, easily be generi-
cally defined, for this depends from various adjuncts and the form of the
judgment. ... It is the duty of good children of the church not to speak
openly against the judgment of this authentic but not infallible tribunal,
but to preserve a respectful silence ; it is, secondly, their duty to render an
internal assent and conform their own judgment to it ; and, thirdly, the firm-
ness of the internal assent will depend from the greater or lesser official
authority of the teaching, and from the greater or lesser presumption of
the consent of the supreme and infallible authority with the teaching is
question. But if grave and solid reasons should occur to the mind of a
Catholic, especially such as are theological, which tend to the contrary side,
it would be lawful for him to suspect, to doubt, to make his assent condi-
tional, and even to hold it in suspense, until the consent of the universal
church or of the Roman pontiff should become manifest; hence also it is
lawful to appeal to a higher tribunal viz., either to a council or to the Roman
pontiff. Yet, although the judgment of such an authority not infallible
may not always furnish objective security, it furnishes in general subjective
security, inasmuch as it is safeio all to embrace it ; and it is not safe, neither
can violation of the duty of submission toward a divinely-constituted mag-
istracy be avoided if it is done, to refuse to admit the decrees of such an
authority. This can be so much the more readily admitted since, on ac-
count of the entire subjection of the faithful under the authority of the
infallible magistracy, all assent given to. judgments and declarations of a
fallible authority is habitually, equivalently, or interpretatively conditioned,
although, so long as no grave and prudent reason for doubting occurs, it
puts on an absolute form." *

A thorough elucidation of all this would take too long-. We
will only pick out one or two points, so that by the help of
these we may bring our discussion to a distinct term and a prac-
tical conclusion.

* Compend. Theol., torn. i. tr. iv. De Fid. Reg., Num. 468.

1885.] HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. 335

One point is, that judgments of an authority not infallible, like
individual judgments, are not of their own nature uncertain or
erring, yet are liable more or less to the accident of error. In
point of fact, these human authorities in the church have some-
times erred.

As our own private and individual judgment furnishes ordi-
narily a secure subjective and practical rule, much more these
judgments of authority ; and as in many cases we can be certain
that our private judgments are actually unerring, we can be cer-
tain generally, even in all but a few exceptional cases, that these
ecclesiastical judgments are unerring.

A second point is that the surest and best protection against
errors of any fallible human authority through encroachment on
private liberty by extending itself ultra vires, going beyond its
sphere, or by decisions against truth, is found in a more univer-
sal, or a higher, but especially in the divine authority ; control-
ling, if necessary rectifying, the action of inferior magistracies ; in
the Catholic Church.

Qui fidem exigit fidem astruat. One who exacts the assent of
belief if he gives a sufficient reason does not encroach on our
liberty. If the reason be insufficient, the exaction of belief is
unjust so far as the reason falls short of the assent and submis-
sion demanded, and our liberty is encroached upon if hindrances
are put in the way of our freedom of dissenting.

It is absurd to speak of any diminution of true and rightful
intellectual liberty by any declaration of truth, or any precept
concerning our moral duty in respect to it which emanates from
legitimate power and does not transcend the preceptive authority
of the power. The mind is enchained when error is forced upon
it, or truth of which it has no evidence, and when it is unjustly
hindered from the pursuit of truth.

No Catholic can maintain or even think that the authority of
the church, as it is in itself and of divine institution, correctly
understood, lawfully and justly exercised, infringes upon the
reasonable liberty of the minds of her children, or opposes the
reasonable liberty of the human sciences to expatiate at large,
each one in its own domain.

There are differences and discussions at the present time be-
tween some Catholic scientists, ecclesiastics as well as laymen,
with whom are associated theologians of name and position, on
one side ; and other theologians of standing and repute on the
other side ; in which one main point is the delimitation of the ter-
ritory which is open ground for discussion. The questions in

336 HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. [Dec.,

dispute mostly take their rise from physical sciences, history,
archasology, the criticism and interpretation of the Scriptures
in regard to these aforementioned matters, and cognate topics.
Now, those who claim the larger domain of liberty may accuse
those who concede only a smaller domain of encroaching on their
free territory, by exacting too much in the name of authority.
Certain matters are asserted by them to be still open questions,
and they claim for Catholics the liberty of deciding on these re-
spective theories, adopting them if they see reason, discarding
them, if at all, on purely scientific grounds, but at all events keep r
ing them intact from any theological censure.

In these controversies those writers who give a greater exten-
sion to the boundaries of Catholic faith or doctrine do not appeal
to the solemn but to the ordinary magisterium of the church, and
they derive their arguments against opinions or theories which
they oppose from an interpretation of Scripture supported by
the patristic and theological tradition. When' they go so far as
to say that a particular theory contradicts a Catholic dogma and
is therefore altogether untenable, it is because they find some
respectable theologians affirming that the contradictory of the
said theory is a dogmatic truth, on the authority of a consent of
Fathers and Doctors, but not on that of a definition of pope or
council. In general they do not go so far as this in maintaining
their own particular doctrine, but are content to claim for it only
a theological certainty or a greater probability.

There is no need that we should make any specification under
this generic statement, and none whatever that we should proffer
any advice to theologians, who understand perfectly well how to
manage their own cause. But to scientists, and those who are
specially interested in scientific questions, if they feel themselves
obliged to be on the alert against real or supposed efforts to
abridge their liberty, we recommend confidence in theology
itself as a safeguard against any unjust aggressions of theolo-
gians, trust in the wisdom of the church and her supreme doctor
and ruler as a sure protection against any infringement of the
reasonable liberty of the children of the church, and of science.

Father Wai worth, in an article which appeared last year in this
magazine, has stated, succinctly and very ably, the impossibility
of separating the sciences into little independent principalities,
and theology among them.* The attempt ought not to be made,
and Catholic scientists will violate their duty if they attempt it.
But, besides this, the thing cannot be done. If particular theolo-

* THE CATHOLIC WORLD, October, 1884, pp. u, 12.

1885.] HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. 337

gians contravene genuine and sound science, or condemn any
Scientific theories as heretical or erroneous in faith which are
probably not so, they will be opposed by other theologians. If
the authority of the Fathers and Doctors and of tradition is un-
duly applied, and stretched beyond legitimate bounds, by writers
whose opinions can be probably regarded as only doctrines of a
school, or as belonging to the incidentals and merely human
elements of traditional belief, such opinions will not be allowed
to pass unquestioned as Catholic doctrine. They will be tested
and tried in the most severe manner, and their quality and value
ascertained. The disciplinary authority of the church may be
exercised, if it seem good to the Holy See to intervene in the
discussion. No class of Catholics, even scientists, can claim ex-
emption from this disciplinary authority. There may be even
future judgments ex cathedrd by which the Sovereign Pontiff,
either with or without an oecumenical council, will define more
clearly and distinctly, in reference to some matters of contro-
versy, what is of divine and Catholic faith, or certain by deduc-
tion from revealed truths, and therefore, in technical language,
de fide ecclesiasticd. If this is done, intellectual liberty will be in-
creased, not diminished, by the liberation of the mind from a part
of its liability to error, which is no privilege of liberty, but a
defect in it. Theologians and the cultivators of other sciences
have one common cause and one common interest the cause of
universal truth. There should be harmony and concurrence
among them all. The progress of human science is an object of
great importance and interest in the view of all who have an
enlightened zeal for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ
on the earth and the highest temporal and spiritual welfare of
humanity. The reigning Pontiff and the bishops in concurrence
with him have exhibited their sense of the great value of human
science by their solemn declarations concerning philosophy, and
their united, universal efforts to secure its thorough cultivation
in all Catholic institutions of learning. Philosophy is a human
science, and the queen of sciences. Physical science is one of its
provinces, and the cultivation of this part of the general domain
has been specially recommended and encouraged. There are
particular reasons for this at the present time, and on account of
these same reasons Catholic scientists who are thoroughly versed
in their branches and are distinguished masters in them are to be
held in high honor and esteem and their labors to be estimated
as of extreme value.

The founding of new or augmenting of already existing Ca-

VOL. XLII. 22

338 HUMAN AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. [Dec.

tholic universities is a kind of grand and noble undertaking
which is engaging at the present time the attention and calling*
forth the energy of the rulers and leading members of the church
to a remarkable degree. The very idea of these universities re-
quires that all branches of knowledge, both sacred and secular,
should be cultivated within their precincts. Laymen must be
and will be associated with ecclesiastics in their academic boards
and faculties. Harmony and concurrence of all toward one end,
which is, in respect to the work of instructing pupils, the forma-
tion of good and well-educated Catholic clergymen and laymen,
require that order should prevail throughout the whole system.
There is a rational order reducing the sciences themselves to a
harmonious system. There are distinct provinces and realms
with their own autonomies, but there is one empire, over which
Philosophy reigns as empress in the natural order, subject herself
to the spiritual supremacy of Theology. This subordination does
not hamper the lawful liberty or true progress of philosophy or
any of the inferior sciences. Father Liberatore, one of the emi-
nent philosophers of this half-century, a pioneer in the great
work of restoring scholastic philosophy to its ancient and right-
ful dominion, well expresses the truth in regard to this point :

" Legitimate liberty does not reject all subjection ; otherwise God, who
alone is altogether possessed of self-dominion and subject to no other,
would alone be free. But the freedom of created beings, and of whatever
is related to them, demands only that the dominion of every foreign prin-
cipality to whose control they are not subject by the order of nature should
be excluded. Now, what is more agreeable to the order of nature than
that fallible reason should obey infallible reason, and that speculations
which can by the occasion of human infirmity be affected by falsehood
should be aided by the light of those truths which admit no fellowship
with anything whatever which is false ? The subjection of which we speak
imports, however, only so much as this. For it is not exacted that philo-
sophy should want its own proper principles, or be deprived of a sphere
of the merely natural order in which it may expatiate without let or hin-
drance. Nevertheless, it is bound to expatiate within that sphere in such
a way as never to contradict the truths of the faith or the conclusions
which are thence deduced. If it should do this it would embrace false-
hoods as being truths, since nothing but falsehood can ever be contrary to
truth. Wherefore it is evident that the subjection of which we speak, so
far from hindering, very much aids the advancement of philosophy, there
being no progress conceivable which is not in and for the truth.

"This is illustrated by the facts of experience, for philosophy has never
received greater augmentations than when it has faithfully ministered to
theology; never has it fallen into more degrading errors than when, allured
by the desire of an unwholesome liberty, it has withdrawn itself from her
light and guardianship."*

* Inst. Philos.) Prolegom., sec. iii.

1885.] THE SATYRS. 339

All this is specifically true of the physical sciences, as well as
of philosophy in general. Instruction in all branches must, there-
fore, be subject to ecclesiastical, disciplinary control, especially
that of the supreme authority, the Holy See. Otherwise chaos,
disorder, and the thwarting- of the end for which universities are
intended will be the result. In like manner the less formal, un-
official teaching of the doctors in natural philosophy and science,
as well as that of doctors in theology, must be subject to the dis-
ciplinary control of the authority divinely constituted in the Ca-
tholic Church. A disturbance of this order shakes the founda-
tions not only of faith but of science. For there is but one uni-
versal objective criterion of truth, and the subjective criteria
are all closely associated and intimately joined with each other
and with the objective criterion.

THE SATYRS.

THERE lived a hermit in a lonely land,
Who, though he saw the luscious forest growth
And meadow verdure on all sides expand,
Seemed solitary there, a world-lost child,
Dwelling, as man's soul in his body doth,
Lone in a lonely wild.

At night the tall grass in the haunted field
Was trampled by brute-hoofs ; a shadowy throng,
With foreheads horned, obscured the moon's broad shield,
That glimmered low, from misty depths arriving;
Rude cries with purer voices mingled long
Angels with satyrs striving.

At sunset once, across the meadows dim,
Untinged by traces of the sunset fires
Still glowing far away beyond the rim
Of twilight and its dusky peace divine,
He saw, with glittering domes and glimmering spires,
A golden city shine.

340 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

SOLITARY ISLAND.
PART FOURTH.

CHAPTER V.
THE TRUTH AT LAST.

FLORIAN resumed professional labors with a zest somewhat
keen after his long and odd confinement on Solitary Island. It
had been a trying time for him, but he felt that he had come out
of those hard circumstances a victor. They had left little trace
on him, and he had put th'e incident of his father's death out of
his life as thoroughly as he had shelved the death of his sister,
the loss of Ruth, and the late election. Life's busy round was
gone over as evenly and as hopefully as if these tragedies had
never been. Yet he could not deny that his real self had been
held up to him in the quiet of his late retreat more minutely than
at any time in the last ten years. He had even come close to ad-
mitting the truth of the portrait which nature's mirror presented
to him. But it was a little too ghastly for truth, he thought, and
he put off an inspection of it until such time as his discerning
mind had recovered its nice balance. When that time came he
had forgotten it. And, besides, he had to admit to himself that
these out-of-the-way events threw a shadow long enough to reach
the pleasantest of his days. They were shelved, indeed, but not
annihilated. He was human, after all, he said, when a protracted
period of restlessness troubled him. With another man it would
have been the " blues " or lonesomeness; with him it was an indi-
gestion, or a phenomenon independent of the will. He bore it as
evenly and placidly as he bore a rainy day or a vexatious lawsuit.
There would be an end to it some time. A calm, steady glance
on the road ahead was enough to neutralize the effect of depres-
sion. It could not be said that he had a habit of dreaming in
the daylight. In studying a political or legal problem he occa-
sionally wandered into unpractical speculations on the incidents
or personages of a suit. Not often. Nowadays he fell into a
habit of reviewing events connected with his father's mournful
history, and of studying those points at which his own and
Linda's life had come in contact with the life of the solitary

1 885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 341

prince. These reveries had always one unvarying 1 conclusion.
Over his face passed that spasm of anguish which twisted the
body like the rack, and which had attacked him many times on
the island. He blamed the pictures and mementoes in his room
for this weakness. There was the painting of the yacht, and
Ruth's portrait, and a score of pretty things belonging to that
former time. A glimpse of any one of them disturbed him, but
he had not the heart to put them away. He was content to await
the time when all these things would stand in his memory like
distant mountains wrapped in a heavenly mist. He had lost
none of his political standing by his defeat, and the Senate was
open to him. He had resolved to accept the office. It would be
a very quiet affair, and its dulness would be a safe refuge for
a vessel without any definite harbor. His love-affairs were not
going smoothly, which did not surprise or ruffle him. Barbara
was acting oddly. He had said to her a few short, polite words
on the general character of her Clayburg visit which were cer-
tain to put an end to escapades of that sort. She had a stock of
other annoyances, however, and dealt them out carelessly. At
an assembly she had chatted much with Rossiter and the count
in turn. When he gave her his impressive reasons why she should
do these things no more she had laughed at him and done them
again. Finally the climax was capped when he encountered the
insidious Russian in Barbara's reception-room. It was certainly
an odd thing for Florian to show his feeling strongly, but he did
so on this occasion. His face paled slightly and a light sweat
burst out on his forehead, while the hands hanging at his side
shook as if with an ague. He stood in the doorway, unable to
move for an instant, his eyes fixed on the count with an expres-
sion which frightened Barbara into a faint scream. Vladimir
smiled with deep satisfaction, and, bowing politely to the lady,
bade her good-morning and withdrew. The scream brought
Florian to his senses, and Barbara's pretty and anxious inquiries
were met with his usual self-possession.

" My dear," said he and the little lady recognized the tone
very well ; it always reminded her of the late visit to Clayburg
" the count is obnoxious to me for the very best reasons. I do
not wish to see you and him together again on any occasion. As
for coming to your house, it must be his last visit."

"And you were such friends!" pouted she. " But I don't care
two pins for him, and I think it annoys him so to see us together.
You are just a little, a very little, hard, Flory. Confess, now, are
you not? "

342 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

" Not hard enough for him," the great man said savagely,
" there is so much of the devil in him."

Barbara was both curious and venturesome. What was the
secret of their mutual dislike? It was something more than mere
jealousy, and she would like to know it. Until she found out the
cause her intentions were to keep on terms with the count. It
would require caution and secrecy. What of that? She was too
clever to be caught by such a mass of dignity as her beloved
Florian, who was unacquainted with short cuts in life's path,
would not take them if he was, and fancied his promised wife
fashioned after his ideas. Barbara and the count became quite
friendly once more on the understanding that he was to keep
out of Florian's way. Every art known to the fair widow was
used to win from the count the secret of his broken relations
with Florian which he never told, of course, but amused and
revenged himself instead by filling Barbara's mind with wild
longings for the title and grandeur to which Florian had so
lately resigned the right. He made her believe it quite possible
that these things could yet be obtained, and, by picturing the
glories of the Russian court, made the life of a senator's wife in
Washington appear by contrast a tedious bore. The astute Bar-
bara was caught fast in the trap, and from that moment Florian
was beset with artifices and entreaties. She began by pretended
delight in Washington life. '

" To move in elegant costume at the most select entertain-
ments, leaning on your arm, Florian, will raise me to the topmost
height of my ambition. I will be the star of society, the bright,
political shrine before which the little men and women little be-
cause of my greatness will fall and adore. And I shall affect the
title of princess, you know, in a quiet way, of course, until people
will talk of me by no other name. O Florian ! after all, how
very tawdry our Washington court must be to that gorgeous one
where by right you should be."

" And if I were there," said he, smiling, "you would still be
nothing more than the widow Merrion. The prince of the blood
would be too far above you to think of marriage."

" How very true ! " she said, with a pretty sigh. " Florian, I
have a secret to reveal to you."

" I thought you kept your pretty secrets for Father Baretti."
And there was a faint touch of scorn in his voice. She pouted.

" That odious man ! It is no longer he, but Father Simplicius,
who hears my stories about you and other people."

11 So you really do believe in what you practise," said Florian

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 343

in a cold, indifferent way that would have almost killed Linda to
see.

" You will never believe in my sincerity," she replied re-
proachfully.

" When you dropped the pharisaical sentiment I thought you
would drop the religion, too. Weil, you are a great improve-
ment on Ruth and " He could not quite bring himself to utter
in cold blood that other name which he had covered with so
much shame. Barbara did it for him maliciously.

" And the secret," said she, " was connected with your great
title, my prince. I dreamed for a time that I might induce you
to give up this tawdry, muddy life in a backwoods country and
to go back to Russia. I did so long to be a real princess ! But
I am sorry for it, and I beg pardon for it a hundred times."

" I have felt it a pity myself," he said, to her intense astonish-
ment, "that the thing could not be done. I am tired of the re*
public, worn out with disgust moth-eaten, in fact. Before I re^
signed my rights the matter was a dangerous possibility ; now it
is absurd to think of it. Yet I do dream of it sometimes," he add-
ed meditatively, "and there is a legal quibble which, apart from
justice, renders it feasible. Yet it is absurd."
Her whole body trembled with eagerness.
" What is the quibble?" she said, with assumed indifference.
" Oh! you would not understand it, perhaps, if I told you."
" Try me, Florian oh ! do try me. I love quibbles."
" As you love sweets, without exactly knowing what they
are."

" Florian," she said as her eagerness burst bonds, " do take ad-
vantage of that quibble and try to win your title. We were not
made for this horrid, home-spun American life. I shall just die
thinking of what might have been, if you do not make the attempt
at least."

He mistook her eagerness for satire and showed her a case-
knife.

" Take that," said he, " and stab me to the heart. It is as
well to do it now as to wait for a Russian spy to do it for
you."

She looked at him and the knife for a few moments, until the
meaning broke upon her mind and with it the full malice of the
count's late suggestions.

" Do you suppose, my dear," he said, amused at her astonish-
ment, " that if there were a chance of obtaining my title and
estates I would hesitate ? I got what was possible, and with

344 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

that we must be satisfied. An American prince is an oddity.
Let us enjoy what glory we may from it."

" Hard fortune, my prince," she replied, with a bitter sob.
He was troubled no more with these longings.

Barbara did not, however, give up her pleasant dealings with
the count. She enjoyed a petty revenge upon him by allowing
him to continue his lectures on the glories of the Russian court,
and in return described to him imaginary scenes with Florian in
which the latter, for patriotic motives, utterly refused to leave
America. It did not take the shrewd Russian long to discover
that she was playing with him. Was he always to be the sport
of this woman and the politician?

*' You are a clever inventor," he said one evening, "and I see
that you have discovered me. You are bound to remain in poli-
tics, Yankee politics, when it lies in your power to enjoy the
refined pleasures of a civilized court. There is no accounting
for tastes."

" Is Florian any the less a prince in America ? " she asked.
" According to your doctrines his blood is as blue and his title
as good as any in Europe. With that I am satisfied."

"Always Florian," he said, unable to hide his fiery jealousy.
" If you should lose this manly paragon, what then ?"

" If!" And she laughed in her exasperating way.

" You are playing with fire, dear lady. You do not know
me. I have not given you up. I never will. I can destroy him
in a breath, and if you do not take care I will destroy him. My
mother's prayers have kept me from nothing so far, and I do not
suppose they are yet more powerful."

" You are charming, count, when you talk and look like that.
How many times have you made the same protestations ?"

" Believe me, never before. Barbara, Barbara, you are "

" There, there, count, do not be unfair. I know all that you
would tell me and sincerely believe it. Let us talk of something
well, interesting."

He ground his teeth in silence and asked himself how much
longer he would be the scorn of this butterfly.

" If the door opened now to admit your Florian "

"Always Florian," she interrupted reproachfully.

" In what a position you would be after his commands to you
concerning my visits ! "

" But he will not open the door, and if he did you would not
be found here. The window, these curtains, your honor
what a number of happy circumstances I trust to ! "

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 345

"Pshaw ! what is the matter with me? I have never allowed
myself to be led by a string so with any woman. And my hand
holding the winning card ! One word and Florian would look
on you with horror. What is the matter with me that I do not
utter it?"

" The matter with you, count," said she, looking at her watch
to hide a faint apprehension, " is that you have stayed too long.
Now take yourself off while the door is open to you, or you may
have to go by the window."

"One word, one little word," said the count, half to himself,
" and you are assured to me. I swear my belief that Florian
would never wish to see your face again."

" If you will not go," she said, rising, with a trembling voice,
" I must leave you. You have always treated rne with honor "

"And I am bound so to treat you always," he exclaimed, at
once jumping to his feet. " You shall not be compromised on
my account, even to satisfy my hate for your lover. My time
will come, and this hand which now I embrace will you per-
mit me " He kissed her hand while she stood laughing at his
foolish devotion ; and this was the tableau which greeted the cold,
steady gaze of Florian entering at that moment by the softly-open-
ing door. There was an awkward pause. Barbara grew pale to
the last degree of pallor, and the count felt a thrill of delight leap
along his veins. The great man alone was equal to the occasion,
for he strode into the room as if nothing had happened, and
made his politest bow to the two guilty ones. The count took
his hat and retired towards the door until Florian detained
him.

" You may leave here with a wrong impression of my rela-
tions to Mrs. Merrion,"he said as blandly as was possible, " which
I wish to correct. I once presented her to you as my promised
wife. It was a pleasantry which now merits explanation. The
lady herself will assure you that henceforth she is less to me than
to you or any other man."

The count bowed with a sardonic smile, but Barbara rushed
to Florian and threw both her arms about him amid a storm of
sobs. In vain he endeavored to loosen her hold.

" He threatened you, Florian ! " she cried. " He said you
were in his power. I did it for your sake. Oh ! do not be cruel,
do not be hasty. A little time, my love time, time, time ! "

Florian was staggered out of his stoical calm by this plausible
explanation, and looked at the count inquiringly.

"It is true," said the latter proudly, "and if you will come

346 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

with me I can show you the truth of what madame is pleased to
assert of me."

" I will go," said Florian in a voice which made her heart
quake.

" Remember, sir, that the truth will bring a heavy penalty on
your head."

" You must not go to-night, Florian," she sobbed " oh ! not
to-night, my dearest. Wait until you are recollected. Appear-
ances are against you and me, and this man is your sworn
enemy."

He flung her off almost rudely.

" You are under suspicion also," he said in that same awful
voice, the voice of suppressed rage or fear. " Be silent until I
come again. Not a word ! "

She fell back among her cushions as the doors closed on the
two men and their footsteps died gradually away. But in an
instant the sharp sense of danger revived her fainting senses, and
with all her strength she began to cast about for means to pre-
vent a catastrophe. They were going to the count's residence,
probably, and some one must follow them and interfere in Flo-
rian's behalf. Paul Rossiter ! He was at Madame De Pon-
sonby's, without doubt, and, though hateful to Florian, the very
man, her instinct told her, to save her lover. Quick with
cloak and out with the carriage, and fly, horses, at your best
speed to the street where the poet lives ! The servant, opening
the door to a hasty and violent ring, is struck with terror at sight
of the wild figure which silently rushes past her and up the broad
stair; and Frances, tranquilly passing across the hall, comes face
to face with the one woman in the world whom she has most
cause to dislike.

" Mr. Rossiter ! " gasps Barbara. " Quick oh ! quick, where
is he?"

" Mr. Rossiter is not in," Frances replied, trembling like a leaf.

" I must find him," wringing her hands ; " it is a matter of life
and death. It concerns Mr. Wallace."

The pale face becomes paler still, and a question forms itself
on her lips, but her pride will not permit her to utter it. She
writes the address of Mr. Peter Carter on a card and hands it to
her.

" If you do not find him there return here, and perhaps I can
help you."

Barbara is half-way down the stairs before the last word is
uttered, and in a moment the carriage is flying round to the next

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 347

street at full speed, but not as fast as her mind travels to terrible
consequences. Paul, seated on the bed in Mr. Carter's warm
room, hears the light step on the stair in wonder, but relights
Peter's pipe and reclines lazily to enjoy the philosopher's small-
talk and gaze at him through half-closed eyes. Peter is in what
he calls undress uniform, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, while his
face glistens in the firelight and his hair stands up like an in-
verted broom.

" It is just the time me lady admirers call on me," Peter says,
placidly drawing long puffs from the pipe ; " and, strangely
enough, they are not disenchanted by this deshabille."

" You do not look much worse than usual," says fun-loving
Paul. And at that moment the steps outside are close to the
door ; there is a knock, and close upon it enters Barbara, in her
excitement more lovely to bewildered Peter than she has ever
been. Both men jump to their feet, and Peter makes a desperate
rush for his best coat.

" It is of Florian ! " Barbara cries out, exhausted. " He is
going to fight a duel with Count Behrenski. You can stop it.
You can save him, Mr. Rossiter. There is no time to be lost.
There is the count's address," pushing a card into his hand, "and
no time to lose. For Florian's sake ! "

Then she sinks down in utter helplessness and begins to sob
weakly, while the two men stand, in their first astonishment,
looking blankly at the unexpected vision.

It was the first moment of pause since the scene between the
count and Florian. Peter slowly grasped the meaning of her
words, and, disgusted, laid down his coat, thought of Frances,
and took it up again ; finally put it on with a vicious jerk, and
glowered with determined indifference upon the weeping beauty.
The poet grasped the situation almost before Barbara spoke, and
he stood looking down at her without much pity, and with a
half-formed resolution not to interfere. Better thoughts, and the
recollection of Frances, and of the hermit too, dismissed that un-
formed hard-heartedness. He poured a few drops of brandy into
a glass and gave it to her.

" Before I can do anything," said he gently, " I must know in
detail what has happened and what is expected of me."

Barbara told her story without a break.

" I do not know what power the count may have over him/*
Barbara whimpered, " but I fear it's something dreadfully real.'*

" The power of a greater divil over a lesser," Peter said sourly.
But neither noticed the words, and Paul went on to say that he

348 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

thought he could understand it, and that perhaps a duel would
be less fatal than the interview which the count proposed.

" I shall take your carriage," said he, " and go after them,
doing what I can."

Paul had not a great sorrow for the mess into which Florian
had got himself, but for Frances* sake, and for the sake of the
dead prince, and partly out of pity for Florian himself, he felt
anxious to prevent the revelations which the count might pos-
sibly make. He had a very strong suspicion as to what they
might be ; nothing certain, but even the possibility was dire
enough to be avoide'd.

" It would make him a saint or drive him insane," was the
current of his thoughts, " unless he is made of material alto-
gether inhuman " words that had a curious resemblance to Flo-
rian's quotation while on the island : " That way madness lies."

The poet was destined to be late in his charitable mission.
The two rivals in the affections of Barbara had lost no time in
reaching the luxurious quarters of the count, and about the time
when Barbara reached Peter's garret a momentous conversa-
tion had' begun. Each raged with sincere hatred of the other,
and each was sufficiently destitute of principle to use any means
to compass the other's destruction. The successful rival saw his
success smirched and befouled by his jealous opponent. The
count could not forgive the deception which had been practised
on him, and, thoroughly unscrupulous, had little pity for the de-
ceiver. With courage and bitterness they sat down to their
weighty conversation. The count, having the advantage, could
afford to be slow and sarcastic.

" An odd change this," he said, " for us who were friends."

"Spare your sentiment," Florian replied, "and come to the
point. And let us understand each other. You said I was in
your po'wer, and you used that assertion to intrude yourself on
my promised wife. I do not think the first true, and the second
merits a punishment which you shall certainly receive on con-
ditions."

"A capital phrase on conditions," sneered the count.
" There are many conditions, then, why I shall never receive
the merited punishment. First of all, Madame Merrion is clever.
I never made use of any threats to induce her to receive me.
She has permitted my visits, secretly, of course, since you for-
bade her the pleasure of my company. At my instigation she
urged you to make an attempt to regain the title you lately sold.
She does not care for me as she does for you, I know. You out

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 349

of the way, I foresee what would happen. Of course I have
left no means untried to put you out of the way. This interview
is one of them. It is my trump card."

He looked into Florian's set face with the old, gay, devilish
look that the great man had often admired. There was anything
but admiration in his soul then. Even the count awed a little
under the intense purpose expressed in his frowning face.

" Your father is dead," said he suddenly. " I know that, you
see, and also who did it. Have you never suspected?"

" Your spy," said Florian, with a shudder and a groan.

" He sent the bullet," the count said, "obeying in that an-
other's will. But there were circumstances, remote and proxi-
mate, which led to the crime. I mean, have you never suspected
them f "

" Is that the secret of your power? " asked Fiorian, shading
his face for an instant to hide its contortions of pain and horror.
His voice was very low and' quavering, almost pitiful. From
that moment until the count had finished speaking he uttered not
a word.

" Ah ! you do suspect it," said the count wickedly, " and you
see I do not spare you. But you have not gone into the secret
so deeply as I. You and 1, my Florian, are a dangerous and bad
pair. The prayers of your father and my mother have only
made us worse, and it is lucky that our faces and wills are set
toward the well, best not to mention it, perhaps."

Florian said nothing when he paused. He was listening like
one in a terrible dream for the one point of this discourse which
concerned him.

" I will do you the honor of believing that had you foreseen
the circumstances arising from your manner of life for years
past you would have changed it. I would not, I fear. You
might not, for your ambition has always been strong enough to
blind you to truth and right. Pardon me for moralizing, but I
wish you to understand me fully. You are a man I have never
trusted since I knew you, and never could trust. Had you not
dropped your faith " Florian started as if struck " to become
a politician it would have been different. With a man who has
once been a firm Catholic it is dangerous to deal. You went
looking for your father ; so did we. You were afraid to find
him ; we were also, or at least I was, for I foresaw his taking-
off. You were afraid his appearance would lose to you the
title-sale money. The motives of each of us compare to the
son's disadvantage, do they not ? "

35o SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

It was of little use for Vladimir to fix his mocking- eyes on
the averted face. The great man, face to face with the spectre
which had so long stood at his side, had only its horrid features
in his gaze.

" Well, you begin to comprehend, my Florian ; you begin to
recognize your own soul in this mirror of mine. You were false
to a son's instincts because of your ambition ; you were false to
a lover's instincts because of your unprincipled passion. What
folly it was to expect you would be faithful to your friend when
he stood in your way ! You fooled us all very cunningly alas !
only in the end to shame yourself. You left your princely father
exposed to the bullet of the assassin when a little honesty and
patience would have saved him. How could you suppose I, the
libertine, the unprincipled one, would have borne your insults in
quiet ? We continued to look for the father you deserted, and
we found him. Your ambition left him exposed to our fury.
But I was merciful. I had no taste for blood, for the blood of
an unfortunate, a countryman, a co-religionist, my friend's father.
I would have saved him but for you."

Again the great man started, and his face, hidden from the
count, was twisted shapeless from that inward agony. The
Russian's face had assumed a stern, malignant expression as he
bent his fierce eyes on his foe and sometime friend. The last
words he uttered as one would thrust the knife into a man's
heart.

" I would have saved him but for you. You left the honored
woman whom you had solemnly promised to marry, to deprive me
of the one woman of my life a woman far below your standard,
hypocritical but charming; a woman to further your ambitions,
but not to be the mother of Catholic children. As your desire
for money exposed your father to danger, so your desire for this
woman destroyed him. You remember that day which revealed
to me your love for Barbara Merrion a selfish, cruel love, doing
no honor even to her. How you triumphed over me ! You
sent me home mad ! I shall never forget that day on which I
sealed my own damnation, if there be damnation, because of you!
The spy had found your father ! What shall I do with him ? he
asked ; and I said, Kill him ! "

There was still no need to look at Florian, now plunged into
the depths of shame and agony. He uttered no moan even ! Out-
side there was a roll of carriage-wheels, and presently the servant
was knocking at the door with Paul's card. The count re,ad it,
and upon second thought declined to see the gentleman, but the

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 351

poet was already in the room making his apologies. One look at
Florian convinced him that he had come too late.

" There is no need for me to say anything, count," he explain-
ed, " since I see you have done the mischief I wished to prevent."

The Russian smiled, although he too was pale from emotion
and triumph. He rejoiced in his success, in the humiliation
of his rival, in the joy of once more possessing Barbara, even if
it had been accomplished through a dreadful crime. Low as
Florian was, he was yet a degree lower. He whispered his
last accusing words in the great man's ear with something like
a laugh.

" The bullet of Nicholas slew your father, and I permitted it ;
but you you " He broke off abruptly and turned to Paul, his
hateful feelings almost bursting from his worn, evil face, his finger
pointed at Florian.

" Behold the murderer of his father ! " he cried.

Florian rose and his face came into the light. A dumb animal
would have pitied its woe, and the poet gave a cry of anger and
sorrow which the politician did not hear. He bowed mechani-
cally to the two and walked out gravely and steadily as a man
proudly going to execution.

" If I were his friend, sir," the poet said in his simple, -truthful
way, "or had the slightest claim upon him, I would feel happy in
the right to punish you for what you have done."

" Mr. Rossiter," replied the Russian courteously, " I would be
sorry if you had a claim. He deserves no pity. It will do him
good, the knowledge which he has of himself. You will excuse
me."

He offered his hand, which the poet did not take, and the
look which he cast at the shapely member, as if he saw its bloody
stain, brought an instant's flush to the brazen cheek. Paul went
out to his carriage, and as he entered it he heard the gay voice of
Vladimir humming a joyous tune.

CHAPTER VI.
THE HIDDEN LIFE.

SMALL consolation Paul had for Barbara when he returned to
Peter's attic, Every thought flew from her mind but one when
he entered in a thoughtful yet satisfied mood.

" I think you can go home," he said, " and give yourself no
uneasiness. There will be no duel at least to-night. The gen-

352 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

tlemen were excited but courteous, as far as I could discover.
Florian went off, and I saw no more of him." Her countenance
fell.

" Is it all so very well?" she asked dolefully. " Your words are
doubtful."

" They should not be," he replied, " for the affair between
them passed off in rather dull style. I can assure you there will
be no duel. If you see Mr. Wallace to-morrow no doubt he can
explain everything to your satisfaction."

" I must be satisfied," shaking her head sadly, while the tears
began to fall. " Oh ! what a wretched woman I am, and to know
that my folly has caused it all."

The two gentlemen were silent, and perhaps unsympathetic.
Her empire was gone in more than one quarter. She gave Paul
her hand and asked to be led to her carriage. Peter held the
lamp as they descended the stairs, standing in stolid dulness like
a podgy Fate, while his butterfly passed out of the circle of light
into the lower darkness passed out of his life altogether, and out
of the life of every one with whom she had been connected in
these pages, and that, too, without a single salute from the gallant
Bohemian whom she had so often deceived.

" ' Fare thee well ! and if for ever, still for ever, fare thee well/ '
hummed Peter in mingled sorrow and disdain. " Ye're the last
woman I'll ever bother me old head over. The world is no
longer Arcadia or Paradise. Eve is still the betrayer of Adam.
Oh ! the groans these beauties have drawn from my aching heart.
It's not aching much now, though, considering. Is she gone,
Paul, b'y ? Has the fairy taken flight ? I'm bowed down with
grief entirely this evening."

" She's gone," said Paul thoughtfully as he took his old place
on the bed, while Peter resumed his undress uniform.

" Gone ! O mournful word ! Gone out of my life for ever-
more, b'y. I did adore that woman in a Platonic way ; her
smiles alone were divinities, and her eyes it would have been
better for me had they squinted instead o' bein' the loveliest
jewels in a woman's head. Poor thing ! if she had a heart, and I
had met her before Maria charmed me with her dignified ways,
who knows what might have happened? Who knows?"

Peter went off into a reverie while speculating on the might-
have-been, and Paul, diverted from annoying thoughts by the
picture which he presented, amused himself with sketching the
poky garret and its odd central figure wrapped in a cloud of
smoke.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 353

" Who knows," mumbled Peter " who knows ? I was a hand-
some fellow once before my nose was flattened in an American
duel with fists, d'ye see ! But the fellow wore copper knuckles,
I could swear. Poor little treacherous Barbara ! no more a Cath-
olic than the man wid a gizzard. Yet a sweet soul, if she wasn't
so deceivin'. O Peter, old b'y ! no, not Peter, but Parker ye
are forever done with females now, until ye meet the sympathetic
heart ye have always looked for. God help ye, me fine old gen-
tleman ! it's hard lines have come to ye at last."

To this melancholy strain Peter mumbled himself asleep, and
the poet, leaving him to struggle with a ponderous snore, stole
quietly back to the attic on the opposite street. It was after mid-
night, and yet she was waiting for him with her heart in her eyes
and every beat of it sounding Florian's name. She did not need
to ask him for his information.

" I am troubled for his sake as well as yours," he said, and
the kindly words brought a smile to her lips. " He has heard
what I threatened to tell him, from no very gentle lips, and he
looked when he left us as if his heart had been cruelly wrung. I
do not know if the truth will make him ill or bring him to his
senses. It is better that you should not know it yet. I shall
watch him and keep guard over him for your sake and his father's
until any possible danger is passed."

She thanked him gently and went to her own room. The
poet climbed to his attic, sadly haunted by Florian's despairing
face.

" That time truth struck home," said he to himself, " and
pretty sharply. If it does not drive him to any extreme it may
have a healthy effect on him. But his eyes looked bad."

He did not like to utter the thought which troubled him.
Florian's mental balance was remarkable, but the events of a
few months past were of a kind to shake the reason of strong
souls.

Neither Florian nor Barbara were to be seen the next day, or
the day after, nor the third day. The papers had a curious
rumor then of the sudden departure for Europe of the accom-
plished Barbara and a well-known attache of the Russian em-
bassy, but Paul would not believe it until a perfumed note in
Barbara's handwriting reached him. Every one seemed to make
him their confidant :

DEAR MR. ROSSITER :

Try to believe everything people say of me in the next two
VOL. XLII. 23

354 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec,,

weeks. My word for it, it is all true. I was married to Count
Behrenski this morning 1 . He convinced me it was all over be-
tween me and Florian ; and if it almost broke my heart to know
that, it did not cloud my senses to my own advantages. I am a
Russian, at all events. I wish you luck in your love-affair. With
the count's permission, I send a kiss to that dearest of old idiots,
Mr. Maria De Ponsonby Lynch. Au revoir !

BARBARA, COUNTESS BEHRENSKI.

Paul read this soberly to Peter, who received it with his ac-
customed roar.

" Be George, b'y, that's good now, an't it ? " examining the
paper critically. "Maria ought to see it. It would give her an
idea of the way outsiders look at her treatment of me. I'll show
it to her. It's a fine writer ye are, Barbara. Oh ! the dainty
little es and r's, wid curls as pretty as her own. Mr. Maria ! ha !
ha! but that's sharp, now. I like sharp things. An old idiot, hey?
What the divil did she mean by that? An old idiot! Me, P. C.
Lynch, the dearest of old idiots ! That for the huzzy ! " snapping
his fingers in sudden rage. "An' if that's the kind of company
you keep, Paul Rossiter, who vilify your friends in notes and
letters"

" Now see here, Peter," said the poet impressively, " do you
mean to insinuate that in calling you an idiot Barbara did not
come as near to the truth about you as any one can come ? "

" Well, may be so," growled Peter less furiously, " but I don't
like to see such things in writing. It's next to libel. It's all well
enough in words, that come an' go, but not in writing. I'll burn
this."

The news of Mrs. Merrion's departure in the r61e of countess,
after exciting the usual wonder of the town, settled out of sight.
It did not reflect on Florian, whose broken engagement to the
widow was not known ; and still it would have mattered little to
him, under present circumstances, if that disgrace had been flung
upon him. He was not to be found in his office nor in his board-
ing-house, but, with his usual careful foresight, he had left writ-
ten instructions for his clerk, without hinting at any date of
return. Paul grew more and more uneasy when a week had
passed and there was no news of him. Frances, with her wistful
eyes and a dread in her face which he alone understood, came to
him daily for information. That he could not give it frightened
both, and vainly the poet cudgelled his brains to discover some
clue to Florian's motives for suddenly disappearing. Had he

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 355

gone to the island ? What could bring him there in the early
days of March ? If he were repentant

a There, that will do," said the poet ; "that's not a sensible
thought, and I don't know as I've had any sensible thoughts
about this whole matter. I think I'll turn to the unexpected for
a change."

" What can we do? " was Frances' daily cry.
" I can go to Clayburg," he said, almost with a blush. " I
have a silly idea that perhaps great misfortune has made him
penitent, and he has gone to do penance over his father's grave."
" That is it," said Frances eagerly. " I knew it would come
to that. Mercy is not beyond him, Paul. Oh ! go, like his good
angel."

" I feel it is a nonsensical thing to do," said he, u but I sup-
pose it must be done. And if I find him, and everything should
be favorable, what could we say to him about well, your mother
and father, for instance ? "

He examined the paper on the wall attentively, while she
looked at him with a puzzled face.

" If he is safe, that is enough," she answered simply.
" Well, let it go," said Paul, smiling. " He doesn't care very
much for any of us, I fear, much as we are interested in him.
And, Frank, as long as you live let no one know that I made
myself such a goose for your sake and his father's."

The poet proposed a trip to Clayburg that evening to his
friend Carter for the mere pleasure of the journalist's company,
and Peter received it with enthusiasm.

" I'll go incog.," said he, " arid stop at the hotel ; and when I
meet Pendleton, dearest of old idiots No. 2, I'll not pay him the
slightest attention, the poor old simpleton ! "

" That suits me very well," said Paul. " I'll travel incog,
also, and we'll arrive there in the evening. Next day we'll
bloom on them like roses or turnips in the snow."

They started the next morning and went by way of Utica,
reaching their destination at a late hour of the evening, when
rheumatism kept the sturdy squire in his warm parlor. Peter
was weary enough to retire to bed immediately after fitting on
a nig-ht-cap of hot punch, and, the coast thus cleared, Paul went
quietly to the priest's residence, and suffered the disappointment
of not finding him at home ; but his knowledge of the people of
Clayburg was large enough to make this mishap a trifle. He
found a close-mouthed fisherman, after a few minutes' search, who
for a reasonable sum agreed not only to take him to Solitary

356 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

Island, but also to keep his mouth shut about it until eternity,
and the journey was made in successful secrecy. Arrived at a
spot overlooking the well-known cabin, Paul dismissed his guide
and crossed the ice on foot to the opposite shore. It was now
midnight. The lonely island lay three feet beneath the snow, and
was singularly tranquil under the dim stars. A faint wind added
to the gentle loneliness, and, stirring the trees on the hill, brought
Paul's eyes to the grave beneath them. No light or sign of hu-
man presence anywhere ! No tracks in the snow save his own
until he reached the cabin-door, and there began a pathway
which led down the slope and up the opposite hill to the grave
the path marked out by the funeral procession ! Even while he
looked a figure came staggering from the grave and along the
path to where he stood a figure stooped, uncertain in its gait,
moaning less like a man than an animal, without words or prayer,
and stopping rarely to swing its arms upwards in impotent
despair. Paul trembled with dread, and the tears sprang to his
eyes. Was he to find the mental wreck he had once pictured ?
Florian gave no sign of surprise when he saw him, but adopted
at once his usual reserve. He was not insane.

" You here ? " he said calmly, but the voice quavered. " I be-
lieve you were there that night, and I remember you said you
had a message for me. Will you come in, if you care to ? "

A cheerful fire burned in the hearth of the single room, and
the tallow candle showed Izaak Walton in his usual place,
with every other circumstance of the room undisturbed. Paul
said nothing until he had scanned his old friend keenly. The
great man sat down before the fire placidly and submitted to the
inspection with an indifference so like his father's own that Paul
drew a breath of delight. In ten days he had changed wofully.
His clothes hung upon shrunken limbs, and his face was wasted
to a painful hollowness. Hollow cheeks, hollow, burning eyes,
and wide nostrils ! The hand which rested on the favorite book
showed its cords and veins, the shoulders were rounded, and
his whole attitude one of physical exhaustion. The tears again
sprang to the poet's eyes. Here was a penitent surely, and there
was something boyish or childish about him that appealed to the
heart wonderfully, as if misfortune had stripped him of all the
years since he was a boy, and of all his blushing honors.

" I have a message for you," the poet said, " but, with your
permission, I'll put it off till to-morrow. I am going to remain
here for to-night, with your permission also.'*

" Oh ! certainly," Florian replied in the same uncertain voice ;

188$.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 357

" there is a good room yonder where he slept. You can have the
bed. Have you had supper? "

" I would like something to eat," the poet said out of curi-
osity. In a shambling, shuffling way Florian took down a loaf of
bread from the cupboard, poured some water into a cup, and sat
down again without any apology for the scanty fare just as his
father would have done. Paul ate a slice or two of the bread
and drank the water, while a pleasant silence held the room. He
did not know how to open a conversation.

" This was his favorite book," said he, touching Izaak Walton
tenderly. " I remember often to have seen him reading it in this
room."

" Yes," said Florian, with interest, " and it is one of my earliest
memories of him. I was very unfortunate in not knowing more of
him. The world fooled me out of that treasure and of many
another," he added, partly to himself. Paul was surprised more
and more. This pleasant, natural manner of speaking offered an
odd contrast to his woebegone looks. It was something like the
Florian of years past. He deliberated whether it would not be
better to defer his communication until he understood his mo-
tives better.

" I came from New York to-night," he ventured to say. " I
was anxious about you, and so were others."

" There was no need to be anxious," said Florian cheerfully.
" I am quite happy here. It is a pleasant residence winter and
summer. I shall never regret the city, which will certainly not
regret me."

" You may not have heard of Mrs. Merrion," Paul remarked
helplessly, so astounded was he by the last remark.

" No," said the other without curiosity. " Some scandal con-
nected with a Count Behrenski, probably."

" No. She married him and went to Europe last week quiet-
ly." And after that the poet said no more, for he was in a maze
and knew not what to think or do.

" I shall retire now, with your permission, Florian," he said
finally, using the old familiar name. " I hope I am not troubling
you too much or driving you from your own bed."

" Not at all, Rossiter, not at all. I never sleep there. Good-
night; and if you should not find me in the morning have no un-
easiness. I shall turn up again assuredly."

Paul fell asleep without settling the vexed questions which
Florian's odd manner and words suggested. The great man, left
to himself, behaved in a simple, matter-of-fact fashion at once

358 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

pathetic and amusing. He snuffed the candle with a face as
earnest as if snuffing candles was the one duty of his life, put
away the remnants of Paul's supper carefully after washing the
cup and drying it neatly, stirred the fire, opened much-handled
Izaak, and settled himself for a quiet hour's reading. Ten days
had fixed him in the solitary's groove as firmly as if he had been
in it for years. On the night of Vladimir's revelations he had
driven to his own apartments in a state of mind not to be de-
scribed. He had long suspected his own share in his father's
death, but the lurid color in which Vladimir painted his guilt
was a fearful shock to him. He fled from the count in a sort of
daze which his firm will could not dispel, and it seemed to him
that madness or delirium was prevented only by the persistency
with which he beat off the tumultuous thoughts that crowded
upon him. His grand self-possession was entirely gone. The
life which he had led, the ambitions which he had cherished, the
woman whom he had loved, all circumstances connected with his
father's death, filled him with wild horror when he recalled them.
He could not think of anything with method. He could only
feel, and his feelings threatened to drive him into insanity, so
sharp, so bitter were they, so confused yet active. It was instinct
more than reason which sent him to Solitary Island. It was a
mechanical effort of the will which produced the instructions for
his clerk; but once on the journey, with people moving about
him, and scene after scene bringing peace to his distracted mind,
Florian was able to cry like a child hour by hour of his sorrow-
ful flight. He scarcely knew why he wept, unless to ease the
burden pressing upon his heart, which seemed to flow away with
his tears. Like Paul, he reached Clayburg in the night, and un-
seen fled away on foot across the ice over the well-known course
which 'he and Ruth and Linda had often taken in the yacht ; past
Round Island with a single light for the ice-waste, leaving Grind-
stone to the left as he ran along the narrow strait with two islands
rising on each side of him like the walls of a coffin ; through the
woods to the spot overlooking the old cabin ; across the bay and
up the slope to the lonely grave on the summit, where he cast
himself with a long, sad cry of grief and despair.

Five days passed before anything like calm and systematic
thought returned to him. One idea stood before him like an in-
habitant of the island, with a personality of its own the words
of the count: " Behold the murderer of his father! " He mut-
tered those accusing words many times in the day and night,
sitting on the grave, regardless of the cold, and whispering them

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 359

to himself; weeping, sobbing-, raving, moaning,, silent by times,
as the fit took him ; never sleeping two hours at a time ; haunted
always by a dreadful fear of divine or human vengeance. Phan-
toms of past incidents and people were floating around him sleep-
ing and waking, causing him constant alarm. Even the sweet
face of Linda frowned upon him, and that was hardest of all to
bear. At the close of the fifth day his delirium suddenly left him
and he enjoyed a long and refreshing sleep. When he woke the
hideous nightmare of sorrow and remorse and dread had van-
ished. He was himself again, but not the self which had fled
from New York to hide its anguish in the icy solitude. There was
another Florian born of that long travail, and a better Florian
than the world had yet known. He was not aware of any change.
He had lost his habit of self-consciousness, and he was to be-
come aware of what was working within him only when others
pointed it out to him. Kneeling in the snow at the foot of the
grave, he said his morning prayers, promising the father of his
love that never again would he have occasion to grieve for him,
and that what man could do to atone for murder he, with the
help of God, would do. His breakfast he made on fresh fish
and meal found in the larder, travelling many miles that day in
the snow to obtain flour and meal and necessaries at a distant
village. He was very weak, but it troubled him not at all. He
had no regard for his own sufferings, so firmly were his eyes
fixed on the martyrdom his father endured for his sake. Every
available moment found him at the grave in deep thought or
prayer. The priest of an obscure village heard with wonder his
strange confession r of ten years of life, marvelling what manner
of man this man could be; and his communion was simple and
fervent, as became a penitent. Thus began the eighth day, and
at its close he was sitting calmly before the log-fire in the kitchen,
and Izaak Walton was in his hands, with the famous paper lying
open before him. He had placed it between the leaves and for-
gotten it during the time he remained on the island after his fa-
ther's funeral. He read it again with a better insight into the
contrast it afforded with his political career. Scarcely a line in
the statement but he had openly or implicitly contradicted
within ten years, and the ideal of Christian manhood penned by
a boy had been lost to the maturer mind of the man. He put
it away carefully, and in so doing noticed the famous campaign
letter which he had once thought an evidence of his liberal feel-
ings and his independence of Italian church domination. It hung
in a frame, and must often have pierced his father's heart with its

360 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

uncatholic sentiments. He did not disturb it. Much as it had
increased his father's anguish, it must complete another work
before its usefulness was ended.

What was he going to do ? His period of uncontrolled grief
was over and his long penance begun. Where was it to end ?
He had many injuries to repair his scandalous life, his rejection
'of Frances, his treatment of all his friends. Not for one moment
did he think of returning to New York or to public life. He
saw clearly the precipice from which Providence, by means of
great misfortunes, had snatched him. He had entered the great
city a pure-hearted boy to whom sin was almost unknown,
whose one desire was to preserve the faith, in spirit and in word,
incorrupt in himself. How gradually and how surely he fell !
Careless intercourse with all sorts of people and the careless
reading of all sorts of books, with the adoption of all sorts of
theories and ideas, brought upon him an intellectual sensuality
only too common and too little noticed in the world. Then came
the loose thought and the loose glance and the loose word, the
more than indifferent companions, the dangerous witticism, the
state which weakened faith and practice and prepared the soul
for its plunge into the mud. Thank God ! he had escaped the
mud, at least. But who had saved him ? And was he to go back
to it all ? " There are some men whom politics will damn."
Wise words for him, at whom they seemed to point. What was
he to do ? He thought over it that night and the next morn-
ing. His resolution formed itself slowly ; finally it was made.
He would take his father's place on the island, and remain
there until death released him from his penance. Was it a hard
thing to do? No, he said, not with the graves of father and
sister so near him. And thus was he situated when Paul found
him.

The poet made his morning meal in silence and constraint.
It reminded him forcibly of many meals he had eaten in the
same room while sharing the hermit's hospitality. The circum-
stances were little changed. Although the day was cold, the sun
shone through the red-curtained window with a summer bright-
ness, the log-fire glowed in the hearth, the savory smell of broiled
fish pervaded the little room, and Florian, a wonderful likeness
of his father, sat eating sparingly, silent but not gloomy, save
for the sad shadows occasionally flitting over his face. The con-
trast between the placid manner and the feverish countenance
was odd, but not so forcible as the difference between this silent
man and the ambitious politician. Paul gave up speculation as a

i88s.J SOLITARY ISLAND. 361

hopeless task, and, rightly judging his present temper, plunged
abruptly into the matter of his visit.

" You may be aware of the circumstances which led to my
stay on Solitary Island," said he for a beginning. Florian re-
garded him placidly, without a trace of the old feeling in his
looks. Paul thought it pretence ; but it was real. The great
man had no feeling towards him.

" I am not aware of them," he replied.

u Strangely enough, our resemblance was the cause of it," said
Paul. " The spy who pursued you because of your resemblance
to your own family pursued me for the same reason, drove me
out of all employment, and, with the aid of injudicious friends,
brought me to the verge of poverty and death. Not far from
this island a deliberate attempt was made to murder me. Your
father saved me, and, for reasons quite plain to us both, took me
in and earned my everlasting gratitude for himself and his son."

A faint flush spread over Florian's face in the pause that fol-
lowed.

" I must ask your pardon," he said humbly, " for my guilty
share in your sufferings. I was your friend, and should have
aided you ; but I was led to believe you stood between me and
Ruth, and again between me and Frances Lynch. I was glad
you suffered. I regret it sincerely now. I trust you will forgive
me."

It was the poet's turn to blush furiously at this humility.

" Don't mention it," said he. " Peter Carter was the cause of
all these troubles. You are not to blame. I am not sorry for
them. They brought me in contact with your father."

" And I hated you for that," Florian went on in the same
tone, " because your worthiness won a privilege which my crimes
deprived me of. I spoke to you once under that impression in a
manner most insulting. I ask "

" Hold on ! " said Paul, jumping to his feet with a red face.
" No more of that, Florian. I cannot stand it. If you are really
sincere in this awful change that has come over you, keep your
apologies for Frances and others. But I do not understand it.
I expected something like this, but not so complete and astound-
ing a revolution."

Florian offered no remonstrance to this blunt suspicion, but
after a little pointed out to the grave with such a look in his
face ! then back to himself.

" ' Behold the murderer of his father,' " he said in a sudden
burst of wild sobs, as he repeated the count's telling words. " If

362 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

I could apologize to him as I do to you, my friend, as I shall do
to all the others ! Alas ! what humiliation is there greater than
that ? "

" He's on the right tack," said the satisfied poet, wiping his
eyes in sympathy and thinking joyfully of Frances.

" It's all cleared up between us, then, Flory," said he cheer-
fully, as he clasped the great man's hand. " My business is made
the easier for that, and it will send me back to New York with a
light heart. Come, I have some spots of interest to show you
about the old house. Your father loved me, Flory. How proud
I am of that honor! But, ah ! not as he loved you, his son. I
was his confidant in many things, and I have the secret of his life
and the explanation of its oddities. Flory, your father was a
saint, of princely soul as well as princely birth."

He lifted a trap-door in the floor of the bed-room, and led the
way, holding a lighted candle, into the cellar.

" It is not a cellar," he explained, flashing the light on the
rocky walls, " but a cave. Here is a door concealed in the rock
very nicely. We open it so. Now enter, and here we are."

They could hear the sound of running water in the cave, but
Florian paid it no attention. His eyes were fastened on the new
discovery. A set of rude shelves took up one whole side of an
almost square room, and was thickly crowded with books.
Their general character was devotional and mystical, but the
classics were well represented, and astronomy and philosophy
had the choicest volumes. A rough desk below contained a
wooden carved crucifix, a few bits of manuscript, and writing
materials. From a peg in its side hung a leather discipline,
whose thongs were tipped with fine iron points. A few sacred
prints hung on the walls. Florian knelt and kissed first the cru-
cifix and then the discipline.

" This spot," said Paul reverently, " is a secret to all save you
and me. When I first came here, broken down and disheartened
it seems a beautiful and fit sanctuary for the disheartened I
was sincerely disposed to lean more heavily on God for the sup-
port I needed. After a little the prince took me into his spirit-
ual confidence, and I beheld such a sight " the tears of emotion
poured from his eyes " as I had never dreamed of seeing this
side of heaven. Long meditations and prayers, mortifications
such as that discipline hints at, unbounded charity for all men, are
virtues common to all the saints. They did not impress me as
did the glimpses of his soul which I received. Ah ! such an
overpowering love of God. It seemed to burn within him like a

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 363

real flame, and to illuminate the space about him as does this
candle. I would have feared him but for the love and strength
these very qualities gave me. I knelt here with him often, and
when I was strong enough tried to stay by him in his vigils. I
know the angels often came to him visibly. I saw wonders here
and dreamed real dreams. It was a vision of the ancient The-
baid. And no one knew it save myself. Who would have be-
lieved it had they not seen what I saw?"

" Blind, blind, blind ! " murmured Florian. " We all caught
glimpses of his glory, but our love was not as sharp as hate, and
our souls too low to look for such a manifestation of grace. My
sin is all the greater."

" The last time I saw him," continued Paul, " was in this spot,
kneeling where you are kneeling. He had a premonition of his
coming passion, but it was lightened by the conviction perhaps
it had been revealed to him that out of it would come your
salvation. ' Tell my son/ he said, ' that I died because of him.' '

" ' Behold the murderer of his father,' " Florian murmured to
himself.

" ' Tell him also not to despair, but with a good heart, and
without haste or great grief for anything save for his sins, to be-
gin his penance.' You see he knew ; and when I asked him if he
were about to die, ' God holds all our days/ said he ; ' who knows
but this may be our last? ' I never saw him again in life. God
rest his soul, if it has suffered any delay ! "

There was again a short pause as Paul waited to review that
last scene and to recall the tones, the feelings, the incidents of a
most pathetic moment. Florian still knelt at the desk with his
fingers about the discipline.

" Well, it is all over," he said to the kneeling figure; " let us
go. You notice the dry air of the cave. It is beautifully ven-
tilated and very safe for such a place. Your father loved it.
Come, my friend. Or do you wish to remain here ? "

Florian rose and they returned to the room above.

" I have finished my work almost," said the poet, putting on
his hat, " and now I am going. Can I be of any help to you ? "

" My father's friend and mine," Florian replied, " I have need
only of your pardon and the renewal of that affection you once
had for me."

" And never lost, my Florian. You have it still, and the par-
don which is always yours beforehand. After a little you will
return to New York ? "

" Yes, after a little," he replied slowly, " but not to remain,

364 TRANSLATIONS. [Dec.,

Here is my home in the future. I have my business to close up
and a great act of justice to perform. After that my solitude."

It was on the poet's lips to dissuade him from so extravagant
a course, but he thought better of it and said nothing, preferring
to leave so delicate and dangerous a matter to time and the good
providence of God. Florian walked out with him as far as the
opposite shore, a smile of joy lighting up oddly the sad lines of
his face. He seemed, however, singularly destitute of the power
of self-reflection. His thoughts were ever fixed on what he had
seen and heard of his father, without much attention to their
effect on himself. He was smiling, not for joy, but in obedience
to some hidden impulse which he did not think of analyzing.

" Why do you look so pleased ? " said the poet to him.

" Do I look pleased?" he asked, with a puzzled expression
which silenced the poet. They parted at the entrance to the
woods.

" Until I see you again," said the poet, clasping his hand.

TO BE CONTINUED.

TRANSLATIONS.

THE WALTZ.

FROM THE GERMAN OF J. G. SEIDL.

LIGHTS are gleaming, viols throbbing,
Lo ! the dance sweeps on amain,

Swaying, surging, undulating;

Pleasure bounds with loosened rein.

Love-lit eyes are flashing glances ;

Music with her siren art
Weaves her subtle spells of magic,

Stirs the pulses of the heart.

And the air is faint and weary ;

Windows are flung open now,
Breezes of the night stream inward,

And they cool the heated brow.

1 885 .] TRANSLA TIONS. 365

By the open window standing,

All unnoticed and unseen,
Much I marvelled, much I pondered, ^j

As I gazed upon the scene.

Through the room a new waltz pealeth,

Joyous, sad, and sweet by times,
With its cadences commingling

Hark ! a bell's sonorous chimes ;

Till the harmony entrancing

Thrills with rapturous delight,
And the tumult rolls more wildly

Forth upon the star-lit night.

Hushed at length are flute and viol,
Hushed all save that solemn clang

' Twas a funeral bell that, tolling,
Through the open window rang !

CHILDHOOD.

FROM THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO.
I.

The child sang gaily : on her dying bed
The pain-worn mother, pale as marble, lay ;

Death's shadow floated hovering o'er her head,
And still the child sang on, nor ceased his play.

II.

Five summers old the child ; he stood among
His toys and playthings in the window's light,

And laughed and carolled blithely all day long,

While coughed his dying mother through the night.

III.

Beneath the churchyard stone they laid her low ;

Still sang the child, nor recked of grief or care
Sorrow 's a fruit God suffers not to grow

Upon a stem too frail its weight to bear.

366 T RAN SLA TIONS. [Dec.,

IMMORTALITY.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF G. PRATI.
I.

I noted a little maid who stood

Beside her cottage door ;
A wistful, sad, expectant look
. Her tender features wore.
" How comes it, pretty one," I said,

" I see thee every day
Stand at thy cottage door and gaze

Into the far-away ? "

II.
" And can it be you do not know

That, since my mother died,
I stand a while each day and wait

My cottage door beside ?
Four years, as I remember well,

Have passed away since then,
And they who bore her forth told me

She would come back again."

III.
" Alas ! poor child," I sadly said,

And tears were in my eyes,
" None ever yet has aught beheld

Return to earth that dies."
" Oh ! yes, within my garden plot,"

She answered smilingly,
" The flowers come back in spring ; the stars

Return and so will she."

A FABLE.

FROM THE SPANISH OF SAMAN1EGO.

Standing one day a pool beside,

Thus spake Sir Goose in conscious pride :

" What animal than I more blest ?

More gifts are mine than all the rest :

I am of water, earth, and sky ;

If tired of walking I can fly ;

Or if at any time the whim

Perchance shpuld seize me, I can swim."

1885.] CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. 367

A Serpent, listening in the brake,

In accents sibilant thus spake :

" Sir Goose ! I cannot boast as you,

I cannot fly as falcons do,

As deer I'm not so fleet of limb,

Nor can I like the barbel swim ;

But pray take not my words amiss

True excellence consists in this :

Rather in doing one thing well,

Than many things in doing ill."

CARDINAL McCLOSKEY, ARCHBISHOP OF NEW

YORK.

THOSE who read New York newspapers have already been
fully informed respecting the principal events in the life of the late
Cardinal of New York, the circumstances of his death, and the
honors paid to his memory by funeral obsequies and spontaneous
manifestations of popular feeling. We do not, therefore, expect
to present to this portion of the public anything of new interest.
But for more distant readers, in. this and in foreign countries, and
to preserve a more permanent memorial which may be valuable
until a biography shall appear, we undertake to give a sketch of
the life and character of the illustrious subject, which, though
necessarily succinct, shall be accurate and trustworthy, together
with some reminiscences of the adjacent scenes and persons with
which his career was associated.

The spacious and beautiful cathedral of white marble, with
the adjoining episcopal mansion and the presbytery, situated in
one of the finest parts of the city, make an architectural group
in grandeur and dignity worthy of the great metropolitan see
and the great city of New York, which is actually the metropolis
of the United States.

The first cathedral church of St. Patrick, now a parish church,
built during the early part of this century, and rebuilt in part
after a fire which destroyed all except its walls in 1866, although
in itself a fine and imposing edifice, is placed amid very different
surroundings. These are and always have been those of a very
poor and mean quarter of the city. The removal to a different
locality was certainly fitting and desirable in every way. Yet

368 CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. [Dec.,

we cannot help thinking that the position of the first bishops of
New York, like that of the first popes in the Catacombs, had
something in it most expressive of the original, characteristic
mission of the apostles and their successors, to plant the church
of Christ amid the poor and miserable habitations of those to
whom especially the Gospel is preached, and who have always
best appreciated its blessings.

The writer has conversed with a lady who had assisted at
Mass in the drawing-room of the Spanish consul, which at that
time, about a century ago, sufficed to contain all the Catholics of
New York. For about twenty years from that date New York
was a mission-station in the diocese of Philadelphia, attended
from that city occasionally, perhaps once a month, until it was
confided to the care of a resident priest. It was erected into a
see in 1808, and the first bishop, Dr. Concanen, was consecrated
in Italy, but, through the interference of the civil authority, was
prevented from embarking for America. The second bishop, Dr.
Connolly, was consecrated in 1814, and ruled the diocese during
eleven years. The portraits of these two bishops, the memory
of whom has been almost effaced, are preserved at the episcopal
residence, and represent them as venerable, and even distinguish-
ed-looking prelates. Dr. Dubois, who succeeded and governed
the diocese from 1826 to 1842, was, during all his career as priest
and bishop, one of the first and most eminent among 'our early
American clergy. Dr. Hughes, then a parish priest in Phila-
delphia, was consecrated as his coadjutor in 1838, succeeded him
in the see, was made archbishop of the new province of New
York in 1850, and died in 1864, after an episcopate of twenty-six
years. The remaining interval until the recent accession of the
present archbishop was filled by the episcopate of the late cardi-
nal. And, as Dr. Hughes practically administered the govern-
ment of the diocese from the time of his consecration, the Catho-
lic people of New York have been governed by only two bishops
during the last forty-seven years a circumstance which partly
accounts for the unusually intense personal devotion which they
have ever manifested toward their prelates.

The writer was taken as a little boy by his father, somewhere
about the year 1832, to see the old cathedral; and, notwithstand-
ing the improvements and decorations of a later date, the im-
pression remaining of the church and its vicinity resembles sub-
stantially its present appearance.

Soon after Dr. Hughes* consecration I heard him preach at
High Mass on a Sunday, the late Father Starrs, V.G., being the

1885.] CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. 369

celebrant. I have still a vivid remembrance of his appearance as
he was then in the prime of manhood of his sermon, and even of
the precise words of some of its sentences. In 1851 I passed a
fortnight in his house, assisting in a mission given under the direc-
tion of the celebrated Father Bernard. The movement among
the Catholics of New York roused by previous missions at St.
Joseph's and St. Peter's these missions being then a novelty
was so great that they would all have crowded into the cathedral,
if it had been possible, and we would have had an audience suffi-
cient to fill St. Peter's at Rome. The church was stuffed with
human beings, many climbing even into the window-sills, and the
streets were packed with people like a solid wall, so that it was
sometimes impossible to get through them from the house to the
sacristy. I was then and often afterwards in familiar intercourse
with this great archbishop, and learned to know him well person-
ally. Although he preserved somewhat of a distant and regal
demeanor towards clergymen who were his immediate subjects,
yet with other clergymen, and especially when away from his
own diocese, he was extremely affable and agreeable. When I
first made his acquaintance at his own house the present bishop
of Brooklyn and the late Archbishop Bayley, of Baltimore, were
two active and sprightly young priests attached to the cathedral,
and they were both soon after the mission appointed to new epis-
copal sees erected within the diocese of New York viz., Brooklyn
and Newark and were consecrated by the Roman prelate who
was afterwards Cardinal Bedini, then on a special mission to the
United States. One of these young clergymen of that early time
related a characteristic anecdote of the archbishop.

The well-known Father Larkin, S.J., called on him soon after
the burning of the old church first occupied by the Jesuits in the
city. The archbishop remarked, with a somewhat malicious smile,
that it was the most beautiful fire he had ever seen. Father Lar-
kin did not reply, but after a moment's pause, presenting his
snuff-box, said : " My lord, will you take a pinch of Irish Black-
guard ? " The archbishop soon after parted from his visitor
with ceremonious politeness, and, returning to his study, observed
to his secretary : " Father Larkin is a remarkable man, a very
clever man indeed ! "

Archbishop Hughes laid the corner-stone of the new cathe-
dral on a blazing summer's day of the year 1858, in the pre-
sence of a vast crowd, which was estimated to number one
hundred thousand, whose orderly and quiet march through the
streets that Sunday afternoon was like that of an army. He
VOL. XLII. 24

3/0 CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. [Dec.,

made other preliminary arrangements for the erection of the
building, but finally left the prosecution and completion of the
work to his successor. He became enfeebled by premature old
age, worn out by the overwhelming cares and labors attending
the charge of a diocese which, before its division, embraced the
entire present province viz., the two States of New York and
New Jersey. His province, when he became a metropolitan, in-
cluded also the present province of Boston i.e., all the New
England States. Except during the three years from 1844 to
1847, ne had no coadjutor, and for several years before his death
he was unable to do more than fulfil the absolutely necessary
duties of his office. Few who are now living can remember him
as he was in the full vigor and activity of his prime. During his
time of warfare he wielded the battle-axe of Cceur de Lion ; while
his successor, whose characteristics were in marked contrast to
his own, was more like Saladin, whose light weapon cut the lace
veil with sure and graceful stroke.

The Catholic Church of New York has reason to be proud of
its bishops, and to be grateful to God for the line of chief pastors
who have fed and defended this portion ot the flock of Christ as
it increased and multiplied like that of Jacob in Mesopotamia.

The fifth bishop and second archbishop, John McCloskey, was
born in Brooklyn, March 20, 1810, four years before the consecra-
tion of the first resident bishop of New York. In 1822 he began
the course of his studies, which he continued, until the comple-
tion of his theology in 1834, at the College of Mount St. Mary's,
Emmittsburg, Maryland. Bishop Dubois was during many
years its president, and here Archbishop Hughes, as well as
many other prelates and priests of the United States, received
their education. It is a most romantic spot, and it has a his-
tory replete with all kinds of interest, running over with remin-
iscences and anecdotes of the boyhood and youth of a great many
men who became afterwards well and honorably knoton in their
various professions. But few of the late cardinal's contempora-
ries are now living. His golden jubilee in 1884 brought one of
them, a venerable Jesuit father, whose provincial threw him into
the greatest alarm by declaring that he had given his comrade,
John McCloskey, a beating in a school-boy fight, and threatening
to relate it publicly. The good father protested that the story
was a myth, and yet he privately acknowledged to the writer
that he was sorry he had ever made known what had really hap-
pened, the historic germ of the legend that he had just given
him one little clip. At the funeral another venerable old gentle-

1885.] CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. 371

man on crutches came into the sacristy to tell me that he had
been the cardinal's schoolmate. I have heard the cardinal him-
self relate with glee some of his school-boy stories, but I have
forgotten them, for which some persons may be thankful.

One boyish adventure had nearly proved fatal. During a
visit to some farm-house in the country a great log fell upon and
rolled over John McCloskey, who was taken up insensible and
severely hurt. The shock which his nervous system received
left a permanent effect. While on a journey I think during the
time that he was bishop of Albany he met with another accident
on a railway which injured him severely and laid him up for
some weeks. These shocks to his nervous system were probably
the principal cause of the premature failure of his constitution
and of the disease paralysis agitans with which he was afflicted
during his latter years.

Mr. McCloskey was ordained priest January 11, 1834, by
Bishop Dubois, who was assisted on that occasion by Dr. Power,
a priest scarcely less celebrated in his day as a preacher and con-
troversialist than Dr. Hughes, and by Dr. Pise, also well known
for his graceful literary accomplishments, peculiarly attractive
personal qualities, and still more worthy of honor for his long and
faithful service in the priesthood. The two following years were
spent in study at Rome, and one year more in a tour through
Europe. During the remaining seven years of his priesthood,
before his elevation to the episcopal dignity, Father McCloskey
was rector of St. Joseph's Church, New York, and for a time
president of the newly-founded St. Joseph's Seminary at Fordham.
While rector of St. Joseph's he received into the church the Rev.
Mr. Bayley, rector of St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church,
Harlem, who by this step lost the inheritance of a fortune of nine-
ty thousand dollars, and who, as archbishop of Baltimore, placed
the scarlet berretta of a cardinal on the head of his former spiri-
tual father. An old man who lived for forty years as a servant
at the Lorillard mansion, Manhattanville, both before and after it
became a part of the grand Convent of the Sacred Heart, told
me that he remembered well Mr. Bayley as a Protestant clergy-
man, and that on the occasion of a wedding in the house he was
the officiating minister and the lady-superior of the convent one
of the bridesmaids. The drawing-room where the marriage was
celebrated became afterwards the first chapel of the convent.

Father McCloskey was consecrated bishop of Axiere in par-
tibus, having been appointed coadjutor with the right of suc-
cession to Dr. Hughes, on March 10, 1844. He was translated

372 CARDINAL MCLOSKEY. [Dec.,

to the new see of Albany May 21, 1847, an< ^ governed that dio-
cese seventeen years. His cathedral was a very ordinary church
with a modest residence attached to it. A new and handsome
church was afterwards built upon its site by Father Walworth,
the present rector. Later on a noble cathedral with a suitable
episcopal residence adjoining was built.

Bishop McCloskey was translated to the metropolitan see of
New York early in the year 1864; he was invested with the in-
signia of a Cardinal Priest of the Roman Church, under the title
of Sancta Maria super Minervam, March 15, 1875; and he died
October 10, 1885, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, the fifty-
second of his priesthood, and the forty-second of his episcopate,
having been archbishop of New York twenty-one years and
some months. During the last five years of his episcopate he
had a coadjutor in the person of the Most Rev. Dr. Corrigan,
titular archbishop of Petra, who succeeded to bis see on his
demise.

We make no attempt at any even succinct historical sketch
of the labors and events of the late cardinal's public official
career. Such an account would be a history of the two great
dioceses which he governed, of his entire province, and of the
Vatican Council, of .which he was one of the most distinguished
members. In fact, his personal history is connected with that
of the whole Catholic Church in the United States. It is well
known that the churches he governed flourished under his ad-
ministration, that great works were accomplished, and that the
cardinal, when his earthly career came to its close, saw, in the
language of Wordsworth :

" Of all by his great soul inspired,
Much done, and much designed, and more desired."

The change in his personal condition, from the time when, as
a little boy, he crossed with his mother in a row-boat every Sun-
day from the small village of Brooklyn to New York to hear
Mass in one of its two Catholic churches, to the time when,
surrounded by his suffragans and clergy, he sat on the throne of
his new cathedral, is typical of the fortunes of that part of the
Catholic Church over which he presided.

Leaving this theme to be handled by others in the ample and
satisfactory manner which it demands, I confine myself to the
effort of sketching the personal character of the great cardinal,
and a few scenes of remarkable interest in which he appeared as
the principal figure.

1885.] CARDINAL MCLOSKEY. 373

The cardinal was tall, slender, and graceful in his person,
with a constitution apparently frail and delicate, yet really sound
and elastic, capable ol great endurance, and retaining its health-
ful vigor until he had nearly reached the period of seventy years.
His mental and physical temperament is most distinctly charac-
terized as one of equilibrium, balanced adjustment, and tranquil-
lity, not, however, at all phlegmatic, but on the contrary marked
by alertness of movement and gayety of disposition. His intel-
lectual faculties were symmetrically developed and cultivated.
He was a diligent and a distinguished student in his youth, stu-
dious and thoughtful during his whole life ; but what may be
called intellectual passion, and all desire to manifest intellectual
superiority or exhibit learning, was absent, and only attentive
observation could discern beneath his unobtrusive exterior man-
ner of conversation how much knowledge and wisdom lay be-
neath. All acknowledge that he was in many ways an accom-
plished scholar, especially in theology and the sacred sciences.
I have sometimes taken occasion to consult him, generally when
I could not find the solution of some difficult question in books
or from other theologians, and I never found him at fault. In
fact, I have known him to correct a serious mistake of a cele-
brated author in a very important matter.

As a preacher he had rare and excellent gifts. I have seldom
had an opportunity of hearing him preach set and elaborate dis-
courses. But I have heard from an old parishioner at St.
Joseph's that the church was always crowded when he preached,
and from competent judges, who had listened to the most cele-
brated preachers in America and Europe, that he would compare
favorably with them, especially in regard to elegance of rhetoric,
logical clearness in the construction of his argument, persuasive-
ness, and attractiveness of manner. Of late years I have fre-
quently listened to his short addresses to the graduates and other
young pupils on the occasion of the annual distribution of honors
and prizes. It is not so easy as some might think to make ad-
dresses of this kind without sinking into a continual repetition
of commonplace remarks, or merely reciting a formula as fixed
as the phrases with which we are wont to begin and end a ser-
mon : " The words of my text will be found"; " A blessing I
wish you all." The cardinal always made a most happy, inge-
nious, and appropriate address to his young people, and never re-
peated the same twice. Each of them was a perfect little gem.
For instance : " There is some hidden spring within these grounds,
the fount of inspiration from which you draw those beautiful

374 CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. [Dec.,

thoughts and sentiments with which you have delighted and
charmed us this afternoon. Where is it? Would that I could
find it and drink from it, that I might make to you some similar
and worthy response ! " There are very few who, if they were
fortunate enough to find such a pretty thought, would not trea-
sure it up for future use. Not so the cardinal. He always had
a fresh bouquet with the dew still on it, as rich and beautiful as
the nosegays which the young Muses and Graces of the convent-
school laid at his feet.

Of course he won the hearts of the young people and children
of his flock whenever he went among them on the joyous festi-
vals of confirmation, first communion, and graduation. The same
amiability and benignity of character endeared him to all who
were under his pastoral charge, whether of the clergy or the
laity, while his episcopal dignity of bearing, his justness of ad-
ministration tempered with mildness, his consummate wisdom
and prudence in government, and his thorough devotion to all
sacerdotal and pastoral duties, inspired confidence and respect.
In regard to all the duties of his office it may be said with literal
truth he was totus in illis. From the beginning to the end he
was completely and entirely the priest and the bishop. All
other employments. and occupations, however worthy in them-
selves, besides those of his priestly state, he touched with the
left hand. As for recreation and amusements, such as are suit-
able and for most men indispensable, although he could not say
literally with St. Charles Borromeo, whose whole life bordered
on the miraculous and in some respects crossed the border, that
" his only garden was the Holy Scriptures," yet he had reduced
the demands of the inferior part of human nature to their lowest
terms. Grievous and growing infirmities alone could compel
him to relax his untiring diligence. He continued to exert him-
self to fulfil a part of his functions, steadily growing less and less,
even after his coadjutor had taken the heavier duties upon him-
self, when his trembling hands could scarcely place a wreath
upon a child's head, when he could scarcely rise up from his
chair, and was unable to walk across the floor of the sanctuary
without assistance.

From the time when he was invested with his highest dig-
nity the cardinal was never well. Even before that he must
have been sensible of failing strength and begun to grow weary.
He was not one to complain of fatigue, but once, when he gave
his pallium into my charge for a time, he expressed with a sigh
the wish that he might lay it aside altogether, and uttered the

1885.] CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. 375

exclamation : " O beati voi ! " During his last years he was com-
pelled to retire more and more into that seclusion and quietude
for which he had longed. Unable during- a long time even to
read, though he continued to direct the administration of his
diocese through his vicars-general, the greatest part of his time
was passed in solitude, with no resource or occupation except
prayer. During all his life his interior occupation had been
more spiritual than intellectual, and not distracted or disturbed
even by incessant outward activity. During his months and
years of languor he was never, so far as I could perceive or
know from those who saw him frequently, morbid, melancholy,
or discontented. He seemed to be serene and happy, and his
conversation was cheerful and simple. I conclude from this
that there was a deep well of the water of life in his soul, that
his " life was hidden with Christ in God," that his spirit was
already dwelling in heaven, though his body was on the earth.
One cannot possess this quiet of contemplation in old age and
sickness, unless he has gained it by strenuous, unremitting efforts
to walk closely with God during the time of mental and physical
activity. The cardinal had been innocent and pious in his boy-
hood, had probably preserved the first grace of baptism, had
been consecrated from his youth to the special service of God,
and had gone on in one unswerving, undeviating course of fidelity
to conscience and the inspirations of the Divine Spirit. This was
the source of his peace and tranquillity, the disposition which pre-
pared him to receive sacerdotal grace in all its fulness. Such
souls, above all others, are worthy of the priestly vocation, and fit
instruments of grace for the sanctification of 'others. They are
like St. John, the beloved disciple of Christ, who was spared the
struggles and the vehement repentance by which St. Peter and St.
Paul won the victory over sin. They may not be so well fitted
for tempest and warfare, but there is a winning sweetness and
gentleness in their sanctity and in their ministry which is spe-
cially fitted to gain hearts. St. Meletius of Antioch is a notable
instance in early ecclesiastical history. The first American
bishop who was made a cardinal, Mgr. Cheverus, bishop of Bos-
ton, then translated to Besangon, and afterwards archbishop of
Bordeaux, a prelate after the pattern of St. Francis of Sales, was
a similar example in modern times. He won the admiration and
affection of all the people of Boston and New England, and left
behind him a reputation of sanctity which has not yet died out.
I always heard him spoken of in my boyhood as a saint. Cardi-
nal McCloskey resembled Cardinal Cheverus in character, and,

37 6 CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. [Dec.,

like him, he has won universal regard. The citizens of Albany,
headed by the governor of New York, presented an address
warmly expressing the honor and regard in which they held him,
when he was transferred to the metropolitan see, New York,
and the country in general was pleased and gratified at his eleva-
tion to the cardinalate. On the occasion of his death and funeral
the press, representing the public sentiment, was filled with edi-
torials and other articles expressing sympathy and giving testi-
mony of the universal esteem of the community. Far more than
distinguished talents and rank, it was the moral and spiritual vir-
tues of the true Christian bishop, the meekness, humility, piety,
sacerdotal zeal and disinterestedness of his character and life,
which called forth this spontaneous homage.

The piety of a bishop has its own specific character and way
of manifestation in a pre-eminent devotion to the Sacrifice, the
sacraments, and all the accompanying holy rites and observances
which belong to the external worship of God in the sanctuary of
which he is a minister. This is seen in the example of the great
modern model of episcopal perfection and sanctity, St. Charles
Borromeo.

Cardinal McCloskey was filled with the devotion to the Holy
Eucharist which is the fountain of vital force in the priesthood,
with reverence for the sacraments and all holy things, with zeal
for the glory and beauty of the house of God. His dignity and
grace of person and manner, refined taste, and nice sense of pro-
priety, together with his elevated piety, fitted him to fulfil all sa-
cred functions at the altar, and to order all external arrangements
and decorations of the church and sanctuary, in 'such a becoming
manner as to reflect outwardly the inner, celestial mysteries sig-
nified by and contained in all sacramental and liturgical forms.
For the same reason that he honored the Lord in his sacraments
and sanctuary, he honored him in his own person as the conse-
crated minister of religion. He did not show his humility by
seeming to disregard his own dignity, his unworldliness by neg-
lecting the external proprieties which belong to it. He was al-
ways a polished gentleman and a dignified prelate, showing due
courtesy to others and exacting due respect to himself. It was
a great pleasure to see him officiate in the ceremonies of the
church. He sought to provide the church and the sanctuary
with all that was most ritually correct, most accordant to the
canons of the purest taste, most cost.ly and splendid, in archi-
tecture, art, sacred vestments and vessels. He associated with
persons of the highest ecclesiastical and civil rank, with the

1885.] CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. 377

most cultivated minds, and was familiar with the best works of
ecclesiastical art, in Europe, from the first years of his priesthood.
Pius IX. said that he was a man of princely mien and bearing ;
and he was exalted to the rank of a prince in the church because
he was worthy to take his place as their peer among the highest.
" When he went up to the holy altar, he honored the vesture of
holiness. And about him was the ring of his brethren ; and as
the cedar planted in Mount Libanus, and as branches of palm-
trees, they stood round about him, and all the sons of Aaron in
their glory " (Eccli. 1. 12-14).

Three grand scenes, which were the cardinal's triumphs, oc-
curred during the last ten years of his episcopate viz., his in-
vestiture as cardinal, the solemn benediction of the new cathe-
dral, and the celebration of the Fourth Provincial Council of New
York. Long and minute descriptions of these scenes are con-
tained in the newspapers of their respective dates. Such descrip-
tions are often of a magniloquent character and full of grievous
blunders in their ambitious but inaccurate attempts to describe
ecclesiastical ceremonies. Some of them, however, are the work
of reporters of the first class, who are well informed and of prac-
tised skill in their calling ; and these are as excellent in their kind,
and as perfect in an artistic sense, as the admirable portraits and
etchings which adorn the pages of the Century. Those who wish
for descriptions of the ceremonies and processions on these occa-
sions can find all that is requisite to gratify their curiosity in the
several numbers of the Catholic Review and the Illustrated Catholic
American for the present month of October, in which they have
been reproduced.

I wish to allude here only to some features which are note-
worthy, and which were very impressive.

On the occasion of the conferring of the cardinal's scarlet cap
on the archbishop of New York by the archbishop of Baltimore,
the vast multitude thronging the vicinity of the old cathedral,
and covering all the roofs of adjacent buildings, together with
the poor and squalid appearance of the district through which
the imposing array of the procession passed, was, to me, the most
impressive part of the spectacle. A view of the crowd within
the church, mingled of all ranks from the humblest to the high-
est, Catholics and non-Catholics, of the perfect order and deco-
rum which prevailed without and within the church, and the mani-
festation of intense interest on the part of all in the ceremony,
were well fitted to attract attentive consideration and awaken
many thoughts and emotions. Splendor coming in upon poverty

378 CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. [Dec.,

without arousing- hate and envy, the highest and the humblest
mingling together, ima summis this presented an image of re-
conciliation, union, illumination of the dark vaults and crypts of
human society by light from its upper regions, showing what the
Catholic religion, and no other power whatever, is capable of
effecting by bringing in harmonizing, ameliorating influences to
pervade all classes and conditions. The cardinal, and Count
Mirafoschi in his grand gala uniform, with drawn sword, were
the two centres of attraction. I smiled inwardly while looking
at the fine, colossal, brilliant figure of the papal officer, remem-
bering old alarms of invasion by papal armies, and fancying the
count attempting single-handed the conquest of the country.
Looking at the new scarlet vestments of the gentle and very
weary cardinal, I recalled the terrifying phantoms of Apocalyptic
beasts and the Scarlet Lady. Then I looked at the eager, admir-
ing countenances of American ladies and gentlemen, the foremost
of them pressing quietly up within the rails and mounting chairs
among the clergy to get a better view of the two personages clad
in ecclesiastical and military scarlet. When the stern, uncom-
promising official who repelled the invaders turned his back, I
acknowledge that I connived at and favored their intrusion, and
gave my chair as a coigne de vantage to one fortunate person, who
had a near view which some hundreds of thousands would have
been delighted to get.

Just so when the great day of the solemn blessing of the new
cathedral, with its bright sunshine and genial air, witnessed the
magnificent procession of prelates and clergy, heard the melo-
dious chants of choristers, and marked itself with a red letter in
our calendar for perpetual remembrance. The drawing together
of the multitude of all classes ; the universal congratulation with
the venerable cardinal, already verging toward the decline of
his days ; the continual throng, for weeks and months, of visitors
to gaze at and admire the storied windows and beautiful altars,
were most interesting and impressive sights to be contemplat-
ed by an observer to whom humanity itself is the object most
worthy of attention in this world.

The celebration of the Provincial Council lacked nothing of
the elements which go to make up a splendid religious spectacle,
in its solemn sessions with their public processions and cere-
monies. Within the council a harmony of proceeding, a quiet-
ness of deliberation, an absence of party spirit and the eagerness
for discussing and speechifying which are so common in delib-
erative and legislative assemblies, even ecclesiastical, gave it a

1885.] CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. 379

peaceful character which seemed to be an inspiration from the
cardinal's own tranquil and serene spirit.

It seemed a wonder that he was able, so extreme was his
bodily feebleness, to preside over all its private and public ses-
sions and to take the part in its ceremonies which belonged to
him as its president. He seemed like one who belonged more to
the sphere of spiritual beings than to that of men living in the
body. " He shone as the morning- star in the midst of a cloud,
when he put on the robe of glory and was clothed with the per-
fection of power " (Eccli. 1. 6, 11). One could easily imagine that
some ancient, holy bishop, raised from the dead and still pale and
infirm as when he lay breathing his last, had returned among his
brethren to testify of the region behind the veil.

On the occasion of his golden jubilee he made one more ef-
fort, with still greater difficulty, to appear for a short time among
his brethren and receive their felicitations ; and then, drawing
always slowly nearer to the world beyond the earthly atmos-
phere, he awaited the summons which came at last, and, in silent,
perfect peace and possession of his intellectual consciousness, all
the solemn rites prescribed by the church fulfilled, he passed to
his everlasting rest and reward. Offices were continually recited,
prayers and Masses were said, watch and guard were kept over
his body, it was laid in state in the cathedral, all the solemn ob-
sequies were fulfilled, and, with his pallium on his shoulders,
what remained of the cardinal's bodily part was sealed up in the
tomb behind the high altar, awaiting the resurrection.

The high altar and the episcopal throne were the personal
gifts of the cardinal, who subscribed for this purpose from his
private purse $10,000, and sold his carriage and horses to make
up the sum. They will always remain as his memorial to future
generations. The governor of New York has already said that
the cathedral of Albany is his monument. Another and more
splendid monument, alike to him and to his illustrious predecessor,
whose body lies by the side of his, is the cathedral of New York.

As a spontaneous tribute of honor and love to the deceased
cardinal, there is nothing which can compare to the gathering of
the people about his coffin while his body was lying in state from
Tuesday morning, October 13, until Thursday, the day of his en-
tombment. Nothing similar has occurred within our memory,
except on the occasions of the funeral ceremonies of President
Lincoln and General Grant. A numerous group of prelates and
several hundred of the clergy, several distinguished civilians, and
as many of all classes as could obtain admission were present at
the obsequies, which were performed with all possible solemnity.

380 CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. [Dec.,

The crowd of persons present in the cathedral was but a small
fraction of the multitude, from all ranks of society and from other
parts of the country as well as from the city, who would have
been present if they could have obtained admission. Even this is
not so very remarkable. But what was really a wonderful spec-
tacle was the scene witnessed about the cathedral during the
time of the lying- in state. The church was filled with the people
who could gain admission; the great area between its entrance on
Fifth Avenue and the street, the avenue itself from Forty-seventh
Street to Fifty-third Street, on the eastern pavement, were densely
packed with a silent, patient army, which began to gather at three
o'clock in the morning, and did not disperse until ten in the even-
ing. A large body of police, which on Thursday was increased
to three hundred, was requisite to put the multitude in orderly
array and prevent the crushing which must have otherwise pro-
duced confusion and resulted in danger to limbs and lives, as well
as to secure a passage to the catafalque to the greatest possible
number. One day was rainy, but this did no more than diminish
the crowd to about fifty thousand. This long and patient wait-
ing was simply for the purpose of getting one brief glance at the
bier with the body of the dead cardinal, clothed in his pontifical
vestments, reposing upon it. And a large proportion of the mul-
titude were deprived of even this satisfaction.

Such a deep and universal emotion as this, prompting the en-
durance of such long-protracted fatigue, and keeping so vast and
miscellaneous a crowd of men, women, and children in a hush of
sombre silence for so long a time, is a wonderful phenomenon.
It has often been witnessed before among the Catholic people
when persons have died in the repute of great sanctity, but it is
very difficult for any one who is not within the sphere of the in-
tense and overawing emotions of which only the popular heart
is susceptible to enter into it and understand it. In a general
and purely natural sense this intense and overmastering awaken-
ing of sensible emotions is a spontaneous stirring of the innate
aspiration of the human soul after the sublime. It is the dispo-
sition to wonder at, reverence, and pay homage to that which is
above and beyond the limits of common humanity and the ob-
jects of every-day life.

When religious faith and the sentiment of the supernatural
lie at its root, then the person or the other object representing
the majesty of God, the mysteries of religion, the unseen, spiri-
tual world, the realities of the life to come, moves the imagina-
tion and the feelings of those who are in a simple and child-like
state, by means of the concrete and sensible embodiment of that

1885.] A DEWDROP ON A COBWEB. 381

which the intellect apprehends by abstract ideas, with a force
which is great because it is consonant to human nature. What
we have been describing manifests the depth, intensity, and wide
extent of religious convictions in the great mass of the people.

The founding, extension, perpetuity, and powerful effect of
Christianity in the past and present are chiefly due to bishops,
from the apostles down to their living successors, who have
been, like Cardinal McCloskey, true and worthy ambassadors of
God and representatives of Christ. It is in the Catholic episco-
pate that the hope of future triumphs of the kingdom of Christ
in the world chiefly reposes. May the example of our holy Car-
dinal Archbishop not be lost on the clergy and people to whom
he left his blessing.

A DEWDROP ON A COBWEB.

How fair a guest upon a couch

So base !
It restless moves, as it disdained to touch

So mean a place ;
Or as it wooed the zephyr's soft embrace,

Upon its wings to upward soar.
It gazeth longing into Morn's sweet face,

And opes its door
In tender pleading to the King of Day,

Whose ray
Shines through the mirror of its rounded floor,

And, lingering brief in beauteous stay,
Bears it at last from earthly taint and soil away.

So in its mortal web the soul,

A guest
Ethereal, mourns her shining, distant goal

In deep unrest.
A viewless spirit ever doth invest

Her with a holy atmosphere ;
And oft, by beams of living light caressed,

She doth appear
A splendid prisoner to the passer-by,

Whose eye,
Fixed with sweet influence on her pure career,

Mounts with her unto regions high,
As God's bright flame absorbs her to her native sky,

382 "Sr. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" [Dec.,

"SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND
"BECKET."

IN picturesqueness and " the tender grace of a day that is
dead " for Tennyson's day is dead, gone in a misty twilight
the latest tragedy of the laureate is vastly superior to the one
which, after " Alexander the Great," has made Aubrey de Vere's
name glorious in the literary annals of the nineteenth century.
But a great tragedy on a subject which is what the Germans call
"epoch-making" demands higher qualities than picturesqueness
and that nameless grace and delicacy so essentially Tennysonian.
It needs even higher qualities than the contrast of marked cha-
racters, pointed epigrams, or the fine play of poetic fancy. Lord
Tennyson's " Becket " has all the lower qualities, Aubrey de
Vere's " St. Thomas of Canterbury " all the higher. An oak is
not more of an oak because the sward around is starred by vio-
lets and all the blooms of spring, and Aubrey de Vere's " St.
Thomas " would not be a greater tragedy if it had the exquisite
touches which the most delicate master of poetic technique the
world has ever seen gives to his.

Tennyson's tragedy is meant to be an acting play, and it
barely fails of being one ; De Vere's is frankly a drama for the
closet. Perhaps the lack of nobleness in Tennyson's is due to
the necessity he felt of making it fit the arbitrary refinements of
the stage. The episode of Fair Rosamond, which is an offence
against historical truth, good art, and taste, would probably
never have been introduced had the laureate not been required
to give a leading dramatic lady something to do. Still, writers
impregnated with the traditions of the Reformation are always
crying, " Cherchez la femme." If a man is holy and there is no
disputing the fact, they construct a romance with a woman in it
to account for his renunciations, and vice versa. Ten to one, if
Tennyson is ever seized with the idea of putting Sir Thomas
More into a tragedy, he will show to us the great chancellor dy-
ing, not as a martyr to religion, but as a martyr to human love.
He has ruined a magnificent persona by making him, on the eve
of his sublime death for the church and freedom, drivel of what
he might have gained had he married. In the monastery at
Canterbury, just before the bell rings that calls him to his doom,
he sighs lackadaisically :

1885.] "Sr- THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" 383

"There was a little fair-haired Norman maid
Lived in my mother's house : if Rosamond is
The world's rose, as her name imports her she
Was the world's lily.

JOHN OF SALISBURY.

" Ay, and what of her ?

BECKET.

" She died of leprosy.

JOHN OF SALISBURY.

" I know not why
You call these old things back, my lord.

BECKET.

" The drowning man, they say, remembers all
The chances of his life, just ere he dies."

Possibly this discord may not strike the audience which, in
" Queen Mary," " Harold," and " Becket," Tennyson addresses
himself to. But to a Catholic it is fatal to whatever harmony he
might have found in the tragedy. Surely the poet who gave us
a type of purity in Sir Galahad, and of chaste elevation in King
Arthur, might have better understood the character of the mar-
tyred successor of St. Anselm. It is impossible to approach the
climax, or rather anti-climax, of Tennyson's play without impa-
tience and irritation. If

" To be wroth with one we love

Doth work like madness in the brain,"

the discovery that a true poet has misunderstood a grand char-
acter and frittered away a sublime opportunity is an incentive,
too, to a helpless and hopeless sort of anger.

In Aubrey de Vere's " St. Thomas " there is no anti-climax,
no disappointment. We miss sometimes the flowers that might
grow around the foot of the oak, but the oak towers majestic.
" St. Thomas " possesses what many of us thought lacking in
the less ambitious poems of an author who has given out much
light without heat sustained intensity of passion. Added to
this, Aubrey de Vere, thoroughly understands the historical
meaning of St. Thomas' time and the relations of the great chan-
cellor and primate to that time. Of these the laureate seems to
be in the densest ignorance. If in " Queen Mary " he drew his
facts from Froude, and in " Harold " from Bulwer-Lytton, he

384 "Sr; THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" [Dec.,

appears in " Becket " to have depended on his own inner con-
sciousness for his " history." He has, in the most important
particulars, ignored the authentic chronicles of the time.

It was, indeed, an " epoch-making " time and one worthy of a
grand commemoration in an immortal poem. England owes her
liberty to the church, and, more than all, to St. Anselm and St.
Thomas, because they first withstood the advancing waves of
royal despotism. And the freedom of the church was the free-
dom of the people. St. Anselm put into the " Mariale " the
echoes of the wails of the Saxon people, beaten down by Norman
conquerors who would have been utter brutes for the Berserker
spirit was strong in them were it riot for the influence of the
church. The Saxons saw their priests made powerless, their
church enslaved, and themselves in hopeless serfdom more
crushing even than the slavery which Ireland endured from the
same hands when suddenly that church which knows no na-
tionality, which fuses all nations into one, asserted her might in
the persons of two primates : one of the conquering race, the
other of the foreigner's court. The position of St. Thomas h
Becket has been misinterpreted so utterly that he is often set
down as an ambitious revolutionist who tried, in the interests of
ecclesiastical tyranny, to dominate both king and people. In
truth, the Archbishop of Canterbury struggled for old English
laws against new ones devised by the Normans to rivet more
closely the fetters of serfdom on the Saxon people.

It has been made a reproach against St. Thomas that he re-
sisted the " Royal Customs," that he figured as a haughty prince
of the church scorning the pretensions of the Plantagenet, and
that he died a martyr to his obstinate desire to crush even royal
freedom, that he and his monks might triumph. This view is
founded on a misconception of the nature of the Royal Customs.
They were not old Customs, but innovations invented by the con-
querors for their autocratic purposes. Aubrey de Vere puts
into Becket's mouth this description of these famous Customs.
The Earl of Cornwall says :

"You serve the king
Who stirred these wars ? who spurned the Royal Customs ?

BECKET.

'The Customs ay, the Customs ! We have reached
At last 'twas time the inmost of this plot,
Till now so deftly veiled and ambushed.. ' Customs ! '
O specious word, how plausibly abused !
In Catholic ears that word is venerable ;

1885.] "ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" 385

To Catholic souls custom is law itself,

Law that its own foot hears not, dumbly treading

A holy path smoothed by traditions old.

I war not, sirs, on ways traditionary;

The church of Christ herself is a tradition ;

Ay, 'tis God's tradition, not of men !

Sir, these your Customs are God's laws reversed,

Traditions making void the Word of God,

Old innovations from the first withstood,

The rights of holy church, the poor man's portion,

Sold, and for naught, to aliens. Customs ! Customs !

Custom was that which to the lord of the soil

Yielded the virgin one day wedded ! Customs !

A century they have lived ; but he ne'er lived,

The man that knew their number or their scope,

Where found, by whom begotten, or how named ;

Like malefactors long they hid in holes;

They walked in mystery like the noontide pest ;

In the air they danced ; they hung on breath of princes,

Largest when princes' lives were most unclean,

And visible most when rankest was the mist.

Sirs, I defy your Customs ; they are nought:

I turn from them to our old English laws,

The Confessor's and those who went before him,

The charters old, and sacred oaths of kings :

I clasp the tables twain of Sinai ;

On them I lay my palms, my heart, my forehead,

And on the altars dyed by martyrs' blood,

Making to God appeal."

These were the Customs that St. Thomas resisted to the
death. In this speech, so full of dignity and fire, Aubrey de
Vere has distorted no facts for the sake of effect. Indeed,
throughout the whole of his work he departs in nothing, except
in the episode of Idonea de Lisle, the ward of Becket's sister,
from the chronicled truth. Idonea, a rich heiress, pursued by
the ruffianly knight De Broc, who " roamed a-preying on the
race of men," took refuge with Becket's sister and was pro-
tected by the power of the primate. De Broc gained the king's
ear, and, " on some pretence of law," drove Idonea from the
house of Becket's sister. De Broc and his friends sued for her
as a royal ward :

"Judgment against her went. The day had come,
And round the minster knights and nobles watched :
The chimes rang out at noon ; then from the gate
Becket walked forth, the maiden by his side :
Ay, but her garb conventual showed the nun !
They frowned, but dared no more."
VOL. XLII. 25

386 "Sr. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" [Dec.,

The feminine interest, to give which to his tragedy Tennyson
invented a new version of the legend of Fair Rosamond, is sup-
plied by Aubrey de Vere in this very fitting episode of Idonea.
It is artistic and congruous. Idonea is exiled from England
when the king's wrath bursts on all the relatives, friends, and de-
pendants of A Becket ; she finds refuge with the Empress Matilda,
mother of the king. Then occurs a scene between the empress
and the novice which for spiritual as well as intellectual eleva-
tion has seldom been equalled.

One would think that it would have been easy to give the
necessary feminine element to " Becket " by the use of an under-
plot ; but Tennyson has preferred to bring the king's mistress,
a " light o* love," Fair Rosamond, into intimate association with
the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose chastity, even before he
took orders, amid all the temptations of a court presided over
by a loose-minded Provencal queen, was proverbial. Fair Rosa-
mond is rehabilitated for the purpose of the laureate. She is
made to be, in her own eyes, the lawful wife of King Henry, and
the chancellor not yet made primate promises the king to
protect her against the vengeance of Queen Eleanor. Becket,
having become primate and gained the hatred of the king, does
so ; and, in a dagger-scene quite worthy of a sensational play,
saves her from Eleanor's fury. After that he induces her to
leave her son and begin a novitiate in Godstow convent, from
which she emerges, with the countenance of the abbess, disguised
as a monk. She is thus present at the murder of the archbishop,
and her presence excites that tender retrospection so in keeping
with theatrical traditions, but so shockingly contrary to the
martyr's character and the truth of history. It is here that
Becket says, according to Tennyson :

" Dan John, how much we lose, we celibates,
Lacking the love of woman and of child ! "

John of Salisbury seeks to give the archbishop consolation
for his supposed loss, in a most ungallant and pessimistic tone
smacking somewhat of " sour grapes " :

" More gain than loss ; for of your wives you shall
Find one a slut, whose fairest linen seems
Foul as her dust-cloth, if she used it ; one
So charged with tongue, that every thread of thought
Is broken ere it joins a shrew to boot,
Whose evil song far on into the night
Thrills to the topmost tile no hope but death ;
One slow, fat, white, a burthen of the hearth ;

1885.] "ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AMD "BECKET" 387

And one that, being thwarted, ever swoons
And weeps herself into the place of power;
And one an uxor pauper is Ibyci"

This is hardly the way in which a sturdy and ascetic priest
and counsellor would talk to an archbishop who, almost at the
moment of martyrdom, would begin to look back at " lost
chances " of love and matrimony. These touches of false senti-
ment show how impossible it is for Tennyson to comprehend a
priest of the church. How different, but how true, is the note
struck by Aubrey de Vere ! Becket has been just made primate,
and he bursts into the splendid speech to Herbert of Bosham :

" Herbert ! my Herbert !

High visions, mine in youth, upbraid me now;
I dreamed of sanctities redeemed from shame ;
Abuses crushed ; all sacred offices
Reserved for spotless hands. Again I see them ;
I see God's realm so bright each English home
Sharing that glory basks amid its peace ;
I see the clear flame on the poor man's hearth
From God's own altar lit ; the angelic childhood ;
The chaste, strong youth ; the reverence of white hairs :
Tis this Religion means. O Herbert ! Herbert !
We must secure her this. Her rights, the lowest
Shall in my hand be safe. I will not suffer
The pettiest stone in castle, grange, or mill,
The humblest clod of English earth, one time
A fief of my great mother, Canterbury,
To rest caitiff's booty. Herbert, Herbert,
Had I foreseen, with what a vigilant care
Had I built up my soul ! "

His pupil, young Prince Henry, is heard singing without, and
he says, in contrast to the whines put into his mouth by Tengy-
son :

" Hark to that truant's song ! We celibates
Are strangely captured by this love of children :
Nature's revenge say, rather compensation."

Catholics whose childhood has been passed among religious
will recognize the truth of this, as well as the falseness of Tenny-
son's point of view. Exiled in the Abbey of Pontigny, after the
king has poured his wrath on him and his kindred for defending
the liberties of the church and the people, he does not break out
into wild regret or sentimental sighs. There is manly tender,
ness in his tone to the abbot :

388 "Sr. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" [Dec.,

'* My mother, when I went to Paris first,
A slender scholar bound on quest of learning,
Girdling my gown collegiate, wept full sore,
Then laid on me this hest : both early and late
To love Christ's Mother and the poor of Christ,
That so her prayer in heaven and theirs on earth,
Beside me moving as I walked its streets,
Might shield me from its sins."

ABBOT.

"Men say your mother
Loved the poor well, and still on festivals,
Laying her growing babe in counter-scale,
Heaped up an equal weight of clothes and food,
Which unto them she gave/'

It would be necessary to apologize for giving many quota-
tions, tempting as their beauty is, were it not for the fact that
mere allusion to them would not suffice. It is regrettable that
among Catholics and the present writer speaks from observa-
tion Tennyson's" Becket," printed in 1884, is better known than
De Vere's " St. Thomas," an American edition of which appeared
in 1876.

Aubrey de Vere's conception of the motives of the martyred
primate is worthy of a Catholic poet. Tennyson grasps only
faintly the Christianity of A Becket. It does not come home to
him, it does not touch him, because in his experience he has
never come in contact with the inner life of a devout priest, and
therefore his imagination is not equal to the task of evolving one.
Of the real meaning of asceticism he is entirely ignorant. The
pride and the impatience of his Becket is only equalled by the
self-conceit of his St. Simon Stylites.

^n the dialogue between the abbot of Pontigny and the ex-
iled archbishop, just quoted, there is an example of Catholic be-
lief which, like sustaining gold threads in a tissue of silk, runs
through the wonderful tragedy of De Vere's. The chancellor
is made the primate; he becomes less gay, less worldly, more
given to the building-up of his soul and his mind, and more spir-
itual. He, almost alone, stands up for the church and the people.
Time-serving court bishops cower, the very court of Rome but
not the church seems to desert him. The pope himself sends
him the habit of the monks of Pontigny, with the cowl filled with
snow " the pope knows well some heads are hot." The arch-
bishop endures it all with the meekness of a saint, yet with the
dignity of a man. Through all trials, up to the time of martyrdom,

1885.] "Sr. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" 389

he seems marked for special grace. He is not singularly learned,
for the practical duties of the kingdom have left him little time
for study. And yet he is well equipped with fortitude and his
hope never falters. Why? We are answered: because his mo-
ther has loved God and the poor, and because he so loves Christ's
poor, following her behest. This essentially Catholic point is
accentuated most sharply and artistically by the author.

Tennyson draws very sharply the envious and the fawning
prelates around the king, and his characterization is as keen and
delicate as we have had every reason to expect it to be. But the
virtuous priests in" Becket" are certainly a strange group. We
know that the church in England, half-enslaved by the state and
burdened with growing wealth, had need of reforms in disci-
pline. Aubrey de Vere, with a regard for truth which has pro-
bably caused guileless Protestants to expect to see him crushed
by the thunder of Rome, makes the pious Empress Matilda say:

" I would your primate

Had let the Royal Customs be, and warred
Against the ill customs of the church. 'Tis shame
To ordain a clerk in name that lacks a cure,
Whom idleness must needs ensnare in crime,
Scandal and worse to screen an erring clerk,
More fearing clamor than the cancer slow
Of wily wasting sin. Scandal it is
When seven rich benefices load one priest,
Likeliest his soul's damnation."

JOHN OF SALISBURY.

" Scandals indeed !

And no true friend to Thomas is the man
Who palliates such abuses. For this cause
Reluctantly he grasped Augustine's staff,
Therewith to smite them down. Madam, the men
Who brand them most are those who breed the scandals.
The primate warred on such. The king, to shield them,
Invoked the Royal Customs."

We understand all this, and no Catholic of to-day attempts to
palliate abuses which crept into the discipline of the church. It
is evident that Aubrey de Vere does riot whiten the courtiers
and sycophants, although clothed with episcopal authority, who
shrank from St. Thomas at the king's scowl. He is even more
pitiless to them than Tennyson. Tennyson, however, does not
seem to see the anomaly of making an archbishop a saint canon-
ized by Rome show an insubordinate and mutinous spirit which

390 "Sr. T&OMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" [Dec.,

almost justifies the hot words that King Henry is made to ad-
dress to him :

" No ! God forbid and turn me Mussulman I
No God but one, and Mahound is his prophet.
But for your Christian, look you, you shall have
None other God but me me, Thomas, son
Of Gilbert Becket, London merchant."

Tennyson's Becket has a most persistent habit of repartee.
The repartee is sometimes very apt, but very unsaintly. Indeed,
if the laureate had made Wyclif the hero of his tragedy, some of
the speeches would be in keeping with the sentiments of that
over-glorified Lollard.

It may be said that Tennyson's idea of St. Thomas is very
human, and that the poet has well depicted in rushing words a
proud nature towering and neither bending nor breaking. Ten-
nyson's Becket is well enough painted from that point of view.
There are some exquisitely "fine natural touches. But the poet-
laureate had no right to attempt to depict the character of St.
Thomas merely from that point of view. Pride and enthusiasm
would never have made a Christian martyr of Thomas a Becket,
and it is the full understanding of this that, leaving out other
qualities, makes Aubrey de Vere the greater poet and the truer
delineator of a hero whom it is almost sacrilege to misrepresent
for the sake of a theatrical succes d'estime. The character of St.
Thomas a Becket belongs to Christendorn and to history, and the
poet-laureate, rushing in where angels fear to tread, not caring
for or understanding the sacredness of his subject, has done both
Christendom and art a wrong by dragging an effigy of the mar-
tyred primate in the dust. It used to be the fashion to overlook
the liberties that poets and romance-writers took with history ;
but since historians have become romancers, and even adopted
the adjectives of the poets, we are more exacting. No excuse
can be offered for Tennyson's falsification of the character of A
Becket not even an excuse that he needed dramatic color. He
had a noble figure and a sublime time, and he belittled them
both, because he would not understand them or because the
success of a play he had adapted from Boccaccio made him
anxious for the applause of the frequenters of theatres.

Tennyson, echoing, perhaps, some sectarian preacher, causes
the pope's almoner to suggest treachery to the archbishop when
the king is urging him to sign the articles against the freedom of
the church. Philip de Eleemosyna tempts the archbishop to

1885.] "ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" 391

grievous sin by whispering that the pope wants him to com-
mit it:

" Cannot the pope absolve thee if thou sign ? "

This might be forgiven in a tract against popery, on the score
of ignorance; but what plea can be offered for it in the careful,
overwrought work of a poet whose fame is world-wide and
whose knowledge ought not to be much narrower?
Becket bursts out in this speech :

" Map scoffs at Rome. I all but hold with Map.
Save for myself no Rome were left in England :
All had been his. Why should this Rome, this Rome,
Still choose Barabbas rather than the Christ,
Absolve the left-hand thief and damn the right?
Take fees of tyranny, wink at sacrilege,
Which even Peter had not dared ? condemn
The blameless exile?''

Is this the language of a Christian hero? Are these revilings
of the Power he is willing to die for consistent naturally or true
artistically ? Herbert of Bosham, the archbishop's faithful friend,
a devout cleric and a sensible man according to good authorities,
is made to drivel :

" Thee, thou holy Thomas,
I would that thou hadst been the Holy Father/'

To which Tennyson's archbishop complacently replies :

" ' I would have done my most to keep Rome holy ;
I would have made Rome know she still is Rome,
Who stands aghast at her eternal self
And shakes at mortal kings her vacillation,
Avarice, craft. O God ! how many an innocent
Has left his bones upon the way to Rome,
Unwept, uncared for! Yea, on mine self
The king had had no power, except for Rome.
Tis not the king who is guilty of mine exile,
But Rome, Rome, Rome ! ' '

Was there ever an honest and faithful priest and friend so mis-
represented by a poet dazzled by the glare of the footlights?
Was ever a saint and martyr more besmeared with mock heroic
pride and selfishness ?

Chroniclers tell us that St. Thomas was serene and digni-
fied in all trials, but " Becket's " serenity is frequently swept
away in gusts of evil temper, and he is quite as foul-mouthed as
the enemies that bait him. The prelates around him wrangle
like school-boys, and the scene at Northampton is simply a free

392 "ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" [Dec.,

quarrel. Aubrey de Vere, comprehending that the key to St.
Thomas' conduct must be found in a supernatural manner,
avoids the almost brutal mistakes of the laureate. The scene of
the signing- of the Royal Customs by A Becket was really at Clar-
endon ; Tennyson transfers it to Roehampton. De Vere treats
this scene with keen perception and admirable reticence. The
archbishop does not forget himself or burst into violent asser-
tions. He is made to explain the episode of the almoner, which
Tennyson treats in a truly evangelical way. He tells how he
was deluded into signing the articles. It is very different from
the version in which the pope's envoy whispers that one may
sin freely and be sure of absolution !

" Came next the papal envoy from Aumone,
With word the pope, moved by the troublous time
Willed my submission to the royal will.
This was the second fraud ; remains the third.
My lords, the Customs named till then were few.
In evil hour I yielded pledged the church,
Alas ! to what I know not. On the instant
The king commanded, ' Write ye down these laws.'
And soon, too soon, a parchment pre-ordained
Upon our table lay, a scroll inscribed
With usages sixteen, whereof most part
Were shamefuller than the worst discussed till then.
My lords, too late I read that scroll : I spurned it ;
I sware by Him who made the heavens and earth
That never seal of mine should touch that bond,
Not mine, but juggle-changed. My lords, that eve
A truthful servant and a fearless one,
Who bears my cross and taught me, too, to bear one
Llewellen is his name, remembered be it !
Probed me, and probed with sharp and searching words ;
And as the sun my sin before me stood.
My lords, for forty days I kept my fast,
And held me from the offering of the Mass,
And sat in sackcloth ; till the pope sent word,
' Arise ; be strong and walk !' And I arose,
And hither came ; and here confession make
That till the cleansed leper once again
Take, voluntary, back his leprosy,
I with those Royal Customs stain no more
My soul, which Christ hath washed."

This is not the talk of Tennyson's ill-tempered and sharp-
tongued Becket, but the sense, if not the exact words, of the real
Becket. De Vere's consummate skill in building up bit by bit
the character of the archbishop, in accordance with the charac-

1885.] "Sr. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" 393

ter given him by authentic writers, is worthy of careful analysis.
The primate asked of his servants their honest opinions of his
conduct, and accepted opinions thus frankly tendered as his
guide. The flattery of Tennyson's Herbert of Bosham, so com-
placently swallowed by the laureate's political primate, would
have brought down the censure of the real St. Thomas. De
Vere characterizes Llewellen, the Welsh cross-bearer, by a nice
touch :

"The tables groaned with gold ; I scorned the pageant.
The Norman pirates and the Saxon boors
Sat round and fed; I hated them alike,
The rival races, one in sin. Alone
We Britons tread our native soil."

In the death-scene Tennyson sins unpardonably. He shows
us the archbishop rushing to his death from obstinacy and want
of self-control. De Brito, Fitzurse, and De Tracy have come to
put into act the hasty words of the king and to murder the arch-
bishop. Becket rails at them bitterly, throws Fitzurse from him
and pitches De Tracy " headlong," after the manner of the mus-
cular Christian heroes beloved of the late Rev. Charles Kingsley.
He even sneers at the monks whom Tennyson makes to flee.
" Our dovecote flown," he says " I cannot tell why monks should
all be cowards." He still repeats the sneer, until Grim 1 , whose
arm is broken by a blow aimed at Becket, reminds him that he
is a monk. Rosamond rushes in and begs the murderers to
spare the archbishop, and then he is slain, just as a thunderstorm
breaks ; this climax, which in Aubrey de Vere's tragedy follows
strictly the authentic account of the sacrilege, is made trivial by
a silly coup de thddtre.

There is nothing in Tennyson's "Becket" to compare with
the lyrics in " The Princess," or even the lute song in " Queen
Mary " ; but they are airy and expressive of the mood of the per-
sons in whose mouths they are placed. Queen Eleanor sings:

" Over ! the sweet summer closes,
The reign of the roses is done ;
Over and gone with the roses,
And over and gone with the sun.

" Over ! the sweet summer closes,

And never a flower at the close ;
Over and gone with the roses,
And winter again and the snows."

It is quite in accordance with the mood of the light-minded
queen, who is quite past the August of life, who has been wed-

394 "Sf- THOMAS OF CANTERBURY" AND "BECKET" [Dec.,

ded more for her rich possessions than herself, and who is far
from her gay and debonair Aquitaine.

Queen Eleanor does not sing in the similar scene in Aubrey
de Vere's tragedy. She turns to a trouvereand asks him to sing.
And he begins :

' I make not songs, but only find ;

Love following still the circling sun,
His carol casts on every wind,
And other singer is therejione.

" I follow Love, though |ar he flies ;

I sing his song, at random found
Like plume some bird-of-paradise
Drops, passing, on our dusky bound.

" In some, methinks, at times there glows

The passion of some heavenlier sphere :
These too I sing ; but sweetest those
I dare not sing and sweetly hear."

This is a smooth setting of a thought which both Keats and
Maurice de Guerin, and no doubt all poets, have tried to express ;
but Queen Eleanor, and perhaps the sensitive reader, finds it
lacking as a lyric. The trouvere then sings another about
Phoebus and Daphne. Queen Eleanor very aptly cries :

" A love-song that ! An icicle it is
Added to winter."

But if Aubrey de Vere's lyrical touch is hard and cold in
comparison with Tennyson's, even when Tennyson's Ivrics are
not his best, he has the advantage, in all the higher attributes of
a dramatic poet, in limning Queen Eleanor, who was a creature of
the senses, yet still a princess and of no mean capabilities. Ten-
nyson gives the impression that she was half-crazed a kind of
Provencal Bacchante, and her first entrance destroys all respect
for her sanity.

Aubrey de Vere's "Saint Thomas of Canterbury " has a foil
in " Becket " which, by contrast, makes it glow and seem more
full of lustre and color, as a diamond of flawless purity when put
in a circle of brilliants. It is hard to account for the blindness of
the poet of the " Idyls of the King " in venturing to attempt a
work that had already been perfectly done. Aubrey de Vere's
place as a great dramatic poet was settled when " Alexander the
Great" appeared. " Saint Thomas of Canterbury" was not
needed to teach the world what he could do. But he has given
it out of the abundance of his heart ; and we Catholics, who have

1885.] THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. 395

the key of faith with which to unlock its mysteries, which are
unknown to a poet of even Tennyson's insight, may thank God
that he has raised up a seer at once strong, pure, true to his
ideals both in religion and art, more than worthy to wear the
mantle that fell from the shoulders of Wordsworth, and with
much of the divine fire that made Shakspere an arbiter of Eng-
lish thought and speech.

THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA.
I.

THE Irish, along with shortcomings which their neighbors,
and through them the world, are never tired of citing, have at
least one virtue : they do not grovel before the golden calf. A
common enough character among them is the prodigal ; but
aside from such extremes, and regarding only the mass of thrifty
and sensible Irishmen of whom one does not hear much, it is soon
apparent that the gross view of money as a thing to hoard for
its own sake is found among them more rarely than in other
nations. How often does one hear of the Irishman, enriched by
the freedom he finds in other lands, who sits like a toad over a
treasure, not enjoying it himself and letting as few others as pos-
sible get from it any satisfaction? The character is common
among Germans, Hollanders, Scandinavians, English, Scotch,
and Americans ; it is not unknown in France, and has represen-
tatives among the Jews even, when they are not oppressed for,
in the face of old prejudices, the Jews are really not so often
given to undue hoarding of wealth as our forefathers made them-
selves believe. Whence comes this trait in the Irish character
a trait that has its fine, magnanimous side, and yet leads to the
unhappiness of the possessor and his surroundings as soon as
pushed far? In the attempt to explain it, if one goes back into
the past, the reader will bear in mindt hat perhaps nowhere in
Europe have more old ideas, old customs, and elsewhere-forgot-
ten traits been kept alive than in the extreme western island
over against our shores.

Among semi-civilized races hoarding is made easy by the in-
troduction of a metallic currency which is protected from de-
basement. Early historians, like Keating, were supposed to say

THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. [Dec.,

that silver money was coined in Ireland at a very remote period ;
but the latest and best translation of Keating makes " silver
shields " take the place of coin. There would be nothing strange,
however, in an early coinage in Ireland of a kind like that found
in other Keltic nations rude tokens, often stamped on one face
only, and commonly bearing the hardly distinguishable, figure of
a horse. These coins cannot be assigned to places and centu-
ries; they are barbarous imitations of Greek and Roman coins,
and may well have been used in Ireland from the earliest ages.
Few treasure-troves are met with, because of reasons we will
come to soon. The first coins of Ireland that can be definitely
assigned to the reign of a given king are those of Aalaf, or Olave,
king of the Scandinavian district about Dublin, of the Isle of
Man also, and of Northumberland in Britain. . vEthelstane de-
feated this pagan at Brunanburgh, drove him, for a time at least,
from England, and caused him to be baptized a Christian before
he died. We hear no more of Irish coins for three hundred
years, when King John minted pence in Dublin which bore the
royal head in a triangle representing rudely the Irish harp. For
centuries afterwards the English kings kept up the coinage of
money bearing Irish symbols on the charge or allusions to Ire-
land in the inscription. But they did not possess Ireland in any
complete sense, for the Welsh-Norman conquest was partial.
Kit Marlowe describes the conquered in the passage where Lan-
caster speaks to King Edward II. in that free way which seems
so disrespectful to republicans, brought up, as we are, to consider
that a king, if he rules at all, should be a sovereign :

" Look for rebellion, look to be deposed ;
Thy garrisons are beaten out of France,
And, lame and poor, lie groaning- at the gates.
The wild Oneyl with swarms of Irish kerns
Lives uncontrolled within the English pale ;
Unto the walls of York the Scots make road,
And unresisted drive away rich spoils."

The bulk of the people adhered to their old system of barter
in kind rather than use the invader's pound, shilling, and penny,
or trust to the honesty of the mints which were liable to be
established by charter in any large city. At most they took at
their weight in metal English and Continental copper and silver,
often giving preference to that foreign money which was famous
for purity. It is said that an Irish fair to-day gains a good half
of its " humors " from the fact that coin is little used among the
poorer classes. Many are the funny stories of peasant wit con-

1885.] THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. 397

nected with this old and satisfactory method ; strange to say, in
the United States the " swaps " and horse-trades of the rural dis-
tricts belong to a similar state of things, an age when coin was
scanty and not above suspicion. Consider the history of Irish
oppression, and judge whether or not the peasant was wrong to
stick doggedly to his prejudice against coin. The Irish have never
liked English coin, as why should they ? Have they not always
been most potent tools in the hands of London bankers ? No
matter if the " wild Irish " did win battles, the results were lost
by the impoverishment of the country through the channels of
trade. Can we not regard a nation in one sense as a great body
bound together by obscure nerves which warn it of. a danger
when the onlooker thinks that suspicion and stubborn refusal to
accept a so-called tool of civilization is the height of unreason ?
The absence from the old literature of mention of a coin currency
is very remarkable. The Book of Rights, notwithstanding that
penalties and tributes form its constant burden, has the " ring "
for the nearest approach to a currency. This was the well-
known most portable property of the northern nations, as of the
Italic races in an epoch before, and is to-day in use among the
African and Indian races.

" Fichi falach, fichi fichthill,
fichi each co ro Eas-ruaith,
do'n righ do nar thearbhas doghaing,

do righ bhearnais Conaill chruaith."

Twenty rings, twenty chessboards,
twenty steeds at the great cataract Eas,
to the King for whom no sorrow is fated,
to the King of the Gap of the hardy Conall.

But the commoner perquisites of chiefs were hogs, .drinking-
horns, horses, cattle, male slaves, bondswomen to grind at the
quern, suits of clothes, shields and chariots. We find rings al-
most emerged into a currency among the Saxons, though,
strange to say, hardly so completely a currency as the shells call-
ed wampum or sewant among the Atlantic Indians. In Beowulf
an ordinary epithet for a chief is " ring-giver," whilst the early'
literature of Ireland is full of the same allusions. Thorarin
Praise-tongue, in eulogy of King S \veyn of Norway, calls him
bauga-briotr, ring-breaker ; whence we conclude that, for exam-
ple, the large arm-rings of copper, silver, or gold were broken up,
and the pieces distributed among deserving jarls and kempies,
just as the Forty-niners of California, true descendants of the

398 THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. [Dec.,

Wickingmen, ran their gold into chains, and, when they wished
to pay the scot, wrenched a " bit " off with their teeth. Bauga
deildo " they distributed or spent money " says the very able
and humorous poet who wrote Rigs-Tkula, the Lay of Righ,
using for the common currency of Scandinavia the word from
which the French get their bague. This recalls the situation in
Britain on the arrival of the Romans ; for Csesar found a brass
currency in Kent, together with tallies and rings of iron, though,
according to some manuscripts, there seems also to have been a
gold currency of some kind. The latter must have been scant
at that period in Britain, and still scanter in Ireland ; but it is
more than probable that with the rise of cultivation in Ireland
which took place in the fourth and fifth centuries mints of some
rude kind were established. Then Ireland became the asylum
of the better class of Kelts from Gaul and Britain. We may
conclude that during at least three important epochs coins were
struck in Ireland, if we include thereunder the rude Keltic
tokens; yet between whiles they fall into disuse. Does not this
show the rooted unpopularity of coinage as against the good old
method of barter ?

Since the traitorous Dermot McMorrough introduced the
Welsh, Norman, and Flemish adventurers into the Emerald Isle,
and opened her to the nation that loves coin above all things in
heaven and on earth, the multiplex power which money gives
has been used to keep Ireland under. It need not be supposed
that Ireland has been the only spot on earth to suffer in like
ways ; no land has been quite exempt. In the United States, for
example, about 1814 it used to be said that England, having
been worsted by America on sea and land, was getting her re-
venge in the counting-house, so oppressive of American com-
merce were the tactics of her merchants and bankers. But Irish
history always has a charm, a picturesqueness of its own ; one
follows better there the destructive course of the English guinea
that coin which shows St. George beating down his baser na-
ture under the symbol of the dragon ; that coin which can do so
much good when the lesson of its effigy is taken to heart. The
stubbornness of the Irish in resisting the uncontrolled power of
capital as embodied in the landlord class, and the ceaseless agita-
tion of men who will neither pay nor emigrate, is not of to-day
or yesterday : it is coeval with the nation ; it has subsisted under
all changes of the population, from slight to large infusions there-
in of " Saxon " blood ; and on this very point history is being
made in Ireland now.

1885.] THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. 399

Pretty uniformly the successive waves of settlement had for
incentive the plunder of the native Irish. After the Norman-
Welsh conquest came the encroachments of Englishmen who ex-
ploited the enfeebled land with the thoroughness of keen traders.
In 1333 the English, and those Normans and Welshmen who had
not become identified in custom and speech with the Keltic
population, were swept back toward Dublin by the Scottish Irish
arms. Then many families assumed Irish names, usually taking
that of the sept into which they had married, and thus making it
hard to trace them in after-generations. As the effort spent
itself and the English power got help stringent laws were
made against all the Ireland -born. One might be proud of
descent from the clan, another boastful of the stock of " Strong-
bownians," a third the son of a recent intruder who scorned
the other natives of an island their fathers had come to plun-
der by frank fighting or legal chicane. But all suffered, un-
less there was influence enough to procure a place from the
dominant party. In 1367 the English were forbid under pain
of prison to entertain Irish bards, who were then, as they
were still four centuries later, considered no better than spies.
Forfeiture of land was decreed against those who adopted
the Irish dress and tongue, or the mode of riding a horse with-
out stirrups. It was felony to intermarry with the proscrib-
ed race or entertain the relations of fosterage or gossipred
that is, of godfather or godmother relations that were often
closer than connection by blood, and in their influence upon the
social situation deserve more attention than can be given here.
It was felony to sell to, barter with, or buy from a native. No
Irishman could hold a living or enter a monastery. A special
rank was assigned the " English by descent/' above the " meere
Irishe " but below the " English by birth." This did persons it
was meant to favor no good, and simply exasperated everybody.
In Wales similar oppressions were more successful, as might
have been expected from its geographical position and the im-
possibility of the natives escaping long from pursuit without
quitting their own soil. Thus in Barddas we read as to affairs
circa A.D. 1400 :

" After the intestine war of Owain Glyndwr the king (Henry IV. or V.)
forbade paper and plagawd (vellum) to be brought into Cymru, or to be
manufactured there, in order that it might prevent epistolary correspon-
dence between a Cymroand a Cymro, and between the Cymry and the peo-
ple of a bordering country and of foreign lands ; and this to avenge the sid-
ing with Owain which was observed everywhere on the part of every man

400 THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. [Dec.

in Cymru. He also forbade the bards and poets to go their circuits and to
visit the different families officially. Then was remembered and brought
into use the ancient custom of the bards of the Isle of Britain ; namely, the
cutting of letters, which they called the symbols of language and utterance,
upon wood or rods prepared for that purpose, called Coelbren of the bards
and thus it was done : They gathered rods of hazel or mountain ash in
winter, about a cubit long, etc., etc."

In 1494 it was thought useless to forbid the practice of the
Irish tongue and the fashion of riding Keltike without a saddle.
Of course after the Reformation the state of the natives was much
worse, because religious fanaticism was added to the virulence
of a mistaken race-idea. The exaggerations as to Saxons versus
Kelts which it pleases eminent English historians to reiterate to-
day in the face of facts, were as strong then as ever. In 1677
Thomas Sheridan, M.P. for an English borough, wrote A Dis-
course on Parliaments from the position of a Protestant and
Englishman that is, from a perfectly hostile position, as became
the renegade descendant of Irish and Catholic houses. He
reckoned only 1,000,000 persons in Ireland which must have
been an understatement even for that time of ruin through war,
pest, and famine " of which 800,000 are Irish, and of them above
10,000 born to estates, dispossessed. . . . Besides their suffering
in estate and religion they are yet further, beyond the Scots, ren-
dered incapable of enjoying any office or power, military or civil,
either in their native or any other of their prince's countries ;
their folly (!) having thus reduced them to a condition more like
that of slaves than subjects." Every sort of difference seemed to
meet in order to foment between the Anglo-Scottish peoples
and the Irish the most virulent bigotry and contempt. Habits
and customs belonging to a by-gone epoch which lingered in
force in various parts of Great Britain, but not directly under
the observation of the men who swayed public opinion, were
seized on by the English and used as clubs to batter the remnant
of reputation left to their defeated cousins. Fair play was never
accorded the Irish ; all they got was harsh treatment, insuffer-
able arrogance, and demands that they should better themselves.
Certainly the example was not good ; unhappily every nation
has its thousands who will imitate ; and though the Irish charac-
ter can never equal the English in senseless brutality, some very
fair attempts at it are to be found in history. The old system of
fosterage which had gone out in Britain was a cause of offence,
and in some ways a serious political difficulty. To the newer
settlers it was so convenient, or so agreeable to inherited traits,

1885.] THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. 401

that we find it among the most English of the island, the people
of the Pale near Dublin, in Dean Swift's time. Who can forget
that Hogarthian sketch, in rowdy-dow metre, of the people of the
baser sort at a feast ? Behold them boasting of their aristocratic
descent, cudgelling each other soundly, and talking of fosterage
and gossipred remnant of the old barbarous but unselfish system
of the past :

" They rise from their feast,

And hot are their brains,
A cubit at least

The length of their skeans ;
What stabs and what cuts,

What clatt'ring of sticks,
What strokes on the guts,

What bastings and kicks !
With cudgels of oak,

Well hardened in flame,
An hundred heads broke,

An hundred struck lame.
You churl, I'll maintain

My father built Lusk,
The castle of Slain,

And Carrick Drumrusk.
The Earl of Kildare,

And Moynalta his brother
As great as they are,

I was nurst by their mother ! "

How well the Dean knew to put his finger on the traits of the
people among whom he lived, and how unfortunate that he was
a paid official of a church that lacked parishioners, and how un-
lucky, too, that, as an exile from politics and the court, his eyes
were always turned toward London! In his day the Irish had
to look back on enough land-swindles under James, and mas-
sacres and plunderings of every sort under Cromwell ; they were
exasperated to the last degree when an obese and grasping hag,
one of the German mistresses of besotted George I., calmly
sold to William Wood the right to debase the coin of Ireland.
Swift's epigram on Wood an Insect is remarkable in the anti-
quarian's eyes for recording a nostrum used by our ancestors for
the jaundice and other diseases one of those remedies whose
only merit seems to lie in the disgust which the human being is
apt to feel for it. To the student of literature it is remarkable
because he calls Ireland " our mother Hibernia," thus identify-
ing himself with the natives in a way that would not occur to
VOL. XLII. 26

402 THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. [Dec.,

one whose parents were English and his birth in Ireland a mere
accident. It forms another slender argument for the theory that
Swift was born of Irish parents and merely put with Mrs. Swift
the Englishwoman a recent widow, and a very poor widow to
boot in order to cover the facts of his true parentage. It
would explain the indifference of Mrs. Swift to her brilliant son,
her separation from him whilst he was still a babe in arms, and
also, perhaps, the large measure of sympathy which Swift showed
in the Drapier's Letters for the oppressed Irish.

ON WOOD AN INSECT (1725).

" The louse of the wood for a med'cine is used,
Or swallowed alive or skilfully bruis'd ;
And let but our mother Hibernia contrive
To swallow Will Wood, either bruis'd or alive,
She need be no more with the jaundice oppressed,
Or sick of obstructions andflazns in the chest' 1

II.

Active and relentless for a century before and a century after
Swift's time was the plundering of a gallant, improvident nation,
crippled more than any other part of the country by anachronisms
of prejudice and habits, land-laws and social etiquette. The Act
for the Encouragement of Trade, passed in 1663, omitted Ireland
very pointedly. The same year the importation of cattle, sheep,
salt meat, and bacon was prohibited, and in 1696 all direct trade
from Ireland to the colonies was stopped. Under William II.
the wool trade was coldly ruined. In 1775 an embargo was laid
on provisions in all Irish ports, so that the army could be cheaply
supplied. In 1779 the CI T which is now so frequent in the
mouths of the English as a reproach to the United States, the cry
in favor of free-trade, was heard in vain in the Parliament of Ire-
land. The argument in England was that these measures would
complete the ruin of the people, whose hold on the land had been
already loosened by successive settlements of Protestant English
and Scotch farmers, aided by infamous laws ; but the men by
whom Ireland was to be " civilized " were the first to be ruined.
They emigrated to America in swarms long before our Revolu-
tion. It is amusing to note the poetic Nemesis. The weapon
against the Keltic Irish turned on the hand of the " Saxon."
Protestant and Catholic, Kelt and Cromwellian, poured across
the Atlantic to form that nation which was to break England's
prestige, at first in war, then on the high seas, and at last in com-

1885.] THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. 403

merce. Yeomen of Keltic Irish names were among the heroes of
the fight at Lexington. To this day American money, sympathy,
and open or silent contempt play their parts in the enfranchise-
ment of the Irish from the rule of the money-bags of London.

The world is now agreed that Ireland has been a victim, even
if exception be taken to the word of Chief-Justice Morris, which
called English rule " a hopeless attempt of a stupid people to
govern a quick-witted one." Stupidity were, easier to forgive
than cupidity. The passion of the English for acquisition often
permits them to suffer callously the taunt of dulness. It is the
guinea they are after, not the applause of the world. With the
guinea they can purchase Irish and Scotch adventurers to make
the " English " arms glorious abroad, Welsh and German pro-
fessors to make English learning respectable among the culti-
vated. It was to save the guinea they hesitated so long to relieve
Khartoum and murdered Gordon. There is a world of truth in
Napoleon's bitter gibe against the English as the nation of shop-
keepers.

But in that gibe there would be little sting if the English were
honest enough to own it and accept the situation. They are per-
petually in a false position. Their royal house proceeds from a
line which began with a king sunk in the coarsest sensuality, open
to the baldest bribes. He hated England and the English, was
sneered at by his new courtiers and insulted by the London mob.
The English peerage is not a peerage of blue blood blood is a
secondary consideration to that practical people it rests on the
guinea, as Burns, a Keltic Saxon, put it long ago in his famous
song. The Norman stock of which we hear so much has long
disappeared in the masses of English, and those who bear names
that recall bloodshed and violence, it is true, but also freedom
from vices most despicable to men of sentiment, have not a drop
of the old blood in their veins. The Saxon stock, with absurd
claims to virtues it has little of, gradually invaded the whole na-
tion with a low standard of morality and sentiment, and largely
obliterated the finer elements which have been hitherto supplied
by the old British substratum in southern England, in part by
the constant drain of the Keltic populations toward London.
That this so-called Saxon race is inglorious no one need sup-
pose. But it is foolish to try to place its glory where it does
not belong. Steadiness of purpose, home-life, comfort in the
house, and order in the commonwealth are not small things to
boast of. They make life sweet and livable. Great schemes in
commerce and manufactures, great buildings and great corpora-

404 THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. [Dec.,

tions, are titles to applause. But the perversity of human nature
is such that these are more ignored than honored by Englishmen.
They point to a peerage which is based on money because without
wealth it cannot exist in the face of the mammon-worship of the
reigning family, of the nobility, gentry, and commons, instead of
resting their boasts on achievements of English merchants and
travellers in opening up a large part of the globe to civilizing in-
fluences and enlarging the common stock of knowledge in every
direction. When an Irishman brags of descent from Brian Boroo
he is to be respected: What if he be unable to read or write, what
if he go barefoot ? He has a fine idea, a sentiment, a glory to think
back on. But the smug Englishman who assumes an air because
he is trying to fill the limits of an old name, bought, not unusually,
with the guineas of a brewer, is a fit object of contempt. Let him
boast the good that brewer may have done in employing wage-
winners and making families comfortable, and none but a fool will
deny him respect.

The strength of the Irish and their weakness has been pov-
erty. A characteristic Englishman who travelled as lately as 1882
in Ireland, that to him foreign and distant land, is impelled to say :

" My impression is that you have only to feed the Irish up and you will
produce as fine a human physique as it is possible to behold. Look at the
Irish constabulary, -for instance. Where are you going to find a more
splendid-looking set of fellows? And where are you going to beat in
smartness the rank and file of our Irish regiments? As for the Irish gen-
try and middle classes, there is an air of high-breeding and genial courtesy
about them which is too often wanting on the English side of St. George's
Channel " (W. H. Hall).

The poverty in which the thrift of Englishman and Scot has
kept the Irish has not been without compensating advantages;
but most people will judge that the harm has outweighed the
good. It has made the guinea a sore temptation. By the guinea
the Irish Parliament was dissolved at the beginning of the cen-
tury, and by the guinea's equivalent in that distant day the native
chiefs and the old Norman-Welsh lords were too readily induced
to betray their people. In 1540, or thereabouts, the confiscated
property of the church was the bribe which induced faithless
rulers to change Henry VIII. from Lord of Ireland to King of
Ireland. The chief of a clan would surrender what was not his
to give the territory of his tribe and receive it back from the
king of England under the feudal system, with an obligation to
do knight's service whenever summoned. It is true that many
regarded it as a form only, and never intended to fulfil their part

1885.] THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. 405

of the contract ; but that made it only worse. The clansmen did
not understand what it was all about ; in most cases never heard
of it till too late. A similar trouble arose among the Kirghese of
central Asia when (1732) Abdul-Khair submitted to the Russians
and stipulated that the khanate should be hereditary from father
to son in his family. The rule had always been that a brother
should inherit, if he were a capable person. For nearly a century
afterward the Kirghese regarded each hereditary khan a usurper
in Russian pay, and continually rebelled under upstart leaders.
Note this likeness between the Irish and Mongol conception of
the executive. In Ireland a Shane O'Neill of the sixteenth cen-
tury repudiated such a corrupt bargain made by his father, re-
belled, and was outlawed. He said, with perfect truth, that his fa-
ther had only a life-interest, according to the native law of tanistry,
and had no authority to sign away the rights of his tribe. This
partially explains what seems so peculiar in the attitude of tenant
toward landlord in Ireland, which makes the English writer cited
above say : " No Kelt, speaking generally, will tolerate a visible
landlord willingly. An invisible landlord, content with a low
rent in good seasons, and none, or next to none, in bad, seems for
the present the Irish tenant's ideal." That, in truth, is the ideal
of tenants all the world over ; but what Mr. Hall meant was that
the Irish tenant seems to feel more than any other an injustice in
the strict enforcement of the contract. When we note, however,
the villany of the bribed leaders of the clans who sold the peo-
ple's birthright, and reflect on the thousand instances of tenacity
of old customs and ideas among the folk, one begins to under-
stand, if not to sympathize with, a flock which has been betrayed
by its own shepherds into the jaws of the wolf.

III.

On the other hand, the clan system in just this fact betrayed
weakness. It had to go. Earlier the pagans had submitted to
Christianity with little or no struggle because the heads of clans
led the way. Moreover, if tithes were exacted for the church
the clergy at least did something to earn them ; the people were
used to make more or less voluntarily contributions to their
pagan medicine-man, whether Druid, or bard, or file, who as-
sumed to have supernatural powers; and the infidel might re-
gard the Christian priest as a man who worked harder and asked
less than a Druid. Later the reverence for the head of the
family-complex made it easy for strangers to enter the country

406 THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. [Dec.,

by interesting the chiefs in their booty. Until Protestantism
overwhelmed Ireland along with the trained veterans of Crom-
well, the clergy was usually on the side of established authority
not of the clan type. For the Papacy was inevitably sympa-
thetic with the existing state of things on the Continent, and
could not be expected to admire an obsolete system still linger-
ing in that remote island. Rome, the centre of a totally dif-
ferent scheme of religious-temporal government, inheritrix of
Latin methods, could extend only a general, humane sympathy
toward the part feudal, part clannish inhabitants of Ireland. Re-
member how native prince, priest, and file stood by each other
in the early Christian ages, and note the same trait later. Be-
tween Italian priest, English king, and Irish chief the clansman
had little chance. He might relieve his mind by lampoons like
that made by Egan O'Rahilly in 1713, wherein he traced back
the pedigree of a luckless renegade, who had entered the ranks
of the Cromwellians, through thirteen generations to the devil!
Laughter is often the instinctive act of those to whom tears are
only too ready. The slave offsets the hopelessness of his life by
that jollity which is said to have disappeared from the Southern
plantation since freedom brought thither the responsibilities of a
voter. Perhaps much of the famous wit and lightheartedness
of the Irish was bred of the necessity to lift at all hazards the
crushing load of despair. Satire was one of the reliefs of an
oppressed people ; but in Ireland even that pastime was not al-
ways safe. Witness Teige Dall O'Higgin, who lampooned six
men of the O'Hara sept in Sligo, and for his reward had wife
and child murdered and his tongue cut out.

The chief reason for the extreme interest that the Irish past,
and indeed her politics down to the present, excite in those who
decline to see things through English spectacles is the mixture
of various epochs, apparently inextricable, which are to be seen,
like so many tilted and plicated strata, in the Ireland of to-day.
It is a most curious land, this back-yard of Great Britain, ignored
by the rest of the Union as much as possible, but containing
specimens of all the fashions in religion and politics, from the
mysterious builders of cairns, cromlechs, and round towers to
the latest apostles of peace or temperance or celibacy. The
crannog of Irish lakes, with its rude huts for outlaws and cattle-
lifters on an island, takes one back to the stone age. The bale-
fires in spring are distinctly pagan. The agrarian murders are
often traceable to the old wild justice, the instinct of tribal pre-
servation among clans. Wakes and riots recall semi-savage

1885.] THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. 407

epochs, and the keeners and wandering- tinkers and gipsies would
have been not out of place in barbarous ages when a much small-
er proportion of the folk was settled in towns. About thirty
years ago the widow of an Irish farmer in Derry killed her de-
ceased husband's horse. When remonstrated with by her land-
lord she said : " Would you have my man go about on foot in
the next world ? " (Lang). The martial ardor of the Irish, shown
of late centuries more in any other country than Ireland, has a
feudal tinge, and the love of rank and blood likewise. Finally,
the monarchic principle has always had its charm for the Irish,
notwithstanding the marked indifference, amounting to disdain,
with which the present royal house has treated them. Why,
then, one asks, do the English explore the Orient and write long-
winded books of travel about the Esquimaux, the red men, the
Mongols and Africans, when the same amount of trouble would
show them similar curiosities in the past and present inhabitants
of their own isles?

And as with politics, so with literature. Ireland has been
hospitable to every form of literary activity, so far as interest and
admiration are concerned. In substantial rewards it has been
far from liberal. Why ? Because the people, apart from the
large land-owners who lacked patriotism, have been wretchedly
poor. The guinea of England has steadily absorbed the half-
penny of Ireland, and hand-in-hand with poverty goes the stifling
of all but the rudest and worst-paid forms of literature and art.
Often a rich community does nothing for art and literature.
But a very poor one, if it would, can do nothing. Skilfully using
the religious differences of Catholics and Protestants, and bribing
heavily whenever it appeared worth while, English politicians
and statesmen have kept Ireland in alternate states of penury and
internal warfare. So it is that, in defiance of the large pro-
portion of brain-power natural to the race, the results, in mod-
ern times, of distinctly Irish departments of literature, art, and
science have been meagre ; it has been necessary for the Irish
talent to adapt itself to English demands, to become Anglicized.
How much has been lost in this denationalizing of the best talent
of Ireland who can reckon? The examples of English coldblood-
edness and selfishness have been offered to impressible natures
with bad enough effect : you will hear now and then an Irishman
speak of the Irish far more brutally than the English do ; and
Irish are found who imitate beyond their models a certain slav-
ishness which one finds in the attitude of the Saxon British
toward persons clothed with power.

408 THE STAMP OF THE GUINEA. [Dec.,

In straitened circumstances, and often in the direst poverty,
the great mass of Catholic and Protestant Kelts retain the old
traits of generosity and hospitality, together with contempt for
parvenus and commercial oppressors. English rule over Ireland
has been the rule of merchants, bankers, manufacturers, acting
through their tools, the peers and commons of Great Britain ; it
has been often opposed by a nation in whom still lurks a passion for
disinterestedness. " Dennis," cried a farmer who had told his
Irish hand to thin out the crowded hills of young corn, " why do
you pull out the tallest and strongest plants?" "Why do I?"
quoth Dennis. " Sure, it is to give the poor little ones a chance,
and why not ? " Could anything show better the kindliness, the
unthinking generosity of the instinct underlying Dennis' view ?
Examine what are called Irish bulls, and, in nine cases out of
ten, you find a fine, poetical, unworldly wisdom underneath.
Hindering and disintegrating as have been the inherited instinct
toward the clan system and the feudality brought in by the Nor-
mans, yet of late Irishmen proud of their name have shown mar-
vellous docility to orders from Protestant as well as Catholic
leaders in whose honesty of purpose they confide, astonishing
friends and foes by their quiet and the compactness of their politi-
cal ranks. To keep the peace an army of police, each man an
arsenal of weapons, has been' aided by regular troops ; money has
been lavished in the old way, and the strong levers of social life
have been set going, but with meagre results, if any. Less than
formerly historians and reporters have to gain by concealing the
truth ; the public has begun to understand the oppressions borne
by the Irish; how their sentiments have been used to subjugate
and keep them down ; how traits which are most valuable as
counterbalances to snobbishness and worship of wealth have been
held up to the world as vices. The press has done good work,
too, in this regard, though notable exceptions to manliness and
fairness have not been wanting ; for example, the London Times
sent an English schoolmaster to report the situation in Ireland ;
printed through oversight his first letter ; discovered that it was
favorable to the Irish, and promptly declined to publish a second.

An English politician of the Liberal party, addressing lately
the populace of a great town within the mighty city of London,
explained English rule in Ireland as " a system which is founded on
the bayonets of thirty thousand soldiers encamped permanently
as in a hostile country. It is a system as completely centralized
and bureaucratic as that with which Russia governs Poland or as
that which was common in Venice under the Austrian rule. An

1885.] "Tirs AMERICAN CONGRESS OF CHURCHES" 409

Irishman at this moment cannot move a step, he cannot lift a fin-
ger in any parochial, municipal, or educational work, without be-
ing- confronted, interfered with, controlled by, an English official
appointed by a foreign government, and without the shadow
or shade of representative authority. I say the time has come
to reform altogether the absurd and irritating anachronism
which is known as Dublin Castle ; to sweep away altogether
these alien boards of foreign officials, and to substitute for them
a genuine Irish administration of purely Irish business."

" My lord," spoke up a poor Irish harper of the Clan Neil
when he found that a certain great man had assigned him a seat
below the salt, " thank you, my lord ; apology is quite unneces-
sary. For of course you know that wherever an O'Neil sits, there
is the head of the table." Alchemist Time is always at fresh won-
ders. Put Parnell for O'Neil, and Parliament for the table, and
consider the tables turned. Not by evictions, detectives, Dublin
Castle folly, constabulary, and redcoats can a great little people
be held from reaching sooner or later its proper level ; no, not by
the most potent of all the levers of to-day the guinea.

"THE AMERICAN CONGRESS OF CHURCHES."*

WE suppose as Roman Catholics we were left out in the cold
in this recent Congress of Churches. Perhaps this " Protestant "
movement for we regret to say it was confined to that was not,
in -its present stage of development, any of our business. Per-
haps not, and therefore this is no matter for regret or grief; but
this much we will be allowed to say, and shall say, that on its
aim and issue our life with all its energies has been deliberately
staked. Who knows, perhaps it never will be our business ?
Its purpose, nevertheless, has our sincere sympathy, and its public
proceedings, though tardily received, were read, be it candidly
acknowledged, with singular interest.

The desire for unity is undoubtedly good. The desire for
union as a step to unity is both rational and good. He who
yearns for unity is a man of peace : he who loves unity above all

* Proceedings of the Hartford Meeting, 1885. Published under the direction of the Execu-
tive Committee. Hartford : The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company. 1885.

4io "THE AMERICAN CONGRESS OF CHURCHES:' [Dec.,

things, quickened by the grace of Christ, is a Christian and p.
man of God ! These desires when followed faithfully are pro-
ductive of much good and of greater blessings than some people
ever imagine. They find an echo in the bosom of every sincere
Christian and vibrate the heart-strings of all upright men. It is
not easy to accentuate these desires too strongly.

Only low, vulgar, and thriftless minds can content themselves
in wasting the force given for a noble purpose in warring and
wrangling sects into which these three centuries and upwards
the actual Christendom has been deplorably divided. Alas !
Satan has known only too well how to sow effectually his seeds
of disunion and discord among men and the people of God.

It is not contrary to reason, nor aside from reason, nor be-
yond our aim, nor out of place for us to ask here and now why
men, rational men, who have a common Creator, a common des-
tiny, and in common the same Mediator and Redeemer, should
be separated from each other in their noble efforts to promote
the present and future welfare of all mankind. Surely this can
only be the work of the enemy of the human race. It may also
be reasonably asked: Why should the bulk of mankind, after
nineteen centuries of Christianity, be seated in darkness, deprived
of the elevation and enjoyment of the privileges of the light of
the Gospel of Christ, intended for all souls, for every member of
the human race, and consequently for all creation? No practical
man doubts for a moment that the accumulated means of modern
civilized society, if once again organically united and directed
with the intent of spreading the Gospel, would fully suffice to
spread its glad tidings among the pagan inhabitants over the
face of the whole globe, and that in an incredibly short time.
Be the responsibility where it may, cast your eyes over the
whole world and ask yourself sincerely as a Christian if the pre-
sent state of civilized modern Christian society is not only de-
plorable but disgraceful !

Let the men who took part in the " Congress of Churches,"
and those who sympathize with them and there are many more
of these than they are aware of think of this and stand unflinch-
ingly firm upon the certain, good ground of theirs, and not yield
until in our generation their hopes are in the way of realization.
This would indeed be a consummation and a worthy blessing
upon what is stigmatized by some as " our material age " !

Their authority is greater than they think. All sincere and
hopeful Christians are one with the movement of this Congress
of Churches, wherever they may be or however called. All

1885.] "TffE AMERICAN CONGRESS OF CHURCHES:' 411

practical and upright men entertain the same hopes. For unity
is a postulate of reason, a mark of divine truth in religion, a sign
of sound philosophy, the ground of well-being in society, and the
source of all that is wholesome in political economy. What does
not make for unity is wrong. Let nothing drive them away
from these convictions ! Speak out ! There is guilt somewhere.
Don't fear, but strike !

" The Congress of Churches " in Hartford, held a few months
ago, was a good and fresh start, and in our opinion God's Spirit
is stirring the minds and hearts of the men who compose this
movement. Let us both hold and preach, too, the Gospel of
hope.

It must be admitted by all men of candor that speculatively
and practically the Catholic Church or, if it pleases some per-
sons, we have no scruples in saying the Roman Catholic Church ;
for we are not now disputing about the meaning of words, but
we are talking with earnest men about realities the Roman
Catholic Church, then, if that suits the palates of some squeam-
ish folks better, has maintained unity from the beginning,
through thick and thin, and never has been by any power
made to swerve from unity. The unity of Christianity is con-
nected, concreted organically, in the Roman Catholic Church or
found nowhere upon the face of this earth ! Her history consists
in the main in the narrative of her struggles against her foes to
maintain unity struggles with the strength of strong races,
struggles with great nations, struggles with distinguished fami-
lies and powerful personages, of great wealth, of high birth and
lofty position, in every form of sacrifice possible and yet she was
never known to have succumbed to their influences. All their
efforts, separate or united, to misdirect her action have been, as
promised and predicted, vain. All power has in the course of
centuries been tried to reduce the Roman Catholic Church to a
race church, or a national church, or to a sect ; but none have
succeeded. There stands the Roman Catholic Church on the
promises and predictions of Christ, with the consciousness of
their truth ; and there, with the experience of so many centuries,
as upon an adamantine rock, she will stand until the end of time,
because she really represents Him who, in the last-uttered prayer
for his disciples, said, in addressing his heavenly Father : " And
the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them ; that
they may be one, as we also are one." *

The Roman Catholic Church stands out as the church of

* St, John xvii. 22.

412 "THE AMERICAN CONGRESS OF CHURCHES" [Dec.,

Christ, deny it who may, or theorize upon it as one pleases, as
the plainest and the most unvarnished fact in the religious history
of mankind or the world !

However you may explain it, unless you accept this simply as
a fact your explanation is looked upon by profound scholars and
practical men, competent to pass judgment on this point, as com-
ing short in covering the facts of the case. Passion and preju-
dice may slander or vituperate ; but when unity is spoken of in
connection with Christianity among candid scholars and intelli-
gent men, their eyes are at once turned towards the Roman Ca-
tholic Church. This is what, in their minds, you mean, if you
mean anything at all. Men feel powerfully sure of this one
thing : that where unity leads the way they are safe ; and they are
not wrong in making this judgment. For where unity, is the
leader, sooner or later men will be surely led to the truth and to
God.

To whatever cause he may attribute the unity of the Roman
Catholic Church, no man who can put two ideas together, no man
who thinks for himself and has an historical sense of truth and a
fair knowledge of history, but sees, whether friend or foe, this
much : that the conduct of the Roman Catholic Church and her
faithful members through ages is induced by something either
preternatural or supernatural. Their conduct is explicable on
no other ground, theory, or hypothesis than that there must
be something in them above human nature. So much has been
gained, at least, that no man of intelligence in this nineteenth cen-
tury dare stake his reputation, if he has any, upon saying it is
his belief that Satan is its promoter and prompter. And it must
also be candidly acknowledged that her unity stands out as one
of her most obvious and irresistible features. It is this attrac-
tive feature, perhaps, more than anything else, that has won the
attention, at one or the other period of their lives, of nearly all
sincere Christians ; and, despairing to create or produce such a
unity by human means, many, unwilling to swell the ranks of
disunion or increase confusion, have abandoned all other asso-
ciations, given up all, to enter into her sacred fold. The words
of the Eternal Shepherd of souls" There shall be one shepherd
and one fold " have sounded louder in their ears than all the
clamors of relatives, or the expostulation of friends, or the flat-
tering praises or noises of the world. What candid and upright
men seek for, especially in religion, is not a man-made unity but
a God-made unity, which men may leave, but cannot break
into fragments or tear into pieces. Christ thought so and

1885.] "T& AMERICAN CONGRESS OF CHURCHES:' 413

made this the test of his power. No sincere Christian will ever
be content with any unity short of that which Christ alone was
competent to inaugurate, and had the power to build up upon
earth, and was able to sustain until the consummation of the
world. The conviction is not uncommon among thinking men,
and is a growing one, that Christianity is fitted for all ages and
for all races of men, or it is the greatest piece of deception that
ever was forced upon mankind or ever appeared upon the face
of the globe. They may not say so, but they think so. Chris-
tianity is Catholicity in time and space, or else a great imposition,
a magnificent fiction, a superb humbug!

Will the men who formed the American " Congress of
Churches " ever be awakened to these truths ? Scholars and
practical men have, and why should not they? It may be, at
least, true of some of them now. Why should we Catholics
not hope for it, and pray for it too ? Oremus !

By this it is not meant to say that the church of Christ has
not had to pay dearly, often with her blood, and had to struggle
hard and heroically to maintain her position as the organic cen-
tre of Christian unity. Neither is it meant to say that she has
not had great sacrifices to make, and has not now great sacri-
fices to make, in order to accomplish the conscious task imposed
upon her by her divine Founder. The cost must always be
great, and will always be great, to advance the cause of Christian
unity in the world. For Christianity means this : to raise men
above themselves, above human nature, above the ties of family,
above the ties which bind them to a nation or to a race ; but not
condemning or sundering these, but renewing them, and commu-
nicating and establishing them at the same time in the tie* of
filial relations with God, and in this Christ-given tie to unite
all men in a common but higher than a natural brotherhood.
But it may be asked, Is this, the conscious divine task of the
church, done ? Who is so foolish as to suppose or imagine
for a moment that Christianity has been perfectly realized upon
earth in any one of its spheres of possible and practical applica-
tions ?

Grant that the human side of the church is always imperfect
and leaves much to be desired. But may we not ask in our day,
without giving offence to anybody : Who broke up, more than
three centuries ago, by a religious revolution, the unity of Europe
which contained the hope and promise of a speed} 7 triumph of
the light of Christianity being spread over the whole globe ?
One thing is well known cast the blame of it upon whom you

414 "THE AMERICAN CONGRESS OF CHURCHES" [Dec.,

like Christendom from that epoch has suffered, in too many
ways to be enumerated, from disastrous divisions and discordant
sects. This much we dare venture to say without fearing to
give offence to anybody : that divisions, discords, and confusions
are not evident marks of the work of men divinely influenced.
One thing is certain : that this division took place, according to
non-Catholic historians of these times Hallam, Guizot, and
Ranke notwithstanding the best efforts of the Roman Catholic
hierarchy and people. May not the question be asked without
offence : Who are to-day the promulgators of free-loveism and kin-
dred doctrines, and of the loose legislation which is effectually
undermining the Christian tie of the family ? Who are the men
who are striving by socialism, by communism and nihilism, to
break up political society? In a word, who are the men in re-
ligion, in morals, in philosophy, and in social and political econo-
my who are actually seeking to bring things back to the reign of
chaos? Not a Roman Catholic voice will be detected in this
Babel confusion. A man must stultify himself not to see to
whom this applies. Nobody is ever bound to do that to be a
Christian. Let the " Congress of Churches " speak out and be
listened to, and, if needs be, let it speak in tones of rebuke and
warning and in loud trumpet tones ! It has a voice, and people
are ready to listen. The axe is raised ; men whose eyes are not
dim with age see the root, and why not strike ?

Admit that the church on the human side is always imperfect
this must be so, having but men and " not angels to manage
her cranks and safety-valves " she is nevertheless a divine insti-
tution, embodying a divine life, and therefore always above and
abreast of the age. She is the source from which men, if they
only knew it, draw their best inspirations and what promotes the
real well-being of mankind. The best authorities have shown that
the most potent, the most popular, the most beneficent institutions
of society, social and political, are due to the example given by the
Catholic Church, whose see was located by the Apostle St. Peter
at Rome. Suppose, for instance, that the rulers of the church
were to find it possible to fulfil the wishes expressed by the Coun-
cil of Trent upwards of three centuries ago in regard to the Col-
lege of Cardinals. More than a million of the race of the Chinese
are good Catholics, and why, it may be asked, is not John China-
man with his pigtail among the cardinals? The senate of the
Roman Catholic Church would be, in this case, the most perfect,
the most august representative assembly of the whole of mankind
that has ever met or appeared upon the earth. It is not yet too

1885.] "THE AMERICAN CONGRESS OF CHURCHES" 415

late ! Suppose, again, the chair of St. Peter to be offered, as
it was in the early ages of the church, to the most gifted man
and the best calculated to fulfil its duties and defend its rights,
irrespective of his race or nationality. Suppose the missionary
enterprises of the church to be adequately organized and com-
mensurately with the objects of Christianity and the spirit of
Catholicity of the church of Christ, would not this unity of or-
ganization, expressed in the most perfect form, present Chris-
tianity to the minds of practical men in its most attractive fea-
tures, and be to the pagan world almost irresistible ? Do not,
we might reply to this, fancy for a moment that the church of
Christ is exhausted ! Grant that there is nothing in these things
incompatible with the doctrines and the spirit of the Catholic
Church, and which the present happily-reigning Pontiff, Leo XIII.
who has shown that he has the courage of his convictions
might not accept, the moment you made it clear that such was
the will of God, would not all this go a great way to reconcile
those who are sincerely seeking for Christian unity to reverse
the religious revolution of the sixteenth century? For there is
nothing, short of what is necessary to salvation, which every
Christian should not be willing to do, if called upon ; and nothing
that those whom it immediately concerns should not be willing
and ready to do to render the church of Christ more attractive
in the. eyes of those who sincerely seek after the truth, or who
are seeking for it in a more Catholic spirit, or who are anxious
to find it in a more perfect form and embodiment. Once this
spirit is made reasonably evident and certain, there is nothing,
short of what is necessary in the nature of things, which cannot
be, in a friendly and reconciling spirit, shapened and adjusted.
Why, it may well be asked, should not the work of the -Council
of Trent and of Sixtus V. be continued and perfected, and, we
may add, by Leo XIII., now happily reigning, and his successor?
But these are not the times, when the foe is at the door, to in-
dulge in condemnations, or recriminations, or mutual criticisms,
however they may be intended in a friendly spirit among Chris-
tians, but rather the occasion for saying: "He that is without
sin, let him cast the first stone." Time and experience, let us
hope, have lifted both parties to this controversy above the
spirit of contention.

But who knows but that, in the providence of God, what he
is stirring up in some hearts to ask he is preparing in others to
grant, in view of the unity of his church? Who knows? For
our own part, we can see no reason why there should not set in

416 THE FRENCH PROBLEM. [Dec.,

a tide in the nineteenth century making for unity, stronger and
wider, than that of the sixteenth century, which led so many
millions of Christians into disunion, discord, and confusion.
Or emus et speremus ; speremus et or emus / God grant it !

THE FRENCH PROBLEM.

THE result of the October elections has been a surprise to all
parties. Yet it might have been foreseen that the government
party or so-called " Moderate Republicans/' to distinguish them
from the Radicals, or " Intransigeants " would pay the penalty of
their blundering and cowardly policy. Too sensible to adopt in
toto the doctrines of radicalism, yet too weak and timid to resist
Radical pressure, they have followed a course that has alienated
the confidence of the country. In this last campaign they were
caught between the upper millstone of conservatism and the
nether millstone of radicalism and ground to pieces ; it could
not have been otherwise. They could not be said to represent
a principle ; no programme of theirs could have availed ; they
stood before the country with their record, to be judged by their
acts, not to be trusted for their promises. And what did this
record show ? The persecution of faithful officials, of brave officers
and learned judges, whom they removed for no other crime than
having an opinion of their own or not changing that opinion
quickly enough to be true Republicans ; the persecution of un-
offending men and women, in violation of rights guaranteed by
law, and not for any alleged offence, simply because they were
servants of God ; interference with the rights of the private citi-
zen, leading to troubling the conscience and disturbing the peace
of the family, by forcibly removing every token of Christianity
from the surroundings of the child and sowing the seeds of infi-
delity and unbelief in his young mind ; a foreign policy which has
not secured one strong, honorable ally to France, but, on the con-
trary, has estranged her from most of the European nations, who
look upon her with distrust, if not with contempt; unnecessary
military expeditions which, if undertaken at all, should have been
strong enough to insure swift and decisive results, but which have
been managed so as to drain the finances of the country and sac-,
rifice the lives of her soldiers.

The people were called upon to ratify all these acts and to

1885.] THE FRENCH PROBLEM. 417

say, " Well done, good and faithful servants ; proceed with your
work," or to signify their displeasure. They chose the latter al-
ternative. They rebuked their rulers at the ballot-box by voting
for the party which had always opposed those obnoxious mea-
sures, for men whom they had been taught to look upon as dan-
gerous enemies, but to whom they must turn unless they prefer
to leave the country in the hands that have so ill-managed its af-
fairs, or to turn it over to the Radicals as a surer and quicker way
of reaching anarchy. Such were the questions before the French
people in this last election. In former ones the spectre of monar-
chy was called up freely; a good campaign weapon, which like
the " bloody shirt " familiar to American politicians did good
service in many a contest, but in this one the form of govern-
ment was not discussed. The aggressive tactics of the Radicals
were directed against the government candidates, who had
enough to do in repelling the attacks. The spectre, for once,
was forgotten and let alone. The people hitherto had been of-
fered the choice between an already-established republic and a
revolution to restore the monarchy ; they had invariably voted
for the former, notwithstanding their displeasure at some of its
acts, for, even if they had not loved the monarchy the less, they
loved peace and order more. Now they had the choice between
three republican platforms, and they voted for that which present-
ed the greatest guarantees. The logic of the situation shows that
to call the result a royalist gain and to predict an attempt to re-
store the monarchy are either the conclusions of an alarmist or a
charge gotten up for effect by the Radicals ; they should have
been received with more distrust by the American press. It
matters little that the candidates elected should be individually
designated in the French despatches as "royalists" or " imperial-
ists " ; the facts amount to this : the principles held by that Re-
publican minority in the Chamber of Deputies who styled them-
selves "republicans, liberals, and conservatives/' and who for
the last eight or nine years have fought against every encroach-
ment upon the rights and liberties of the citizen, were embodied
in the platform upon which these candidates were elected. True
royalists and imperialists voted for them, but so did every Re-
publican who calls himself a Catholic, every friend of Christian
education, every Frenchman who realizes the danger of such
a policy as has prevailed since the death of M. Thiers. No ;
when we scan the returns and see departments with a large rep-
resentation, such as that of Nord, or Catholic provinces where
the government of the republic had conquered the time-honored
VOL. XLII. 27

4i 8 THE FRENCH PROBLEM. [Dec.,

royalism of the peasants, return the whole list of Conserva-
tive candidates, the truth forces itself upon us. This victory
is not for the monarchy over the republic; it is for religion, mo-
rality, and true liberty over infidelity, materialism, and injustice,
for wisdom and patriotism over foolhardiness and ambition.

That among these royalists and imperialists there are some
who desire the overthrow of the republic cannot be denied ; that
a few, a very few, like that mad enthusiast Cassagnac, would
even help the Radicals in their work of destruction is probable ;
that any number could be found to inaugurate a revolution is
impossible. In the first place, the mass of the people is against
them and they know it. It is not that the love for free institu-
tions is very deeply rooted, but the people have become used
to them ; they begin to realize the blessings of liberty ; all they
ask is to see social order and the national prosperity secure. A
change of government means a crisis that interrupts the business
of the country and affects the material interests of the individual.
Few would choose to face these evils in order to attain a pro-
mised good. It is only when the situation has become unbear-
able that the masses are roused to action. Then the patient
sheep becomes a roaring lion. Such a contingency may happen
if the Radicals get complete control of the government ; it does
not exist now. All the former revolutions were made by Paris
alone ; the country acquiesced the deed was done ; as well accept
it as make trouble. But the relations between the capital and
the provinces are changed. The war and the struggle with the
Parisian Commune are lessons not easily forgotten ; then the
spread of education, the introduction of the railroad, and the vul-
garization of the telegraph have brought their fruits. The peo-
ple of the provinces have a consulting voice in the affairs of the
country ; they are not willing to remain at the beck of the Pari-
sians, but they think sometimes they may have to march again
on Paris. Besides, it is the Radicals, not the Royalists, that con-
trol Paris.

Supposing the adversaries of the republic did not shrink from
inaugurating a revolution that must be more terrible than any
that has convulsed France since 1/93, another consideration
would make them pause. They represent two parties which
hate each other as much as they hate the republic, and neither
would like to work for the benefit of its rival. Bonapartists and
Orleanists will never agree, not to mention the Legitimists, who
have no pretender to the crown. Absolved from their time-
honored oath of fidelity to the house of Bourbon, they are free

1885.] THE FRENCH PROBLEM. 419

to transfer their allegiance to any government, and they would
prefer a liberal, conservative republic to either a Bonaparte or
an Orleans, whom they have little cause to love.

There should be, then, no fear of an early attempt to change
the form of government. The most dangerous enemies of the
republic are in the Republican camp. It has ever been so. The
uprising of 1789 was a reform movement, inspired by a generous
desire to correct intolerable abuses. Louis XVI. himself had
given the example. On ascending the throne in 1774 his first
act was to reduce the expenses of the royal household. This
measure of reform he had pursued year after year ; he had abol-
ished serfdom, suppressed statute labor in despite of the resist-
ance of parliament, abolished the right of mortmain, granted civil
rights to his non-Catholic subjects, reorganized the magistracy,
forbidden the rack, opened to all, men and women, the avenues
of trade hitherto closed by the stringent regulations of the guilds.
He had acquired the right to say, as he did to the States-Gene-
ral in 1789: " It is I who so far have done everything for the
welfare of my people, and it is perhaps a rare occurrence that
the sole ambition of a sovereign should be to obtain from his
subjects that they should come to an understanding about ac-
cepting his benefactions." The demagogic element which en-
tered the National Assembly changed reform into revolution.
Tiie Jacobins of 1793 paved the way for the empire with the
b )ties of innocent victims. The revolution of 1848 surprised the
world; it was the triumph of ideas, not of violence and blood-
shed. The republic held out her hands in token of fraternity,
and they were pure of blood. Here was the opening of a new
era such as had never been known in the history of a people.
The Socialists and Red Republicans of the time strangled young
Liberty in her cradle and made the advent of a Bonaparte possi-
ble. The fall of Sedan brought about another bloodless revolu-
tion. The Commune arose, ready for the work of destruction.
It failed, and the patriotism of the men who rallied around M.
Thiers founded the republic on a durable basis. It was acknow-
ledged the only form of government possible in France, the only
power to which contending parties might surrender, for it repre-
sented the majesty of the nation. One condition, however, was
attached to its existence. M. Thiers spoke advisedly when he^
said : " The republic shall be conservative or it shall be no more."
He knew that " history repeats itself," and he saw the dark cloud
rising which means destruction if a firm and prudent hand is not

420 THE FRENCH PROBLEM. [Dec.,

at the helm. The cloud has taken shape ; it is called radicalism
the precursor of anarchy.

The effect of the last election will be to draw more clearly
the party lines. The various factions which have influenced the
vacillating policy of the government will be effaced. The strug-
gle is between the Conservatives and the Radicals. That it will
be bitter no one can doubt. How it will end is hard to" foresee.
If the Conservatives have wisdom and prudence, if they are faith-
ful to the principles from which they have not swerved since
1880, they may control the majority and consolidate the republic.
But who among them will pick up the mantle of the dead Thiers?
The Radicals have their leader already chosen, a bold, aggressive,
ambitious leader Dr. Eugene Clemenceau.

A more dangerous enemy of the republic than this true Simon-
pure of radicalism could not have been selected. The man is not
a political crank like his newly-elected colleague, the mischief-
making mountebank, Henri Rochefort, but a tribune of the Dan-
ton type, more astute, perhaps, and knowing how to bide his
time. By a strange inconsistency this apostle of " advanced
ideas " goes back to the infancy of French republicanism nearly
a century to find a model for his ideal republic. This model is
the Constituent Assembly of 1789. To such a body of direct
representatives of the people, without the controlling power of
a senate and with no other head than its own presiding officer,
M. Clemenceau thinks the destinies of France should be confided.
That he will continue to work for this desired end, whatever
compromises he may seem willing to make in the present emer-
gency, cannot be doubted. His whole past shows him to be an
ambitious man with a fixed purpose and an indomitable will, too
cautious to risk a battle without assurance of the victory, and too
unscrupulous to hesitate before the means when he sees his
chance.

Eugene C16menceau was .born in Catholic Vend6e in 1841.
He is therefore in the prime of life too young a man, perhaps,
for the statesman's work of directing the policy of his country.
He came to Paris in 1865 to complete his medical studies, and re-
ceived his diploma of M.D. in 1869. He is of that school of phy-
sicians who dissect the body to search for a soul, and, finding
^ none, proclaim man soulless. As a doctor of the old school re-
marked once: "They could hardly have expected to find the
tenant in after he had left the house for ever." But such simple
logic does not strike the eminent modern scientist ; he demands

1885.] THE FRENCH PROBLEM. 421

material evidence of the existence of a spiritual soul. Dr. C16-
menceau's anatomical studies therefore confirmed his suspicion
that there is no such a thing- as a soul ; the soul being said to be
the essence of the Divinity breathed into man, the one immortal
link between the Creator and the creature, it was logical to deny
God. The young man asserted himself as a confirmed material-
ist and infidel. Time has only strengthened his opinions.

Untrammelled by superstitions, the doctor felt capable of great
things. Not content with curing diseased soulless bodies, he de-
termined to devote his surplus energies to securing the material
happiness of his fellow-man and his own advancement and
turned his attention forthwith to politics. Immediately after the
formation of a republican government we find him mayor of the
eighteenth arrondissement of Paris. Here one of his first official
acts was to order that lay teachers should be substituted for the
members of religious orders employed in the free schools of his
district. Superstition must be rooted out, and the new-fledged
mayor was eager for the fray. Such zeal deserved a reward. It
came. Clemenceau was elected to the National Assembly in
1871. He voted against peace a cheap way of gaining popu-
larity, considering how impossible it was for Paris to maintain
the struggle. Then came the dark days of the Commune. C16-
menceau, like his colleague, Rochefort, remained in Paris. That
his sympathies were with the Communists at the beginning is a
well-known fact. What part he took in their resistance to the
legal government has never been satisfactorily shown. It was
claimed that he had tried to save the lives of Generals Lecomte
and Clement Thomas, but, unfortunately, had reached the place
of execution too late to stay the fatal fire ; that his endeavors had
made him open to suspicion, and the Central Committee had
ordered his arrest and trial. He was never arrested, however,
and when the assassins were brought to trial, after the fall of the
Commune, several witnesses testified that the doctor had not
used all the diligence he might have used if he had been really
anxious to save the victims. M. Langlois, who defended C16-
menceau, testified as to the latter's willingness and the causes
of his delay, and the charge was dismissed. As Lecomte and
Thomas were not priests but soldiers, and therefore not objects
of an infidel's just hatred, the doctor should have the benefit of
the doubt.

Howbeit, it is certain that he participated in various efforts at
bringing about a " reconciliation " between the government of

422 THE FRENCH PROBLEM. [Dec.,

Versailles and the misguided fanatics who ruled in Paris. These
attempts having failed, he resigned his seat and retired to private
life. Not being a fool, he saw that the Commune was doomed.
He must have cursed his mistake in not following his colleagues
to Versailles, as was clearly his duty. But lucky man ! that
mistake turned to his advantage ; it made him popular with a
certain class of Parisians. After the restoration of order he was
elected a member of the Municipal Council of Paris, where he
took a prominent part in all discussions concerning the secular-
izing of primary instruction and like " anti-clerical " measures.
He introduced a bill to increase the number of members and the
already too great powers of the council a government within
a government, whose pretensions have given no little trouble.
C16menceau was elected a deputy in 1876, and was one of the
ardent promoters of the general amnesty a dangerous measure
that owed its adoption in great part to the sentimental appeals of
the late Victor Hugo. The Conservatives were in favor of a
conditional pardon which, while putting an end to the punish-
ment, left a just stigma attached to the crime. Amnesty gave a
clear record to the Communists, and the welcome given by the
Radical council members to the released convicts made heroes of
them. Scarcely half a dozen years had passed since these men
had brought their city to the verge of destruction, and some of
them were called to take part in its councils. At this moment
the names of a dozen ex-Communists may be checked off on the
list of elected deputies. Such are some of the fruits of Radical
policy. Clemenceau, re-elected in 1877, after the dissolution of
parliament, became a leader. He urged the impeachment and
trial of Marshal MacMahon's cabinet, and showed no little bitter-
ness in his advocacy of anti-church measures. His policy has
always been aggressive. He was mainly instrumental in the
overthrow of Jules Ferry. The mismanaged Tonquin expedition
was his ably-handled weapon in the recent campaign. With it
he demolished the " Opportunists," little thinking how the same

blows counted to swell the ranks of the Conservatives.

Can moderation be expected from this man if he sees his op-
portunity for dictating the policy of the Republicans, so-called ?
Will the royalist and imperialist Conservatives side with him in
order to defeat the government ? or will all true Conservatives
and true Republicans unite in an imposing majority to subdue
Radical folly ? Such are the questions agitated in all the Euro-
pean political circles. These questions are momentous, for they

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 423

involve the existence of the republic and the peace of Europe.
American Catholics cannot be indifferent to the fate of that fair
land, so long called the " eldest daughter of the church " the
country that gave birth to Lafayette and Rochambeau. Neither
should they despair of seeing it restored to its once proud rank
among nations. The French conscience is roused ; the godless
shall not prevail.

NEW PUBLICATIONS,

CATHOLIC LIFE AND LETTERS OF CARDINAL NEWMAN. With Notes on
the Oxford Movement and its Men. By John Oldcastle. London :
Burns & Gates; New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.
1885.

This neat volume is a reprint from the periodical called Merry England.
It is not properly a life of the cardinal, but a collection of memorial notes
and letters. The portraits contained in it, but especially the group of the
Newman family as they were in 1829 when they were living at Newnham
Courtney, add much to the value and interest of this memorial. In this
family group, which was sketched in chalk by Miss Giberne, we see the
future cardinal as a young clergyman of twenty-eight, with his mother, his
two sisters, and his brother Francis, sitting together in a small parlor, in
easy and natural attitudes, engaged with work, books, and conversation a
pretty picture of home life, which thousands have regarded and will here-
after regard with great pleasure on account of the great fame and distinc-
tion which the two young men have gained, but especially on account of
the veneration and love for Cardinal Newman which is so universal. Sure-
ly every one of his admirers will wish to possess this memorial.

THE CATHOLIC FAMILY ANNUAL for 1886. New York : The Catholic Pub-
lication Society Co. i$86.

It has come to be a high compliment to say of a new issue of the Catho-
lic Family Annual that it is worthy of its predecessors. More than that
may be said for the Annual for 1886, a little volume which is in every re-
spect a credit to the Catholic literary and publishing enterprise of the
United States. Taking it up to glance it over cursorily, we were unable to
lay it down until we had read it quite through, so interesting as well as
valuable are its contents. It is a well-illustrated, well-written, and a most
carefully prepared publication ; and so accurate and exhaustive are the
brief biographies of eminent Catholics who have died or come into unusual
prominence during each year that for these, its specialty, the volumes of the
Catholic Family Anmtal already constitute an indispensable authority for
reference. Among the leading biographies now given are those of Car-
dinal McCloskey, Cardinal McCabe, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, and Mr.
A. M. Sullivan, of the recently dead, and Cardinal Moran, of Sydney,

424 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

Dr. Walsh, the new Archbishop of Dublin, and Dr. Corrigan, Archbishop
of New York, of the living. All these are accompanied by finely-engrav-
ed portraits, that of the new Archbishop of Dublin being the best like-
ness we have seen published of him anywhere. There are besides these
other biographies of distinguished Americans, Irishmen, and Catholics. An
interesting feature is the description and illustration of the newly-erected
monument in New Orleans to Margaret Haughery, "the Orphans' Friend."
The array of original articles is quite imposing. We would call particular
attention to the article on " Mediaeval Guilds," a knowledge of which subject
we have long wished to see spread among ourworking population. Sciol-
ism is so hopelessly rife among the advocates of labor reform nowadays that
the protection of labor by organization in trades-unions is generally ac-
cepted as one of the " ideas " of the nineteenth century. How old-fash-
ioned the notion is, and how much better it was in its old form than in the
new, and how great a part the Catholic Church played as the champion of
the oppressed in those so little understood " dark " ages, may be learned
from a study of the mediaeval guilds, to which the article in the Annual
will serve as an introduction. The Count de Mun, an active laboring man's
friend, is doing in France for this subject a work that we long to see some
one do for America. Perhaps the most attractive " bit " in the issue will
be voted to be Mr. Maurice F. Egan's poem, "The String of the Rosary,"
with the exquisite engraving in which it is framed, whose design is a sweet
poem in itself. On the whole, let us further say that we are struck particu-
larly about this Annual by the fact that no legitimate expense appears to
have been spared to make it worthy of its mission to American Catholic
homes.

THE CATHOLIC HOME ALMANAC for 1886. New York, Cincinnati, and St.
Louis : Benziger Bros. 1886.

The Catholic Home Almanac is another very creditable publication mod-
elled on the plan of the Catholic Family Annual. Its issue for 1886 its third
year '-shows a marked and most encouraging improvement on the two issues
that preceded it There are many original articles in the number, a number
of original stories, and some of the engravings are original. One important
article, " The Religious Element in our American Civilization," is from the
pen of the Most Rev. Dr. Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore. The stories are
by Maurice F. Egan, Christian Reid, and Mrs. and Miss Sadlier. The selected
matter, whether literary or artistic, shows admirable judgment and taste.
A beautiful colored chromograph of the Sacred Heart forms the frontis-
piece. There is one flaw, however, on this otherwise almost perfect publi-
cation which we cannot let pass without remark. In a paragraph at the
head of a page referring to the English Church missions in Palestine this
sentence occurs : " Fancy spending ,153,000 in trying to convert a Jew :
and what a costly creature he would be even if he were converted ! " This
jeer at the Jews, for whom the saving mercy of our Divine Lord flows as
for every other section of mankind, is conceived in anything but the
Christian spirit in a spirit rather which would be peculiarly obnoxious
and dangerous if allowed to enter Catholic homes. We would advise
the editor of the excellent Almanac, if it be not too late, to suppress this
ugly and hurtful paragraph.

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 425

ALMANACK DES FAMILLES CHRE"TIENNES POUR L'ANNEE 1886. Einsiedeln
en Suisse, New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis : Charles and Nicholas
Benziger Freres. 1886.

This almanac, a French one, is a still further indication of the way in
which Catholic publishing enterprise in this department is progressing.
It is a beautifully printed and illustrated volume, and its interesting con-
tents are well worthy of their setting. A good feature is the summary of
the principal public events of the year, with the condensed illustrations ac-
companying it.

THE TRUTH ABOUT JOHN WYCLIF : His life, writings, and opinions, chiefly
from the evidence of his contemporaries. By Joseph Stevenson, S.J.
London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Socie-
ty Co. 1885.

John Wyclif, one of the fathers of the religious revolution in the six-
teenth century, is naturally revered by all Protestants as their lawful an-
cestor and dearly-loved progenitor. Any one carefully studying history
will see that not only did he hold all the special errors which Protestants
afterwards insisted upon, but that his political opinions were such as must
delight the veriest anarchist or communist of our own time.

The conclusion of the learned and venerable author of the book must
be the conclusion of the candid reader and of any real student of history :

"Of Wyclif personally we have been unable to form 1 any exalted estimate. Intellectually
there is little to admire in him. He was a voluminous author, and has left behind him a large
mass of writings on various subjects, thus supplying us with ample materials on which to form
an estimate as to his mental capacity. These writings are remarkable only as embodying nu-
merous blasphemies, heresies, errors, and absurdities, expressed in obscure language. Morally
he does not command our respect. He attacked the church of which he was a priest, and in
which he continued to minister long after he had denounced it as the synagogue of Satan. He
rebelled against that ecclesiastical discipline which he had pledged himself to maintain and
defend."

Each error and heresy which he introduced among his countrymen had
been previously condemned by the universal consensus of the authority
competent in such matters. Disregarding this, he made them his own
and bequeathed them as an evil inheritance to his native country. The
wretched legacy was accepted, and in our time we see England eating the
bitter fruits full ripe from the noious weeds planted by that archhere-
tic, John Wyclif.

His opinions will be more easy to obtain when the new edition of his
works which is in preparation is published.

POETS OF AMERICA. By Edmund Clarence Stedman, author of Victorian
Poets. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885.

This book is a companion volume to the Victorian Poets, published by
Mr. E. C. Stedman about ten years ago. Mr. Stedman is one of our best
American critics, and to his high and difficult calling he brings an honesty, a
soberness, and a power of sympathetic insight which are seldom found com-
bined in the same individual, and which, when they are, g've his judgments
a value that is much rarer than that attaching to the more brilliant and

426 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

showy qualities of the literary man. A true poet himself, Mr. Stedman has
an instinct for discovering the true poetry of others and a clarifying intelli-
gence which enables him to set upon his discoveries a generally just ap-
praisement. His Victorian Poets was a critical disquisition on the poetry
of the Victorian era, including a notice of every English poet of any con-
sequence who flourished since the beginning of the present queen's reign.
The volume under notice does a similar work for the whole range of Amer-
ican poetry from the earliest native poets down to the songsters of to-day.
Of the two volumes the latter will be regarded with the greater curiosity.
It is the first comprehensive and competent criticism of the American
poetic outgrowth considered as a whole that has been published. More-
over, Mr. Stedman seeks to substantiate a claim for American poetry which
will probably be generally conceded : namely, that " the literature even
the poetic literature of no country, during the last half-century, is of
greater interest to the philosophical student, with respect to its bearing on
the future, than that of the United States." Mr. Stedman, who is always
charming, and all but perfect in direct individual criticism, seems to be on
his weak side when he comes to broad generalizations. There is some-
thing naively provincial about his summing up of the attitude of Europe
towards the literature of America. " The Old World," he says, " has
drawn its countries together, like elderly people in a tacit alliance against
the strength of youth which cannot return to them, the fresh, rude beauty
and love which they may not share." In fact, as is too much the habit of
our countrymen when they feel that a foreign eye is upon them, Mr. Sted-
man becomes uncomfortably self-conscious when he comes to talk of the
literature of his own land and to make comparisons between it and the con-
temporary literary product of what he so frequently alludes to as the " mo-
ther country" England. No doubt, too, he feels himself on delicate
ground when dealing with home poets, not a few of whom are among his
own contemporaries. At any rate we notice a constraint about the first
portions of this book which is in marked contrast to the freedom which
characterized Mr. Stedman's earlier volume. For the rest of the book, the
monographs of Bryant, Whittier, Emerson, Longfellow, Poe, Lowell, and
Holmes are models of graceful and thorough criticism. A very adroit
chapter is the one on the present generation of literary men. Hardly a
living poet or litterateur of merit is left unmentioned. Among the Catho-
lic writers we see discriminating allusicm to Maurice Egan, whom Mr. Sted-
man calls "a sweet and true poet," to Boyle O'Reilly, the late Dr. Joyce,
Father Ryan, O'Brien, Halpine, John Savage, and McDermott. Of Mr.
Charles de Kay, who has contributed some remarkable studies of Irish his-
tory and archaeology to THE CATHOLIC WORLD during the past year, and
whose charming prose helps to adorn our present issue, Mr. Stedman says
that he " is conspicuous for height of aim and certainly for a most resolute
purpose ; in these days it is bracing to see a man of his ability in earnest as
a poet." So exhaustively has Mr. Stedman performed his task that his
valuable book may be looked on as a critical encyclopaedia of to use an
expression of his own the whole choir of American poets. The places
and dates of their births and, when dead, of their deaths are given in neat
marginalia, and a copious index adds the finishing-touch to a rarely well
made volume.

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 427

THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS. By Charles Egbert
Craddock. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885.

We have had lately the irksome task of examining a number of stories
by American authors, most of which may be likened to adulterated wine
or poorly-made artificial flowers. When the turn of this story came, five
pa'ges had not been read when a sensation of refreshment began to steal
over us, and we recognized the presence of a genuine article. The pro-
mise of the beginning was fulfilled by the complete book, and our firm de-
cision was made that a new writer has appeared, worthy to take rank
among the really good old ones. We have found that this is the general
opinion of critics and readers, and it is beyond doubt that the young lady
who has taken the noin de plume of Charles Egbert Craddock has only to
continue as she has begun, to win a place among the best of our American
writers of fiction. This story, and the shorter ones in In the Tennessee
Mountains, bear a general resemblance to those of Cable, and a closer one
to the stories and sketches of life and scenes in Georgia by R. M. John-
ston, with whose name the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD are familiar.
In saying this we are comparing them to real masterpieces in their kind.

The locality of the story is in the mountainous country of Tennessee
among the inside barbarians. It is very dramatic. The persons are rude
and ignorant preachers, working-men, illicit distillers, politicians, and wo-
men of the same class, sketched with great individuality of character, in a
graphic manner. Their peculiar lingo is rendered in a way certainly pi-
quant and skilful, we must suppose correct and derived from intimate
knowledge. Their strange talk is moreover original, picturesque, and full
of mother-wit. Among them all, Kelsey the Prophet and Dorinda Cayce
stand out in bold relief as ideal characters. Dorinda especially is an ad-
mirable conception, as perfect as Auerbach's " Barefoot," but of a much
higher kind ; for the religious element is in it, which was absent from Auer-
bach's ideal.

The author excels in describing natural scenery, in landscape and sky-
scape word-painting. Her rude characters live their semi-barbaric life in
a country of wonderfully picturesque beauty, and the description of its
scenery in the story surrounds its narrative and dialogue. This descriptive
environment is genuine poetry in all except its formal arrangement.
Sometimes it is so rhythmical and cadenced that it can easily be put into
the poetic form. Here is one instance from pages 6 and 7 of In the Tennessee
Mountains :

" Lost Creek sounded some broken minor chords,
As it dashed against the rocks in its headlong way.

The wild grapes were blooming. Their fragrance so delicate, yet so pervasive,
Suggested some exquisite presence the dryads were surely abroad !
The pine-knots flamed and glistened under the great wash kettle.
A tree-toad was persistently calling for rain in the dry distance.
The girl, gravely impassive, beat the clothes with the heavy paddle.
Her mother shortly ceased to prod the white heaps in the boiling water,
And presently took up her broken thread otf discourse."

Only two or three words have been changed in the above extract, and
it is plain that such prose could easily be altered by the author into a
poetical form as regular as the metre of Longfellow. We think she will

428 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

find herself too much restricted within the limits of the region she has thus
far occupied, and will have to take a wider range. We heartily wish that
she may accomplish all which seems to be within the scope of her powers.

AMERICA, AND OTHER POEMS. By Henry Hamilton. New York and Lon-
don : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1885.

The author of America, and Other Poems is a sweet singer, and his song
is animated by true poetry and the highest and only philosophy that there
is the love of God in himself and in all his works. In one of the numerous
and admirable sonnets which he groups together under the title " God and
the Soul " he gives apt utterance to the dominant note of his song :

" I love all that is beautiful and fair

The flowers that look into the face of spring ;
And birds when in their leafy bowers they sing ;
The children playing in the balmy air,

" And grazing flocks, and yellow bees that bear
Their honey to the hive, the murmuring
Of waters, fragrant orchards blossoming,
And summer nights when all the heavens are bare.

" But though I love, my heart finds -not repose

In all the glories of the earth and sky :
They are as fleeting as the melting snows,

And rain as homeless winds that round me sigh ;
Past them my yearning soul to God up-glows,

Seeking the beauty which will never die."

A kindred elevated sentiment is expressed in a little hymn which for
its simple beauty is worthy of quotation :

" The child, watching the eagle float

Through heaven's ethereal blue,
With sails out-spread like a fair boat,

Would gladly bid adieu
To earth, and soar through boundless space,
Contending in the tireless race.

" The poet, too, in his high song,

Dreams of the lofty flight
That bears the eagle swift along

Above the mountain height,
Sweeping still on with the glad sun,
Whose godlike course is never run.

" And lovers, when the heart is young,

Long for the dower of wings,
That they may dwell the stars among,

And taste the joy that springs
When tender souls from crowds remote
Together blend and onward float.

" And when sweet music softly steals,

And trembling upward flies,
The heart responsive yearning feels

To mingle with the skies ;
And like harmonious viewless sound,
To rise through the blue deep profound.

1 885.] NEW PUBLICA TIONS. 429

" But blessedness lies not in space ;

And had we wings to soar,
They could not bring us to God's face

Or make us love him more :
Within the living fountain springs
Purer than skies cloven by wings."

Having quoted so much from this poet, we find ourselves in duty bound
to treat our readers to more of his sweet verse, lest we do him and them
the injustice of withholding fairer specimens. We feel his work is genuine
and pure poetry, and the best criticism we can offer of it is to give up some
of our space, that our readers may taste of his sweets as well as ourselves.
Here is a tender baby-song :

' ' See where the bending wheat

Hangs down its heavy head ;
See where the flowers sweet
Droop low above their bed.

" See how the evening dies

And softly sinks to rest ;
See how the bird now flies
To its leaf hidden nest.

" O baby mine, bend now

Thy weary head like wheat :
Like bird on leafy bough,
Slumber my baby sweet ;

" Like flower thy head bow down
Upon thy mother's breast

Sleep, let thy soft crown
Upon my baby rest ! "

We think these extracts are sufficient to justify us in our estimate
of this new singer, whoever he is. But there is one more poem that we
must make room for, since its thought gives us a suggestion of Words-
worth :

" Ah ! no : I will speak true.

When youth's glad spring was near,
And the soft heaven clear,
My happiness I knew ;
And even then I saw
The vision far withdraw
Swift as the morning dew.

" Nor did I ever dream

That days like those return,
However much we yearn
For their ethereal gleam :

1 felt the shadows fall,
I heard the future call,

And saw life's darkling stream.

" O days when orchards' bloom
Was like an angel's smile,
And brightness, mile on mile,
Left not a thought of gloom ;

430 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Dec. ,

When every little flower
And every warm spring shower
Were fragrant with perfume.

" But not for joy like this

Has a man's breast been made ;

To sit in idle shade
Is life's best worth to miss ;

To do the thing we ought

Is price at which is bought
The only lasting bliss.

" I look upon the grave,

Where my sweet youth now lies ;
And lift to God my eyes,
Knowing that he can save.
And this is all I ask :

To do right well the task ,

Which he with life's boon gave."

It must not be inferred that all the poetry in the volume is up to the
above standard. On the contrary, much of it is loose and jejune, the
poem that gives the book its title, " America," being among the worst in
the collection. Nor should it be inferred that the above-quoted pieces are
the best ; they are chosen almost at random. Mr. Hamilton, who publishes
a lot of poems at the one time, possesses a poetic gift of a high order;
but he seems to suffer from the want of the tonic of healthy criticism. Had
he published oftener and in smaller instalments, it might have been better
for his copious but irregular verse.

THE PRINCIPLES OF EXPRESSION IN PIANOFORTE-PLAYING. By Adolph F.
Christiani. New York : Harper & Brothers. 1886.

The author of this book undertakes a very novel and (if he have suc-
ceeded) a very important work. He endeavors to reduce that quality in
musical interpretation called "expression" to a systematic theory with
principles that can be denned and expounded. Expression is usually, but,
as this author asserts, erroneously, held to be a manifestation of feeling
only, in the regulation of which the intelligence plays but little part. To
perform music with true expression requires a special gift of nature, and
no one can teach this art of expression ; the best that can be done is, by
illustration, to show when playing has expression and when it has not.
This is the generally-accepted view, and the leading teachers of both
Europe and this country have up to this had to be content with it. Mr.
Christiani takes issue with this opinion. He holds that intelligence, not
feeling, is the chief requirement in expression ; that expression is based
upon principles, and not merel)' upon emotional impulse or individual
taste ; and that the laws of expression can be learned and obeyed with
certain limitations even as other laws of musical interpretation.

All teachers and students of the pianoforte must prick their ears at
hearing of these revolutionary sentiments sentiments which convey to
them the promise of an inestimable boon. Does Mr. Christiani substantiate
his claim to render expression teachable ? We have examined his able trea-
tise carefully, and it is our opinion for what that opinion may be worth

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 431

that he does substantiate his claim. The clearness of this author's reason-
ing has strongly impressed us ; the attractiveness of his style no less. We
have never met a musical work which, dealing so largely with technicality
and keeping itself so rigidly to business, had more power to interest and
carry along the lay reader. The uninitiated layman can follow its argu-
ment as easily as the trained theorist or the professional musician. For
the benefit of our many readers who are interested in all that concerns the
most popular of musical instruments, an outline of this new view upon
pianoforte-playing may not be out of place. The truly artistic pianist,
says Mr. Christiani, must have four special endowments namely, talent,
emotion, intelligence, and technique. Talent and technique are always
indispensable to expressive playing, but a performer may be able to play
with expression and yet be either wanting in emotion or wanting in in-
telligence. This causes Mr. Christiani to divide expression into three
classes : i. Where there is emotion without intelligence ; 2. Where there
is intelligence without emotion; and 3. Where there are both emotion
and intelligence together. Expression depending on emotion solely is a
thing of impulse, at its best but " the fitful effort of exaggerated sensi-
bility." Expression depending solely on the intelligence is fine, scholarly,
clear, and enlightened, but cold. It takes the two elements in combi-
nation to produce the only kind of expression which is perfect, which
is artistic. Purely emotional expression cannot be taught, of course, but
purely intellectual expression may, and emotion, when it is found co-
existing with intelligence, may be stimulated and directed to the right
service of art. It is intellectual expression that Mr. Christiani undertakes
to teach. He lays down the laws of accents the main ingredients of ex-
pression in an exhaustive and amply-illustrated treatise, and shows, with
notable intelligibility for so subtle a theme, the true value of accents in
pianoforte-playing, and when, where, why, and how accents ought to be
given. This is the first time this task has been attempted in any work on
music that we are aware of. Mr. Christiani further deals with the functions
of dynamics and time in subserving the ends of musical expression. On
the whole he has accomplished a work of the highest service to the vota-
ries of the pianoforte, has revolutionized, in fact, one vital branch of musical
interpretation. He has reduced almost to an exact science one of the lead-
ing elements of artistic pianoforte-playing an element that had hitherto
been left to be acquired with the aid only of hap-hazard suggestion and
untutored intuition. There can be no question that the writer of this able
book leaves students of the pianoforte under a rare obligation.

THE BOY-TRAVELLERS IN SOUTH AMERICA. By Thomas W. Knox. Illus-
trated. New York : Harper & Brothers. 1886.

Mr. Knox has earned the gratitude of the present generation of boys
by the series of books in which he has described for them the wanderings
about the globe of his pair of boy-travellers, Frank Bassett and Fred
Bronson, with their mentor, Dr. Bronson. Already Mr. Knox's boys have
been all over the far East and up even to the Arctic Circle. He now brings
them to South America, and they traverse the length and breadth of that
wonderful continent, seeing most of the strange things and strange people
that are to be seen there by sea and shore, in city and in desert. They

43 2 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec., 1885.

inspect the Panama Canal and pass through the Strait of Magellan, they
cross the Andes and descend the Amazon, navigate the La Plata and Para-
guay, visit the principal cities and study, like good boys, the " manners and
customs " of the various peoples they come across on their way. The
book is copiously and well illustrated, hardly a page being without its
" picture," so dear to the heart of the school-boy.

THE LIFE OF FATHER ISAAC JOGUES, Missionary Priest of the Society of
Jesus, slain by the Mohawk Indians in the present State of New York,
Oct. 18, 1646. By the Rev. Felix Martin, SJ. With Father Jogues' ac-
count of the captivity and death of his companion, Rene Goupil, slain
Sept. 29, 1642. Translated from the French by John Gilmary Shea.
With a map of the Mohawk Country, by Gen. John S. Clark. New

, York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis : Benziger Brothers, printers to the
Holy Apostolic See.

Having read pretty much all that has been written about Father Jogues,
we did not expect that another biography of him would seem fresh and
vivid to us. But this one, translated by Mr. Gilmary Shea and enriched
by his learned notes, has made that impression on us. We have read every
word of it with interest. We sincerely hope that Mr. Shea will give us yet
more on this and kindred topics, for his book cannot help being most ac-
ceptable to a discerning public. It is intensely interesting to read such
exciting adventures, undertaken solely for God's glory and in behalf of
perhaps the most savage tribes known to history. The romance of reli-
gious heroism in its most attractive form is here displayed, inspiring the
reader with generous emulation, or at least a deep sentiment of veneration.

FACTS OF FAITH ; or, First Lessons in Christianity. Compiled by the
Rev. A. Bromley Crane, of St. Wilfrid's College, Cotton, Cheadle, Eng-
land. London : Burns & Gates; New York : The Catholic Publication
Society Co. 1885.

A valuable book of reference for one who needs to answer questions
about the faith tersely and clearly. Worthy of a large circulation.

MEDITATIONS ON THE MYSTERIES OF THE HOLY ROSARY. From the
French of Father Monsabre, O.P., by V. Rev. Stephen Byrne, O.P.
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1885.

This little book will serve admirably for a more devout saying of the
beads. It is suggestive of good thoughts and resolutions, and will help to
deepen our love for the holy mysteries of the Rosary.

LITTLE MONTH OF THE SOULS IN PURGATORY. Translated from the
French of the author of Golden Sands. By Miss Ella McMahon. New
York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis: Benziger Brothers.

We are glad to see books of this kind which refer to the other world,
because in this country we are not disposed to think too much of the other
world. We thank the author for writing it, the translator for translating
it, and the publishers for publishing it. Such books of devotion at once
solid and pious cannot be too much multiplied. God bless all who are con-
cerned in its publication !

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLII. JANUARY, 1886. No. 250.

THE CHRISTMAS ROSE.

O ROSE of Sharon ! this thy day of glory

Fills all our hearts with sunshine ; gone is gloom,

And from our raptured lips bursts the sweet story
Of how thou, Rose of roses, cam'st to bloom.

A bud thou wert when Gabriel out of heaven
Came, bending low before thee, Humblest Heart,

And told thee of the Gift to thee God-given
" Thou among women, Mary, blessed art !"

And through the spring of the Annunciation,

And through the summer, grew thy Hope and Joy.

God gave thee peace for will's renunciation
His great, sweet peace, pure gold without alloy.

The summer passed ; like swift-winged doves the days flew,
Fierce floods had gone, filled was each rippled spring,

And August heat had long dried up the May's dew :
The Life within thine grew O wondrous thing !

O Mystic Rose ! O Rose of Joy and Sorrow !

What peace, what love abode with thee and thine !
Stretched happy days to-morrow and to-morrow

For thee, God's handmaid with his Son Divine.

434 A STILL CHRISTMAS. [Jan.,

Christ was within thee, House of Gold, in splendor,
And in thy fragrance lay He day and night.

Most sweet thy heart, and humble, and most tender ;
And day by day thy petals saw the light.

The cold winds blew, and at the wells in winter
The housewives shivered, and spoke of the cold,

And of the needful fire of chip and splinter,
And of the sheep that huddled in the fold.

Ah ! suddenly, when all the world was flowerless,
Ah ! suddenly, when dark was winter's gloom,

And the poor earth was lying robbed and dowerless,
The Rose of Sharon burst in fullest bloom.

A STILL CHRISTMAS.

IT was Christmas eve in the year of our Lord 1653. The
snow, which had fallen fitfully throughout the day, shrouded in
white the sloping roofs and narrow London streets, and lay in
little, sparkling heaps on every jutting cornice or narrow window-
ledge where it could find a resting-place. But in the west the
setting sun shone clearly, firing the steeples into sudden glory
and gilding every tiny pane of glass that faced its dying splen-
dor. The thoroughfares were strangely silent and deserted.
The roving groups that had been wont at this season to fill them
with boisterous merriment, the noise, the bustle, the good cheer
of Christmas all were lacking. No maskers roamed from street
to street, jingling their bells, beating their mighty drums, and
bidding the delighted crowd to make way for the Lord of Mis-
rule. No shouts of " Noel ! Noel ! " rang through the frosty
air. No children gathered round their neighbors' doors, singing
quaint carols and forgotten glees, and bearing off rich guerdon in
the shape of apples, nuts, and substantial Christmas buns. In
place of the old-time gayety a dreary silence reigned through the
deserted highways, and down the narrow footwalk, with even
step and half-shut eyes, tramped the Puritan herald, ringing his
bell and proclaiming ever and anon in measured tones : " No
Christmas ! No Christmas ! No Christmas ! "

In sober and sad-hued garments was the herald arrayed, with
leathern boots that defied the snow, and a copious mantle envel-

1 8 36.] A STILL CHRISTMAS. 435

oping his sturdy frame. Now and then he stopped to warn a
couple of belated idlers that they would do well to separate and
go quietly to their homes. Now and then a little child peeped
at him timorously from a doorway, and, overawed by his sombre
aspect and heavy frown, retreated rapidly to hide its fears in the
safe shelter of its mother's gown. Men shook their heads as he
went by, and muttered something that was not always compli-
mentary to his presence ; and women shrugged their shoulders
and sighed, and thought, perchance, of other Christmases in the
past, with Yule-logs burning on the hearth and stray kisses
snatched beneath the mistletoe. From a latticed window a girl's
face peered at him with such a light of laughing malice in the
brown eyes that the Puritan, catching sight of their wicked
gleam, paused a moment, as though to reprove the maiden for
her forwardness or to inquire what mischief was afoot under this
humble roof. But the night was growing chill, and he had still
far to go. It might not be worth while to waste words of coun-
sel on one so evidently godless; and, with a heavier scowl than
usual, he tramped on, swinging his bell with lusty force. " No
Christmas ! No Christmas ! " echoed through the darkening
streets, and as he passed the girl contracted her features into a
grimace that would have done credit to the wide-mouthed gar-
goyle of a Gothic cathedral.

" Cicely, Cicely !" cried a voice at this juncture from within,
" close the shutters, do, and come and help me."

Cicely, who had been inclined to stare out a little longer, shot
the heavy oaken bolt into its socket, and, opening a door leading
to the inner room, disclosed a scene whose ruddy cheerfulness
shone all the brighter in contrast to the dreary streets outside.
A mighty bunch of fagots blazed and crackled on the hearth, and
above the carved chimney-place hung branches of holly, their
scarlet berries glowing deeply in the firelight. In one corner,
half-veiled by a tapestry curtain, a waxen Bambino nestled in
its little manger, while before it burned a small copper lamp.
Wreaths of holly and ivy bedecked the doors, and, standing
tip-toed on a tall wooden chair, a young girl was even now striv-
ing to fasten these securely with the aid of a very old and wrin-
kled woman, who seemed more competent to admire than to assist
the undertaking.

" Some bigger berries, pray, Catherine," she said impatiently ;
" and, Cicely, if you feel you have loitered enough, hand me those
two long ivy branches. They should droop gracefully so ! And
now stand off a little way, and tell me how it looks."

436 A STILL CHRISTMAS. [Jan.,

The younger sister obeyed, and, stationing- herself in the mid-
dle of the room, surveyed the whole effect with much approval.
Annis, her fair face flushed with the exertion, balanced herself on
her lofty perch and gazed complacently upon her handiwork;
while even Mistress Vane, who had been seated quietly on a deep
chair by the fireplace, roused herself as from a reverie, and looked
half-wistfully around the cheerful room. " What bell was that I
heard just now ? " she asked.

" The herald's, proclaiming a still Christmas," answered Cicely
promptly ; " and he watched me as sourly as though he knew that
we were plotting treason."

" Cecil, Cecil ! " remonstrated her mother in alarm. " Surely
you did nothing imprudent."

" I ? " returned Cicely, apparently oblivious as to what she had
done. " I cast up the whites of my eyes, as though repeating
psalms for mine own inward sustainment; and seeing me so pi-
ously disposed, he was fain to pass on to the correction of greater
sinners."

" That were well-nigh impossible," said her sister, laughing ;

but Mistress Vane only looked anxious and disturbed. The sense

of insecurity to which Annis was indifferent, and which Cicely at

fourteen found absolutely amusing, weighed heavily on the older

woman, who had a better understanding of the danger, and who

had suffered cruelly in the past. Husband and son had fallen for

a lost cause, confiscation had devoured the larger portion of her

once fair inheritance ; and now, with her two young daughters,

she found herself beset by perils, harassed by stringent laws, and

at the mercy of any ill-wind fate might blow her. Cromwell's

mighty arm held the fretful country in subjection, making the

name of England great and terrible abroad, and silencing every

whisper of disaffection at home. The Puritans in their hour of

triumph stamped upon the land the impress of their strong and

bitter individuality ; and a morose asceticism, part real and part

affected, crushed out of life all the innocent pleasure of living.

With every man determined to be better than his neighbor, the

competition in saintliness ran high. Under its vigorous stimulus

the May-pole and the Yule-log were alike branded as heathenish

observances, the Christmas-pie became a " pye of abomination,"

and all amusements, from the drama to bear-baiting, were censured

with impartial severity. Feast-days were abolished, and even to

display the emblems of the Nativity was held to be sedition. The

Established Church, cowed and shorn of its splendor, was treated

with surly contempt; the Catholics were altogether beyond the

i886.] A STILL CHRISTMAS. 437

pale of charity. It was not a time calculated to promote festivity ;
yet while the heralds proclaimed through the frosty streets that
Christmas at last was dead, Annis Vane, with holly and ivy, with
Yule-dough and Babie-cake, was making all things ready for its
mysterious birth. And as she worked she sang softly under her
breath the refrain of a carol she had learned at her nurse's knee :

"This endris night

I saw a sight,
A star as bright as day ;

And ever among

A maiden sung
Lullay, by-by, lullay."

" Is it not strange, mother," she said, breaking suddenly off,
" that men should deem it a mark of holiness to cast derision on
the birth-night of their Saviour ? "

" Let us be just even to our enemies," replied Mistress Vane
gently. " They think not to deride the Nativity, so much as to
condemn the riotous fashion in which Christians were wont to
keep the feast. There have been times, Annis, when the Lord of
Misrule did more discredit to this holy season than does the Puri-
tan to-day."

Annis opened her blue eyes to their very utmost. This view
of the matter was one she was hardly prepared to accept. " Why,
dearest mother," she protested, " when should we venture to be
happy, if not on Christmas day ? And how can we show ourselves
too joyful for our salvation ? And did not his most blessed Ma-
jesty King Charles knight with his own royal hand a Lord of Mis-
rule who held court in the Middle Temple?"

Mistress Vane smiled at her daughter's vehemence. She knew
more about these jovial monarchs and their courts than Annis did,
and it may even be that his most blessed majesty's approval car-
ried less weight to her experienced mind. But in these dark and
chilly days a little enthusiasm was helpful in keeping one's heart
warm, and she was far too wise a mother to disparage it. " Truly
they made a brave show then upon Christmas day," she admitted,
" for the lord mayor and his corporation, a goodly company of
gentlemen, rode in procession to the church of St. Thomas Aeon,
and thence to dine together with many pleasant ceremonies.
And stoups of wine and huge venison pasties were despatched to
the Temple for the stay and comfort of the mock-court, who made
merry all day long. And the streets were crowded far into the
night with maskers and revellers ; and even the poor might for

438 A STILL C&KISTMAS. [Jan.,

once forget their poverty, and were welcome to the brawn and
plum-broth of their richer neighbors."

\" And now we have nothing of all this ! " cried Cicely, with pas-
sionate regret. " Nothing to look at and nothing to hear, save the
cracked bell of a dingy herald, who does not even ride a hobby-
horse like the merry heralds of old. In truth, Master Prynne
hath made good his own words when he holds that Christmas
should be rather a day of mourning than one of rejoicing."

" Not so thought my godfather, kind Master Breton," said
Annis thoughtfully. " For he hath written that it is the duty of
Christians to rejoice for the remembrance of Christ and for the
maintenance of good-fellowship. 'I hold it/ he hath said, 'a
memory of the Heaven's love and the world's peace, the mirth of
the* honest and the meeting of the friendly/ "

Cicely's eyes danced with glee. " That were well remem-
bered," she said mockingly ; " if now you can but tell us in
turn what your godfather's nephew, Captain Rupert Breton,
hath thought upon the matter."

Annis flushed scarlet, and the quick tears welled into her eyes
as she turned them reproachfully upon her sister. It was not
easy for her to think of her absent lover and maintain the cheer-
ful frame of mind she deemed appropriate to the season. The
shores of France seemed very far away that night, and the long
months that had elapsed since the defeat at Worcester stretched
backward like a lifetime, as she recalled his last hurried farewell.
He had ridden hard and risked much for those few words, and
patiently and bravely she had waited ever since, hoping, praying,
turning her face steadily to the brighter side, and keeping ever in
mind the happy hour which should reunite them to each other.
Now in silence she bound together the last green boughs and put
all in order for the night. Old Catherine had long since gone off,
yawning and blinking, to bed, and Cicely, half-asleep, nodded over
the dying fire. Only her mother watched her, with eyes of loving
scrutiny, and Annis smiled brightly as she kissed the careworn
face. "I shall not cry myself to sleep to-night," she said reso-
lutely. " This is a time for gladness ; for the star of Bethlehem is
shining in the sky, and the birth of the Lord is at hand."

Bright glowed the Christmas-logs on the capacious hearth
till every pointed leaf and scarlet holly-berry shone in the gen-
erous firelight.

" Whosoever against holly do cry
In a rope shall be hung full high."

1 886.] A STILL CHRISTMAS. 439

For when the oak and ash trees babbled to the wind and be-
trayed the Saviour's hiding-place, the holly, the ivy, and the
pine kept the secret hidden in their silent hearts ; and for this
good deed they stand green and living under winter's icy breath,
while their companions shiver naked in the blast. Not till the
risen sun has danced on Easter morn shall the oak adorn a Chris-
tian household and prove itself forgiven. The Christmas-pie
the Christ-cradle, as the Saxons used to call it had been baked in
its oblong dish in memory of the manger at Bethlehem, with the
star of the Magi cut deeply in the swelling crust. The Yule-
dough, cunningly moulded into the likeness of a little babe, had
been carefully laid by as a sovereign protector from the evils of fire,
floods, carnage, and so say some ancient writers from the bite
of rabid dogs. Annis Vane, decked out in the bravest array her
altered fortunes would permit, knelt by the blazing hearth. Her
ruff was of the finest lace, and a row of milk-white pearls clasped
her slender throat. She shaded her face from the fire, and piled
up shining cones of bright-brown nuts that seemed to tempt the
flames.

" All we lack now is the mistletoe," she said half-despondent-
ly. " It was no easy task to find the holly and bring it home un-
noticed ; but we cannot gather mistletoe near London, and there
is none for sale throughout the city."

" Of what use is the mistletoe," said the practical Cicely,
" when we are but three women here alone ? We can kiss each
other as readily under a sprig of ivy, and we can fire our nuts
without the help of man or lad, provided only we keep one in
our minds. Of whom shall I think, Annis?" she queried, wrink-
ling up her pretty forehead in anxious perplexity over so disturb-
ing a doubt.

" You are far too young to think of men at all," answered An-
nis reprovingly, and with all the conscious superiority of age.
" Nor do you know enough as yet to make such pastime profit-
able."

Cicely's brows drew together with a frown which plainly in-
dicated the nature of the retort upon her lips, but a glance from
her mother checked her. " The word uttered in vexation is bet-
ter left unspoken," said Mistress Vane, with gentle authority.
" And I am waiting here, not to listen to disputes, which in these
stormy times have grown wearisome, but to hear the Christmas
carol promised me to-night."

Annis, with flushed cheeks, took down from the wall a little
mandolin of Spanish workmanship, and, striking a few chords,

44 A STILL CHRISTMAS. [Jan.,

began the carol, in which Cicely, after sacrificing some moments
to ill-temper, concluded presently to join, her clear flute-notes
rising high above her sister's weaker tones :

" When Christ was born of Mary free,
In Bethlehem, in that fair citie,
Angels sungen with mirth and glee,
In Excelsis Gloria !

" Herdsmen beheld these angels bright
To them appeared with great light,
And said, God's Son is born this night
In Excelsis Gloria !

" The King is comen to save kind,
Even in Scripture as we find ;
Therefore this song have we in mind,
In Excelsis Gloria !

" Then, dear Lord, for thy great grace,
Grant us in bliss to see thy face,
Where we may sing to thee solace,
In Excelsis Gloria ! "

As the sounds died into silence there stood one in the icy
streets and listened. No self-elected saint was he, scenting out
treason to the Commonwealth, but a Cavalier from France, with
his love-locks shorn for sweet prudence* sake, and a mighty mantle
enveloping him from head to foot. If Annis Vane had waited
and hoped and built up her faith in the cheer of Christmas night,
the joy she coveted was very near at last. After lingering a
few moments, as though on the chance of hearing more, the
stranger advanced and knocked sharply at the heavily-barred
door. It was opened in due season and with great caution by
old Catherine, who evidently thought the hour ill-chosen for a
new-comer, and mistrusted sorely the purpose of his visit. He
allowed her scant time, however, to threaten or expostulate, but,
putting her gently on one side, stepped to the inner room.
There, pale with anxiety and terror, Mistress Vane leant forward
in her chair, while Cicely, half-frightened, half-defiant, grasped
her mother's skirt. Before the fire stood Annis, her blue eyes
shining like stars, a round red spot burning feverishly in each
cheek, her lace ruff rising and falling distressfully with the heav-
ing bosom within. The mandolin had fallen from her hands ;
the ruddy firelight lit up her slight figure and fair, disordered
curls. She stood thus for a moment, swaying breathless be

1 886.] A STILL CHRISTMAS. 441

tvvixt hope and fear, then, with a low, joyous cry, sprang forward
into her lover's arms. .

Welcome now the good cheer of Christmas night ! Welcome
the Christmas-pie, the pasty of venison, the pudding stuffed with
plums, and the flagon of old wine. Love is a brave appetizer
when backed by long fasting and a ten hours' ride, and Captain
Breton brought all the vigor of youth and happiness and of a
noble hunger to bear upon the viands. The glow of the cheer-
ful room was infinitely comforting to the tired traveller; the sight
of Annis* happy face put fresh hope and courage in his heart.
He had much to tell of the gay court of France, and of the royal
exile, who should one day, God willing, sit on his father's throne.
Nor were there lacking adventures and dangers of his own to
give flavor to the narrative, nor plans for the future, colored with
all the happy confidence of youth. He had come home to win
his bride, and to carry her away to brighter scenes until this
soured and gloomy England should be merr.ie England once more.
" He who would keep a light heart within London walls," said
he, " must needs be very sure of heaven, as are Master Prynne
and Master Philip Stubbes, or very much in love, as am I. It
lacks but a covered cart and a bell in every street to make one
feel the Black Death is upon us. If you can laugh in such an at-
mosphere of melancholy, Annis, what will you do in France ? "

" Mayhap if I laugh enough in sober London I shall grow too
giddy and forward in foolish France," returned Annis gaily ;
" unless"

" Unless what, dear heart ? "

" Unless while I am safe in Paris you are fighting the battles
of the king in England. Then tears will come easier than laugh-
ter, as in truth they have done of late."

" Wherever I may be, your prayers will prove my bulwark,"
said Captain Breton confidently. " It would take more than a
silver bullet to find its way to my heart while you are besieging
heaven's doors in the tumultuous fashion that only women can
attain. I bear a charmed life as long as you remember your pe-
titions."

Annis answered with a look, and Cicely, nestling by her mo-
ther's chair, watched her sister with wide, serious eyes. To the
child standing on the threshold of womanhood the presence of
love carries with it an intoxicating flavor of mystery. It is
something that fills her alike with envy and a vague resentment,
with wonder and an indefinable desire. Its commonest expres-
sion is a perverse antipathy to one of the lovers, with an irra-

442 A ~STILL CHRISTMAS. [Jan.,

tional increase of affection for the other; and in this case Captain
Breton came in for his full share ol Cicely's smothered anger and
disdain. He, meanwhile, in happy unconsciousness, chancing to
meet the brown eyes lifted dreamily to his own, and noting the
upward curve of the short, sweet lip, thought within himself that
this elfish little Cicely was growing almost as pretty as her sister
a judgment which proves conclusively the blindness of love ; for
Annis, though fair and comely to look upon, carne no nearer to
her young sister's beauty than does the pink-tipped daisy to the
half-opened rose-bud uncurling slowly in the sun. At present
the girl, seeing that she was watched, turned away her head pet-
tishly and eyed the leaping flames.

" Annis said to-night there was but one thing lacking to her
Christmas cheer," she remarked after a pause, and with the too
evident intention of saying something vexatious.

" And that was I ! " interposed the Cavalier, with the ready
assurance of a lover.

" It was not you at all," returned Cicely, " but the mistletoe.
We gathered the other greens ourselves, but there was no
mistletoe to be found within or without the gates of London."

" By a happy chance we can procee'd as though we had it,"
said Captain Breton contentedly, while Annis crimsoned like a
rose. " It is a welcome little plant, and carries a merry message ;
but if it be banished in these saintly days we obstinate sinners
must kiss without its sanction."

" But the maid who is not kissed on Christmas night beneath
the mistletoe will never be a wife during the coming year," per-
sisted Cicely, who had laid down her line of attack and was not
to be driven therefrom.

" Now, will you wager your ring or your new ear-drop on
that, little sister? " said the captain, laughing at the threat. " Or
have you a trinket that you value less to risk in such a cause ? "

Cicely, deeply affronted, puckered up her brow and drew
closer to her mother; but Annis, far too happy to be vexed,
leant over and kissed the pouting lips. With her, joy meant
thanksgiving, and her heart was singing singing the song of
the angel of Judea : " In Excelsis Gloria! "

v^tw &,

mJfc-

1886.] A TOUR mffr^Lic TEUTONIA. 443

A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA.

THE Rhineland, Bavaria, Austria, and German Switzerland
are, of all countries peopled by Teutonic races, the most full of
interest for the Catholic traveller. In Germany and Switzerland
he may witness inspiriting results due to the Kulturkampf perse-
cution, while in Austria he may contemplate unique examples of
the survival to our own day of religious institutions which were
already flourishing at a time when Gothic cathedrals and bare-
footed friars lay undreamed of in the womb of a remote future.

On the great grouse festival of the present year (August 12,
1885) we started from London to visit places which for a quarter
of a century we had desired to see, but which recent political and
religious struggles and the dangers of future revolutionary legis-
lation had made yet more interesting and desirable to visit.

Rapidly passing by Brussels, Koln, and Mainz, our first halt
was made at the capital and seat of the venerable and renowned
ptrince-bishopric of Wiirzburg.

After leaving Mainz the line, passing by Darmstadt, traverses
a flat and uninteresting country (only the hills north of the Main
being visible in the distance) till Aschaffenburg is approached,
when it becomes undulating and woody, and then the road makes
a steep ascent amidst fir-clad mountains relics of the great Hyr-
canian forest described by Julius Cassar. Towards the summit
is a long tunnel (which even first-class passengers have to tra-
verse in darkness), and then begins a rapid descent, first by the
river Lohr and then the Main, to Wiirzburg, which was reached
at 2.34 P.M., Koln having been left at 6.5 A.M. As the city is ap-
proached the traveller is struck by the enormous quantity of
vineyards on every side, and which gives to the surrounding
hills, when viewed from the city, the appearance of having been
clothed with some textile fabric covered all over with gigantic
but admirably-executed "darning." The low grounds about are
occupied largely with the famed Bavarian hops, not growing on
poles only, as in England, but also extending horizontally round
small cords attached to the summits of their supports.

The view of the old episcopal city, with its many spires and
towers, is picturesque and attractive, and on entering within its
bright and clean appearance confirms the good impression pro-
duced by its external aspect. We went to the Kronprinz Hotel,

444 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Jan.,

admirably situated opposite the Residenz, or palace of the prince-
bishops. For a room on the first floor, facing south and looking
into a garden and towards part of the Residenz, the charge was
two and a half marks. The table d'hote was three marks, one
mark for a breakfast of coffee and bread and butter, and one-half
a mark a day for attendance.

The first visit to be paid was, of course, that to the cathedral
a very ancient and originally Romanesque structure, which yet
preserves externally some of its old architectural features, but
which is entirely transformed within by elaborate stucco addi-
tions in the taste of the eighteenth century, and is ablaze with
gilding. The floor of the choir and transepts is raised to a con-
siderably higher level than that of the nave. Prince-bishops
ruled in Wiirzburg for more than a thousand years, and their
monuments, like those of the archbishops of Mainz, are set against
the sides of the pillars of the nave, save the west side of each,
which is occupied by an altar. As at Mainz, the successive
monuments exhibit (but to not so great a degree) the changing
taste of succeeding centuries, but the great majority consist of
erect, life-size figures in stone in high relief, vested for Mass, and,
although only bishops, yet with a pallium-like ornament above
the neck, but bearing some inscription instead of the crosses of a
pallium. Almost all have a sword, symbolical of their temporal
jurisdiction, in their right hand, and a crosier in their left. The
figure of the earliest monument, however, that of A.D. 1190, has
no sword. That next in date (1198) has a sword, but it lies
against the bishop's chasuble and is not grasped by him. But
the next bishop, and each of the long line of bishops which fol-
low till modern times, firmly grasps his temporal weapon. The
figure of one late prince-bishop has much resemblance to Cardi-
nal Richelieu ; it is supported by two weeping cherubs, one of
whom holds his ducal-electoral crown and the other his mitre.
Somewhat droll, and yet pathetic, is the monument of a bishop
who died in 1780. He is only represented by his bust, which,
however, instead of having an appearance of passive repose,
turns the face, with a deprecating expression, upwards to a
great figure of Time who is about to place a cloth over it ;
and one cannot but pity the poor bishop, who has got no arms
wherewith to push the obnoxious cloth away ! There are three
monuments to bishops since the Revolution one to the bishop
who died at Rome during the Vatican Council.

There are also many figures of canons (and a few of bishops
also) in bronze, in low relief, and the cloisters of the cathedral are

i886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 445

rich in sepulchral monuments. At present the cathedral is pro-
vided with ten canons. Vespers, however, are only sung on Sun-
days and great feasts, the office otherwise being recited in mono-
tone.

The chancel, or choir, is separated off by an iron screen, and a
rood (without the Mary and John) is suspended over it from the
ceiling. The walls of the choir are all white and gold. The
worldliness of the eighteenth century makes itself plainly mani-
fest in the decorations. Over two of the altars are the coats of
arms of prince-bishops, with their crests on helmets. One has
seven helmets, each with a crest, save the middle one, which
bears his mitre. The high-altar itself has a baldacchino, which
is surmounted, and almost crushed, by a gigantic ducal-electoral
crown. Towards the west end of the nave is an ancient bronze
font very well deserving careful inspection.

Next in interest to the episcopal church, as left us by its
prince-bishops, is their own former stately palace. The existing
bishops inhabit a modest house near the east end of the cathe-
dral. Their princely predecessors inhabited a " Residenz " which
is a miniature Versailles. Most magnificent is its entrance-hall,
into which carriages can drive and set down at the foot of a truly
regal staircase. Its painted ceiling represents one of the prince-
bishops that is, his portrait in a frame with wig and bands,
being carried upwards to Apollo enthroned aloft. Some of the
bishops' rooms are said to retain their ancient furniture, and one
is entirely, lined with looking-glass, in part painted over with
flowers and birds. The portraits of most of the bishops are very
dignified, and several are represented habited in a black cassock
with a royal mantle, lined with ermine, over it. The rest of the
rooms are furnished in the style of the first Napoleon. Gardens,
partly in the French and partly in the English style, adjoin the
palace, ornamented with mythological statues in the taste of the
eighteenth century. They are now open to the public, and a
military band plays there several times a week.

Wiirzburg has not been so long under the sway of its prince-
bishops in vain. It is a very Catholic city as much so as
Munich, or even more so. There are Madonnas and statues of
St. John Nepomuk outside the houses at every turn, and they are
all in good condition and seem well looked after. The city con-
tains Capuchins, Conventual Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augus-
tinians. The last-named make use of the ancient Dominican
church and monastery, but the Conventual Fathers, of whom
there are about a dozen, inhabit a house which has been theirs,

446 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Jan.,

though rebuilt, since the days of St. Francis himself. Their old
Gothic church has been of late rather well restored and deco-
rated. The interior of the Carmelite church is repulsive from
the dolls in glass cases and other analogous objects of a degraded
taste. A church close beside the cathedral has a very interesting
crypt, in daily use, in which St. Kilian is said to be buried.
Most of the churches are overloaded with gilding, applied in
large masses, and some are quite dazzling. The most interesting
and beautiful is the Marienkapelle, in the market-place. It is
an elegant mediaeval structure of the last pointed style. It has a
beautiful spire of stone tracery, and a curious open-work stair-
turret is placed externally at the angle between the chancel and
the nave, on the south side. Within the tall pillars have no capi-
tals, but are surrounded by images of saints a little below the
position where capitals would ordinarily be placed. The chancel
is separated from the nave by an open iron screen, above which a
rood is suspended.

The city is surrounded by pleasant garden-walks in the place
of fortifications. The handsome stone bridge which spans the
Main supports a dozen stone effigies larger than life. They
mostly represent saints, of which one is St. Frederick, and an-
other, of course, St. John Nepomuk.

An immense mass of building, which was formerly the semi-
.nary and the Jesuits' establishment, is now the university and
library. Science is well represented at Wiirzburg, which enjoys
the advantage of professors no less eminent than Kolliker,
Semper, and Sachs.

On the morning of the feast of the Assumption we hastened
to the Marienkapelle, where, we were told, the bishop would sing
High Mass at eight o'clock. We found it but three parts filled,
there being still vacant places on the comfortable benches. Here,
as in the other churches, they had both backs and kneeling-boards
a long spittoon, filled with sawdust, extending in every case in
front of the kneeling-board for its whole length ! Punctually the
bishop arrived and the church became crowded. He is a strong,
rather young-looking man, with a typical German countenance.
Only a single priest descended to the door to receive him, and
the Mass turned out to be merely a low one, said by the bishop
and accompanied by congregational singing in German.

The cathedral High Mass was at nine o'clock. There was an
assistant priest in cope, as well as deacon and subdeacon. Five
canons assisted in the stalls, but no minor ecclesiastics, so that
the great choir had a very deserted appearance. The singing

1 886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 447

took place in a gallery on the east side of the north transept, and
women bore part in it. The rite was purely Roman, save that
the deacon sang- the Gospel from a lectern placed medianly,
standing with his back to the congregation. The latter filled all
the benches of the nave, but plenty of standing-room was unoccu-
pied. A Missa cantata, with good music, was sung at the chapel
of the Residenz at half-past ten.

The road from Wiirzburg to Nuremberg is uninteresting, and
the traveller will do well to make use of the evening for that
journey. It is true that at Kitzingen, which is much elevated, a
good view may be obtained of the windings of the Main, and
there is a considerable amount of forest ; but it is all pine, and
therefore monotonous, and the trees are almost all slender and
insignificant. Nuremberg has a bad sanitary reputation, and is
said to contain almost as many cesspools as houses. The careful
traveller may, then, follow our example and put up at the Wiirtem-
berger Hof, close to the railway station and just outside the city
walls. But Nuremberg has also a great reputation as an old
mediaeval city surviving all but unchanged ; and it is true that
this is deserved with respect to certain buildings notably St.
Lawrence's Church, and fragments of the old city walls, and towers
with high roofs covered with red tiles. Nevertheless Nurem-
berg, as a whole, is now so modernized as to be disappointing to
the lover of old ways. Its wide, newly-built suburbs quite over-
power the old central core of the city, and even the latter is now
much modified. Its modernization was especially marked at the
period of our visit. A great universal exhibition of medals
(which had filled all the inns) was being held every day, while
every evening a concert took place in its adjoining gardens,
illuminated by the electric light. On listening beneath that light
to airs of Meyerbeer and Wagner, within view of some of the old
city's towers and spires, one could not but be impressed with a
sense of the mutability of human life, and feel that mediaeval times
were indeed distant from us. But while thinking on the changes
with a certain sadness, supported by the phenomena around, the
moon suddenly emerged from a cloud and shone brilliantly over
the whole scene. Immediately the conditions and events which
before seemed so remote became but matters of yesterday ; for
what was the oldest antiquity of mediaeval times compared to the
abyss of the ages which have elapsed since that luminous but
dead and drear satellite was a living world with its winds and
waves, and probably an abode of life ?

Sunday was our only day for visiting the sights of the city,

448 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Jan.,

and any traveller so circumstanced should know that the beauti-
ful old churches of St. Lawrence and St. Sebald cannot be seen
after nine o'clock till their Protestant service is over. The for-
mer church is more interesting than words can express, and it is
well worth a journey from London to Nuremberg to see it alone.
It is a most wonderful instance of "survival" a mediaeval
Catholic church perfectly preserved in its primitive state, as it
were fossilized !

The crosses and candlesticks, and even the cloths, remain
upon all the altars, as do all the images in their niches, with their
lamps before them. The rood is most beautiful, and the curious,
more than life size, hanging figure of the Annunciation is, we
believe, umque. But these and the wonderful sacraments-house
are described in all the guide-books. There is a little renaissance
work, showing the last efforts of Catholic zeal before the Reforma-
tion movement, so blighting to religion, but so fortunate so far as
concerns the preservation unchanged of these Nuremberg fossils.
St. Sebald's Church has a nave of very early pointed architec-
ture, interesting from having a western apse and altar. The
well-known and beautiful shrine of St. Sebald, where his relics
still repose, had all its candles lighted during the Protestant ser-
vice. This very surprising phenomenon (and perhaps also that
of the many candles alight on the altar) was explained to us as a
practice due to its being a legal condition for the holding of cer-
tain property. It is not probable, however, that it is any such
condition which causes the Madonnas of the street-corners to
be still preserved unmutilated and even bearing their ancient
crowns.

The principal Catholic church the Frauenkirche is in an
admirable state of repair and decoration, the whole of the latter
being in correct mediaeval taste. There is a rood-screen of
open metal-work, apparently new, above which the rood is sus-
pended. The whole nave is of one height, that of the aisle being
as high as the central portion. The sermon preceded the Missa
cantata and lasted the best part of an hour, the church being
crammed to the very doors. Another smaller Catholic church,
recently acquired, we believe (near the gate leading to the rail-
way station), is in the early pointed style and remarkable for the
small size of the apse, which projects out from the extensive
eastern wall. Very devout and edifying was the congregation
assembled within it for afternoon service prayers, rosary, and
benediction all said and sung by the congregation in German.

A very beautiful mediaeval fountain, with images of saints,

i886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 449

stands near St. Sebald's Church ; but another mediaeval one near
the Frauenkirche is very singular. Various small female figures
are placed round its central stem, and a tiny stream of water issues
from either breast of each figure. The cemetery is one of the
most celebrated in Germany, and is crowded with monuments
and plain tombstones, all we noticed bearing inscriptions touch-
ing from their simplicity and the absence of all exaggeration.
Except the Jews, people of all religions or of no religion are
buried side by side, no portion being separated off for any creed.

The old castle of Nuremberg deserves a visit, if only for the
sake of its two superimposed chapels, which are very interesting
architecturally, and so ancient that the more modern one is said
to have been built by Frederick Barbarossa. A magnificent
view of the city and surrounding country will also repay the
visitor, who can, if he pleases, drive all the way up in a carriage.
In an adjacent tower are shown the various instruments of tor-
ture used here till the year 1780. They are so well known as to
dispense us from the task of their description the rack, the back,
tearing ladder, the spiked seat, the Spanish ass, Spiteful Bess,
etc., etc. There are also engravings illustrating their use and
many other horrors besides. In another chamber is the well-
known " iron virgin/' standing over the " oubliette " in the mid-
die of the room, in which the person sentenced to die by her had
to sleep (or try to sleep) the last night of life in a sort of wooden
crib. The last person thus done to death by the Eisenerjung-
frau's internal daggers was a lady of Nuremberg, executed in
1787 for the murder of her child.

It should always be recollected that if these revolting prac-
tices existed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at
Nuremberg, they so existed at a time when no Catholic was al-
lowed to live within the city's walls, as also that the vile machines
are all /^/-mediaeval in date.

The journey to Regensburg (Ratisbon) is best made at night,
as it can then be made in two hours instead of in six. Bidding
adieu at eleven to our hotel, which was no dearer than that of
Wiirzburg, we got to our quarters at the Griiner Kranz (the
green garland) in Regensburg soon after one o'clock in the
morning. Its charges were somewhat cheaper still, and it is
conveniently situated in a central position ; but here, as at Nurem-
berg, the table d'hote is at half-past twelve.

Our first visit next morning was, of course, to the cathedral,
and we greatly regretted being one day too late to hear the cele-
brated chant. Very striking is the magnificent Gothic church's
VOL. XLII. 29

45o A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Jan.,

elaborate west front, with its two noble towers and spires, a
landmark on all sides for many miles around, and which have
been completed but fifteen years. The cathedral was, we be-
lieve, once full of rococo altars and ornaments, as is that of Wiirz-
burg now ; but they were removed by King Ludwig of Bavaria,
who did much to restore the church. Each aisle ends eastwards
in an apse and altar, but there are four altars against the side-
walls of the nave (two on either side) which are very puzzling.
Each is surmounted by a Gothic baldacchino supported on foui
columns, and each is entirely mediaeval in style and appears to be
really ancient and unchanged. Nevertheless the altars do not
stand east and west (as do all the other mediaeval altars we know),
but are so placed that the celebrant faces north in those on the
gospel side of the nave, and south in those of its epistle side.
It would be very interesting to know for certain whether or not
they have been changed in position. We were shown in the
treasury a number of relics* and precious articles, amongst
them a large chasuble said to have been worn by St. Wolfgang,
and a peculiar vestment, called a " rationale " (in shape like a very
short French dalmatic without the shoulder-flaps), which had
been sent by the pope to certain of the bishops of Regensburg.
We were told that only the bishops of ten bishoprics had ever
received it, whereof the bishop of Paderborn was one. It was
worn over the chasuble.

The two very ancient and very small churches attached to
the cloisters must on no account be left unvisited by any lover of
old architecture or of Catholic antiquity. They are duly de-
scribed in the guide-books. Very noteworthy are the wonder-
fully rich inner mouldings of the windows of the cloister, with
figures and tracery in very high relief and showing an incipient
renaissance influence. There are a good number of sepulchral
monuments of varying degrees of interest and curiosity. One
has a pair of Caryatides, each with a skull on the top and four
transverse rows of breasts beneath it. On two other monuments
are the oddest priests' heads. Each head bears a berretta and
is placed at the summit of a swan-like neck which comes out
through the top of a helmet !

After inspecting the cathedral we eagerly bent our steps to-
wards the river to take our first leisurely view of, and our first
walk beside, the Danube, which is here very wide (spanned by an
ancient bridge), and with islands where good baths may be en-
joyed.

* One of these was a skeleton of one of the Holy Innocents.

i886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 451

A pilgrimage to the church of St. James is a matter of ob-
ligation for every English-speaking Catholic, as it was the church
of Scotch Benedictines from the eleventh century till within the
last five-and-twenty years. It is a solemn, simple, and dignified
basilica, built within a century of the abbey's foundation. It is
well restored, and quaint and curious carving decorates its ex-
terior on the north side. It serves now as the church of the
bishop's seminary.

Last but by no means least amongst the ecclesiastical struc-
tures of Regensburg is the vast and venerable abbey of St. Em-
meran, now after enduring for twelve hundred years the
enormous palace of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis. The church
remains as it was when the abbey was secularized, and is very
curious. Like the cathedral of Wiirzburg, it is a very ancient
church, disguised by a mass of stucco and gilding applied in
the last century. The monks' choir is much raised and at the
west end like some of the Spanish choirs and there is an
altar at the east end of the raised part. This choir and the part
of the west end of the church adjacent to it are separated
from the rest of the edifice by an ornamental iron screen. The
church contains many venerable and interesting monuments, but
very strange was the manner in which we found treated the
relics of two saints. Each lay at full length in a glass case over
an altar. Bands of ornamental gilt metal-work were twined
round all the bones and a gilt palm-branch placed in either skele-
ton's right hand. The skull, in each case, had a very peculiar
decoration. Three large, elaborate jewelled brooches were plac-
ed, one in the hollow socket of eaqh eye, and the third within the
cavity where the nose had been. Beneath this a curved band of
gold concealed the opening of the mouth, giving a horrible grin
to the face. Altogether it was an odd and ghastly sight.

After inspecting all these ancient and mouldering fragments
of the past of different centuries, our next excursion was a most
dusty drive to the far-famed, marble, modern Walhalla, which
looks down from wooded heights on the left bank of the Danube
six miles below Regensburg. This temple of Teutonic fame,
built by King Ludwig in imitation of the Parthenon, and of simi-
lar size and proportions, save that it is a trifle shorter, is inter-
nally gorgeous with its colored marbles and of great interest for
its historic busts and statues. It was well to make this edifice-
rather a pagan Walhalla than a Christian temple, considering
who and what were some of its more conspicuous inmates..
Thus Catherine II. of Russia is in the same division of the build-

452 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Jan.,

ing as the pious Empress Maria Theresa, while close to the bust
of the latter is that of her enemy, Frederick the Great, though
they have been considerately so placed that they could not, had
they vision, see one another !

It was not without regret that we left the venerable city of
Regensburg, the general aspect of which we thought quite as
interesting as that of Nuremberg. In its old Rathhaus may be
seen the historic chamber where for nearly a century and a half
(1663-1806) the diets of the empire were held. There also may
be seen a collection of instruments of torture and dungeons
more repulsive than the celebrated ones of Venice. Though
Regensburg is so Catholic a city, the images at the street-corners
are much less numerous than those of Wiirzburg, so full of
modern life, or than the fossil ones of Nuremberg.

A tedious journey of nearly five hours brought us to that
frontier town of Bavaria and Austria Passau. For a very long
time the twin spires of Regensburg's cathedral visibly dominated
the plains we traversed, and when lost to view the Walhalla
still shone out as a brilliant white spot in the dark-green eastern
boundary of the Danube, soon becoming the mountain boundary
of Bohemia. The land on the western side of the rail is quite
uninteresting, and the only town worth notice that we passed
was Straubing, with its lofty church tower and more remarkable
towers of its Rathhaus, surmounted by no less than five pointed
spires. In a chapel in the churchyard of St. Peter's, which
stands outside the city's walls, is the tomb of that unfortunate
and virtuous teterrima causa belli, the fair but humble maid,
Agnes Bernauer, who was thrown into the Danube in 1436, by
order of Duke Ernest of Bavaria, for having gained the heart
and hand of his son Albert an act which drove him to rebellion
and long civil war.

As the railroad approaches Passau it skirts the Danube,
which here appears surprisingly small and insignificant. The
houses take on a Swiss character, with large, overhanging eaves.
The long-esteemed and well-known house, the Wilder Mann, hav-
ing ceased to be an inn, we went to the Bayerisher Hof at
Passau a house centrally situated and with charges similar to
those made by the inn of Regensburg, and a table d'hote at half-
past twelve.

The darkness of the streets rendered any exploration of
them on the evening of our arrival unprofitable, but the sight
which daylight afforded justified an early rise for its enjoyment,
Passau has a wonderfully fine situation at the junction of three

i886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 453

rivers the great Inn (which has rolled here from the Engadine
through Innsbruck), the relatively small Danube, and the tiny Ilz.
Its commanding position was keenly appreciated by the Old
World's conquerors when it became the Batava Castra of the
Romans. In mediaeval times the seat of a prince-bishopric
which endured till the peace of Luneville (1801), it has, besides the
cathedral, its stately Residenz, which must, however, yield in
stateliness to that of Wiirzburg. Both stand on a lofty eminence
overlooking the Inn, on the opposite shore of which is the pil-
grimage church of " Maria-hilf," on a corresponding eminence.
Externally the late pointed choir of the cathedral gives a promi-
nence which the interior belies, as within it is completely disguis-
ed with stucco, rococo ornaments. The externals of Catholicity
are not conspicuous in Passau, and its priests no longer wear
cassocks in the streets, but black coats, round hats, and ordinary
trousers, which are Austrian fashions adopted in this frontier
Bavarian town. At three o'clock we started in a comfortable
steamer for Linz, which we reached before eight, after a journey
so cold that it might have been the igth of November instead of
the iQth of August. The hand-packages (and such were our
only luggage) were examined or supposed so to be, for ours
were not by Austrian officials before embarkation. The Dan-
ube between Linz and Passau compares, in our opinion, advan-
tageously with the Rhine. It is true that the Danube's castles
are both much less in number and less picturesque; but what
it may lose in this respect it gains in wildness and natural
beauty. The Rhine, in spite of its noble mountain boundaries
and picturesque turns, has an artificial aspect from the multitude
of vineyards which clothe its banks, and signs of man's habita-
tion are otherwise evident at every turn. On the Danube the
vine is absent, and its place is taken by abundant forest, while
towns and villages are few and distant ; so that the aspect of
this majestic river (swollen below Passau by the addition of the
Inn) is as wild, for long stretches of its course, as in the days
of Tacitus, when its lofty, frowning left bank was known as
the From Germanica. It winds in many sharp, serpentine curves,
amidst lofty, wooded mountains, for a distance of thirty miles,
when it spreads out into a wide, watery expanse with low
banks and many islands. Shortly before getting to Linz, how-
ever, the hills again advance and close in upon the river, so
that another picturesque defile is traversed before reaching the
last named city. On its left bank is the birthplace of the Em-
peror Otho II., and on its right a Cistercian monastery, relaxed in

454 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Jan.,

discipline, we were told, and now containing only some eight
monks. At Linz we went to the very conveniently-situated and
well-appointed hotel, the Erzherzberg Karl, close to the steam-
er's landing-place, and from the windows of which we looked out
on a charming view of the hills and mountains on the other side
of the river. Here we met with higher charges and no table
d'hote, but we supped excellently well on a piece of saddle of
roebuck and pancakes (pfankucken), which we found generally
so excellent in Germany and Austria.

After a good night's rest we looked eagerly out to enjoy the
charming view of which we had had but a glimpse in the evening
twilight. To our amazement we could see simply nothing. A
dense fog, as dense as any of London city though, of course, not
yellow made every object invisible at six yards' distance from
our window. The Vienna steamboat could not start till an hour
after its proper time, when the mist began to lift and slowly dis-
sipated itself. After looking in on the church and the small
cathedral, both renaissance structures with rococo ornaments,
we made our way to where a new cathedral is rapidly rising.
By good-fortune we overtook a priest, who with much amiability
entered into conversation and took us into and all about the fast-
rising structure. The lady-chapel, at the east end of the choir,
is finished and in use, and the whole choir was expected to be in
a similar state by the end of September. When completed it
will be a very fine Gothic edifice, quite traditional in all its ar-
rangements, and with the altars and stained glass of its chapels
all in very good taste. Beneath the choir is a fine, well-lighted
crypt intended for actual use. In its midst is fitly buried the
worthy Bishop Rudiger, who began the work. Our guide, who
turned out to be the capitular preacher, informed us that there
were but seven canons, and that they said office in choir at nine
and at three, except on Thursdays. Linz boasts a convent of
Capuchins and another of Carmelites, but the most famed reli-
gious establishments are not within the city, more or less remote
from it, and it was mainly to visit these that we had come to
Linz.

Accordingly we started at half-past twelve, in an open carriage
and pair, for the great Augustinian monastery of St. Flonan.
The day was delightful, the carriage well stuffed with easy
springs, and our smart, well-behaved coachman, with his black
cockade, took our well-groomed horses at a spanking pace along
an excellent road ; and it was with no small degree of pleasurable
excitement that we found ourselves at last so near the accom-

1 886.] A TOUR iw CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 455

plishment of a journey we had longed to take since boyhood's
days, when in the paternal library we had read the interesting
account given by Dr. Dibdin, the bibliographer, of his visit to
the same place in the year 1818.

The road at first for a considerable distance skirts the railway
to Vienna. It then diverges southward, and, ascending between
some hills, traverses an extremely pretty wood, which reminded
us more of our English woodlands than anything we had seen
since we had left our own shores. Though the season was ad-
vanced, there was no scarcity of wild-flowers. Conspicuous be-
yond all others were the brilliant spots of color, amidst the green-
ery around, due to the multitudinous flowers of Melampyrum
nemorosum. The pendent (true) flowers were of a very brilliant
yellow, made the more conspicuous by the crown of brightest
blue-violet bracts (or false flowers) at the summit of every stem.
Nowhere during our wanderings did these flowers gladden our
eyes save in this welcome wood on the road to St. Florian.

After less than two hours' drive two distant towers and cupo-
las began to appear over distant woods which bounded our view
westwards. These were the western towers of the monastic
church, and soon the huge, palace like edifice itself appeared in
view. Like the other monasteries I subsequently visited, St.
Florian has lost all traces of its mediaeval structure. It was en-
tirely rebuilt in the last century.

We drove through the outer quadrangle, and, ringing at an
inner gateway, gave in our letters of introduction (from the
bishop of Newport and Menevia and the abbot of Buckfast), and
were at once admitted. The Herr Prelat, or abbot, was then at
Vespers, and we were introduced into the interior of the abbey
church a very handsome building of its kind, rich with many
marbles, deftly inlaid, and costly woods and copious gilding.
The nave was filled with handsome and commodious pews with
doors, but without spittoons items of church furniture which
we left behind us in entering Austria from Germany. Vespers
were being recited in monotone by fifteen religious, who occu-
pied the stalls and wore short surplices over their cassocks.
When Compline was finished we were invited into the abbot's
presence a tall man of pleasing aspect and about sixty years of
age, whose manner was a happy mixture of benevolent courtesy
and dignity. These Austrian abbots may well be dignified, for
they are really lord-abbots, possessing still their ancient terri-
torial possession, and neither disestablished nor disendowed.
They may well serve to give us a notion of what some of our old

456 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Jan.,

English monasteries might now have been had there been no
change of religion in Britain, and had Glastonbury and St.
Edmunds remained side by side with the still surviving hospitals
of St. Cross and the various diocesan properties. He, in com-
mon with the other monks, was habited in a black cloth cas-
sock, over which was suspended, both in front and behind, a
long, narrow strip of linen, the two strips being connected by a
narrow tape round the neck. This singular ornament appears to
be a case of ecclesiastical survival in garments, and to be a rudi-
mentary structure representing a white scapular of the normal
kind. The abbot unfortunately spoke neither French nor Eng-
lish, so that we were reduced to converse in our very imperfect
German. We accompanied him to the abbatial apartments, and
waited in a very handsomely furnished drawing-room while he
retired to read our introductory missives. He then conducted
us to the library, where the venerable librarian, Father Albin
Axeray, showed us some of the most interesting works out of a
collection of no less than fifty thousand volumes. Amongst them
we were greatly interested to behold the three volumes of Dib-
din's bibliographical tour, sent by the author as an act of cour-
tesy to his monastic hosts.

The monks' refectory is a noble room, and there is a gallery
of pictures of moderate value. The abbey gardens and conser-
vatory are thrown open to visitors on all days except great
feasts. The royal apartments are extremely handsome, but very
rarely used. Fourteen years ago, however, the Emperor Francis
Joseph paid a visit and occupied them for a short time.

By the great kindness of the abbot a special performance took
place on the magnificent organ of the church. There are three
hundred pipes, which look as if of burnished silver, and it has
more stops than has any other organ in Austria. We sat in the
stalls with the kind abbot and librarian, and enjoyed for nearly
half an hour a high musical treat, during which the delicacy and
sweetness as well as the prodigious power of the instrument were
well displayed. Lastly we descended to the crypt beneath the
church, wherein the bodies of past abbots up to the very last
lie above ground, enclosed in bronze sarcophagi, as also those of
a few benefactors of the abbey. These are disposed around the
central space, which is devoted to the sepulchres of the simple
monks, their coffins enclosed in recesses (much as in the cata-
combs of Kensal Green Cemetery), each closed by a stone in-
scribed with the name and date of the death of him whose body
lies within it.

i886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 457

Ascending to the upper air, we took our leave of the cour-
teous Herr Prelat, Ferdinand Moser Profst der reg. Chorhaus-
tifter St. Fiorian, who committed us to the librarian's care, that
we might see the abbey farm. The monastery, to which be-
long ninety monks, has the right of presentation to no less than
thirty-three livings. These are served by religious sent out from
the house, which, of course, much reduces the number of its
actual inmates. Such incumbents are liable to recall at any mo-
ment, and can themselves generally obtain a recall should they
greatly desire it. The abbey lands are farmed by the monks
themselves by means of hired labor, and are not let out on lease
or by the year to tenants. The farm buildings are very spacious
and in excellent condition. Within them were no less than
sixty-seven cows in their stalls and twenty-six horses. In another
building were no less than forty-eight pens for pigs, and some
were shown us recently imported from England. The abbot,
as becomes a wealthy prelate, has his own carriage and horses.

The existing superior has held his office fourteen years. At
the death of an abbot his superior is freely elected for life by the
community, and neither the government, the bishop, nor the
pope can interfere with the election further than the circum-
stance that the government has the right to veto the election of
a monk to whom it has any great objection a right which, we
were assured, has been very rarely exercised.

The community is a most ancient one, having a few years ago
celebrated the thousandth anniversary of its foundation. Al-
though not practising any remarkable austerities, this institution
of canons regular of St. Augustine is in a very flourishing con-
dition and enjoys a considerable reputation for learning, on
which account it is called upon to supply not a few seminaries,
colleges, and schools with professors an office readily undertaken,
and is one of the main ends of the institute as at present existing.
We bid adieu with regret to the very kind father-librarian a
venerable man, who had passed forty-three years of his life in
religion.

Our horses carried us back very rapidly to Linz, to our great
contentment, as very threatening clouds began to appear on the
horizon and rapidly approached. We were safely housed and
occupied in noting down with much contentment the events of
the day, when we were suddenly half-blinded with light and
stunned by a deafening peal of thunder. The storm before an-
ticipated had broken quite suddenly over the city. The rever-
beration of the thunder-peals amongst the mountains was most

458 A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. [Jan.,

impressive, and flash after flash lighted up the landscape with a
most weird brilliancy. Soon torrents of rain descended, and the
storm ceased as suddenly as it had begun, leaving us not with-
out the hope of being able to pay on the morrow the much-an-
ticipated visit to the great Benedictine monastery of Chrems-
minster.

A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

A BRIGHT morning in the December of 1884. A bright break-
fast-room in No. Fifth Avenue, New York. The fire sparkles ;
the brasses around it glitter. The napery is whiter than the
snow outside. Each plate, each cup has hold of a dancing sun-
beam, while the silver cover-dishes, and the knives and forks and
spoons, are dazzling to gaze upon.

A trim little maid, whose cap would make a fortune for a stage
soubrette, noiselessly enters, bearing a telegraphic despatch upon
a salver :

" If not detained at Quarantine the SS. Aurania 'will arrive at
her dock, Pier No. 19, North River, at 11 A.M.

" MANAGER MARINE DEPARTMENT."

This telegram is hurriedly opened and rapidly read by a very
plump, pink-faced little lady in the fifties, who, during its perusal,
holds a gold eye-glass to one eye in a fat, white, dimpled hand.

" The Aurania is in."

" She arrives on the anniversary of "

" Bother your anniversaries, George W. ! " explodes the little
lady.

" I repeat, madam, that she arrives on the anniversary of the
crossing of the Delaware by our immortal Washington." And a
dapper little gentleman, a double pink, bald, stomachy, and shiny,
rises from the breakfast-table, and, turning his back to the mu-
sically sputtering logs, and his coat-tails over his arms, stands in
a Bluff King Hal attitude, as he vainly endeavors to get up a
frown for the annihilation of his better-half for in this happy re-
lationship does the rosy little lady stand to him.

This oleaginous little man is George Washington Trubsome,

1 886.] A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 459

known all over the length and breadth of this vast continent as
the most uncompromising of Americans, and whose animosity to
Great Britain and Great Britainers is as rampant to-day as ever
was that of his grandfather, Ichabod Trubsome, who handled a
particularly troublesome musket " on that day at Bunker Hill."

Every notable event in the chain that led up to the evacua-
tion of New York by the redcoats finds an abiding-place in Mr.
Trubsome's heart, and all the anniversaries are celebrated with
becoming pomp, punctiliousness, and patriotism. On the " Glo-
rious Fourth " it is Mr. Trubsome's custom to attire himself in
the uniform of a Continental, and, shouldering his grandfather's
musket, to go on guard for certain hours upon the piazza of his
charming villa at Tarrytown, from whence fireworks are lavishly
delivered to the small boys of the surrounding country, with
stern injunctions that a cheer for American independence must ac-
company each and every explosion. The anniversary of Wash-
ington's death sees Mr. Trubsome in deepest mourning, while
that of the birth beholds a full-blown rose in his button-hole, and
other and various indications betokening much inner jubilation.

Mrs. Trubsome, who thoroughly enjoys three meals a day
and is not averse to a quail on toast towards midnight, imagines
herself an invalid, and has visited every spa and spring of note
on this continent in search of that which she possesses in the
rudest possible degree health. Her annual desire to repair to
Carlsbad, Marienbad, or some other European healthery of fash-
ion is annually stamped out by her caro sposo with the emphatic
expression :

" If you can't find a spring in this glorious country that will
cure you, there's not the ghost of a chance of a spring anywhere
else."

One child, a son, who presently comes upon the scene, is the
single olive-branch, while the household is completed by an or-
phan girl, Florence Maitland, immensely wealthy and somewhat
capricious, who was placed under Mrs. Trubsome's care on the
annihilation of both her parents in that dire Ashtabula railway
smash-up of nine years ago.

. " You will go down to the dock, George W. ? " observes Mrs.
Trubsome.

" I would, my dear; but this being the anniversary "

" Then Wash must go, and at once. Somebody must meet
this young lady. Wash must hurry up ! "

At this moment a tall, 43-inch-chested young fellow enters the
room, a very tower of youthful strength and vigor.

460 A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. [Jan.,

" Good-morning, mummy." And he kisses his mother, to the
utter disarrangement of her breakfast-cap. " Good-morning, fa-
ther. What a"

" This is the anniversary of the crossing of the Delaware,
Wash," bursts in his father.

" So it is." And the young gentleman energetically attacks an

" On this day, one hundred and "

" Read that, Wash," cries his mother, tossing him the yellow
despatch.

" Oh ! the Aurania in. Won't Miss Lawson have a splendid
sight coming up the bay this sunshiny morning ! "

" Staten Island is covered with snow, and the ice "

" Was pretty thick in the Delaware on this day, one hundred
and"

" Bother the Delaware ! Wash, you will go down and meet
her."

" But I don't know her, mummy ! "

" You can pick her out. The captain or any of the officers
will show her to you."

" Yes ; but what a stupid thing fishing about for a young girl !
None of you can tell me if she is tall or short, slim or stout."

" If she is like her father," says Mr. Trubsome, " she will be
particularly pudgy. Poor Ed Lawson ! He and I made money
together on a water-works contract. Then I got hold of a Flor-
ida canal, and he went to India and froze to a railway. He then
plunged into indigo, and I took a plunge at cotton. He made
some money, I made a lot. It was a queer thing, his thinking of
me on his death-bed. Lawson was a shrewd chap, and I'll bet a
double dollar that he has laid pipes for a match for you, Wash,
and this girl, his daughter, who is now in Quarantine "

" If that's the case, sir," sputters young Trubsome, his mouth
very full, " I hope the ship won't come any farther up the bay."

" My son marries Florence Maitland," cries Mrs. Trubsome.

" My son will marry whom he pleases, always provided that
she is well raised and has not a drop of British blood in her
veins."

" Our son," laughs Wash, " won't marry anybody till he's
what the barometer registers on the window-sill there thirty-
seven in the shade."

" This may be a designing girl, an artful minx, coming right
over here to capture our boy," exclaims Mrs. Trubsome ; adding
angrily : " It is really quite too provoking to be hampered with

1 886.] A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 461

girls in this way. One, goodness knows, was enough. My health
won't stand the worry of two. You should have thought of me,
George W., before you wrote asking this Miss Lawson to come
over. / am never consulted."

" Why, Maria, didn't you burst out crying when you read her
letter, and beg of me not to lose a mail ! "

" That was all my poor nervousness."

" Anyhow, the girl is here, and whether she goes for Wash or
not, he'll have, in less than ten minutes, to go for her." And the
old gentleman laughs and shakes at his own joke till a couple of
oily tears steal calmly down his ruby cheeks.

" I don't fancy this job," cries Wash, pouncing upon a cutlet.
" Can't Florence Maitland go and meet her ? "

" That is just what Florence is ready to do."

The girl who utters these words is strikingly haughty, strik-
ingly good-looking. She would be handsome, if the expression in
her eyes were more soft and that of her mouth less hard. She is
attired in a sable coat that would bring water to the mouth of a
Russian archduchess, while a hat of the same costly fur sits jaunt-
ily on her shapely and Juno-like head.

" Are you going down to the boat ? " asks Mrs. Trubsome.

"Yes."

" Won't you have some breakfast ? "

" I have had a cup of coffee. I shall breakfast with my fellow-
orphan."

The servant announces the carriage.

" Won't it be fun trying to pick out our girl ! " laughs Flor-
ence, as, disdaining all offers of service, she trips down the steps.
" Let us have a bet on it, Wash."

" All right."

The Aurania is being warped in, the dock appearing to move
instead of the leviathan steamer.

" She has had a rough passage," observes Wash. " See the
smokestack all white."

" Ay, and ice in the rigging."

" Look out for a girl in black."

" I see one ! " cries Miss Maitland excitedly. " See, over
there ; next to Pshaw ! it is an old woman."

"Do you observe a black hat and veil next to that tall,
bearded man in the Scotch bonnet ? "

" Yes, yes ! "

" I'll bet"

462 A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. [Jan.,

" She has a pink necktie."

" Crushed again ! " laughs Wash.

A long row of faces appears above the bulwarks a row ex-
tending from stem to stern of the ship.

"Just fancy, Wash, that behind that wall of wood may be
standing your future wife ! "

" I don't fancy it at all."

The magnificent floating palace is at length moored to the
dock, and Miss Maitland with her escort is hustled up the gang-
way hustled in good sooth, for there are those on the quay who
are madly eager to clasp their loved ones, separated from them
bv three thousand miles of ocean, to their gladdened hearts.
Some there are who advance to offer the inestimable boon of
sympathy to sorrow and suffering ; some, with blanched lips and
dilated eyes, who rush forward to learn the worst.

" There she is ! " says Wash, pointing to a tall girl in a black
ulster who calmly stands by a pile of state-room luggage.
" Nice, but hard-looking."

" Go over and make yourself known."

He advances awkwardly enough.

" I am looking for Miss Lawson," he says with a bow.

** Are you one of Mr. Trubsome's family, sir? "

" I am Mr. Trubsome's son."

" Miss Lawson is on board, sir."

" Am I not addressing Miss Lawson?"

" I am Stokens, Miss Lawson's maid, sir. I shall go and
acquaint my mistress. Would you be so kind as to have an eye
to the baggage, sir ? " And she trips away to disappear.

"Well?" asks Florence.

" A nice mess I've made of it. That's Stokens, Miss Law-
son's maid."

Miss Maitland laughs till Stokens reappears, following a young
girl who is very tearful-eyed, very red-lipped, and very pale.
She is petite, a great pilot coat with hussar black braid almost
eclipsing her.

She advances with womanly instinct to Florence, who takes
to her at once.

" Are you Miss Trubsome ? " she eagerly asks.

"I am just as good, my dear !" exclaims Florence, folding
her close to the sables and kissing her. Then the two cry a little,
and Wash asks Stokens about the passage.

" Awful bad, sir. My mistress was sick the 'ole way over,
and I was 'orribly 'elpless. Ha ! would you ? " This to a deck-

1 886.] A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 463

hand, with a rap on his knuckles from a bundle of umbrellas, who
is for removing the bag-gage to land.

It is Wash's turn now.

" We are very, very glad to see you, Miss Lawson," he says,
" my father and mother and Florence here, and and I we'll
all do our level best to make you feel at home."

She takes his hand in both of hers, only covering two of his
big fingers, and gratefully presses.

" I refused to go anywhere except to you, for it was poor
papa's last request. I have relatives in Scotland, who wanted me
to come to them, but "

" You will be much happier here, dear," cries Florence.
" Come along; the sooner you get rid of the ship the better.
Wash, you can stay with Stoker "

" Stokens, if you please, miss," interposes the maid.

" Stokens, and get the baggage passed through ; and I will
take dear little what is your given name? "

" Given name?" asks Miss Lawson in surprise.

" Well, Christian name ? "

" Marie. I am dedicated to Our Lady."

" I don't know what that means, Marie, for I am a well, I
can't tell what I am nothing. It depends very much on how
they heat the church in winter and cool it in summer, or the side-
whiskers of the pastor. Don't be shocked, dear. After a good
breakfast, a talk, and a rest, I'll take you out for a sleigh-ride."

" Would you mind driving me to some Catholic church? "

"Now?"

" Yes."

" What for?"

" To return thanks to God Almighty for my safe passage."

Miss Maitland stares at her in silence ; then she turns to the
coachman.

" Thomas, do you know of a Catholic church on the way to
the house?"

" Five or six, miss."

" Then stop at the best at the best, mind you." And she
t bangs the door.

" Glory be to God ! ye'd think it was a store I was to drive
to," mutters the honest Jehu, ''instead of to the house o' God.
The best ! That's the way wid them, blown about be every
windy docthrine, as Father Cassidy says."

A family jury sits upon Miss Lawson after she has retired for
the night.

464 A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. [Jan.,

" A most ignorant little girl," exclaims Mr. Trubsome. " She
knows nothing of American history, and couldn't tell me the
date of the evacuation of New York by the British. It is my
opinion that she never heard of the country at all till poor Ed,
her father, mentioned us."

" I asked her about those wonderful Cheltenham pills for the
nerves. She could tell me nothing. She hasn't a single patent
medicine with her," moans Mrs. Trubsome.

" She's none the worse for that," laughs her husband.

" She's a quiet little darling," bursts in Florence, " that wants
a shaking up. She's awfully good she's a Catholic, you know.
It's a dead pity that she's in deep mourning, for I could have
given her such a time the Patriarchs' ball on Monday night,
Mrs. Astor's on Tuesday, Mrs. Bradley-Martin's on Wednesday,
Flossie Bild's rosebud luncheon on Thursday ; on Friday " she
counts on her bejewelled fingers "what is there on Friday?
oh! a sleighing party and dinner at Jerome Park; Saturday "

" I just imagine that Miss Lawson, whether in mourning or
not, wouldn't care to go in for that rattling programme. Good-
night ! I'm off to the club." And Wash dutifully kisses his
mother and strides out.

A month has rolled onwards. Christmas has passed. Marie
has made a real English plum-pudding with her own dainty
hands, of which Mr. Trubsome innocently partakes, and gets
laughed at when his anger at being led into eating any thing Eng-
lish bursts forth. Every morning, rain or shine, beholds Marie
at the eight-o'clock Mass at the Cathedral, Wash of late escorting
her thither, no matter to what " wee sma' hour" he has been de-
tained at the Union. She does not desire this, and attends an
earlier Mass at St. Stephen's. He is not to be baffled, however,
and on Christmas morning attended the first Mass, although he
had been " on revel " to a very advanced hour.

" You will spoil your complexion, Marie."

" You will catch pneumonia."

" You will slip on the ice and break your bones."

" Malaria hangs around in the early morning."

She only laughs as batteries such as these are opened upon
her, and continues to hold the even tenor of her way. Morning
after morning when she returns from her orisons, rosy, bright-
eyed, fresh as May dew, she is met by her maid with " Please,
miss, would you step into Miss Maitland's room ? "

There lies Florence, hollow-eyed, yawny, languid, if not fever-
ish, after this ball, or that hop, or the other theatre party.

i886.] A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 465

" I do think that I will give this all up, Marie," she yawns ; " it
unfits one for anything- else ; it makes one feel a hundred ; it
wearies. Bah ! the same round, the same people, the yes, Char-
lotte," to her maid, " I'll wear heliotrope to-night at Mrs. Paran
Stevens'."

Wash turns in for afternoon tea now, spreads his immense legs
under the gipsy table, looks happy, and says very little. He
dines at home muchly, and finds fault with the cookery with the
air of a crucial connossieur. Mr. Trubsome holds Marie as the
Ancient Mariner held the wedding guest, every morning after
breakfast, to narrate unto her the grand and thrilling story that
led up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence ; and she
now knows the portraits of the signatories without once glancing
at the key, a proof copy of the celebrated picture hanging in Mr.
Trubsome's study between George Washington and his comely
dame Martha. Mrs. Trubsome is scarcely reconciled to her
guest. Marie is too healthy, too nerveless to evoke sympathy.
Of patent medicines she knows nothing, of spas and healtheries
about the same. The only theme that interests Mrs. Trubsome is
the illness of Mr. Lawson, which, she insists, would never have
ended fatally had the lamented gentleman partaken of " Jobson's
Blood Tingler," or " Medcup's Nerve Twitcher," or even " Tom-
tod's Stomach Desiccator."

One afternoon, while Wash is engaged in playing a game of
chess with Marie, a servant hands that young lady a card. She
reads aloud, half-unconsciously, 4< Captain Belfort, Third Dragoon
Guards," adding, with a very pleased expression :

" Show him in, please."

Wash frowns and looks very rueful.

" Won't you excuse me?" she says. " Captain Belfort is the
son of my kinsfolk in Perthshire. We can finish our game later
on."

' " Oh ! don't let me interfere," says Wash almost bitterly, up-
setting the chess-board and then the table in an awkward effort
to rise.

Captain Belfort enters. He is tall, inclined to obesity and bald-
ness, but is a thorough " plunger " from his boot-heel, which he
digs into the Aubusson carpet, to his tawny moustache, to which
he administers a preliminary twirl.

" Awfully glad to see you, Miss Lawson. Awfully sorry for
your loss. Awfully yaas, awfully. Am here for a look at this
shop. Awfully rum shop it is."
voi.. XLII. 30

466 A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. [Jan.,

" Captain Belfort, let me introduce Mr. Trubsome."

The two men acknowledge one another by a nod.

" When did you arrive ? "

" This morning."

" Had you a good passage ? "

" Awfully blowy and roily and wavy, you know yaas, aw-
fully."

Then she asks him after her kinsfolk, who are, according to
the gallant warrior, " awfully fit."

Florence comes in and Belfort is duly presented. After he
regains his seat he screws a rimless glass into his left eye and
peers at her. She, in order to meet him on equal terms, adjusts
\\tr pinces nez, and the two glare at one another.

Yes, the captain has been in Egypt, and has been awfully
knocked about by those ^//founded niggers. Yes, he has been in
India, and has been awfully knocked about by those confounded
niggers. The two young ladies extract some talk from him, and
then propose to administer tea.

" Wash," suddenly exclaims Florence, " is your father dining
out to-day ? "

" I don't know," replies Wash gloomily, his first words in half
an hour. " Yes, he is," he adds with sudden vivacity. " The
Bunker Hill Club dine to-day," with a hard glance at the British
warrior ; " it's the anniversary of "

" That's all right, Wash. I want to give a little dinner at
Delmonico's to Marie's kinsman," cries Florence. " Go and order
it. You pretend to know a lot about dinners ; let us see how
you'll come out. Secure the round table in the corner window.
Be off ! Captain Belfort," she adds, " my dear guardian, my sec-
ond father, is very peculiar on the subject of well, he don't like
Britishers, and will not have them at any price. We can do
nothing with him. He actually imagined himself ill because he
ate some English plum pudding on Christmas day made by
Marie here. We are powerless, but we want to do all that we
can for you."

" What an awfully extraordinary old fellow ! " exclaims the
captain. " And you mean to say that because of things that
happened five or six hundred years ago he keeps it up ? By
Jove ! " And he pulls dreamily at his moustache, as if it were
candy.

They sip their tea, and contrive to get out of Belfort that he
is stopping at the Brevoort ; that he hopes to pot buffalo ; that
he is in no hurry, having six months' leave of absence from his

1 886.] A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 467

regiment ; that he has a " pal " with him, who is going- to look at
a ranch in Wyoming, and that he hopes for a lot of sleighing and
canvas-back ducks.

" Who's talking of canvas-backs ? " asks Mr. Trubsome, senior,
who rolls in, smiling all over and rubbing his hands gleefully.
The girls glance at one another. The captain rises and tugs vig-
orously at his moustache.

" Mr. Trubsome," palpitates Marie, " let me introduce Cap
Captain Belfort, who has just arrived, and and brings me good
news of my dear friends in Scotland."

" Humph ! " And Trubsome glares at the British warrior.
" In the English army, sir ? "

" Yaas, the K. D. G.'s " ; hastily adding in reply to a ques-
tioning glance, " the King's Dragoon Guards."

" I know them, sir. They were over *here in 1774-5 and '6
and '7. In the spring of 1778 they were in Philadelphia, but they
abandoned that city in June to come along here. In 1780 they
were in West Point with that black-hearted traitor, Arnold.
Have you ever heard of Yorktown, sir?"

" I have aw been quartered at York; a doosidly good bil-
let, too. Awfully good club, awfully hospitable people, and
the hunting keen. The regiment hunted at York

" Well, sir, they were hunted 2& York town, and "

" Papa ! " bursts in Florence.

" This is only history, my child. I'm giving the captain the
history of his regiment."

" You are very good, sir," says Belfort stiffly.

" On the I7th of October, 1781, Yorktown surrendered, and
the K. D. G.'s with it. Why, sir, we had the most splendid cele-
bration here on the centennial the I7th of October, 1881. It
lasted for days. I attended, and wore a uniform and carried a
musket that belonged to my grandfather, who fought in one and
with the other at Bunker Hill."

Captain Belfort rises to take his leave.

" Papa," says Florence, " I am giving a little dinner at Del-
monico's to Captain Belfort, our dear Marie's friend, as I know
your prejudices and "

" Ho\v dare you do such a thing ! " pulling her ear. " Cap-
tain, you will dine here. You are my prisoner. I put you on pa-
role that while in New York you will dine here as often as you
can, provided always that you discuss with me over our walnuts
and claret the glorious campaigning of a hundred years ago.
To-night I dine with the Bunker Hill Club to celebrate the anni-

468 A CABLEGRAM, AND WHA T CAME OF IT. [Jan.

versary of our treaty with France, but my wife and son, and the
little girls here, will entertain you."

" You are awfully good," says the captain, "and, by Jove!
I'd like to hear a lot about Buncombe Hill "

" Bunker." And he spells it for him, and briefly describes the
fight.

" I have engaged the table by telephone and ordered the din-
ner," observes Wash.

" You can dis-order it, my son. Captain Belfort dines here.
I feel it a duty to feed a British officer, we had them on half- ra-
tions for so long."

Wash gives Florence a look that plainly says, " What next? "

Wash does his best to be civil to Belfort puts him up at
his club, brings him to several smart dances, and lends him a
sleigh and pair of horses. But he cannot get him to leave New
York, or yet No. Fifth Avenue, although he endeavors to pic-
ture the glories of Niagara in its gigantic mantle of ice ; of Flor-
ida, with its fragrant orange-groves ; of Boston, so British, and its
" boys " so well up to the mark all round. The only thing Wash
admires about the captain are his clothes, and he, despite the
thirty degrees, goes about in a tight-fitting frock and gaiters and
varnished boots, his nose as blue as indigo, his cheeks blanched
with cold. Belfort's companion, a Mr. Dyke, leaves for Wyoming
after a vain endeavor to uproot the gallant captain.

" How Marie can find patience to listen to the nonentities of
this fat fool is more than I can imagine, mummy," Wash ex-
claims about ten times a day to his mother, who invariably re-
plies : " Love, my dear boy, is always blind. The very brutal
health of these two people establishes an affinity."

Bslfort makes himself as agreeable as possible to the old lady,
and has cabled to Cairo for some desert water used by the Arabs
and considered by these nomads as possessing wondrous healing
pow3rs. Ha listens to her nervous woss, and lets her warble on,
while he gazes with rapturous eyes upon Marie, who is ever at
home and ever at work.

" That's an awfully swell frock you are embroidering, Miss
Lawson," he exclaims, as one evening Marie is engaged with
bullion-thread and seed pearls.

" It is a robe for the Madonna. The church in which this
statue of Our Blessed Lady stands is very, very poor."

*' Do they want coin ? "

" Oh ! indeed they do."

1 886.] A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 469

" Would you mind writing the address down in this book for
me ? "

She writes it in a bold, large, generous hand.

" Thanks awfully ! I suppose that fifty pound wouldn't do
'em much harm ? "

" Make it a cool hundred, Captain Belfort," laughs Florence.

" Oh ! this is too bad," interposes Marie.

. " Not a bit ; he is one of you. In what better way could he
spend his money ?"

It should be mentioned that Belfort is a Catholic. At first
he used to present himself at the pew in the cathedral which
Wash had secretly rented for Miss Lawson, late for Mass. Marie
gravely took him to task, and on the following Sunday he was
there before her. Then he knelt very little. For this he was
also impounded. Then he was minus a prayer-book a want
speedily supplied by his uncompromising neighbor. He was
for asking questions and for turning round to gaze up at the
choir, but he soon relinquished such practices. And lastly, under
Marie's admonition, instead of making an absurd motion with his
thumb anywhere about the regions of his throat or chest, he
gravely and faithfully blessed himself.

Miss Lawson was absolutely her own mistress. She came
and went, and there was no one to question her. Florence would
sometimes jest with her anent her prolonged absences ;

" If you would only come with me, Florence, and give up
some of those eternal matinees, those perpetual visitings, which
you acknowledge are dreadfully boring, you would be more of
what God intended you to be, \vi\\\ your brain and your heart and
your wealth a useful woman."

" Wait until Lent, Marie. I shall be a different person, I as-
sure you. I shall dress in sombre colors, violets and grays; and
I don't mind going to church with you twice a week. And for
the first and last week I shall not enter a theatre. There! isn't
that next door to conversion ? Who knows but I may ' vert '
some day ?"

Lent arrives. Captain Belfort beats a retreat to Boston and
Niagara, and lastly to Saratoga, where Mr. Trubsome joins him in
order to go over the battle-fields that led to Clinton's surrender.
Trubsome and the British warrior get on wonderfully well. Bel-
fort has posted himself through the medium of a work technically
written by an English officer, and worries the ardent American
with military phraseology. In all this, however, Trubsome recog-
nizes a keen intelligence and a foeman worthy of his steel.

47 o A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. [Jan.

Wash threatens voyages round the world ; trips to India to
pot tigers; to the East to visit scimitar-guarded Mohammedan
cities ; to the North Pole, if an expedition be gotten up ; to the
top of Chimborazo. But he never stirs. His toilets are reful-
gent, his manners morose. He smokes a great deal too many
cigarettes, and his mother intends asking Miss Lawson to request
of him as a favor to cut down his daily allowance at least one-
half. His club knows him not ; he takes long walks in the snow,
and at times cannot be induced to leave the cosey little room at-
tached to his bed-room.

" Faix, we have wan Christian in the house, anyhow," observes
Mrs. Trubsome's cook, as she prepares a piquant entree for her
" delicate " mistress, " an that's Miss Lawson. She fasts, an' no
mistake. It's rale Lent with her. It an't soup \.\&\. pretends to be
flour and water ; it an't fish, done up to the queen's taste, at two
dollars a pound ; it an't ducks, that's neither fish or fowl or
flesh ; nor flim-flams that's full of sherry wine, and port wine,
and Maydarial wine. No, the darlin' ! it's dry toast, and no milk
in her tea, and everything for to correspond. There's luck and
grace in this house as long as she's in it, God bless her ! "

Florence Maitland is as good, ay, and better than her word.
She refuses every invitation ; and, if her sackcloth be tailor-made
and her ashes somewhat fragrant, she strides forward on a
rougher bu,t, after a while, a less wearisome road.

" O my!" she exclaims, "if Susie Blyde or Mamie van
Strope were to see me now." This, as with Marie she enters a
poor tenement-building, bringing comfort to the sickened heart
of the helpless mother of six little children. The girl's check-
book is ever in her hand, and the generous impulses that have
hitherto only blossomed under the sunshine of fame and fashion
now bear fruit in obscurity and shadow.

Lent over, Captain Belfort returns from the Rockies. Flor-
ence Maitland, being one of the leaders of fashion, flings herself
into the whirl and spins as giddily round as any dancing dervish.

" Bah ! it's all Dead Sea fruit," she will say. " The moment
the season is over, Marie, let us take Wash and our maids and
visit the great shrines of the world, from Monserrat to Mecca.
That will be doing something."

An April shower catches Miss Lawson on her way to early
Mass. She remains in her damp clothes, and comes home chilled.
The family doctor is sent for, and an immense fuss is made by
Mrs. Trubsome, who takes charge of her and furnishes her room

1 886.] A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 471

with a whole battery of bottles. She does not improve. Florence
becomes a most troublesome but most affectionate nurse. .She
constantly awakes her patient to ask if she requires anything,
and is then in despair because the girl cannot sleep. She fights
pitched battles with Mrs. Trubsome, and sends for two additional
physicians without consulting the family one. In a word, she is
an amiable nuisance, is in everybody's way, and in antagonism to
every human being she encounters about the house.

" You call everything fever here, by Jove ! " says Captain Bel-
fort " a fever finger, a fever lip. We don't do that in England."

" Who cares what you do in England ? " snaps Miss Maitiand.

Marie has a request to make of Florence.

" I want you," she says, " as to morrow will be the first of
May, the month of Mary, to go to Our Lady's altar in the Cathe-
dral and place a bouquet of white roses at her feet."

" I will I will ! " bursts Florence.

" And every day during the month."

" Yes, darling, yes ! "

" And I want you to say one Ave Maria. It is a short little
prayer. I will teach it to you.'* And she repeats it, the other
girl breathing it after her, word for word, until it is committed
to memory.

Florence faithfully performs this task. She goes nowhere
else. It is a pilgrimage. Maria's chill has burned up into fever,
and the doctors look very, very grave.

One day Florence is later than usual in visiting the altar of
Our Lady. A man, bent in an attitude of the deepest devotion,
kneels before it. Florence starts. It is Wash. She can hardly
believe her eyes. She retires till he goes slowly away, and then
makes her daily offering of pure white roses and says her simple
prayer. But oh ! so devoutly.

It is the " Glorious Fourth," and ninety degrees in the shade.
Up and down the piazza of Washington House, Tarrytown,
paces Mr. Trubsome, attired in a rusty uniform a trifle too small
for him, and over his shoulder the celebrated musket that com-
mitted such fearful havoc on the British at Bunker Hill. He
perspires to an alarming degree, and his complexion suggests
apoplexy. Mrs. Trubsome is on a rocking-chair; it has very
wide arms, and to each is attached a small medicine chest. She
now and then applies herself to the chest, takes out a particular
bottle, and either inhales the aroma or helps herself to its contents.

Under an immense chestnut-tree on the velvety lawn hang
two hammocks. One is occupied by Marie, the other by Flor-

472 A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. [Jan.,

ence. Beside the former, stretched on the greensward, is Wash ;
beside the other the British captain, who vies with Mr. Trubsome
in color and moisture. A regiment of small boys, all with drums,
their leader playing "Yankee Doodle" on a tin whistle of tor-
turing shrillness, marches up the avenue, and, after giving three
cheers for George Washington, departs laden with Roman can-
dles, Catherine wheels, and rockets of every conceivable descrip-
tion. The Hudson is languorously dozing in the dayshine. The
greenery everywhere is bathed in sunlight, while the dimpled
hills seem as though composed of a beautiful film. A war-ship,
on its way to West Point, causes Mr. Trubsome to fling aside his
treasured musket and dash at a small brass cannon, to which he
applies a match, his wife holding her bejewelled fingers to her
ears. Bang! and Mr. Trubsome now hauls on a flag, dipping it
in further salutation to Uncle Sam's " powder-boat," which salutes
in return, to the worthy man's rapturous delight. Not a craft
passing up or down the river fails to salute Washington House,
and the banging of the cannon and the hauling on the flag in re-
sponse to whistles from steamers, cannon and rockets and guns
from sailing vessels, keeps the proprietor in a very blaze of fren-
zied exertion.

Marie, after peering through the bars of the gates of death,
returned slowly to life, and her beautiful and holy resignation
made so deep an impression upon the impulsive heart of Florence
that she resolved to embrace the faith.

" I have a big, big surprise for you, Marie," she said one day
as the girl was coming into convalescence. " I am to be received
into your church to-morrow, and so is Wash."

Captain Belfort has obtained extra leave, and chuckles im-
mensely over the letter that announces the furlough and his pro-
motion to " major." One afternoon he asks Mr. Trubsome for
an interview in the library.

" You were all wrong about that skirmish at. Brooklyn, captain.
The real facts of the case are these "

" My dear sir, I concede. I yield everything. I want to
speak on another subject."

" Oh ! that's the way you try to get out of it. Now, my
dear sir, George Washington, when he found that the alliance

" It's about an alliance I want to speak," gasps the major.
" You have been so awfully nice to me, and your wife, and your
boy, and Miss Lawson, and Miss Maitland, that I have to thank
you most awfully. You see I have got awfully fond of the whole

1 886.] A CABLEGRAM, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 473

lot of you, and why not ? You see you have made my visit to
this big" country so awfully jolly that, by Jove ! I really don't
know how to thank you. You see, don't you know, that it's
awfully jolly to be so well treated, and your cookery is-so awfully
excellent, and your cellar is so awfully fit ; and you see, don't you
know, that I have about ,3,000 a year $15,000 and a snug little
place in Leicestershire, where I want you all to come and stop as
long as you can, and I want Miss Maitland most awfully to stop
ail the time, as my wife, don't you see." And poor Belfort, after
this prolonged intellectual effort, relapses into stolid silence.

" Am I to understand that you want to marry Florence ? "

Beifort nods.

" I must search for precedents. I believe it* was common
enough for American girls to marry British officers after the war.
Why, yes, to be sure, my own grandaunt married a Colonel
Whepster, and I never heard that she was unhappy or badly
treated. I'll think over this, captain

" Major, sir ! "

u Major, then, and I'll see how the enemy is posted."

Belfort, in a fever of excitement, meets Florence as he emerges
from the library.

" More battles, major? " she laughs.

" A victory, I hope," he blurts out, then follows up : " Flor-
ence, I have 3,000 a year, and a snug little place in Leicester-
shire " and he stops.

" And you want me to share it with you," she cries in despera-
tion.

" Yaas, most awfully."

" Well yes. You see," she adds, " you are dreadfully stupid,
but a good fellow. Oh ! I know more than you think, and I
know what a trump you are to your poor relations. I am bright
enough for both," she naively adds.

Of Wash's wooing of Marie I shall not write one word. They
are -engaged. This is sufficient.

On Christmas morning next it is Mr. Trubsome's intention to
read out at breakfast the following cablegram :

" If not detained at Quarantine the SS. Aurania will arrive at
her dock, Pier No. 19 North River, at n A.M.

" MANAGER MARINE DEPARTMENT."

And to add :

" And you refused to go and meet her, Wash ! "

474 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Jan.,

THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS.
PART III.

NOT far from where Euphrates, that great river,
From heights of Taurus seaward winds in flood

Its mighty youth replenishing for ever,
In days of yore a royal city stood :

Two lesser streams embraced it like two arms

That clasp some bright one in her bridal charms.

Around it gleamed Plane-tree and Poplar shivering
In Syrian gales tempered by mountain snows,

And gardens green traversed by runnels quivering
And Palms at each side set in columned rows :

High in the midst a church of ancient fame

There rose. Edessa was that city's name.

Before that church there stood five porches fair
Wherein the maimed and crippled sue$ for alms ;

Likewise God's penitents, admitted there

As men beloved, might hear the hymns and psalms

Until, their penance past, once more the shrine

Received them, and they fed on food divine.

Within that fivefold narthex one there knelt
Of race unknown, and humbler than the rest,

His garment hair-cloth 'neath a leathern belt ;
He deemed himself unmeet to stand as guest

Within that hallowed precinct whose embrace

Cherished the Veil all-blest and "Sacred Face."

For that cause, year by year, he dwelt without,
Although in spirit kneeling still within;

And neither civic pomp nor popular shout
Made way to him. Propping a haggard chin

On haggard hand he sat with low-bent brows

Absorbed in heavenly thoughts, unearthly vows.

1 886.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 475

Meantime o'er all the world's circumference
Euphemian sent wise men to seek his son :

Some to Laodicea sailed, and thence
Their way,' like others, to Edessa won ;

Near him they drew ; upon him turned their eye,

And knew him not; yet passed him with a sigh.
+

There were who turned again, and, instinct-taught,
Lodged on those fingers worn a piece of bread ;

And he with gladness ate it, for his thought
Grew humbler daily ; breaking it, he said

"Thank God that I have eaten of their hand

Whom once I fed and held at my command ! "

So thus by patience and long-suffering first,

And next through heart self-emptied to its core,

The inmost of Christ's Teaching on him burst ;

And u Blessed they who mourn," " Blessed the poor,"

Lived on his lips, as he in them with awe

The shrouded Vision of God's greatness saw.

He saw the things men see not. In a glass
Nearer to God than Nature's best, in Man

He saw that God Who ever is and was :

In those whom this world lays beneath her ban

The halt, the stricken, saw their Maker most :

The saved he saw in those the fool deems lost.

Now when those years were past, within the church
One day, as vespers ceased, was heard a Voice,

" Bring in My Son who kneeleth in the porch :
The same shall see My Countenance and rejoice."

Then forth God's people rushed, both old and young,

And haled the man to where that picture hung.

Instant that Pilgrim fixed his eyes thereon,

And saw that Countenance through its mist of blood

Which many see not: still, ere set of sun,
A change miraculous swifter than a flood

O'erswept it. Grief and shame far off were driven :

It shone as shines the Saviour's Face in heaven.

476 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Jan.,

And still he said : " Behold, these Faces twain
Reveal the portions twain to man allowed ;

For one of these is earth and Holy Pain,
And one is heavenly Glory, when the cloud

Of time dissolves." And still his prayer he made

For those far off: " Aid them, Thou Saviour, aid ! "

Twas needed sore. The day Alexis fled

His mother sat in ashes on the ground,
And thenceforth day by day ; and still she said,

" Lo, thus I sit until the Lost is found ! "
And night by night murmured the one-day bride,
" His wife I am : faithful I will abide.

" I will not muse, as once, in groves of Greece,
Nor dance, as once, in palace halls of Rome ;

Until this wedded widowhood shall cease,
Here with his parents I will make my home :

I must be patient now, though proud of yore:

He called me ' Child ! ' He said, ' We meet once more.

While sinks the sun, nighing his watery bed,
The shadow reacheth soon the valley's breast ;

More late it climbeth to the mountain's head
His loved one gone, Euphemian hoped the best :

Not yet the shade had reached him. Every morn

He said : " Ere night Alexis may return !

" The day my Son was born the self-same hour
I shook the dust from many a treasured scroll

Precious with that which time would fain devour,
The great deeds of our House. In one fair whole

To blend those annals was my task for years :

They bled full oft : they cannot end in tears."

But when his messengers from all the lands

Returning-, early some, and others late,
From Gaul, Iberia, Thrace, from Syrian sands,

Red Libyan coasts, and Calpe's golden gate,
Brought back the self-same tidings as the first,
That grief which reached him last was grief the worst.

1 886.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 477

Silent he mused : " Were these our prayers of old?

Sent was our child, that late-conceded boy,
To be the lamb unblemished of our fold, ,

Then vanish, and to by- word change our joy ?
Had he but won the martyr's crown and fame !
But now God's Church shall never hear his name.

" O ancient House, revered in days of yore,

Then dark, yet just, I deemed that years to be
Fourfold to thee, now Christian*, would restore

What time or heathen hate had reft from thee,
And Of thy greatness make a boon for all
That dream is past ! Now let the roof- tree fall ! "

Thus as his father mourned Alexis knelt

One day before that picture-hallowed shrine,

When suddenly he heard at once and felt
A voice oracular, awful yet benign :

" This day in prayer be mighty for those Three,

Since what to them I grant I grant through thee."

Then prayed the Saint as Saints alone can pray ;

And on that far-off Three, they knew not why,
There fell a calm undreamed of till that day,

As when some great storm ceases from the sky
Sudden, and into harbor sweeps the bark,
And green hills laugh around, and sings the lark.

Thenceforth for things gone by they hungered less,
And of the joy to come had oftener vision ;

Thenceforth self-will inflamed not heart-distress,
Nor pride, dissolved in some strange soul-fruition

The parents saw their son once more a child ;

The wife, as when hq saw her first, and smiled.

Two years passed by : once more within his heart
That son received an answer from his God :

" Go to the great sea down, and thence depart
To Tarsus, where My servant, Paul, abode ;

For I will show thee there by tokens true

The things which thou must suffer and must do."

473 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Jan.,

The man of God arose, and gat him down

To where Laodicea's mast-thronged bay
Mirrored that queenly city's towery crown,

And found a ship for Tarsus bound that day,
And sailed till o'er the morn-touched deep arose
Her walls, and hills behind her white with snows.

Then from those hills a storm rushed forth, as when
An eagle from great cliffs has kenned its quarry ;

And the black ship before it raced like men

Who flee the uplifted sword they dare not parry,

With necks low bent. So fled that ship : each sail

Split ; and the masts low leaned like willows in the gale.

Amid the slanted rain of falling spars,

And roar of winds and billows far and near,

Astonished stood those sea-worn mariners,

And hushed, since none his neighbor's voice might hear:

Then heard God's Saint: " For all this company

Fear nothing. Of their number none shall die.

" Fear not for thine own self: this storm is Mine,

And it shall lay thee by thy father's door:
There shall the great storm greet thee storm benign,

For what I take, that fourfold I restore."
Next morn they entered Tiber's mouth : at Rome
He stood ere noon, and saw his father's home,

Saw it far off whilst yet upon his way

To earth's cathedral metropolitan,
" Mother and Head of Churches," there to pray

That what to him remained of life's brief span
Might, through God's help, accomplish God's decree,
And praise His Name for all eternity.

Entering, he knelt before that crypt cross-crowned

Where, in a subterranean chapel small,
Reposed, awaiting God's Last Trumpet's sound,

The sacred bones of Peter and of Paul :
A child, before those portals he had prayed,
Nor e'er had lacked in prayer the Apostles' aid.

1 885.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 479

Evening drew nigh : he left the Lateran :

Anon, as slow he paced Rome's stateliest street,

From Caesar's palace issued forth a man,

Though bent, majestic, with attendance meet.

That man Alexis knew. With steadfast eye

The sire drew near the son ; and passed him by.

Then cried that son with anguished voice and face

" Servant of God, revered and loved of all,
Within thy house yield me a little place

That I may daily eat the crumbs that fall
Down from thy table." And his sire replied:
" So be it, Pilgrim : walk thou by my side."

Through lonely ways dimmed by the day's decline
That sire and son made way, and neither spake,

Till, step by step climbing Mount Aventine,

They reached that well-known mansion. Flake by flake

The snows were falling. 'Twas not like the day

Of that fair bridal in that far-off May.

Alexis spake : " A stripling, sir, I saw

Ofttime thy house ; memory thereof I keep :

Beneath the great stair, on a bed of straw,

Slept then a mastiff: there I fain would sleep."

And answered thus Euphemian : " Let it be !

Long since he died : his place remains for thee."

Once more the son: " Footsore and weak am t :
'Tis time to sleep : my pilgrimage is made :

The mastiff died : the Pilgrim soon will die."
Then down upon the straw his limbs he laid,

And sank asleep. Whole hours, as there he slept

Two women by his couch their vigil kept.

Down from the head of one, silk-soft, snow-white,
Rolled waves of hair : the younger kept her bloom

Though worn. They sat beside him till twilight
Was wholly lost in evening's deepening gloom,

And longed that he might wake and eat ; and spread

Their silks and velvets closelier on his bed.

480 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Jan.,

At morn he woke. Sickness and crippling pain
Fixed each its eye thenceforth on that sole man ;

And like to dead men on the battle-plain
Silent he lay. In pain his day began,

In pain worked on till daylight's last had fled,

As though great nails had fixed him to his bed.

And ever by his couch they ministered

Who loved that sufferer well yet knew him not :

For at the first note of the wakening bird
That mother came who o'er her infant's cot

Ere break of day so oft had peered ; at noon

His sire drew nigh : and when the rising moon

Flung o'er the marble floor a beam as bright
As that long path wherewith it paves the sea,

Softly she came upon whose bridal night
So black a shade had fallen so suddenly ;

And by his bed sat in the white moonshine

Like one that inly says: " This place is mine."

Some deem they knew him not because so long
That Syrian sun his wan face had imbrowned ;

And some because, at God's high Will, there clung
A mist illusive still their eyes around ;

While some are sure that mist, those long sad years,

Was unmiraculous, and a mist of tears.

Yet one avers that, gazing evermore

Year after year upon that Sacred Face,
Its semblance spread that Pilgrim's countenance o'er,

Its anguish fixed, its gleams of heavenly grace,
So that who saw the living face, beneath
Its veil saw, too, the Face of Christ in death.

That sufferer at that hour when Jesus died

Saw still the Three Hours' Darkness move o'er earth ;

And at that hour when rose the Crucified
He saw God's Universe in angel mirth

Flash forth, created new, and heard that song

The Immaculate sing, the singing spheres among.

1 886.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 481

And Thrones he saw in Heaven ; and, near those Thrones,
Three, for those Three he loved in glory set :

His father's was the loftiest, for his groans

Had risen from crypts of grief profounder yet

Than theirs ; and near he saw a fourth, low down,

Smaller; and o'er it hung a lowlier crown.

But when his parents at high festivals

Serving the mighty Rite were absent long,

A slave, not Christian, reared in those great halls,
Of him had charge. At times he did him wrong ;

Then cried, that wrong rebuked by no complaint,

" The man's a fool ! Not less the fool's a Saint ! "

And oft to that low couch a man there came
Old ere his time, with haught yet pleading eye,

Who spake : " My sires to me an ancient name

Bequeathed. When I am dead, that name shall die."

And he made answer: " Household none on earth

Can last, save Christ's. The rest are nothing worth."

And oft a woman sat beside that bed,

Meek-eyed, with soft white hair: " A child had I :
The twentieth winter now is past and fled :

That child returns not. O that I might die! "
And he replied : " Have courage, and endure ;
Pray well; and find thy children in God's Poor."

And many a time low-bent beneath the rod
A weeper wept, still fair as fair may be,

But bright no more : " Pray well, thou Man of God,
That, living yet, my husband I may see,

A living man ! " And thus he made reply :

" Yea, thou shalt see thy husband ere thou die ! "

And ever when those Three were set at meat
Euphemian sent him viands, meat and wine,

But he of barley crusts alone would eat :
And still he spake to them of things divine ;

And still, when back he sank and ceased from speech,

Musing they sat, or staring each on each.
VOL. XLII. 31

482 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Jan.,

For others spake of great things through the ear
Divulged to faith : he spake of great things seen

Clear as the stars of heaven through ether clear,
Clearer for frosty skies and north wind keen :

The Martyr means the Witness: such was he,

Martyr, not slain, of selfless charity,

Which, loving well, not self, but Man, our brother,
For that cause loves its God better by far

Than Man ; nor suffers mortal loves to smother
The immortal Love with lawless loves at war.

Such men there lived of old : such man was he,

Bondsman of Love, thence setting many free.

At times the old passion in their bosoms burned ;

At times the wound half-healed welled forth anew ;
Then to that man of woes those strong ones turned,

Child- like ; and thus he gave them solace true:
" God yearns to grant you peace, yet waits until
Your wills are one with His all-loving Will."

And when they said, " Weary we grow of prayer
Because God hath not given us that we sought,"

He answered : " Love in God, and work, and bear ;
Let no man say, ' Serve they their God for naught? '

Pray for great Rome ; for him your Lost One pray,

That he be faithful till his dying day."

Suns rose and set ; the seasons circled slow ;

Upon that house settled a gradual peace
Breathed from that spot obscure and pallet low ;

Yea, as the dews of midnight drench a fleece
So drenched was every heart with that strange calm,
And wounds long festering felt the healing balm.

Now when the years decreed had all gone by,
There came from God an answer to His Saint :

" Rejoice ! Thy work is worked, and thou shalt die : "
Then thanks he gave in happy tone though faint,

And, turning to that slave with quiet smile,

Demanded parchment scroll and writing-style.

1 886.] THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. 483

Then wrote he down the story of his life,

And God's Command, in love that spares not, given ;

And ended thus : " O Parents, and O Wife !
We meet ere long : no partings are in heaven.

God called me forth ; He said, ' Work thou My Will.'

In part I worked it, and I work it. still.

" Farewell ! God sent you trials great below
Because for you He keeps great thrones on high :

Likewise by you God willeth to bestow
New gifts on man. Each dear domestic tie

Whereof so many a year ye stood amerced

Shall yet rule earth but raised and hallowed first.

" Because ye loved your God as few men love,

He called you forth His witnesses to be
That Love there is all human loves above,

A Love all-gracious in its jealousy, .
That, all exacting, all suffices too ;
The world must learn this lesson, and from you."

When all was writ he crossed upon his breast

His arms, and in his right hand clasped that scroll :

And as the Roman monks arose from rest

Nocturns to chant, behold, that dauntless soul,

Cleansed here on earth by fire expiatory,

When none was near went hence into the glory :

Next morning, in the Lateran basilic,

Blessed Pope Innocent, who, throned that day

High in Saint Peter's world-wide bishopric,
O'er all the churches of the world held sway,

Had sung at Mass that text, though dread, benign,

" Unless a man leave all he is not Mine."

That moment from th e Holy Place a Voice

Went forth : " All ye who labour, come to Me : "

And yet again : " All ye that weep, rejoice ! "
At once that mighty concourse sank on knee,

And each man laid his forehead near the ground :

Then, close to each, those pillared aisles around,

484 THE LEGEND OF SAINT ALEXIS. [Jan.,

Distinct and clear thus heard they, word by word :
" Seek out My Saint, and bid him pray for Rome :

Yea, if he pray, his pleading shall be heard ;
That lighter thus My judgments may become,

For now the things concerning Rome have end.

Seek in Euphemian's house my Witness and my Friend."

Straightway uprising in procession went

The Roman people. With them paced that day

The Emperors twain, and holy Innocent

Between them, higher by the head than they.

Their crowns Arcadius and Honorius wore,

His mitre Blessed Peter's successor.

Arrived, they questioned if beneath that roof

There dwelt a Saint. All men replied : " Not here " ;

All save a pagan slave that stood aloof,

He who had watched the sick man all that year :

He spake: "A Saint is here; I did him wrong,

Yet never heard from him upbraiding tongue."

Then to that marble stair Euphemian ran,
And passed beneath its central arch ; and lo !

Dead on his small straw pallet lay the man ;
And on that face, so long a face of woe,

Strange joy there lived and mystical content;

And o'er him with wide wings an Angel bent.

Aloud Euphemian cried : they flocked around

, And saw and knelt. But some that stood espied
That parchment in the dead hand clasped and wound,

And strove to loose it. To that pallet's side
Drew near the brother Emperors: each was fain
To win it from his hold, but strove in vain.

Lastly Pope Innocent approached, and spread
Softly upon the dead man's hand his own;

And instant dropped that parchment on the bed ;
Long, standing by that sacred head alone,

The Pontiff eyed that scroll : at length he raised ;

While each man, rising, nearer drew and gazed.

1 886.] THE LEGEND OF ST. ALEXIS.

He spread it wide : he read with voice that trembled ;

Then beat each heart, and every cheek grew pale,
And strong men wept with passion undissembled ;

For short, and plain, and simple was that tale :
No praise it sued ; no censure seemed to shun :
Record austere of great things borne and done.

Now when Euphemian saw these things, and heard,
Motionless he remained as shape of stone ;

Ere long he stood a-shivering without word ;
And lastly fell upon the pavement prone :

But, when kind arms had raised him, on the dead

He fixed unseeing eyes, and nothing said.

Next through that concourse rushed the Mother, wailing,
" Let be! Shall I not see the babe I bore ? "

And reached the dead ; and then, her forces failing,
Sank to her knees, and eyed him, weepijig sore ;

And as a poplar sways in stormy air

So swayed she ; and back streamed her long white hair.

A change she stood. She who, her whole life long,
Had lived the soft and silent life of flowers

Pleased with the beam, patient of rain and wrong,
Had held, unconscious, all those years and hours,

A fire within hidden 'neath ashes frore :

It rose to speak but once, and speak no more.

It spake reproach : " Ah me ! thy Sire and I
Sought thee while near thou lay'st, but vainly sought

Likewise a household slave right ruthlessly

Smote thee at seasons : thou didst answer naught:

Thou didst not dry our tears ! O Son, O Son !

Make answer from the dead, was this well done ? "

Last, with firm foot drew near the one-day Wife,
And looked on him, and said : " I know that face!

Dead is the hope that cheered the widow's life :
'Tis time the Wife her Husband should embrace ! "

She spake, and sank in swoon upon his breast,

And in that swoon her heart then first had rest.

486 THE LEGEND OF ST. ALEXIS. [Jan.,

But by the Dead still stood Pope Innocent ;

His deacons placed the mitre on his head ;
And on his pastoral staff the old man leant :

Upon that throng his eye he fixed, and said,
" Henceforth I interdict all tears. A Saint
Lies here. Insult not such with grief or plaint.

" This man was God's Elect ; for from a child
He walked, God's prophet in an age impure :

Ye knew him, sirs : harmless and undefiled
He nothing preached. To act and to endure,

To live in God's light hid, unknown to die

This task was his. He wrought it faithfully*

" This man a great work wrought : its greatness fills
True measure since His Work Who still divides

To each man severally as He wills ;

He common souls in common courses guides :

To some he points strange paths till then untrod :

This thing had been ill- done had it not come from God,

" Behold ! He spreads the smooth and level way,
And blesses those that walk there pure and lowly :

Behold ! He calls, ' Ascend My hill, and pray,
And holy be ye, for your God is holy :

Let each man hear My Voice and heed My Call ;

For what I give to each I give for all.' "

He spake, and ceased. Then lo ! an angel strain
At first breathed softly round that straw-laid bed

Swelled through those halls : and in it mingled plain
That voice long loved of him so lately dead

Then when, a child, he poured that vesper hymn,

" Salve, Regina," through the twilight dim.

Again and yet again that strain ascended ;

And in it, sweeter each time than before,
The child-voice with the angelic met and blended ;

The courts, the garden bowers were flooded o'er,
Till sorrow seemed to all some time-worn fable,
As when, to lull sick babes, old nurses babble.

1 886.] THE LEGEND OF ST. ALEXIS. 487

It ceased. The Emperors gave command, and straight
Men stretched the Saint upon a golden bier

For kings ordained ; and passed the palace gate ;
And laid him in a church to all men dear ;

And lo! that night blind men who near him prayed

Made whole, gave thanks, departing without aid.

But in that palace where their Sai-nt was born
Till death those mourners, sad no more, abode ;

And, yearly as recurred her marriage morn,

That wife put on her wedding-dress, and showed

A paler, tenderer reflex, many said,

Of what she looked the morning she was wed.

Serving their God all lame half-service past
Serving their God, and, in their God, His poor,

They lived ; and God, Whose best gift is His last,
Suffered not these that anguish to endure

Worn patriots feel watching their land's decay :

Ere Rome had fall'n they died on the same day.

But two years later came that Scourge from God, 1
Alaric, and those dread warriors, Goth and Hun,

Whose fathers bled beneath the Roman rod.
Above the city walls at set of sun

They laughed a dreadful laugh. At twelve that night

Men whispered, each to each, with lips death-white.

The carnage o'er, they passed to farthest shores,

Exiles or slaves, maiden to matron bound,
Noble to knight, and hoary senators :

Yet through God's saints who slept in Roman ground
God spared most part ; and scathless towered o'er all
The basilics three of Peter, John, and Paul.

t
Euphemian's latest act had given command

To raise, where stood his Fathers' house in pride,
A church to God. This day that church doth stand

Honoring the spot whereon his dearest died :
Of that huge house remains that stony stair
Alone, which roofed the dying lion's lair.

488 THE FAULT OF MINNEOLA. [Jan.,

The Romans bring their infants to that spot ;

Young children glance therein, then shrink away
Between those columned ranges twain that blot

With evening shades the glistening pavements gray ;
And oft the latest lingerer drops a tear
For those so sternly tried, and yet so dear.

But ever while the bells salute that morn

When from the darksome womb of mortal life

Their Saint into the heavenly realm was born,
Old Aventine with bannered throngs is rife ;

They mount o'er ruins where the great courts stood :

They mark old Tiber, now a shipless flood.

They reach the church. Star-bright the Altar stands:
The Benediction Hymns ascend once more :

They press yet nearer: Apostolic hands
Uplift the Eternal Victim : all adore.

The world without is naught : within that fane

Abide the things that live and that remain.

There still thou livest, Alexis ! livest for ever
There and in heaven, rooted in endless peace

Thou, and those Three like trees beside a river,

That clothe each year their boughs with fresh increase

Of flower and fruit embalming airs divine :

In that high realm forget not me and mine !

THE FAULT OF MINNEOLA.

ON a beautiful lake connected with the Upper Missouri by a
slender stream of water, and in full view of a mountain called
Harney's Peak, stood an Indian village. The Indians were the
last remnant of the Pottawatomies. They were no longer war-
like ; they had long ago buried the tomahawk, and the white-
haired Jesuit, Father Duranquet, who had baptized them in the
Catholic faith, found in their docility and devotion a sweet re-
compense for his many years of hardship in the wilderness.
Thrice every twelvemonth he visited his dear Pottawatomies,
and when to-day this Christmas day is ended he will depart to
visit other missions many miles to the south.

1 886.] THE FAULT OF MINNEOLA. 489

But his countenance this morning does not wear its wonted
look of cheerfulness. The government agent, whose duty it is
to supply the Indians on this little reservation with provisions
and blankets for the winter, has not made his appearance ; game
is extremely scarce ; the buffalo are well-nigh exterminated ; a
piercing wind is blowing from the northwest; his flock is cold
and hungry.

" Father," spoke a young woman, as the priest was walking
toward a small church, built of logs, where he was about to
offer up the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass " Father, see what a
pretty stone I picked up a moment ago by the lake. At this
season there are no flowers to decorate the altar ; but this stone
is so bright and shiny 'twill take the place of the flowers. Do
put it upon the altar as my Christmas gift.'*

The missionary felt a cold chill through his veins and his
face grew deathly white at the sight of the golden nugget.
" Minneola," he whispered, "you have never disobeyed me.
Hasten to yonder air-hole in the ice-covered lake, and through
that hole drop this stone. The water is deep; 'twill not be
found again. And I bid you to tell nobody." These words sur-
prised Minneola. Why did Father Duranquet reject her Christ-
mas gift ? Why did he speak in low, faltering accents, and look
as if she had shown him a rattlesnake ?

But she was always obedient, and without a murmur she
turned her steps toward the frozen lake. Minneola had almost
got to it when she met a young chief named Bald Eagle. He
was her husband ; they had been married only a few months.
All his happiness was wrapped up in her. Many a mile had he
roved over the snow-covered prairie in order to procure food
for Minneola, but not an antelope, not a bison had he seen. She
was growing thinner and weaker; starvation was coming. Can
we wonder that Bald Eagle this Christmas day had a fierce
gleam in his eye ?

" The black-robe tells us," he said, clutching her arm, " to
love those who do us wrong. But how can I love the wicked
agent who has kept back from us our rations and our blankets ?
O Minneola ! I don't want to go to heaven, if I must meet pale-
faces there."

" Hush ! Speak not thus," exclaimed Minneola, with a look
of tender reproach. " Among the pale-faces are good men as
well as bad. Is not Father Duranquet good ? "

" Ay, true," answered Bald Eagle. " If all were like him we
poor Indians would not have been driven further and further

490 THE FAULT OF MINNEOLA. [Jan.,

from the hunting-grounds of our ancestors. But how few are
like him ! Why, I once heard a pale-face say that the only way
to civilize an Indian was to kill him. And the dishonest, robbing
agent will, no doubt, kill you this winter. But, Minneola, if you
freeze or starve to death I vow to place upon your grave the
agent's scalp. I will redden the snow on your grave with his
blood. By the Great Spirit I will ! "

" Go to church go ! " said Minneola. " It pains me to hear
such threats. Mass will begin presently. I will join you in a
few minutes." And she strove to push him gently from her.

But Bald Eagle espied something in her hand and asked what
it was. " Let me see that glittering thing," he said, " and then
I promise to go to Mass."

Minneola opened her palm and showed him the nugget, but
did not give it to him.

" Let me have that pretty stone," he continued.

" I cannot. Father Duranquet bade me throw it into the
lake," said Minneola.

" Let me have it," repeated Bald Eagle " let me have it."

More than one pale-face in Wildcat Town had asked him if
he ever found such bright, yellow stones on the reservation.
Here at last was one of those very stones. It might, perhaps,
buy food and clothing for Minneoia.

" Well, do not tell Father Duranquet that I disobeyed him,"
said Minneola, after Bald Eagle had entreated her to surrender
the nugget, and then changed his tone and declared that she
must give it up.

Poor Minneola ! There was a heavy Weight on her heart
as she knelt at Mass this Christmas morning. She could not
sing the " Adeste Fideles" as she used to sing it. Her mind was
distracted with vague alarms. Nor did Bald Eagle, who knelt
by her side, pray much either. He heard the northwest wind
howling round the church, he saw his wife's hollow cheeks, and
he determined, as soon as Father Duranquet should have set out
for the other missions which he would doubtless do despite the
intense cold to hasten to the nearest pale-face settlement with
the bright, yellow stone and try to exchange it for food and
blankets.

On the morrow Father Duranquet bade farewell to the Potta-
watomies, arid as he went away shivering in his buffalo-robe he
wondered how many of them would perish with cold and hunger
before spring returned. It was too late to send a complaint to
Washington. His unhappy flock must abide their fate.

1 886.] THE FAULT OF MINNEOLA. 491

But within half an hour after the priest had departed Bald
Eagle left the village in another direction. He was young and
active, and swift was his pace to the nearest town of the pale-
faces. He reached it at dusk, and the first person he met was
Bob Gould. Gould had more than once tried to persuade him
to smuggle brandy into the mission, but Bald Eagle had always
refused, and Gould knew that it was because Father Duranquet
had forbidden him. Now, Gould was in the liquor business
and hated the priest. " Only for him," he used to murmur, "I
should be much richer than I am." And it was this very Gould
who had once said, in Bald Eagle's hearing, that the only way to
civilize an Indian was to kill him.

For these words Bald Eagle hated the publican. But this
winter evening the crafty white man perceived his advantage,
and, taking the young chief by the hand, he addressed him in
winning accents. " Come to my fireside and I will warm you and
feed you," he said. " I heed not the cold," answered Bald Eagle.
"But. my kinsmen are suffering. The agent, who should have
come to us six weeks ago with supplies, has not come. I must
have food and blankets. Is this of any value ? " As he spoke he
held up the nugget.

Gould, self-possessed as he was, could with difficulty pre-
serve a composed countenance at the sight of the gold. It was
almost as big as a pigeon's egg. But when he answered his
voice betrayed no excitement. Yet a keen ear might have
heard his heart thumping. " 'Tis a pretty enough bauble, and
will do to ornament my mantelpiece," said the tavern-keeper.
" I will give you a sack of flour for it." Bald Eagle eagerly
pressed the nugget into his hand. Then, being asked where he
found it, he said that his wi/e had found it by the shore of the
lake. " And I remember," he added, " that before the frost
set in, while I was digging for roots near a muskrat-hole by
the water-side, I saw a number of stones exactly like this one,
although not quite so large. If I see any more shall I bring them
to you ? "

" Hardly worth the trouble," answered Gould carelessly. Yet
his hand quivered as he dropped the precious metal into his
pocket. What visions of wealth were rising up before his mind's
eye ! " I may soon be worth millions," he thought to himself,
while he led the innocent Pottawatomie to his drinking-saloon,
where, after refreshing him, he sent him home rejoicing with as
much meal as he was able to carry. " And expect me to-morrow
with a sledge-load of flour and blankets," said Gould, into whose

492 THE FAULT OF MINNEOLA. [Jan.,

mind an inhuman thought had just entered a thought which
only a demon could have inspired.

And now all night long across the desolate prairie abandoned
even by the wolves Bald Eagle travelled. No rest did he give
his weary limbs : Minneola was famishing. And when Harney's
Peak flamed in the morning sunshine he greeted his loving spouse
with a cheery voice as she ran to meet him. But it was not until
Bald Eagle had pressed her hand and ridiculed her foolish scruples
that Minneola consented to taste the food which he had brought.
" My sleep last night," she said, " was disturbed by a mournful
dream. I saw an Indian passing by me. Then came another and
another of our dwindling tribe all in solemn procession, with
heads bowed down as if in grief. Alas ! I fear that some calami-
ty is approaching. And 'twill be all owing to me. Oh ! why did
I disobey Father Duranquet ? "

" Silly woman, eat and be happy," answered Bald Eagle.
" The priest is a holy man, but he is not wise, or he would not
have bidden you to throw away the pretty stone which you
wanted to place upon the altar for a Christmas gift. Why, 'twas
that very stone which purchased this food ; and we shall all have
enough to eat ere long, and blankets too." But Minneola shook
her head, and there were tears in her eyes as she sat by his side
eating ; for while she ate she could not help thinking of her
mournful dream. It had left a deep impression on her.

This day Gould did not arrive with blankets and provisions, as
he had promised. But he appeared the following day, and the
villain inwardly chuckled as Indian after Indian took a blanket,
then gratefully shook his hand.

Ere he went back to Wildcat Town he examined the shore
of the lake, marking well the spot where Minneola had found the
nugget ; it was close by the muskrat-hole where Bald Eagle had
seen so many little yellow stones.

" Thousands of miners will soon be flocking hither," thought
Gould. " But my claim will be the richest claim of all." Can
we wonder that he felt elated ? He did not doubt for a moment
that his hell-inspired scheme for exterminating the Pottawatomies
would succeed.

Poor Minneola, loath as she was to partake of the food
which had been got in exchange for the nugget the nugget
which Father Duranquet believed to be at the bottom of the lake
yielded to the pangs of hunger and ate. But nothing could in-
duce her to accept a blanket. She drew scornfully back when
Gould offered her one ; nor would she let Bald Eagle even touch

1 886.] THE FAULT OF MINNEOLA. 493

one of the blankets with the tip of ^his finger. Bald Eagle
laughed, but let her have her way in this matter, for he had never
known her to be so in earnest. There was an expression of fiend-
ish delight on Gould's face as he went away, which Minneola
perceived, and it made her tremble. And when Bald Eagle fol-
lowed her into his wigwam and asked why she was moaning,
Minneola only answered : " Woe is coming woe is coming."

Two weeks later a figure on horseback might have been seen
watching from a distance the stricken Pottawatomies. Cold as it
was, Gould was willing to endure the cold in order to make sure
that his scheme was succeeding. Indian after Indian had fallen a
victim to a horrible disease. By and by not a Pottawatomie was
left alive, except two, a man and a woman, whom Gould through
his spy-glass espied wending their way to the westward. He
ground his teeth when he saw that Bald Eagle and Minneola had
escaped the plague. For, rude and lawless as were the citizens of
Wildcat Town, even in their eyes he might appear a criminal
worthy of being " lynched," if what he had done should become
known to them. And Bald Eagle was not a fool. He must sus-
pect the truth. Would he not make it known ? Gould must not
let Bald Eagle and Minneola escape. He did not follow them
immediately, however, but went back to Wildcat Town for a
supply of ammunition.

In Wildcat Town this winter the small-pox had broken out
and carried off a good many people. But the greater the scourge
the more brandy and whiskey had been imbibed. Gould's tavern
had never been so popular. And now when he reappeared among
his friends they set up a shout, and Gould so far forgot himself
as to exhibit the nugget of gold. Then some one called his health
and wished him good luck. His health was toasted uproarious-
ly, and, full of craft as Gould was, he himself drank more than
was wise, and very soon it was noised abroad that where the
Pottawatomie mission stood was a gold-mine !

Had a supernatural being dropped down from the sky and
told the inhabitants of Wildcat Town that by simply shoulder-
ing a pick-axe and marching due west forty miles they might all
become millionaires, the bustle and uproar could not have been
greater. Straightway the small-pox was forgotten ; on every side
appeared new life and energy, while the telegraph flashed the ex-
citing news to the remotest corner of the land. Then an unex-
pected thaw set in, the snow melted away, and, too impatient
to wait for spring-time, an army of swearing, drinking, rollicking
men, with pick-axes, pistols, and whiskey, turned their faces in

494 THE FAULT OF MINNEOLA. [Jan.,

the direction of the Black Hills, and at their head was Bob
Gould ; for so anxious was he about securing the richest claim
that he forgot to go in pursuit of Bald Eagle and Minneola.

Ay, gold there was, and plenty of it, just where the rum-
seller had told them there was gold ; and nuggets almost as big
as his fist were unearthed. Into a trench the dead Indians
were tumbled pell-mell. What was the life of a few score of red-
skins compared with a gold-mine? Nobody cared to ask ques-
tions. And when, toward the end of March, a Catholic priest came
among the miners and implored them to tell him how all this had
happened what had destroyed his flock ? had they starved, or
been frozen, or what? and who had pulled down the little church
and the wigwams? -the miners were too busy to answer, except
by a shrug of their shoulders. Where the church had stood a
big hotel was being erected ; countless gambling-hells and drink-
ing-saloons were doing a flourishing business ; a theatre would
be opened in a week ; there was even talk of a railroad ; Wildcat
Town would soon be a mere village compared with Auriopolis.

But Father Duranquet was not to be rebuffed ; undaunted by
scowls and gibes, he continued to ask questions, until finally he
learnt that small-pox had carried off his whole flock except two,
who had escaped and wandered into the wilderness. This much
Bob Gould had divulged when tipsy to a friend less tipsy than
himself. And it was this friend of his who now paused a moment
digging for gold to speak a calm word to the heart-broken priest.
" Gould himself," added the miner, " hasn't been seen in several
weeks. He couldn't sleep at night; had something on his mind
that troubled him ; and the last I saw of him he was galloping off
towards Harney's Peak, howling like a madman."

Father Duranquet, who knew the desperate character of Bob
Gould, could not help suspecting that in some mysterious way he
was at the bottom of all this ruin and desolation. He had heard
enough, and, mounting his horse, he rode out of Auriopolis in
quest of the two Indians whom the small -pox had spared. And
as he jogged along he called to mind the nugget which Minneola
had brought to him on Christmas morning. She had, no doubt,
obeyed him and thrown it into the lake. Yet was it not strange
that within a few months, and winter-months too, a gold-mine
should have been discovered on the mission-ground? Perhaps
after his departure Gould had visited the mission, and in an un-
guarded moment Minneola might have told him about the nugget.
And then auri sacra fames ! the unhappy Indians had -been
doomed. While Father Duranquet was thinking of this he met

1 886.] THE FAULT OF MINNEOLA. 495

a band of men carrying rifles and pick-axes. They had trudged
all the way from Missouri, and they stared at him with curious
eyes, and marvelled that he was not going in the direction of the
wonderful gold-mine. In reply to a question they told him that
two Indians, one of whom was a squaw, had been seen about a
week before. " But reckon they're starved to death by this
time." And with a heartless laugh they went on towards the
Black Hills for was it not enough to make them laugh that a
white man should bother his head about a redskin?

The following day, near a grove of cottonwood trees, a shock-
ing sight presented itself to the missionary's eyes. A man sur-
rounded by wolves was crying for help and doing his utmost to
beat them off. But the savage, hungry pack pressed closer and
closer; nor could Father Duranquet do anything to save him : his
terrified steed refused to advance, and in a few minutes the unfor-
tunate traveller was torn in pieces. Then, strange to relate, one
of the wolves separated itself from the pack, and, holding in its
jaws the man's head, passed slowly within a very little distance of
the priest. And lo ! the blood-besmeared head was the head of
Bob Gould.

This evening, as the sun was setting, Father Duranquet per-
ceived on a low hill ahead of him a buffalo. It was the first that
he had seen in more than a twelvemonth, and, as he gazed on the
solitary creature, he did not know that it was the very last buffalo
left in that region. Of the millions that had once roamed over
the plains of the far West, all had been destroyed except this
one. As Father Duranquet was watching it slowly retreating be-
hind the hill, his horse snorted and swerved to one side with such
violence that he was almost thrown out of the saddle. Turning
to look for the cause of its fright, what should he see, half-hidden
by a clump of sage-brush, but an Indian ; and the Indian was Bald
Eagle ! He was crouched at the foot of a mound, at one end of
which was planted a little cross made of a broken arrow. His
head reclined on his breast ; dangling from his wrist was Min-
neola's rosary, and in his right hand he clutched a bow, from
which he had aimed a shaft perhaps at the buffalo on the hill.
But Bald Eagle's strength had departed ; the missile had dropped
half-way. Then, sinking beside the grave of his beloved, he
had gone, let us hope, to rejoin Minneola in the happy hunting-
ground.

Used as the aged missionary was to scenes of woe and death,
his eyes were bedimmed with tears as he knelt and offered up a
prayer for the last of the Pottawatomies.

49 6 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

SOLITARY ISLAND.
PART FOURTH.

CHAPTER VII.
"WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT?"

THAT was a miserable day for Ruth Pendleton which wit-
nessed the vulgar outbursts of Barbara Merrion and showed to
her the real character of the woman in whom she had confided.
There was nothing- to prevent her from telling the story to the
whole world ; and in her heart there was the dread of its reach-
ing Paul's ears, as it must if he remained long in the town or if
Barbara encountered him. She was compelled to believe that
Paul thought no more of her than of any other woman, in spite of
Barbara's gossip. His manner had always been cordial, respect-
ful, and distant. He had never sought her out, and he so near ;
had never presumed to any of a lover's boldness or familiarity ;
had always been as distant as a polite acquaintance could be, and
talked of New York and his visit to her convent as common
things, which they were not to her. Was the bit of Bristol-board
a fancy, then? She looked at it many times a day. How it
would amuse him when Barbara related its history ! Her cheeks
burned at the thought of the humiliation. The squire assured
her that he had arranged it with Barbara nicely, and that night
Barbara came herself with Florian to protest against the conduct
of that day and to declare that the secret would be a secret for
ever.

Ruth was fain to be satisfied, but could not trust Barbara un-
til she heard that Paul had also departed from Clayburg. It was
a delicate and thoughtful act on the poet's part, and well deserved
its intended effect. Ruth rejoiced over it from one point of view.
It was hardly probable that he had met Barbara. If so, and she
had told him, there was no dread of meeting him again in this
world. Her dream was faded into the chili reality of day. Re-
signation was Ruth's stronghold, and she bore this sorrow as
sweetly as she had borne many others in her placid life. The
winter wore away, until blustering March began to hint at the
warmth of spring. Clayburg was deep in snow and ice still, and

1 886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 497

won many a malediction from the genial Peter, as he surveyed
the wintry desolation from the office of the hotel on the morning-
after his arrival.

" The whole place ought to be ceded to the British govern-
ment," he said to the amused bystanders, " for a compensation,
of course. You might take it back in the summer, but in winter
a Yankee ought to be forbidden to enter it. If ye had steam now
under the streets to keep the snow melting there at least, it
wouldn't be so bad. Ye look like Esquimaux."

" We air Esquimaux," said a shrewd youngster, " except in
the matter of whiskey. That don't freeze, anyway."

" Yer right, b'y," said Peter, with a wink ; " and that reminds
me," giving a mighty cough, "that I must take something for this
cold, if I hope to escape consumption. Step up, lads."

Peter was interrupted in his approach to the bar by the sud-
den opening of a door near him and the immediate appearance of
the squire in his very path. It was as if the world stood still with
surprise when the two old worthies faced each other. The squire
walked haughtily away in one direction, and Peter as haughtily
in the other, with his eye flashing and a certain weak but con-
sistent inclination to turn back and address his enemy, visible in
the uncertain movement of his legs towards the bar-room. He
came to the door once, with the " tears of Erin " in his hand and
his eye hinting at an invitation ; but the squire was deep in the
weekly paper, and looked savage. He was examining the hotel
register when Peter came again to the office, and had put on his
glasses to read Peter's new name.

" Masquerading," he snorted; " nothing more! His name's
no more Parker C. Lynch than mine is. I know him. The
greatest natural fool that ever was born inside Ireland. He's
Peter Carter the world over, and he'll die so."

" Here's my card," said Peter, at his elbow, "and there's my
reference," laying his finger on Paul's name. " I've come all the
way from New York to apologize to your daughter for certain
conduct unbecoming a gentleman "

In some way unknown the squire got self-possession enough
before this speech was well begun to seize Peter's hand jovfully
and crush his words out of hearing by loud and joyful shouts of
welcome, while at the same time he pushed him out of the office
into a private room.

" This is amazing," said Peter, " and unexpected. After our
long estrangement, to meet in this friendly way

" It is amazing," said the squire, with a groan, "and I shall
VOL. XLII. 32

498 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

end the whole matter with shooting you. What do you mean by
shouting- out in a public room matters concerning your private
life and mine ? How dare you speak of my daughter as you do
in public ? It is enough to drive a man mad ; and if you don't
shut up and get out of this town at once, or never say a word of me
or mine until you are dead, I'll arrest you as a swindler and give
you six months in jail. I'm the sheriff of this county, and I can
do it. Carter, you're a fool, and you never were a gentleman."

" I'm a fool, I admit," said Peter in deep astonishment, " to
stand the like o* this from you, you red-faced country nabob, with
as much sense in your system as there is in my nose ! You must
know once for all that I shall talk as I please, about anybody I
please, and where I please. I'll go out this minute," said Peter,
rising, " and detail the whole story of your daughter to the world.
I'll put it in the paper."

The squire drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and stood
before the door jingling them.

" You're going to jail, Carter, this instant," said he deter-
minedly. " I am not going to endure you any longer."

" O ah ! " quoth Peter, with a long stare at the handcuffs and
the situation. " My name's not Carter," he said after a pause,
" but just what you saw written in the register P. C. Lynch
and I'm the husband of Madame De Ponsonby, and the father of
that sweet girl Frances. Paul Rossiter will swear to it. I'm
sure you wouldn't put a born gentleman in jail. 'Twas yourself
brought the trouble on. I know what it is to be a father, and I
came up here to apologize to Miss Ruth for the mean advantage
I took of her some time ago when looking for Paul."

The squire could not but feel his sincerity, and with a slow,
uncertain movement he put away the handcuffs.

" Why do you make such a fool of yourself, then," said he,
" shouting all you know to the world, and dragging a lady's name
before the public in a bar-room ? "

" I didn't do that," Peter stoutly asserted. " Did I, though ?
Well, if I did and yet I can't believe it I'm heartily sorry, and
I'll drink to me own repentance, with your kind permission.
After that I'll call on Miss Ruth, explain myself, and retire."

" No, you needn't mind, Carter, or Lynch. I'll bear the apol-
ogy. Miss Pendleton is not anxious to see you again, and it
would disturb her too much. I am sorry we can't offer you the
hospitality of our house, but it would only end by carrying you
off to jail. I'm the sheriff now, and I don't stand any more non-
sense."

i886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 499

" Just so," said Peter dubiously. " Man dressed in a little
silly authority commits such absurdities as make fools weep.
Who asked you for your hospitality, Pendleton ? Haven't t
money to pay me own way ? You may be sorry you can't offer
it, but you have saved me the trouble of declining. And this
idiot was once my friend ! "

" And would still be your friend, if you knew enough to keep
your mouth shut," the squire snapped in a savage way.

" Would you, now ? " Peter asked earnestly. " Then hear
me. I close my mouth now and for ever. If my mouth is all
that separates us, I'll do away with it. I'll sew it up or deposit
it in a bank as far as I can."

" There's enough of it to draw big interest," said the squire,
softening.

" D'ye say so ? " Peter roared. " Then we're reconciled. I'll
have in a punch to cement the glory of this day, and as long as I
am in this town we'll make the night rosy as the dawn with feast-
ing. Don't be afraid, squire, of my peaching on ye henceforth.
As long as I stay I'll act like the gentleman I am by birth, and
and and I can't think of the other word, but ye can depend on
me."

" What are you doing here, anyway?" said the squire sus-
piciously.

" I came up with Paul ; ye know Paul Rossiter ? Be George !
I forgot all about him " ; and, as if a sudden thought occurred to
him, " Squire, I'll bet ye ten dollars I'll sleep under your roof to-
night."

The squire shook his head gravely, and yet with a lingering
sense of uneasiness. What could the old fellow mean ?

" Don't get that idea into your head," said he.

" I haven't got the idea, squire. I won't go till you ask me,
of course. That's what I mean. But I'm sure ye'll ask me.
Never mind ; we'll not talk of it. Come on for a game of euchre ;
and mind, it's double the stakes after every deal."

In the excitement of a favorite pastime the old gentlemen for-
got all unpleasantness, all idea of time, past or future. The din-
ner-hour passed unnoticed, and its noisy herald, the bell of the
establishment, made no impression on their ears circumstances
leading to complications and encounters the results of which
found point and emphasis in the fact that Peter laid his round,
jolly head on one of the squire's pillows that night. For Ruth,
having dined alone, and certain that her father would not return
to dinner, took advantage of the clear, bright day to visit some of

5oo SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

her poor. They met at the post-office Paul hearty and loud from
a consciousness of the happiness to come, she a trifle pale and
saddened on many accounts. It was :

" Miss Pendleton, are you not glad to see an old face to-day? "
and " Mr. Rossiter, this is an unexpected pleasure," with bows
and tremblings and heart-beats innumerable, and many inquiries
about nothing at all, until Paul said :

" I am going to visit you this evening, with your permission,
and I shall bring with me, if you like, an eccentric friend whom
you may have met Mr. Peter Carter, as he is commonly known."

Ruth smiled an assent while she tingled with shame, and the
scene faded for an instant from her vision. He must know all,
then, to be here at this season and in the company of this dread-
ful old man !

" His rightful name," said the poet, " is Lynch, and he is the
father of that Miss Lynch who was to be the wife of our friend
Florian."

" Who was to be?" she repeated. " Is, then, that story true
which we have heard of her cruel desertion ? "

" Unfortunately, yes " ; and he added in a lower voice, " You
may wonder at my return in this rough season, but I come on a
matter that concerns us both."

" Had you not better wait ? " she said politely, glancing around,
while inwardly she grew hot and cold from shame.

" I merely wished to give you a hint," he said, " of what you
are to expect." And the cruel fellow knew all the time the double
meaning in his words and watched her confusion with secret de-
light. " The island has another solitary."

She cast a startled look at him.

" Florian has come back a penitent, thrown up the world and
its honors, and proposes to live and die, as did his father, in the
obscurity of that island."

" I am dazed," she replied ; " I cannot understand such things."

" They are as true as they seem, Miss Pendleton. This evening
I shall explain them. Florian is on the island, has been there for
ten days, and Mrs. Merrion has married a Russian count and gone
to Europe. You are still more surprised. Let me say good-day
to you, and do me the honor of being at home this evening."

He raised his hat and allowed her to pass on her way. At the
hotel he found the squire and his partner still deep in their game,
with faces excessively red from hot punch, and no idea of the
state of time and their own stomachs. The squire shook hands
with Florian's rival gruffly.

1 886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 501

" I suppose you have dined," said the poet. "I am a little
late."

" It's hardly ten o'clock," said Peter. " Come, squire, double
the stakes." But the mention of time had struck the squire like a
blow. He looked at his watch, and tossed the cards pettishly at
Peter, who tossed them back again, and finally threw them over
his person in a shower.

" I'm late again," said the squire. " This card-business is too
much for me. And now what will Ruth say ? "

" Papa," mimicked Peter, who was now in the mood for royal
fun, " why do you return when the praties are cold "

Paul laid his han^on Peter's arm in time to check his impru-
dence. " We shall all dine together," said he. " Squire Pendle-
ton, will you accept an invitation to dinner? "

" Thank you," said the squire ungraciously. " There's no help
for it now. I shall be happy."

"And mind," said the jovial Peter, as they proceeded to the
dining-room, "that you're going to entertain the dignitary of the
county the man who may have yet the privilege of hanging
you."

Very doubtfully the squire received the poet and Peter at his
home that evening. Ruth blushed on greeting the latter, but his
apology was so utterly wanting in eccentricity, so suited to the
occasion, and his manner afterwards was so modest because of
Paul's warnings, that both father and daughter were put at their
ease. Ruth was again deceived. This visit concerned only Flo-
rian, she thought, and consequently there was no reason why she
could fear that Barbara had exposed her. Talk drifted into the
usual channels, and presently Peter coaxed the squire to a glass
of cider in the back room and a quiet game of cards. The door
was left open for various reasons quite patent to all present, but
the reasons were deprived of their force by the continual noise
which the veterans made. In the midst of it, and in spite of it,
Paul related the circumstances which had led to Florian's flight
to the island, and gave Ruth a description of his experience with
the penitent that morning.

" It is a wreck you have seen, not Florian," she said, with the
tears in her eyes ; " but out of it the old Florian will come back
to us. Thank God ! I hope Linda and the prince know this day
of joy."

" It is quite impossible," said Paul, " that he should take up
the life his father led. He is too useful. Yet it fits him wonder-
fully ; and to see Kim you would think the prince was revived."

502 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

" We shall leave Pere Rougevin to settle his future. He will
make it easy for him to resume the old life without violence to
the grace which he has received. I shall make bold to visit him
to-morrow."

" Double the stakes," came Peter's voice through the door,
" and fire away."

The squire cast a satisfied glance at the polite manner of the
poet. No sign of the lover there !

" I shall have the honor of accompanying you," said Paul, " if
you have no objections. I am going to the island myself. My
two reasons for coming here were "

" Three games out of four ! " shouted Pet^r. " Paul, b'y, New
York against the world ! I'm waxing the Clayburg heathen."

" Hard work," thought the squire, " to make love with Peter
around."

" I wished to make certain of what had happened to Florian,
for the sake of Frances," continued the poet.

" Poor girl ! " said Ruth, " she will be his salvation yet."

" Indeed she will, Miss Pendleton. I believe his heart turns
that way still. No great heart like his could ever find content in
such a creature as Mrs. Merrion. And my other reason was to
remove any misunderstanding between you and me."

" Misunderstanding!" said Ruth, greatly surprised.

" I have loved you a long time, Miss Pendleton fully eight
years. 1 have tried to keep it a secret, to bury it for ever from
your knowledge, and yet I could not. I could not leave you with-
out having spoken. God knows if I might not have made a mis-
take in so doing ! It would be an eternal regret to me, and so I
wish to know from your own lips, Ruth, if I must part from you
for ever. It rests with you to give me the greatest happiness or
the greatest sorrow of my life."

" I shall be compelled to give you " She hesitated, for her
emotion was strong, and she dreaded an exhibition of tears be-
fore Peter and the squire. Paul trembled in spite of his confi-
dence in Barbara's story.

" I shall be compelled to give you," said Ruth calmly, after a
time, " what you call the greatest happiness of your life." And
she laid her hand in his for an instant, while their eyes met and
exchanged the thoughts too true and sweet for expression. His
face was radiant, and he made no demur when she begged to be
excused and withdrew to her own room. God had been very
good to her. In the very moment of her resignation to his will
he had honored and blessed her beyond belief. The squire saw

1 886.] SOLITAR Y ISLAND. 503

her depart with a hearty delight, and thereafter accepted triumph
and defeat with indifference ; but his heart fell when Paul, in the
presence of the journalist, made a formal demand upon him for
his daughter.

" You needn't hesitate," said Peter; "the two were made for
each other, and no man can part them. Didn't you and I try it
in New York, like the foolish boys we are? Didn't I keep on
trying it for years afterward ? If love can more than match two
such giants as we, where's the use of fighting it? Come, now,
surrender. New York is at the pinnacle of glory to-night. Beat-
en in cards and love under your own roof, the least you can do
is to come down gracefully, and then select your monument.
There's no room for ye here after to-night. Ye poor old squire \
Ye were always a fool, but I never saw ye look so much like one
as now."

" I had thought Ruth's idea of marrying was over," said the
squire sadly ; " but if you've made it up between you, I have
only to say yes."

" So you may go to the hotel, Paul, b'y," said Peter, " for the
old boy won't be able to stand the sight o' ye for a week, and I
shall stay here to comfort him. Be off, now! "

The squire felt the need of consolation and made no objection
to Peter's proposal. The poet modestly withdrew, not at all dis-
heartened by the squire's reluctance to receive him as a son-in-
law, while the old man proceeded to drown sorrow and time in
Peter's fashion, without any regard for the morrow. The stakes
were doubled innumerable times before the winter's dawn steal-
ing coldly into the room displayed the empty pitchers, scattered
cards, and chairs upset in cheerless outline.

Florian easily guessed the relation existing between the two
who visited him the next day. Ruth's manner was always so
clearly marked in its modesty and reserve that her intimates
might soon discover any variation in it. The new hermit ac-
cepted the position quietly and without so much as a single re-
flection on what might have been. He did not look for any
surprise on the part of those who came to see him, nor did Ruth
manifest any. It was as if he had been there ten years. Paul
gave them an opportunity to talk alone.

" I congratulate you," said Florian gravely, " on your pre-
sent happiness. You are every way deserving of it."

" And I congratulate you on yours," said Ruth. " Our island
seems destined to have a tenant always."

She would have wept, had she been alone, at his sadly altered

504 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

appearance, stooped, pale, hollow-eyed, and the firm lips quiver-
ing-. But better that way and dear to God than in the pride
of his physical strength and political glory !

" Yes, this is a place for happiness," he said, looking around
the homely room. " It healed my father's heart "

" And it will heal yours," she added for him as he left the
thought on his lips unexpressed. He smiled as if she had re-
proved him.

" I hope so. You have not known all my wickedness, Ruth.
I deserted Frances"

" I know it all, Florian. Do not distress yourself with re-
counting it. Your reparation will be all the sweeter to her, poor
girl."

" How can I make it ?" he said humbly. " I have put a shame
upon her which only marriage can take away ; yet I could not
ask her after the wrong I have done."

" Do not think about it at all," said Ruth with emphasis.
" Go to her, tell her your sorrow and your resolutions. Her
love will find a way through difficulties. Linda would rejoice
to see this hour," she added. ** O Florian, what a time it has
all been ! What a treasure we missed finding ! I cannot forgive
myself for not knowing in time ! "

" I came near missing it altogether," he said in turn. " I was
but little disturbed at his discovery and death. What a fate is
mine ! Had I remained in Clayburg he would have made him-
self known to me. Had I even been faithful to God while in
the world he would have granted me the favor. Had I tried to
discover him, and not feared it, I would have found him. Had I
been faithful to Frances he would not have died. My ambition,
avarice, disloyalty to the faith, and desertion of my promised
wife have been almost balanced by the fact that I am his mur-
derer. I would never have known my dreadful share in his
death had I responded to the feelings which decency and grace
prompted in me when I was last on the island after his death.
But no; I went back to evil, and thus was I turned from it. May
God and my saintly father help me ; but indeed, Ruth, I am a
most miserable man ! "

His cheeks flushed while he was speaking, and Ruth's tears
fell slowly. It was his first outburst of feeling in mortal presence
since the night his crime was fixed upon him. He bowed his
head upon the table and wept in silence.

" Thank God, as I do, for these tears," she said. " Yours is a
strong nature, Florian, and once turned from the right it would

i886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 505

require just such means to bring you back. I am not sorry for
your sins, since I see your repentance. Your father cannot re-
gret his sad ending, nor your share in it, when he sees your tears
falling into the hand of God. O Florian ! be of good heart : all
your sins are forgiven you."

It was a haggard face that he presented on rising.

" I know they are forgiven. I am very fortunate. Pardon
me for intruding these things on you. It is not a day for tears."

The sun was shining maliciously on the helpless snow, whose
white fingers clung in vain to the spruce-trees and the rocks, and
with much weeping lost their hold and fell out of sight. Patches
of gold color lay along the ice, and big shadows stole around the
islands, retreating from the sun. The air and earth sparkled. A
soft wind blew from the south in gusts and filled the narrow
channels with music. It was not a day for tears, as Florian had
said, but the sight of that lonely grave upon the hill was ever in
his eyes, and the beauty of the world lay under its shadow. For
him the sun rose and set behind it, and beyond it he saw heaven
and hell, the eternal truths of religion, and the path that led to
heaven. He could not but be a little gloomy, and the presence
of men augmented the gloom. His friends parted from him with
many kind wishes and hopes for the future. Like his father, he
said nothing and watched them until they were out of sight.
What was he thinking of ? The poet thought it might be of the
days when the rights now exercised by another over Ruth be-
longed to him. The poet was wrong. Florian was wondering
if his repentance would bring him the peace of heart which at-
tached to the former hermit of Solitary Island !

CHAPTER VIII.
REPARATION.

THE oldest inhabitant of Clay burg, mindful of that day, years
back, when Florian had received a public reception from his
townsmen, and particularly moved by the physical and moral
grandeur of the man at the time, had he seen the figure which
one April day walked to the residence of Pere Rougevin would
have been overcome with resentment and shame. Still pale and
emaciated, stooped and shambling in his walk, as plainly clothed
as a workman, Florian proceeded through the streets of the town

5o6 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

as calmly as if it was a custom with him so to do. People stared
at the stranger and wondered at his likeness to " their boy,"
speculated as to who he might be, and were mystified when no
one knew him. Florian was more than disguised. It was an-
other person who walked the streets that day on his pilgrimage
of reparation. Pere Rougevin received him with respect, yet
distantly. Since the days when he had been his altar-boy affec-
tion had not existed between them to any degree. Florian had
not desired it, and the polite priest had never intruded. He had
not even presumed on his knowledge of Florian's antecedents,
holding himself as a disinterested spectator when his official
character was not dragged in. The priest was not a lovable
man commonly, being prudent and diplomatic and stern, but his
character was one that drew out the esteem of his neighbors and
held the interest of his people. Its intellectual side was upper-
most, which fact sufficiently accounted for the repulsion he and
Florian exercised on each other.

" You are aware," said Florian, without any preface, " of all
that has happened to me. I suppose Mr. Rossiter told you. You
will not be surprised at my visit, then. I come to ask your par-
don for much that I have thought and said and done against you,
and much more for the lack of gratitude I had for your services.
My father thought you a valuable friend, and your fidelity proves
that he did not esteem you too highly. Will you believe that I
regret most sincerely my past conduct ? "

" Certainly," said the priest, with some constraint ; for he saw
that Florian was in an odd mood, one that he could not then
conceive to be natural. Both Ruth and Paul had urged him to
influence Florian against his resolution of living on the island,
but he saw no way to begin. He was farther removed from the
politician than ever, and when he said no more Florian rose
to go.

" I heard a rumor," said Pere Rougevin then, " that you in-
tended to spend the rest of your life on the island."

" It is true," said Florian simply.

" As an act of penance ? " inquired the priest.

" And from inclination, too," answered the penitent.

" It is a rather violent change," suggested the other. "Are
you sure it is an act agreeable to God? One should hesitate and
seek advice before rushing into positions of that kind."

" Is not inclination a good adviser ? " Florian asked.

" To a penitent it is a great enemy. Inclinations for a long
time bad or erratic do not lead to good in an instant."

1 886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 507

" I am ready for advice," he replied humbly. " Would you
advise me?"

" Then tell me minutely your reasons for leaving a life which
had become a second nature," said the pere, with business-like
alacrity, " and turning to one so trying and unusual in our day."

Without emotion or affectation Florian laid bare his most
secret thoughts to the priest and made plain his reasons for liv-
ing on the island as a solitary.

" I did not think it unusual after my unusual career," he said in
conclusion. " It seemed a fitting close to a life so full of error."

" Perhaps it is," the priest said doubtfully, " and you can
wait. A few months hence it may be easier to arrive at a deci-
sion. In the meantime you can continue to follow those im-
pulses which God may give you. I can say nothing more now."

These words Florian received as a command, although the
priest was himself surprised at them. He had already arrived at
a speculative decision in the case, but Florian's simple narrative
had made a great impression on him, and, obeying a strong mo-
mentary impulse, he resolved to attempt no interference in a mat-
ter which Providence seemed to have taken into its own hands.
Florian, therefore, went away uninstructed. He took the morn-
ing train for New York, buying his ticket with the squire's
startled eyes fixed on him fearfully. Was this a ghost ? the squire
asked himself. He did not venture to address the figure, and
Florian did not observe him, while the more he looked at the
undressed beard and the lean form the less resemblance could he
see to his famous boy. The eyes of New-Yorkers were not so
easily deceived. Passing through the streets to his long-desert-
ed office, he met but a few acquaintances, and all recognized him,
offered him their sympathy for the illness of which they had
heard nothing, and wondered at the odd manner in which he
accepted their condolences. Just then he was a political cipher
and was not troubled with the presence of old adherents. A
paragraph in the paper announced his return to the metropolis,
and brought fear and trepidation into the De Ponsonby house-
hold, but in no other circle did it create any excitement. Peter
read the notice from the paper with considerable satisfaction in
his garret.

" It's the season of marriages," he said to himself ; " and since
Paul is going, I'd like to see Frank, poor creature, going too.
She has a large heart, that girl, and may be she could supply him
with a little poor divil ! he needs it. I'd not grudge him some
of my own, if it could be transmitted like the transfusion of

508 SOLITARY ISLAND. ["J an '

blood; but it can't, and, anyway, how do I know that I have so
much of it to spare ? I lost some on Maria, the poor thing it's
little she appreciated it. What grand opportunities ye lost,
Peter no, Parker, old b'y, since ye lost the first ; that was when
Adam took a bite of the apple, poor fellow. There's more of him
in us than original sin. Hey, Paul, b'y, what d'ye think of him
turning up the man with a gizzard instead of a heart ? "

Paul had just entered for a chat, and the paper was waved at
him triumphantly.

" Is it so ? " said he in excitement. " Let me see."

" There, now, don't be impatient, and I'll read it for ye. Now
that Ruth is yours ye have no reason to be hasty for the rest of
your days."

" Thank you," said Paul, after hearing the paragraph ; " I
can't stay." And he was out of the door so swiftly that Peter had
barely time to throw on his coat and follow him with a burning
curiosity. He saw the poet rush around the block and enter the
boarding-house, and he followed more leisurely to arrange for his
own safety in entering it. Frances was already acquainted with
the fact so eagerly communicated by the poet, and looked help-
less and delighted.

" We must get your mother into humor some way," said Paul ;
" why, we may not have a minute to spare."

" I am afraid," said Frances tremulously, " that she never will
forgive him never."

" Don't fear, Frank. I have a last resort your father. He
will surely make a break of some kind if we get into difficulties.
I must see madame instantly. Depend on me."

The poet was lull of joy and excitement as he sought out
madame, but he repressed it into its ordinary limits as he entered
into her parlor. The stern image of Parker C. Lynch, ever be-
fore her eyes like a fate, also concealed the smile which the poet's
presence always brought to her lips.

" I have a bit of information to impart, madame," said he mod-
estly, " which may surprise you. I am soon to be married."

" Agreeable information," said madame, interested. " And
who is the fortunate lady?"

" Miss Ruth Pendleton," he replied. " You recall her, do you
not ? "

With a slight frown madame said she did, and looked as if she
did not care to hear more ; but the poet's purpose would take no
hints at that solemn moment. Half-laughing, he went on to
wring her heart still more.

I886.J SOLITARY ISLAND. 509

" She was here one winter some years ago, and later still while
I was rambling north. She stopped at Mrs. Merrion's. I hope
it's not to her detriment in your mind that she was once engaged
to Flonan Wallace."

" Not at all," said madame severely ; " but I would prefer his
name to be left unmentioned in this house."

"It has merited the opprobrium of silence," Paul admitted
jauntily, as if pronouncing sentence on a professional criminal.
" What he made poor Frances suffer he has endured himself at
Ruth's hands, only reasons differed in both cases. Now he is
just after receiving a second instalment of justice, and I am glad
of it."

So he was, but not in the sense which madame apprehended,
and at the same time she could not repress her curiosity.

" What was the instalment ? " she asked.

" Haven't you read the newspapers ? His charmer, Mrs. Mer-
rion, married the Russian count and went to Europe."

" Oh ! yes, I heard that. It was deserved well deserved."

" Those who knew his dealings with the beauty did not get
the whole truth. It was he who deserted her."

" What more could be expected of him ? However, he had a
sensible woman to deal with. If Frances only had her spirit ! "

" The funniest part of the story is his motive for acting as he
did. Some miracle of grace was worked in him. He threw up
Mrs. Merrion of his own free-will, threw up his political life, and
retired into a northern solitude to begin a lifelong penance.
What do you think of that?"

Madame surveyed the statement and the poet with keen eyes
and keen judgment before answering.

" On the face of it there is something strange, and in him re-
volting," said she. " I see that he has returned to New York."

" Why, he has a notion that a penitent sinner is bound to
make as great an atonement as possible, and he is going about ask-
ing pardon of those whom he has injured, and offering restitution.
He asked pardon of me and several others. What an idiot ! "

" You saw him, then ? " said madame coldly.

" I did, for I followed him to his retreat while pursuing my
affianced in the icy north. I was shocked at his appearance.
He looked as if he had suffered from a fever. He was living on
bread and water. His hair and beard had grown, his elegance
was gone, and I feared he was a little off that is, insane ; but he
wasn't. Ruth told me he was very sensible. Do you remember
seeing Miss Pendleton, madame?"

5io SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

" Why, I have an idea," said madame, " but not a very dis-
tinct one. Of course there is no other woman like her in the
whole world."

" She is the soul of truth. She told me of many things con-
cerning Mr. Wallace, and she hinted that he was coming to see
you to ask your pardon and Frances'. She asked that you would
receive him kindly for the sake of his late repentance. In this
point I differ from Miss Pendleton. You owe it to yourself and
your daughter, madame, to dismiss him the moment he makes
his appearance. 1 give you Ruth's message, as in duty bound,
and my opinion along with it."

" Your opinion is a little harsh,'* said the lady. " I could not
deny him the satisfaction of asking pardon for a great wrong."

" Oh ! " said Paul, agreeably disappointed, and he saw that it
was safe to let the great man plead his own case. In another
room Peter was arguing the matter with his daughter. He sus-
pected, in some fashion, that Florian was coming to renew his suit,
but Frances would not admit it.

" And if he does, I am sure, Frances, you will receive his at-
tentions kindly." Peter made a strong effort at pure English
in speaking to his daughter. " I wouldn't blame him so much
for his former behavior. These American politicians with equali-
ty in their mouth all the time have a great love for blue blood
and rank. I can't find fault with him for not wishing to marry
my daughter. Pm disreputable. And he was nothing but a Yan-
kee wire-puller."

" Doesn't blood tell, and wasn't he a prince?" said Frances.

" Not at all," blurted Peter, trampling the objection to death.
" Not at all, not at all ! What are these Russians, even the best
of them ? Tartars, Mongols, candle-and-oil-eaters, savages mas-
querading ! Blue blood in them f No, sir ! No, Frances, not
even in their czar! So don't mind his display of plebeian horror,
but take pity on him if he asks for it."

" I have always pitied him," she said, smiling.

" That isn't the kind of pity I like. Pity smiling! Such pity
is barbarous ! The savage smiles murdering, and coquettes smile
in breaking the hearts of honest men! Look at me! I'm the
victim of coquettes, of pity with a smile in it, like a bee with his
sting."

" And you are quite broken-hearted, papa ? "

" Broken-hearted ! " exclaimed Peter with a wail. " No, but
splintered-hearted. It's been chipped away. Don't give Florian
any of that merchandise, for no man will buy it No, Frank ;

1 886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 511

receive him this way if he comes : put a smile on your sweet
little mouth, so" and Peter threw his mouth into position
"throw your little hands out so, and say" Peter piped the
words" O me beloved ! all is forgiven, all forgotten. I am
yours for ever ! ' "

Then he fell into a fit of roaring over his own humor which
even Frances could not -quiet.

" I am in earnest now, Frank," he went on. " Ye ought to re-
turn him good for evil ; and once a woman loves, sure she loves
for ever. I know Maria's heart yearns for me, but she can't accept
what is disreputable. You'll be kind to him now, Frank ; say
you will."

A well-known voice in the hall startled Peter out of attending
to her reply. With a hasty glance around he plunged into a
convenient room in time to conceal himself from the wrathful
glances of madame just entering. Paul followed close, to give
her no opportunity of speaking to Frances that evening, and
they settled down there to a comfortable game of cards, which
was enlivened for two of the party by glimpses of Peter's subdued
and rosy face as he looked out helplessly from the cut de sac into
which he had precipitated himself. Certainly none had any idea
that Florian would visit the boarding-house so soon after his arrival
in the city, and Paul was counting on that supposition to get
madame into a reasonable frame of mind. All were surprised
when the servant laid Florian's card in the mistress' hand and
heard his name.

" Send him up," said madame promptly, while Paul rose to
go. " No," she continued, "you may remain. This matter is
as public as was his engagement. I wish it to be so."

The poet sat down disturbed in mind, so poorly did this
promise for the result of his scheming. Frances was in a state
of agony utterly beyond her will to control, but madame never
once alluded by word or look to her nervous manner. It was a
formidable court before which the penitent presented himself,
and its humiliation was fully completed by the unseen figure
listening and observing from the room beyond. Yet Florian en-
tered as indifferently as if he were in the lonely island cabin, and,
after saluting the three gravely and politely, sat down. His ap-
pearance astonished madame greatly, and drew a quickly-smoth-
ered sob from Frances, but all signs of emotion were presently
buried in a dead calm, which grated upon Paul's nerves like saw-
sharpening. He was bound by circumstances and could say
nothing and do nothing to alter the condition of affairs. The

512 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

battle lay between madame and true love ! If Florian. suffered
from any emotion it was visible only in the long interval which
followed his entrance before speaking. Like a true and deter-
mined enemy, madame said not a single word while waiting for
the parley to begin, until Paul in his hard indignation felt that a
battery would not be too much to bring to bear on this feminine
obstructor to the natural course of penitence and love. Occa-
sionally Peter surveyed the scene in blank astonishment. Flo-
rian he recognized only from hearing him addressed, and the
mystery aggravated his imprisonment.

" I have done you and your daughter a great wrong, mad-
ame," Florian said with simple directness, "and I thank you for
giving me this opportunity to express my sorrow and ask your
pardon. I deserted Miss Lynch for another far beneath her in
real worth. It was a heartless act, but at that time I found such
acts ot mine easily justified. My eyes are opened. I have no
words to express my sorrow for what I have done. I hope you
will forgive me."

" You were forgiven at that time," said madame gently so
gently that Paul's heart, leaped with hope.

" I owe it to you to say," continued Florian, bowing, " that
my feelings towards Miss Lynch have never changed. They
have only been obscured. I believe sincerely that at one time
these feelings your daughter returned. Although she released
me from the engagement, I do not think she lost those rights on
me which it gave her. I am glad to make the poor restitution
of renewing the offer which I once had the honor to make to her.
I do it fully conscious of my own unworthiness. I beg of you
not to misunderstand my motives."

Madame never hesitated in her reply, although while Florian
was speaking she had caught the petitions of three appealing
faces, the third being now visible through the half-open door,
where Peter was listening, impatient and interested.

" I do not pretend to know your motives," she said calmly,
" but your offer we reject for good reasons. It is quite impossi-
ble that my daughter should ever again consider marriage with
you."

The face of Frances grew pale as death, but her lips were
pressed tight in determination. Paul growled and Peter started
forward, then drew back. Madame crushed these signs of re-
bellion by her proud and confident indifference.

" Perhaps it is best," Florian said after a pause. He had re-
ceived her answer without any surprise, as if he considered it

i886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 513

a very proper thing-. " There have been many changes in my
life which might not be agreeable to you. In no way am I the
same as when I first had the honor of proposing for your daugh-
ter's hand. I will never again be the same, I trust. I have done
all that I know how to do in atoning for a great injury. You
have forgiven me. It would be a great pleasure to know that in
your opinion I have done all that is possible."

His wistful gaze and simple words disconcerted mamma con-
siderably. She was half-convinced that the man was acting, but
his motives were hidden, nor could she discover them. There
was no adequate motive to explain all this masquerade.

"You could not have done more," she answered steadily in
a tone that closed the interview. Florian rose and bowed his
farewell. Peter stood expectantly in the doorway, as if waiting
to hear a protest from the interested others. When it came not
he entered the room with his usual bravado and seized Florian's
hand. Had he known the precise condition of the politician's
affairs, his grasp might have been less hearty and the scene about
to follow prudently deferred. Standing in the doorway, he con-
fronted madame.

" Some time ago I did not favor the attentions of Mr. Wallace
to our daughter " a shade of disgust passed over madame's
scornful face " but my feelings have changed, Maria. He has
acted like a gentleman ; his love is sincere, and I hereby declare
he shall not leave the room until the late unpleasantness is
smoothed out for ever."

Paul would have cried " bravo " to Peter's speech but for its
unfortunate ending, which left him mute. He ventured, how-
ever, to second Peter in his open rebellion.

"Had not Frances better speak for herself ?" he murmured
gently to take the sting from the suggestion. He looked timo-
rously at madame's face for the Et-tu-Brute expression, but
Peter, like the bull in the china-shop, left no time for expres-
sion.

** The head of the family is speaking for her," said Peter
sharply, yet with dignity, " and ye may know that the paternal
authority still, reigns supreme in spite of a foolish attempt of wo-
man to usurp me throne. Mr. Wallace, ye are welcome to join
your fortunes to ours at any time that Frances gives the word ;
and that she will give it I pledge me sacred word of honor."

Peter looked at madame after this declaration of war, but the
lady was deeply interested in a book at that moment, and Fran-
ces had buried her shamed face in her hands. It was an awk-
VOL. XLII. 33

5 14 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

ward crisis, and even Peter's blatant courage fell flat before that
ominous silence.

" Well, come again," said he sociably to Florian, " and we'll
settle it more suitably, d'ye see."

And he winked at the grave gentleman, drew his arm in his
own, and conducted him out of the room and down the stairs.
A happier ending to a tragic comedy could not have been con-
ceived, and madame joined Paul in the hearty laugh which he
indulged in, escaping to her own apartments, however, to avoid
further talk on the matter.

f T The poet went down into the hall and found Peter standing
there in a deep study, shaking his bullet-head.

" It's no use," said he ; " Maria's moral superiority is beyond
mine, and I must cave every time. What's to be done? I'll
carry her off, abduct her, and have her married from me own
residence in the top story of No. 49. Wouldn't that be glorious,
and such a joke on madame ! Poor Maria, I can't help but ad-
mire her. When she was Frances* age they were like as two
peas in looks, but in moral character they no more resemble each
other than than than I've lost every simile I ever had to-
night."

" We made a mistake one way," said Paul musingly, " and
another way it's all right. Peter, I want to bet with you that
there will be two marriages in Clayburg within a twelve-
month."

" Done," said Peter. " But, as I'm sure to win, lend me a few
dollars in advance, and take it out of the wager."

" Dear old boy ! " said Paul the indulgent, in admiration, " who
ever found you untrue to your colors ? "

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

1 886.] THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. 515

THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN.*

THERE is a small company of New England Radicals who have
been posing- for the past quarter of a century as the special de-
positaries of Divine confidence. It is upon the question of negro
slavery that they assume to have shared the secrets of Providence.
They advocated the most violent of all measures of emancipation
while slavery was established by law. War and a servile insur-
rection, according to them, would have been at any time an ap-
propriate remedy for the evil which stirred their indignation ; and
to think as they did about the matter was the last test of Chris-
tian sincerity. When slavery at last was swept away they began
to believe that they had done it all themselves that is, they and
God together. It is true that none of their particular schemes
were realized and none of their expectations were fulfilled. So
far as the human eye could see, God, who governs the world in
his own way, brought about emancipation by agencies which no-
body could have anticipated or would have chosen. Freedom
was secured, not by an insurrection of the slaves, but by an insur-
rection of the slaveholders ; and the sentiment of Union, which
the Radicals detested as the principal support of slavery, became
the chief factor in its overthrow. So signally was the wisdom of
man brought to naught by the events of the civil war that we all
might have learned from that great social and political revolution
to distrust ourselves and adore the inscrutable power which rules
the world. But that, as we have said, is not the lesson which our
Radical friends read in recent history. It is enough for them that
slavery fell ; and although they did less for its overthrow than any
other division of the abolitionists, and were further out in their
calculations than any other party whatever, they seem honestly
persuaded that our Lord committed to them the regeneration of
this country and gave them the foresight and courage necessary
for so high a task. Partly on account of their connection with
Boston literary circles, it happens that they have persuaded a
considerable minority of the public to accept them at their own
valuation ; and as this easy acquiescence in an extravagant claim
involves troublesome consequences, it may be worth while to pause
a moment and pass under review a recent characteristic utterance
of the Radical clique.

* The Life and Letters of John Brown^ Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia.
Edited by F. B. Sanborn. i2mo. Boston : Roberts Brothers. 1-885,

516 THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. [Jan.,

Of this complacent little company Mr. F. B. Sanborn has long
been a conspicuous member. He is one of the few survivors of
the Secret Committee of extreme abolitionists who supplied John
Brown with the money and other means for his raid upon Vir-
ginia, and he appears to have known more than any of his asso-
ciates about the precise form which Brown's enterprise was to
take. His Life of the hero of Harper's Ferry has many glaring
defects as a biography, but it is valuable as a statement of the prin-
ciples by which an influential body of advanced political thinkers
were governed at a very critical period of our history, as well as
the judgment which nearly thirty years' experience and reflection
induce them now to place upon those principles and their prac-
tical application. We do not purpose discussing the character
of John Brown. Our business is with the doctrines of John
Brown's biographer and apologists.

When Brown went to Kansas in 1855 Mr. Sanborn assures us
that he had already been for many years engrossed with plans
for a forcible attack upon slavery, and that he removed to the
Territory because he saw there the best opportunity for carry-
ing out his great object. It is not unlikely that this statement is
substantially true, although it is not supported by Brown's letters.
Five of his sons had settled in Kansas, and, like the rest of the
Free State men, they were threatened with the loss of their in-
vestments to say nothing of their lives by the lawless incur-
sions from Missouri. John Brown went out to join them, taking,
for family use, a few rifles bought with money received from
Gerrit Smith and other sympathizers. So far there was nothing
to distinguish his action from that of hundreds of other anti-
slavery settlers who hastened to the Territory in those disordered
times. But in the fighting which followed Brown was the leader
of a band, including his sons and a few other bold men, which
won a wide celebrity. Sometimes they acted nominally as a
part of the Free State militia; sometimes they operated inde-
pendently under a curious compact, or set of rules, drawn up
by their captain. Neither side was very particular about the
authority under which it fought. Mr. Sanborn assumes that
Kansas at that time was a theatre of war. In one sense this is
true, for civil society had nearly fallen to pieces, and men were
learning to obey no authority but that of military force. There
was actual warfare, inasmuch as there was bloodshed and system-
atic violence. But this is not to say that there was any such con-
dition of legitimate war as effects a suspension of the civil law
and authorizes belligerent undertakings. It may be admitted.

1 886.] THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. 517

however, that the equities of the case were obscure enough to
puzzle unlearned frontiersmen, and that the readiness of the
United States government to consult the interests of a political
party rather than the demands of justice was the mainspring of
awful misfortunes. Upon this we presume that impartial his-
torians of all classes are now agreed. Impelled by President
Pierce's fatal mistakes, pro-slavery men and anti-slavery men
alike ruled themselves entirely by their own ideas of policy and
right. Both ran off horses and cattle, foraged upon the enemy,
made " requisitions " upon shop-keepers, captured and rescued
prisoners, raided camps and settlements. A Kansas man writes
to Mr. Sanborn : " I met John Brown on the evening before the
battle of Osawatomie. He, with a number of others, was driving
a herd of cattle which they had taken from pro-slavery men. He
rode out of the company to speak to me, when I playfully asked
him where he got those cattle. He replied, with a characteristic
shake of the head, that ' they were good Free State cattle now.' '
John Brown's eldest son, describing an attempt, with the aid of
his brother Owen, to escape from a federal marshal, writes: " He
[Owen] brought with him into the brush a valuable running
horse, mate of the one I had with me. These horses had been
taken by Free State men near the Nebraska line, and exchanged
for horses obtained in the way of reprisals further south." Some
time later Brown and his band formed part of an expedition
which crossed over into Missouri to emancipate certain slaves.
Besides bringing off the negroes they killed the owner and took
his cattle. Brown conducted the fugitives to Canada, and on his
way dispersed a marshal's posse in Kansas, capturing a number
of horses belonging to the party. In one place Mr. Sanborn tells
us that he gave these animals to some " Topeka boys " who had
aided him ; in another place he says that he publicly sold them
in Ohio, " warning the purchasers of a possible defect in the
title."

In the midst of the raids and skirmishes a tragedy was enact-
ed which filled both sides with horror. Scattered along Potta-
vvatomie Creek stood the cabins of five or six active pro-slavery
men. They are said to have been ruffianly characters, and there
is some testimony that they were threatening an attack upon the
Browns. It does not appear, however, that the Pottawatomie
settlers had recently been guilty of any special outrage. Be-
tween midnight and dawn on the 25th of May, 1856, the cabins
were visited one by one by a band of armed men, and five of the
occupants were roused from sleep, led out, and quietly put to

5i8 THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. [Jan.,

death.* Suspicion by common consent pointed to Brown. To
the end of his life he denied killing any of the men, although he
declared that he approved the " executions." Brown's New Eng-
land supporters accepted this denial. All his friendly biogra-
phers down to Mr. Sanborn have likewise acquitted him of the
crime. Dr. von Hoist, in the volume just published of his learned
Constitutional History of the United States, reviews the testimony
(so far as he has read it) and is convinced of Brown's innocence.
Yet it has been known for a few years past from the confession
of one of the " executioners," and the fact is now put beyond
question by Mr. Sanborn's avowals, that the deed was John
Brown's. He planned and ordered the enterprise, led the assas-
sins in person, entered the houses, pointed out the victims, and
gave the death-signal. Whether he struck any of the fatal blows
with his own hand or left that work to his subordinates is the
only point now in dispute. The confession of Townsley, just
referred to, asserts that Brown did take a personal share in the
butchery. Mr. Sanborn appears to have satisfied himself that
this assertion is not true. But testimony which satisfies Mr. San-
born is not necessarily conclusive. Until Townsley 's confession
appeared John Brown was generally cited as denying that he
was present at the Pottawatomie murders. After his death his
son Salmon, who, according to Mr. Sanborn, was with him on
the night in question, made a written declaration that John
Brown was " not a participator" in the affair. When it became
necessary to meet Townsley 's statement, the witnesses revised
their recollection of Brown's language, and remembered that he
had denied only the killing, and' not the participation. One can-
not feel much confidence in this corrected testimony, nor does it
seem to be worth the pains which Mr. Sanborn and others have
spent upon it. The party under Brown consisted of his sons
Frederick, Owen, Watson, and Oliver, his son-in-law Henry
Thompson, Townsley, and a man named Wiener. The actual
executioners were told off from this band. Their names have
not been revealed, but we infer from Mr. Sanborn's comments
that he knows them and has talked with them. The weapons
were artillery cutlasses which Brown had obtained in Ohio.
They were sharpened in the camp just before the " secret expe-
dition " started. " No man of our entire number," says John
Brown, Jr., "could fail to understand that a retaliatory blow
would fall ; yet when father and his little band departed they

* The horses which John Brown, Jr., mentions, in a passage cited just now, as having been
" obtained in the way of reprisals," were stolen on this occasion by the murderers.

i886.] THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. 519

were saluted by all our men with a rousing cheer." The same
authority is quite outspoken about the motive for the massacre.
" The blow was struck," he says, " for Kansas and the slave ; and
he who attempts to limit its object to a mere settlement of ac-
counts with a few pro-slavery desperadoes on that creek shows
himself incapable of rendering a just judgment in the case."
And Mr. Sanborn treats the affair as a justifiable and salutary act
of retaliation for the murder of " five sons of liberty slain in the
previous six months " although, it may be remarked, none of
the five were murdered by these Pottawatomie men.

It is not our place to judge the conscience of John Brown.
Educated in the most savage school of Calvinism, he had brood-
ed over the wrongs of the slave and fed his morbid imagination
with the bloodiest pages of Old Testament history, until Jehovah
appeared to his eyes only as a God of wrath and destruction.
" Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins "
was a text for ever in his mouth. " I think God has used me as
an instrument to kill men," he said once to a lady ; " and if I live
I think he will use me as an instrument to kill a good many
more." As the Almighty armed the Hebrew people against the
hosts of the idolater, so John Brown held that he, too, had re-
ceived a divine command to slay and to despoil, and that for him
the dispensation of carnage was still in force. Fanatics of the
same stamp have appeared in the world before. We need not
inquire into the sincerity of John Brown's delusion. For our
own part we readily admit it as to his general course, although
his continued denial of the Pottawatomie murders is hard to
reconcile with an absolute faith in a divine commission to kill.
But it is of some consequence how the intrinsic morality and
reasonableness of his acts are regarded by the representative of
a school of writers who exercise a deep and, we suspect, a grow-
ing influence upon contemporary thought ; and so let us turn to
Mr. Sanborn.

To begin with, Mr. Sanborn declares in the most dogmatic
manner that John Brown in Kansas was " divinely inspired."
We understand this not as a rhetorical flourish but as the de-
liberate expression of what the author regards as an ascertained
truth. Elsewhere he speaks of John Brown as having been fa-
vored with a direct revelation from heaven shortly before his
death. The world ought not to be expected to receive these
remarkable statements merely upon the ipse dixit of Mr. San-
born, and yet he does not offer to substantiate them. How does

520 THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. [Jan.,

he know that Brown was divinely inspired? If one were to put
that question to him personally, he would perhaps answer, " Why,
Brown told me so himself" ; but even that authority leaves
something to be desired. It reminds us of the intelligent jury-
man who voted for the acquittal of a thief in defiance of the evi-
dence, and, when asked his reason, replied, " Why, the man owned
that he was not guilty." As a matter of fact Mr. Sanborn's
confidence in the theory of inspiration is not so great that he
ventures to neglect other justification. If John Brown was in-
spired there is no more to be said. His savage deeds were dic-
tated by the Almighty, and they could not be wrong. But the
biographer undertakes a defence of the Pottawatomie murders
in a series of purely earthly arguments, with which we must say
that he makes a sorry show.

1. The victims were dangerous and vicious men. John
Brown once said that if they had committed murder in their
hearts they deserved to die ; and, having satisfied himself that
they had committed murder in their hearts, he naturally pro-
ceeded to their slaughter. This rule of conduct, that any man
has a right to kill any man who has deserved to die, is so mon-
strous that we cannot conceive of a thoroughly sane person up-
holding it. We will not do Mr. Sanborn the unkindness of be-
lieving that he really does uphold it. But he puts it forth for
the benefit of John Brown, and the plain truth is that whenever
he attempts to discuss the conduct of his hero he involves him-
self in such a muddle of false sentiment and unregulated emotion
that he is hardly responsible for the logical deductions from his
language.

2. The murders had a good effect. They terrified one side
and encouraged the other. " Upon the swift and secret ven-
geance of John Brown in that midnight raid hinged the future
of Kansas, as we can now see ; and on that future again hinged
the destinies of the whole country. Had Kansas, in the death-
struggle of 1856, fallen a prey to the slaveholders, slaveholding
would to-day be the law of our imperial democracy." This is
something worse than the hated doctrine that it is permitted to
do evil that good may follow, for it is equivalent to contending
that any deed whatever is just which God, in his inscrutable
wisdom and boundless mercy, may finally overrule for our ad-
vantage. And if the Pottawatomie murders were right because
emancipation was one of their remote and indirect consequences,
why was not the secession of South Carolina right for precisely

1 886.] THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. 521

the same reason ? Yet it is upon this argument that Mr. San-
born rests the principal weight of his defence. The grotesque
assumption that the issue of the slavery question was decided, or
even materially hastened, by the killing of five men on Pottawa-
tomie Creek is a striking illustration of the narrowness of mind
with which the Radical clique have always judged the incidents
of the great national conflict.

3. The murders were acts of war. " Yet we, who praise
Grant for those military movements which caused the bloody
death of thousands, are so inconsiderate as to denounce Brown
for the death of these five men in Kansas. If Brown was a mur-
derer, then Grant and Sherman and Hancock and the other
Union generals are tenfold murderers, for they simply did on a
grand scale what he did on a small one. War is murder- in one
of its aspects it is deliberate and repeated murder ; and yet the
patriot warrior who goes to battle in behalf of his country is not
arraigned for murder, but honored as a hero. This is so even
when by stratagem or midnight assault he slays hundreds of
defenceless people, for the cause in which he fights is supposed to
excuse all atrocious deeds. A like excuse must serve for this vio-
lent but salutary act of John Brown." Pray, who taught Mr.
Sanborn the scandalous doctrine that the cause in which a sol-
dier fights " excuses all atrocious deeds " ? Where did he learn
that the massacre of defenceless hundreds is an honorable occu-
pation for a military hero ? What warrant has he for the insin-
uation that Grant and Sherman and Hancock were capable of
dragging unarmed citizens out of their beds and cutting them to
pieces in order to strike terror into the enemy ? Is this what
Mr. Sanborn understands by war ? In point of fact the whole
argument is an after-thought. Until quite recently John Brown's
friends agreed in denying that he had any hand in the affair.
Then they looked upon it as an atrocity, provoked, indeed, by
outrages on the other side, but not to be defended, and certainly
not to be included among the operations of war. With the dis-
covery that John Brown was the author of the dark deed their
tone changed. To their minds John Brown could do no wrong;
and they must find a defence for what they once considered in-
defensible. The words with which Mr. Sanborn dismisses the
subject are suggestive : " Those of us who long refused to be-
lieve that Brown participated in these executions would not,
perhaps, have honored and trusted him less had we known the
whole truth. I for one should not, though I should have deeply

522 THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. [Jan.,

regretted the necessity for such deeds of dark and providential
justice."

Brown returned to the East after this affair to raise funds for
the further prosecution of the war, and what was known of his
character and method of operations commended him so strongly
to the New England party of action that, in spite of suspicions
engendered by the Pottawatomie tragedy, he was trusted with
money and arms to be used in Kansas practically at his own dis-
cretion. " Brown's purpose, as he disclosed it in Boston in Jan-
uary, 1857, was to equip and arm a hundred mounted men for
defence and reprisal in Kansas ; and it was upon this plan that the
National [Kansas] Committee, when it assembled, held a warm
discussion, in which Brown himself took part. His request was
for arms and money, which he might be at liberty to use in his
own way, his past conduct being his guarantee that he would use
them wisely." There were various committees engaged at that
time in promoting Free State emigration to Kansas, and assisting
settlers with money, clothing, and arms. In the National Com-
mittee, whose headquarters were at Chicago, there was great
distrust of Brown's violence. The temper of the Massachusetts
Committee was much more radical. At the meeting of the for-
mer body, held in New York January 23, 1857, Brown's request
for money and arms was presented by Mr. Sanborn as delegate
from Massachusetts. The debate ended in a " compromise."
The National Committee voted Brown a credit of five thousand
dollars (of which, in the end, only a small part was paid), and
transferred to the Massachusetts Kansas Committee two hundred
rifles, which that committee, according to prearrangement, en-
trusted to Brown as its agent. But the expedition, from which
the committees expected a great deal, was never organized, and
one would think that even the most sanguine of Brown's friends
must have felt their confidence in his practical sagacity severely
shaken. With a small sum of money, contributed by various
admirers, he travelled as far as Iowa, and after considerable
delay he did enter Kansas, but without arms or followers. Most
of his funds had been squandered upon an English adventurer
named Hugh Forbes, whom he hired as a " military instructor"
at one hundred dollars a month, paying him six months' salary in
advance.

Moreover, it is clear that his interest in Kansas was giving
way before a scheme for a more direct and romantic attack upon
slavery. This scheme, out of which the Harper's Ferry enter-

i886.] THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. 523

prise was finally developed, contemplated the establishment of a
series of fortified camps somewhere in the mountains of the
border slave States, as rallying-points for fugitives and bases for
offensive operations. From these secure posts emissaries were to
visit the plantations and arouse the negroes, runaways were to be
helped forward, and raiding parties were to swoop down upon
" the enemy.' 5 Brown was infatuated enough to believe that a
few determined men could hold the mountain fastnesses against
any attempt to dislodge them. Drawing their supplies from
the plunder of the plantations, and recruiting their numbers from
the more courageous of the negro fugitives, they would gradually
drive slavery back by making it insecure, and as it retreated
southward they would follow it. " God has given the strength
of the hills to freedom," he said to Frederick Douglass; "they
were placed here for the emancipation of the negro race."

This was the plan with which he again came East in 1858.
Mr. San born gives an interesting account of the manner in which
the project was laid before Brown's most useful friends. Mr.
Sanborn, Theodore Parker, George L. Stearns, and T. W. Hig-
ginson were invited to meet Brown at Gerrit Smith's house,
near Peterboro', N. Y., in February, 1858. Sanborn was the only
one of the four who presented himself at the appointed time, and
to him, to Gerrit Smith, and to Edwin Morton, the tutor of Mr.
Smith's son, the plan of campaign was then divulged. Virginia
was designated as the field of operations, the following May was
indicated as the time, and a constitution which Brown had drawn
up for the government of such territory as he might occupy was
exhibited and explained. The biographer states that the little
council was not only astonished but almost dismayed. The
hopelessness of the undertaking was manifest, but Brown was
not to be moved by objections ; and after the debate, adjourned at
midnight, had been continued through the next day, Gerrit Smith
took Mr. Sanborn aside. "You see how it is," he said : u our
dear old friend has made up his mind to this course and cannot
be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone ; we
must support him. I will raise so many hundred dollars for him ;
you must lay the case before your friends in Massachusetts, and
perhaps they will do the same. I see no other way." Concur-
ring entirely in this judgment, Mr. Sanborn at once disclosed the
plot to Parker, Higginson, and Dr. S. G. Howe, while Brown
himself explained it to Mr. Stearns, who was the most liberal
of his backers. A little later, in company with his eldest son,

524 THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. [Jan.,

Brown had a conference respecting the enterprise with Frederick
Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, and some other colored
men. In March a " Secret Committee " was organized, consisting
of Smith, Parker, Howe, Higginson, Stearns, and Sanborn. The
money which Brown said he required one thousand dollars
was easily raised, Mr. Stearns giving three hundred dollars, but
more was afterwards called for.

In the meantime the costly Colonel Hugh Forbes had made
trouble. He did nothing of consequence for his six hundred dol-
lars, but he held Brown's secret, and he threatened to use it un-
less he were placed at the head of the enterprise and Brown dis-
missed. He professed, indeed, after some correspondence, to
have betrayed the scheme to Sumner, Seward, and other Repub-
lican leaders at Washington. There is no proof that he ever did
so, but he did tell something to Henry Wilson, and Wilson wrote
to Howe, in consequence of which the invasion was postponed
for a year and ostensibly given up. To baffle suspicion Brown
was despatched again to Kansas.

This new turn of affairs drew attention to a highly embarrass-
ing circumstance. The arms with which John Brown proposed
to equip a slave insurrection in Virginia were those which had
been entrusted to him by the National and Massachusetts Com-
mittees for the defence of the Free-Soil settlers in Kansas. Sen-
ator Wilson's letter required an answer, and Dr. Howe accord-
ingly wrote : " Prompt measures have been taken, and will be
resolutely followed up, to prevent any such monstrous perver-
sion of a trust as would be the application of means raised for the
defence of Kansas to a purpose which the subscribers of the fund
would disapprove and vehemently condemn." The nature of
these " prompt measures," as they are described by the ingenu-
ous Sanborn, is rather curious. The Massachusetts Committee,
to which the arms belonged, had spent its money and done its
work, and in effect nothing was left of it now except Messrs.
Stearns, Howe, and Sanborn, who held occasional meetings to
finish off ragged ends of business. It was agreed by these three
gentlemen, acting as the State Committee, that, in satisfaction of
a debt, the arms should be made over to Mr. Stearns as a private
individual; and Mr. Stearns, as chairman of the committee, hav-
ing formally warned John Brown not to use the arms for any
other purpose than the defence of Kansas, and to hold them sub-
ject to the orders of the committee, proceeded a week later, as a
private individual, to lend the arms to John Brown, to be used in

i886.] THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. 525

his own discretion. Mr. Sanborn remarks that neither he nor
Mr. Stearns nor Dr. Howe wished at any time that the- arms
should really be recalled, and, moreover, they knew very well
that Brown would not give them up unless he chose. Such
were the prompt measures by which Dr. Howe and his asso-
ciates prevented the monstrous perversion of a trust.

The Secret Committee of six decided, after this affair had
been disposed of, that it was better not to be burdened with a
needless and inconvenient knowledge of Brown's plans. " They
were willing- to trust him with their money, and did not want
him to report progress except by action." Thus it happened
that none of them were consulted about the Harper's Ferry
affair. They knew that Brown was preparing a foray some-
where on the Virginia line, but they knew neither the day nor
the exact place selected for the enterprise. They raised about
four thousand dollars, including liberal donations from Mr.
Stearns and Gerrit Smith, and of this sum, says Mr. Sanborn,
"at least thirty-eight hundred dollars were given with a clear
knowledge of the use to which it would be put." Thus when
Brown took up again his postponed project in the spring of
1859 ne was we ^ supplied with money and weapons, and there
were no scrupulous committees to interfere with him. Dr. Howe,
strongly disapproving of some of his latest actions in Kansas,
had partly withdrawn his confidence, but did nothing to thwart
him. Higginson appears to have lost a great deal of his original
earnestness in the plot. Theodore Parker was in Italy, near his
death, and no help was to be expected from him. Stearns, Smith,
and Sanborn were the men upon whom the financial burdens of
the enterprise at last rested. One can hardly help wondering
what they thought of some of John Brown's demands upon them.
At one time he asked for " a quantity of whistles such as are used
by the boatswain on ships of war. They will be of great service.
Every ten men ought to have one at least." Again he wrote to
Mr. Sanborn : " I want to put into the hands of my young men
copies of Plutarch's Lives, Irving's Life of Washington, tfie best-
written Life of Napoleon, and other similar books, together with
maps and statistics of States." Mr. Sanborn adds that Brown
was very particular about getting the best edition of Plutarch.
But the New England enthusiasts " who were willing to give to
a brave man forcibly interfering with slavery, without inquiring
very closely what he would do next," had not much reason to
complain of his methods, even when he talked of freeing the

526 THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. [Jan.,

slaves with Plutarch's Lives and boatswains' whistles. Nor, cer-
tainly, could they reproach any one but themselves when he
rushed into a mad and fatal enterprise for which they had fur-
nished the means.

We shall not follow the story to its familiar conclusion, nor
inquire too closely into the behavior of some of John Brown's
accomplices when they were confronted with the deplorable con-
sequences of their conduct. T \venty-five years ago abettors of
the Harper's Ferry affair were naturally anxious to evade a re-
sponsibility in which they now glory. Our present concern is
with the apology which after this long interval is put forth for
John Brown's career, from his predatory raids and midnight
slaughters in Kansas to his last outrages against the sanctity of
human life in Maryland. The key to that career was his declara-
tion that slaveholders had no right to live. Even Mr. Sanborn
perceives that it needs an apology. " The story of John Brown,"
he says, " will mean little to those who do not believe that God
governs the world, and that he makes his will known in*advance
to certain chosen men and women, who perform it, consciously or
unconsciously. Of such prophetic, Heaven-appointed men John
Brown was the most conspicuous in our time." He believed
elsewhere our author gives us to understand that he knew
that God had called him to a high and painful work. In carry-
ing on that work it was his privilege to make his own code of
ethics. The common laws of morality did not bind him. His
deeds are "not to be judged by the every-day rules of conduct."
That was the theory upon which John Brown acted, and upon
that theory Mr. Sanborn defends him. To the case of John
Brown our biographer fits the lines in Milton's " Samson Ago-
nistes " :

"As if they would confine the Interminable,
And tie him to his own prescript,
Who made our laws to bind us, not himself,
And hath full right to exempt
Whom so it pleases him by choice
From national obstriction, without taint
Of sin, or legal debt ;
For with his own laws he can best dispense."

This, he continues, is high doctrine, applying only to heroes,
but it does apply to John Brown. We might inquire what Mr.
Sanborn means by applying this high doctrine to heroes. Milton's
doctrine is that God is not the slave of the laws which he made

1 886.] THE APOLOGY FOR JOHN BROWN. 527

for men ; Mr. Sanborn's doctrine seems to be that heroes are not
subject to the laws which God made for other men. Milton
holds that God may exempt whom he pleases from particular
obligations ; Sanborn holds that heroes may exempt themselves.
This principle of action has obvious inconveniences. In the first
place, before it can be put in practice a man must be able to look
himself all over, inside and out, and decide that he is made of
heroic stu,ff and fired with heroic impulses. Then, if he once
begins to exempt himself from " national obstriction " and other
restraints, there is logically no stopping him. He may do what
he pleases, and to all remonstrance it will be a sufficient plea
that the ordinary rules of conduct are only for ordinary men,
but high doctrine is for heroes. To be sure the plea is befogged
a little by reference to a divine commission ; but the hero himself
is the only witness to that commission ; he alone authenticates
his own credentials ; he alone hears the inward voice and deter-
mines whether it is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, or a whis-
per from the pit, or the vagary of a diseased mind.

Preposterous as it is, the " high doctrine applied to heroes "
governed the conduct of a party of very respectable and highly-
educated New England Radicals in a time of grave national dis-
turbance ; it led them to subscribe money for the promotion of
homicide ; it justified them to their own minds in sustaining what
they believed to be a good cause by methods so violent and law-
less that they had not the moral courage to look at them ; and
now, after years of peace should have brought them a calmer
judgment, it figures again in an apology which fits the life of
every insane fanatic who has ever disturbed society, as perfectly
as it does the sins and delusions of the poor old Calvinist who
was hanged at Charlestown hanged because he reduced to ac-
tion the principle virtually maintained in this book, that the final
standard of right and wrong is every man's own fancy.

528 DOMENICO' s NEW YEAR. [Jan.,

DOMENICO'S NEW YEAR,
i.

DOMENICO CAFFERATA stood on the hard, yellow beach that
skirts the Gulf of Santa Eufemia at the lower town of Tropea.
The mild December sun had not long risen, and the shadow of
the high rock on which is built the city of Tropea proper lay on
the lower town and stretched out over the surface of the gulf
towards Capo Vaticano. Tropea at this early hour still slept,
but the lower town was already wide awake, and the mothers,
wives, sisters, and daughters of the fishermen whose homes were
there moved about at their work. In front of a white-washed
cottage not far from where Domenico was standing a fat, white
kitten was chasing a wooden float at the end of a net which a
young girl was slowly drawing towards her as she mended it
mesh by mesh. Starch-like, vase-shaped masses of jelly-fish lay
about on the sand where the tide had left them. Out near the
horizon the brown lateen-sails of the small craft plying between
Stromboli and Naples bellied before the fresh breeze that was
rippling the blue water. Several men in green and white-striped
sleeveless jackets, with scarlet cloths wound in turban fashion
around their heads, were up to their waists in the gulf hauling
in a seine, and above them a covey of gulls, hovered in the air,
waiting to make a meal on the worthless anchovies that would be
cast aside on the beach.

On a shelf of rocks under the cliffs was a cluster of houses
better built and more neatly kept than the somewhat shabby fish-
ermen's huts that straggled lower down. They were the homes
of the wealthier inhabitants of the lower town, of the masters and
mates in the shipping trade along the coast from Taranto to
Naples and to Sicily and the Lipari islands. This trade was
mostly in silk, cotton, wine, earthenware, raisins, currants, and
figs. But it had fallen off greatly. For Garibaldi's expeditions
had interfered with the legitimate commerce of the coast, and,
though the heavy taxes imposed by the king of the Two Sicilies
were still levied and exacted, the revolutionary excitement had
cut off the resources with which to meet them.

Domenico was just turned eighteen. He was a handsome
youth, not tall nor brawny, but of medium height and of that neat

1 886.] DOMENICO' s NEW YEAR. 529

form which utilizes the essentials of physical strength to the best
advantage. He was dressed in a short jacket and wide trousers
of dark blue velveteen ; a red knit cap, the point and tassel of
which hung jauntily down over his left ear ; low shoes of russet
leather, showing above them woollen stockings knit with clocks
of many colors. His jacket, buttoned at the top, opened over an
embroidered brown linen shirt, and a silver crucifix on his chest
was suspended from his neck by a silver rosary. His hair was
black and his skin a clear, light brown. His features, though
masculine, were perfectly regular, the nose straight, the wide-set,
black eyes full of intelligence and looking directly at whatever
interested them, while the long, moderately thick lips parted over
white teeth that always took a share in the young man's smiles,
which ordinarily were frequent.

But just now Domenico was not in a gay mood. Except
when watching the headland of Capo Vaticano, he was embracing
his mother with great warmth and addressing to her in the dia-
lect of the region words very many of which were affectionate
diminutives. He was telling his " dear little mother " that he
would always be " a good little boy " anof say his " little prayers,"
so that the " dear little most holy Virgin " should have no cause
to be displeased with him, and that in a very little while by the
next New Year after the corning one a mere pezzino of time, he
would be back again, etc. It was such a story as many a son of
every race has told his mother to cheer her at parting, in every
language and dialect of civilized man. But Domenico's mother,
like all mothers under similar circumstances, refused to be com-
forted.

Agata Cafferata had done her best to bring up the children
that her late husband, the master of a felucca, had left to her care.
But the Lord had taken them one by one away from her, all but
this last, Domenico her baby, bambino carino, as she still called
him. Her savings had dwindled away in the general depression
of trade, and she had been forced to dispose of the felucca for a
very small sum, and that sum was going fast.

News came from time to time that far away across the ocean,
in the land which the Italian sailor, Cristoforo Colombo, had dis-
covered for the good of the church, the people, for some in-
scrutable reason, were in arms. The accounts were vague, and
the geographical notions which the generality of the inhabitants
of Tropea, even the navigating ones, had of America were any-
thing but definite. Still something of what everybody continued
to say must be true, and all agreed that though a war was raging

VOL. XLIL 34

530 DoMENiccfs NEW YEAR. [Jan.,

in the far-off Stati Uniti di America was it North or South
America? no one was certain money was circulating plentifully
there, and strangers might take their chance of earning great
wages without being involved in a war in which they had no
interest. Several young fellows of the Tyrrhenian coast had
gone, and were sending back to their families more money than
they could have touched in ten years of toil between Naples and
Taranto.

Domenico's ambition had been fired by these reports, and after
many arguments he had prevailed on his mother to consent to
his going to America. In the long leather bag that lay near him
Agata, besides his working-clothes, had put a few souvenirs of her-
self and of the kindly old priest of the parish, who was too feeble
to come, as he had intended, to give a blessing to the boy on his
departure and to the boat that was to carry him on the beginning
of his adventure. Among the rest was a little prayer-book ; for
Domenico could not only read Tuscan but could say the Credo
and the Pater and Ave in Latin, and had several times been per-
mitted the privilege of serving the curatos Mass.

" Eccolo ! " murmured the cousins and second-cousins and
other relatives clustered in a group which held itself delicately
apart from the mother and son, who had now but a few moments
to be together before the wide ocean should begin to divide
them. The blades of a pair of oars rose and fell from the side of
a yawl that was heading in towards the beach.

The thin waves were leaping lightly in the sun, and the foam-
ing edge of the brine with every ripple came further up the
strand. It was the coming-in of the tide that going out would
bear Domenico away to Naples in the trader anchored beyond
the mole.

Poor Agata's head rested on her child's shoulder and all else
but he was forgotten. The boy's quick ears, however, caught
the dip of the oars, and as he turned to look the boatman, who
was grinning recognition at the crowd on the beach, called out
to him, " Presto, ragazz inio ! "

A hearty embrace for old men and women, youths and chil-
dren kinsmen all. And then the final good-by to the mother.
To save beaching the boat Domenico would have rushed through
the gentle surf, but the stout fellows about, unwilling that he
should spoil his fine clothes, lifted him up and bore him out.

" Orsii ! Agata," said the men. " Have courage ; Domenico
will come back rich and wise." The women sighed, " Povera
Agata ! povera madre / " a mother to be pitied, for she was los-

1 8 86.] DOMENICO' s NEW YEAR. 531

ing her son. And then for Domenico the women and children,
falling on their knees, begged Mary, Star of the Sea, to direct his
voyage safely, while the men waved their caps and shouted after
him: "Buon viagg ', carino ; iddio e la Santissima Vergine ti ten-
gon ! " Good-by, Domenico. You need the help of God and the
prayers of the saints indeed on the voyage of life you are begin-
ning.

II.

It was the spring of 1863. South Street, New York, and the
streets opening out of it, were not so brisk as they had been.
There was no longer the dense forest of masts, extending from
the ferries at the Battery to Corlears* Hook, that used to excite
admiration. And from the peaks of the thinly-scattered vessels
lying at the docks it was no longer the American ensign that
almost everywhere caught the eye. The English-built Confed-
erate cruisers and blockade-runners had changed all that.

Yet the day was bright. The clear, ringing sledge-notes
from the forge in Roosevelt Street, alternated by the lighter
taps of the smith signalling to his helper, were taken up by the
redbird in his cage against the front of the " Anchorage," two
doors beyond.

Two rough-looking fellows sat side by side on a chain cable
coiled on the sidewalk near the smithy. One of them, a squat,
red-faced, sandy-haired man, carried in the leather belt he wore
around his waist a long sheath-knife, which stuck out from be-
neath his dark blue reefing-jacket. His clasped hands rested be-
tween his knees, and he measured off his slowly-spoken sentences
in an accent that showed him to be from the south of England.
The other was a strongly-knit man also, but better-shaped and
of more regular features, swarthy of complexion, and having
black eyes with a red glitter. He would be pronounced an Ital-
ian by any passer-by.

They both savored of the salt sea, but, though they were once
sailors, they were now crimps, and as conscienceless a pair of ras-
cals as ever recruited a ship's crew. The metallic sparks which
swarmed out of the smithy doors like flies warned the pair that
honest workmen were near, and they carried on their conversation
in a low tone, occasionally looking towards the Anchorage.

The Anchorage in Roosevelt Street was a gabled brick
house, and bore the marks of having once enjoyed greater re-
spectability than it appeared to possess now. But whatever the
house may have been at the beginning of the century, it was now

532 DOMENICC? s NEW YEAR. [Jan.,

and had long; been a sailors' boarding-house. The sign that
swung from the tall post on the curbstone had a faded picture
of a ship in a chopping sea letting go her anchor, and, beneath,
the words, " The Anchorage. By Keziah Winslow.' But the
'house was familiar to every Jack-tar that the winds brought to
New York as " Mother Winslow's."

The Widow Winslow liked the nickname " Mother," and she
sincerely regarded her coarse and often boisterous boarders as
" her boys," and never hesitated to enforce discipline among
them. She was tall but rather gaunt, yet had the physical abil-
ity to compel an acceptance of her ideas of deportment. If a
newly-landed salt, after spending the day trying to get his sea-
legs off, only to get a drunken pair on, reeled up the two steps
from the street and bore down upon the bar with many a tack to
starboard and port, she merely gave a wink at the bystanders
and put the man before her, just as a policeman would do, and
stranded him on his cot safe and sound for the night.

Mother Winslow was a thorough Yankee " aginiwin wooden
nutmeg from Connecticut," she was proud to say and as brack-
ish as any of the weather-beaten men she provided with board
and lodging. She took her name of Winslow from an ambitious
New London mariner who had tired of coasting work and gone
off as mate on a whaler, but, dying on a prosperous voyage, had
left to his widow, Keziah, his share in the oil, blubber, and whale-
bone. She was the daughter on both sides of seafaring people of
many generations. Perhaps her ancestors in the direct line had
never given up their dislike for dry land since the first of them
took refuge with Noe in the Ark. Keziah Winslow herself
would have shipped before the mast when she became a widow,
if any skipper would have encouraged the notion ; but as her sex
forbade her being a sailor, she took her husband's legacy with
her to New York and bought out the Anchorage. She was rich
and had shares in some of the best-paying vessels in the coasting
trade. But that trade was in a bad way now, though the coast-
ing vessels were again beginning to thrive as transports for
troops and supplies in the government service.

Occasionally, however, her coast- wise boarders at night,
when "half-seas-over," were inclined to "raise the roof" with
their " chantee " :

" I wish I was in Mobile Bay,

Ah, hay ! ah, hoy!
Screwing cotton by the day "

but the " Belay ! " of a gruff voice would very likely end the

1 886.] D OMEN ico' s NEW YEAR. 533

wish with " Mobile Bay, eh ? Mates, there an't any Mobile, ~or
Charleston, or Wilmington, or Savanny for us any more, unless
you want to ship on one o' them lime-juicer Britishers. They've
got the whole coast ; they have, d n 'em ! "

But Mother Winslow was hopeful. " Wall, boys," she would
remark, " the critters what's fightin' to_ keep the stars and stripes
out o' them harbors down there an't got good sense. I'm not
afeard about the Johnny Bulls keepin' the trade nohow. It an't
in good reason that this coast from the Saint Lawrence to the
Rye-o grandy hadn't ought to be all one coast, and there an't any
power on earth as can make a dividin' line in it and say : ' This
here's one country and that there's another.' "

Mother Winslow's only child, Amos, a strapping fellow, who
had sailed as mate between New York and the lower coast, had
felt disgusted at the idleness in the trade that followed the out-
break of the war and the depredations of the cruisers, and enlisted
in the Union army, much to his mother's regret ; for whereas she
could formerly see him once every few weeks at least, months
sometimes passed now that she could not even hear from him.
She was discussing with some of her guests the wages offered on
the transports.

" If Ame hadn't been such a blamed fool," said she, " he could
'a' had a good berth on one them transports. And there's that
young Eye-talian over there. Just see how he sets and grins !
He's a nice-lookin' boy, though, and I'm afeard o* them crimps
if they git him. They an't none o' you knows his lingo, eh ? "

But none of these coasting mariners had the polyglot abilities
requisite, and Mother Winslow was forced to do what was evi-
dently against her inclination. She went to the door and called
" Maltese John," the swarthy one of the worthy pair who were
sitting on the chain cable near the blacksmith's.

As the Maltese entered the barroom he glanced about in
search of the foreigner whose language he was expected to inter-
pret, and he instantly descried the young Italian whom Mother
Winslow seemed to take a warm interest in.

It was Domenico ; not quite so open of expression as when he
had sailed away from Tropea six months before. He was evi-
dently growing wary, or thought he was.

" Eh ! " exclaimed the Maltese with the soft, guttural sound
which the Italian language affords to its playful speech. " Tu
vuoi farti ricco Americano?" and, turning to Mother Winslow,
" Dis-a boy want to be a rich-a American like-a you and me."
And he chuckled at the innocent manner of the young man. j

534 DOMENICO' s NEW YEAR. [Jan.,

Domenico glowed with joy on hearing the sounds of his na-
tive land, even though in a dialect not so soft to him as his Cala-
brian. At Tropea, it is true, the Maltese were not favorites,
but then that was a surviving prejudice, a memory of the days
when the mixed race of Malta were Saracens and Christians
by turns, and corsairs and freebooters whatever their religion.
Domenico told the Maltese all : how. on his arrival in England,
he had been robbed of his money, and then been deceived by
crimps, who, pretending to get him a berth as a sailor before the
mast, for his passage, to New York, had really shipped him on a
voyage to Quebec and return, and had arranged between the ras-
cally Liverpool boarding-house keeper and the equally rascally
master of the vessel to divide up all of his pay between them in
advance. Now he was at last in New York, after several other
mishaps and three voyages across the Atlantic instead of the one
he had expected. He wanted advice now, he said, and assistance
to secure work in the transport service.

The Maltese listened in silence to the young Italian's voluble
utterance, and when it was ended promised with a grunt that he
would see what could be done.

" Well, Maltee," Mrs. Winslow asked, " what's the young
man want to do ? Ship?"

" Yes," replied the crimp ; " he want to ship^a on transport.
Sometin' Jim Piper tell-a me about do jus* right for him, I t'ink."

" Now look here, Maltee," exclaimed the widow, reddening
with anger at the mention of the English crimp, " don't you dare
to help Jim with any shanghain' business on this here boy. But
you're afeard o' that little Englishman. Yes, you are ; you know
you are," as the Maltese shrugged his shoulders almost to the
rings in his ears by way of protest. " That young fellow's a
countryman of yours, too."

"He? "queried the Maltese. "Why, he's an Eye-talian, a
Calabrese, and I'm from de island of Malta."

" Well, there an't any difference worth talkin* about ; and any-
way he's a countryman of mine, because he's got a mother what
he likes, and he's away from her. I know it. I seed him lookin'
at her pictur not long ago. He has her pictur hangin' round his
neck, painted very pretty. His mother has red hair. There, he's
lookin' at it now."

" Dat's de Madonna de boy got dere," the Maltese corrected
her, and a certain softness in the tone of the man's voice seemed
to speak of youthful recollections of the innocent days of early
piety, perhaps.

1 886.] DOMENICO'S NEW YEAR. 535

" Well, I know such a boy as that's got a mother, any way, and
I know I sh'd hate to have my Ame get into the grip of a lot o*
land pirates. But Ame's too sharp for that. I wish he was here
now to git this boy a good send-off. Maltee, you git him a
berth and do the square thing by him. There an't any man ever
sailed the sea can say I went in hooks with a crimp or a ship's^
master to rob him of his wages, or let it be done without raisin'
a row about it."

" All-a right," was the only response the Maltese made as he
darted out with a laugh.

III.

The weather had been mild during most of the final month of
1863. On the last day of the year a soft fall of snow had whiten-
ed Thorofare Gap and all the country round about, but in the
dusk of approaching niglit it was difficult to distinguish its
few patches remaining on the warm ground from the hoary
masses of granite and basalt that at frequent intervals overhang
the pass.

The main turnpike road as well as the principal railroad con-
necting the portion of Virginia which reaches from the lower
Potomac to the lower Rappahannock with the Shenandoah Val-
ley and those other pleasant valleys nestling along the eastern
fringe of the Blue Ridge, cross the short range known as the
Bull Run Mountains by means of Thorofare Gap. One would
have to go many miles to the north or south of that great pass to
find another rift in the range where even the most sure-footed of
men and beasts could with any ease make their way from east to
west or from west to east. Thorofare Gap, consequently, was of
immense importance in the military operations of Virginia dur-
ing the Civil War. It was the scene of many an adventure, of
surprises by one and the other of the opposing forces on its an-
tagonist, of scouts and reconnoissances without number, of con-
flicts more or less serious. Sometimes the pass was in the pos-
session of Federal troops, sometimes of the Confederates ; fre-
quently neither held it but both disputed for it.

Historic Bull Run courses through the pass on its way to-
wards the broken ground between Centreville and Manassas
Junction, where it gave the name to two great battles and to
several skirmishes in the four years' contest. In the pass, how-
ever, Bull Run is a limpid brook flowing in a shaly bed, now
beside, and now under and across, the railroad and turnpike,
which run parallel between the rugged eminences at either hand.

536 DOMENICO'S NEW YEAR. [Jan.,

As the last night of the year settled down the wind shifted
towards the northwest and whistled sharply through the tall
pines and the laurel shrubberies that grew here and there on
the steep declivities of the gap, sending into the air little whiffs
of the now fast-freezing snow that had been clinging to their
branches. The sky was cloudless, and as the atmosphere more
and more filled with frost the stream sparkled back reflections of
the stars from the film of ice that was forming on its surface.
The soft ooze of mud that had lain for days on the turnpike road
was now as hard as stone, and the echoes were acute and rapid.

It was a cruel frost that was preparing to usher in the new
year, and so thought a knot of men in Federal uniform who were
gathered about a roaring fire near the western end of the gap.
Except for the sparks that rose straight up in the air whenever
one of the men struck his heavy boot into it to rouse it, no one
coming from the west would have suspected the existence of the
fire, for it was sheltered from sight in that direction by a project-
ing rib of rocks.

These men were an outpost from a New York infantry regi-
ment that was quartered in the gap, and were the connecting
link between a stronger post nearer the regiment and other but
smaller groups skilfully placed on the cliffs and out in the open
beyond the mouth of the gap. Twenty loaded muskets rested
against the perpendicular rock. Some of the men were reclining
with their limbs extended in the warm bed of ashes that surround-
ed the fire; the shadows of others, who, with their overcoat-capes
pulled over their heads, were trotting up and down to keep their
blood in circulation, were thrown upwards against the high em-
bankment of the railroad in grotesque and ever-changing pos-
tures. The lieutenant who was in command of this post and of
its outlying pickets sat alongside of the sergeant a little apart
from the rest.

It was very still except for the sighing of the trees, and the
creaking of the ice in the now solidly congealing stream, and the
coughing now and then of the sentinel from the outpost keeping
his two hours' watch in the road beyond the glare of the fire.

Most of the men were veterans, but there were several who
had recently joined from the recruiting rendezvous, and these
were distributed about at the different posts, in order to give
them a good initiation into the roughness of the service. The
sergeant had just returned from relieving the outer line, and was
discussing with the lieutenant the merits of the new men he had
placed.

1 886.] DoMENiCtfs NEW YEAR. 537

" How about No. 3 Post?" inquired the officer. " That's the
riskiest of all, and I hope they'll not fall asleep with the cold out
there before I can make the ' rounds ' ; for the ' reb ' cavalry were
at Aldie this morning, and they may come down the 'pike before
the night is over to try us."

" There's a mighty good corporal at No. 3, lieutenant," said
the sergeant, "and he has three pretty good men with him. But
he has one of the new men, too, that I don't know anything
about. He's an Italian, and is almost as black as your cook.
He seemed a little excited when I was out there ; his ears were
pricked up at every sound, and his eyes were as wide open as
saucers. It's not a very easy place out there in that open field.
If the 'Johnnies' come it is fight, die, kill, or surrender; not
much chance to run into the gap, unless a man studies the ground
well enough to fool those Virginia horsemen, and that's not easy
either."

" I wonder how much that Italian cost the country?" the lieu-
tenant sarcastically remarked in reference to the large bounties
then paid, as he filled his brier-wood pipe and thrust a stick into
the red embers of the fire for a light.

v " I don't know," the sergeant answered, " but I guess he cost
a good deal more than he got ; for I hear that he and some
others of the same batch of recruits were swindled out of their
bounties by the substitute-brokers."

A crackling of dry branches overhead brought everybody to
his feet, and a rush was made to grasp the muskets. All eyes
were turned upwards towards the jutting cliff, but the strained
nerves relaxed again as a familiar voice spoke out from the dark-
ness up there:

" Be gobs, b'ys, it's ye that's comfortable and aisy wid yer
feet to the finder. Ye're more like salamandhers than soldiers, so
y' are, rowlin' in thim ashes. The divii a bit ye care if Post
No. I's froze as shtiff as pokers."

"Now, Flanagan, what's the matter? What are you doing
away from your post?" demanded the officer severely as the
owner of the voice and the brogue a very fat man, seemingly,
from the loose way in which his overcoat was bundled around
him came into sight at the edge of the rock and cast a longing
look at the cheerful blaze almost directly beneath him.

" Well, leftenant," was the answer, " the carporal bid me tell ye
we've been hearin' harses' hoofs on the 'pike beyand, though it's
so black out there that sorra bit o' gray can we see. Ah ! but
that's a fine fire y' have there, leftenant." But, noting calmly the

538 DoMENiccfs NEW YEAR. [Jan.,

officer's impatience, he said : " Annyhow, the carporal and us b'ys
does be thinking thim b'ys to the left o' the 'pike, in the open
field beyand, '11 be in throuble shortly if they don't mind." And
so saying he disappeared in the darkness, and his return up the
steep hillside to rejoin his comrades on the lookout was marked
for a minute by the glint of his bayonet.

" Put out the fire ! " was the officer's order at once, and it was
obeyed, though with reluctance, and with not a little growling in
undertones at Flanagan as the messenger that had disturbed their
repose. But Flanagan's was a clear head if not a cool one, as
they knew, and the corporal was a brave fellow not likely to be
overcome by the fidgets or to take alarm at nothing. The scat-
tered embers of the fire were stamped out ; cartridge-boxes were
opened and the flaps buttoned up so as to leave the cartridges
handy ; the priming of the muskets was examined, and quietly
the men, under the low-spoken orders of their officer, fell into
ranks and moved through the ditch beside the railroad to a rude
breastwork of logs, which was covered in front with branches to
conceal the purpose of the construction.

It was nearly midnight, and at midnight, as these soldiers
knew, the moon would rise with the new year. Already, indeed,
a white light was illumining the crests on either side of the gap,
and one wide moonbeam fell slanting athwart the turnpike-road
beyond the mouth of the gap, and showed, though indistinctly,
some human figures motionless near a ruined log-house. That
was Post No. 3.

The moon is rising now clear above the tops of the mountain,
but a cloud that is passing across keeps the turnpike in darkness
where it issues from the gap to the west.

There was a flash at the log-house ! There is another ! Ah !
now they are coming. " Hi ! hi ! hi ! " The Confederate yell and
the rattle of hoofs over the stony field threaten the isolated picket-
post with destruction. The flash of the muskets at the log-house
is almost as rapid and their crash as spiteful as if fifty infantrymen
were at that post instead of the five brave fellows. Now the
cloud has passed from the moon, and the field is dotted with
horsemen caracoling around the poor hovel, and there in the
turnpike, with guidons flying, a solid column of cavalry is form-
ing to charge into the pass.

All is quiet but ready at the breastwork, and hasty word has
been sent to the rear to notify the main force. The Confederate
yell in the field is answered by the angry and defiant shouts of
the Federal picket-post, and the rattle of their musket-shots re-

1 886.] DoMENictfs NEW YEAJZ. 539

spends to the crack of the horsemen's pistols. But it is too much
for the five men, and they are running towards the gap, loading
their pieces as they come and turning about to fire. It is as light
as day out there, or these agile infantrymen might escape without
harm now. But the ground they are coming over is rough and
deeply seamed, and the Confederate horses bound over it with
the certainty of goats. One Confederate reels in his saddle and
falls; the horse of another is maimed, and, stumbling, hurls his
rider to the earth.

" Hurrah ! " cry the running Federals exultantly, and they
descend out of view into the hollow through which flows the
stream. In the field beyond, the charging scattered horsemen
are coming on, and the heavy stamping on the turnpike indicates
that the solid column also is now advancing. Three infantrymen
emerge from the bed of the stream and make for the breastwork.
Breathless and almost broken they reach the shelter. The cor-
poral and the Italian are missing.

The next morning a cheerful fire burned again behind the
cleft in the rock near the mouth of the gap. A Federal soldier,
whose shattered arm was set in a splint, was kneeling near the fire
beside another Federal on whose sleeves the double-barred chev-
rons indicated the grade of corporal. In front of the breastwork,
a few yards further out, lay the dead body of the lieutenant who
was in command there at midnight. Nearly all who had occu-
pied the breastwork then were still there or close by, dead or
wounded. . Flanagan was not dead, but he said he might as well
be, with the ugly sabre-cut across his features to mar their
beauty. Having fought cleverly as long as there was fighting to
do, he was equally clever now in the useful occupation of nurse
to his wounded comrades. A party of men in Confederate uni-
form were working with pick and spade to dig a long trench in
the frozen earth to bury the dead, whom another party of Con-
federates were counting and arranging in rows, Confederates in
one place, Federals in another. The battle-flag of the Southern
Confederacy, a white field with a red saltire cross, waved from
a staff on the railroad embankment. The Confederates were in
possession.

" Do you know him ? " a Southern surgeon asked the Federal
soldier who was kneeling beside the corporal.

" Speak-a no Eenglees. Me Italiano," said the other.

" Well, if you don't speak English this letter which the man
you are attending to has written speaks well for you." And the

54 DOMENICO' s NEW YEAR. [Jan.,

surgeon chuckled with satisfaction at the lame pun he had made
unintentionally, as he examined a closely-written sheet of paper
folded and addressed without an envelope. " But," he said, " I
used to know something of Italian, and here goes." And before
he was through he learned from Domenico Cafferata for it was
he of his many adventures since leaving Tropea.

" And this corporal dying here," Domenico told him in his
Calabrese, which the surgeon contrived with much difficulty to
understand, " is the only child of Mrs. Winslow, who keeps the
Anchorage in New York, where I boarded when I was trying to
find work as a sailor. But two men, who pretended that they
were getting me a berth, took me over to an island near the city,
and I was made to put on a soldier's dress. I told the officers
that the paper I had signed was represented to me to be shipping-
papers, but they did not understand -and they only laughed at
me. I was kept on that island for a long while, and made to
drill four times a day. Then they sent me off along with others
by railroad, and after a day we came to a city with a great white
building with a dome Vaschenton they called it. There we got
out of the cars and were made to march across a long, ugly
bridge over a wide river to a vast field, where we had to live in
the open air like an immense drove of cattle, with soldiers gal-
loping constantly around on the outside to prevent us from es-
caping. But I had no longer any thought of escaping. Where
should I go ? I knew not the country, and I had no money and
no friends.

" One day they gave some of us little brass numbers and letters
to fasten on our caps like these." And he showed the Confede-
rate surgeon his blue kepi with B, 4-th N. Y. V. on the crown.

" And so you wanted to be a sailor, and they made you a sub-
stitute in the army, whether or no, for some patriot, and then
robbed you of the bounty ? "the surgeon remarked.

Domenico nodded his head and went on : " We were put on
board cars and rode for a little while towards the southwest, and
were then ordered out and were marched to a camp a few miles
the other side of this gap, and there I was assigned to Company
B in the 4-th New York Infantry Volunteers. But I was happy
when I found that I had chanced into the same company as Mo-
ther Winslow's son ; for Mother Winslow is a very good woman,
I am sure, or she would not have been so kind to me, a poor boy
in a strange land."

" But she didn't save you from those rascals who deceived
you by making you a soldier," interrupted the surgeon.

i886.] DoMENictfs NEW YEAR. 541

" Ah ! but she did not know until it was too late ; and she
came over to the island in a little boat, and rowed it herself, just
like any of our Tropean fisherwomen. She spoke to the officers,
but they said they could do nothing for me ; and then she came
and kissed me yes, and cried over me, as my mother might have
done."

The wounded corporal meantime was rapidly approaching
his end. He had been shot through and through the body, and
his case was beyond the reach of treatment. The Italian's hand
was in his. The surgeon, who had been busy with his associates
since midnight, attending equally to the Federal and the Confede-
rate hurt, was affected by the touching evidence of friendship
between these two men, neither of whom understood the other's
language. The one was a dark, emotional Italian boy, the other
a rugged, full-grown Yankee, whose red beard covered his chest
as he lay with his head pillowed on a knapsack.

" Doctor," said the dying man, " see that that letter is sent
to my mother and be good to the Italian. He is a brave
boy and a Christian. He might have escaped but he stayed
to help me when I was hit."

The Italian had moved gently aside to permit the surgeon to
catch the whispered words of the fast-weakening corporal, and
was gazing on the crucifix of the rosary which he had detached
from his neck, where he still wore it, though under his clothes.

" Sia buon* a lui, O Gesu Cristo ! " he muttered. " Prega per
lui e per madre sua e madre mia, O Madre del nostr' iddio e di not
tutti ! " He did well to ask for the prayers of her who is at the
same time the Mother of our God and of us all, that there might
be comfort for two sorrowing mothers one in America, one in
far-away Calabria.

The corporal clutched the Italian's hand again, and, drawing it
close to his face, pressed the crucifix to his lips. His groans less-
ened. Perhaps the representation of the dying Saviour of men
soothed the excruciating pain of his wound. His strong features
relaxed from the sensation of anguish, and as the blue tint of mor-
tality touched them and the tips of his fingers, which were clasp-
ed in prayer across his breast, he faintly uttered, in seeming har-
mony with the Italian's word madre, " My mother ! "

All the dead were soon buried, and as the bugles sounded
" Boots and saddles" the prisoners were mustered, and such of
them as were not too badly wounded to walk were formed in
ranks, for the whole Confederate force was to be withdrawn im-
mediately.

542 DOMENICO" s NEW YEAR. [Jan.,

The surgeon approached Domenico, who was kneeling beside
a rude cross of two sticks which he had set at the head of the
trench at the part where Corporal Winslow was interred, and
tapped him on the shoulder.

" You must fall in now with the rest," he said. " I shall find
some means of sending- through the lines this letter of your dead
comrade to his mother."

He read and translated for Domenico a part of the letter in
which the brave corporal, in the agony of death, had sought to
offer some consolation on this New Year's day to his worthy
mother. But the surgeon did not translate the final lines, in
which Corporal Winslow related briefly Domenico's generous
act of courage in risking deliberately his life and liberty to save
a comrade, and in which he expressed it to be his dying wish
that his mother should in future have for Domenico the same
affection she had borne towards himself. " He is a good boy,"
he wrote, "and the best Christian I have ever met ; and whatever
you do for him, if ever you see him again, will be just as pleas-
ing to me if the good Lord after my death lets me know what
is happening on earth as if you did it for me."

Domenico took the place in the ranks pointed out to him, and
the victorious Confederate column poured out of Thorofare Gap
and bent its march towards the upper waters of the Rappahan-
nock.

IV.

A year and more had passed since the Confederates had made
their early New Year's call on the Federal troops stationed at
Thorofare Gap a year during which Domenico had grown ten
years older, for he had spent the time in the great prison-pen
at Andersonville. Perhaps he would have died, either from
starvation or from the exposure and anxiet}', only for a compan-
ion who had great ingenuity in procuring food, and whose
cheeks never became too hollow for a smile nor his jaws too
lank for a joke, though the jokes were often bitter enough at
contemplation of the prospects.

The Confederate soldiers had little to eat for themselves ; how
could they be expected to provide amply for their prisoners?
They would have exchanged the prisoners, but certain influences
in the Federal cabinet, to forward a policy of their own, prevented
any exchange.

Domenico and Flanagan were inseparable now. They slept
together in the same hole in the sand, and the one thin blanket

1 886.] DOMENICO' s NEW YEAR. 543

was their protection against the chills of night. Domenico ac-
quired a fluent facility in English, thanks to his talkative compan-
ion and his own quick, musical ears, which readily caught every
sound and intonation. " Be gobs," he would say, " it's de fine
English I shpake. Sure I have de best of tachers ; it's Flanagan
himself."

But Flanagan, who was somewhat advanced in years, finally
sickened on the scanty, unwholesome fare, and his wound, conse-
quently, refused to heal. Domenico was the grave-digger, and he
mourned sincerely over the loss of this light-hearted and generous
friend.

Deliverance came at length for all the captives in that ill-
starred prison-camp, and Domenico could now look forward to a
homeward-bound voyage just as poor as when he had set out,
and as good, but much wiser.

How his heart beat at the prospect that before long he would
be gliding over the blue water of the Mediterranean; that, as he
turned Capo Vaticano, he should see white Tropea perched on its
lofty crag in the distance, the waves lapping the mole, and down
there on the beach in front of the lower town his dear kinsfolk
awaiting his arrival, and, best of all, his mother But was
she still alive after all these months of separation ? Yet he felt a
good deal of reassurance as he recollected her true piety and sin-
cere trust in God, and her resignation to his will the Italian
pazienza that has provoked the sneers of many who do not under-
stand it.

But he remembered the gallant, upright fellow who got his
fatal wound that midnight at Thorofare Gap a noble, faithful son,
too, whose mother would nevermore see him. Yes, he must find
Mother Winslow, cost what delay or inconvenience it might.
That was a religious duty.

And he would like to put his hands heavy hands again, for
he was regaining his strength on those scoundrels, Jim Piper
and the Maltese. But no, he would not seek revenge ; that would
be unchristian, although he argued with himself that to punish
crime is not necessarily to take revenge. But he set this aside
with another ready phrase of the Italians, " ma chef " which prac-
tically means " do nothing " when nothing can be done. For the
war was over, and it would be hard to convict a man now of an
offence connected with the war, even if the witnesses could be
found.

It seemed to Domenico an age before all the formalities of
mustering, marching and counter-marching, and paying off of the

544 DOMENICO'S NEW YEAR. [Jan.,

released prisoners were completed, and he was really at liberty
once more to go whither he wished.

His eyes brightened and the color came to his cheeks as he
gazed on Chesapeake Bay and inhaled the familiar air of the
salty sea. At nightfall, as the steamer that bore him to Washing-
ton met the swell of the tide off Fortress Monroe, and the fresh-
ening breeze blowing straight from the ocean tossed his long hair'
about his face, he could have sobbed with joy. He saw far away
to the east the flickering lights of Cape Charles and Cape Henry.
As the vessel pitched and tossed in the trough of the sea he felt
himself secure again, on an element which would not, like the
treacherous earth, quake at some unforeseen moment and open
to swallow up those who confide in it. Above him the pleiades
twinkled in the heavens, and the Great Bear crouched, watching
the pole-star. He took the course, as nearly as he could, of
Tropea. " Iddio mio ; tanto lontano! " Still he felt gay, for, long
as was the distance to be travelled, he was now every day short-
ening it.

In New York how he flew across the city from the Jersey City
ferry and down Maiden Lane to South Street ! He looked about
as he hurried along past the ships' stores on that street. He had
known the street but for a few days, and that was months ago,
yet everything seemed as if it had undergone a change. But he
was young, barely twenty now, and at that time of life a few
months are what a generation is to the older man.

Once he lost his way, and he inquired for Roosevelt Street of
a spruce-looking, sandy-complexioned fellow with a shining white
shirt-bosom, on- which a cluster of diamonds glittered. But Do-
meniq^'s queer English, mingling an Italian accent with an Irish
brogiit:,;.drew no response but a derisive laugh and a sneer.
Domenico's temper was wrought up, and as he searched the face
of his insulter he fairly screamed with rage, "Jim Piper!" and
would have grasped the rascal. But the prosperous ex-mutineer,
ex-crimp, ex-substitute-broker, now become an influential ward-
politician, recognized Domenico at the same time and slunk
quickly into a hall-way and disappeared. Domenico's first im-
pulse was to pursue the man ; but he recollected that he had
promised the Lord to suppress feelings of vengeance, and he
went on.

The Anchorage was no longer an anchorage for the toilers of
the sea. The building had been repaired and remodelled, and a
brisk dealer in ships' groceries, who now carried on business
there, was standing at the door. He was a recently-discharged

i886.] DOMENICO' s NEW YEAR. 545

soldier himself, and therefore took interest in the inquiries of
Domenico, who still wore the military blouse with the brass but-
tons. Domenico was told that the Widow Winslow, to whose es-
tate the property still belonged, was dead, but that if he would
go to the Seamen's Savings-Bank he would find a gentleman who
was administering the estate, and who could give all particulars
about Mother Winslow.

Mother Winslow in her will, after reciting the noble conduct
of Domenico, as related in the letter which her dying son had
written, constituted Domenico her sole heir; though in case he
should not survive her, or could not be found, she desired that
the interest of her property might be expended in maintaining
sailors' boarding-houses, where sailors could be protected from
the dishonesty of recruiters for ships' crews. Luckily the widow
had not a surviving relative to find a pretext in this whimsical
proviso for breaking the will, and the stanch retired sea-captain,
now a bank-officer, whom she had chosen to administer the es-
tate, carried out the trust loyally.

One of Domenico's first cares after entering into possession of
the respectable property so unexpectedly bequeathed to him was
to make another journey to Virginia, and, after several days' ex-
amination of the western end of Thorofare Gap, he was reward-
ed by finding the exact spot in the trench occupied by Corporal
Winslow's body. The remains were tenderly gathered and taken
to New York, and interred in Greenwood, where a graceful mon-
ument commemorates the widow and her son. The inscription
runs thus :

" To Mother and Son

By a Foreigner
Who Loved them Both

As if he were
Their Son and Brother."

Domenico sat beside Agata on the front gallery of their house
in the lower town of Tropea, receiving the welcome-home of his
kin and his townspeople, all of whom were proud of this young
man who had gone so far and returned unspoiled.

" Madrina mia" he said to his mother as he took her hand in his
" when I went around Capo Vaticano yonder on my voyage to
America I would not look back, for I wanted to see you again ;
but I felt at the instant our boat was turning the cape that on the
next New Year's but one I would be with you, and not before.
But even this the good Lord did not permit. As it is, I shall
never forget that New Year's day."
VOL. XLII. 35

5^6 OLD GAL WAY. [Jan.,

11 Nor I either," said his mother softly. " I prayed that day
you left me, and most fervently ever after, that, wherever you
might be or whatever you might have to do, you would behave
yourself like a man and a Christian. And the Lord heard my
prayers."

OLD GALWAY.

" GALWAY ! " is shouted out by the railway-guard, and the
train, after a run of six or seven hours from Dublin, puffs its way
into one of the finest railway-stations in Ireland. Big enough for
London or New York, it was built in the days when railway-
making was a sort of romance, and railway directors in Ireland
indulged in ideas of making her people happy in their hunger
by means of steam alone. Connected with the station is a ho-
tel of corresponding proportions, which seems to look out from
its blank and untenanted windows over the comparatively low-
ly roofs of the town, and down upon the little square in front
of it (which one would think had dwindled from its natural size
in its despair of rising to the dignity of the situation), with an air
of aristocratic astonishment, as though it were wondering how it
had come to be dropped among such indifferent company. Con-
trasted with their surroundings, hotel and station are in their his-
tory not a bad illustration of the brilliant hopes, the extravagant
schemes, followed by the small performance, which have marked
so grotesquely the history of nearly all sorts of enterprise in Ire-
land. At the time when the railway was built great things were
going to be done for Ireland. Connaught, which had been an al-
most terra incognita to the rest of the world from the time when
Cromwell had given it as an alternative place of refuge to the de-
spoiled " papists " of the eastern counties, was to be opened up.
Its mystical hidden beauties of lake, mountain, and valley were
to be unveiled to the tourist ; the romances of its ruined castles
and the roystering life of its decayed gentry were henceforth to
be learned not merely from the pages of the novelist ; its resources
of sea and shore were to be developed, and the picturesque bar-
barism of its people, of which the world had heard something
in the vague rumors that had reached its ears of knee-breeches,
poteen, and potatoes, was to be replaced by English roast-beef,
baker's bread, tracts, and other triumphs of English civilization.

i886.] OLD GALWAY. 547

English capital, too, was to come and establish the manufactures
which were to complete its prosperity ; rags were to give place
to broadcloth, repining to shouts of gladness ; old things, in fact,
were to altogether pass away, and all things were to become new.
The picture may seem exaggerated, but in spirit, at least, it is
not. How far any portion of it was realized it is not for us now
to inquire, but, at any rate, none of the things promised ever came
in sufficient quantity or numbers not even the tracts or the tract-
distributers to utilize to any extent the railway-station or the
hotel.

No one visiting Galway for the first time and taking a walk
among its old-fashioned streets everywhere pervaded with a sort
of Troja fuit air, where a bit of crumbling wall may be all that
remains of what was once a castle, where hoary and half-ruined
mansions stand side by side with smirk plebeian dwellings, or
cabins so far gone in decrepitude that they carry their chimneys
as the typical Connaughtman is supposed to wear his caubeen
could believe that little more than two centuries ago Galway was
the second city for commerce in the British Empire. Yet such,
according to the testimony of Richard Cromwell (son of the
Oliver whom Ireland has such sad reasons to remember), was Gal-
way, now only a city of ruins and recollections, of pride and
poverty, of ancient dignity in rags and a few parvenu pretensions
in purple or such substitute for purple as Galway purses will ad-
mit of, for every one in Galway, simple and gentle, does his best
to walk in the way of ruin by trying to keep up appearances
shorn of almost every honor except the name still proudly ap-
plied to it by its people of the " Citie of the Tribes," and the
dignity it enjoys as the capital of the poorest province in Ireland.

Starting from Eyre Square the square whose modest preten-
sions the monster hotel looks down upon with such an air of su-
perciliousness we come into the principal street, passing by the
commonplace name of Shop Street. This is the chief business
street, as well as the leading thoroughfare of the town, and,
though generally commonplace and vulgar enough in appear-
ance, even for the petty transactions of Gaivvay commercial life,
has many features of interest for the antiquarian and student of
history, as well as for the moralist whose pleasure it is to dwell
upon the vicissitudes of things and the cynical mode in which
Fate, chief amongst democrats, delights to show its contempt for
human grandeur. A narrow and tortuous little street tortuous
enough, for its little length, to make one almost imagine it was
trying at every turn to hide its littleness from the world, or had

548 OLD GAL WAY. [Jan.,

become so tired of its puny existence, almost as soon as it had
entered upon it, that it was trying-, like many a human creature,
to escape from itself it has nothing of dignity in it as a street,
but even in its present insignificance shows traces of ancient
grandeur, relics of rare workmanship that look, from the posi-
tion they occupy, like bits of lace seen among the rags of a beg-
gar. Gal way borrowed much of its architecture and many other
things from Spain ; for from an early period its relations with
that country were numerous and intimate, and, while Spanish
wines have filled its cellars and crowned its boards, Spanish
beauty has often adorned its promenades and drawing-rooms.
How Spain and Galway became so intimately connected it is
hard to explain, but history as well as modern evidences attest
the fact. Traces of the Spanish origin of some of its people may
still be seen, no less in the lustrous black hair and dark eyes of its
women than in a certain hidalgo-like bearing in some of its men.
These peculiarities are most observable among its humbler classes,
especially among the fishermen and their families, whose circum-
stances and position preserved them from influences which affect-
ed the higher or more conspicuous members of society.

The Citie of the Tribes is no longer so except in name. The
"tribes," as such, have long disappeared; their individuality has
been as completely broken as that of the ten tribes of Israel after
the Captivity in Babylon. Of the fourteen families, or so-called
tribes, who were once the chosen people and rulers of the city,
the names of not more than four or five are to be found in the en-
tire population. The rest have been scattered over the face of
the earth, victims to the misfortunes which follow most things
human, and more especially to the misfortunes which for gene-
rations have followed men and things Irish. The Blakes, the
Bodkins, the Burkes, and the rest of the old magnates of Gal-
way, though little in their greatness, were really great in
their littleness. Their city was never at best very large, but
'they had their feuds and distinctions, no doubt, as the Monta-
gues and Capulets had theirs in Venice, only all the more
marked on account of the smallness of the arena. To this day,
even, one may observe symptoms of jealousy in regard to their
respective dignity between the representatives of some of the
old families of Galway. Between Blakes and Burkes and Bod-
kins there is still many a private wrangle as to which of their
names was greatest in the grand old times. But, whatever their
relations towards each other, they were united in their hatred
and fear of the " barbarian " who roamed like the Arab outside

i886.] OLD GALWAY. 549

their walls. For the " tribes " were of different race to the people
among whom they dwelt. They were of English or Welsh ori-
gin, descendants of the men who had come with Strongbow and
those who came immediately after him, who, having in their turn
fallen under the frown of fortune, withdrew to the barren spot
beside the sea where Galway now stands, and had built them-
selves a city, as the refugees from northern Italy had settled
upon the lagoons and islands which afterwards, under their hand,
became the city of Venice. Outside the city limits lay the
country of the O'Flahertys, the O'Connors, and other septs of the
Milesian Irish, against whom they had to be on continual guard,
and whose attacks they feared so much that, not depending sim-
ply on their own prowess, they had placed over the western gate
of the city the inscription : " From the ferocious O'Flahertys
good Lord deliver us ! " Like Venice, Galway, having no re-
sources within itself, was a purely commercial community, and
as such lived and throve in spite of the ferocious O'Flahertys,
whom, however, they often contrived to appease by a scanty
tribute or by gifts of the wine which it early began to import
from Spain. With Spain was its chief trade, and through Gal-
way the wines of the south of Europe became as well known at
the tables of the Galway gentry, and of others farther away, as
their native usquebaugh.

The reputation of Galway for its wines continued long after
it had ceased to be a place of any commercial importance.
Towards the end of the last century no such wines could be had
in Ireland as were to be found in the cellars of its country gen-
try or in the bins of its few remaining merchants. It was the
smuggler, however, not the legitimate trader, who had generally
been the means of putting them there.

As to its architecture, the stamp of Spain is on all that re-
mains, and of a greatness when Spain herself was great. A house-
front emblazoned with fantastic mediaeval figures, surmounted,
perhaps, by a Spanish galleon in full sail; a gable end pointing
to times as gray in the memory of mankind as it is itself; a pon-
derous and elaborately-carved doorway, supporting, perhaps,
some mean superstructure of recent date ; a heavy arch, opening,
it may be, into some wretched laneway, which, by its carving
and graceful curve, might suggest reminiscences of Seville or
Salamanca all these we may see in Galway. One of the most
perfect remains of the past stands in Shop Street. It is called
Lynch's Castle, and is substantially as perfect as the day on which
it was built ; though its dignity as a castle exists no longer, for it

550 OLD GALWAY. [Jan.,

is now a chandler's shop. The Spanish galleon still continues to
spread its sails of stone over its doorway, the griffin and other
monsters famous in the heraldry of the middle ages still look
fiercely out from its marble front, but only the memory remains,
and that indistinct enough, of the time when it was the home of
merchant-princes ; for the halls where we can easily fancy the
wealthy burgher displayed his munificence, and the bejewelled
lady her beauty and her brocade, are dingy with dust and neg-
lect, and in the windows whence once bright eyes beamed on
a world that they made more bright, and smiles went forth that
smote the passers-by with sweet madness, there are now half a
dozen tallow candles and one or two bottles of castor-oil. Better,
perhaps, that Lynch's Castle, too, had become a ruin or been de-
stroyed like the rest of its stately brethren.

Near the old church of St. Nicholas stand the remains of the
building from the window of which one of the mayors of Gal-
way played the part of Brutus in the execution of his only son.
The story is that the young man had murdered his rival in love,
a Spaniard and a guest, and was tried and condemned to death
for the murder by his own father. No one, however, could be
found to carry the decree into execution, and the mayor, obdurate
to the last, was obliged to do so himself. Over the window from
which the execution took place a pair of cross-bones, with the in-
scription under them, Memento mori, still remind the passers-by
of the tragical deed.

Down towards the river is a great archway, where once was
one of the gates against which the fury of the " fierce O'Flaher-
tys " was, no doubt, often directed ; and under and beside the
arch the Galway fisherwoman plies her trade, with a vehemence
of tongue and gesture which, we can well believe, almost rivals
the clamor of the ancient foes of the city. The fisherwoman rep-
resents the Galway of the present; the tall archway, towering
with gray and solemn mournfulness over the chattering crowds
beneath, the Galway of a time which is no more ; and both form
a scene fraught, perhaps, with more melancholy and suggestive
feelings than even Lynch's Castle with its griffins and flying gal-
leon on the marble front, and its candles and castor-oil bottles
in the windows.

The suburbs of Galway are neither very pretty nor interest-
ing. The only one to which either epithet could be applied, per-
haps, is Salt Hill. Salt Hill is Galway 's watering-place, and
stands about a mile from the town, on the northern side of the
bay. It is a favorite place of resort in the summer, and during

1 886.] OLD GAL WAY. 551

that season can show, perhaps, as many fair faces and fine figures
as any other place of its size in Ireland. Many a bright recol-
lection can it afford to the Gaiway pleasure-seeker, for the people
of the old town are genial to excess, and take their pleasures any-
thing but sadly. The Gaiway lady is distinguished by some of
the best qualities of her sex, and the Gaiway gentleman, though
a trifle rollicking in his manner, is always agreeable. Lever did
him an injustice in making him simply a kind of better-class
rowdy, for there is no man who appreciates more keenly the
tastes and sympathizes more warmly with the feelings of others.
He is far from being a worldly man in the ordinary sense of the
term, so is often set down as a spendthrift ; seldom knows the
value of money, but has a decided liking for the genteel in its
largest sense, though he has often false ideas of gentility. If in
trade, for instance, he always hastens to get out of it as soon as
possible ; and when he has acquired just enough, perhaps, to en-
able him to carry on his business properly, he closes his warehouse
or shop and makes arrangements for becoming a country gentle-
man. This weakness may afflict him less now than formerly, for
land in Ireland has lost much of the fictitious value that used to
attach to it, and democratic ideas have invaded even the ruins of
old Gaiway. Take him for all in all, however, it would be hard
to find his superior or equal elsewhere in the possession of solid
and simple, good qualities.

Gaiway, of course, is not free from the tendency to minute
social distinctions which sometimes makes Irish society not a
little ridiculous. In its puny population of seventeen or eight-
een thousand it is said there are no less than seven or eight
distinctly-defined social " sets," each of which looks up to, or
looks down upon, the others, and shows an amazing amount of
vigor in doing so. Social fences, however, are everywhere get-
ting broken down in Ireland, and in Gaiway even the work of de-
molition has made some progress.

Among the people of Gaiway those of the suburb known as
" The Claddagh " are, however, the most interesting. They are
really a " peculiar people." Though separated from the main
body of the town only by the breadth of the river, the inhabi-
tants of the Claddagh have almost as few dealings with the rest
of its population as the Jews had with the Samaritans. They
are a simple and primitive people, who cling to their old habits
of life with more than aristocratic conservatism. Irish is their
universal, and almost their only, language ; and one of the sights
of Gaiway on a Sunday evening is to see the children gathered

552 OLD GAL WAY. [Jan.,

together in the Sunday-school, and watch them as they are being
taught their catechism in Irish, and hear the Babel of little voices
giving their answers in the ancient tongue, unknown to many
even in Galway. The stranger might say this was not civiliza-
tion ; but the language is almost the only legacy their parents
have to leave them, and it is touching to see with what fidel-
ity it has been preserved within earshot of the " higher " and
more imperial speech. It can bring them no riches, it is a very
imperfect kind of preparation for beginning the world, but it is
the language of their love and their recollections, and, above all,
it is the language of their prayers.

The Claddagh, poor as it is, with its mud cabins, tumbling the
one over the other, was once the seat of royalty the home of a
hierarch as implicitly obeyed in his pea-jacket and sou'wester as
if he had a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand. Like
several other peculiar localities in Ireland and among the islands
on the sea-coast, the Claddagh people elected one among them-
selves, whom they called " the king," to whom they referred their
disputes, and whose opinion they consulted in their fishing dif-
ficulties. Torry Island, off the coast of Donegal, had, until lately,
its king also, and so had a certain locality in Dublin formerly
known as Mud Island ; but both are now gone, and democratic
Fate has proved unfavorable to royalty in the Claddagh as well.

The Claddagh from time immemorial has been a fishing com-
munity, and the first day of the fishing season, when their boats
were putting out to sea, was one of high ceremonial and import-
ance to them. Whatever of gayety they had amongst them was
then made to appear most gay. Then the men put on their best
attire, and the women appeared in their scarlet mantles the origi-
nal of the Colleen Bawn cloak some years ago so fashionable, spun
by themselves, and colored with a dye the composition of which
was a secret to all save themselves, and which is said to have
been the only real representative of the famous dye of ancient Tyre.
Coming to the sea-shore, the priest solemnly blessed the boats,
while the fishermen listened with uncovered heads, the women
kneeling at the same time on the shore, to the prayer which he
raised to heaven for their safety and prosperity. But these
things exist no longer, save in the traditions of the neighborhood
or in the memory of its very oldest inhabitant. The fishermen,
many of them, are gone, and half the houses that were their
homes are now in ruins.

Lough Corrib stretches from Galway upwards of twenty
miles north a narrow strip of water at first, displaying tew

1 886.] OLD GAL WAY. 553

points of beauty or interest until Menlo Castle is reached, which
stands on the right-hand shore, when there is something to ad-
mire and more that may interest the stranger. Here has resided
for generations a member of the Blake family, and here are sup-
posed to have been enacted many of the rollicking scenes de-
scribed by Lever in Charles O'Malley. Close to the castle stands
the hamlet of Menlo, a confused collection of huts which one
might easily mistake for a Zulu village ; for, with the exception
of the police barracks, it is entirely composed of mud and straw.
The contrast which it offers to the fine old dwelling of its pro-
prietor is no less striking than that which may be perceived
everywhere in the west of Ireland between the dwellings of the
peasantry and those of the police. The best house in every
western town and in the country parts of Connaught. is almost
invariably the police barracks. Of course the landlord can beat
the policeman in this respect, for he generally lives in a castle,
and between the relative degrees of comfort to which landlords,
policemen, and people are respectively entitled there was, until
recently, no common point of comparison. Anything was sup-
posed to be good enough for the people.

Opposite Menlo Castle is part of the estate of him who was
once the eccentric and hospitable Richard Martin. " Dick "he
was familiarly called, and as Dick he is known to fame. Time was
when he could boast that there was an avenue of forty miles
running through his estates, for he had estates, more or less con-
nected, from Galway bridge to Clifden, which is about that dis-
tance. But the ruin which the extravagance of his hospitality
began, the famine, by depriving him of his rents, completed, and
the rich and bounteous Dick, the "king of Connemara," died a
pensioner on the generosity ot his friends. To-day there is not
an acre of the vast property over which he held sway in the
hands of any one of his name.

554 ^ LEGEND OF JUDEA. [Jan.,

A LEGEND OF JUDEA.

THE good dame busy with her yearly cleaning-
Heard in the streets a loud, resounding cry :

" Come from your haunts of toiling, careworn mortals ;
Oh ! come and see the famous kings pass by."

Quoth Martha, flourishing her sedgy duster :

" This last year's wear hath left a grievous track :

I must not tarry for this grand procession ;

I'll work, and see them : they're coming back."

So she resisted the entreating cry,

And all unseen the gorgeous train passed by.

And then Dame Martha, when her work was finished,

Took up her station at her cottage door,
And watched and waited for the Magi's coming

Three kings renowned for Eastern wealth and lore.
And, standing there with eager eyes, she listened

To rude descriptions of the glittering train,
And said : " 'Tis well I've finished all my cleaning

In time to see them when they come again ;
And though I've dwelt beneath resplendent skies,
The glorious sight will please my fading eyes."

But the three kings, forewarned of wily Herod,

Sought out their kingdoms by another road.
The gorgeous train, aflame with gold and purple,

That lighted once Dame Martha's poor abode,
Swept o'er the other side of fair Judea ;

While Martha leaned upon her well-worn broom,
And dreamed her visions of that grand procession,

Its gold and purple and its rich perfume,
Her dim eyes fixed upon the eastern sky,
Where never more will king or train pass by.

O Martha ! vain is all your weary waiting ;

All, all in vain your tears and your regret !
The kings ere this are ruling their dominions :

They came not back they owed to you no debt.

1 886.] THE KNICKERBOCKER GHOST. 555

And, busy Martha, when again you listen

To royal troopers calling you to come,
I trow you'll say not in the olden manner,

" Wait, good people, till my work is done."
What profit earthly order you may gain
Who miss the Lord of Hosts and all his train ?

And, O ye Marthas who are always troubled

That this or that may not be rightly done,
Can ye not feel 'tis love alone that seasons

The toil by which all earthly things are won ?
That days do come when voices from the heavens

Demand your presence at some royal feast,
And if you wait to furbish your mean cottage

You miss the Host, the Sacrifice, and Priest?
They wisest are who " choose the better part " :
Not all earth's treasures can outweigh one heart !

THE KNICKERBOCKER GHOST.

ONE of the most brilliant women in Washington society fif-
teen years ago was Mary Ten Eyck. Her face, laughing and
piquant, attracted more admiration than the beauties about her,
and her indomitable will and energy triumphed over adversity,
built up a home from the wreck of fortune, and kept her at the
head of a charming coterie in spite of her manifold duties.

Practical to the tips of her pretty fingers, she was the last
person to hold a midnight review of dead-and-gone generations
for the pleasure of being frightened. And yet this is the story
she told me as we sat in the parlor of the old Randolph home-
stead.

The open fire meditated in the twilight, the strings of the piano
she had just left still vibrated with faint echoes of Heller's wild
" Tarantella," the wind rattled the windows, and the snow whirled
past in drifts, like clouds of ghostly witnesses come in sheet and
shroud to testify to the truth of her tale.

Two years ago I was invited to spend the Christmas with my
aunt, Mrs. Philip Stuyvesant. They live on the Hudson in the
house the old Patroon built, and retain many of the ways and

556 THE KNICKERBOCKER GHOST. [Jan.,

almost all the old furniture, plate, and china that came in with
the Hollanders but went out with the Hessians ; for when " the
terrors of Hanover" made their raid through that part of the
country their forage-bags were stuffed with many things foreign
to rations.

I reached the landing on a lovely, frost-bespangled December
night, and I thought the old place had never looked more attrac-
tive. The avenue of elms bent and swayed in the sharp, strong
air, their shadows moving to and fro like witches' fingers weav-
ing the moonlight into a silver scarf ; the lights twinkled through
small diamond panes of thick glass set in lead and sunk deep in
the massive walls; and the somewhat squat, solid proportions of
the house assumed grace, almost elegance, in the magic light.

Within it was even better the soft, deep colors of the native
woodwork mellowed by two centuries of warmth, sunshine, and
liberal friction ; the carved furniture, brass-bound and shining
with generations of polishing; the quaint tiled fire-places, where
Jonas disappeared bare down the throat of the whale and came
out in the next panel clad in a full court-suit with a broad grin on
his face ; where Esther in an infant waist, with the ripest of figures,
knelt to an Ahasuerus who was the fac-simile of King Gambrinus ;
and where Noe, in knee-breeches and lace ruffles, assisted a large
family out of a small ark, surrounded by animals of which the
elephants and rabbits were of even size. Add to this the waxed
floors with their rugs of fur and panther-skins, the dragon-sconces,
girandoles and candlesticks with cut-glass pendants, and the
queer little Venetian mirrors, and you can picture the spot where
I was to take my holiday.

My welcome was all that could be wished, and I entered on a
Christmas-tide of such absolute enjoyment that the days ran by
like hours. We skated, we sleighed, we drove and walked, had
private theatricals, and finally aunt announced she would close
the season with a ball.

This produced a stir through the county, for her parties were
famous, and, as many of the guests would come from adjoining
districts and dozens from New York City, we resolved ourselves
into a committee of ways and means to house over-night some
thirty or forty whose country-seats were too far away to make
coming and going possible, or whose age made fatigue unadvis-
able.

Every night we would gather about the hearth and discuss
invitations, dresses, etc., and by day we would open up rooms,
change furniture, have bedsteads mounted three and four deep ;

1 886.] THE KNICKERBOCKER GHOST. 557

and, leaving the actual work to the good domestics, we made the
walls ring with our laughter and nonsense.

One morning while we were at breakfast the butler brought
in the mail, and aunt, under shelter of the coffee-urn, opened her
letters. Suddenly I, who sat next her, heard a low exclamation
of dismay, and, looking up, I saw her staring ruefully at the letter
in her hand.

" What is it, auntie dear ? "

" Why, Mollie, old Madam Schuyler has expressed a wish to
come to the ball, and Mrs. Peter has written to ask if I can ac-
commodate her. I haven't a decent spot to offer."

" Put the Haverstraws into my room, and give her theirs."

" Where will you sleep?"

" Anywhere on a clothes-line, in the coal-cellar, in a rocking-
chair, on the weather-vane ; or, I'll tell you, in that old lumber-
room where we were raking around yesterday. It will make a
beautiful dressing-room for Gretchen and myself. There's a
lovely old glass, and "

" Mollie," said my aunt, looking at me with stately approval,
" you are a very sensible girl." Then she added : u But, my dear,
do you know that room is said to be haunted ? "

" Haunted ? How delicious ! By what ? "

If she had answered, "A regiment of ghosts," I should not
have cared, for my spirits were as effervescent as champagne.

" Well," she said with some reluctance and a signal of caution,
" they say it is old Anneke Pook, the housekeeper during whose
time the 'missing silver' disappeared, and who is reported to
have either died of grief on account of its loss or to have been
murdered by the Hessians who stole it."

Now, this missing silver had been a moan in the family for a
century, and indeed the list of plate (carefully preserved) proved
it to have been of great value, and many a harsh word had been
said of the Hessians and old Anneke by the ladies of the Ten Eyck
family whenever a state occasion brought out the plate-chests.

Telling Gretchen, my favorite cousin, of the plan, I ran up-
stairs to the pretty little hall bed-room into which I had moved
in view of the coming crowd, and gathered up my belongings ;
but, suddenly remembering that the old room had not been
cleaned, I went down the hall and opened the door.

Was it only the chill of a long-closed place that struck me,
and was it the breath of the morning mist still floating through
the air that made a filmy shadow pass over the mirror? It will
take a wiser than I to say, but I have my opinion.

5 $8 THE KNICKERBOCKER GHOST. [Jan.,

" Dust and ashes," I said aloud, for in the tire-place was a
small heap of charred wood, and everything was gray with dust.
Our foot-prints of the day before were tracked deeply, and the
bed looked like a hearse with the body laid in state, its curtains,
faded and moth-eaten, waving a gloomy invitation to " come up
and be dead."

Even my light heart was not proof against the general air of
ruth and rust, so I seized the bell-cord and gave it a hearty jerk.
The rotten wool snapped in my hand, and a broken wire slid out
after it. Then I called, and in a few minutes the servants were
hard at work.

Out went the dirt and broken furniture, and, with the aid of
lavender-water (sprinkled over the newly-scrubbed floor), a pretty
rug near the bed, fine linen on it with one of aunt's eider quilts,
a rocking-chair, fresh curtains at the window and around the
tester, and a wood-fire " to take the chili off," the room looked
so comfortable that I moved in immediately.

That evening my aunt was ailing, and Gretchen asked if I
would mind sleeping alone, as she felt she ought to be with her
mother.

I assured her positively on that score, and ran singing down
the hall- way. I slipped into my flannel wrapper, put my chair
before the glass now polished to its first brightness and sat
down to brush my hair. As my brush twinkled back and forth
I stopped several times to beam amiably at the touches aunt had
added during the afternoon a clock of bronze with a chime,
brass candlesticks, a vase of chrysanthemums, and on the writ-
ing-table a candelabra of wax-lights.

I never once thought of the ghost, and, indeed, was conscious
of nothing but sleepiness and the comfortable sense of fatigue re-
sulting from youth and exercise. I locked the door, put out my
lights, pulled aside the window-curtains, hopped into bed, and
fell immediately into a profound sleep.

I awakened suddenly but quietly. The fire had burnt to
embers, a gibbous moon stared haggardly in at the window, and
I was conscious in every nerve of my body of the presence of
something that my eyes strained to see and my ears to hear.

The curtains of the bed were draped tentwise, and in the
opening toward the room I saw as in a frame the fire-place, the
table, my rocking-chair, and a portion of the mirror. For a rea-
son I could not define I looked intently into the depths of this
glass. As I did so a film passed over it as if it had been breathed
upon, and I saw a woman's figure reflected in it. She was bend-

1 88 5.] THE KNICKERBOCKER GHOST. 559

ing- over the fire, stirring- something in what seemed to be a small
stew-pan. I turned my eyes in her direction and surveyed her
closely. "It is one of the servants," I thought; "but what in
the world is she doing in my room ? May be aunt is sick and
needed hot water, and my fire is the only one not out/'

This was so plausible that I rose on my elbow, intending to
ask about it, and at the same time to get up and go to her. The
soft, whistling sound of the silk-covered eider quilt as it slipped
from me seemed to attract the attention of the old woman, for
she turned, and in the glow of the embers I saw the face of an
absolute stranger, and noticed for the first time her odd attire
a quilted black skirt, a cap with heavy plaited border, a bodice
and over-gown like " Mother Hubbard's," lace mits on bird-claw
hands, and a black bag hanging from her arm. Her face was
old, but in turning toward me she got her back to the light, and
I could not distinguish her features. She came toward me with
a mincing little step, and dropped a curtsey twice. I looked
steadily at her, utterly fascinated, and as she got near the bed, I
cannot tell how or why, I became convinced it was the ghost of
Anneke Pook ! Cold water seemed to be pouring over my scalp
and trickling in a tiny stream down my back. A wild, unreason-
ing fear that she would touch me took possession of me, and as
she drew nearer and nearer I ground myself into the bed to es-
cape her. She reached out her hand, and for the first time in
my healthy young life I fainted.

The next thing I remember was hearing the clock chime three.
Then came the memory of what had passed, and then the realiza-
tion that if I lay there, with that dreadful old woman possibly
hidden behind the curtains, I would go mad with terror.

I sprang from the bed at one bound, seized the candle, and
thrust it into the coals I didn't dare trust myself to strike a
match, for fear it might go out and leave the last condition of
that woman worse than the first ! The sperm broke into a flame,
and I lighted all ten of the candles in the lustre. Then I looked
in every hole and corner, thoroughly ashamed of my fright and
convinced that it was some real person who had strayed in by
mistake.

" Of course," I said aloud. "May be it was a relative of one
of the servants, come to see the festivities, and the old lady "
just here I passed the door.

// was locked, and the key was on the inside.

I felt the old dread stealing back, but with returning circula-
tion came new courage, and, throwing a log of wood on the coals,

560 THE KNICKERBOCKER GHOST. [Jan.,

I sat until, overcome by warmth and fatigue, I fell asleep, and did
not awaken until the morning sun shone in my face.

The candies were burnt down and guttering in their sockets,
the fire was dead as the Caesars, and only my pale cheeks and
position assured me that my experience was not a nightmare.

The question of what to do occupied my dressing-hour ef-
fectually, and my conclusion was to say nothing about it, for I
was an officer's daughter and had been raised in a very practical,
common-sense way. The word " ghost " was unknown in my
"youth's lexicon," and in broad daylight my adventure dwindled
to an optical illusion.

But my pale face was something of a tell-tale, so I slipped up
into the attic, and out of the "property" chest (left since our
private theatricals) got a pot of rouge and tinted my cheeks so
artistically that every one exclaimed at my color as 1 came into
the breakfast-room.

During the day, on one pretext or another, I interviewed all
the servants as to the whereabouts of their venerable female rela-
tives, but without result. And an old book I picked up in the
library made me far from comfortable, for under the head of
" Holland Costumes" 1 saw exactly such a one as that worn by
my midnight visitor, and it was labelled " Housekeeper and
Bourgeoisie."

I was rather silent and thoughtful all day, but this was attri-
buted to a telegram announcing that my special friend could not
be present at the ball. As darkness came on my pulses beat
quicker, and to shake off my nervousness I played and sang and
danced with such vim that I went to my room exhausted, but so
full of electricity that I was as wide awake as a colony of owls.

" This will never do ! " I thought, and, undressing quickly, I
blew out my lights and went to bed, where I lay with my eyes
resolutely shut, counting " white sheep," till I actually fell asleep.

I awakened in the same way I had done the night before, and
repeated its experiences in every particular, except that when
the old woman came toward me I turned out of bed, and, with
my teeth chattering in my head, said :

" Stop ! Do not come any nearer. What do you want?"
! A smile flitted over her face, and, beckoning with one of her
mittened hands, she walked out of the room, turning every few
steps to look back at me and repeat the motion. I was shaking
so I could hardly stand, but my blood was up, and I determined
to follow her if I had to go on my hands and knees.

I caught up a candle and a box of matches and started after

1 886.] THE -KNICKERBOCKER GHOST. 561

her. She went through a long hall in the oldest part of the
house. It was full of windows, and 1 could distinguish her
figure as she flitted past these openings a shadow among sha-
dows, mine running a race with it as I scudded after.

Suddenly she stopped and waited until I was within a few
feet of her, then she touched the wall, and was gone !

I struck a match and lit my candle. The passage ended in a
back stairway separated from the house by a nail-studded door
of oak; the key was on the right side, and the door was locked,
so I had to conclude she had disappeared.

I looked carefully about me. What had she brought me here
for? She I was so sure it was Anneke's ghost that I always
meant her when I said " she " couldn't want me to take her
bones and give them Christian burial, after the fashion of the
conventional ghost, for she had been found dead in her chair, in
the room I occupied, two days after the Hessians raided the
county. She was too respectable and Dutch to be playing prac-
tical jokes on one of the family at midnight. She

The silver, the missing silver ! !

I tried to fix the exact spot where the little claw had been
laid. My eyes or imagination detected a tiny spot, which I
industriously enlarged with the dead match, and then I crawled
back to bed full of plans for the morrow.

In the morning I went to my aunt's room, and, after I had
kissed her, I said :

"Aunt, I want to borrow Peter."

Peter was the coachman and very clever with his tools.

" Certainly, my dear. Do you want the single or the double
carriage? "

" Neither, dear, only Peter. Aunt " And here I stopped,
for my next step was so very decisive.

-Yes?"

" Aunt, if I make a mess and break one of the walls down "
she looked at me attentively and in a somewhat startled
manner "and then don't find anything, will you mind it very
much ? "

" My dear"

" No," I interrupted, " ' I am not mad, I am not mad,' like the
young woman in the ballad, but ' I soon shall be ' if you don't let
me satisfy my curiosity."

"Child, what is the matter?" For I had laid a peculiar
emphasis on that last word.

Then I told her, adding I was convinced the apparition had

voi. XLII. 36

562 THE KNICKERBOCKER GHOST/ [Jan.,

to do with the lost silver ; and I coaxed and argued so success-
fully that at last she consented, and off I went to find Peter.

At four o'clock the household went sleighing. Then Peter
and I locked the doors at both ends of the hall and began our
work. I found the match-mark and sounded with a small ham-
mer. I fancied it rang hollow all about the place my little old
visitor had touched, and so did Peter, who grew quite excited.
He was a negro, the son of a slave of great-grandfather's, and
retained all the superstition of his race in spite of his " Northern
raisin'." Seeing this, I told him my story. His wool rose visi-
bly and his eyes grew round and prominent.

He struck the first blow at the wall with great solemnity.
The plaster cracked and flaked away. He used a large chisel,
and after an hour's work brought to view some planking. I
should have thought it a partition, but it was in the solid outer
wall, and a few more strokes disclosed an iron hinge. Highly
elated, I ran to aunt's room.

Curiosity is a good medicine.

She got up, dressed, and came over.

Peter was almost white with plaster-dust, and his white tie
was under his ear, but his elegance was unfailing, and he pointed
with his most gorgeous bow to a wooden door about three feet
long and two wide.

My aunt changed color and shrank back.

" Mollie, I hardly like to go on with this."

But I was wild with impatience and told Peter to prize it
open.

A dark recess was what we saw, filled with unequal lumps of
something that when touched felt like dried flesh.

It was now my turn to recoil.

Could old Anneke have been murdered, after all, and buried
there?

Fear lent a sharp edge to my voice.

" Peter, don't stand there like a goose, but clear out that
closet right off ! "

He stepped to the opening and drew out, one after another,
some twenty or thirty doeskin bags which gave forth a faint
metallic clash in the process.

My aunt sat flat on the floor and took as many as she could in
her lap. The first one she opened held a bowl about two feet in
diameter, its beaten surface covered with bas-reliefs of Bacchantes
reeling through a drunken dance.

" Mollie," she said in a positively awestruck voice, " this is the

1 886.] THE PRIEST AT CASTLE GARDEN. 563

flip-bowl great-grandfather's father had made out of the first
silver dollars he got from the Brazils after settling in the New
World. And here are the * Twelve Apostles ' ; these were
twelve spoons of marvellous workmanship and goodly size, ter-
minating at the handles in exquisitely wrought figures of St.
Peter, St. Luke, St. John, and the rest of the holy twelve, each
indicated by his symbol St. Peter a crowing cock, St. Mark the
lion, St. John the eagle, etc.

" And see these," indicating caudle-bowls, marrow-spoons,
salt-cellars as big as young sugar-bowls, silver skewers, tankards,
gravy-boats in a word, all of the "missing silver."

Anneke had guarded the treasure faithfully, and the house-
wifely little ghost had not been able to rest until it was given
into the proper hands.

She was never seen again.

THE PRIEST AT CASTLE GARDEN.

WITH the kind permission of the editor of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD I beg to tell the story of the Mission of Our Lady of the
Rosary for the protection of immigrants that has been estab-
lished at Castle Garden within the past two years.

The idea of having a priest at Castle Garden was first sug-
gested at a meeting of the Irish Catholic Colonization Society
in Chicago, May, 1883, when it secured the earnest support of
Bishops Ireland, Spalding, and Ryan. Until that time there was
no Catholic mission at Castle Garden.

The Colonization Society felt that here, on the threshold of
their new life, it was of the utmost importance that the church
should mount its guard upon the faith and virtue of the Catholic
immigrants. The character of their whole career might depend
on the influences they would be brought under during their first
days in a strange country. No one who has not made the lot of
the newly-landed immigrant a special study, or who has not been
an immigrant himself, can understand what dangers beset the
" stranger " on his or her first introduction to American life.
Young girls waiting to obtain employment, and going at night to
boarding-houses in the slums of a strange city ; young men going

564 THE PRIEST AT CASTLE GARDEN. [Jan.,

to similar places, easy dupes, during these days of idleness, for
swindlers who lie in wait for such as they ; poor people arriving
in New York without any clear notion of where to settle down
and not knowing whither to turn for disinterested information or
advice; people wretched, or mayhap conscience-burdened, whom
a little help or a kindly word of counsel would start upon the
right path ; in a word, helpless Catholic immigrants distracted
amid the din and the danger, for the first time in their lives be-
yond the reach of a priest, and never in worse need of the sus-
taining hand of the church, yet seeing neither priest to consult
nor chapel before whose altar to gather strength and consola-
tion this was the state of things that existed at Castle Garden
until attention was called to it in 1883.

The Right Rev. Dr. Ryan, Bishop of Buffalo, was requested
by the Colonization Society at the meeting in May to wait on
his Eminence the late Cardinal McCloskey as a committee of
one, and to ask him to take the matter in hand and establish a
priest at Castle Garden, one who would be thoroughly acquaint-
ed with the city. The cardinal received the proposition cor.
dially, and with that tender solicitude which he ever displayed
in all matters concerning the welfare of the Catholic immigrant.
Shortly afterwards the question was laid before the bishops
assembled in the Provincial Council of New York, and it was
there resolved that the mission should be established. In accor-
dance with their resolution the bishops at once called on me to
take charge of the undertaking.

The day after the Provincial Council Bishop Ryan and my-
self paid a visit to Castle Garden to make a first investigation as
to what good could be effected by a priest there. We met with
considerable discouragement and would have left somewhat
dashed in hope but for Mr. Connolly, of the Labor Bureau at
Castle Garden, who told us " there was work at Castle Garden
for a priest, and that this work would develop itself with the
presence of the priest " ; whereupon we resolved to make a tho-
rough-going effort at any cost.

As soon as possible I bade farewell to the parish of St. Ber-
nard, and made formal application for admission to Castle Gar-
den, receiving from the Emigration Commissioners a cordial
response.

Before arranging my permanent quarters at the Garden I
thought it well to make a journey westward, so as to acquaint
myself with the parts of the country towards which the stream
of immigration was mainly tending. Accompanied and aided by

1 886.] THE PRIEST AT CASTLE GARDEN. 565

W. J. Onahan, Esq., secretary of the Irish Colonization Society,
I established in the cities of Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas
City, Denver, Omaha, Peoria, St. Paul, and Minneapolis bureaus
of information for Catholic immigrants to work in connection
with the central bureau which I contemplated establishing in
New York.

On my return from the West, January I, 1884, I regularly took
up my post at Castle Garden. By the courtesy of the commis-
sioners I was allotted a room in the building, which I had fur-
nished as an office.

I was not long at Castle Garden before it became apparent
that there was a great work to be done. Every other day
brought its shiploads of immigrants, who, after they passed
through the hands of the registration clerks, took their places in
the Labor Bureau to wait for employment. Where were they
to go to at night, if an employer did not turn up in the mean-
while? Their only alternative hitherto had been to go indiscrim-
inately with the first lodging-house keeper who got possession of
them. For any one acquainted with the life of a great city it is
unnecessary to dwell on the dangers to which virtuous young
girls and unsophisticated young men were thus exposed. It is
impossible to exaggerate these dangers. Many a young woman
has been ruined for life on these occasions ; and many a young
man has had his whole career wrecked at the outset by the asso-
ciations and circumstances among which he has there been thrown.
Moreover, the trials to be faced by penniless immigrants appealed
forcibly to commiseration ; charity had a most noble and useful
field here. I have found the advancement of a railroad fare to a
point where employment had been offered enough to start many
an immigrant on the road to success. The condition of immi-
grants who have had to wait weeks, as is often the case, especially
during the winder, before receiving an offer of employment, and
have spent all their little means on their support in the mean-
time, was pitiable in the extreme. From what fate God alone
knows have men and women in such a plight been rescued by
the timely bestowal of a night's lodging, and a meal that at least
stayed the pangs of hunger.

I soon found that my private purse was inadequate to the
demands that were being made upon it, and that a priest's bless-
ing would not feed an empty stomach or give a night's lodging
to a destitute immigrant. I therefore applied to his eminence the
cardinal for the remedy. The result was the institution of the
" Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary" a mission founded on the

566 THE PRIEST AT CASTLE GARDEN. [Jan.,

same basis as Father Drumgoole's St. Joseph's Union. I was
thus authorized to promise certain spiritual advantages the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered up for their benefit on every
Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday to subscribers of twenty five
cents (or upwards) annually ; and by this means it was calculated
that I would obtain a fund sufficient to meet all the requirements
of the mission.

The cardinal, in order to give practical encouragement to the
project, headed the subscription with a donation of $50, and his
Grace Archbishop Corrigan handed me over a like sum. Other
subscriptions followed, ail of them voluntarily (for I called on no
subscribers personally) ; and I visited some of the parish churches,
where, by favor of the pastors, I propagated the mission among
the congregations. This proceeding was attended with such spon-
taneous success that the nucleus of a fund was soon amassed, and
I felt confident that, when the time came to call for it, there
would be no difficulty in obtaining from the faithful of America
a fund in every way worthy of the mission and its objects.

My first serious step, on being provided with means, was to
establish a lodging-house for destitute immigrant girls. Up to
May i, not having an establishment of this kind, I managed by
sending girls to boarding-houses in the neighborhood, kept by
persons of whose honesty and respectability I was assured. But
this plan was not entirely satisfactory. As may be readily under-
stood, it was impossible to exercise the thorough surveillance
necessary for the protection of the girls under this system. What
was wanting was some place distinct, some place separated
from the influences of the ordinary immigrant boarding-house a
place of my own, in short, the arrangements of which would be
completely under my own control and constantly under my eye.
On May i, I was enabled to rent part of the house No. 7
Broadway for this purpose, I was fortunate, too, in being able
to secure the services of Mrs. Boyle, matron of the Labor Bureau,
who kindly consented to act as matron of the establishment.
Here, since May I, Our Blessed Lady of the Rosary has en-
abled us to afford board and lodgings to one hundred and sixty
destitute immigrant girls. Some of them stayed three or four
nights, but the majority only stayed one night. Many often
received temporary shelter and food while waiting for friends
who came for them late at night. This house is intended exclu-
sively for destitute immigrant girls; it is a harbor in which they
are safe in the midst of danger until employment is procured.
No one can over-estimate its safeguarding influences ; and no one

1 886.] THE PRIEST AT CASTLE GARDEN. 567

who has had any experience of immigrant life will fail to appre-
ciate its necessity and its efficacy.

A brief experience of Castle Garden impressed upon me three
great evils that were characteristic of Irish emigration particularly.
When I first began work the " state-assisted " emigration from
Ireland was in full swing. This was a cruel device by which the
English government sought to thin out the over-crowded Irish
poor-houses. The English authorities took paupers from the
various Poor Law Unions, supplied them with clothes, and paid
their passage to New York. Occasionally the fare was paid to
some city in the interior of the country where the assisted emi-
grant was supposed to have friends. We found this supposition
often based merely on the statement of the emigrant that he had
at some time or other known of some one from his neighborhood
in Ireland who had settled in the city mentioned, or else on the
fact that the emigrant had had a letter at some time, often several
years back, from an American acquaintance. The presence of
these poor people was an unmixed misfortune. Thoroughly de-
moralized by their experience of British poor-houses, they were
incapable of making their way in this country. Helpless and des-'
titute they were thrown on our hands. Some attempt, I thought,
ought to be made in Ireland to bring public opinion to bear against
this cruel business. I was furthermore impressed with what I
may call the recklessness that characterized the voluntary emi-
gration from Ireland. People were rushing from the old country,
giving up fair ways of living, in the belief that they would have
no trouble in obtaining employment here. Most of them seemed
to think that there was no such thing as poverty or distress in
this country. They came utterly unprovided for the prolonged
period of enforced idleness that faced many of them, usually
having with them only money enough to pay for their board and
lodgings for about a week or two. Another feature typical of
all classes of Irish emigrants was their ignorance as to what part
of the country it would be most advantageous for them to settle
in. Most of them came with no idea whither to go after landing
in New York. The result was that many a man trained to farm-
work, who could have obtained good wages and a prospect of in-
dependence by going West at once, kept hanging around New
York until all his money was gone, and finally had to settle down
to the career of a city laborer with o no prospect but to excavate
cellars and clean sewers for a contractor all his life. I found an
important function in directing and assisting emigrants of this
class to locations where agricultural labor was in high demand.

568 THE PRIEST AT CASTLE GARDEN. [Jan.,

But I felt convinced that it would be essential for my purpose to visit
Ireland itself, whence the chief stream of Catholic emigration flows
to us, and there on the spot to warn the people on these matters
so vital to the welfare of the emigrant.

Accordingly, taking with me the surplus remaining of my tes-
timonial from St. Bernard's parish, and leaving Rev. E. J. Siat-
tery in charge of the mission, I visited Ireland, having these
three objects in view: (i) to condemn assisted emigration; (2) to
throw a damper on reckless emigration ; and (3) to point out to
healthy emigration the proper directions for it to take. I was
most kindly received in Ireland by both people and clergy. His
Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Croke, Archbishop of Cashel, gave me
a particularly hearty welcome ; and I had the privilege of stating
my case before the assembled bishops of Ireland at their annual
meeting at Clonliffe College. Their lordships made me the bearer
of a message to his Eminence Cardinal McCloskey, thanking him for
the appointment of the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary at
Castle Garden, and stating that the mission was another testimony
of his eminence's unceasing care for the exiled of their flocks.
I spent three months in Ireland, and was welcomed everywhere
by priests and people. With tongue and pen I did my utmost to
forward the objects I had in view, seizing every opportunity to
speak or write in discouragement of the heedless rush of emigra-
tion from Ireland. Everywhere I went the priests offered me
their pulpits, and the newspapers, from the great daily of the me-
tropolis, the Freeman s Journal, to the remotest provincial weekly,
placed their columns at my disposal. I have reason to think
that some good was effected by this visit ; and that the subject
has not been allowed to fade from the Irish mind is assured by
the fact that the official organ of Mr. Parnell, United Ireland,
has, through a special commissioner in this country, caused the
question of Irish emigration to America to be thoroughly in-
vestigated.

So far as the work has proceeded, we have every reason to
thank God, and the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary, for
the progress that has been made. Let any immigrant who landed
at Castle Garden in the old days visit the institution now, and he
will be astonished as well as delighted at the blessed change that
the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary has brought about. No
longer do friendless girls and forlorn families step straight from the
deck of the emigrant ship among " black strangers," and into the
pitfalls of a sinful city. The comforts of their holy religion, and
the friendship and counsel and protection of persons of their own

i886.] THE PRIEST AT CASTLE GARDEN. 569

faith and race, specially appointed by the church for the purpose,
greet them on their arrival.

The work of the mission is not yet, of course, completed.
It is contemplated to establish further an immigrants' chapel, a
home for both sexes, and a Catholic immigrants' bureau of in-
formation.

An immigrants' chapel near Castle Garden is the first need.
We want the altar, so that its sublime blessings and consolations
will be the very first influences that will touch the immigrant in
his new home ; the confessional to open its doors to those who
are " weary and heavy laden," and to remind them that this
fountain-head of all true comfort in trouble will not be absent in
the strange land to which they have come ; and the Sunday
Mass, so that the obligation of attending the Holy. Sacrifice will
not be the first good practice the immigrant will forget on his
breaking with his old life. Oh ! who can tell the inestimable
blessings to flow from the presence of this institution of the
church at the gateway of the New World? Already what de-
light is there in beholding the sense of safety and comfort that
glows over the poor immigrants when they perceive that they
are welcomed by a priest of the old faith ! They are sure now
of a friend who will direct them and advise them and protect
them in their first adventures in the new country ! Some there
are who come with heavy-burdened conscience, alas ! and for
them the priest is the only confidant. If they meet him not
among their first experiences, before the religious influences of
the old land have yet lost their bloom, they may never again
come to the fountain of repentance, and may be lost to grace for
ever. How grand it has been when such immigrants have come
to the priest with their tales, and when he has felt, as they went
away purified and upheld, that they have been started fairly for
good and happy lives ! And how awful is the thought of the
numbers whose temporal and spiritual future has been doomed
to ruin for the want of the helping hand and sacramental grace
on their first withdrawal from the atmosphere of home !

As yet we have but a lodging-house for destitute immigrant
girls. We need a lodging-house for friendless Catholic immigrants
of the opposite sex. We have as yet been unable to properly
guard these against the dangers that attend a sojourn among im.
migrant lodging houses during their period of enforced idleness.
In one word, what we require is an institution of our own, a
temporary home, in which we can offer board and lodging to
the destitute Catholic immigrants of both sexes one being,

570 A CORRECTION: [Jan.,

under proper superintendence, devoted to the girls, and another
to the men and not merely board and lodging-, but reading and
the means of innocent recreation, during the idle time they are
forced to spend while waiting for employment. It is as essential
for the young men as for the girls that they should be made to
feel, from the outset, that their best protection in the new coun-
try, as she was in the old, is our holy mother the church.

In connection with this temporary home I also count on
establishing a thoroughly-equipped Catholic immigrants' bureau,
where every kind of information and accommodation will be
furnished to immigrants ; where letters and messages can await
them ; where letters can be written for those unable to write
themselves, and through which correspondence of every kind
concerning immigrants can be carried on, with regard both to
America and the old country.

JOHN Jos. RIORDAN,

Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary, Castle Garden,

New York.

A CORRECTION.

THE author of the article on Cardinal McCloskey in the
December number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD wishes to correct
a mistake which has been pointed out to him by a friend. He
stated that Archbishop Bayley was received into the church by
Cardinal McCloskey while he was rector of St. Joseph's Church.
He was received at Rome. The foundation of Mr. Bayley 's con-
version was laid by his study of the Fathers in the fine library of
Dr. Jarvis, son of Bishop Jarvis, of Connecticut, with whom he
was a student. Mrs. Jarvis became a Catholic, and the first
Mass said in Fairfield, Conn., where there is now a pretty Catho-
lic church and a flourishing parish, was celebrated in Mrs. Jar-
vis' drawing-room. While Mr. Bayley was rector of St. Paul's
Protestant Episcopal Church, Harlem, he was an intimate friend
of Father McCloskey, who prepared him by his counsels and in-
structions for his great and happy change. His reception into
the Catholic Church took place in the church of St. John Late-
ran, and he made his first communion in the chapel which was
formerly the cell of St. Ignatius, and in which the saint died.
The friend who has kindly given this information received it
directly from the mouth of Archbishop Bayley.

1 886.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 571

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

HISTOIRE DES PERSECUTIONS PENDANT LA PREMIERE MOIETE DU PRE-
MIERE SIECLE. Par Paul Allard. Paris : V. Lecoffre, 90 Rue Bona-
parte. 1886.

This is a very different work from any we have before met with, except
the similar ones of the same author, especially that one which treats of the
persecutions during the century and a half preceding A.D. 202, when the
persecution of Septimius Severus began. His persecution, and those of
Maximinus and Decius, with intervals of peace during the reigns of Helio-
gabalus, Alexander Severus, and Philip, fill up the first half of the third
century.

This work is different from others, inasmuch as it is not a mere narra-
tive of martyrdoms, or a mere description of archaeological remains, but a
history constructed with the greatest pains, from archaeological documents
as well as the formal records of historians. As such it is a work of the
greatest value and importance, as well as one of an intensely interesting
character. We say the same of the prior work to which we have alluded.
Ancient history is getting itself rewritten, in our day, in a way that is sur-
prising to one who remembers the old times when Rollin was our text-
book. Minute researches into archaeological documents, and new investi-
gations among the great cemeteries of the past followed by great dis-
coveries, have enabled erudite scholars to reconstruct and reproduce the
buried ages with wonderful minuteness and accuracy. Christian antiquities
surpass all others in importance. Heretofore our histories of the first
Christian ages have been unsatisfactory. But such writers as M. Allard
are doing much to remedy this evil. It is needless to say that all investi-
gations and discoveries bring more and more into the light most conclu-
sive evidence that those first ages of Christianity were Catholic, and show
the primitive origin of dogmas, rites, organic laws, and all other principles
and elements which make the specific character of the Catholic Church
and the Catholic religion.

THE NINE MONTHS. The Life of Our Life. Part I. Vol. II. By H. J.
Coleridge, S.J. London : Burns & Gates. 1885. (For sale by the
Catholic Publication Society Co., New York.)

There cannot be a better book for Advent than this. It treats of the
interval between the conception and birth of our Lord. It is among'the
richest and sweetest of all the treatises of Father Coleridge. Perhaps
many Catholics do not reflect that this part of our Lord's life was con-
scious, perfectly rational, and constantly meritorious ; that he was endowed
with all mental and spiritual perfections and in possession of the beatific
vision from the first instant of his conception and the creation of his hu-
man soul.

572 NEW PUBLICATIONS. I Jan.,

We have been pleased to find Father Coleridge maintaining the opinion
that St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin were formally married before the
Annunciation. So also his explanation of the cause and reason of St.
Joseph's hesitation and trouble respecting the miraculous pregnancy of
Our Lady, and his intention of departing privately from her, is one which
gives us great satisfaction. He explains all this, viz., not as a doubt or
fear arising from ignorance of the cause of Mary's having conceived, but
as a hesitation respecting his own call to be the protector of the Mother of
God and the foster-father of her Divine Child. The volume on the In-
fancy of Jesus is announced for the end of Advent in time for Christmas.
We wish the author a happy Christmas and success in his great work until
its full completion.

HISTORICAL NOTES ON ADARE. Compiled by the Rev. T. E. Bridgett,
C.SS.R. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. 1885. (For sale by the Catholic
Publication Society Co., New York.)

Adare, the seat of the Earls of Dunraven, is one of the prettiest spots in
Ireland. Besides this it has the distinction of being the part of the County
Limerick around which cluster most mediaeval associations. Father Brid-
gett has collected some reliable historical notes about Adare and pub-
lished them in a brochure which makes a very compact and interesting
little volume indeed. He tells the history of Adare in brief, its occu-
pation by the Geraldine family, the wars by which it was ravaged, the
founding of its manor, castle, abbeys, schools, and even its hospital for in
Adare the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem held possessions.
The history of the White Abbey of the Trinitarians, whose priory was
founded in 1230, and which, having been despoiled from the Catholics, has
now fallen into the hands of the faithful again, and is one of the few of
the ancient shrines of holiness in Ireland that still remain in the posses-
sion of the people, is peculiarly interesting. So is the history of the Black
Abbey of the Augustinians, which, meeting a less fortunate fate, is now
the Protestant church of the parish. In the story of the Poor Abbey,
whose beautiful ruins are still to be seen within the park of Lord Dun-
raven, we get a glimpse of the way the Irish and Anglo-Irish families
in the middle ages between them built churches. Thus runs the list
of benefactors : " Cornelius O'Sullivan erected the belfry, and made an
offering of a silver chalice washed with gold. Margaret Fitzgibbon, wife
of Cornelius O'Dea, built the great chapel [by which is perhaps meant
the long south transept] ; John, son of the Earl of Desmond, erected a
second chapel, of minor dimensions, to which Margaret, wife of Thomas
Fitzmaurice, added another, small indeed but exquisitely beautiful.
O'Brien of Ara and his wife built the dormitory, while Rory O'Dea
completed a portion of the cloister and presented a silver chalice.
Marianus O'Hickey, who subsequently took our habit and died in Adare
convent, built the refectory, and it was he who furnished the north-
ern side of the choir with its beautiful panellings and stalls. Donald
O'Dea and Sabina, his wife, finished another portion of the cloister, and
Edmund Thomas, Knight of the Glens, and his wife, Honora Fitzgibbon,
built the infirmary ; the latter died 1503. Another lady, the wife of Fitz-
gibbon, added ten feet to the length of the chancel, in order that the

1 886.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 573

priests might have ample space about the great altar; she likewise caused
a vault to be constructed for herself under the choir." Particulars are
given by Father Bridgett of the suppression of the religious houses, the
spoliation of the lands of the orders and their distribution among the in-
vaders, the coming of the Palatines, and the founding of the Quin family,
whose head was a member of the Irish Parliament in 1800, and who was
raised to the peerage, as Baron Adare, in reward for his vote for the Union.

ITALIAN POPULAR TALES. By Thomas Frederick Crane, M.A., Professor
of Romance Languages in Cornell University. New York and Boston :
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885.

Christmas-tide is an appropriate season for the issue of a book which
brings with it as much old-fashioned delight for folk who like to gather
round the winter's hearth and hear " stories " as it does solid food for the
scholar's digestion. And such a book is one which Professor Crane, of
Cornell, gives to the public at this festive time of the year.

One of the characteristics of modern scholarship is the attention it is
paying to folk-lore. This is a field which the comparative methods of his-
torical study, now so generally pursued, have discovered to be a rich and
attractive one. The stories and the superstitions which have been handed
down from generation to generation at the firesides of a people have been
found to be filled with invaluable historical suggestion, and in tracing the
dim origin of the traditions many a clue has been obtained to the origin of
the people itself. The brothers Grimm not only accomplished a great
work in collecting the legends and tales from the lips of their countrymen
in Germany, but by their achievement they gave an impetus to the pursuit
of this line of study which has been felt in most countries of Europe. Al-
ready in England, Scotland, France,, Biscay, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Nor-
way, Sweden, Russia, Iceland, Greenland, scholars have gathered the tradi-
tional literature from the folk and published it in many volumes. Even
Ireland, through Kennedy, has given an incomplete contribution to this
bibliography, while from India, China, Japan, and South Africa collections
of folk-stories have come. Italy has hitherto been rather backward in this
work ; but recently her scholars have taken the subject in hand, and, both
in the mainland and the island of Sicily, have gone far towards rescuing
for permanent use the folk-literature of their country. Professor T. F.
Crane has rendered a great service to American students and the Ameri-
can public by translating and giving us in a bulky volume a copious se-
lection from the materials thus amassed.

The selection includes one hundred and nine tales (exclusive of a num-
ber of tales given in the notes), and the author classifies these under five
general heads : fairy tales, stories of Oriental origin, legends and ghost-
stories, nursery-tales, and jests. The versions given by Professor Crane
are the homely originals as they are told by the people themselves, and not
the " literary " versions, as those versions which have been published from
time to time by Straparola, Boccaccio, and others are called. As Professor
Crane's volume includes the entire range of popular tradition in Italy, it
forms a condensation of the literature of the subject ; and as the work is
compiled with great exactitude, and contains notes which are full of sug-
gestion for further investigation, it is a book invaluable for students, one

574 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.

which will save them a great amount of labor and which brings within
their reach materials not easy of access in this country.

We find in this collection the germs of many favorite stories and
legends, and variations of others. " Beauty and the Beast," "Cinderella,"
" Puss in Boots " appear in their original form, and it must be allowed that
the literary versions of Perrault, Mile. Lheritier, Count Caylus, with which
the young folk are familiar, are hardly an improvement on the tales as the
unnamed story-tellers gave them to the people. There are a few variations
of the legend of "The Wandering Jew " ; here is one : " Malchus was the
head of the Jews who killed our Lord. The Lord pardoned them all and
likewise the good thief, but he never pardoned Malchus, because it was he
who gave the Madonna a blow. He is confined under a mountain and con-
demned to walk round a column without resting as long as the world lasts.
Every time that he walks about the column he gives it a blow in memory
of the blow he gave the Mother of our Lord. He has walked around the
column so long that he has sunk into the ground ; he is now up to his
neck. When he is under, head and all, the world will come to an end, and
God will then send him to the place prepared for him. He asks all those
who go to see him (for there are such) whether children are yet born, and
when they say yes he gives a deep sigh and resumes his walk, saying : ' The
time is not yet,' for before the world comes to an end there will be no chil-
dren born for seven years." Here is a quaint legend from Venice of the
middle ages : " A wealthy knight, who has led a wicked life, repents when
he grows old, and his confessor enjoins on him a three years' penance.
The knight refuses, for he might die at the end of two years and lose all
that amount of penance. He refuses in turn a penance of two years, of
one year, and even of a month, but agrees to do penance for one night.
He mounts his horse, takes leave of his family, and rides away to the
church, which is at some distance. After he has ridden for a time his
daughter comes running after him and calls him back, for robbers have at-
tacked the castle. He will not be diverted from his purpose, and tells her
that there are servants and soldiers enough to defend the house. Then a
servant cries out that the castle is in flames, and his own wife calls for help
against violence. The knight calmly continues his way, leaving his ser-
vants to act for him, and simply saying: 'I have no time for it now.'
Finally he enters the church and begins his penance. Here he is disturbed
by the sexton, who bids him depart, so that he can close the church; a
priest orders him to leave, as he is not worthy to hear a Mass ; at midnight
twelve watchmen come and order him to go with them to the judge, but
he will not move for any of them ; at two o'clock a band of soldiers sur-
round him and order him to depart, and at five o'clock a wild throng of
people burst into the church and cry : ' Let us drive him out ! ' Then the
church begins to burn and the knight finds himself in the midst of flames,
but still he moves not. At last, when the appointed hour comes, he leaves
the church and rides home, to find that none of his family had left the
castle, but the various persons who had tried to divert him from his pen-
ance were emissaries of the devil. The knight sees how great a sinner he
was and declares that he will do penance all the rest of his life."

There is a pretty version of the legend of St. James of Galicia with a
couple of legends of St. Oneira in this collection, and there are besides

1 886.] NE w PUBLICA TIONS. 575

some stories which are the germs from which Lafontaine wrought some of
his famous fables.

ART McMoRROUGH O'CAVANAGH, PRINCE OF LEINSTER. By M. L.
O'Byrne, author of The Pale and the Septs, Leixlip Castle, and ///- Won
Peerages. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1885. (For sale by the Catholic
Publication Society Co., New York.)

For some time past the author of the book above-named has been pub-
lishing Irish historical romances. Art McMorrough O'Cavanagk is the
third that has appeared. No more ambitious work than a historical ro-
mance can be undertaken by a writer of fiction ; and surely none more
desirable than a romance whose materials are gathered from Irish history.
Full of thrilling incident, of heroic and romantic derring-do, and of the
darkest tragedy, as every page of Irish history is, it is strange that the
romancist has left this field all but untouched. When an Irishman with
the genius of Walter Scott appears, he will find a work to do for Irish
romance which will be worthy of his highest powers. How has the author
of Art McMorrough CfCavanagh succeeded in this direction ? Well, Miss
O'Byrne we believe the author is a young lady is not a Walter Scott.
But, having said that, we have nothing but praise to utter for the manner
in which she has performed a work that would be too much for any novel-
ist of lesser calibre than the great enchanter of Abbotsford. Miss O'Byrne
goes to her task with a most advantageous equipment. She has an intense
love of her subject, a love for the past of Ireland, and an almost passionate
attachment to the sentiment of Irish nationality. She seems thoroughly
versed in the history and genealogy of her favorite district, Leinster; and
she wields a rapid and picturesque pen. But she lacks, or perhaps has
not yet developed, the novelist's master-spell, the power of weaving an
unbroken and enchaining narrative. Miss O'Byrne's love of history and
genealogy, her anxiety to be exact, not to miss a single genealogical or
historical point, causes her to overlook what should be her most impor-
tant concern the elements of pure romance. The plot is thus interrupted
and involved, and the interest dissipated from the story itself. This is all
the more to be regretted because Miss O'Byrne's work displays qualities
which we have seen in no other romance of Irish history that has been
attempted, save Gerald Griffin's Invasion. She does make the past live
again in her pages ; and this is a rare and most valuable quality, espe-
cially as the time she revivifies is one of the most obscure and neglected
in history. The Celtic and Norman-Irish chieftains, and the lords of the
Pale, their manners, their conversation, their dress, their dwellings, and
their life with its constant stir of incident, are vividly depicted.

EXILED FROM ERIN. A Story of Irish Peasant Life. By M. E. T. Dublin :
James Duffy & Sons. 1885.

As an Irish story, Exiled from Erin is the direct antithesis of Art
McMorrough O'Cavanagh. One deals with the chieftains and hierarchs of
ancient Ireland, the other with the humblest class of the Irish peasantry of
the present day. The author has been anything but fortunate in the treat-
ment of his theme. He has managed to give us a picture of the Irish peasant

576 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan., 1 885.

from which all the beautiful traits that belong to the character are omitted
and in which none but the least lovely traits appear. The tone of the book
is decidedly low. Its first scene is a pugilistic set-to between youngsters, and
its hero and heroine, a peasant lad and lass, act as letter-carriers and go-
betweens for a pair of lovers of "the quality," one "Master Dick" and
" Miss Minnie," who are planning an elopement. It cannot be commended
as elevating reading.

UNDER THE PINE. By M. F. Bridgman. Boston: Cupples, Upham & Co.
1885.

This is a volume of poems of one who has drawn his inspiration evi-
dently from the blessed damosels of Dante Rossetti or the pea-green maidens
of Burne Jones. Not that there is much about maidens of any kind in
these watery verses, which are all blank. They seem to be addressed
mostly from one male friend to another, a pair who are in the habit of
"sitting and talking in dreamland," "gazing o'er a dusky meadow," and
holding conversations like this with each other :

" Sombre," said he, " is yon pine-tree

In this scanty August moonlight."

"Ah ! " I said, " o'er Way land's wood the moon is wan ! "

STORIES OF DUTY : A Book for Boys and Girls. By Maurice Francis Egan,
author of The Life Around Us, etc. Philadelphia : Fasy & Comber.

Mr. Egan has applied the same method to these stones for young folk
that has made him such a successful delineator of life among " children of a
larger growth." The preface puts his little readers in a good-humor, and
then he proceeds to tell them a delightfully straightforward and graphic tale
of city and country life called "Working their Way." "The Boys in the
Block," which follows, describes daily life in New York in a realistic manner
which has charms even for older people. The struggles, the temptations, and
the motives of city boys of the tenement-house are vividly painted. There
is a pleasant, humorous flavor about some of the passages, and the boy's
thoughts as he watches the Chinaman in his laundry are evidently taken
from life. Mr. Egan's boys are real boys boys who are certainly very wel-
come after the " little Savoyard " style of literature. It is not often that an
author whose motive is evidently a moral and religious one succeeds in
making his work so attractive. Mr. Egan's stories are such easy reading
that they must be hard writing. "The Child of the Floods " and "Mr. Kalb-
fleisch" we have seen before, but we although our hair is turning gray
read them with new pleasure. Through all these stories runs a chain of
religious instruction, evident but not obtrusive.

ELIZABETH ; or, The Exiles of Siberia. A tale from the French of Mad-
ame Sophie Cottin. New York : W. S. Gottsberger. 1885.

We recognize an old familiar friend of boyhood in this tale. It was
very popular sixty years ago, and is worthy to have another run of favor
among the young folks. It is really a very pretty tale, very well told, and
is founded on fact.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLII. FEBRUARY, 1886. No. 251.

A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS.

ST. PAUL, in his Second Epistle to Timothy (iii. 2, 3, and
4), mentions filial disobedience and its usual concomitant sins as
part of the signs of the " dangerous times " " to come on " in
"the last days."

" Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphe-
mers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked,

" Without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful,
without kindness. . . ."

The force of parental authority in France has become greatly
impaired from what it was in former times, and, as might be ex-
pected, to the serious detriment of family union, social harmony,
and the general public welfare. One of its alarming features has
been the steadily increasing number of instances of rebellious or
wayward fits de famille, by which term those sons are meant
whose parents hold a good social position and are blessed with
means to educate and comfortably provide for them. The
causes in France of this particular evil and of its spread have
been such as might be expected, and as can be observed in other
countries, especially in our own. They are clearly explained in
pamphlets from which I have derived the information I am about
to give about the establishment of the Maison Paternelle and its
subsequent success.* There has been an unwholesome expan-
sion of ideas of liberty and personal independence in the minds

* They are mentioned in a foot-note to page 169 of THE CATHOLIC WORLD for November,
1885, under the heading of "A French Reformatory."

578 A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. [Feb.,

of young men, leading- them to great earnestness and tenacity in
claiming what they conceive to be their rights, while forgetful of
correlative duties. Another fruitful cause has been the weakness
of those parents whose sons, having been always allowed in
childhood and boyhood to have their own way in almost every-
thing, cannot be brought to understand, when they are grown,
that they are under any obligation to regard parental counsels
and to obey parental authority, and become, therefore, unman-
ageable. The widowed mothers of sons who are to come into an
estate when they attain their majority are often lacking in the
force of character and determination needed to bring them up
properly and control them. The expectant heir is tempted to
discount the future and spend the proceeds very much like the
prodigal son of the parable, and is not very patient of maternal
remonstrance. An instance is related of one of these young fel-
lows, who, when reproached for having aggravated his disobe-
dience by most outrageous behavior to his mother, gave as an
excuse, " I do not see that I am to blame ; I was told by my com-
panions that it was beneath the dignity of a man to obey a
woman." Parental authority, for obvious reasons, is also usually
feebly enforced with their sons by widows who marry again.
The stepfather is naturally loath to exercise it, and the mother,
deprived of his earnest co-operation, and feeling that her mater-
nal prestige has become more or less impaired, has not courage
and fortitude, when the occasion calls for it, to do her entire duty
in the matter. Finally, a potent cause besides those just ex-
plained, which in France has led many young men of good social
position to turn out badly, has been either a neglect of duty on the
part of parents or their bad example. Many are quite careless
about training their sons properly and religiously, and instilling
good principles into them, and are consequently without any
controlling influence when the time comes for its needed exercise.
The father is devoted to his business and to getting along in the
world, and is fond of his club ; the mother has her visiting circle
and " what is going on in society " to look after, and both have
" really so little time " to devote to the training of their children.
Other parents, intent on enjoying the pleasures of this world and
getting out of this life as much of them as they can, point out
to their sons a course which the latter are not slow to follow as
soon as they are old enough. Some parents think to mend mat-
ters by sending their sons to boarding-school, but find that their
scions are just as unwilling to obey rules and be submissive to
authority there as at home. Expulsion from ^college or grammar-

1 886.] A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. 579

school is a very serious matter in France, and puts great obsta-
cles in a young- man's career, and particularly if a professional
one be intended for him. One of these young scapegraces, when
warned by the principal of his college that if he incurred expul-
sion from it he never could be admitted into any other, replied :
" So much the better ; there will then be no end to my vacations."
Another youngster of like stamp tried twice to set fire to the
school to which he had been sent, hoping, as he said, " that since
he would not be allowed to leave the school he would make the
school leave him." Nor has the remedy of sending sons away
to travel in foreign parts, when their families can afford the ex-
pense, or of getting them into the French army or navy, proved
often efficacious. In the first-mentioned case the young men
usually return from abroad not only unimproved, but sometimes
even worse than before. If, after having been compelled to enter
without vocation and as a punishment, they manage to stick in
either service, the tendency to dissipated habits is likely to be
made worse by garrison life and its surroundings.

The French civil code has provided one last and forlorn
means for parents afflicted from the cause just described. There,
as in the State of New York, a parent can apply to a judge for
an order to have an unmanageable son committed to a house of
correction for a term, mentioned in the judicial sentence in the
case of boys under fifteen not to exceed one month. But the ex-
pectation of any good results from an appeal to the law is so
very uncertain, and the risk of making matters worse so very
great, that parents in France, particularly those in good circum-
stances, dread having recourse to it.

In 1854, after the Colonie Agricole* had been many years in
successful operation, the unhappy father of a son with whom he
could do nothing, and was at a loss what to try, said to M. de
Metz : " You have established so fine an institution to reclaim
from vice the outcast children of the poor, why do- you not start
something to reclaim the wayward sons of the rich?" This ap-
peal, and a thorough understanding of the great and wide-spread
need to which it referred, led M. de Metz, in February, 1855, to
begin at Mettray his Maison Paternelle, or school of repression for
boys of the wealthier classes of society. The subjects that were
to be dealt with in this new sanitarium would evidently need a
mode of treatment very different from that followed with the poor
waifs in the Colonie Agricole. The former had become perverse,
though blessed with all the advantages of which the latter had

* Described in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for November, 1885.

580 A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. [Feb.,

been always deprived. Family surroundings, the comforts of
affluence, parental care, school facilities, a sense of personal
dignity all these they had in abundance. But personal dignity
had in their case become turned into pride and insubordination ;
maternal love they had unfeelingly trifled with ; in a word, they
had become perverse through abundance, just as their outcast
counterparts had through destitution.

The building is near to the Reformatory, but entirely separate
from it. It is a spacious structure, built of the fine white stone
of Touraine, with two wings, and the way to it is through a spa-
cious avenue lined with fine trees. The arch of the main en-
trance is crowned with an escutcheon containing the well-known
emblem of Hope and surmounted by a cross. Above the door is
a statue of the Good Shepherd carrying the stray sheep on his
shoulders. Within are the cells of the young men under treat-
ment, the main feature of which is solitary confinement. The in-
mates never see one another ; their names remain a secret be-
tween the superintendent and their respective families. They
are known by a given name ; and the case has happened of two
brothers having been in the house at the same time, and neither
knowing of it until long afterwards. The solitude of the cell, in-
tended to arouse reflection, a sense of misconduct, and a craving
for occupation of some kind, is broken only by the visits of the
preceptor, the chaplain, and the superintendent. The practice of
steady, regular labor is greatly relied upon for its moralizing
effects. The preceptor (one being specially assigned to each of-
fender) takes charge of his pupil's studies and makes him prepare
recitations and tasks. Under an assumed name his productions
are allowed to compete for excellence with those of the regular
students of the college at Tours, and thus a spirit of emulation is
aroused. The system followed in the institution admits of the ap-
plication of great rigor or great kindness and leniency, according
as the case calls for either. As soon as the boy gives evidence
of good-will, docility, and good behavior, he is rewarded accord-
ingly, and is transferred from the cell with only bare walls and
a gloomy aspect to a more cheerful one, in which, if the preceptor
be well pleased with him, he is allowed to have pictures hung on
the walls, and to have flowers and singing birds to cheer him in
his solitude, and he is permitted to work at gardening in a plot of
ground set aside for that purpose. If his preceptor is particularly
well satisfied with him he is indulged, according to his tastes, in
lessons in fencing, riding, gymnastics, music, drawing, and military
drill. His preceptor takes him out to walk in the beautiful sur-

1 886.] A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. 581

rounding country, with a view that, by seeing the magnificent
sights of nature, he may be reminded of, and brought to reflect on,
the infinite power and wisdom which created them. The oppor-
tunity is then improved to call his attention to the peasant men
and women hard at work in the fields, who barely earn a living,
and are nevertheless cheerful and apparently contented, and, after
the day's toil, sing as they wend their way home. He is also
taken to see the young colonists on the outlying farms of the
Colonie Agricole, hard at work under a broiling sun, garnering in
the crops, and when noon comes enjoying contentedly their plain
repast of bread and a little curdled milk. He sees them cheerful
and affectionate with their head men, to whom they yield a will-
ing and ready obedience. At other times he visits peasants in
their cots, and has opportunity to realize the daily privations
they have to endure ; how they have to strive to make both ends
meet and to keep their homes neat and in order. The crucifix
on the wall, with its bit of boxwood above, is pointed out to him
as evidence of their faith and hope. Occasionally he is taken to
visit the abodes of the poor unable to work from sickness or old
age ; he is reminded to contrast their suffering condition, borne
with resignation, with the comfort and plenty which has been his
lot and for which he has been ungrateful, and if he appear com-
passionate he is provided with a little money to give in alms.
Finally, when the boy's behavior has become exceptionally good,
so as to give prospects of his being soon fit to return home, he
is invited to dine with the superintendent. Parents are kept
regularly advised, by reports sent to them, of their sons' improve-
ment.

The principal moralizing forces on which M. de Metz's sys-
tem relies for success are thus shown to be constant, arduous
employment, which is required to be performed with spirit and
contentedly ; hardships and privations which must be endured
without grumbling or any evidence of bitter feeling ; and, per con-
tra,on the part of the authority enforcing these requirements,
the manifestation of an untiring devotedness. It is rare to find
a boy under treatment so perverted as to persevere in evil re-
gardless of the intelligent and affectionate care which he sees be-
stowed on him, having plainly for its object to restore in his
family that harmony which he has disturbed, and to replace him
in a position conducive to his future welfare.

The treatment and its resulting cure usually takes two
months. In cases where the superintendent has doubts that the
subject has been entirely healed, he places him for a month with

582 A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. [Feb.,

one of the priests having charge of parishes in the neighborhood
of Mettray, who, being a well-informed and charitable man, con-
versant with the practice of the house which the boy has just left,
continues the treatment, but in a different manner, and involving
only a partial restraint of his liberty. When an inmate is about
to leave the institution and return to the home of comfortable
affluence from which he came, he is notified that his discharge is
temporary only, and conditional upon his not relapsing into the
bad conduct which led to his confinement, and he is shown the
cells set apart for the reception of those brought a second time.
The superintendent expresses to him a confident hope that the
notification thus made will amount in his case to no more than a
mere formality, with which, in compliance with the regulations,
he has to go through.

It will be readily imagined that much of the success which
has attended M. de Metz's labors in establishing this institution,
which has supplied so great a need in France, is due to his high
intelligence, his varied and abundant experience, his excellent
judgment, and his dignified, impressive manner, which almost al-
ways proved irresistible with young men.

His usual practice, before admitting a boy into the Maison
Paternelle, was to try first what could be done by kind but firm
remonstrance and admonition. If the delinquent lived too far
away from Paris or Tours to be seen personally, M. de Metz,
after having carefully ascertained the facts in his case, addressed
him a letter couched in terms similar to the following : " I am
pained to learn that you are a serious cause of displeasure to
your family, and that all the parental exhortations made you up
to this time have been in vain. The day of severity is at hand ;
you are about to be deprived of your liberty, and thereby given
opportunity to reflect in solitude, and in the light of your con-
science, on the fatal consequences to you of disregard of your
filial duties. It is my desire to be a mediator between your
family and you, and I have asked in your behalf for a respite of
punishment. Turn the delay to good account by imploring
your parents to forgive your past bad conduct, the disgrace of
which so far rests on yourself only, but which may hereafter
attach a stigma to a name the honor of which should be main-
tained, not impaired, by you. From and after the reception of
this letter set yourself to acquiring habits of industry ; be respect-
ful and submissive with your parents ; revive in your heart those
religious sentiments which made your childhood happy and
which you have been so quick to forget ; and, above all, show

i886.] A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. 583

your gratitude to God, who has inspired me with the thought of
attempting to save you from the punishment which now awaits
your bad conduct.

" If, heedless of this fatherly warning, you persist in the sad
course upon which you have entered, do not blame me for the
rigorous treatment which you will have rendered necessary, and
the infliction of which I did all I could to avoid for you. There
is yet time ; afford me the joy of having successfully co-operated
in bringing you back to the path of duty and restored in your
family a condition of happiness which you should never have
disturbed."

By strong admonitions in the kind tone of the above, deliver-
ed either personally, when possible, or by letter, M. de Metz has
often obtained a successful result. Nor did he confine himself to
a single communication, if he judged that more would effect the
purpose. M. Bertin relates a very interesting case, of which he
had personal knowledge, in which M. de Metz prevailed. A
friend of the former came one day to him, and with tears in his
eyes told him that the conduct of his eldest son was the cause of
the most cruel pain to himself and wife and to their aged parents.
The young man claimed that he was old enough to direct his
own conduct, and that he did not intend to be preached to by
anybody. He was arrogant, frequently disrespectful, to his
mother and to his grandparents ; the entreaties and threats of his
father had no effect on him. Every means had been tried in
vain. M. Bertin gave his friend a letter of introduction to M.
de Metz, who, after having carefully ascertained by inquiry the
young man's antecedents and disposition, sent for him, and, in an
interview alone with him in his office, thus addressed him :

" You have entered upon a bad course, in which if you per-
sist the certain result will be bitter grief for your parents, and for
yourself a wretched and dishonored existence, because there can
be no happiness for the man who ignores the duties which have
been made obligatory by laws and morals in all countries and in
every age.

" You take a pride in doing wrong, and, in the contest which
you have begun with your family, have made it a point of honor
that your ungodly efforts shall come out triumphant ; the anguish
and tears of your parents are a cause of rejoicing to you.

" I conceive it my duty to tell you that by a long experience

'in life, and through an ardent desire to contend with the genius

of evil for the recovery of those who have been led away by

him, I have become a physician for young men afflicted with

584 A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. [Feb.,

moral disorders. I prefer to use anodyne remedies ; but when
they prove insufficient I have recourse to a heroic treatment.
You are one of these diseased subjects whom I ought to and
will heal ; I trust that, after I have assured you that you cannot
avoid the necessity of leading a different life, you will not fail to
understand that my fatherly advice is prompted solely by the
desire of serving your best and highest interests.

" I wish you, moreover, to know that on one of my hands I
wear a velvet glove, and on the other an iron gauntlet. To-day
I offer you the former, and shall continue to do so for eight days ;
if you allow these to pass without availing yourself of it, you
shall be made to feel the pressure of my iron grasp."

The young man withdrew and joined his father and mother,
who had remained in an adjoining room. He did not unbosom
himself in the least to them, but remained cast down and taciturn
the entire evening. The following morning he came into his
father's office and said to him : " I have found a man who is
stronger than I, and I will strike my flag." There was no evi-
dence, in the manner this determination was announced, of the
working of a tender and affectionate nature ; the rebellious con-
test was, indeed, brought to an end and calmness restored in the
family, but the respect and submission which followed were not
accompanied by those outpourings of the heart so highly priz-
ed by parents.

But the yonng man who would not, or could not, avoid the
alternative of being sent to the house, was visited, very soon after
having been immured in his cell, by M. de Metz, who talked to
him usually in this wise : " Do not fail to understand that you
have been sent here to be morally cured ; pray do your best to
bring this about as quickly and with as little difficulty as pos-
sible, and I shall be the one to thank you for it. Your godfather
became sponsor for you to God ; I have become sponsor for you
to your family. Do not attempt to fight it out with me. It
would be sheer madness to fight an enemy much stronger than
yourself; it would be foolish ingratitude to fight a friend who
desires and is seeking after your good."

M. de Metz has sometimes had experience of repentance on
the part of the self-accusing parents of boys placed under his
charge. A touching instance is that of a mother who thus wrote
to him : " I see clearly that all the trouble has been brought
about by my fond weakness, and that I really deserve to be
locked up in a cell next to that of my son. Pray come to my aid

i886.] A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. 585

to enable me to recover a parental authority received in trust
from divine Providence, and for which I have not known how
to secure respect."

M. de Metz's solicitude and labors for the reform of the
inmates of the Maison Paternelle were not brought to an end by
their departure from it. He corresponded with his ex-pupil and
his parents, and if the former showed that he was persevering in
good he received affectionate letters of encouragement ; in the
contrary event he was reminded that a violation of his promise
by a return to evil courses would cause him to be brought back
to Mettray and confined in the gloomier cells called cellules de
re'inte'gration. But M. de Metz never had recourse to this sad
alternative without first having an interview with his ex pupil
and giving him a chance to promptly make new promises and
reasonable time to show how they were kept, and if they turned
out in a failure an officer of the institution was sent for the
relapsing offender.

When M. Duruy was Minister of Public Instruction he came
to Mettray and specially examined the Colonie Agricole and the
Maison Paternelle. After having fully accomplished the object
of his visit and talked with the young men in their cells, he ex-
pressed to M. de Metz his surprise that, while going the rounds
of the schools and other educational establishments elsewhere, he
had heard no end of complaints either against the management or
the teachers, and, on the contrary, nothing but expressions of
satisfaction from the incarcerated boys above mentioned, whom,
in most cases, no school would keep. " The explanation which
your excellency desires," replied M. de Metz, " is probably this :
This house is really a paternal one for the young men confined
in it, and we do our best to make them feel it."

During a period of nineteen years, from the time it was opened
up to January, 1874, the Maison Paternelle has had sent to it
1,132 young men, belonging to all the well-to-do classes of society.
A little more than one-half were sons of land-owners and manu-
facturers. Thirty came to Mettray during the two months imme-
diately following M. de Metz's decease. The sad fact has been
observed that the number annually admitted is steadily on the in-
crease. On this point the triennal report of 1880 is silent, but in
that of 1883 it is stated that in 1882 there had been 208 applications
for admission and 42 admissions, while in 1875 there had been 176
applications and 54 admissions. This difference is accounted for
from the fact that afflicted parents find obstacles in getting, and

586 A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. [Feb.,

are, besides, averse to apply for, the judicial decree which seems
to be an obligatory condition of admission. What is more natural
than that parents should be desirous to avoid for their sons the
stigma of a commitment on record in a court of justice? How
much they would prefer as complete privacy as possible ! At
the time that M. Bertin wrote his account one-fifth of the released
inmates had relapsed into bad ways and had to be brought back
to go, through a second and more severe treatment, which in
most cases proved ultimately successful. It is hardly conceivable
that discharged patients of the moral sanitarium at Mettray should
ever themselves apply, of their own accord, to be readmitted ; such
has, nevertheless, been the fact, and M. Bertin states, from the
latest report then before him, that there had been up to that time
41 cases of young men readmitted on their own petition, arid that
four of them were then in the institution. Their object seems, in
many cases, to have been to seek a spot endeared to them by
appreciation of past benefits, where they could spend a few days in
retreat, either to find quietude and peace and strengthen their
good resolutions, or devote themselves to some work which could
best be done in solitude and retirement. To satisfy these wants
a few secluded small cottages have been provided, each having
only three rooms on the ground-floor viz., a bed-room, study,
and a small bed-room for a nurse in case of sickness with a
flower-garden in front ; the whole enclosed by stone walls.

There can be no doubt that licentious novels, feuilletons, and
plays, of which there has been a growing abundance in France for
the past half-century, an abundance which unfortunately still con-
tinues, have had their pernicious effects upon the youth of the
day. A similar moral contagion, but lesser in degree, has been
observed in our own country ; take, for instance, the cases of per-
version among the children of the middle classes in consequence
of reading dime-novels and like trash.

The success which, under the blessing of divine Providence,
followed upon M. de Metz's labors was undoubtedly in some
measure facilitated by that generous impulse, enthusiastic gra-
titude, and admiration for devotedness which are observable, in
greater or less degree, in the French character, and which cause
it to be carried away by kind and generous treatment, and to
respond to noble examples of charity and disinterestedness.

The quasi religious unity existing in France was also undoubt-
edly of great assistance to M. de Metz, as it would be to the fur-
therance of any good work. I mean a unity hardly at all disturb-

1 886.] A PROTECTORY FOR PRODIGAL SONS. 587

ed by the dissension of many sects.* There are only two sects
of any note in France, and they exert a very limited influence on
public opinion, and their claims created no serious embarrass-
ments in the management of affairs or in the discussion of plans,
such as are observed in our own country. Moreover, the ties of
family and relationship are highly considered and exert a strong
influence in French society, in which there is a very sensitive
regard and concern for whatever may affect or tarnish the family
good name. This feeling was very strong in the past and has
great force still. It has given rise to the usage of assembling
conseils de famille, which are recognized by French law.f

M. de Metz's utterances were sometimes full of dry humor.
A friend was once talking with him on the subject of the contrast
between the insufficient care which some people of fashion give to
bringing up their children and the interest they take in training
horses and dogs. " I know," said M. de Metz, " of a wealth}- family
where it is considered quite in order to give four thousand francs
(eight hundred dollars) a year to a piqueur,\ and only half the sum
to the tutor in charge of the children. I admit," he added,
smiling, " that a good piqueur who thoroughly understands the
handling of dogs is a man hard to find. But to know how to
properly bring up children ! . . ." His abrupt silence at this
point was more expressive than words.

M. de Metz had formed the project in 1864 of founding another
institution, very different in its purpose from the other two, in
another locality, and to be named " La Colonie Libre." It was
to serve for the reception and training to habits of labor and
steady industry of boys of the middle and artisan class, not
vicious, but inclined to roving habits and to yield to temptation,
and for whom life in a large city is full of peril. M. de Metz
had conceived the idea that a few years spent in the country
at farm- work, under special training, would be very efficacious to

* According to the census of December, 1881, as given in the Statesman's Mamtal for 1884,
the religious denominations in France were as follows :

Roman Catholics (78.50 per cent.) 29,201,703

Protestants (Calvinists and Confession of Augsburg, the only two

recognized by the laws of France, .018 per cent.) 692,800

Jews 53,936

Non -Professants, who decline to make any profession of religious

belief 7,684,906

Various creeds 33,042

Total 37,666,387

f The conseilde famille is an assemblage of the heads of a family and their prominent near

relations for the purpose of deliberating and taking action on any matter of moment affecting

any of its members.

J A whipper-in or huntsman.

588 To ST. CECILIA. [Feb.,

build up such subjects physically and morally. As the reports of
1880 and 1883 make no mention of any such establishment, it is to
be presumed that he died before having opportunity to make a
beginning of it.

How is it wither defamille in these United States, and parti-
cularly in the city of New York ? Do not many of them every
year begin to go to the bad and become fit subjects for a Maison
Paternelle, if we had one here ? Is such an institution needed
here ? Would it be in accordance with the ideas and habits of
the people, assuming that the required zeal and devotedness could
be found to undertake its establishment ?

SONNET TO ST. CECILIA.

O PERFECT Lily ! whose fair, fragile white

Life's glowing sunshine wooed, and wooed in vain,

And all its tempests had no power to stain ;

O fragrant Rose ! bathed in a glow so bright,

Thy life's first glory, not its early blight,

As they believed who, through death's passing pain,

Gave for a little loss a priceless gain,

And Heaven's first glimpse to thy enraptured sight

Thy very name awakens melody,

And music's tenderest praises seem to play

Around thy distant, martyred memory,

As fresh in this as thine ungrateful day.

Sweet Saint, the symbol of meek constancy,

Pray God we share in thy triumphal lay.

i886.] THE SLAUGHTER OF THE FIRST-BORN. 589

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE FIRST-BORN.

WHY must the public schools of this free land be so con-
ducted that Catholics are forced to establish parochial schools ?
Can sincere believers in Christianity be parties to this injustice ?
Can fair-minded men be parties to it? We say sincere believers,
because as the pretended mother was discovered by her will-
ingness to have the child put to death and divided, so it can only
be a pretended Christian who will divide the child's training for
life and death between two divergent methods of instruction.
And, we ask, what fair-minded citizen can demand that the public
money shall be spent exclusively upon schools which Catholics
honestly believe rob the souls of their children of the Christian
faith ? If you say the public schools do no such thing, that Ca-
tholic parents are mistaken, then, we ask, who has made you judge
between these fathers and mothers and the souls of their chil-
dren? Will you take the responsibility of affirming that on a
question of the most vital importance to these parents, a ques-
tion touching a religion to which you are a stranger, your opin-
ion is right and that of the parents wrong ? And will you please
bear in mind that the practical result of the dispute is that the
dollars and cents of a multitude of good citizens must be paid
into the public treasury and spent for your side of the question
and against their own ? Do you think this is acting like a fair-
minded man? Put yourself in the piace of your Catholic neigh-
bor : how would you like it? There is but one escape from this
charge of injustice, and that is to affirm that the Catholic view
of the school question is immoral. Maintain, if you please, that
our convictions openly violate a fundamental principle of com-
mon Christian morality, and you may force us to pay for the
public schools. But if this preposterous claim be not set up you
must admit that some accommodation should be come to ; the
principle of American liberty called freedom of conscience estops
your further discussion. The objection of Catholics to the pre-
sent public-school system is a matter of conscience. If you will
say that a private school aided by a free state is an open viola-
tion of public morality, on a par with polygamy or infanticide,
please tell us how and in what particular, or concert measures
with us to readjust in accordance with the American idea the
mutual relations of the state, family, and churches in public educa-

590 THE SLAUGHTER OF THE FIRST-BORN-. [Feb.,

tion. Prudent and wise men know how to adjust differences when
they mean well. Meantime ponder the words of the bishops of
the Province of New York in the late Provincial Council : " Un-
til such time as a sense of justice will force our fellow-citizens to
admit the fairness of our claims, and realize the injustice of tax-
ing us for schools to which we cannot conscientiously send our
children, unless in cases of extreme necessity, we shall be obliged
to build our own schools, even out of our scanty resources."

Is it a right use of political power to cram down the throats
of an integral portion of the American people your views of
education? Is it honest to make them help pay for schools
which may be yours, indeed, but which can only be theirs by vio-
lating their consciences ? Is this a taste of American liberty of
conscience ?

How long will this driving of Catholic children into private
and parochial schools goon? Will it continue till non-Catholic
children shall be alone in the public schools, and every Catholic
parish, however poor, shall have its own school? It looks as if
the remnants of Christianity outside the church were doomed to
be swept clean away by paganizing education. How long shall
American citizens be made to suffer in patience from this bigo-
try ?

In Europe men look to the state for favors ; in America
this is not the case. Catholic Americans ask no favors of the
state. But we maintain that it is a disgrace and a shame that, of
all places in the world, in this free country any large body of re-
spectable citizens should be taxed for the support of schools
which are so conducted that to send their children to them is to
risk their religious perversion. We maintain that what bigots,
with all their venom, were unable to do at the formation of our
government the partisans of the public schools are now, whether
consciously or otherwise, endeavoring surreptitiously to do by
public secular education ; that is to say, the law of the land and
the public taxes are made use of to force upon a portion of the
community something which their deliberate convictions forbid
them to use.

The Catholic parent says, That school injures my child's ulti-
mate welfare ; you say, I disagree with you, and I have the power
and I will put the taxes upon you. Is this fair play? Is this
American ? And now it has come to pass that it is not simply
the state but the nation that is to be used against the Catholic
conscience, since the enormous sums asked at Washington by
scheming politicians for educational purposes are to be exclu-

i886.] THE SLAUGHTER OF THE FIRST-BORN. 591

sively used for secular schools. Having milked the udder of the
state nearly dry, they would like to try their hands at that of the
nation.

Meantime we are more than persuaded that freedom and
equal rights are (excepting this one blot) the primary ideas of
Americans in their political conduct ; and we are equally cer-
tain that in accordance with freedom and equal rights Ame-
ricans will meet this issue and decide it. The issue as seen by
the Christian, whether Catholic or not, is stated in four words :
Christianity against secular schools. That this is truly the issue
has been growing clearer and clearer every day. Religious men
of all denominations are beginning to perceive it. They per-
ceive that it is the public-school boards in their respective locali-
ties that have become the judges of the worth or worthlessness
of Christianity to the child. Thoughtful religious men and wo-'
men are finding out the reason why unbelief is spreading among
the people. The main business of teaching this people what to
believe and how to live and die is carried on by a system which
shuts out from their view the God who created them and the
end for which they were created. The reader will see evidence
of this in the following words of an upright Protestant minister.
They are printed in the Chicago Interior, one of the organs of
Presbyterianism in the West. He is speaking of higher educa-
tion, and incidentally of primary. The italics are our own :

" We think it is not too much to say that the control of the higher
education of the future is a question which intimately concerns both
church and state. Garfield used to say that ' man is the joint product of
nature and nurture.' This is a very pregnant statement, the general accu-
racy of which no one will dispute. Perhaps we might safely go a step fur-
ther and say that nature may prove stronger than nurture, or vice versa.
If nature in the great majority of cases should prove stronger than nur-
ture, it would be a bad thing for society ; for nature, according to our or-
thodox views, ' is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.'
Hence it is apparent that no true virtue could be the outcome of an educa-
tion that simply gave to nature an unbridled use of its power. But is not
the welfare of states dependent upon the virtue rather than the intelli-
gence of its citizens? The real question is, then, What shall be the char-
acter and aim of the education, especially higher education, of the future ?
If it be an education that shall merely develop power, and aim at that only,
its character is determined by that fact. But if it seek to accomplish two
main things viz., power and control then its character is fixed according-
ly. Now, we do not hesitate to say that the element of control in education is of
greater importance than that of power. In other words, I should infinitely
prefer that my boy should have clear views upon the questions of right and
wrong, and prefer the former, than that he should know a little more in a

592 THE SLAUGHTER OF THE FIRST-BORN. [Feb.,

general way about some of the sciences and speculative philosophy, but be indif-
ferent to the Ten Commandments. Whether nurture or education shall prove
stronger than nature depends mainly upon the emphasis placed upon the
element of control. This brings us, then, to the original inquiry, Under
what control shall the higher education of the future be placed ? There
are only three conceivable answers to this important question :

" i. The state. But the state does not emphasize the element of con-
trol in education. One of its leading aims seems to be to avoid this very
thing. Hence our common schools, while excellent in many respects, are prac-
tically godless. It is becoming more and more exceptional that even a few
verses of the Bible are hastily read in the morning. The Bible and prayer are
virtually excluded from the school-rooms of the state. What is the result ?
You get power, but no control of that power. An atmosphere is developed
which is hostile to piety, duty, morality. Of course nature is master of the
situation, and nature is hostile to God.

" The above is largely true of our state universities. Where a better
state of things prevails in them it can only be regarded as a temporary inci-
dent of their life, and due to an accidental influence being exerted by some
Christian denomination. But the point is, these exceptional and better
features are really abnormal and cannot be depended on.

" 2. Private and irresponsible individuals may assume control of Jthe
higher education of the future. Of course this will never be a very general
condition of things. Yet how many private enterprises of this kind have
sprung up in our country during the past two years ! But the fact that in
all such cases the prevailing motive is a mercenary one is a sufficient com-
mentary.

" 3. The Christian church may control the higher education of the fu-
ture. The question is, Does the church afford the only safe guarantee for
efficient work in this line? Unquestionably it does. In the element of
power the church will give as much of it as the state can. The best sci-
ence and philosophy of the day is within the pale of the church. Educa-
tion, in its broad and liberal sense, has had no better friend than the
church in the past, nor is it likely to have in the future. But the church
does not forget the important element of control in education. It jealous-
ly guards the conscience and feeds it with proper food, so that it may not
only live, but become strong enough to perform its true functions in the
soul as its controlling power. In a word, the education of the church has
prime reference to character, and the development of the strongest and
best character it believes can be secured by the faithful education of man
as a totality. It would not ignore any of the faculties of soul or body, es-
pecially not the higher faculties of the soul. Of course the question of
ministerial supply in the future is intimately and vitally connected with
the other question of the control of the higher education of the future.
There are many leading minds who think that the new empire springing
up rapidly in these parts is to be the battle-ground of the future in respect
to this matter of control in education. Our Board of Aid for colleges and
academies was not born a day too soon. If the church will be alive to its
opportunities and duty, it can make this board an arm of mighty power in
our land. . . . JOHN D. MCLEAN."

" GROTON, D. T."

1 886.] THE SLAUGHTER OF THE FIRST-BORN. 593

In establishing in such magnificent proportions the present
school system the generosity of the American people has been
wonderful. It has been called forth by their love of knowledge
a noble trait. The same sentiment, set right, guided by the
principles so honestly stated by Mr. McLean, would but stimu-
late the same generosity and consecrate education to the noblest
of all purposes. The number of schools and of teachers in all
grades would but be increased and their character elevated, if
the education of the child were conformed to the end for which
the parent believed he was created. But so far the zeal for
knowledge has been zeal without knowledge. Have our people
sufficiently appreciated that there is no intellectual privilege
equal to being taught by Jesus Christ ; that there is no doctrine
that can compare with his; that there is no true teaching which
does not lead to him and his truth ? The American people have
not denied this or doubted it. Their mistake was concerning the
method of applying the teaching of Christ to the human mind.
They thought that the faith of Jesus Christ could be well enough
imparted by a method of instruction which dealt with .things
temporal and things eternal in sensu diviso ; but in reality this
life and the life to come are one. They have forgotten, too, that
religious belief and practice are maintained among a people only
with difficulty and by means of much systematic teaching, and
that religious teaching at its very best is apt to be deafened by
the clamor of the world in the hurly-burly of this busy age.

Meantime secular statesmen have fallen into a grosser error.
They have fancied that it is the business of the state to educate
the people. This is a mistake. The problem of statesmen in
this matter is really how the state shall aid the divinely-appoint-
ed agencies of education. These are the authority of God in the
family and the same authority in the church. To consult the
rights, nay, the very scruples, of parents, to assist in a spirit of
impartial justice the different religious societies among us in the
work of education such is the r61e of the state as Americans
understand it. Divine rights the state has, to be sure, but among
them the training of children is certainly not to be found ; least
of all training children to the grief of parents. In educational
matters the American state has been running off from its provi-
dential lines.

No wonder, then, that religious Protestants are becoming

antagonized by the public schools. We believe that the more

thoughtful portion of every Christian denomination in this

country would favor an honest effort towards religious school-

VOL. XLII. 38

594 THE SLAUGHTER OF THE FIRST-BORN. [Feb.,

ing-. We believe that honest Protestants would be glad if the
people's children could be taught the religion of their parents at
school. They have discovered that the school grievance is only
Catholic because it is a religious grievance in the broadest sense.
Catholics and Protestants are nearing each other in this contro-
versy. Whatever aversion we may have to Protestant errors,
we see but deeper error in the interference of a godless school-
board between God and the child's soul, and between the father
(Protestant or otherwise) and his child. Sincere Catholics and
honest Protestants in this country, as is the case in others, can
have a platform of principles broad enough to stand together
upon, and shortly, we think, will have it. And then let bigots
and political schemers beware !

This propaganda of unreligious citizenship must be resisted.
Resistance will not be confined to any one section of this people.
A portion are taking their leisure, indeed, in coming to this
point. But the slaughter of their first-born is persuading them
of their duty. "For whereas they would not believe anything
before by reason of the enchantments, then first upon the de-
struction of their first-born they acknowledged the people to be
of God" (Wisd. xviii. 13). If they will not admit that Catholics
are the people of God, at any rate they will admit that we know
what we are about on the school question.

So great a principle and so true a cause will not long lack
champions in the political arena. " The first of all gospels is
this, that a lie cannot endure forever." There is a class of minds
whose ruling passion is love of being right. Another class there
is whose ruling passion is love of peace and plenty. Woe to the
state when the latter outweighs the former ! Have we come to
that already? Are you going to say that the love of being right
is no longer the dominant trait of the American people ? We
do not believe it. And we are further persuaded that when
sincere and intelligent religious men and women present their
religious convictions as a political factor, then the school ques-
tion will be fairly considered and quickly settled. Meantime we
will raise our voices, and will not allow them to be stifled till we
get our rights.

A sincere member of any church is always respected. A
man or woman fond of religious society, a regular attendant
at religious services, a constant reader of Holy Scripture, is
still the most honored member in an American community. If
he be deemed of upright conscience his religious disposition
makes him welcome in a worldly man's home-circle, and such

1 886.] JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. 595

traits are noted in favor of one who seeks a worldly man's child
in marriage. It will be twenty times the present power of
agnosticism that will weaken the instinctive respect that men
have for those who solve the great questions of the soul by living
'and dying for God and for eternity. Shall such men be ignored
or have no weight when they organize to bring the school
grievance to settlement? God forbid ! If a man is known to
buy and sell goods under the influence of the Christian religion,
he is but the better trusted ; shall he be only scoffed at if he pro-
claims the same rule of conduct in the training of his children?/

JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL.

" A HISTORY of the lifetime of Joost van den Vondel," says
Mr. Edmund Gosse in his Studies in Northern Literature, " is a
chronicle of the whole rise and decline of the literature of Hol-
land." Born in 1589, he was eight years old when the United
Provinces, throwing off the yoke of Spain, proclaimed their Com-
monwealth and insured at once the freedom and the prosperity
of the Netherlands. Though the struggle continued for years,
the victory was practically won, and even the assassination of the
stadtholder failed signally to undo the work that he had done.
As Holland rose rapidly in wealth and political importance she
blossomed into a literature whose rich efflorescence was second
only to the glory of the Elizabethan school in England. The
great historian Hooft, the dramatists Brederod and Vondel, the
lyrical poets Huyghens, Barlaeus, and Janssen Starter, formed a
little group of rare talent whose lifelong labors raised their coun-
try to an honorable distinction in the world of letters, as William
the Silent, Maurice of Nassau, and Oldenbarneveldt raised her to
a place among the nations. They died, leaving none to succeed
to their titles ; and Vondel, who had assisted at the birth of
Dutch literature and nourished its vigorous growth, was des-
tined in his old age to be the witness of its premature decline.

Nothing could well be more homely than the early surround-
ings of this greatest of Holland's poets. His parents, poor Ana-
baptists of Cologne, were driven hither and thither as members
of that much-persecuted sect until they found a shelter in Am-

596 JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. [Feb.,

sterdam, where they established themselves in a modest stocking-
shop in the Warmoesstrat. Years of thrift insured them a com-
petency, and when Joost Vondel at twenty-one succeeded to the
business he left it principally in the hands of his young wife,
while devoting himself to the more congenial task of writing
verses, none of which, however, gave much promise of his future
greatness. His early tragedy of Henry IV. probably met with
no more tfbtice than it deserved, and his fugitive poems were but
little known outside of the small coterie of writers and scholars
who willingly received him in their midst. For Hooft especially
he felt a warm admiration and affection, which was ill-repaid in
later life ; and another and happier friendship formed about the
same time was destined to have a marked effect upon his sub-
sequent career. This was with the poetess Tesselschade, the
daughter of Roemer Visscher, a man of wealth and standing,
whose ripe scholarship and distinguished attainments placed him
without a rival at the head of the literary society of Amsterdam.
His three daughters were its brightest ornaments, and of
these the youngest, Tesselschade, was a Dutch S6vign6, whose
praises poets sang, and for whose sake they wore their brightest
bays. It seems impossible to speak with sufficient admiration of
one whose influence was so unreservedly good, whose rare beauty
wrought evil to none, and who combined within herself the grace
and wit of a woman of the world with the modesty, the domestic
affections, and the sterling sense of a German housewife. An
artist of some merit, she counted Rubens among her friends ; a
tender and pleasing writer, she won the hearts of Holland's
greatest sons. The fiery young genius Brederod flung his pas-
sionate soul at her feet; Constantine Huyghens bore her through
life a real though somewhat fantastic affection ; the poet Barlaeus
sought her hand, and Vondel, when a widower, would fain have
shared with her his undying fame. Yet, unspoiled amid this uni-
versal admiration, Tesselschade suffered herself to be wooed and
won by a middle-aged and commonplace sailor, Allart Krom-
balgh, and when he died she remained faithful to his memory.
Her friendship with Vondel lasted unbroken through their lives,
and in one respect at least her influence touched him nearly.

The family of Roemer Visscher were Catholics. Good pa-
triots, who had no mind to see their country trodden under-foot
by Spanish tyranny, they were yet faithful children of the mo-
ther-church. Amid the jars and dissensions of Calvinists and
Arminians, amid the wrath of the Remonstrants and the war-cry
of the Gomarists, the little household maintained its peaceful

1 886.] JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. 597

serenity, withdrawn wholly from the religious struggles of the
hour. Mr. Gosse, who cannot be accused of any undue prefer-
ence for Rome, is moved to acknowledge that, in this case at least,
Catholicity was a boon, and Peter's Rock a more comfortable
resting-place than the sea of discord that raged around it. " To
the family of Roemer," he says, " with their mild Catholicism and
their cultured humanism, these rabid shouts of Free-Will and
Predestination that deafened the consciences of men, and drove
them to the foulest acts of tyranny and treason, must have seemed
pitiful indeed ; nor has Protestantism ever shone in so contempti-
ble a light as in those years preceding the murder of Oldenbarne-
veldt."

That murder was the turning-point in Vondel's career. The
Synod of Dort, which had met in 1618 with the ostensible pur-
pose of reconciling the perfectly irreconcilable religious bodies,
had .become a mere tool in the hands of the triumphant Calvinists,
with Maurice of Nassau at their head, and James of England
lending them his gracious approbation. In their pitiless zeal they
were not content with hounding the Arminian pastors from their
livings and banishing many from the country. Hugo Grotius,
the most eminent jurist of his time, and Rombout Hoogerbeets
were imprisoned for life in Loevestein, whence the former es-
caped through the sagacity and devotion of a maid-servant. The
body of the secretary, Ledenberg, who died by his own hands in
prison, was dragged from the grave and publicly hanged, that
the state might wrest from his children their inheritance. And
Oldenbarneveldt, Holland's greatest and truest son, the friend of
William the Silent and the liberator of his country, was beheaded
on the I4th of May, in his seventy-second year, " for having con-
spired to dismember the States of the Netherlands which he of
all men had helped to bind together and for having greatly trou-
bled God's church."

A blacker judicial murder never stained the fair fame of a re-
public. All that could be urged against the Grand Pensionary
was his laxness in the spirit of persecuting Christianity. " He
was accused," says Motley, "of a willingness to wink at the in-
troduction quietly and privately of the Roman Catholic worship.
That this was the deadliest of sins there was no doubt whatever
in the minds of his revilers. When it was added that he was sus-
pected of the Arminian leprosy, and that he could tolerate the
thought that a virtuous man or woman not predestined from
all time to salvation could possibly find the way to heaven, lan-
guage became powerless to stigmatize his depravity." For these

598 JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. [Feb.,

crimes they dragged the old man to the scaffold amid coarse jn-
sults and ribald jests ; and after his bleeding body had been
thrust with ostentatious ignominy into a filthy box a document
was published explaining that the utter absence of any treason-
able evidence was owing to the humanity of his judges, who, in
consideration of his extreme age, had mercifully abstained from
putting him to the question. " This is the reward of forty
years' service to the state," said the prisoner, with a momentary
pang of anguish, as he looked upon the gaping crowd assembled
to witness his execution ; and then, with gentle dignity kneeling
upon the rough boards, he bent his venerable head to receive the
fatal stroke.

Barneveldt's heroic death fell like a thunderbolt upon the
little group of poets and patriots that met under Roemer Viss-
cher's roof. Hot with shame at his country's disgrace, and with
fury that Prince Maurice should have left his father's cherished
friend to such a fate, the passionate resentment that shook Von-
del's soul found vent in a series of burning songs, and in the
tragedy of " Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence," where Barne-
veldt, the stadtholder, and other eminent personages were paint-
ed under the thinnest of disguises. Though this tragedy was not
produced until after Prince Maurice's death in 1625, it very natu-
rally awoke a spirit of bitter resentment, and cost the poet, or his
friends, a fine of three hundred gulden. By this time, however,
his fame was being slowly and surely established, and his name
had become a watchword among those whose finer souls or wider
sympathies responded freely to his call. He had reached an age
when men have oftenest put forth their best efforts, and his life-
work was but begun. Gradually and powerfully his massive
genius developed itself, attaining its highest point only when old
age had crowned his head with silver. Had Vondel died as pre-
maturely as Byron, Shelley, and Keats, there would have been
nothing left to show mankind how great a poet they had missed.
Had Keats snatched too soon from a listening world been per-
mitted to ripen into vigorous manhood, what ravishing lost har-
monies would have been bequeathed to the English tongue !
Vondel was forty-nine years old when his great tragedy, " Gijs-
brecht van Aemstel," was first played in the Academy of Amster-
dam ; a year later he dedicated to Tesselschade his translation of
the " Electra " of Sophocles, and on his fifty-fourth birthday he
took the long-meditated step and entered the Catholic Church.

It seems a little hard to understand the universal opprobrium
that followed. As a sympathizer with the Arminians Vondel

1 885.] JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. $99

had always stood upon the losing- side, while by joining the Ro-
man fold he sacrificed at once such political influence as he had
hitherto possessed, and with it the support and approbation of
his oldest friends. Now, when a man willingly relinquishes any
distinct worldly advantages for the sake of his religious convic-
tions, he challenges our respect, even if those convictions seem
to us mistaken. When Dryden, the most courtly and astute of
poets, accepted Catholicity in the nick of time to make good his
favor with a Catholic king, his enemies had some ground on
which to doubt his disinterestedness, though the less captious
critics of to-day refuse to impute to him ignoble motives. But
when Crashaw threw himself into the bosom of the church there
was not one dissentient voice, save that of the surly Prynne, in
the universal acknowledgment of his sincerity. And, like Cra-
shaw, Vondel had nothing to gain and much to lose in adhering
to his new creed. Less spiritual and far more masculine than the
English poet, it was given him to spend hours in a trance of ec-
static devotion ; but he could and did suffer manfully for the
faith he held. If his poems are not " steps for happy souls to
climb heaven by," they at least stretch soberly along in the same
great direction. Crashaw, in his contemplative purity and rap-
turous love, at once represents the church suffering and the
church triumphant ; Vondel is the very embodiment of the
church militant Crashaw died at thirty-seven, a flower-like
soul unfit for the coarse and wicked soil of earth ; Vondel strug-
gled on until ninety-one amid poverty and misfortunes, with an
indomitable courage that nothing could subdue. His is the sad-
der as well as the more instructive history ; and who was there
to write of him, as Cowley, the stanchest of Protestants, wrote
in love and reverence of the dead Crashaw ?

" Pardon ! my mother-church, if I consent
That angels led him when from thee he went.

Or again :

" His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right,
And I myself a Catholic will be
So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee.
Hail, bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the poets militant below."

Venders friends on the other side, denying him with one ac-

600 JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. [Feb.,

cord the privilege of deciding for himself what he should believe,
turned away in anger when his change of creed was announced,
and never seem to have forgiven him the step. Hooft, whom he
had loved so long, barred the doors of Muiden Castle against his
old companion, and would not suffer him beneath his roof. Huy-
ghens, suspecting that Tesselschade's influence had much to do
with the matter, forgot for a while his admiration of the " match-
less qualities " he was never wearied of singing, and upbraided
her fiercely and bitterly for assisting at Vondel's fall. So sting-
ing, indeed, were his reproaches that the lady, whose gentle femi-
ninity did not permit her to indulge in polemical warfare, wearied
of this one-sided battle and entrusted her defence to Barlaeus,
who was too happy to be allowed to espouse her cause. But,
except Tesselschade, there was no one to defend Vondel, who, see-
ing himself deserted by his friends, wasted no time in complaints
or self-extenuation, but proceeded quietly with his literary labors.
Drawing his inspiration from Holy Writ, he produced at this
time his Scriptural dramas, " The Sons of Saul," " Joseph in Do-
tham," and " Joseph in Egypt " ; also his translation of the
Psalms of David, which he dedicated to Christina of Sweden,
who sent him a golden chain with her portrait attached.

There is something na'ive enough to be absolutely amusing in
the verdict of a modern French critic on the poet's conversion to
Catholicity. While acknowledging the " incontestable services
rendered by him to the country of his adoption," and saluting
him as the "father of Netherland poetry, and the restorer of
the national language of the Pays-Bas," the writer deprecates
the one mistaken step which robbed him of the support and sym-
pathy of his friends. " But the most cruel punishment of his in-
consistency," he adds, " was met by him in his own family. His
daughter Anna left him to enter a convent, and his son Joost
ruined him in business." Here we have a relation between
cause and effect that does credit to Gallic logic. That his
daughter should have gone into a convent was perhaps the
natural outcome of her father's religion, and may be regarded
as an evil or a blessing, according to people's views. But to
say that his son mismanaged the stocking-shop and brought
poverty on the family because Vondel had become a Catholic
is inferring rather more than the circumstances will permit.
Apparently, however, a somewhat similar view was held by his
contemporaries. Such misfortunes were plainly the punishment
due him for his perversion, and they were only acquiescing

1886.] JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. 6oi

cheerfully in the decrees of Providence when they refused to
lift a hand to help him in his sore distress.

But this is unduly anticipating- events. Vondel had still be-
fore him some years of prosperity and peace, though death was
about to deprive him of his dearest friend. Tesselschade, whose
wedded happiness had been of brief duration, had since her
widowhood devoted herself to the education of her only re-
maining child. Still beautiful and winning, she gently refused
all offers of marriage, content to remain the companion of great
men and the beloved patroness of all the younger writers of
her day. Her last years were shadowed by sorrows, borne with
touching patience and resignation. A spark from a smithy
partly destroyed her sight and marred her loveliness for ever.
Death carried off in quick succession many of those dearest to
her, and finally laid his hand on her young daughter, the pride
and joy of her life. Broken-hearted by this last blow, she died
of grief in 1649, leaving her memory embalmed in the songs of
Barlaeus, Huyghens, and Vondel, while her own lyrics hold a
more modest niche in the temple of fame. Of these " The
Nightingale" is familar to all, having been translated into Eng-
lish by Sir John Bowring and Mr. Edmund Gosse, and pub-
lished at different times in collections of fugitive poems.

Vondel was sixty years old when Tesselschade died. His tra-
gedy of " Mary Stuart " had met with brilliant success, and the
poet, now living quietly with his daughter on the Cingel, began
the great work of his life, the choral drama of " Lucifer." Mr.
Gosse has clearly pointed out how deeply indebted to this ma-
jestic poem is the author of " Paradise Lost." Preceding the
English epic by thirteen years, it could not have failed to at-
tract the attention of Milton, who was a finished Dutch scholar,
and who drew so much of his inspiration from foreign sources.
Had he, indeed, adhered to his original design of treating his
subject dramatically, the resemblance between the two poems
would have been closer still, though no one ventures to place
"Lucifer" on the same lofty pinnacle as its heroic rival. But a
like spirit dominates in both. "The great Puritan epic," says
Mr. Goldwin Smith, " could hardly have been written by any
one but a militant Puritan " ; yet Vondel, though a son of Rome,
is swayed by precisely the same warlike zeal for a sublime cause.
The clash of the celestial armies rings in his ears, their gleaming
armor dazzles his eyes, their impetuous charge fills him with ex-
ultation. Like Milton, he makes of Lucifer a superb incarnation

6O2 JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. [Feb.,

of revolt, not to exalt the spirit of rebellion, but to give dignity
and meaning to the struggle. It is not the Almighty crushing a
worm which calls forth our enthusiasm, but the angels of God
rushing with loyal valor against a powerful foe.

In their own characters and destinies Milton and Vondel
closely approximate each other the same stern and uncom-
promising patriotism, the same passionate defence of a lost
cause, the same purity of life without a tinge of asceticism,
the same adherence to their respective creeds, the same heroic
fortitude under heavy affliction. In an old Dutch print of Von-
del we discern far more of the soldier than the poet. With his
martial bearing and his military mustachios, he looks ready to
gird on his sword and fight gaily in the foremost ranks of bat-
tle. Yet, gentler far than Milton, his warlike spirit never degen-
erated into blood-thirstiness ; and for the real difference between
the two we have but to turn from the downright ferocity, the
" Latin Billingsgate," with which Milton pursued the unfortu-
nate Salmasius, to the epitaph in which Vondel has recorded his
unswerving affection for his ungenerous friend Hooft.

" Lucifer," as well as " Gijsbrecht van Aemstel," has been
translated into French, and may be found in the " Chefs-
d'oeuvres des ThMtres Etrangers "/ but though Mr. Gosse in his
study of Vondel has given us a spirited synopsis of the drama,
only a few scattered extracts from the chorus have been ren-
dered into English verse. The entire action takes place among
the heavenly hosts. We hear of Eve's beauty and Adam's bliss
only through the angelic praises of both. Apollyon describes
Eve as lovelier than the brightest spirits, fairer than the gates of
pearl, her hair golden as a veil of sunbeams. Man, created less
than the angels, is yet laden with blessings and destined to
work his way to a higher glory and to a place nearer God.
Lucifer, the Morning-Star, the Stadtholder of Heaven, is roused
to bitter grief and jealousy at sight of this new rival, and Beel-
zebub inflames his wrath with pointed taunts upon his fallen
greatness. Apollyon and Belial fan the flames of rebellion
among the sorrowing and discontented angels, who wail with
one voice :

"Alas! alas! alas ! where has our bliss departed!"

In vain Gabriel seeks to argue them into obedience; in vain
the superb and haughty Michael warns them of the hopeless-

1 886.] JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. 603

ness of contending against the Most High ; in vain Raphael, the
messenger of love and reconciliation, endeavors to win them
back to their allegiance ere the thunders of God hurl them into
hell. Lucifer, to whom the rebel hosts have already paid divine
homage, refuses to bow his crested head. Despairing of success,
he yet rears the banner of revolt and rushes impetuously on his
doom.

There is but a single conflict between the two armies of
heaven. The loyal servants of God fly with quivering pinions
to the fray, while the rebellious spirits advance in the form of a
crescent, Belial and Beelzebub leading either horn. Lucifer, in
his sun-bright chariot studded with rubies, his shining buckler
engraved with the morning-star, encounters the mighty arm of
Michael, who, bearing aloft the standard, on which is blazoned
the mystic name of the Creator, leads the triumphant hosts
of heaven. Maddened by approaching defeat, Lucifer in vain
essays to cleave with impious arm that awful name. The arch-
angel's gleaming sword hurls him with irresistible force into the
yawning abyss of hell, whose grim gates open blackly to receive
the rebel rout. From thence a monarch still within his own
domain he sends Belial to tempt the innocent Eve and accom-
plish through her fall the degradation of mankind. With the exile
of our first parents from their lost Eden, and with the final doom
of the disgraced and defeated angels, the drama is concluded.

The likeness between " Lucifer " and " Paradise Lost " is too
apparent to need comment. Not only is the general tenor of the
poems the same, but individual passages often bear a close resem-
blance. Thus Satan's

" Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven"
is more tamely rendered by Lucifer's

" En liever d'eerste Vorst in eenigh lager hof
Dan in't gezalight licht de tweede, of noch een minder."*

And though Mr. Mark Pattison lays stress on the greater earthli-
ness of Vondel's angels, yet the Miltonic spirits who turn desirous

" Forthwith from dance to sweet repast,"
and Belial " in gamesome mood " chuckling over the success of

* Better to be Prince of a lower court
Than stand second or third within the holy light.

604 JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. [Feb.,

his new artillery, must be thought to occasionally rival them in
this respect. The chorus which concludes the first act of
" Lucifer " has been translated by Sir John Bowring, a most
indefatigable worker and a most indifferent poet. We quote a
portion of it before passing on to Mr. Gosse's too scanty versions:

" Who sits above heaven's heights sublime,

Yet fills the grave's profoundest place,
Beyond eternity or time

Or the vast round of viewless space ;
Who on Himself alone depends,

Immortal, glorious, but unseen,
And in his mighty being blends

What rolls around or flows within.
Of all we know not, all we know,

Prime source and origin, a sea
Whose waters pour'd on earth below

Wake blessing's brightest radiancy.
His power, love, wisdom first exalted j

And waken'd from oblivion's birth
Yon starry arch, yon palace vaulted,

Yon heaven of heavens to smile on earth.
From his resplendent majesty

We shade us, 'neath our sheltering wings,
While awe-inspired and tremblingly

We praise the glorious King of Kings
With sight and sense confused and dim.

O name, describe the Lord of Lords !
The seraphs' praise shall hallow Him :

Or is the theme too vast for words ? ''

Compare this with Mr. Gosse's translation of the angelic
chorus, who watch with wondering dismay the changed and
sullied brightness of their rebellious brothers :

" Why seem the courteous angel-faces
So red ? Why streams the holy light

So red upon our sight,
Through clouds and mists from mournful places ?

What vapor dares to blear

The pure, unspotted, clear,

And luminous sapphire ?

The flame, the blaze, the fire

Of the bright Omnipotence ?
Why does the splendid light of God
Glow, deepened to the hue of blood,

That late, in flowing thence,
Gladdened all hearts ? "

1886.] JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. 605

Here we have the quaintness of the old Dutch poet set into
living English ; and the anti-chorus, in a singularly musical reply,
explain that envy " from the under- world came sneaking," and
has tarnished the glory of God's chosen servants.

" The doves of heaven here on high,
Whose innocent pinions sweetly tinkled,
Are struck with mourning one and all,
As though the heavens were far too small
For them, now Adam's been elected,
And such a crown for man selected.
This blemish blinds the light of grace,
And dulls the flaming of God's face."

r One more short quotation is all we may add, but it is too
felicitous to be omitted. The triumphant chorus celebrate
Michael's victory in an ode so curious and complex that only a
poet-critic could successfully unravel its intricacies, and we can-
not forbear to give at least the opening lines :

" Blest be the hero's hour,

Who smote the godless power,
And his might, and his light, and his standard,

Down toppling like a tower ;

His crown was near God's own,

But from his lofty throne
With his might into night be hath vanished ;

God's name must shine alone.

Outblazed the uproar fell

When valorous Michael,
With his brand in his hand quenched the passion

Of spirits that dared rebel.

He holds God's banner now;

With laurels crown his brow ! "

" Lucifer " was received with a storm of invectives, as " treat-
ing in a fleshly manner the high theme of God's mysteries," and
found its way to the stage, to publication, and to the hearts ot the
Dutch people only after a prolonged and hard-fought battle. Crit-
ics to this day persist in thinking that it veils a political signifi-
cance, and Lucifer is believed by some to mean William the
Silent, and by others Cromwell ; both of which suppositions be-
ing equally unhappy when we reflect that the first stadtholder and
the ruler of the English Commonwealth, so far from being inglo-
riously defeated, carried their respective rebellions to a most suc-
cessful issue. There seems no legitimate reason to connect this

6o6 JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. [Feb.,

noble poem with the miserable wickedness of the day ; and
critics, in their rage for finding hidden meanings, have forgotten
that the devout and reverent Vondel would hardly have compared
the cruel tyranny of Philip II. or the unscrupulous falseness of
Charles I. to the just vengeance of an Almighty God.

The poet was now approaching his seventieth, year. He had
been elected president of the Guild of St. Luke, and publicly
crowned on that occasion by the painter, Bartholomeus van der
Heist ; he had outlived the malice of his enemies, and might rea-
sonably hope to see his sun of life set clearly and peacefully in an
honorable old age. But heavy sorrows were even now in store for
him. His son's mismanagement whether the result of Catholici-
ty or not plunged him into financial ruin. He sacrificed his own
little fortune of 40,000 gulden, and, after travelling into Denmark
to try and treat with the creditors, he obtained on his return a
petty clerkship, in which by hard toil he earned a scant support.
" In this misery," comments Mr. Gosse sternly, " Holland allowed
her greatest poet to drudge from his seventieth to his eightieth
year, and his employers had the insolence to reproach the old
man with sometimes writing verses in his office hours. I doubt
if in all the tragical annals in literature there is a sadder story than
this; and that London should have let Otway starve seems to me
less infamous than that Amsterdam should have plagued the aged
Vondel so harshly for a pittance of fourteen pence a day."

Troubles more undeserved never darkened a poet's life. Ot-
way starved in the streets of London, but not until he had sunk
his manhood in the foolish passion that hurried him into his last
sad misery. Milton blind, feeble, and contemned lingered in
lonely obscurity ; but the author of " Eikonoklastes " and the
" Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio " could hardly hope for much
consideration from his outraged and triumphant enemies. Yet a
short concealment in Bartholomew Close was practically all he
endured at their hands before the Act of Oblivion relieved him
from even that necessity. " There were among the Royalists,"
says Mr. Keightly, " men of humanity who could feel compassion
for him who was deprived of nature's prime blessing, and men of
taste who were capable of admiration for exalted genius." But
Vondel, having led a life of chaste and abstemious simplicity, and
having raised his voice only in behalf of the wronged and perse-
cuted, found no one in rich and busy Amsterdam to hold out to
him a generous hand of sympathy. With characteristic courage
he went cheerfully on his way, not posing as a martyr for the

1 886.] JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL. 6o/

benefit of posterity, but doing his daily work as well as his in-
creasing years would permit, and writing all the while with un-
dimmed power and beauty. " Jephte," " King David Restored,"
" Samson/' " Adam in Exile/' " Adonis," and the translations of
" CEdipus Tyrannus " and the " ^Eneid," were among the pro-
ductions of those ten hard years ; and if the spectacle is a sad one,
it is sublime in its unostentatious endurance. The noble old man,
going daily to his humble toil, yet ever mindful of

" That one talent which is death to hide,''

suffering neither age nor poverty nor scorn to dim his light nor
to disturb his soul, has taught us the truest lesson we can learn.

When, in his eightieth year, Holland awoke to her own shame
and a small state pension freed Vondel from drudgery, he still
continued to write, his last literary work being the translations of
Ovid and Sophocles. He lived to be ninety-one, retaining the
full use of all his faculties, and he died with a jest, on his lips,
light-hearted to the end. The influence of his Catholicism is
shown in such purely religious poems as " The Virgins," " The
Mysteries of the Altar," and the " Praise of St. Agnes," written
before he entered the church ; but at all times he drew from the
Scriptures and from tradition the inspirations best fitted to his
Muse. His body lies entombed in the Nieuwe Kirk at Amster-
dam, near that of the gallant Admiral de Ruyter ; but though
Protestant walls enclose his ashes, his memory is distinctively
our own by right of the common faith he so bravely loved and
cherished.

6o8 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

THE DOCTOR'S FEE.
I.

IT was a burning day of July, and not a breath of air was stir-
ring in the narrow, dirty alley through which two men a priest
and a physician were passing on their daily rounds of charity.
They were strangers to each other, and both were strangers in
the place where they now met, the town of Altonboro' the priest
having arrived there only three days before to take temporary
charge of the mission-duty of a brother cleric at present absent
on account of ill-health, and the doctor being, comparatively speak-
ing, a new-comer also, a young man just commencing the prac-
tice of his profession.

Dr. Kelly, the priest, who was walking some yards in front of
the other, stopped suddenly before one of the small, mean-looking
houses that lined the alley, to speak to a sallow woman standing
in an open door. After exchanging a few words with her he was
about to continue on his way when she exclaimed, as the young
physician approached :

" Here's the doctor now that 'tends him. He can tell you,
father."

The father glanced round, and, lifting his hat, bowed courte-
ously as he said :

" Dr. Ferrison, I believe ? "

" That is my name," answered the young man, bowing in re-
turn.

" Will you, sir, allow me to ask you a question about one of
your patients?"

"Certainly," was the ready reply, as the speaker drew a step
nearer his interlocutor and paused.

" This good woman tells me that Mahoney, who lives next-
door here, has taken a turn for the worse since I saw him this
morning. I wish to know if he is in danger of death."

" I have not seen him myself since this morning," answered
the doctor, a look of concern coming over his face. " He was
not then in danger that is, immediate danger though a very
sick man. But if there has been a change I shall have to see what
it is before I can give you an opinion."

They walked on together to the next house, and, passing

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 609

through a small outer room, entered another where the sick man
lay. It was a poor place, but clean, and the bed looked comfort-
able. The wasted figure upon it was moving very restlessly, his
hands and feet not being still an instant, though he was evidently
too weak to toss his body about. He had typhoid fever, and by
the illness of a month was reduced from a robust man to an
emaciated frame pitiable to see. The pinched, unshaven face was
colorless, but the languid eye had still a fever lustre in it that
brightened almost to a flash when its wandering glance fell on the
doctor; and a faint attempt to smile curved the parched mouth
as the priest advanced and stood at the foot of the bed.

" Glad I am to see you, father," he said ; then, looking up as
the doctor touched his wrist, he added plaintively : " An' sure I'm
afraid me time's come, doctor ! "

" The crisis of your fever's come," answered the latter. " Come
a little sooner than I expected. And I'm afraid you haven't been
following my directions properly. Did you take your medicine
regularly a spoonful every hour? "

" I did," said the man in a weak voice. " Mary there '11 tell
you so."

" Yes, doctor, he tuk it sure, an' ivery drop, too," cried a
woman's voice in a quick, eager tone, as the speaker advanced
from behind the head of the bed, which, for the sake of air, had
been drawn into the middle of the floor. She stopped, facing
the doctor, and stood in an unconsciously dramatic attitude,
her thin hands grasping each other tightly, her straight, black
brows drawn together, her eyes looking out from under their
shadow with a strained gaze of agonized inquiry from one to
the other of the three men before her the poor writhing form
on the bed, the grave face of the physician, who stood, watch in
hand, counting the fearfully rapid but weak pulse, and the benign
but sad countenance of the priest.

Small comfort did she derive from the scrutiny. Her face,
haggard from watching and anxiety, twitched convulsively, and
once her lips unclosed as if to utter a passionate wail ; but she
restrained herself bravely, and there was a moment's silence,
broken at last by the feeble tones of the sick man.

" Father, you'll give me the rites?" he said, looking, with a
pitiful quiver of a smile, at the priest.

"Yes, my son," responded the latter. " I will anoint you at
once ; and if the doctor thinks then that your condition requires
it, I will return home for the Blessed Sacrament. I have my oil-
stocks but not the pyx with me."
VOL. XLII. 39

6 io THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

He stepped to the side of the woman, who was staring- vacantly
before her with an expression of dumb despair, and directed her
to make the necessary preparations for the administration of the
sacrament; and when she had set a small table beside the bed
and covered it with a clean white cloth, he took from his pocket
a morocco case containing his stocks, asked for holy water, and,
having completed his arrangements, proceeded with the holy rite.

The doctor, meanwhile, had gone into the outer room and
been engaged in mixing and portioning out some medicine for his
patient. Seated before the only window the apartment could
boast, and leaning over a chair that he had taken for a table upon
which to work, he did not observe what was going on around,
and was surprised, on returning to the sick-chamber presently, at
the scene which met his sight. The priest was anointing the
feet of the sick man, who lay perfectly quiet now. His hands,
clasped upon his breast, held a crucifix, his eyes were closed, and
there was an expression of peaceful resignation on the skeleton-
like face. Back towards the wall, as far from the bed as the lim-
ited space of the room permitted, a rough-looking man and two
women were kneeling neighbors who had gathered in. They
were saying the Litany of Loretto in a low tone one leading,
the others responding and the poor wife knelt on the other side
of the bed, praying too, but silently. Her face, which was almost
as fleshless and wan as that of her husband, wore a singular look
of mingled anguish and hope, as her eyes followed greedily every
motion of the priest.

Dr. Ferrison, taking in at a glance all these details as he was
about to enter, paused on the threshold, leant his shoulder against
the side of the door, and looked curiously at what was to him a
strange spectacle. He was aware that a Catholic when dangerous-
ly ill called for a priest, who performed certain religious services
at the bedside ; but he had never happened to be present before
on an occasion of the kind. He had taken good -care, indeed, not
to be present on such occasions, regarding these ceremonies as the
superstitious observances of one of the effete creeds of the world ;
for, like most non-Catholic men of his day and generation, he was
a materialist in opinion. Since it now came in his way, however,
he was not averse to studying this new phase of human nature
which he had stumbled upon, and felt interested in observing the
effect already produced by the reception of the sacrament in
stilling the fevered restlessness of the sick man, being the more
struck by this result from the fact that several similar cases had
come under his notice sudden changes in the condition of the

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 611

sick, which changes had been ascribed by their friends to the hav-
ing " received the rites." Heretofore he had attributed this effect
to the force of imagination acting together with the strong ten-
dency of all illiterate minds to religious superstition. But while
waiting now until the prayers were concluded there dawned sud-
denly on his mind a sense of doubt whether he had more reason
for his belief in negation than these people, evidently so earnest
and sincere, had for their faith in a personal God. It was the
priest more than the people who excited his attention, however.
The contrast between the man and his surroundings was very
striking. Father Kelly's face, seen anywhere, must have impress-
ed an observer as both handsome and distinguished-looking ; but
kneeling, robed in his lace surplice and violet stole, in this home
of poverty, the incongruity of such a presence in such a place
was, to one not a Catholic, something to marvel at. He looked
as if he had been taken from what was his appropriate place, a
cathedral sanctuary, or like a figure from an altar-piece, Dr. Fer-
rison thought, and gazed with thoroughly assthetic appreciation
at his fine head, graceful attitude, and most impressive manner.
The young man, during a residence of some years in Paris while
studying his profession, had sometimes, for the sake of the spec-
tacle and the music, gone to church. The blaze of lights and flash
of jewels on the altars of Notre Dame and the Madeleine, the rich
robes and picturesque grouping of figures in the holy ceremonies,
the clouds of incense and the music, were all very attractive to
him. And so, too, was the fine oratory of many of the preachers.
Listening to these orators, he did not greatly wonder that there
should be men ready to adopt a profession which gave them the
intellectual eminence and spiritual power etfjoyed by the pre-
lates of the church. Even the sight of the priests whom he met
in the hospitals had never moved either his surprise or admira-
tion, partly, perhaps, because he had given little thought to
them or their work, and partly because he tacitly classed them,
with the subordinate employees of the civil government, as offi-
cials who had duties, and salaries for performing these duties
the church there being a state machine, which the present rulers
of the state had not yet been able to get rid of, notwithstanding
their good- will and zealous endeavors to that end.

But the priest before him he regarded with different senti-
ments. He knew that neither fame, power, nor yet riches could
be the motive influencing this man to the self-devotion of which
he had been the witness for two days past. For himself, he was
conscious of a personal motive in his own labor. He could

612 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

scarcely feel that, valuable as his services were to these poor
people (to whom he gave them gratuitously), he was so much
conferring a favor as exchanging benefits, the knowledge and
experience which he was acquiring more than offsetting the
work he was doing. But what possible advantage could the
priest gain by labor in such a field as this?

Of course it never occurred to him to think of spiritual gain in
the matter.

His thoughts were so plainly expressed in his countenance
when Father Kelly, after concluding the services, turned from
the bedside, and, while taking off his surplice, accidentally glanced
toward him and caught his eye, that the good father was much
amused, and smiled to himself as he gave his surplice and stole to
one of the women who had been kneeling in the corner, saying :

" Take care of them, Kitty. I am going now for the Blessed
Sacrament, and will be back as soon as possible. In about an hour
and a half," looking at his watch, "you may expect me."

Then he walked toward the door, but suddenly paused and
looked back at the doctor, who was examining his patient. The
man lay motionless and limp, with more the appearance of death
than life, so extreme was the pallor of both face and hands. He
opened his mouth when requested to do so, but his eyelids did
not lift until the doctor said in a somewhat hushed tone :

" How do you feel now ? "

" Aisy, glory be to God ! " he answered in a faint voice, look-
ing up ; " but I'm very weak "

So weak, obviously, that his voice failed. But his eyes, from
which the fire of fever had now died out, fixed for an instant
wistfully on the doctor's face, and then travelled slowly to that
of the priest.

"If I'm going," he murmured, " I'd like to know."

" Tell him the truth, doctor," said the priest. " He is able to
bear it. Is he dying?"

" He is not dying now that is, he is not in articulo mortis ;
but he is in a critical condition. The chances of life and death
are about equal at present, I should say. If there is a favorable
change within the next twelve hours he will get well, I think."
The speaker hesitated a moment and his voice sank a little as he
concluded : " Without a change there is not much hope."

" God's will be done ! " said the poor fellow in a whisper,
turning a glance, half-pitying, half-apprehensive, on his wife, who
stood near.

She saw and understood the look, and, starting forward, cried,

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 613

in a voice so cheerful and hopeful that both the "priest and the
doctor were surprised : " Keep up heart, Mike, my man, and don't
fear for me. Shure the doctor says there's a chance yit for ye ;
and the father said a Mass for ye the mornin', and the Blessed
Virgin is praying- with all her might for ye this minute, I feel.
Cheer up and trust in God ! "

The doctor smiled on the woman as he beckoned her to him.
" That's right keep up his spirits," he said. " Here is his medi-
cine. Be careful that he takes it exactly according to these di-
rections. Can you read writing?"

"I can, sir."

" Well, I have written down the directions, so that there can
be no mistake. I will read them over to you." He did so.
" Remember that the least forgetfulness or neglect "

" Never fear, doctor," interposed she eagerly ; " I understand."

" That is all, then. I'll call again when my round in this part
of the town is over."

This part of the town consisted exclusively of the dwellings
of the poor, which were crowded together on a low flat of
ground bordering a rather sluggish river. It had been a wet
season excessive rains alternating with great heat and atten-
tion to sanitary regulations had not been as strictly enforced as
prudence required. The inevitable result of such neglect follow-
ed : diphtheria and typhus fever both made their appearance
the first attacking children, the last able-bodied men principally.
Among a small colony of Irish railroad laborers Mike Mahoney,
the man whose bedside the doctor had just left, was the first vic-
tim, though others soon followed ; and Dr. Ferrison's round con-
sumed so much time this afternoon that the sun was setting
when he emerged from the last house in which he had a patient.
The street here ran parallel with the river, and he paused a mo-
ment to look down the stream at the blazing western sky, which
was pouring a flood of radiance along the water and touching
with gold every object the level rays could reach. It was with
a little sense of regret that he turned his back, after a lingering
gaze, and, walking a short distance further, came to the entrance
of the alley in which Mahoney lived. It crossed the street at
right angles, and consequently was now in shade, the solid wall
of houses that interposed between it and the glowing west shut-
ting off every glint of the golden glory burning there.

The young man closed his umbrella and removed his hat from
his flushed brow as he entered the alley, slackening his steps at
the same time. But before he had proceeded far he resumed a

6 14 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

quicker pace, and there was a slight movement of his nostrils in-
dicating- that the atmosphere was not quite that of a hay-field ;
for, while there was no positive ill-odor in the air, unless the dis-
infectants which were very perceptible to the sense might be so
considered, a close, earthy smell pervaded the place.

As he approached the house to which he was going the priest
came out of it and stopped to speak to him.

" You will find your patient better, doctor," he said, with a
genial smile, as he returned the young man's salutation.

" Ah ? " said the latter. " I am glad to hear it. When I left
him two hours ago I apprehended the approach of coma."

He passed on into the house, and, after remaining a few min-
utes, reappeared.

" There is a marked improvement in his condition," he said
cheerfully to the priest, who had awaited his return. " I hope the
poor fellow may recover, though he is not out of danger yet.
All the symptoms are favorable now, however."

" I think he will recover," said Father Kelly. " I see this
is your direction, I believe?" and, the other assenting, he con-
tinued his sentence as they walked on together. " It comes in
the way of my profession to see so much of dangerous illness
that it is rarely a priest is at fault in his judgment of disease
though," he added, " we always defer to the superior knowledge
of our medical brethren. And this reminds me to inquire about
several of my people whom you are attending." He named half
a dozen or more. " None of them are likely to need the sacra-
ments before to-morrow morning, I suppose? I mean no one ot
them is desperately ill?"

" Several of them are desperately ill or, rather, will be so
before the fever has run its course," responded the doctor ; " but
none are in danger of sudden death, which, I presume, is what
you are thinking of?"

" Yes. Thank you for the information. It relieves my mind.
I saw most of them this morning, and did not regard them as
in immediate danger; but I am always uneasy about a typhoid
case, the malady being so deceptive. And this fever, it seems to
me, is rather virulent in form, is it not? "

" Decidedly so. And very contagious," added the speaker
with lurking malice, shooting a quick glance at the face of his
companion, to note the effect of his words.

That face looked serious ; but if the young physician had ex-
pected to excite any personal alarm in the mind of the priest,
and supposed for an instant that he had succeeded in his object,

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 615

the next remark of the latter disabused him of such a suspi-
cion.

" I have been trying to devise some plan," the father said,
" for the removal of the children, at least of these poor people,
from the danger of contagion to which they are exposed, but
have been unable as yet to make arrangements for the purpose.
If the municipal authorities were wise they would lose no time
in establishing a hospital and a camp in healthy situations a
short distance from the town, and removing both sick and well
from the pestilential locality we have just left. In my opinion
the fever was not brought from elsewhere and communicated by
infection, as is alleged ; I believe that it originated on the spot."

" Without question it did," answered Dr. Ferrison. " But
the other theory is a convenient and economical one economi-
cal for the present, that is. It will prove very expensive eventu-
ally, these dolts that make up the corporation will find ; for if
matters go on as at present much longer, the county will have, at
the lowest estimate, some scores of paupers to take care of dur-
ing the winter."

"And is not there danger of the disease becoming epidemic?"

" Such a thing is not impossible, but not very probable," the
doctor replied. " With the exception of those back streets lying
along the river slums they might almost be called the sanitary
status of the town is not bad. The air we are breathing, for in-
stance" they had just left the streets in question u is pure
enough ; and there is no danger of the spread of the fever by
contagion, as nobody but the inhabitants of the place ever go
into it except yourself."

" And yourself, and your brother-physicians," said the other.

" Men of my profession are fever-proof, as a rule ; and since
we are necessitated to be in constant contact with disease in all
its forms, each one has to take the risk of making the rare excep-
tion. But if you will excuse me, sir, for telling you so I have
thought several times during the last day or two that you are
committing a great imprudence in venturing into and spending
so much time as you do in that infected atmosphere. I am glad
of an opportunity to speak to you on the subject. You are in-
curring great danger, I assure you."

" Thank you for the warning," said the priest in a cordial
tone, " though you must not be surprised at my disregarding it.
What you have said of your profession applies equally to my
own. We priests "

" Father Brian ! " a voice called to him from behind at this

616 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

instant, and a gentleman hastened up, saying as be advanced : " I
have been looking for you for the last two hours, Father "

" In a moment," said the priest, with a slight motion of apo-
logy ; " I will speak to you in a moment, Mr. Ashby." And he
turned to his late companion who, bowing silently, was about
to walk away extended his hand and shook warmly the one
placed in it. " I am very glad to have made your acquaintance,
Dr. Ferrison," he said. " As we are fellow-workers, I hope to
see you soon again."

During the following three months the priest and the phy-
sician became good friends and faithful comrades in the work
of charity to which they were both devoted. Fellow-workers
they were, indeed, through many weary days and nights, and
beside many beds of sickness and of death. For Death reaped
his harvest, though not a large one. Altonboro' itself, of which
this little pied de terre, now the scene of so much suffering and
sorrow, was a suburb, was not a very large town, and the popu-
lation of the fever-infected district did not number, probably,
more than five hundred souls. Nevertheless, in consequence of
its lingering character, the sickness found ample material all
through the months of July, August, and September. In every
house, almost, at least one, and often more than one, of the in-
mates was ill; and the disease seldom ran its course in less than
a month, while in violent cases it lasted double that length of
time.

That the rate of mortality was comparatively small was at-
tributable in a great degree to the example and energetic effort
of the priest, Dr. Kelly or Father Brian, as he was familiarly
called by his people. As he had remarked to Dr. Ferrison the
day they first met, the most effectual way to arrest the progress
of the disease was, he thought, to remove as many people as
possible from the crowded and unhealthy locale of the river-side.
He suggested to the mayor that by prompt action in this direc-
tion the threatened mischief might be averted; but that func-
tionary was, in the first place, of the sluggish nature which is in-
capable of promptitude either in thought or action ; and, sec-
ondly, he was a man of narrow prejudices, well-intentioned but
ignorant, who did not care to adopt the suggestion, however sen-
sible it might be, of a Roman Catholic priest. Seeing this,
Father Brian proceeded to take what measures he could for
the safety of those of his own people who lived in the river sub-
urb. But he had difficulties to encounter here, too or, more

i886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 617

properly speaking, a difficulty : the want of pecuniary means.
He was not to be daunted in his resolve, however. He appealed
to his congregation in Altonboro', which was few in numbers,
and, with two or three exceptions, all humble people of limited
means; he wrote to his bishop and to friends elsewhere, and
in each case there was a generous response to his call for
help. One of his parishioners gave him the use of a site for his
proposed camp of refuge, another furnished a large bill of rough
lumber, and the rest contributed money, food, cooking-utensils,
and bed-clothing to the extent of their ability. The bishop sent
a check and his blessing ; others sent checks and good wishes ;
and so he had the happiness, in less than two weeks after he
came to Altonboro', to see his charitable enterprise fairly
afloat.

He began on a small scale, preparing accommodation at first
only for the little ones of his own people eight or ten Irish
families; but the sight and thought of the children of the equally
poor people, their neighbors, distressed him greatly, and he de-
cided that he could afford to take a few of these children,
and began considering how best to approach the parents on
the subject. Being Protestants, he feared they would distrust
his motives and suspect him of proselytizing designs. He was
hesitating what to do, and had just made up his mind that he
would speak to the several physicians whom he met daily in
their rounds of duty, and request them to negotiate the affair,
when one of the small individuals in question smoothed the way
for him. This child had been accustomed to seeing and being
noticed by the priest while playing with his little Irish com-
panions, and he crept up to the father, half-shyly, half-boldly, on
the day after the last batch of Catholic children had been taken
away, evidently expecting a greeting.

" Well, Johnny," said the priest kindly, " how are you com-
ing on? The fever hasn't caught you yet, I see."

" No, sir, but it's cotched Tommy and Caddy," answered the
child promptly.

"Ah! I'm sorry to hear that."

" And mother says she knows me and Liz '11 be the next,"
pursued Johnny in a doleful tone. Then, lifting his eyes to
the face that was looking down at him, and reading aright
its expression of regret and pity, he plucked up courage to
say diffidently :

"Father Brian, won't you take me to the Riffuge?"

" Willingly, my little man," was the reply. " It would be a

6i8 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

pity for such a sturdy fellow as you to take the fever. I'll
carry you out with me this morning, if your mother will let
you go."

"I'll ask her I'll ask her!" cried the boy eagerly, running
off as fast as his legs could carry him.

The priest followed slowly, resolved to seize the opportunity
thus providentially, it seemed to him, offered for the furtherance
of his design, but very doubtful how he might be received by
the boy's mother, who had the character among her Catho-
lic neighbors of being particularly ill-natured and prejudiced
against the church. To his surprise his proposal was at once
gratefully accepted. The poor woman, having, as she said, her
hands full already with two sick children, was more than glad
to guard against the risk of having two additional cases of ill-
ness, by sending Johnny and his little sister to a place of safety.
And, the ice thus broken, plenty of candidates presented them-
selves, or rather were presented by their parents, for admission
to his camp of refuge. Day by day its numbers were increased,
until more than a hundred pairs of little eyes and hungry little
mouths watched eagerly every morning for his appearance with
their daily rations.

II.

It was not until after the establishment was in good work-
ing order that Dr. Ferrison found time to pay a visit to the
place. Though but recently settled in Altonboro', on the com-
pletion of his medical studies, he had already gained conside-
rable reputation and practice ; and when to his regular profes-
sional business was added the gratuitous practice he was now
doing in the fever district, as it began to be called, he had few
spare minutes in the twenty-four hours. It was with some re-
luctance, therefore, that he consented one morning to place
himself beside Father Brian on the front seat of the homely
vehicle the priest had lately set up for the convenience of con-
veying supplies to his colony (which was situated two or three
miles from the town too far to be easily accessible on foot),
and, as Father Brian expressed it, take a breath of country air
and a look at the Refuge.

"Don't grudge yourself an hour or two of rest," said the
father, seeing the doctor glance at his watch a little uneasily
as they went bowling along a beautiful, shady country road,
which was so narrow that the boughs of the pine forest through

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 619

which their route lay met overhead and shut out the blinding
and sickening rays of the sun. " You need it. You are over-
working yourself."

The young man laughed slightly. " That accusation from
you puts me in mind of a very homely old proverb," he said.
" If I am the kettle, you most emphatically are the pot. You
cannot deny that you work harder than I do, and without the
same necessity."

" I do deny it; I deny both counts. Considering our respec-
tive ages, I do not work so hard as you do," replied the priest.
" And the necessity in my case is not less than that in your
own. Proverb for proverb : Prevention is better than cure."

"Granted," said the doctor "the truth of the proverb, I
mean. But I was thinking less of your work here about these
children than of the manner in which you haunt that infected
purlieu which nobody ought to enter unnecessarily ; and the
recklessness pardon the word with which you expose your-
self to contagion by touching, and putting yourself in such close
contact with, these fever-patients, as I see you every day doing."

" It is not recklessness but duty which moves me in the mat-
ter," answered the priest seriously. " You touch them and in-
hale their breath while examining their pulses and tongues in
your ministrations as a physician ; I do the same in the per-
formance of my functions as a priest.''

"But"

" Speak frankly," said Father Brian, as the speaker checked
himself, evidently, in what he was about to say.

The latter complied with the request, changing, however,
the drift of his intended remark. " You said a moment ago that,
* considering our respective ages,' you do not work harder than
I do. What has a slight difference of age to do with the ques-
tion, may I ask?"

" The difference is not slight between your age and mine,"
was the reply. " It is fifteen years at least, I should say from
your appearance."

" Scarcely so much as that, I imagine," said the doctor a little
quickly.

"I am thirty-eight," said the priest, "and I judge you to be
about twenty-three."

" You certainly are a very close and accurate observer," the
other admitted. " That is nearly my age. I was twenty-four a
few days ago. But why should not a man of twenty-three or
lour be able to incur as much labor arid fatigue as one older?"

620 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

" You are a young physician as well as a young man, or you
would not ask that question," responded the priest. " Why is
not that sapling " he pointed with his whip to a young elm
"as large and as stout as that tree? " indicating a young oak of
older growth.

"Ah! father, I am afraid there is malice in that illustration."
cried the young man, with a boyish laugh. " You would insin-
uate that there is a difference of character as well as age in the
two types."

" No ; I did not mean that," answered the other, laughing
too, and looking pleased ; for it was the first time that the doctor
had called him by the name he loved best to hear. " Not at all,
I assure you. I only mean that there are degrees of strength
corresponding with degrees of maturity. You acknowledge
that?"

" Of course."

" At twenty-one, more or less, a man is mature that is, he
has attained to the full development of his physical organization :
ail is there that is to be there ; the machine of his body is com-
plete in all its parts. But the material of which this machine is
'composed is still too soft and flexile to be able to support with
impunity the same amount of labor and fatigue which it can en-
dure with ease after it has been hardened by ten or fifteen years'
efterci'se of nerve and muscle. Is not this self-evident ? "

" Y-es, in a degree, but with a qualification. In fact, I must
make two qualifications. First, there is a fire and elasticity in
early youth which evaporates during the hardening process of
which you speak ; and, secondly, there are great differences in
the individual man as marked differences as there are between
the elm and the oak. To return, then, to the personal question,
I claim in right of my twenty-three years an exuberant and un-
tiring vitality which your additional fifteen years have taken
away from you, and for my physical man a character of fibre and
temperament that give me unlimited power of endurance."

The quiet, argumentative tone of the speaker took away from
his words any appearance of boasting and vanity which other-
wise they might have seemed to express. He stated what he
held to be a plain fact, in plain terms, and the priest did not mis-
understand him, but answered, with a glint of humor in his eye :

" That is, you think you can stand the strain of work better
than I can."

" Not better, but as well," was the candid reply. " You have
a splendid physique ; there is no fear of your being hurt by any

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 621

amount of work. But there is very great danger of your con-
tracting the fever ; and since you will brave it so rashly, I should
like to suggest a few precautions that would somewhat lessen
the risk you run, if you will permit me."

" Certainly. I shall be much obliged to you, and will follow
your advice if possible."

" My first recommendation, then, is that you exchange your
heavy black dress for a light linen suit or white flannel, and I
would earnestly advise you not to go into that pestilential air
when overheated or when fasting. On Sunday I heard one
woman say to another who was waiting to waylay you as you
came out of the house where Conolly was dying : ' Don't stop
Father Brian now! Shure he's just from the altar an' fastin'.'
And that," concluded the doctor with emphasis, " was at
noon ! "

" It was a risk, and I was aware of the danger," admitted the
priest ; " but it was unavoidable. The message sent for me was
so urgent that I was afraid to stop a minute, and the event justi-
fied my haste. The poor fellow did not live half an hour after I
reached his bedside."

" I should not myself like to breathe such air for half an hour
on an empty stomach," said the doctor in a tone of indignant
protest against an act which he regarded as madness. " Indeed,
no consideration could induce me to do it."

" I had no option in the matter," said the priest. " Even if I
had been inclined to shrink which, thank God ! I was not I
could not have indulged the impulse. To have failed to respond
to such a call would have been an inexcusable dereliction of duty.
But I determined at the time that the same thing shall not hap-
pen again. I will not sing High Mass hereafter while the fever
lasts, but will say a Low Mass on Sundays as on other days, at
an early hour."

The doctor did not give utterance to the thought in his mind,
" Why sing or say it at all? " But probably the priest read it in
his countenance, and the reverend gentleman smiled to himself
as he thought : " Never mind, my young friend ; before I have
done with you, Deo volente, I'll answer that question to your
satisfaction, I hope." He said nothing on the subject at present,
however, but began to speak of his camp of Refuge, which they
were now approaching.

" Here we are ! " he cried cheerfully, pointing to a long, low,
roughly-constructed building standing two or three hundred
yards away from the road in the heart of a thick pine wood.

622 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

" It is a healthy situation, you see ; but a little too much shaded,
perhaps. Do you think so ? "

" Not for temporary use of this sort," was the reply. " You
have a considerable colony," he added, smiling- at the commotion
visible even from where they were and through the intervening
trees and undergrowth.

The moment the horse turned, which he did of his own ac-
cord, from the road into the new but already well-beaten track
leading to the building aforesaid, there had been a quick shout,
followed by many and exultant shouts: "The father!" "Here's
Father Brian ! " " The father's coming ! " iterated and reiterated
by many voices in tones ranging from incipient bass to the shrill-
est treble, while a crowd of small figures, increasing in numbers
momently, rushed about pell-mell, jumping, screaming, throwing
up their arms, and finally clustering like a swarm of bees all
around the father when he drew up his horse on a level space in
front of the house.

" Gently, gently ; stand off, all of you ! " he remonstrated,
flourishing his whip in the air, but at the same time smiling
kindly upon them. " Yes, Joe, that's right ! " he went on, as a
tail boy sprang unbidden to the horse's head. " Well, my chil-
dren, how are you all this morning?"

" We's well ; what you got for us, father? " responded divers
throats in unison.

The father slowly lifted up a huge demijohn that had been
sitting between his and Dr. Ferrison's feet, and, balancing it with
some difficulty on his knees, said with well-simulated gravity :
" I have brought you some medicine this morning. The doctor,
you see, has kindly come out with me to give you a dose of rhu-
barb all round."

The look of blank disappointment and dismay which all the
eyes blue eyes, gray eyes, brown eyes, black eyes in the sea
of eager, up-turned faces fastened on the doctor at these words
quite upset his gravity. After an ineffectual effort to maintain a
serious countenance he suddenly burst into a fit of laughter, in
which the priest joined heartily. And at this instant there was a
triumphant cry from just behind the father's back, which caused
a joyful revulsion of feeling among the small people.

" Peaches ! peaches ! " shrieked two audacious little rascals
who had climbed up on the back wheels of the shallow, green-
bodied wagon, and stealthily investigated the contents of some
covered hampers. And the cry, " Peaches ! peaches ! O father,
you've brought us peaches ! " was echoed by the others, several

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 623

of whom had been about to lift up their voices in weeping at the
mention of rhubarb, when the discovery and proclamation of
their enterprising companions changed their tears to rejoicing.

" Yes, I have brought you some peaches," said the father, set-
ting the demijohn down, " and no bad news, thank God ! " he
added, as his eye fell on faces here and there in the crowd which
showed, by their eager anxiety of expression, that a few of the
children were not so self-absorbed as the majority undoubtedly
seemed to be. "All the sick are doing well this morning."

He alighted while speaking, walked round to the back of the
vehicle, and, pushing the cover off one of the hampers, displayed
a heaped-up abundance of beautiful, crimson-cheeked fruit. " Don't
get out, doctor," he said to the latter, who was preparing to de-
scend. " Sit still, sit still ; we'll drive on presently. And mean-
while try these " he motioned to the peaches ; "you'll find them
good."

" Thank you," said the doctor, leaning over and helping him-
self ; " they are very fine."

" I am glad this is a good fruit year," Father Brian remarked,
as, having distributed the contents of the hampers, he mount-
ed again to his seat, and, making a circuit around the house,
began to descend a steep hill in the rear of it. " Ripe fruit is
wholesome, and eating is one of the staples of a child's enjoy-
ment. I find that the bringing some little matter of cakes or
fruit or nuts to these children every morning has a wonderful
effect in keeping them happy and contented."

" They are little animals," said the doctor, " who only need
the gratification of their animal instincts to make them happy."

" If I had time," said the priest, with rather a grave smile, " I
would take issue with you on that opinion, which is not sound,
my young friend. We must discuss it some of these days. But
now look around and tell me if this is not a pleasant transition
from the close streets we left half an hour ago."

The doctor glanced around and uttered an exclamation of
astonishment and pleasure. The temperature on the hill above,
where they halted the moment before, had seemed to him de-
lightful, the house being embowered in pines large and small,
that shielded it effectually from the heat of the sun ; but the
place to which they were now descending was as cool and almost
as dark as a cave, only a few shimmering gleams of gold falling
here and there through the dense masses of foliage that surged
like a sea far above their heads. They had been jolting down a
rough, tortuous road which, just as Father Brian spoke, brought

624 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

them to level ground again, and they emerged from between two
walls of thick undergrowth into a narrow ravine, through which
a small stream flowed tranquilly along.

Here was a busy scene, not altogether unlike a gipsy en-
campment, only that the same sort of rudely-built structure as
the one on the hill took the place of the picturesque tents of the
Romany race, and the figures dotted about, singly and in groups,
along the banks of the little water-course did not look at all
Egyptian in character. At the far side of the glen, which was
not more than a hundred yards inlength, half a dozen washer-
women, of various shades of color, were industriously at work,
the bushes surrounding them being covered with small garments
of graduated sizes and diverse shapes ; scores of children, who
after their regale of fruit had scudded down the steep hill around
which Father Brian was obliged to wind laboriously, romped
noisily about, while others, reversing the order of that rule of
propriety so much inculcated on the juvenile mind, and so ob-
noxious thereto, that children should be seen and not heard, were
making themselves heard, though they could not be seen the
drying-ground of the laundresses affording excellent hiding-places
from which to send forth those unearthly whoops and yells the
emission of which is such ecstasy to small boys, probably be-
cause they are aware that the sound is such a torment to the ears
of their elders.

, Near a spring that nestled against the hillside and was over-
hung by a giant oak, and not far from the gable-end of what
looked like an indefinitely elongated shanty, a large caldron was
hanging over a brightly blazing fire, its contents bubbling mer-
rily and throwing off clouds of savory odor savory at least to
the sense of its presiding genius, a short, fat old woman in a blue
homespun dress, who stood, flesh-fork in hand, watching the
seething mass with approving, not to say loving, regard, and oc-
casionally giving it a caressing stir. She turned her head as
the sound of wheels came to her ear, showing a round, good-
tempered, yellow face ; and at the same moment a negro man,
who was squatting beside her stuffing wood into the fire, rose
precipitately to his feet and came in a shambling half-trot, half-
walk to meet the father.

" Well, Simon/' said the priest, pulling up his horse opposite
the old woman, to whom he gave a smiling nod " all's going on
well, 1 hope, this morning?"

" Y.es, sir; all's going on first-rate, father," answered the man,
a tall, very black, and very flat-nosed individual. " I fetched

i886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 625

out the things early ; and besides what was on the paper that I
carried to Mr. Morgan, he put in a big- piece of beef and a set of
liver and lights that he give you hisself, he told me to tell you."

" That was very kind of him. i hope you thanked him ?"

" Yes, sir. I told him I knowed you'd be a thousand times
obliged to him. And Mr. Green he give a bushel of potatoes ;
and Mr. Hanwell told me to call to-morrow morning and he'd
send you a bag of flour and some rice."

" We are getting on famously, you see," said Father Brian to
the doctor, as they alighted. " Good-morning, Aunt Penny," he
went on, turning to the cook. " Sandy brought you enough to
keep your pot boiling this morning, didn't he?"

" Enough and more'n enough," responded she, looking up
with a smile at the speaker, and measuring the doctor from head
to foot with one quick glance from a pair of bright brown eyes,
which then reverted to Father Brian's face, as she continued in a
scolding tone : " Half o' the meat Simon fetched would 'a' been
enough, what with all the other things I had. But it was your
orders to put it all in, he said, and I done it. You's what I call
'xtravagant, Father Brian. For my part, I don't believe in stuf-
fin' children. But you's 'xtravagant ! "

" God forbid !." said Father Brian. " Extravagance is waste,
and waste is sin. I don't want to stuff the children, but they
must not be stinted."

"Stinted, indeed, with all that potful o' victuals! They gits
another sight more here than they's used to, /know," retorted
the old woman.

" And besides the children," pursued Father Brian, " there
are all the rest of you the women yonder, and Simon, and
yourself. Are you sure now that you have got dinner sufficient
for all?"

" It's not my fault if I haven't," she answered a little shortly.
" I've followed your directions strict." Then, relaxing into her
good-tempered smile again, she added : " Don't you be makin'
yourself uneasy, Father Brian, about that. There's enough and
more 'n enough for all, as I told you awhile ago."

" There ought to be, from the looks of that vessel," said the
doctor, speaking for the first time. " It puts me in mind of the
caldron from which Sancho Panza received a ladleful of gravy
with a few fowls floating about in it."

" What?" said the old woman abruptly, fixing her eyes, which
were singularly clear and intelligent for one of her age and sta-
tion, on the young man's face inquiringly.
VOL. XLII. 40

626 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

He was amused with her free and easy manner, and told
briefly the story of the hungry Sancho's enjoyment of the wed-
ding- feast in Don Quixote, Aunt Penny listening with absorbed
interest, and Father Brian meanwhile holding an aside confer-
ence with Simon.

" Well," said Aunt Penny, in comment, " that was a feast, sure
enough. I shouldn't 'a' minded bein' there myself," she confessed
with a short, chuckling laugh. " I've heard a good many stories,
but I never heard that before. My mistiss used to tell me stories,
and"

" Come, doctor," Father Brian's voice interposed here, " while
Simon is taking the things out of the wagon, come and see my
treasure-house. Bring the wagon to the door, Simon, and be
as quick as you can about it, for we must be thinking of get-
ting back to town."

" Yes," said the doctor; " I am afraid my patients are looking
for me now."

" I won't detain you long,"*said the priest, leading the way
toward the rough-looking house mentioned above. " Every-
thing is very primitive, you perceive," he went on in the tone of
a cicerone, " but substantial, and sufficiently comfortable even for
bad weather. This building is the commissary department:
magazine, kitchen, and refectory are all under one roof. Aunt
Penny prefers to boil her pot out of doors such weather as this,
but we have a kitchen, where the other part of the cooking is
done, under her superintendence, by another woman."

The doctor laughed. " You have fine names," he observed.

" I make up in sounding names, you see, for the plainness, of
the things designated," was the good-humored reply, as the
speaker pushed open a door that gave entrance to a well-sized
room, and stepped in, followed by his companion.

The latter smiled at the air of satisfaction with which the
good father surveyed the multifarious contents of the place.
There were bundles, bags, barrels, baskets, boxes, jars, jugs,
pots and pans, tinware, crockery and cutlery, bolts of cloth
and bales of blankets, ready-made clothing for children in
short, a most miscellaneous collection of articles necessary and
useful, coarse in quality, but good of their kind, all disposed
in order, some on the floor and some on shelves around the
walls. ,

"A tolerably furnished store-room to begin with," Father
Brian remarked complacently.

" An exceedingly well furnished one, I should say," assented

1 885.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 627

the doctor. " There is more here than you will be able to use,
surely."

"Oh ! yes ; more than will be needed for the use of the chil-
dren ; but what is left over I shall distribute among- their parents
when the little ones go back to them. Those blankets that you
glanced at, for instance, will be very welcome in many poor
houses during the coming winter. But I shall not accept any
more stores of this description. I put a card in the morning's
paper informing the kind people who have been so liberal that
we are now fully supplied with household stuffs and clothing,
and for the future will" need only provisions. Indeed, we have
plenty even in that line, as a dealer would say, to last some time.
And all of these things are voluntary contributions," he added.
" People only need to receive an impulse to develop the chari-
table instinct of human nature."

"Do you think so?" said the doctor, with a slightly incredu-
lous smile.

"Think so! Is it possible that you doubt such an obvious
fact? Why, look about you and you will see that it is so. I say
nothing of the permanent charities of the world or of the habi-
tual charities of individuals, but, considering only temporary calls
like the present, did you ever know an instance where such a call
was disregarded nay, where it was not responded to promptly
and liberally ? I never did. Take the present case. No sooner
was it known that I had established this Refuge, and that it was
not what is called sectarian since other children as well as those
of my own pe*ople were received than a number of the most
prominent citizens of Altonboro' came to me and expressed a
wish to assist in the work. They would have subscribed money,
if I had wanted it ; and when they learned that I preferred con-
tributions of this sort " he motioned around with his hand
"you see the result."

"A very good result," said the doctor a little dryly; "but
you must excuse me for doubting whether charity in the abstract
had much to do with the affair, so far as anybody but yourself
was concerned."

" To what motive, then, do you attribute the action of the
men I speak of?" asked Father Brian.

" I suppose they were ashamed to see you bearing the whole
burden of what concerned the rest of the community as much as
it did you more, indeed, as the Protestant children outnumber
the Catholics and chose as a matter of vanity to do their part."

The priest shook his head as disapproving the opinion just

628 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

expressed, and had opened his lips to speak ; but at this moment
his attention was diverted by the appearance of Simon, who came
staggering in, bent half double under the weight of a huge sack
of potatoes, the last of several additions he had been making to
Father Brian's hoards while they talked. " This is all, father,"
he said, dumping it off his shoulder into a corner.

" Very well ; then we will go," said the father, turning to the
door.

As they drove by the house on the hill he pointed to it, say-
ing : " The dormitories. Aunt Penny is dominant below in the
victualling department, and a white woman and her husband
very respectable people have charge here,"

" Aunt Penny is a comical-looking old soul," said the doctor,
" and, judging from her didactic way of speaking, seems to have
an excellent opinion of herself."

" She has, and with some reason. She is strictly honest, and
good-tempered if she is not rubbed the wrong way."

" If she is not rubbed the wrong way! " repeated the doctor
with amusement. " I don't think there is anything specially com-
mendable in such amiability as that."

" Yes, there is," said the priest. " Everything is comparative,
and her faults, when measured with those of many of her betters,
are trifling. For example, contrast her character all circum-
stances considered with yours and mine. Do you think that if
you had been born in her condition of life, and had no more edu-
cation than she has, you would have been better than she is ? For
myself, I am fain to confess that I do not believe*! should have
been as good."

" 1 think it very likely that, with the odds you allow me, I am
not as good," said the doctor laughingly. " Goodness is not my
strong point."

" And what is, may I ask?" said the other.

A flippant reply rose to the lips of the young man, but he did
not utter it. There was a something about the priest which com-
pelled respect of manner as well as of sentiment, and, after an in-
stant's hesitation, he answered in the tone of the questioner:

" Love for my profession."

A short silence followed ; and, glancing at the handsome, well-
cut face of Father Brian, the doctor saw on it an expression which
he did not understand. The full, gray eyes were fastened absent-
ly, but with mechanical attention to the business of driving, on
the horse's head and the road stretching before them, but there
was a look of inward, concentrated thought in the whole counte-

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 629

nance which made the observer doubt whether his companion
had not lost ail recollection of what they had been talking- about,
and, indeed, of time and place also. A vain man would probably
have felt somewhat offended at such sudden abstraction ; but Dr.
Ferrison was not afflicted with that uncomfortable characteristic,
self-consciousness. He had as little of it, in fact, as a man well
could have, and, consequently, instead of indulging- any sense of
affront, his own mind went contentedly off on a little thought-
excursion, from which it was presently recalled by the voice of
the priest.

" Love for your profession," the father said, repeating in a
tentative tone the words he had just heard. Then, after a slight
pause : " A very worthy object for love is your profession, cer-
tainly," he went on, " if viewed in the right way. But do you
view it in the right way?"

" You will have to explain what you conceive that to be be-
fore I can answer your question," replied the doctor.

" Do you recognize the fact that, in the words of Ecclesiasticus,
1 all healing is from God ' ? that both ' the skill of the physician '
and the medicines with which he ' cures and allays pains ' are the
' creations of the Most High ' ? "

The gravity of the speaker impressed the young man in spite
of himself. He was conscious of a faint emotion of regret that
truth obliged him to say :

" I never took that view of the matter, I confess."

" Ah ! I suspected as much," Father Brian exclaimed, and,
turning his head, looked earnestly into the eyes that met his own
with a smile, which, however, had nothing of offensive levity in
it. " You are not a Catholic," continued the priest, " and there-
fore it is not strange that you should be carried along- with so
many others on the tide of modern thought, as it is named by its
adherents that tide which is sweeping away all religion not
founded on the Rock against which the g-ates of hell shall not pre-
vail. It is not strange ; and yet it strikes me with a little sur-
prise."

" Why ?" the doctor inquired.

" Because," answered the priest, with the air of a reasoner
" because you have both intellectual acumen and moral rectitude
of nature ; and though it frequently happens that these qualities
do not prevent a man's straying, on 'his own account, into the
mazes of speculative illusion, they ought to preserve him from
being led away by the sophistries of other men."

Dr. Ferrison made no reply, but his mind was evidently

630 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

given to the words of the speaker, who, after a slight pause, re-
sumed :

" Our acquaintance is not of long standing, my young friend,
but from the very first of that acquaintance I have been attracted
toward you by certain unmistakable indications of character
which interest me very much." He here paused again, and said
with a smile: " I do not offend you by my frankness?"

"Offend me? Oh! certainly not," answered the other, rous-
ing himself with a slight start from his attitude of mental atten-
tion. " Pray go on."

" It is one of the popular delusions of the day to consider an-
tagonism to the Christian faith a sign of courage and enlighten-
ment of mind. No doubt this is your opinion ? "

" I do not entertain any feeling of antagonism to the Christian
faith," the doctor said, evading a direct reply to the question
asked. " I would not, if I had the power, interfere with it or its
professors in any way. I simply do not believe in it myself."

" Did you ever examine the subject? Or have not you, like
the generality of non-believers, leaped to your conclusion without
regard to premises ? "

" I am perfectly familiar with the tenets of Christianity. I
was educated in them."

" As taught by Protestantism, you mean ? "

" Yes."

" You know nothing, then, of Christian theology, I assure you.
Protestantism is not Christianity, but merely a few mutilated
fragments of Christian belief. It is the most illogical of systems,
it system it can be called denying and protesting against the
authority of the Catholic Church, apart from which it has no
base of existence."

" That last idea is precisely what occurred to me from the
time I was capable of thinking," said the young man; "and, con-
sequently, having no respect for the consistency of Protestant-
ism, or for .its authority either, I could have none for its pre-
cepts."

" But how is it," asked the priest, " that, perceiving thus in-
tuitively, it may be said, the fallacy of Protestant pretensions as a
teacher, it did not further occur to you to doubt its credibility as
an accusant of the church, and to investigate the whole ques-
tion ? "

" I knew enough of the question to satisfy me that I could
never give my adherence to beliefs, many of which are opposed
o all natural reason."

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 631

" To the unshackled freedom of human thought," said the
priest, with a laugh.

The young doctor laughed too, good-humoredly. " Yes," he
said, " to the unshackled freedom of human thought. I accept
your definition of the idea I wished to express."

" It is not my definition," said Father Brian. " I was amused
once, when talking to an old friend of mine who plumes himself
on the ' liberality ' of his opinions, to hear that grandiloquent sen-
tence pompously enunciated by him. It has a sound that tickles
the liberal ear; but some time we will analyze it, and I think I
can show you that it is all sound and no sense. Meanwhile, to
return to our point. You cannot give your adherence, you say,
to beliefs that are opposed to reason. Is it consonant with rea-
son to form an opinion without knowledge of the subject con-
cerned ? You have not studied the science of theology ; there-
fore how can you judge of the reasonableness, that is to say, the
truth, of what it teaches ? "

The doctor was somewhat taken aback by this query, but re-
covered himself almost immediately. " I have never studied the
science of theology," he said, " but the dogmas of the Catholic
Church are patent to the world. For instance, there is transub-
stantiation. I do riot see how it is possible to reconcile that be-
lief to reason."

" It is not possible if by ' reason ' you mean the natural law
that is, the law which governs the material world, and man him-
self in his relations with material things. It is no more possible
to judge theological dogma by the natural law or, if you like
the term better, natural reason than it is possible to weigh a
legal argument in a pair of cotton-scales.'*

The doctor looked surprised, almost startled, by this unex-
pected reply. Without having ever given the matter a serious
thought, he had taken for granted that Catholics considered
themselves as having reason for believing what he regarded as
most preposterous imaginations ; and this frank avowal of
Dr. Kelly's astonished him, while at the same time the illustra-
tion that followed threw a gleam of light on the subject which
somewhat changed its aspect in his eyes. He turned with a
doubtful, puzzled gaze to the priest, as he said :

" You admit that reason has nothing to do with your faith,
and yet

" Pardon me," interposed Father Brian, " but I expressed my-
self badly if what I said conveyed that impression to your mind.
Reason has everything to do with my allegiance to the church if

632 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

I was born a Catholic, or my acceptance of the faith if I was
born without the pale of the church; but not in the way that
non-Catholics seem to suppose it ought to have. Reason is
merely a guide which, if accompanied by pure intention, leads
the mind to the church the pillar and ground of truth. The
church, like her divine Founder, teaches not as do the Protestants
and free-thinkers of the day, the modern Scribes and Pharisees,
but ' as one having authority.' And as one having authority
she does not submit supernatural mysteries to the judgment of
human reason. On the contrary, she says to the mind of man:
* These things you must believe. They appertain to the spirit-
ual, not the natural, order, and thus they are above the compre-
hension of human reason. Above, but not contrary to, reason.
It is by faith alone, then, that you can believe.' '

" But what if the mind replies: ' I have no faith, therefore
I cannot believe'?" asked the doctor.

" Faith is the gift of God," answered the priest, " and he
never fails to bestow it on the soul which seeks it in the way he
has commanded. We must become as little children in docility
and trust. ' Ask, and you shall receive ; seek, and you shall find '
if you ask and seek in the right spirit."

The doctor was too well bred to shrug his shoulders ; but the
expression of his face was so significant of the thoughts passing
in his mind that Father Brian could not repress a smile, though
it did not seem to him a smiling matter.

" I am afraid," he said, " that, so far from seeking the gift of
faith, you, like many others with whom I have accidentally come
in contact, would reject it if it pressed itself upon you."

" No," answered the young man ; " you are mistaken. I have
no feeling that would make me shrink from the truth in whatever
form it presented itself. The difficulty with me is to conceive it
possible that such a tenet as the one I referred to transubstantia-
tion could be true."

" But you do conceive it possible to select one isolated fact from
the centre of a great system, and predicate correctly the truth or
falsehood of that fact, and the whole scheme to which it belongs,
by the light only of your uninstructed intelligence ! Let us see
how this method would work in judging the facts of secular sci-
ence. We will take the simple proposition, ' It is the earth, not
the sun, which moves.' Does this assertion look reasonable, or
even credible, on the surface ? We feel the ground firm under our
feet; we saw the sun rise in the east this morning ; we see it now
moving across the heavens ; the daily experience of many years

i886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 633

assures us that in a few hours it will sink below the western
horizon. How is it that, notwithstanding this positive evidence
of our senses to the contrary, we believe that it is the earth, not
the sun, which is moving?"

" We believe it because astronomy, which is an exact science,
teaches it," replied the doctor.

" Precisely," said the priest. " Astronomy teaches it ; and
having, either by a study of data or a simple act of faith, satisfied
ourselves of the trustworthiness of astronomy as an expositor of
celestial phenomena, we receive unhesitatingly the conclusions
which that science presents to us. Theology also is a science.
Will you tell me why you accept the teaching of the one and
turn from that of the other?"

" There is the vast difference," said the doctor, " that while
astronomy treats of the real, the material world, and is there-
fore, as I said before, an exact science, theology deals with ab-
stractions matters which, being intangible to the senses, cannot
be examined and tested by them."

" Let us be exact in our terms as well as in our science," said
Father Brian, with a smile. " What do you signify by the word
< senses'?"

"Of course," answered the other, " I mean those faculties, so-
called, by which we take outward impressions into the mind."

" Into the mind," repeated the priest. " You admit, then,
that it is the mind which your material science must appeal to as
the discoverer and interpreter of her mysteries. And if the mind
or, in other words, human reason can grasp and analyze the
nature and processes, or (to speak with more precision) a knowl-
edge of the nature and processes, of that which is its antithesis,
matter, how can you suppose the operations of its own nature
(assuming the word * abstractions,' in the sense you use it, to
mean processes of mind unconnected with matter) to be 'intan-
gible ' to its comprehension? "

"I am afraid," said the young man, with a half-laugh, "that
you are getting beyond my depth. Metaphysics was always my
abhorrence ; and if you are going to plunge into its weary laby-
rinths I doubt whether I shall be able to follow you."

" But how," said Father Brian seriously, " are you to know
what to believe and what not .to believe what is truth and what
is fallacy if you do not take the trouble to examine and inform
yourself? The majority of mankind accept without question
whatever creed is given them either by their parents or by the
self-constituted teachers of all shades of opinion who abound in

634 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Feb.,

the world. But I had fancied that vou were not of this num-
ber."

" I am not, I assure you," responded the doctor.

"Then, if you do not take your opinions ready-made, nor yet
acquire them by logical inquiry, how do you come by them, and
on what do you ground them?"

" If you mean my religious opinions, I have none. I am a
materialist, pure aud simple. I believe in what I see, hear, and
touch in nothing more."

" Excuse me, my friend," said the priest, smiling, " but you
believe in more than that, whether you are aware of the fact or
not as I can soon convince you, if you will go into the sub-
ject with me. We are almost in town, so there is no time for an
argument now ; but I should like to discuss the matter fully the
first leisure hour that we both have. As to your objection to
metaphysics, I suspect you are jesting about that merely fencing
off an inconvenient question."

The young man laughed, tacitly admitting the truth of this
conjecture, and expressed his willingness to look into the subject,
as proposed by his companion. " But I don't know when the
leisure hour you speak of will come," he added. " There is not
much prospect of it at present."

" Not much, I am afraid," said Father Brian, as he drew up
in front of a private residence at the entrance of the town. " This
is where you wished to be set down, I believe."

TO BE CONTINUED.

1 886.] " DUDE" METAPHYSICS. 635

"DUDE" METAPHYSICS.

THE newspaper and conversational term "dude" has not
found its way into the dictionary or polite literature. Yet it is
so expressive, so well understood, and so apt for our present pur-
pose that no other term could fill its place. A self-complacent
fop, with the age but without the full physical proportions of man-
hood, and devoid of intellectual force, is usually dubbed with the
title. In society he is the butt of ridicule ; and his arrogance
and insolence are treated with contempt by men of sense, or at-
tributed charitably to ignorance or imbecility. Such a character
in every-day life provokes our laughter, but when met with in
the higher walks of science he excites our disgust. And yet who
has not met in his readings with such a frivolous dilettante some
slipshod scientist who treats all the knowledge of antiquity with
disdain; some shallow-pated theorizer who has dabbled in for-
eign metaphysics, and tries to import its aberrations among us
without really understanding them himself; some would-be imi-
tator of Voltaire or Fichte, though as unlike the original as a
baboon is to the Apollo of Belvidere? But of all the "dudes"
save us from the " dude " metaphysician ! He has read Darwin
and Fichte, and swears by them, though he does not understand
them. He wants to create a sensation, to be a novelty, and for
that purpose he will coolly affirm the most outrageous nonsense,
and expect to find gulls to swallow it. Nor does his expectation
always go unrealized. The number of metaphysical tuft-hunters
who swear by Schelling, and drink with smacking lips the watery
twaddle of Atlantic Monthly theology, is very large even in the
United States. They believe in " Dawwin, you know, and evo-
lution "; they "admire Fichte" and pronounce " Chwistianity,
miwacles, and God a bowe [bore], you know."

This burst of contempt spontaneously came to us while pe-
rusing an article in the last December number of the Atlantic
Monthly on the " Idea of God," by John Fiske a man not devoid
of talent or reputation. The insolent manner in which he treats
the arguments used for centuries in the schools to prove the ex-
istence of the Supreme Being, and the indecent way in which he
mixes up the names of profound scholars and saints. in the same
category with infidels and scoffers, would rouse the bile of the
most phlegmatic polemist. Thus he speaks of the " cosmic

636 "DUDE" METAPHYSICS. [Feb.,

theism of Clement and Origen, of Spinoza and Lessing and
Schleiermacher" ; and no doubt John Fiske's tuft-hunters, believ-
ing him to be an authority, imagine that the orthodox Clement
and Origen, who preached a personal God, differed in nothing
from the pantheist Spinoza and the sceptic Schleiermacher. Is
not this ignorant confusion of men and opinions an evidence of
the " London assurance " of the metaphysical " dude " ? Again :
" The difference, however, between this cosmic conception of
God" (that is, by Clement, Origen, and Spinoza) "and the an-
thropomorphic conception held by Tertullian and Augustine,
Calvin and Voltaire and Paley, is sufficiently great to be describ-
ed as a contrast." Was ever such ignorance, and this, too, in a
magazine that is said to be one of the beacons of New England
intelligence? Does not every tyro know that the God of Augus-
tine, Tertullian, Clement, and Origen was the same the triune
God of the Christians? And by what stretch of imagination does
Mr. Fiske couple these names with the cruel Calvin and the scoff-
ing Voltaire ? This is coupling tigers with lambs, contrary to
sense and Horace :

" Non ut
Serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni."

Not only the men but their doctrine was dissimilar, as every one
who knows anything knows.

Mr. Fiske's ignorance of the doctrine of the Fathers regarding
the Deity is equalled by his self-possession in trying to impose on
his readers without proof the old but false theory that mono-
theism is posterior to polytheism. " Cosmic theism," which is
but another name for the pantheism of Spinoza, and " anthro-
pomorphic theism " (we use Fiske's terminology), which is but
another name for polytheism, are corruptions of the primeval
truth that the triune God acts in and through nature, and that
the second Person of the Trinity became incarnate. All history
proves that monotheism was the first belief of mankind. Take
the first chapter of Genesis as a witness.

Even when our metaphysician wants to be jocose he forges,
or steals at second-hand from some one who lies. Ridiculing
the mediaeval miracle-plays, he quotes one as containing the fol-
lowing passage. Our readers will pardon us for giving the ir-
reverent words, but we do so to show the " dudish " character
of the Atlantic's metaphysician : " ' Wake up, almighty Father!
Here are those beggarly Jews killing your son, and you asleep
here like a drunkard ! ' * Devil take me if I knew anything

i886.] " DUDE" METAPHYSICS. 637

about it ! ' is the drowsy reply." We do not hesitate to say that
no such words as these occur in any of the genuine miracle-plays
of the middle ages, and we have a right to demand from Mr.
Fiske his authority for the quotation. He gives none ; he can
give none worthy of credence. By the way, let us suggest to
our esteemed contemporary that its writers should be taught to
indicate in foot-notes, as the writers in Catholic periodicals do,
the sources from which they take at least their important quota-
tions and statements.

But the strongest evidence of the " dudish " nature is given
by Mr. Fiske's treatment of the argument from design which St.
Thomas and all the great thinkers use to prove the existence of
God.

We see in the universe that all unintelligent beings follow
certain laws. They have plainly a purpose and they obey a
certain order. Yet we know that as they do not possess intelli-
gence, they cannot have an aim unless guided by an intelligent
being outside of them, as the arrow is by the archer ; * and this
supreme intelligence which rules and guides them all is God
the great Architect, the great Designer.

This argument Mr. Fiske dismisses with disdain, quoting
against it John Stuart Mill's threadbare objection: " It is impos-
sible to suppose the Creator to be at once omnipotent and abso-
lutely benevolent. For nothing can be clearer than that nature
is full of cruelty and mal-adaptation. In every part of the animal
world we find implements of torture surpassing in devilish inge-
nuity anything that was ever seen in the dungeons of the Inquisi-
tion. We are introduced to a scene of incessant and universal
strife, of which it is not apparent on the surface that the outcome
is the good or the happiness of anything that is sentient." In
other words, the divine Architect does not exist, because there
are bugs, mosquitoes, and rattlesnakes. Yet Mr. Fiske's own
words might have suggested to him an answer to his difficulty :
" It is not apparent on the surface that the outcome " of bugs and
rattlesnakes " is the good or the happiness of anything that is sen-
tient"; but beneath "the surface" may there not be reasons for
their existence that we do not understand? Is there not some
" good " and " some happiness " for a bug or a rattlesnake to exist .>
We have no doubt that both are. happy in their way and have a
very gay time of it while they are let alone. We must not be too
selfish, Mr. Fiske. That swarm of buzzing mosquitoes which you
hear singing their harmonious chorus of exultation seems to be

* Div. Thomas Sum. Theol. par. prim, qusest ii. art. iii.

638 "DUDE" METAPHYSICS. [Feb.,

a crowd of very merry fellows, even though they do annoy you
and like to taste your blood. Do you not think that a pair of rat-
tlesnakes may enjoy life on a summer's day under the shelter of a
rock or near the sweet waters of the rustic spring? Our happi-
ness is not the only happiness in the world ; and any existence is
better than none at all. A disciple of Mr. Fiske once said : " I
believed in God until one day my cat ate up my canary, and I
thought that a benevolent Deity should not permit such an act of
cruelty to happen." He forgot that the cat was happy in eating
the canary, and that the canary may have passed into a happier
state for having been eaten up. Who knows the future of cana-
ries or bugs ? Who can fathom all the plans of the Creator ? Not
" by the surface," then, should we judge, but answer the objection
of Mr. Fiske and Mr. Mill as St. Augustine answered it nearly fif-
teen hundred years ago : " Since God is supremely good, he would
not permit evil to be in his works, unless he were at the same time
so omnipotent and so good as to draw good out of evil ! "* We
may not be able to see all the good which God takes out of evil.
We cannot understand how the bee takes honey out of poison.
We do not understand all the final causes of beings, for we are not
God. His aims, purposes, and designs are not all known to us.
That he is we know ; that there is design in his works we know ;
nor should we give up belief in these clear truths on account of
certain obscurity in trying to understand the oddities of nature.
We spoke of mosquitoes. They may have even their moral use.
If Mr. Fiske would sleep a midsummer's night in a Hackensack
swamp, and would not swear nor lose his temper, he might find
himself in the morning a better man morally, though shorn of
much of his facial beauty.

Mr. Fiske's rejection of the " argument from design," on ac-
count of the oddities of irrational nature, is surpassed in inconse-
quence by the same rejection on account of the existence of moral
evil in the universe. Moral evil comes from free-will. God,
therefore, is not, in the sense in which Mr. Mill and Mr. Fiske put
it, the " creator of the devil." God is the creator of an angel
who abused his free-will and made himself a devil. Nor is there
"in orthodox Christianity . . . the Augustinian doctrine of total
depravity." It ought to be known to Mr. Fiske that the whole
Catholic Church and it is "orthodox" abhors the "doctrine
of total depravity," and has anathematized it in the Council of
Trent. " Total depravity " is the figment of John Calvin's brain,
and in no sense can be attributed to St. Augustine or be called

*In Enchir. cap. xi.

i886] "DUDE" METAPHYSICS. 639

Augustinian. The permission of physical or moral evil in the
universe, therefore, although in some respects mysterious, proves
nothing against the argument from design for the existence of God.
A flaw in my watch does not prove that it was not made, and well
made, by the watchmaker. That flaw may be the work of some
one else. In the case of nature what man calls flaws and defects are
only so to his limited ken. If he could get behind the scene, as he
will some day, he would be able to see the causes of things and
understand what is now wrapt in mystery.

Mr. Fiske, having sat down on " the argument from design " ;
having, as he imagines, destroyed St. Thomas, St. Augustine,
Calvin, and Voltaire, proceeds to give his own idea of God. And
here is where you can always catch the "dude" metaphysician.
When, with a wave of his kid-gloved hand, he wafts away ortho-
doxy, and with offensive drawl begins to give you his theory,
his view, mark how imbecility is stamped on its features. After
much discussion of the forces of nature everywhere witnessed he
reduces them all to one, which he calls "the Power"; but "this
is the very same power which in ourselves wells up under the
form of consciousness." In a word, the forces of nature and our
force are identical are God. But it is transparent that if this
theory be true there are two Gods. The force in me is a per-
sonal one ; I know and feel by the only means possible for knowl-
edge, which is my own consciousness, that I am a person, while
the forces of nature are evidently impersonal. There is a spe-
cific difference between me and them, as there is between the
personal and the impersonal. There must be two Gods, then,
if Fiske is right the one myself, and the other the not-me of na-
ture ; and if he is going to identify both, what becomes of his
originality ? For this identification of the personal and the im-
personal of the me and the not-me is an importation from the
modern German pantheists. Instead of the one God, therefore,
proved by the argument from design, we have two by the ar-
gument from Fiske. Yes, we have more than two : we have as
many Gods as there are human persons ; for each human person
knows that he is specifically distinct from his neighbor, yet all
are "the very same Power which in ourselves wells up under
the form of consciousness."

Thus, according to Fiske, Bunker Hill will be the new
Olympus, and he its new Jupiter, sitting " ' 'Anporarfl nopycpfj
TtoXvdsipado? Ovkv/tTroio," surrounded by all the gods and pretty
goddesses of the Atlantic Monthly.

There are forces in nature, we concede ; there is even much

640 " DUDE" METAPHYSICS. [Feb.,

truth in Darwin's theory of natural selection and evolution. His
error consists in drawing conclusions from mere similitude as if it
were identity. Because things look alike it does not follow that
they are identical. But underling Darwin's theory of natural
selection, and Fiske's identification of forces, there is a question
which remains unsolved. Is the cause of these natural forces in
themselves or out of them ? Whence come these natural forces
and natural laws? Are they self-existent, self-creators, or do
they point to a supreme First Cause, self-existent and omnipotent,
who has created them ? Beyond Fiske's forces there is a force
which is the efficient cause, and the efficient cause by creation, of
all power, whether it be outside of us in the visible universe or
" well up under the form of consciousness."

Consciousness attests that the cause of our existence is not in
ourselves. Reason shows that the cause of the existence of be-
ings outside of us is not in themselves, for they are essentially
contingent. These two facts blow Fiske's theory into the air.
Metaphysics that goes no further than what is visible, that simply
certifies to the existence offerees in nature and goes not beyond
them to find the intelligent cause which produced them, is only
chemistry. We concede all that it may attest, but beyond it our
intellect must soar to the only solid resting-place for a logical in-
vestigator the supreme, necessary, self-existing, personal, cre-
ating First Cause.

That we have not misinterpreted Mr. Fiske will be clear from
a quotation or two from the closing pages of his article : " The
infinite and eternal Power that is manifested in every pulsation
of the universe is none other than the living God." " The ever-
lasting source of phenomena is none other than the infinite Power
that makes for righteousness." The sum of the forces underlying
the universe is therefore God. He is the Anima mundi. He is
the substance, " everlasting source of phenomena," " manifested in
every pulsation of the universe." This, we perceive, is bald pan-
theism Spinoza in an Atlantic Monthly dress.

But how does this theory answer the objections brought
against " the .argument from design " ? Mr. Fiske rejects that
argument because of the existence of physical and moral evil in
the world. How does his God get rid of them ? Very simply,
for they are God in his theory. They are only " phenomena " of
the infinite power. Fiske shuts his eyes and practically denies
the existence of any evil in the world. Good and evil, right and
wrong, are " phenomena of the infinite power that makes for
righteousness." What is " righteousness " according to Fiske?

1 886.] THE DAYS OF GENESIS. 641

It is the end of that " struggle between man's lower and higher
impulses in which the higher must finally conquer." But, as a
matter of fact, the higher do not always finally conquer. Experi-
ence contradicts our metaphysician's unauthenticated statement.
It is a mere cobweb of his brain. To make man and his moral
life a mere phenomena of the " infinite Power " of nature is to
deny free-will and take away all human responsibility for crime.
If I am God I cannot sin. All that I do is right. I am only one
of the many manifestations of that " eternal Power that is mani-
fested in every pulsation of the universe."

Thus, to get rid of the objection to God's benevolent provi-
dence derived from the existence of evil, Mr. Fiske, following
Hegel and Fichte, identifies evil with God. Thus we have logi-
cally from their theory : God-crime, God-sin, God-bug, God-
mosquito, God-rattlesnake. Where is the fool-killer? Arise, O
Juvenal, and scourge the " dudes " !

" O sanctas gentes, quibus hsec nascuntur in hortis numina ! "

THE DAYS OF GENESIS.

PROEM.

DEEM not these days primordial spanned by time.

Range not the bells of Genesis to chime

With science. What are ages, years, or days

To eyes prophetical but sacred ways

To teach high law and holy truth to man ?

All life leads back to Him who drew life's plan

Untableted, Bound by one high behest,

The Prophet ranged his tablets as he list.

Creation was his theme ; and from inspired tongue

Burst this grand burden in a solemn song,

With intervals of choral praise ;

And the intervals are days.
VOL. XLII. 41

642 THE DAYS OF GENESIS. [Feb.,

DAY I.

In the beginning God made heaven and earth.
Void was creation at its earliest birth,
Lonely and dark, an ocean without shore.
Perpetual midnight brooded evermore
Upon a waste of waters. The primeval sleep
Of death hung on the eyelids of the deep.
No life as yet. Blind forces drove or drew
By laws which even dull inertia knew.
Grand in his purposes, but all unused to urge,
A mighty Smith slow plied the kindling forge.

" Be light ! " Quick through the world the fiat rang,
And wakened Nature into lustre sprang.
A soft enchantment flooded pregnant space,
Giving blind chaos body, itself bodiless.
The eddying atoms rolled in wreaths of light,
Taking all vision needs save only sight.
Creation had no eye. Not yet were wrought
Those crystal caves where sense distils to thought ;
But all unseen a lone though luminous world
Of mustering meteors into order whirled.

Evening and morn, day one.

But the mighty Smith wrought on.

DAY II.

Hung the deep heavens in shrouds of vapor dressed,
The earth was blanketed in watery mist.
Far overhead, slow gathering in their robes,
The shapeless meteors crystalled into globes.
God spake : Divide, O waste of waters, here ;
Make space for a clear sky and a free atmosphere.
Westward, ye heavens, in endless circle sweep,
And, like a roof, arch in this lower deep ;
And thou, O sea, lapped in thy caves remain
Without a shore until I speak again.

Evening and morn. Tis done.

Yet the mighty Smith wrought on.

1 886.] THE DA YS OF GENESIS. 643

DAY III.

What vision saw that wondrous eve and morn
When from the ocean-bed the lands were born ?
What mighty hand lifted the deep sea-caves,
And made the islands bud above the waves?
These grew to continents. Along the ocean-floor
Deep currents spread the wastings of the shore
In ridges vast. Slow throbbings of the earth,
Upheaving these, to mountain chains gave birth.
Green spread the grass and trees o'er the young land.
Oh ! gentle were the fingers of that mighty hand.

A third day's labor done.

But the mighty Smith wrought on.

DAY IV.

Now lift our thoughts to the round heaven above,

Where sun, moon, stars by law in order move.

They mark our time. The sun by day gives light.

A softer radiance rules the veiled night.

God made all these. O Israel, lend no ear

To heathen myths or philosophic sneer.

Stars are not deities ; nor do they draw

Their being from unlegislated law.

Creatures of God are they ; and Him, glad throng

Of worshippers, they praise with waltz and song.

Day fourth. A work well done.

But the mighty Smith wrought on.

DAY V.

Oh ! who can chronicle what ages long

The woods have thrilled with winged love and song ;

How long, with threads of sunshine in their wake,

The gamesome fish embroider stream and lake?

And tell me, science, did some 'prentice hand

Engrave such forms on the Silurian strand,

Give warlike morion to the trilobite,

And eyes that gleamed from cones of jewelled light ?

644 THE DAYS OF GENESIS. [Feb.,

Vast is thy work, O God, graded thy plan ;
But high organic types with earliest life began.

A fifth day come and gone.

But the mighty Smith wrought on.

DAY VI.

Said God : Open thy womb, thou barren earth ;

To beasts that walk, and things that creep, give birth.

Rallied red dust to life. " Tis good," the Maker said.

Now from the same dull mould let man be made.

Nature lacks nothing save a lawful lord,

And let him bear our image. At the word

Stood man upon his heritage, soil and soul.

Child of the soil, 'tis his the earth to rule ;

Child, too, of heaven, to high hopes early blessed,

'Tis his to work with God, with God to rest.

Lo, the Smith's labor done!

God's Sabbath has begun.

DAY VII.

Blest is the Sabbath day. Hushed is the hive

Of busy life. Now the still heart may live.

Vanish the phantom forms of yesterday,

And unreal living to true life gives way.

God speaks to silent hearts. Ah ! look and see

Beyond this near horizon. Let eternity

Tell what is earth, and life, and man ; and why

Creation creeps thus low beneath a lofty sky ;

And wherefore that slow week of work was blessed ;

And why it ended in a Sabbath's rest.

O Christ ! I wait the dawn.

Bring my slow Sabbath on !

1 886.] . SOLITARY ISLAND. 645

SOLITARY ISLAND.

PART FOURTH.

CHAPTER IX.

A CONSPIRACY.

A RUMOR crept through political circles in the metropolis
that Florian was closing up his legal business on the point of
retiring to a more congenial field of labor. It was only a rumor,
and before it could be verified the great politician had utterly
disappeared from the sight of men. A reporter was knocking
his door out of shape for an interview at the very moment which
saw him approaching Clayburg on the evening train. Thus the
world would always knock at the doors of his heart. Never
again would they open to any of its emissaries, and his joy had
something fierce in it as he reflected that, God willing, he was
entering Clayburg from the south for the last time. Behind
him in the distance his burnt ships were smouldering his fame,
his power, his wealth, his memory, his love ! Men would never-
more see them in their proud beauty sailing rough seas towards
glorious harbors ! If they heard of him and he prayed they
would not it would only be to hear of his conquests over him-
self, and probably they would shrug, and wink, and smile, and
touch their foreheads knowingly to insinuate his mental weak-
ness, a fact which pleased him greatly and drew a smile from
him, as showing how often the world mistook wisdom for folly.
He jumped from the train before it reached the depot, and made
his way across the fields to the river. It was now the first week
of May, and the ice was gone, but the chilly air blew sharply
across the water, and the shore resounded under the breakers.
He stood on the hill for a moment with his eyes fixed on Linda's
resting-place, where the tall monument pierced the sky. His re-
solution had been to look no more to the past, to leave its sad
reflections in the grave, and to keep his eyes on the future, while
his thoughts engaged the present and made what thev could out
of it. At this moment it was impossible. Back went his recol-
lection to the hour when Linda was in the meridian of her health
and beauty, when he was young and full of hope and unstained
by sin, when Ruth was his by love's clear title. The intervening

646 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,,

years were like a nightmare ignorance at thfc beginning, murder
at the end, and mystery everywhere. Was he not dreaming
now ?

At a convenient spot along the shore he found a boat, whose
he knew not, but used it as if it were his own. It was a long
and weary pull against a north wind until he reached the shelter
of the channel ; longer and wearier across Eel Bay to the anchor-
age below the cabin ; and the night reminded him of that blus-
tering, raw evening when with Ruth he had first set foot on his
island. First to the grave and then to the house! He lit the
fire and drew the curtain, fondled Izaak Walton, and, settling-
close to the log blaze, felt himself at home. His home ! He was
cut off from the world at last and for ever. His next flight he
hoped would be heavenward.

Ruth quickly received word of his return and the events pre-
ceding it, and had a long conversation with Pere Rougevin touch-
ing the new hermit. As a part of a plan which she had con-
ceived, and the pere improved and perfected, the squire was in-
formed of Florian's presence in Clayburg.

"Where is he stopping?" said the old man doubtfully.
" What's he doing here at this time of the year ? What's he
come for?"

" He is living by himself on Solitary Island," said Ruth.
" For the rest you had better ask himself."

" What ! " murmured the squire, and he said a queer word
under his breath, "have you Jesuits got hold of him again?"

" The news came from New York," Ruth replied indifferent-
ly ; "I know nothing more about it, papa."

" Well, you'll know more after I git back, girl. Living on
Solitary Island, hey ? I'll blow that island to the cats. It's
made more trouble, for a little two-acre mud-hen that it is, than
old Grindstone ! Does the pere know of this?"

" I told him, papa."

" Of course you did. You and he are always plotting and
planning. He's a sneaky Jesuit, that pere, and I'll tell him so
when I see him. And mark me, Ruth, don't let me hear of you
or the priest visiting that boy without my permission. You're
both free and independent, but, by the shade of Mackenzie ! I'm
sheriff, and I'll make you both feel it if I'm disobeyed."

" We have not the faintest desire, papa," said Ruth meekly,
" to see Florian ; but we fear he is troubled, and we know that
there is no one like his old friend to help him. Unless you per-
mit it, we shall not go near him."

I886.J SOLITARY ISLAND. 647

" You're a deep pair," said the distrustful squire, shaking his
leonine head, " but I'm to be ahead of you, anyhow."

What the squire feared and distrusted he scarcely knew, but
he was ready to maintain against all opponents that Florian's pro-
per place at any time was New York City. Not to be there
was, in his eyes, dangerous for so prominent a politician. He
shook hands with the hermit on entering the cabin, and sat down
in a panic. This was the man who had bought the ticket weeks
previous in Clayburg station, but it surely was not Fiorian.

" What's happened, Flory ? " he asked in a hushed, awed
voice.

" I've changed my method of living," said Fiorian gravely.

" I should think you had," murmured the squire feebly, " but
I don't get the hang of this thing, somehow."

The hermit did not seem to care much for his dazed condition,
as he made no effort to relieve it. The squire shook off a ten-
dency to faint with disgust.

" Flory," said he sternly, " I've sworn by you since you were
born, because there was not a year nor an hour of your life that
I couldn't put my hand down and say, He is just so. I can't do
that now. What's come over you ? Why are you here instead
of in New York? Who's been bewitching you ? What has hap-
pened to you ? Good God ! " cried he in an excess of feeling,
standing up to hit the table into fragments with his fist, " tell me
something, or I'll think you've been dead and come to life again."

The crash of the broken furniture sobered him for an instant.
Fiorian looked with slight displeasure at the ruin.

" There is no need of excitement," he said soothingly, and the
tone cut the squire to the heart. He sat down trembling, al-
most crying, as a suspicion of Florian's sanity entered his head.

" I was dead," continued Fiorian, " and I came to life again.
You are very shrewd, squire."

He paused, and Pendleton waited long for further informa-
tion, but none came. The hermit sat gazing into the dying em-
bers of a fire, and at times moved naturally around the cabin, ar-
ranging odd articles or brushing them. The squire stared at him
with a feeling, as he said afterwards, that Rev. Mr. Buck was
pouring ice-water down his spine.

" I suppose it surprises you, old friend," Fiorian said, with
sudden cordiality, " but I have come here to live for good. You
know who lived here before me. I am not better than he, am I ?
It pleases me to follow him, and I don't think the world has any
reason to make a fuss over it."

648 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

The squire considered this expression of a future policy some
moments, and then, reverting to the words, " I am not better than
he, am I ? " said emphatically :

" Yes, you air, Flory, and don't you forgit it." Here a
pause while he gathered himself for another burst, and then,
" Better than him ! Why, what was he more than a slave of the
Russian Empire with all respect to him as your father a fellow
that didn't dare call his life his own ? And you are an American
citizen, a governor, almost, of the greatest State in the Union, and
a Clayburg boy. Flory, this looks like insanity. Flory, I don't
know what to say to you. I'm groping. Can't you look and
talk for one minute as you used to, Flory ? "

This appeal made no further impression on the hermit than to
illuminate his pallid face with a smile. The squire made a few
more weak attempts upon the hermit's defences, and then rushed
in sudden and overpowering disgust for the door.

" I've got to think," said he, " and I can't do it looking at a
corpse."

He did not hear Florian laugh as he banged the door the first
laugh that had passed his lips since the night of Vladimir's reve-
lations.

After an hour he returned and resumed his seat with a deter-
mination written all over him.

" I must know the ins and outs of this thing," he said quietly ;
"and I'm going to put some questions as the sheriff of Jefferson
County. What's to prevent me from jailing you?"

" Nothing," said Florian, " unless the consequence jailing
yourself."

" Now, Flory, be reasonable and answer squarely. Have you
thrown up politics for good and all ? "

" I have, squire."

" And you are going to live on this island for the next forty
years or so? "

" With God's will, yes."

" H'm ! that smacks of the Jesuits. What's the reason of all
this, Flory ? Did you get a pious stroke? "

" I suppose it was that," said Florian, meditating, as if a new
question had touched his soul.

" Is it in the papist line, lad, somewhat like your father ? I
hoped you were working away from the Jesuits?"

A faint blush spread over Florian's face.

" I am nearer to the Jesuits than ever, squire, but not as near
as I could wish."

1 8 86.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 649

" So I thought," said the squire, shaking his head " so I
thought. And I must say my opinion of the Jesuits is consider-
ably smaller than it was an hour ago.'*

He reflected a few moments, and saw that Florian's curiosity
was aroused.

" Had I been the boss of the Jesuit corporation," said he, aim-
ing eye and finger at Florian's reason, " I think I could have done
a smarter bit of business than has been done in letting you bury
yourself out. of sight. When you got your pious stroke and
came to me to have it utilized, put in the market, so to speak, I'd
have thought in this way : ' Here's a man as clever as the devil,
a speaker, a wire-puller, a statesman ; knows the ins and outs of
everything. Here we are, papists without much standing, with
no politicians to speak of on our side ; nobody to look after us
when the spoils are dividing and the Methodists are gobbling
everything ; nobody with the ears of the nabobs between his fin-
ger and his thumb to tell our story there. Here's a man dying
to get such a job.' And I'd give it to you and send you out, if
you did nothing else than educate young papists to do as you
did, Flory," said the squire solemnly. " Could you let me have
the name or the daguerreotype of the boss Jesuit ? I've heard
and seen a great many fools in my time, but I put him down as
the completest fool that was ever born."

It was an impressive speech and had a meaning which Florian
seized upon quickly. The squire might have retired at that mo-
ment with honor. His mission was fully accomplished, and he
had sent home like an arrow a thought which had not yet broken
upon Florian's mental vision. But the squire buzzed and buzzed
a thousand commonplaces in the hermit's ears for another period,
and departed, out of humor with himself and the world, only when
Florian politely showed an inclination to lead him down to his
boat. Ruth rejoiced when she had heard the substance of the
conversation stormily poured from his lips. His one sensible ob-
jection to Florian's idea of a solitary life tickled him much, and
he was never done describing the effect it had upon Florian, all
unconscious of how innocently yet successfully he had played the
part intended for him by those scheming Jesuits, his daughter
and the priest. In fear that he might spoil the effect which he
had created, Ruth forbade further visits to the island until the
hermit had time to revolve the thought in his mind.

" You know Flory," she said to him " how when you pre-
sent him a new idea he thinks and thinks about it until he knows
it to the core. Let him think upon it for a week. It was such a
very good idea."

650 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

T " Wasn't it, now ? " said the gleeful squire. " I'd like to pre-
sent him with one more, and that would fetch him."

While he hugged his triumph to his bosom, Florian had time
to digest his lately-acquired information, and the way was paved
for an assault by the wary Pere Rougevin. No man on a diplo-
matic errand could look less concerned than the priest, and his
" just-dropped-in " air was perfect. He was well informed of the
squire's late interview when he paid his casual visit to the island.
The hermit was not suspicious, but the pere was also careful to
arouse no suspicion. Florian's manner had not changed. His
thoughts, however, had suffered a serious invasion upon their
routine, and he was wishing that the priest would introduce that
subject of which they had spoken at their last meeting. Some-
thing in his manner must have caught Pere Rougevin's quick
eye, or he would not have made his adieus and walked to the door
so confidently, leaving the object of his mission in the shade.
Florian did not stop him as he went out, but rose up and fol-
lowed him.

" Do you remember," said the hermit, " of expressing at one
time a doubt as to my vocation to this solitary life ? "

u I do," said the priest promptly, " and I have my doubts
still, but I thought it better to leave this work to yourself.''

" Would you mind telling me why you think my vocation is
doubtful?"

" Why," said the pere, with hesitation, "on general principles
we need in this country more of the active, less of the contem-
plative, life. With regard to your case, we need such a man as
you in public life. You can see that without further expla-
nation."

" I have thought of it," said Florian, and there was a touch of
sadness in his voice and in the droop of his head.

" Your circumstances are so peculiar that I hardly dared de-
cide upon the matter. I think yet it is best to trust it to your-
self, and if you need any advice on particular points I can give it
to you."

" Thank you," said the hermit. And with so few words the
work was done.

The pere said but one sentence to Ruth when she met him at
the dock : " The occasion is ripe for you, miss," and went on his
way smiling.

Ruth had some difficulty in restraining the squire up to this
point, and still more difficulty in persuading him to accept of her
company on the proposed visit to Florian. He declared he had
no confidence in her since she became a Jesuit, did not know but

i886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 651

that she would intrigue to keep his boy on the island, and had a
general feeling against her saying or doing anything in so deli-
cate an affair. Ruth vowed solemnly that her only desire and
aim was to restore to a loving and grieving and injured heart
the one man who could bring peace to it, and sealed her de-
claration with an all-conquering kiss on the rough, paternal face.

" You know what'll fetch me every time," said the squire ;
"and since there's another woman in the pie, come along."

Ruth could hear her heart beat as she approached the cabin
above the boulder. What would the final result be? They
could not keep from Florian the secret of their assault upon his
determination to do penance as a solitary. Would the knowledge
drive him into obstinacy ? She did not yet know the extent of
the change which had taken place in him. Florian opened the
door for them.

" If your visitors are all as persistent as we are," said she,
smiling, "you will not have much of your solitude."

" I fear I am not to have much of it anyway," he replied in
such a tone as made it hard to tell his feelings. " Your father,
here, has disturbed me on that point, and Pere Rougevin has
almost settled it that I shall go out into the world and be a her-
mit there."

" The best thing the pere ever did in his life," said the squire.

" Which would be very hard for you, Florian," said Ruth with
a gentle sympathy that woke him at once, while the squire was
resolved into a thunder-cloud at this treachery.

" Ruth, you tell me what to do," Florian said humbly and
submissively.

" It is easy enough to endure this solitude," she continued ;
" it may be beautiful to certain natures. But to be alone in the
busy world is very trying. Of course duty makes the hard
things easy and sweet. That would be your only consolation,
Florian."

" It is this way with me, Ruth," he began eagerly, and mak-
ing no account of the squire : " I have learned to love this place,
this life, as I never loved anything in this world. You know
why. And what I was is such a horror and shame to me that to
return to its scenes is like death. Yet it seems to me and to
your father and to the pere that I ought not throw aside a power
which could certainly be used for the general good, merely to
satisfy myself."

" And you ought not, that is true "

" That's what / maintain that's what I've maintained all'

652 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

along ! " shouted the squire. " Flory, if you do otherwise you
must write your name beside the boss Jesuit's."

" Now, papa!" said Ruth, bringing the boiling volcano down
to a harmless simmer. " You ought not, Florian, if there would
be no danger to yourself in holding a power which was to you
so strong a temptation."

" I would take and hold it under protest," he replied confi-
dently. " I value it no more than a straw. I cannot disguise
from myself that hereafter I can but despise it. O Ruth ! is
there no middle course ? Yet why do I ask ? I have set myself
to do that which is hardest. Let me take the worst with joy."

Ruth's face kindled into enthusiasm.

" Well, there is a middle course," she said triumphantly. " You
can remain in your solitude and yet retain your interest in the
world."

Both gentlemen uttered exclamations of delight or rage, and
turned upon her the hermit hopefully, the squire in despair.

" Have you forgotten Frances ? " she said.

" No," and he drew away as if hurt. " She has justly forgot-
ten me. I saw her. It is all over."

" You saw her mother, Florian. If you had seen herself you
would not have been in trouble so long. It is not all over. That
dear girl is as faithful to you as if you never wronged her. She
let her mother speak first, as obedience required; and she was
silent, as became her modesty. But she has never lost her faith
in you when we all trembled, and she loves you still."

This picture of feminine devotion drew the tears to Ruth's
eyes.

" Then, besides, you were half-glad the test of coming here to
live was not to be laid before her. She would have followed you
to a tent, you foolish fellow. Florian, where are your wits ? See
that hill yonder? Build there a pretty villa, and bring Frances
to preside over it. There is no reason why a great politician
should not live among the islands and rule from this solitude.
You need not practise law. And so your temptations are mini-
raized, your influence is preserved, and your solitude is saved to
you."

It was a sight to see the squire's face glow as Ruth reached
her climax, and when the last word was uttered he gave a cheer
that rattled the loose articles in the room.

" You can think over it," said she, seeing that the squire's
emotion jarred upon him. " These things cannot be done hastily.
If it be God's will that you stay here"

1 886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 653

" More Jesuitism ! " growled the squire.

" You must do so. If duty points another road to you, my
advice will occur to you as an easy way out of the difficulty.
You will not forget Frances?" she added wistfully.

" I can never forget her," he replied. " I thank you for your
visit, Ruth. In a little while I can decide, if I have not already
decided. Squire, not another word, or I stay here for ever."

Pendleton saw dimly that few words and a speedy departure
were two important points in Ruth's programme, and for a won-
der he tucked his daughter under his arm and, with a brief fare-
well, led her down to the boat.

CHAPTER X.
THE RED CURTAIN.

CLAYBURG was " completely upsot," as a native expressed it,
by the publication of the banns of marriage between Paul Rossi-
ter and Ruth Pendieton. It had " reckoned " on her remaining
an old maid; it "admired" what the squire would do now; it
" swowed " its astonishment over and over for two weeks, at the
end of which time the fact was accomplished in white satin and
tulle, and a great part of the town invited to assist in the festivi-
ties. Parker C. Lynch was ex-officio the master of the feast. In
full morning-dress, gloved and collared to perfection, this erratic
representative of the bluest blood of Ireland was a fine-looking
gentleman on the model of an English squire, and, when he posed
or walked about under certain eyes of the assembly, showed that
he had not forgotten his earlier training. The squire could not
restrain his astonishment or refuse his admiration. In his suit of
armor he was as stiff as a post, growled and swore secretly at
intervals, and looked anxiously for the opportunity to steal away
and disrobe himself.

" Where did you get the knack of wearing this confounded
rig?" said he to Peter. "Can you see those tails of mine? I
feel like a swallow ; I don't know what minute I am going to
fly."

" Ye're a ground-swallow," replied Peter, with a grin and a
drinking gesture as if swallowing a hot liquid. " Ye're cavernous,
squire. Faith, ye look well for an old country buck that knows
so little, and ye carry the odd garments neatly."

" How do you manage to do it ? " said the squire, awe-stricken.

654 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

" It was born there," Peter said" the coat I mean. I had it
on when I was born. D'ye notice the shape of me legs ? Ye
can never wear a swallow-tail unless you are shaped so."

The squire looked down mournfully at a fearful waste of thigh-
bone and flesh on his particular person.

" I must look awful," said he sadly. " Couldn't we get away,
Peter, and get rid of these togs? There's a neat little room up-
stairs, with a red curtain across a bay-window and a bed-room
opening off the other side, where I keep my private cellar "

" Your midnight cellar you mean," Peter broke in, with a
deep, silent laugh. " All right, me b'y ; hang on to your guests
for a little longer, and when I give the signal make for the
room."

Not the least distinguished of the guests was Mrs. Buck and
her minister, as faultless in costume as of old. The good lady
had been .somewhat left in the shade since the discovery of Flo-
rian's real parentage, and her vanity had received a deep wound
in being cut off so roughly from her famous brother. Mr. Buck
alone could have told her severe disappointment at not having
been the Princess Linda, and her ravings over the possibility of
Mrs. Winifred having put Linda in her place. These weaknesses
Sara kept from the world prudently. She was now quite a mo-
ther in Israel. Five blooming and clever children clung on occa-
sions to her voluminous skirts, and her matronly figure, with its
still coquettish movements, was almost charming. Her faith was
wholly dead. She never was troubled with a single longing for
the truths on which she had been fed, nor with a single scruple
as to her apostasy. In being liberal enough to consider Catho-
lics on a par with Episcopalians and in despising the sects she
considered herself doctrinally safe. Poor Sara ! The day was
not far distant when the conscience so peacefully slumbering
would rouse itself to make her careless life most miserable ! She
seized upon the squire at a most critical moment. Peter had just
winked at him knowingly, and then disappeared into the upper
rooms.

" Aren't you happy, squire ?" buzzed Sara in his ears. " Who
would have thought, knowing, as we do, all that has happened,
that this day would ever have corne? Who is Mr. Rossiter?
Such a fascinating man ! How is it that he wasn't gobbled up
by a handsomer woman than our Ruth?"

" Because in New York, where there aren't any women," said
the sarcastic squire, " he didn't see any one handsomer. If he had
come to Clayburg first, where the women are as thick as sar-

1 886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 655

dines, Ruth wouldn't have had a chance. Will you excuse me,
Mrs. Buck? 1 see "

" No, I won't excuse you," said Sara, laughing. " I must tell
you something about Dunse. You know "

But the squire never heard a word of the something, for his
eyes were fastened on Peter, who had returned to the guests with
a sheepish expression of countenance, and who now raised his
eyes to the ceiling and shook his head to signify that he could
not enter the room. Mrs. Buck had finished her narration.

" Wasn't it ridiculous of Dunse?" she said.

" He's an idiot," the squire replied, connecting the words with
Peter's pantomime. " I beg your pardon, ma'am ; I referred to
Mr. Carter. You must excuse me now, for really I am wanted
in another part of the house."

The squire sought out Peter, and heard his report of the pri-
vate room with the red curtain and the private cellar.

" I couldn't get beyond the door," said he.

" Why," growled the squire, " what was to hinder?"

" The door was locked, to be sure. I'm not immaterial,
squire."

If the door was locked the squire had a key, and he tossed
the door in on its hinges scornfully and entered the room. The
red curtain across the bay-window was shaking in the wind, and
the squire was about to close the window behind it when Ruth
had him by the arm. ^

" Now, papa," said she the elegant Peter mimicked her with
a chuckle " this room is my room for to-day. If you look for
a nice, quiet corner, go into the room over the kitchen."

" There's nothing to drink there," said he.

" I move we hold our ground, then," said Peter.

f But the old gentlemen were forced to yield to Ruth's demand,

and finally made themselves comfortable in the appointed room,

as became barbarians fond of undress uniforms and cards and

punch. Paul followed his wife to the room with the red curtain.

" You have everything ready ? " said he.

" Your own plays could not show a better situation," she re-
plied. " It has been a weary time until this day, husband. I have
never felt easy in ten years until this hour. If Linda were only
here to share our joy ! "

" I don't think she cares," said Paul, looking at a copy of that
painting which had once hung in Florian's room Linda waving
her handkerchief from the yacht. " Your own selfishness, Ruth,
prompts that wish."

656 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

Ruth acknowledged the charge, and then, dismissing him to
the guests, explored the space behind the red curtain. There
was considerable running to and from that room during the after-
noon, and every attempt made by the squire to take possession for
he was not satisfied with his allotted room was steadily resisted.

" Why isn't Fiory here? " the squire asked frequently.

" Give him time, papa. These great men don't come and go
like common people."

" Common people ! I'm sheriff of the county ! "

" Don't be quarrelsome. When Florian comes you shall be
told in time to see him and hear him."

" Why can't I go into that room ? "

" Because Ruth says you cannot."

" Let me see just b*ehind the red curtain."

" There's nothing behind the curtain, papa."

" What is it shut all the time for?"

" Now, papa, go away and be reasonable or I shall punish
you. I have a secret which is to be mine all day. At night you
shall all know it."

" Gimme my punishment now," urged the squire, and, after
pulling his whiskers, she dismissed him with a kiss.

At twilight the guests were gone, and the squire and Peter
were peacefully sleeping off the effects of the day's excitement.
The poet and his bride stood together on the veranda, facing the
calm waters of the river, her head resting on his shoulder and
her deep eyes watching the stars in the cool, far-reaching sky.
Their thoughts were too overpowering for utterance.

" It is all over," she sighed occasionally " all over." And he
said nothing. " One effect of a steady life in these old villages
is peculiar. The years seem as days. I am not ten days older
in thought than when Linda used to come down that road O
my dear little princess ! waving her hands and singing to me a
long way off. All the nights like these seem as one, there have
been so many of them."

" And there are to be so many of them," said the poet.

" Let us hope so, dear," said she. " With all the suffering and
uncertainty in the past there has been more beauty in it than
ugliness, more good than evil. Even poor Florian will find cer-
tain and unexpected rest to-night."

" There are two figures coming down the road, Ruth. It is
time for Florian to be here."

" Do you meet them, and then send Florian up to the room,"
said she. " Tell him I would like to see him."

1 886.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 657

Pere Rougevin and the hermit congratulated the poet where
he stood, and then Fiorian proceeded alone to the apartment
where Rath, all aglow with delight, awaited him. It was the
room with the red curtain.

" Accept my best wishes for your future happiness," said he ;
" the present is all your own."

She looked at him with satisfaction. His dress was the usual
neat-fitting citizen's costume, his hair had been cut and his beard
trimmed. Fiorian, subdued and pale, was very much himself
again.

" I conclude from your appearance," said Ruth, " that con-
science has again decided against a solitary life for you."

" It is settled," he said, " that I am still to remain in the poli-
tical world most of the time here ; as it may need in New York."

" You are very sad over it. Have you forgotten my via
media ? I flattered myself you would act on that immediately."

" How gladly would I, if it rested only with myself ! But,
Ruth, put yourself in my place. You know the motive I had in
deserting Frances. I have no courage that would send me to
the feet of one I have so wronged to ask a great favor."

" How is it ever to be done?" said Ruth in pretended de-
spair. " Frances has forgiven you, will have no other but you,
waits for you, weeps for you. She is not bold enough, and you
are excessively humble. This will never do. There should be
no go-betweens, yet I cannot see how it is to be avoided if you
will not speak for yourself."

He was silent for a few moments.

" It would be a great happiness for me," he said, " to have
the support and sympathy of one so tenderly loved. Yet you
know her bringing-up. You see the life that awaits me and
those who attach themselves to my fortunes. How can I ask her
to banish herself to Solitary Island ? "

" Without you she considers the world a desert. With you
Sahara would shame Grindstone."

" You leave me no escape," he protested.

" No, you are trapped to-night," she said, exultant. " Do you
see that red curtain, Fiorian ? " He looked at the object. " If I
were to tell you that by pulling it aside you would find there the
last wish of your heart, the or\e circumstance needed to make
your life complete, would you run out the door to your island ?"

" Have your words a meaning?" said he in a tremulous
voice.

She rose and pulled aside the mysterious curtain, and there
VOL. XLII. 42

658 EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I. [Feb.,

in the space beyond was Frances, blushing and paling and trem-
bling in doubt and joy.

" No sibyl's vision can surpass the reality of this," said Ruth,
as with a laugh of hysterical strength she fluttered from the room,
leaving Florian on his knees beside the trembling and laithful
woman whose hands he kissed with reverence and love.

THE END.

EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I.

SOME time ago the learned Dr. Faust deploringly remarked in
one of our leading publications that " our English Catholic litera-
ture is sadly deficient in historical works illustrating the differ-
ent phases and epochs of the German revolt of three hundred
years ago." In order to explain the rise and growth of the Pro-
testant schism, even Catholic writers throw the blame on a uni-
versally corrupted clergy and laity, and heedlessly repeat the
old calumnies of Protestant historians, thus unconsciously de-
faming the great men of that unhappy period. Dr. Faust mildly
calls this " a kind of lazy acquiescence in the more popular form
of belief."

Among the names which are held for opprobrium by non-
Catholic or by indiscreet and acquiescent Catholic writers
stands foremost that of Emperor Maximilian I. We are not sur-
prised, but rather prepared, to hear a Protestant partial historian,
the bigoted Robertson, in his history of Charles V. speak of
Maximilian with contempt, as "a prince conspicuous neither for
his virtues, nor his power, nor his abilities " ; but we sincere-
ly regret to find one of our great English Catholic historians *
alluding slightingly to the great emperor, placing his noble char-
acter in a questionable light. Maximilian was, in his time, the
pride of the German nation, and will be at all times the boast of
the Catholic house of Hapsburg. Johannes Janssen, the highest
living authority on the historical questions of the Reformation
period, has successfully vindicated and permanently established
the moral greatness of Maximilian.

Emperor Maximilian I., son of Frederic III. and Eleanore of

j* S. H. Burke, Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, i. n8, 119.

I886.J EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN /. 659

Portugal, was born in 1459. In his early youth he gave but in-
sufficient proofs of even ordinary mental abilities, and was often
flogged by his masters on account of a deficient knowledge of
his lessons. Soon, however, this dulness was succeeded by rare
brightness of mind and astonishing eagerness for study.

During the siege of Vienna, as a boy, he experienced the
fickleness and instability of fortune, and was forced to beg his
bread to save himself from starvation. " He alone," Maximilian
afterwards said to the Duke of Saxony, " understands the wants
of the people who himself has suffered from want."

Charles of Burgundy became acquainted with the young
prince at Treves in 1473, and was so charmed with his noble
qualities that, on his return to the court at Ghent, he gave such
glowing accounts of the rising young Hapsburger that the heart
of his only daughter, Mary, was smitten, and four years later she
became the happy wife of Maximilian. By this his first mar-
riage he secured Burgundy to his house. " Poorer match there
could not have been for the richest heiress of Christendom," says
Gardiner, in his preface to Letters and Papers illustrative of the
Reigns of Richard III. and Henry VI I. , admitting, however, that
Maximilian's talents were " a real accession " to the strength of
Burgundy. The emperor was married a secon-d time to Bianca
Maria of Naples in 1494.

Maximilian's appearance was truly majestic and attractive,
commanding at once respect and admiration. His soft eyes, re-
flecting his kind-heartedness, could yet blaze with angry fire in
excitement and pierce to the heart of the guilty. He is said to
have once stood before a cage of lions, and by the sternness of
his look to have kept the ferocious beasts in subjection. When
he made his solemn entry into the Flemish city of Ghent to meet
his fair bride, Mary of Burgundy, he won the hearts of all
lookers-on by his chivalrous and graceful bearing. Mounted on
a large, brown steed, glittering in a silver cuirass, his profuse
golden locks bound together by a coronet of pearls and precious
stones, he presented a dazzling picture of romance and chivalry.
An eye-witness to this scene, the chamberlain William von
Hoverde, wrote on this occasion : " Oh ! what a magnificent ap-
pearance. Maximilian is so youthfully fresh, so manfully strong,
so resplendent of fortune, that I know not what to admire,
whether his blooming youth or his strength or his fortune.
One must love him, this brilliant man." " Yes, one must have
loved him," continues Janssen, " whether seen in simple gray
hunting-coat, 'neath Alpine hat, equipped with climbing-spikes,

66o EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I. [Feb.,

cross-bow, and bugle-horn, scaling precipices to climb to the
highest peaks of the Tyrolese mountains ; or engaging in familiar
talk with a passing peasant ; or in social pleasure at Frankfurt
or at Ulm, jesting in humorous conversation with the burghers
and the burghers' daughters, and not taking it ill if some patri-
cian lady, hearing of his intended early departure, had hidden his
boots and his spurs, and kept him for another day to lead the
morrow's dance with the queen of the feast."

A model soldier and excellent commander, Maximilian pos-
sessed a courage approaching temerity. He cheerfully shared
the trials of war with his army, and bore with apparent ease the
fatigues and hardships of camp-life. He personally engaged in
battle, and often showed where cannon-shot flew thickest a des-
perate and almost presumptuous boldness. Many of his heroic
adventures and knightly feats at tournaments, clothed in poetry,
still live on the tongue of the South Germans and call forth the
admiration of brave hearts.

During the Diet of Worms in 1495 a celebrated French
chevalier, Claude de Barre, unexpectedly appeared in the city,
hung up his shield on the outer wall of his inn, and proclaimed
by a herald that he was ready to engage hand-to-hand any Ger-
man who had courage sufficient to tilt spears with him. This
bold and insolent defiance received at first no response. Maxi-
milian then, to save the German name, took up the challenge, and,
unknown to any one, had a shield put up beside the Frenchman's,
and had it proclaimed that a German knight would sustain the
contest. On the appointed day Maximilian, in the armor of a
simple knight, presented himself in the arena. He fought like a
lion, was slightly wounded, but finally unhorsed and vanquished
the Frenchman. Great was the joy and grateful admiration of
the people ; but when the mysterious knight threw back his
visor, then the wildest applause and shouts of unbounded enthu-
siasm greeted the emperor.

Maximilian is justly called the last of the knights, for with
him the chivalric spirit disappeared. Passionately fond of the
chamois chase, he met with many adventures, which were per-
petuated in verse and song.

As he was the most chivalrous and warlike prince in Christen-
dom, so he surpassed ail his princely contemporaries in learn-
ing and culture. He spoke fluently German, Flemish, Latin,
French, Walloon, Italian, and had a thorough knowledge of the
English and Spanish languages. The Court Library at Vienna
preserves many manuscripts by Emperor Maximilian. They show

1 886.] EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I. 66 1

his vast erudition and singular scholarship, and are essays on di-
versified subjects on theology, architecture, genealogy, mili-
tary art, agriculture, gardening, armoring, the chase, cooking,
etc.* His literary skill and taste are manifested in his two poeti-
cal works, Theuerdank and Weisskunig. The former is an alle-
gorical poem conceived by the ^emperor, and for the most part
written by himself; it was prepared for the press and orna-
mented with interesting wood-cuts by the provost of St. Alban's,
in Mayence Melchior Pfinzig. The Theuerdank is a sort of auto-
biography of the emperor, whilst the Weisskunig is an allegorical
prose-writing relating the notable deeds of his public life.

Thus both a scholar and an author, and imbued with a love
for learning, Maximilian gave a vigorous impulse to the arts and
sciences, and was deservedly styled by his contemporaries " fa-
ther of the arts and sciences." Scholars and poets were his
welcome guests and enjoyed his constant patronage. Pierre de
Froissart, the celebrated Frenchman, visited Vienna during the
reign of Maximilian, and was astonished at the activity of the
university students, especially at their easy access to the impe-
rial court, and at the intimate and hearty relation which existed
between Maximilian and men of science. " The emperor," he
wrote back to France, " not only calls them his friends, but treats
them as such. It appears to me that he seeks their company to
be edified by them. There is certainly no other sovereign who
is willing to be instructed by men of more learning, and who
himself is of so rich a mind that he instructs by his very question-
ing."

He was surrounded by men of the highest culture. Sebas-
tian Sprenz, a distinguished Hebrew scholar and mathematician,
was his secretary ; Matthew Lang, Bishop of Gurk, afterwards
Archbishop of Salzburg and cardinal, was his chancellor. His
efforts in behalf of German historical literature were invaluable :
in the interest of history he sent scholars to various abbeys and
convents to ransack their libraries in search of old manuscripts ;
at his request and by his aid Ladislaus Stabius gathered together
material for a genealogical history of the house of Hapsburg.
To carry out a scientific project Maximilian once pawned a
costly jewel. John Stabius, Jacob Manlius, Andrew Striborius,
John Cuspinian,f all men of the highest literary fame, travelled

* Cf. Geschichte der Kaiserl. KoenigL Hofbibliothek zu Wien, von Ig. Fr. Edlen von
Mosel, pp. 17-22.

t In a house at Vienna, believed to have been inhabited by Cuspinian, is to be found on a
stone tablet the following inscription : " Imp. Caes. Aug. Maximilianus Frederici III. fil. Archidux

662 EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN /. [Feb.,

abroad in the interest of science at the expense of the generous
emperor. Among his intimates were the gifted abbot, John
Trithemius, and Conrad Peutinger, whom he engaged and en-
couraged in many historical publications. He bestowed the
dignity of the laureateship on the Rhenish poet, Henry Glarea-
nus, ennobled the celebrated humanist, John Reuchlin, and gave
the famous composers Josquin and Obrecht chairs in his impe-
rial orchestra. Preferring the nobility of science to that of birth,
he one day sharply rebuked a nobleman who refused, thinking it
beneath him, to steady a ladder placed against a wall on which
Nuremberg's painter, Albrecht Diirer, was sketching a picture
for the emperor. " Albrecht/' said Maximilian, " by the emi-
nence of his art is a nobleman and more. I can easily make a
nobleman of a peasant, but I cannot so easily make an artist of a
nobleman." Men of science and art, thus honored and assisted
by him, gratefully looked up to him as to their Maecenas and
dedicated to him their works. Martin Waldseemliller dedicated
to him his Introduction to Cosmography, with the Four Voyages of
Amerigo Vespucci ; Albrecht Diirer beautifully and humorously
illuminated a prayer-book for him.

The University of Vienna became the emperor's favorite
child and enjoyed his continued and practical patronage ; by
many personal sacrifices he made it the first university in Europe.
He there founded the Court Library for the use of the students,
and made the famous humanist, Conrad Celtes, whom he had
called to the university, its first librarian.

Maximilian had a thorough knowledge of the noble art of
architecture, and was proud of his membership in the builders'
guild. "He built," says Janssen, "and repaired many churches
and castles, and gave work to brass-founders, tinsmiths, jewel-
lers, painters, plumbers, helmet-smiths, armorers, wood-carvers,
and engravers. Many superb creations of the then living artists
owe their origin to his order. The best proof of the emperor's
cultivated taste will be found in his grand sepulchral monument
at Innsbruck, for which he himself, with his friend, Conrad Celtes,
designed the plans ; it is one of those last important productions
of the old German art." Several pyrotechnical discoveries are
attributed to his inventive genius ; besides, he perfected the con-
struction of fire-arms and the method of casting ordnance.

From a prince so richly possessing the noblest qualities, and so

Austriae Litterales litterae Viennam invexit. Gymnasium viris illustribus exornavit. Impera-
torias leges adduxit. Barbariem e Germania sustulit. Ac militarem disciplinam Germanos
docuit." Cf. Von Mosel, 1. c. p. 6.

1 886.] EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN 7. 663

willing to serve his country, the accomplishment of great things
for his people was expected. At his accession to the imperial
throne Wimpheling wrote : " All eyes are directed towards
Maximilian, and from no one of the emperors since Charlemagne
have the people expected so much." If he only partially ful-
filled these expectations, any lack of success must be sought out-
side his personal endeavors and labors. His greatest political
fault was his over-trust in the German princes, who at that time
were for the most part a degraded, faithless, and selfish oligarchy
a circumstance explaining the growth of Protestantism better
than any commonly alleged cause. The emperor had to waste
much time and energy at fruitless diets of these worthless
princes ; his fiery eloquence often drew forth the most hopeful
promises, but their deceitful and dishonorable dealings left him
powerless at the end. Trithemius characteristically remarked of
the Nuremberg Diet (1487) : " Much was proposed, spoken, and
agitated ; but besides promises nothing resulted, as all were
seeking their own personal interests."

Besides a corrupt and perjured nobility, Maximilian had to
guard himself from the treacherous machinations of the French
king, Louis XII., who excited Hungary and Poland against the
emperor, and who aimed, as did his son, Francis I., at the posses-
sion of the imperial crown. The straightforwardness and hon-
esty of his character were not always, however, a match for the
deceitful cunning of his rivals.

To establish better order than he found in the empire he in-
stituted the Imperial Chamber, the Imperial Aulic Council, and
divided Germany into ten districts, over each of which he placed
a captain, with a force sufficient to quell any disturbance. To do
away with the evils of a mercenary service he organized a per-
manent body of troops, and made several important improve-
ments in military matters.

He commissioned Francis, Count of Thurn and Taxis, to in-
troduce mail-service into Germany, and established a regular
post between Brussels and Vienna.

The erriperor's political idea and constant aim was the welfare
of the empire, to draw together and strengthen the German
states against foreign powers. To this end, as he declared be-
fore the assembled states at the Reichstag of Lindau (1496), he
was ready to sacrifice his life and all he had, and to suffer, if need
be, poverty and its consequent wretchedness. How he kept his
promise may be learned jfrom the words of Abbot Trithemius,
written seventeen years later : " What emperor for centuries has

664 EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN /. [Feb.,

taken such pains for the good of the empire ? Who was more in-
ventive of means to restore its unity and strength ? Which one
has for this purpose so entirely exhausted his own resources as
he ? It is sad to think how little it has availed. ... It has become
the fashion of the states not to keep at all or only in part the
promises they have made to the emperor. Hence it comes that
the emperor has no power to maintain right and justice, and to
punish fitly the disturbers of the public peace."

When, towards the close of his life, Maximilian saw that all
his plans and hopes for the restoration of the empire's ancient
glory and power were in vain, he sorrowfully exclaimed : " For
me no joy is left on earth. Poor German land ! "

More successful in the building-up of his own illustrious
house of Hapsburg, he secured for it by fortunate marriages the
crowns of Spain, Hungary, and Bohemia, which gave rise to the
famous distich :

" Bella gerant alii ; tu felix Austria, nube :
Nam, quae Marsaliis, dat tibi regna Venus."

These peaceful acquisitions strengthened the house of Haps-
burg against its Eastern enemies, and in the near future limited
the extent of the apostasy in Germany and saved Europe from
the barbarism threatened by the crescent.

Maximilian's moral character and social qualities appear in an
amiable light. Always mild, cheerful, and condescending, he be-
came one of the most popular kings in German history. Misfor-
tune or distress could not ruffle the peace of his soul nor weaken
his confidence in God. He was generous and at times extrava-
gant, lavishing presents without discrimination ; for he thought
it high-minded and becoming an emperor to be so. Personally,
however, he was frugal and economizing, living on rather scanty
fare, and in his own apartments content with a few indispensable
articles.

The emperor's loyalty to the church and filial affection for
the Vicar of Christ can never be seriously questioned. A devout
Catholic at heart, he endeavored to advance the interests of his
holy faith and humiliate the enemies of the church.

In 1518 Leo X. proclaimed a crusade against the Turks, and
sent a consecrated sword and helmet to the emperor, the born
defender of the Catholic Church. This blest armor was present-
ed to Maximilian by the papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan, at the
Reichstag of Augsburg. " With a most grateful heart," said the
emperor on this solemn occasion, " do I receive this holy armor

1 886.] EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN L 665

from the hands of the legate. It has been my ardent desire since
the days of my earliest youth to risk blood and life, gopds and
riches, for the Apostolic See and the welfare of Christendom. "
Though now deprived of youth arid vigor, yet, under the protec-
tion of the helmet of the Holy Ghost and the sword of faith, he
would further the holy enterprise and head the Christian army.

One day, while riding alone on horseback in the vicinity of
Augsburg, he met in a mountain pass on the road a beggar who
had been suddenly taken ill. He dismounted, gave the poor
man a refreshing draught, wrapped his imperial cloak round him,
and. riding back to the city, called a priest to administer to him
the last consolations of religion.

He was pained to see before his death the beginning of the
great schism, and with it the decline of the great German Em-
pire. Many saw in the insolent proceedings of the Wittenberg
monk a mere quarrel of the schools, but the clear-sighted Maxi-
milian at once discerned the full importance of the new teach-
ings. In a letter to the Holy Father dated August 5, 1518, he
showed the extent of the religious trouble, asked Leo X. to sup-
press the dangerous heresy in its germ, and readily offered his
energetic assistance to enforce any papal decrees against the in-
novators, who were endangering the unity of faith, replacing
revealed truth with private opinion.*

When the emperor felt his end approaching he fervently pre-
pared for the awful hour. During the last four years of his life
he had his coffin borne about with him on his journeys, and was
often heard to apostrophize in mournful words his last dwelling-
place. He devoutly received the last sacraments, and during
his death-agony, in full possession of his senses, repeated the
prayers of the dying till his lips were closed in death. This
occurred on January 12, 1519, the sixtieth year of his eventful
life.

* See vol. iii. of the Life of Martin Luther, by George Evers, where the letter is given in
full. It breathes the noble sentiments of a thoroughly Catholic monarch. Oh ! that his words
had been better heeded.

666 THE ELEVEN GENERAL ELECTIONS OF [Feb.,

THE ELEVEN GENERAL ELECTIONS OF THE REIGN
OF QUEEN VICTORIA.

JUST at this time it may be relevant to recall a few of the
features of the last ten general elections in Great Britain. It is
not proposed to do more than to speak of names and events
which would be remembered by most men who are turned sixty.

1837. The accession of Queen Victoria, in the year 1837, made
it necessary that a new Parliament should be summoned. The
general election gave the preference to the Tories or, as they
were then called for the first time, the Conservatives. Some
gifted and promising men sat in the new Parliament. Mr. Dis-
raeli was for the first time elected. Mr. Grote, the distinguished
writer of Greek history ; Lord Lytton, then Mr. Edward Lytton
Bulwer ; Sir William Molesworth, a " philosophical Radical " ;
Lord Morpeth, more a scholar than a politician, with a good
many other superior men, were first heard of as members of the
House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone had been five years in Par-
liament. Lord John Russell had begun his career as a party
leader. Lord Palmerston, who now became foreign secretary,
had not yet given proofs of his great ability. Sir Robert Peel
was the acknowledged leader of the Tories. Lord Stanley (the
late Lord Derby) was a distinguished member. O'Connell and
Sheil represented the Irish party, and alternately astonished
and delighted the House with their courage and magnificent elo-
quence. Sheil was perhaps the most brilliant of the orators who
have been heard in the House of Commons during the present
century. With not a few natural impediments in particular a
most unmusical voice he was pronounced, both by Mr. Glad-
stone and Mr. Disraeli, to be the most fascinating orator of his
day. Sir Robert Peel, unlike Sheil, was very calm, full of com-
mon sense, not of ardor ; yet his sound, practical arguments won
a hold over the House of Commons which enabled him at all
times to command attention. Lord John Russell was a stronger
man than he seemed to be. He was not an orator, but he was a
skilful debater ; and he was gifted with a sort of irritating sar-
casm, which was likened to a " dissolving acid to an opponent."
Tom Moore, who was a great friend of Lord John Russell, has
praised him with the warmth of his poetic nature rather than
with the justice of criticism. Lord John Russell was a very

1 886.] THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA, 667

expert word-swordsman, and was indomitable in " sticking- to
his own ground." For many years Lord John Russell and Sir
Robert Peel fought out their political battles " hand-to-hand."
Lord John was before all things "a reformer." He had learned
his political lessons at the feet of Fox. And he was (for his day)
as advanced or extreme a Liberal as any man who sat in the
Commons. He needed and he possessed great abilities, in a
House which comprehended such commanding minds as those of
Disraeli and Gladstone, O'Connell and Sheil, Stanley and Peel ;
and also such highly cultured thinkers as Bulwer and Grote, Sir
Francis Burdett and Villiers ; and the somewhat opposite yet
not unimportant factors in debate, Tom Buncombe of Finsbury
and Smith O'Brien.

i84r. On June 4 Sir Robert Peel, by previous agreement,
proposed a vote of want of confidence in the ministry, and Lord
Melbourne (then prime minister) and his colleagues were con-
demned by a majority of one. That " one " was no suggestion of
the immense majority (throughout the country) by which the
Conservatives were about to be restored to power. Sir Robert
Peel came into office with (as Lord Melbourne assured him)
" more friends outside the House than inside it," and, certainly,
with few enemies of much importance. Lord Melbourne then
quietly dropped out of office, and seven years afterwards he
died. The Peel ministry was now installed with great hopes.
Many notables held office under the premier ; but perhaps the
most remarkable of the new members who were now brought
into Parliament was the (until then) almost unknown Mr. Richard
Cobden. He was destined soon to make a great name in a House
where Mr. Gladstone was still but " a rising man," and to create
a considerable sensation among a ministry which included Sir
James Graham for home secretary, Lord Stanley for colonial
secretary, the Earl of Aberdeen for foreign secretary, and Lord
Lyndhurst for the woolsack, but which did not include Mr. W.
E. Gladstone very shortly, however, to become the prime
minister.

1846. The defeat of Sir Robert Peel's ministry in this year
was due mainly to his advocacy of free trade. It has been said
that Peel crushed O'ConnelPand carried free trade, but that
O'Connell and the protectionists had life enough left'in them to
pull down the ministry they detested. Be this as it may, Lord
John Russell now succeeded as prime minister. Lord Grey be-
came colonial secretary. Sir Charles Wood was the new chan-
cellor of the exchequer ; but, though a man of sound sense, he

668 THE ELEVEN GENERAL ELECTIONS OF [Feb.,

was a bad speaker, and consequently was not popular in the
House. Sir George Grey, on the contrary, though but a re-
spectable home secretary, was a speaker of great fluency or pre-
cipitancy. Lord John Russell, being at the head of affairs, soon
found himself involved in great difficulty in having to deal with
the terrible Irish famine. And yet another difficulty also em-
barrassed him the outbreak of the Chartist riots in London.
At the general election Fergus O'Connor, a known agitator, had
gained a seat as Radical member for Nottingham, and was im-
mediately engaged in stirring up all Radicals to communistic
ideas about property. It was just at this period that Louis
Philippe had fled to England, and about half Europe was in
revolutionary mood ; so that it was a comparatively easy matter
for any popular demagogue to rally a crowd round " the flag of
the people's liberties."

1852. In the summer of this year there was a general election,
which was embroiled by very serious riots, not only in England
but in Ireland. The great mass of the Irish people were quite
indifferent to the fact that Mr. Disraeli (who at that time was
chancellor) had done his best for the financial interests of Eng-
land. The question which they cared for was that of " Tenant
Right " ; and between the landlords and the popular party in
England contention ran so high as to become dangerous. The
Irish Catholics, too, had felt piqued by the debates on the " Eccle-
siastical Titles Bill," and still more piqued by the fact that the
English people, as a whole, did not care a pin about Irish affairs.
The general election passed off, however, quietly. Among the
new members returned by' this election was the celebrated essay-
ist, Macaulay. Edinburgh had elected him without his solicita-
tions and without any declaration of his opinions. This was ex-
ceptionally flattering. In 1847 Macaulay had been thrown out.
In 1852 his election was spontaneous an act of reparation and
of grace. It was just at this moment, when men were "counting
up "the general election (and just two months before the new
Parliament met), that the Duke of Wellington died at Walmer
Castle. He may be mentioned as a counsellor of his sovereign,
much more than as a statesman or as a minister. His death was
the signal for a national mourning ; for, though his victories be-
longed to a past time, he was regarded as a type of English
heroism. No episode of importance marked the opening of
Parliament; but Mr. Disraeli had to introduce his budget to the
House, and this was the rock on which he split. The two points
which stood out in that budget were (i) the reduction of the malt

1 886.] THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 669

duty, and (2) the increase of duty on inhabitated houses. The
debate was very long and very furious. The excitement with-
in the House was intense. Mr. Disraeli made a magnificent
speech, and then Mr. Gladstone rose to answer him. (This was
the beginning- of that rivalry of the two heroes which lasted
from 1852 to 1876, and which scarcely for a brief interval seemed
to slacken.) Mr. Gladstone won a vote from the House. Mr.
Disraeli was beaten by nineteen. Exit the Conservative minis-
try ; enter Lord Aberdeen, Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston,
with Mr. Gladstone as the chancellor of the exchequer.

1857. That " government by party means government by
mutual recrimination" was proved to perfection in 1857. Lord
Palmerston " went to the country " with the assurance that Lord
Derby, Lord Lynd hurst, Sir E. Lytton, Lord Grey, and Lord
Robert Cecil were craven Englishmen, utterly devoid of any
patriotism, who were friends and allies of " an insolent barba-
rian " namely, a certain Chinese gentleman, Governor Yeh.
That phrase, " insolent barbarian," won the country ! The vic-
tory of Lord Palmerston was complete. Such men as Cobden,
Bright, Milner Gibson were all "nowhere" annihilated by the
phrase " insolent barbarian." No sooner was Lord Palmerston
in power than he distinguished himself in two ways in parti-
cular : appointing evangelical clergymen to bishoprics, and in-
sisting on passing the Divorce Bill. The two preferences, as
Mr. Disraeli gaily remarked, were " hardly harmonious in spi-
rit." Mr. Gladstone vigorously opposed the new Divorce Bill.
Nevertheless the Divorce Bill was passed. A year later Lord
Palmerston resigned office.

1859. A vote f " want of confidence," moved by Lord Hart-
ington (then for the first time taking a position in public trust),
provoked a long and bitter debate. It was in this quarrel that
Sir James Graham called Mr. Disraeli " the Red Indian of de-
bate," who " by use of the tomahawk had cut his way to power,
and by recurrence to the scalping system hoped to prevent the
loss of it." Lord Hartington carried his motion by thirteen.
The queen then invited Lord Granville to form a ministry. But
Lord John Russell would not serve under Lord Granville.
Lord Palmerston, therefore, became once more prime minister
and continued prime minister for life. He formed what was
certainly a strong ministry : Mr. Gladstone was chancellor of
the exchequer ; Lord John Russell, foreign secretary ; Mr. Sid-
ney Herbert, minister for war ; Mr. Card well, the Irish secretary ;
and Sir Charles Wood, the secretary for India. Lord Palmer-

6/o THE ELEVEN GENERAL ELECTIONS OF [Feb.,

ston offered a seat to Mr. Cobden ; but it is remarkable that the
chief promoter of the repeal of the corn laws never held a place
in an administration.

1865. On July 6 the Parliament (which had died a natural
death) was dissolved by the ordinary proclamation. It is ob-
servable that at this time (just exactly twenty years ago) Mr.
Disraeli told his constituents that " the chief issue to be decided
was the existence of the English Established Church." " The
maintenance of the national church," he stoutly maintained, " in-
volved the question whether the principle of religion should be
an element of the political constitution ; whether the state should
be consecrated ; or whether, dismissing the sanctions that appeal
to the higher feelings of man, the scheme of government should
degenerate into a mere system of police." (There is probably as
little fear now as there was then that such " degeneracy " will en-
sue during the next Parliament !) Mr. Gladstone, who was now
"put up" for Oxford, was defeated by the not important Mr.
Gathorne Hardy. He was, however, elected for South Lanca-
shire. Mr. J. S. Mill was now first returned to Parliament.
Mr. Bright was triumphantly re-elected. The new Parliament
was essentially democratic ; it was formed largely of the extreme
section of Liberals. The country earnestly wished that Lord
Palmerston could have headed it ; but the aged statesman died
just as Parliament met, and Lord John Russell was invited to
form a government. He did so. A few " new men " now came
into public life. Mr. Forster became under-secretary for the
colonies, and Mr. Goschen succeeded to the Board of Trade.
Mr. Gladstone was, of course, the leader of the House of Com-
mons. But some great changes now marked the new assembly.
Palmerston, Cobden, Sidney Herbert, Sir James Graham were
all gone. Lord John Russell had been raised to the Upper
House. Mr. Lowe was a " free lance " once more, unshackled
by any official position. But the greatest change was undoubt-
edly that of " Gladstone in place of Palmerston." The latter had
united all parties not, of course, in their opinions, but in good-
will. Mr. Gladstone led only the Liberals ; but he invited the
Radicals to join them. Mr. Disraeli now headed the Conserva-
tives.

1868. On the last day of July the dissolution took place, and
the elections came on in November. The Liberals had a con-
siderable majority. But there was also a Conservative reaction
in not a few Liberal constituencies. Thus Lancashire returned
only Tories for its county divisions, and chiefly Tories for its

1 886.] THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 671

borough divisions. Eight Conservatives came in for Lancaster,
Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington being displaced. Mr. Glad-
stone was therefore transferred to Greenwich. From Oxford
Mr. Gladstone had migrated to Lancashire, and now from Lanca-
shire he migrated to Radical Greenwich perhaps the most demo-
cratic of London suburbs. Mr. Milner Gibson and Mr. Bernal
Osborne were unseated. The latter got into Parliament once
more ; the former disappeared from public life. In the new
House of Commons the majority (of the Liberals) was not less
than one hundred and twenty, being sixty more than their ma-
jority in the last Parliament. Mr. Gladstone had therefore every-
thing in his own hands.

1874. Mr. Gladstone decided of his own accord that he
would bring his administration to an end. On the night of Janu-
ary 23 all London was astonished (and all London, indeed, was
incredulous) at the news that Mr. Gladstone had resigned. He
stated in his address to his constituents that his authority had
now " sunk below the point necessary for the due defence and
prosecution of the public interests," and that, if the country
should return him to power, he would introduce a series of finan-
cial measures, and among them would totally repeal the corn-
tax. The country was not amenable to such wooing. The
country reseated the Conservatives. The Conservatives had a
majority of fifty. Mr. Disraeli very quickly formed a ministry.
Lord Salisbury was entrusted with India, and Lord Derby with
foreign affairs. Lord Carnarvon became colonial secretary. Mr.
Cross (an almost unknown man) was exalted to the position of
home secretary. Mr. Gathorne Hardy was made secretary for
war, and Mr. Ward Hunt first lord of the admiralty. Sir Staf-
ford Northcote became chancellor of the exchequer. The Duke
of Richmond, as lord-president of the council, was a safe leader
for the government in the House of Lords. Mr. Gladstone pre-
sently announced his " intention of retiring from the leadership
of the Liberal party " an intention which eleven years later he
has reconsidered with some variety of disposition.

1880. The session of 1879 was the sixth session of a well-worn
Tory Parliament, and the country was crying out for a dissolu-
tion. Mr. Gladstone was pleased to argue that a government
ought to dissolve itself a few months before its natural expira-
tion an argument which was hardly worth pressing ; for, as a
matter of fact, no Parliament lasts seven years, and there is al-
ways " a moribund interval " for every ministry. The dissolu-

672 THE ELEVEN GENERAL ELECTIONS OF [Feb.,

tion took place on March 24, and the general election commenc-
ed almost immediately. The result has been compared to a
political earthquake. From the very first day of the elections it
was evident that the Conservatives were " out " at least half over
the kingdom. Defeat was soon turned into disaster. A majo-
rity of one hundred and twenty (strangely enough, the same ma-
jority which sent the Liberals to power in 1868) now did the
same kindness for them again. The queen sent for Lord Hart-
ington, then for Lord Granville, then for the real man who was
wanted. And Mr. Gladstone (not having " retired ") took office.

It will be relevant to add some further details in regard to
recent Parliaments and elections.

First, as to the duration of English Parliaments. From the
first Parliament of George III. to the last of Queen Victoria it has
been a rare thing for a Parliament to " last out its time." No
Parliament did so in George III.'s reign. The two Parliaments
that sufficed for George IV. lasted, one of them six, the other
three years. In William IV.'s time four Parliaments (in but six
years) were elected to serve under his majesty, the longest last-
ing two years and five months. In Queen Victoria's time there
have been two Parliaments which have lasted six years that

from 1859 to l8 ^5 an d tnat fr m l8 74 to l88 -

Prime ministers in England have usually "made" general
elections, quite as much as general elections have made prime
ministers. It may be interesting to recall the names of the
prime ministers from the date of the accession of the House of
Hanover. From October 10, 1714, there have been forty-three
first lords of the treasury or, more accurately, forty-three
changes in the ministry, involving forty- three accessions to of-
fice. The names of these prime ministers are Walpole, Stan-
hope, Sunderland, Wilmington, Pelham, Newcastle, Bute, Gren-
ville, Buckingham, Grafton, North, Shelborne, Portland, Pitt,
Addington, Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, Wellington,
Grey, Melbourne, Peel, Russell, Derby, Aberdeen, Palmerston,
Disraeli, Gladstone, Salisbury. Of this number Walpole was
twice prime minister, Pitt twice, Melbourne twice, Peel twice,
Russell twice, Derby three times, Disraeli twice, and Gladstone
twice. The above list, extending from 1714 to 1885, would show
that the average duration of ministers (and therefore of the
tenure of the premiership) is little more than three years and
eight months. This must seem to be a very short time. Yet

i886.] THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 673

some prime ministers have " reigned " a long while. Thus Wai-
pole was premier for twenty years ; Lord North for twelve ;
William Pitt for eight ; Lord Liverpool for fourteen ; Lord Mel-
bourne for six ; Lord John Russell for six ; Lord Derby for six ;
Lord Palmerston for six; Mr. Disraeli for six, and Mr. Glad-
stone for even a slightly longer time. In regard to the number
of electors in Great Britain, there were in 1864, in the counties
of England and Wales, 535,788; in the counties of Scotland, 49,-
109 ; in the cities and boroughs of England and Wales, 491,229 ;
in the cities and boroughs of Scotland, 52,628 ; total, 1,128,754.

In 1874 the number of electors on the register was 2,748,985
namely, 2,245,108 in England and Wales, 280,308 in Scotland,
and 223,569 in Ireland. Taking the period from the passing of
the Reform Bill in 1868 to June, 1874, the county electors in-
creased about 300,000, and the borough electors about one mil-
lion. So that the electoral franchise (up to the other day) used
to include about one in twelve of the population. The recent
addition of two millions to the register will, of course, revolu-
tionize these old figures.

In regard to the number of the members of the House of
Commons, it appears that in the reign of Henry VII. there were
altogether 296 members. Henry VIII. added 38; and, by gra-
dual increase from reign to reign, the number of members in
1817 amounted to 658. It must be remembered that the union
with Scotland in the reign of Queen Anne was the occasion of
adding 45 members ; and the union with Ireland in the year 1800
was the occasion of adding 100 members. In the session of 1874
the House of Commons had 661 members, England and Wales
sending 487, Ireland 105, and Scotland 69.

As we are speaking only of the electoral system, it may seem
irrelevant to allude to the House of Lords. Yet since by re-
commendation of existing ministers peers are (at least usually)
created, and since there is a marked disposition at this time to
adopt a general principle of " elected peers," it may be per-
mitted to state that more than two-thirds of the hereditary peer-
ages have been created since the year 1800. At least 350 of the
peers have been created in the last eighty years, of whom
(about) 175 have been created in the reign of Queen Victoria.
This fact is so far analogous to the electoral system that the
creation of peers is now principally motived by the interests of
the political party in power. And the present general election
shows clearly that, whatever be the future of the House of Lords,
the people wish it to be partly electoral. Thus, by analogy, the
VOL. XLII. 43

674 THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. [Feb.,

House of Lords must open its gates pari passu with the largely
widening- House of Commons. And the "moral" of general
elections, in regard to the House of Lords, is that the more the
people get the government into their hands, the more the Lords
must take the people into their counsels.

THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES.

THE Irish language is apparently dying. If not dying, it is
in the last stages of decay. The chances are that the next gene-
ration, if not our own, will be*present at its deathbed. From a
literary point of view, the death or decay of the language of an
imaginative race of old standing in European civilization is cer-
tainly mournful to behold. Yet Irish funerals are not often un-
mitigatedly sad. The elastic nature of the people easily rebounds
from woe, having a touch of true philosophy in its readiness to
submit gracefully to what has to be. And even if their language
disappear, the race itself is vigorous, full of life, hopeful, and it
has made the English speech so fluently its own that there are
many good people who find it hard to believe that it ever had
any other. To-day, indeed, excepting to the rustics and moun-
taineers and fishermen along the west and south of Ireland,
and to a few scholars and some aristocratic representatives of
old chieftains' families, the Irish is an unknown tongue to the
Irish people. Few Irishmen or Irishwomen with any pretence
to refinement care to acknowledge an acquaintance with it.
There are many, whose English is not as good as it might be,
who yet would take offence at being supposed to understand the
language of their race ; there are others who understand it, but
deny any knowledge of it. Strange fact, that a people almost
morbidly sensitive as to all else that is peculiarly theirs should
be indifferent to their language, the distinctive badge of their
race. But in this, as in many other respects, the Irish are real
Gaels. In abandoning .their language they are merely doing
what their relatives of the Continent did centuries ago.

But, in addition to this, the Irish have shown no resentment
at having most of their surnames distorted out of resemblance to
the original sound, and, further, they have permitted themselves
to be deprived of the ancient given names, sonorous and full of
meaning, which their ancestors proudly k bore. So far has this

1 886.] THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. 675

gone that " Pat," the diminutive of a name foreign to their tongue,
has become the accepted humorous designation of an Irishman.

It is only within very recent years, and owing almost as much
to the labors of German philologists as of Irish scholars, that the
Gaelic language, of which Irish is the purest dialect, has receiv-
ed that attention which it deserves.'*

The probabilities are that the fair-haired, blue-eyed Scots
were the first of the Gaelic tribes to issue from Asia on the
inarch across Europe. If one may found an opinion on the tes-
timony of clear traditions, current among the Irish as long as we
have any record, and on the references by the Greek historians
of the time, there is good reason for believing that the Skuthes
(or Scythians) were that tribe of the Gaels who never rested
until, after many vicissitudes and fierce struggles, they had
planted themselves on the farthest island of Europe to the west,
the island called by the ancient geographers lerne, and by the
Irish themselves Eire, the " land of the West " Ireland. There,
as elsewhere, they overcame the dark-haired, swarthy aborigines
and gradually adopted them as part of their own people. The
vacuum left by these Gaels on the northern shores of the Black
Sea was afterwards filled by other races, and later by the
Tartars, who, on account of the territory taken up by them,
have sometimes been erroneously confounded with the original
Skuthes, or Scythians. It is worthy of note that this vanguard
tribe of the Gaels, the Scots of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle
of Man, is the only Gaelic tribe still preserving the use of the
mother-tongue.f

* "Gaelic" is the spelling adopted in Scotland in the last century, instead of the ancient
spelling still preserved in Ireland, Gaodhelig. The correct sound is hard to convey to one who
has not heard it. It might be represented by some such phonetic spelling as Gwo-e-lig, giving
to the w a barely perceptible sound, and to the o the German sound, the emphasis being placed
on the first syllable.

The correct name of the Gaelic-speaking race, by the way, is Gael (Gaodhal), not " Celt,"
or " Kelt." Celt, or Kelt, another form of which is kilt (or ceilf), a part of the ancient attire
of the race, is derived from ceilim, " I conceal." It has been explained to have been applied to
an order of chivalry amongst the Gaels of ancient days, each member of which was bound in
honor to conceal his identity and family connections until he had established his reputation for
prowess. It was these Celts, or bands of " unknown " knights, who became so great a terror to
the Greek frontiers, and it was some of these, probably, who prepared the way for that irrup-
tion of the Gaels which set the geese of the Roman Capitol to cackling.

t Omitting the Greek termination es, the word Skuth corresponds very closely to an unedu-
cated Scotchman's pronunciation of the word " Scot" (Scoot), which is also the Gaelic sound of
the word.

Until quite late in the middle ages the Irish were always spoken of as "Scots," and Ireland
then was "Scotia." After a time, in order to distinguish it from its colony of Argyle (Ar
Gael), Ireland was called "Scotia Major." Still later the geographical name Eire (Hibernia)
took the place for Ireland of the tribal name Scotia, which gradually c?.me to be applied exclu-
sively to the lesser Scotland, or Caledonia.

676 THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. [Feb.,

Once Gaelic was spoken over a wide belt of Europe, from
Galatia to the ocean ; now it has been dead for centuries on the
Continent, where its few traces are the nasal sounds of French,
Portuguese, and of some of the dialects of that part of Italy
which once was Cisalpine Gaul, and of the dialect of the Gali-
cians, or Gallegos, in Spain, a few idioms, and a few translitera-
tions or softenings of consonants. The Cymraeg which the
English call " Welsh," and the Irish call " Bretnach "including
the dialects of Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, is a kindred tongue
to the Gaelic ; according to some it is a later offshoot.

The literary culture of Gaelic, which had long been waning,
may be said to have come to an end as soon as the bitter Penal
Code was put into force in Ireland in the early part of the last
century. It is unnecessary to repeat Edmund Burke's famous
characterization of that iniquitous code, which practically closed
all schools to the great majority of the people of Ireland. With-
in a generation or two, under its cruelly skilful action, Ireland
became the most illiterate nation in Europe, perhaps. Of course
the Gaelic language suffered in consequence, as did everything
else Irish.

But Gaelic had been directly attacked long before. In 1367
a parliament of the Anglo-Normans at Kilkenny enacted a stat-
ute which, among other things, forbade the employment of Gae-
lic by the English settlers in Ireland. Yet by the end of the fif-
teenth century the Gaels had so used their winning ways that
Poynings' Act of 1495, though renewing the other Kilkenny
decrees intended to keep the Irish and English elements from
mingling, let the language alone ; for many of the most promi-
nent Anglo-Norman families had lost their Norman-French and
spoke no language but Gaelic. In James I.'s time the Bible of
the "authorized version" and the Book of Common Prayer
were translated into Gaelic for the use of the Irish. But that
was a temporary concession, and was made in furtherance of an
English purpose. With the breaking-up of the clans in the
seventeenth century, and the confiscation of Irish lands to Eng-
lish adventurers and to a few of their Irish allies, the bards dis-
appeared, and with them almost the last vestige of a current
Gaelic literature of any intrinsic merit.

The legal banning of Gaelic by the supporters of English
dominion contributed also to the corruption of Irish surnames.
But this was aided to some extent, though unintentionally, of
course, by the action of the Catholic priests and Catholic school-
masters. The priests, on account of the various enactments

i886.] THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. 677

against the Roman Catholic religion, were nearly all educated
and ordained abroad. When they returned to Ireland from
Rome, Paris, Vienna, Salamanca, or Flanders, where they had
spent much of their youth and early manhood, they were full
of the fashionable, classicism of the time, and many of them were
apt to regard Gaelic as a barbarous jargon. It is true, they had
usually to preach, and to exercise their ministry generally, in
Gaelic, for most of their flocks understood no other language.
But, as a rule, they discouraged Gaelic. When a child was
brought for baptism, the sponsors would naturally propose for
the given name one that had long been identified with the clan
or with that particular family. But the sponsor's suggestion
would be ignored, and the child, perhaps, christened " Patrick "
or " Bridget," according to its sex, or the proposed name would
be perhaps translated into something more " Christian," a name
more or less resembling it in sound being sometimes chosen.
In this way the youngster whose parents or sponsors had
wished to name it Domhnall (Donald) became thereafter
legally known as " Daniel " a Hebrew name while, worse still,
perhaps, Diarmaid (Dermot) became "Jeremiah"! No other
people in Europe have had a similar experience. Catholic
schoolmasters also were under the ban of the law, as were the
Catholic priests, and in trying to keep the lamp of literature
from going quite out among their impoverished countrymen
they were liable to fine, imprisonment, banishment, and, for a
repetition of the offence, death. Yet even these brave old
sesquipedalians were bitten by the classical mania and would
not tolerate the Gaelic. The luckless youngster who thought-
lessly broke out into the language of his fathers was flogged
by these pedagogues as old-fashioned pedagogues knew how
to flog. What wonder that a language should fade out of
use when its natural supporters joined with the enemy against
it!

Though the language is disappearing, the surnames survive
and promise to be propagated in all parts of the civilized world.
But most of them are mutilated in form. Very few of these
names are pronounced by their present bearers as they were pro-
nounced two centuries ago, and many of them are so changed,
both in orthography and pronunciation, as to be traceable with
very great difficulty to their true source. The very look, not to
say sound, of " Gilhooly " and " Muldoon " is enough to stir one
to laughter. Yet both these names are respectable in their ori-
gin, in their meaning, and in their antiquity, while their true

678 THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. [Feb.,

sound, as properly spelled, is extremely musical. But Ireland
has long been unfortunate, and therefore unfashionable.

In James I.'s time an act was passed forbidding the use of all
but a few of the old Gaelic surnames. This act was only par-
tially enforced, however, and principally in Ulster, where the
work of translating the names began. The Mac and the O'
were easily dropped. But MacGabhan (M'Gowan) became
"Smythe,"* MacEoghan (now often written McOwen, McKeon,
M'Ewen, Ewing, McCune, etc.) and MacSeaghan (M'Shane)
both became "Johnson" or "Jackson." O'Domhnall (O'Don-
nell) was translated into " Danielson " or " Donaldson," and also
into " Daniels " ; and so on through a long list of corruptions
or mistaken translations.! Sometimes his nickname and nick-
names were plentiful where all the people of a village belonged
to one clan and had one surname furnished the clansman with a
new surname when he began in his awkward way to crunch the
fearful consonants of the Sacsanach. The tow-headed Murtach
"fionn " (" very fair") O'Neill became " Martin Whyte," or per-
haps " Mortimer Neilson," etc.

Previous to the establishment of English dominion in Ireland
the Irish lived in tribes or septs, each sept being composed of a
number of clans or groups of villages. All the members of any
one sept were, in theory at least, descendants of a common an-
cestor, whose name, with O' or Mac prefixed, designated the
sept. All the septs of Ireland were, again, descended from cer-
tain groups of ancestors, and these lineages are still piously pre-
served, and no doubt with great accuracy. For the tenure of
land, which was held in common, as well as more sentimental pri-
vileges, depended on accuracy in this matter, and very little on
purchase or other acquired title. The bards of each clan, who
were its historians and genealogists, were therefore watched by
an interested criticism that would be sure to check any imagi-
native tampering with the lineage on which so much depended.
There was no aristocracy in the feudal sense, for the Gaels had
always either exterminated or effectually absorbed whatever
people they conquered, so that there was no race of helots for
them to lord it over. The clansman looked upon his chief as his
relative and as the official representative of his family.

* Gabhan is the Gaelic for " smith."

t Many of the so-called " Scotch-Irish " of the United States are the descendants of beaten
clansmen of the various clans of Ulster who translated their surnames. Properly speaking not
one out of a hundred of those in the United States who boast a Scotch-Irish origin have any
" Scotch " about them. The whole thing is a convenient myth, invented by those who wished
somehow to explain away their Irish strain.

1 886.] THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. 679

O\ anciently written ui, means a " male descendant " generally,
while Mac 'nowadays written also Me and M* means simply " a
son." But it is only in English that either of these is prefixed to
the name borne by a woman. In Gaelic the prefix Ni a con-
traction of ingean, "a daughter" is used. Thus a woman who
in English would appear as "Julia O'Connell " would in Gaelic
be " Siodla [Sheela] Ni Chonaili." The famous Amazon of the
sixteenth century, whom English historians call " Grace O'Mal-
ley," is known in Ireland by her true name, " Gra Ni Mhaile "
(pronounced Graw nyee Wale).* It is not difficult to understand
how the complicated orthography of Gaelic names came to be
shattered when these names were rendered in English letters.
For the English alphabet has twenty-six letters, while the Gaelic,
like the most ancient Greek alphabet from which, perhaps, it was
derived has but sixteen besides the aspirate, or k. In addition
to this there are two peculiarities of Gaelic which account for
some of the odd distortions of these names. These are aspiration
and eclipsis.

Orthographically aspiration consists in putting an h after the
letter to be aspirated ; phonetically in softening or modifying, or
even deadening, the sound of the letter aspirated. Thus the
names MacMuircath and MacMuirchu have been jumbled to-
gether in English, and now appear under such forms as " Mac-
Murroch," " M'Murrough," "Morrow," " Murphy," etc. f One
use of the aspirate is purely euphonic; it is inserted between the
prefix O' and the surname, if the surname begin with a vowel,
just as the French use the letter t in a-t-il. Let us take that ex-
tremely ancient name of Aodh, which signifies " fire." In some
parts of Ireland it is sounded almost like ay in the English word
" day," in others like ee in the word " meet." In Ulster was a
clan descended from an ancestor of this name, and this clan bore,
therefore, the surname of MacAodha. Further south another
clan with an ancestor similarly named used O' instead of Mac
for its prefix, and this clan was called O'h-Aodha. Nowadays
O'h-Aodha and MacAodha appear in a multitude of forms;
among them O'Hay, O'Hea, Hays, Hayes, Hay, etc. the final s
being an imported Anglicism MacKay (M'Kay), Mackay, Mac-

* There are but few O's among the Scotch, for O' did not come much into vogue in Ireland
until the eleventh century, by which time the migrations from Ireland to North Britain had
ceased. Nevertheless there are O's in Scotland ; for instance, Ogilvie, or Ogilby, correctly writ-
ten O^Giall buidhe, " the descendant of the yellow-haired hostage." Then there are Oliphant,
Ochiltree, etc.

\Muir cath signifies a "sea-battle," and muir cu a "sea-hound" (" sea-dog" we say in
English) i.e., a "fighter at sea."

68o THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. [Feb.,

key, M'Kee, Magee, MacHay, etc. The translating process
gives MacHugh, Hughes, etc., the shallow pedants having treat-
ed Aodh as "the Irish " for Hugh, which is, of course, of Teu-
tonic origin. Another instance of the confusion caused by this
euphonic h is in the case of the name Aonghus and its modi-
fications. With O' it properly becomes O'h-Aonghus, whence
we now see O'Haynes, Haynes, etc.; while MacAonghus, with
more sportive opportunities, has capered about as MacEnnis,
Maclnnes, M'Gennis, Magennis, Ennis, Guinness, etc. Aonghu-
saigh, signifying " belonging to Aonghus," furnishes the surname
of O'h-Aonghusaigh, better known now as O'Hennessey and
Hennessy.

Eclipsis is a very puzzling feature of Gaelic grammar, yet it
is quite as philosophical and, to the Gael at least, just as natural
as were the euphonic transformations in his verb to the Greek.
It is used in inflecting nouns, and consists in prefixing a certain
consonant to the initial consonant if the initial be a consonant
the prefixed consonant being sounded instead of the initial. An
(like French du] signifies " of the," and it eclipses the noun it
governs, or aspirates it if it begin with a vowel. Thus sagart
(Latin sacer] means " a priest." The name Mac an t-sagairt (t
being the eclipsing letter for s) nowadays appears as MacAn-
tagart, M'Entegart, Taggart, Taggard, etc. Mac an t-saor, " the
son of the artificer," is now M'Intyre. Where aspiration is em-
ployed instead of eclipsis we have Mac an phearson, now usually
written MacPherson ; MacPhaidin (from Paidin, pronounced
" paw-dyeen "), " the son of little Patrick," now familiar as
M'Fadden. Mac an bhaird, "the son of the bard," is the origin
of the names MacEnward, Mac Ward, M'Quard, Ward, etc.

The adjective terminations adh, ach, agh are nearly always
represented in the Anglicized form by the final y, though not
always. Thus O'Ceallach has been Englished into O'Kelly, Kel-
ley, etc.; yet it also is met with in such shapes as Kalloch, Kel-
logg, etc. The name of O'Seaghdha loses its terror in O'Shea,
Shee, Shay, etc. But a sad fate has befallen O'h-Uilleachan,
which, though it still wrenches unaccustomed jaws as O'Hoola-
han, has generally been changed into Howlan, Holland, etc.

At the period when the present corrupt forms of Irish names
were coming into use the great body of the Irish people had
been rendered completely illiterate. They could neither read
nor write, whether in their native Gaelic or in the foreign Eng-
lish tongue which they were beginning to learn. On the other
hand, the English knew no Gaelic. What wonder, then, that the

1 886.] THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. 68 1

mellifluous, majestic surnames of the Gaels were mutilated, if
not caricatured, when done into English, by the joint work of
Irishmen and Englishmen ignorant of one another's language?
One can easily imagine a scene at the breaking up of a clan and
the legal taking possession of its confiscated territory by some
newly-arrived Englishman who is thereafter to be the ''land-
lord." He is there with his business man, a London attorney,
and an interpreter, pressed into the service, is at hand. A group
of the clansmen are kept in place, awaiting their turn to be regis-
tered as " tenants." Behind them a force of English soldiers
stand ready with arms in hand to make English law beloved by
Irishmen. The attorney is seated at the table, ready to begin the
rent-roll.

" What's your name ? " asks the landlord of the stalwart fellow
first in order.

" Cdh-ainm an thu ? " translates the interpreter.

" M'ainm, a deir se ? [my name, says he ?] " replies the Gael.
" Inis don Sacsanach, is maith agus mor an t-ainm orm ainm nios
onorach nasa h-aimn fein. Is misi Tordhalbhach MacGiola Mho-
chudha ! " (Tell the Saxon it is good and great, the name on me
a name more honorable than his name. I am Tordhalbhach
MacGiola Mhochudha.)

Small blame to the Cockney attorney if he winced; and when,
with tongue between his lips, he laboriously spelled out the
name as he thought he heard it, " Turlough MacGillicuddy "
(or perhaps " MacEllicott"), he did his best. It is hard to
catch correctly the sounds of an unfamiliar foreign tongue.

The conjunction of the final c in Mac with an initial liquid or
vowel is responsible for such double forms of the same name as
MacReidy and MacCready (Macready) ; MacRea and MacCrea ;
MacLellan and MacClellan ; Maclvor and MacKeever, etc.
Something similar is seen in Welsh names. Ap Hoel gives
Howell and Powell ; Ap Lloyd, Lloyd and Floyd ; Ap Ris, Rice
and Price; Ap Hugh, Hughes and Pugh ; Ap Robert, Roberts
and Probert, etc.

The two words giola and maol are frequent compounds of
Irish surnames. Giola is found in English dress in the word gil-
lie, a corrupt spelling introduced by Scotch novelists. Giola ori-
ginally meant "a youth," and was applied particularly to the
young fellows who were attached to a chief's retinue. Thence
it passed easily into the sense of a client or follower. Amongst
the early Gaelic Christians it was employed in this sense, figura-
tively, in connection with the name of some holy person chosen

682 THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. [Feb.,

as a model. Thus we have Giola Dia (Anglicized into Gildea),
" a servant of God " ; Giola Christ (Gilchrist), " a servant (or fol-
lower) of Christ " ; Giola Mhuire (Gilmuir, Gilmore, Gilmer,
etc.), "a servant or client of Mary"; and so with the names
Giola Phadhruig(Gilpatrick, Gilfettrick, McElfetrick, etc.), Giola
Brigdhe (Gilbride), signifying special reverence for St. Patrick
or St. Bridget. The names MacGillicuddy, Magillicuddy, Mac-
Ellicott, Elliott are phonetic attempts to put into English dress
MacGiola Mhochudha, "the son of St. Mochudha's client."

Maol or mael is used somewhat like giola. Primarily it means
" bald," and hence was used of the ancient monks on account of
their tonsure. To shave the hair from the head was understood
to symbolize the complete dedication of one's self to religious
service ; and hence mavtas a prefix came to mean " disciple " or
" imitator " of some religious teacher or saint. We have Maol
Colm (Malcolm), " a disciple of St. Colm," the founder of lona ;
Maol Isa (Meiissey), "a disciple of Jesus"; Maol Mhuire (Mai-
lory), < a disciple of Mary." Malone, Moloney, Muldoon are
names formed in this way.

The colors are displayed in the surnames of most nations.
Among the Irish they originated, not more than about two cen-
turies ago, in the nicknames of the common clansmen. As
samples there are Finn (in Gaelic written fionn), which means
" white "; Duff (dubh\ " black " ; Donne, Dunne, and Dunn (donn)
" brown "; Glass (glas), " green "; Gorm (gorni), " blue "; Roe and
Rudd (ruadh\ "red"; Leigh (liath\ "gray," etc., besides the
translated forms, Whyte, Greene, Browne, etc.

The Scotch abandoned the ancient orthography of the Gaelic
about the middle of the last century. As late, however, as 1724
the Presbyterian Synod of Argyle published a psalm-book with
the ancient alphabet and orthography. But the Scotch, having
finally adopted the Roman alphabet, have differed since that time
from the Irish in the spelling of many familiar names common
even yet to Scotch and Irish. Thus the Scotch names Colqu-
houn, Farquhar, etc., are identical with the Irish forms Calla-
ghan, Farrar, etc., some ingenious person having introduced the
digraph qu as a representative of the broad Gaelic guttural. But
the guttural, in sound at least, has pretty nearly disappeared
from Gaelic surnames as we hear them pronounced nowadays.
For instance, the true form of the name Connor, or Conor, is
Conn chobkair, meaning " the war-hound of help " i.e., " the help-
ing war-hound " ; while Gallagher is Gall ckobkair, " the stranger
of help " i.e., " the helping stranger."

i886.] THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. 683

There is a class of pseudo-Gaelic names which has puzzled
some Americans anxious to trace their pedigree. Many of the
Anglo-Normans who settled in the west and south of Ireland
adopted the language, dress, manners, and customs of the Gaels,
so that they were said to have become " more Irish than the
Irish themselves " ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores. They even went
so far as to organize clans of their own, the Anglo-Norman
knight becoming the chief of the clan he organized. His clans-
men would be outlaws, or adventurers from Gaelic clans, willing
to throw in their fortunes with him. The De Burgo and Fitz-
Gerald families, which had already divided into several branches,
were the first to set the example. The De Burgos took the
name of MacWilliam, from an ancestor, William de Burgo, while
the FitzGeralds became MacMaurice, MacGibbon (or Fitz-Mau-
rice, Fitz-Gibbon) ; and all the clansmen, no matter what their
origin, assumed the common surname of the clan. Hence the
host of Bourkes, Burkes, McWilliams, Fitz-Gibbons, etc., in Ire-
land. The De Courcy family formed the MacPatrick clan, the
De Barrys became MacDavids or MacDevitts, the De Ber-
minghams became MacYoris, etc.

The ecclesiastical and classical pedantry, already referred to,
has been principally responsible for the substitution of names of
Hebrew or classical origin for the beautiful Gaelic given names.
A few samples of the old names and their queer modern sub-
stitutes or " translations " may be interesting. Alastair * has
been " translated " into the Greek name " Alexander." Aluin
(Alan), meaning " beautiful," is lost to the Irish, though still pre-
served by the Scotch. Aonghus (Angus), " the shrewd one," has
almost disappeared, or else has been replaced by " ^Eneas " !
Art, meaning " high," "haughty," " lofty," etc., has nearly gone
out of use, or has been replaced by its Welsh relative " Arthur,"
to which it is sometimes made to do duty as a nickname. Aodh,
"fire," has disappeared completely. Wherever it was once a
favorite the Teutonic name " Hugh " is found. Aine, an ancient
feminine name, has given way for the Hebrew " Hannah," or
" Anna," or, in the soaring middle-class circles, to the Greek
" Anastasia." If Aine O'Kelly were sent to a convent boarding-
school in Ireland she would most likely be set down in the
school register as " Miss Anastasia Kelly." Brian has been
" Christianized " into " Bernard " and " Barney." Calbhach,
Carroll, Cathal, Connor, and Cormac, all now masquerade as

* From ala, "a swan," and astraim, "to carry" -"a swan-bearer," in reference, perhaps,
to some singular performance of the first who was called by the name.

684 THE METAMORPHOSES OF IRISH NAMES. [Feb.,

" Charles." Conn, a suggestive name for a leader of men, signi-
fying " war-hound," has come to be treated as if it were a mere
nickname by the foolish or ill-informed descendants of those who
once wore it proudly. Nowadays an Irishman who is familiarly
called " Conn " signs his name " Cornelius," or perhaps " Con-
stantine." Diarmaid (Dermot) * has become "Jeremiah"!
Domhnall f (Donal or Donald) has been Hebraicized into " Dan-
iel." Some Irishmen whose family tradition would have called
Donat are known as Dionysius, and others as Denis. How
much grander " Dionysius Smythe " sounds than does " Donat
MacGowan " ; the second is Irish, however, and the first is non-
descript. Eoghan has been modified into the form of its Welsh
relative " Owen," or has been Hellenized into " Eugene.' Fear-
ghus (Fergus), " a wise man," is seldom met with now in Ireland,
though still flourishing in canny Scotland. Felim is now ren-
dered by "Philip," and Finnin by "Florence." Lorcan has
given place to the Latin " Laurence," and Maghamhn (Mahon),
4< rich in pastures," to " Martin." Maolmhuire (Myler), " Mary's
devotee," has been changed into the Latin " Miles " (Myles),
which means "a soldier." Niall, "a champion," has nearly dis-
appeared. Raghnaiil (Ranal, Ronald, or Reynold) is lost to the
Irish. The very ancient Celtic name Ruadhri (Rory), " the
ruddy-complexioned chief," has been abandoned for the Teutonic
" Roderick " and " Roger." Sighile (Sheela), " fairy-like," pro-
bably older than Rome, beguiles mankind as "Julia," "Judith,"
and, colloquially, as "Judy." Tadg (Teague), also very ancient,
has been "translated 5 ' into " Thaddseus," "Timothy," and
" Teddy." It is easy to understand the terror to Saxon eyes of
so magnificent a piece of orthography as Tordhalbhach (Torlach
and Turlough), " tower-like " ; but how it seems to lose its height
and dignity when it is turned into " Terence " ! The beautiful
name of Una, native and peculiar to Ireland, has been sacrificed
for the Saxon "Winifred." Nearly all the Irish "Winifreds"
belong to families or lineages where Una was once a favorite
name.

* This Homeric style of name is derived from<#, "a god," and armaid, "of arms" t'.e. t "a
god in arms."

t From domhan, " the world," and a//, " powerful."

1 8 86.] THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 685

THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE.

"When such a one as she, such is her neighbor."

As You Like It.

THE faculty of composing interesting concretes, whether in
verse or in prose, out of the discordant elements of this lower
life was bestowed by the Almighty for benign purposes. In this
lower life good and evil, their actions and results, are often so
confounded that the industrious and the honorable often seem to
fail of their reward, while the indolent and the vicious triumph
over and mock at them. In addition to the consoling hope of
immortality, in which good and evil are to be separated for ever,
God has imparted a supplemental. Next and subsidiary to the
preacher, whose office is to remind us constantly of the Last Judg-
ment, is the poet, who leads our minds, inconstant enough to
need such aids, to trustful expectation of that Judgment by cre-
ating from among the inhabitants of this present world those of
his own in which justice is administered in ways at least ap-
proximating the justice of eternity. For this purpose, less exalt-
ed, indeed, than that of the priesthood, we believe that poesy was
bestowed upon mankind. The novelist is a poet as well as the
maker of verses. In these new creations the jarring elements of
human life are so joined as to appear to harmonize in some de-
gree, or made to cease their conflict by the triumph of the good
even on this side of the grave. This is the leading, legitimate
purpose of fiction to show us a more excellent way than the
present in which we travel, and so to hold us from discourage-
ment for the irregularities and failures that we continually wit-
ness and experience.

We have made these observations prefatory to some reflec-
tions upon satire, particularly as exhibited in the works of Mr.
Thackeray.

Suggestive were the motives that impelled the first of the
satirists of Greece. What might have been done by Archilochus
of Paros but for the accidents in his earliest ambition we cannot
say, knowing so little of his youth. But it was his lot to love
the fair Neobule, daughter of Lycambes. The maid returned his
passion, and her father at first gave consent to their union, but,
having ascertained that the mother of the youth had been a
slave, withdrew it. Thereupon the lover gave vent to his disap-

686 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. [Feb.,

pointment and indignation in such verses (the first of their kind)
that not only Neobule but her sisters also hanged themselves.
Results so tragic have not often followed the scourgings of the
Parian's successors, but they sometimes have been painful and
hurtful. Let us consider briefly some of those in the productions
of him whom many regard the greatest of the novelists.

In the drolleries of Michael Angelo Titmarsh there was
a sufficiency of bitterness. The name was prophetic, and its
prophecies ran along in rapid fulfilment in the Times, the New
Monthly Magazine, and Punch. Yet nothing seriously ambitious
seemed to have been attempted in The Fat Contributor, Miss
Tickletobys Lectures, Jeames* Diary, Mrs. Perkins' Ball, The Journey
from Cornhill to Grand Cairo. The characters thus far created
had been laughed at, and some of them despised, but none were
destined to become immortal. If the artist was ever to take
more thoughtful views of men and things, it was time he had
begun, for he was now forty years old. So Michael Angelo
Titmarsh retired from public view, and his place was taken by
William Makepeace Thackeray.

Vanity Fair another prophetic name ! The wisest of man-
kind, he who had tried every form of prosperity, riches, power,
glory, love, revenge, even wisdom, had pronounced them vanity.
In vain the men-singers and the women-singers ; in vain the
trumpet of triumphant war; in vain the sweet peacefulness of the
lute, dulcimer, and harp ; in vain the soft words of concubines and
parasites ; in vain the royal diadem ; in vain all human know-
ledge. The aged king, turning his eye back upon the past and
reviewing his career, could only drivel out in impotent complaint,
" Vanitas vanitatum ! " A mournful judgment to make of human
life, yet not unfitted to one who had used its best things intetn-
perately, and who, in spite of his wisdom, in spite of his commis-
sion from Heaven to build the Temple, had turned his way
from the true God and bent his knee before Baal.

We are now to have a Vanity Fair exhibited by Mr. Thack-
eray. Well, men are fond of spectacles, even the grotesque.
Invited to this Vanity Fair, although warned that we are to see
deformities instead of excellences, we accept the invitation.
What have we here? Representatives of several estates a mar-
quis, a baronet and his family, a tradesman and his family, some
officers of the army, and a governess. We had been led to be-
lieve that they were a brave set of men, the peers and the knights
of England. But when we see two of their representatives in
the Marquis of Steyne and Sir Pitt Crawley, we are made to

1 886.] THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 687

doubt if history be not in error to assign to the ancestors of such
as these the wresting from despotic kings Magna Charta, Habeas
Corpus, and the Bill of Rights. But let these go. Yet we may
be allowed to hope that persons in our class, without ancestral
image or tradition, the necessarily self-reliant that some of these
are worth the bread they eat, the breath they draw, and the
clothes they wear ; and that the lives they lead, or try to lead,
may encourage us somewhat in efforts to walk honestly among
men and reverently before God. Then who are these Osbornes,
Sedleys, Dobbins, and Sharps? Indeed, with one exception,
they are vicious or contemptible. That exception is Dobbin.
Dobbin did have a heart, and was made awkward and unlovable.
It would not have suited the showman, who had advertised for
monstrosities, that a man who had a heart should also have a
proper figure and winsome manners. The only apparent pur-
pose for which this heart had been given was that it might be
wounded and trampled upon with levity and impunity. Behold
what a run of loves is here. Honest, clumsy Dobbin, risen from
little beginnings, gives his single love to Amelia Sedley, who
cannot endure to hear his name mentioned along with that of
George Osborne, handsome, but ignorant and a scoundrel. The
wife believed him glorious until Waterloo, when it was found
that had he not fallen in battle he would have forsaken her and
run away with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. Years afterwards, when
the widow has lost youth and beauty, and been broken by soli-
tude and privation, Dobbin, now high in fame and rank, comes
in for the poor remnant of what is left of her.

How has it been with Rebecca Sharp ? The artist tried his
hand on her. He gave the beauty, social position, other goods
to Amelia. But the things which sometimes captivate men more
than these were bestowed upon the poor, plain governess. The
very relation of such men as the Crawleys to each other made
their pursuit more shamefully eager. What a scene was there
when on the death of the old dotard's wife, reaching his withered
hand to grasp the coveted prize, he found that she, not having
foreseen this opportunity, had become the wife of his son ! Then
ensued a career which it is surprising that a most gifted man
should narrate through long years of circumstantial details. We
look on and watch how this wife manages to preserve that mid-
dle place, tormenting her husband with jealousies that do not
amount to full assurances, and avoiding the disgust of other
lovers by semblance of the chariness of her favors. We can-
not but be fascinated by a certain sort of heroism, evil as it is,

638 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. [Feb.,

and we are not too indignant when we find her at last enjoying
comparative triumph, become a snug widow, and dispensing in
charities a commendable safe part of the property so unexpect-
edly devolved upon her. Dowerless, without beauty, without
family, without heart, without honesty, she fought her way, out-
lived most of those with whom she had to do, and, so far as the
world knew, was not far from being about as respectable as any.

We have been to the show. What now are our reflections?
What higher and braver thoughts have come to our minds
when, wearied with toil and the witness of life's discordant reali-
ties, we turned aside to dream of the unreal ? What encourage-
ment have we gained for efforts at well-doing by the sight of
honest work and patient endurance rewarded ? Or what warning
have we had from the contemplation of vice and intrigue over-
taken by disaster, or at least by disappointment? Instead of
these we have found and to some extent been ashamed to find
ourselves admiring a creation that is as seductive as it is evil.
Added to this we were conscious of a loss of some portion of that
which it is most calamitous to lose. Woe to him who parts from
his trust in mankind, who does not believe that in this world
there is goodness beyond that which he has ever found in his
own being the capacity to practise !

In this book the artist and he was an eminently great artist
seemed to have endeavored to drive mankind to their own
unaided struggles, taking away from them all good examples,
and leaving them to conclude that nothing is real but folly and
perfidy. Let us read this extract, like which very many might
be made :

" Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no better satires than letters. Take
a bundle of your dear friend's ten years back how you clung to each other
before you quarrelled about the twenty-pounds legacy ! Get down the
round-hand scrawls of your son, who has broken your heart since with
selfish undutifulness ; or a parcel, breathing endless ardor and love eternal,
which were sent back by your mistress when she married the Nabob your
mistress for whom now you care no more than for Queen Elizabeth.
Vows, loves, confidences, promises, gratitude how queerly they read after
a while ! There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction
of every written document (except receipted tradesmen's bills) after a cer-
tain brief and proper interval. Those quacks and misanthropes who ad-
vertise indelible Japan ink should be made to perish along with their
wicked discoveries. The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that
faded utterly in a couple of days and left the page clean and blank, so that
you might write on it to somebody else.''

Surely the Preacher himself would have been puzzled to put
more strongly the case of vanitas vanitatum.

1 886.] THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 689

In the literature of fiction there is not to be found a picture
drawn more artistically than Rebecca Sharp. She 'was of the
sort upon whom it suited the author to exert his consummate
powers. He painted her to the life, with pretended reluctance to
evil, suspected, yet not fully known to be persuasible to consent,
demanding risk, high pay, so that the pursuit, of which, if easy, a
bold lover would weary, acquired the eagerness which must not
be allowed to abate. No woman could better understand the
trick, as sung by the shepherd in Virgil, of casting her apple and
then fleeing to the covert of willows :

" Malo me Galatea petit lasciva puella ;
Et fugit ad salices ; et se cupit ante videri.''

It is a sad commentary on the powerlessness and the hope-
lessness of a poor young woman without other gift than mere
virtue to obtain success that appears to attend upon insidious-
ness and fraud. It would have been a good sight to see the lift-
ing of such a one, even though slowly and through difficulties,
where so many thousands of poor girls do rise through toil and
patient waiting. In default of this the next best would have
been to drive her to the frustration of every dishonorable pur-
pose that had tempted her from the path of rectitude. Better
than both of these, for the highest purposes of instruction, would
have been pictures of young women who endured temptation
and outrage without expecting and without receiving reward
except such as came from the testimony of a good conscience
and of suffering for the sake of Him who ennobled suffering and
put it above successes, victories, and triumphs. For had there
not lived in such a career Agnes and Afra, Rose and Eulalia,
Lucy and Blandina ? If such as these be outside of the art of
the novelist, then surely he may hold up to our view young girls
such as Richardson presented with generous sympathy to the
public of his day. Alas ! the eves of that public were yet moist
with tears when the profligate Fielding made them laugh both at
them over whom they had wept and at themselves. It was such
a joke to imagine it possible for as poor a girl as Pamela to
marry a rich, hardened bachelor and reform him after marriage,
or for another like Clarissa to endure such trials and yet con-
tinue spotless in her virtue ! No, no ; Rebecca Sharp must be
what she was, have a better time than even Amelia Sedley, and
thus be made to exhibit that virtue is worth not even as much
as a semblance that is suspected and almost known to be false.
Satire, indeed ! Satire upon the men in highest society, for of
VOL. XLII. 44

690 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. [Feb.,

the two from this class whom he exhibited one was a heartless
profligate, the other a loathsome brute ; satire even upon mar-
riage, for the couple who were truest to each other were the
O'Dowds, whose rudeness was sufficient to make all of both
sexes feel like keeping away from marriage altogether, if this is
to be considered a fair illustration of its most honorable estate.

In Pendennis Thackeray's sarcasm, if somewhat less painful
because more playful, is yet more undistinguishing. On its ap-
pearance men of letters were disposed to regard it as a satire
upon the literary profession. The truth is that whoever reads
the book, if he be one who considers himself superior in gifts and
conditions to a rather low plane of human life, will find himself
jeered at on occasions wherein he will be most surprised to find
himself an object of reproach. Mr. Pendennis lived to become a
person of whom the author was proud that he was considered a
gentleman to be admired. When a boy he was polite, good-
looking, well cared for, of sufficient fortune and thoroughly re-
spectable family. Such advantages naturally lead us to expect
a quickly-developed, worthy manhood. Yet very soon after
first looking upon the goodly lad we are made acquainted with
some little matters which, but for remembering that he is a spe-
cial friend of the distinguished author of Vanity Fair, would lead
us to infer that the youngster has already been sold to the devil
and is destined to do faithful work for his master. He had the
misfortune, when in his seventeenth year and while absent from
home at a boarding-school, to lose his father, of whom he was
the only child. This father, though formal in his exterior, was a
devoted family man, " adored his wife, and loved and admired
his son with all his heart." To the young generally death seems
an awful event, and the death of one's father is certainly one of
the most appalling of all its forms. Even when the parent has
been harder than is consistent with such relation, surely it must
be seldom, except among the very worst specimens of boyhood,
that one feels like triumphing at the very hour and in the very
presence of such a death, and strutting amid the possessions
which it has devolved upon him. Let us see, according to the
testimony of his most intimate friend, how young Arthur be-
haved when, summoned from Gray Friars', he entered the room
where lay the corpse of him who, in his life, had " loved and ad-
mired his son with all his heart," to whom, so says this most in^
timate friend,

"Arthur had been his father's pride and glory through life, and his
name the last which John Pendennis had tried to articulate while he lay

1 886.] THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 691

with his wife's hand clasping his own cold and clammy palm, as the flick-
ering spirit went out into the darkness of death, and life and the world
passed away from him.

" As for Arthur Pendennis, after that awful shock which the sight of
his dead father must have produced on him, arid the pity and feeling which
such an event no doubt occasioned, I am not sure that in the very moment
of grief, and as he embraced his mother and tenderly condoled her, and
promised to love her for ever, there was not springing up in his breast a
feeling of secret triumph and exultation. He was the chief now, and lord.
He was Pendennis, and all around about him were his servants and hand-
maids. In the midst of the general grief and the corpse still lying above
he had leisure to conclude that he would have all holidays for the future,
that he wouldn't get up till he liked, or stand the bullying of the doctor,
and had made a hundred such day-dreams and resolves for the future.
How one's thoughts will travel, and how quickly our wishes beget them !
When he, with Laura in his hand, went into the kitchen on his way to the
dog-kennel, the fowl-houses, and his other favorite haunts, all the ser-
vants assembled there in great silence with their friends, and the laboring-
men with their wives, and Sally Potter, who went with the post-boy to
Clavering all there assembled and drinking beer on the melancholy occa-
sion rose up on his entrance, and bowed and curtsied to him. They
never used to do that last holidays, he felt at once and with indescribable
pleasure. The cook cried out, ' O Lord ! ' and whispered, ' How Master Ar-
thur do grow ! ' Thomas, the groom, in the act of drinking put down the
jug, alarmed before his master. Thomas' master felt the honor keenly.
He went through and looked at the pointers. As Flora put her nose up
to his waistcoat, and Ponto, yelling with pleasure, hurtled at his chain, Pen
patronized the dogs, and said, 'Poo Ponto! poo Flora!' in his most conde-
scending manner. And then he went and looked at Laura's hens, and at
the pigs, and at the orchard, and at the dairy. Perhaps he blushed to
think that it was only last holidays he had in a manner robbed the great
apple-tree and been scolded by the dairy-maid for taking cream."

If anything equal to this can be found in another book pur-
porting- to represent highly respectable people, imaginary or
real, we do not know where. Yet this youth grows up to be a
fine gentleman, become a favorite of the author, be an author
himself, a great author, charming the best society, marry a sweet
girl that is, sweet enough, we judge ; the same Laura, indeed,
who went tripping it along with him on that same morning, patro-
nizing the servants, and dogs, and chickens, and pigs. Why not?
What has he done that we would be above doing in the same
circumstances ? We are told over and over again, by the author,
that we need not turn away with disgust from the sight of such
things, and congratulate ourselves that we would not and could
not do them. He looks us calmly in the face and asserts that
we both could and would, and that we actually do them con-
stantly. One of us may have a rosy-cheeked, full-eyed boy, in

692 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. [Feb.,

whom he may believe to see the promise of a manhood that will
rise fully to the needs of his time. As he looks into those full
eyes he may believe he sees the filial love that is desired and
professed to be in the boy's breast, and that when himself shall
come to die that fair son, even if yet a boy, will grieve away
down in the depths of his true heart, will sometimes repair to his
father's tomb to weep there, and ever afterwards remember him
with pious, sweet regret. If we who are parents could not thus
believe, we should pity and almost feel like cursing ourselves
that God had not made us childless.

Such sarcasms, the very quintessence of bitterness, abound
throughout Thackeray's works, and we are sometimes made to
feel how insultingly they are turned from the meanest characters
and inflicted upon ourselves. He seemed to take a special plea-
sure in recounting the quarrels of married persons. Bad as
such things may be, we dare not express our disgust, because we
foresee that we are to be told, almost apace, that we are not bet-
ter nor happier than those whom we think we despise or
compassionate; that our " silly-headed " wives, when they seem
most affectionate, have least concern for us, and that all of us,
husbands and wives, are but " pairs of infinite isolations, with
some fellow-islands a little more or less near between us." Alas ! ;
there be some, too many, who thus outrage the holy estate of
matrimony, and lose or trample upon the good influences and
the pure enjoyments that it was designed to impart. But it is a
poor lesson that such persons learn when they read in a famous
book by a famous man that their own lives are but miniatures of
the world around them. They have weak incentives to amend-
ment when they are taught by such high authority that such
amendment is not only unnecessary but impossible. Human
nature wants supports and incentives from every source whence
they can be brought. Out of harmony as is this lower life, beset
with perfidies and wrong- doings of many sorts, it would be in-
tolerable if, in the absence of all real, we should be forbidden to
contemplate imaginary good examples. If these evils abound in
us and among those we know around us, we might be allowed, at
least, to hope that somewhere, beyond the pale of our poor ac-
quaintance, there are some, if only a few, among whom vulgar-
ity and lies and perfidy have no abiding-place. Such sarcasms,
therefore, even if they were just, would do harm. But they are
not just. In every society there are husbands and wives who
not only love but respect one another, and there are .boys and
girls who love and honor their parents sincerely, heartily weep

1 886.] THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 693

when they die, and feel a sense of loss that only God can repair.
Everywhere there are thousands upon thousands, of both sexes
and all conditions and all ages, among whom the appearances
and avowals of love and friendship and honor are not mockeries
and lies; and such persons become more numerous as the world
grows older and approaches the fulness of the times of God.

As Thackeray grew older his writings afforded somewhat
more comforting, at least less despairing, views of human life.
In The Newcomes Mr. Arthur Pendennis seemed to have mode-
rated considerably since the day when he strutted about his
possessions close to the yet unfilled grave of his father. Yet in
this most studied and consummate story and in Henry Esmond
there are flings against society in general which show that, if the
bitterness was subdued, the lack of any confidence yet remained.
The latter work, with all its splendid writing and its several in-
stances of profound feeling, is a great, broad satire on life. Our
hearts had been made sick in Vanity Fair by the contest of a
father and his son for the love of the same woman, and we had
strengthened ourselves, as well as we could, by reflections that
such hideous monstrosities were to be seen only in the ruder of
the sexes ; but in Henry Esmond this sickness returns and seems
destined to come nigh unto death when we see a young man,
who has been jilted by the girl of his choice, seeking and finding
consolation in the arms of that girl's mother ! O shade of Sir
Pitt Cra.wley ! thou wast defeated in that unnatural strife with
thy son for the possession of Rebecca Sharp ; but it might have
subtracted somewhat from the anguish and the shame of defeat
hadst thou foreseen that, in such another struggle, age in its turn
would triumph, the young daughter fall down, and the mother
rise upon her ruin ! We may have thought it had been enough
for us to be made to contemplate the horrible history of the
family of Laius of Thebes a history made in obedience to the
decrees of Fate, and which, though in a barbaric age, filled man-
kind with consternation, drove Jocasta to suicide, and OEdipus
to tear out his eyes with his own hands. Yet now in Christian
times, in high society, we are made to look upon careers not
very far less revolting, entered upon and run deliberately, and not
only see the runners not ashamed, but be forbidden to feel, or at
least to express, shame for ourselves for being in such presence.

If what we have said of the purpose of fiction be just, that it
was to aid in consoling for the want of harmony and the wrong-
doings in this life, then we must conclude that Mr. Thackeray,
with all his pre-eminent talents, if he did not pervert and dis-

694 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. [Feb.,

honor his art, at least came short of its noblest behests. From
the contemplation of his masterpieces we turn with sadder in-
stead of more cheerful views of life, with less instead of more
cordial chanty for mankind, with diminished instead of enhanced
confidence in men and hope for ourselves, with lowered instead
of exalted aspirations for the good. In that series of powerful
creations by Hogarth, The Harlot's Progress, we are led along in
natural, inevitable gradation from little Kate, innocent as a flower
in her native Yorkshire, alighting from the old wagon at the
" Bell Inn " in Cheapside, to that last scene of Dolours and Death in
the garret of Drury Lane, and we turn away shuddering for the
sure end of vicious living. A mournful lesson, but not without
its benefits. But what if the artist had retired her into decent
widowhood, or many, many times worse if he had accosted us
at the door of his studio, as, exhausted with horror and pity, we
were making our way out, and, grinning the while at our excited
state, charged us, and not only us but all the world else, with
being no better than his picture, and declared that our escape
thus far from a fate unhappy as that of her whom he named " the
creature of the pest-pit and perdition " was due, and our possible
escape from it hereafter would be due, either to the want of suffi-
cient temptation or the absence of detection? Alas! that we
should be allowed to look upon no good examples, real or imagi-
nary, and even be discouraged from making them of ourselves.
If Mr. Thackeray in his work had motives which were meant to
be generous, we can conceive of none other than that he believed
the only way possible to amend mankind was to render every-
body contemptible in the eyes of everybody else and his own
besides. The latter, indeed, is in harmony with the teachings
of the church, which always commends to its children to be
modest, even lowly, in mind. But the former is a dangerous
method of instruction. It is, indeed, an evil disease to which the
remedy to be applied is worse than itself. Nothing is more salu-
tary than humility, but for its best uses it must be in the heart
of him who " in the midst of reproaches remaineth in great
peace." " Never think that thou hast made any progress until
thou feel that thou art inferior to all." In order to avail of this
counsel of Thomas a Kempis one must have set before him a
standard of excellence of some sort, be made to believe that out-
side of himself there is good, and that it is attainable by per-
sistent endeavor. Otherwise his humility must turn back upon,
rend, and drive him to despair of all conditions for the human
heart the most deplorable.

1 886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 695

A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA.

PART II.

THE next monastery which claimed our attention was that of
Chremsminster. And we would advise any one intending to visit
it from Linz rather to go the long journey to it by carriage
than by the most tedious of trains one which stops, and stops
long, at every station of its route. We unfortunately elected to
follow the more economical course, and started from Linz by rail
at. ten minutes before seven, to arrive at the station for Chrems-
minster at nine. The latter part of the journey is interesting
as affording distant glimpses of the mountains of the Salzkammer-
gut. On nearing Chrems the huge monastery, which, perched
on a lofty hill, overhangs that little town, has a very impressive
appearance, and an enormous and very lofty tower (much like
representations of the Tower of Babel) is a singular adjunct to its
more ecclesiastical-looking towers and cupolas. It is entirely
an eighteenth-century building.

Being ignorant of our exact route, we rejoiced to overtake
a traveller by our train who, from the black scapular over his
cassock, we took to be also on his road to the abbey. We found
that he was indeed a member of the fraternity, who was returning
home after serving for some years in one of the parishes belong-
ing to the abbey. Through his courtesy and latch-key we were
enabled at once to scale the hillside through garden-paths and
get at once to the abbot's quarters, avoiding what would else
have been a long walk round the base of the hill and a slow
ascent to its principal entrance. We sent in our cards and let-
ters, waiting meanwhile in an anteroom in the company of a vene-
rable janitor. Very soon the abbot, Herr Leonard Achleitner,
came out from his apartments, into which he invited us, where,
seated on a handsome crimson velvet sofa, we began a conversa-
tion which, to our regret, we found we were compelled to carry
on in German as best we might. He then showed us his most
comfortable study, and also the room in which the monks say (in
the evening) their Matins and Lauds of the next day, instead
of saying it in the church choir. He then handed us over to
the charge of an amiable and healthy-looking young monk by
name Columban Schiesflingstrasse with an injunction to show

696 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Feb.,

us everything worth seeing. He also invited us to sleep at the
monastery (an invitation we were reluctantly obliged to decline),
and insisted on our dining with the community, regretting that
an urgent call from home necessitated his leaving us to the hos-
pitable care of the prior.

Our first visit was to the library, which, we were told, could
boast of eighty thousand volumes. The works devoted to the
different natural sciences, however, were separate and placed in
the vicinity of the school of the professor of each such science
for Chremsminster is a vast educational establishment. We were
shown many beautiful manuscripts and various curious works,
one being a mediaeval book of the "black art," and another
a treatise on astrology, both profusely illustrated. We then
walked through the spacious " royal apartments," which are not,
however, so sumptuous as those of St. Florian. A picture-gal-
lery extending through several rooms, a room full of engravings
and others with old glass, china, objects of " vertu," next claimed
our attention. We then descended to the church to hear Sext and
None. The abbey church is similar to that of St. Florian in style,
but not so fine. The choir, too, is placed up in a western gal-
lery. The office was only recited in monotone, and we were told
that no High Mass was sung even on Sundays, but on the great
festivals'only. About one hundred monks belong to the abbey,
but only twenty -five were in residence at the time of our visit.
Many are permanently absent, serving the twenty-five livings
which are in the abbot's gift, but others were away for their
vacation. A certain number act as professors to the three hun-
dred students who are educated in the abbey, the great majority
of whom are not destined for the priesthood. The age of the
students varies from nine to twenty-two years, but all these lads
were away for their holidays at the time of our visit. The
monks have no hood ; their scapular has three buttons at the top
in front, and they wear trousers under their black cassock. Only
on great days do they wear a cowl in choir, and this cowl has a
hood, which is, however, never worn on the head. Of course
they have not the large monastic tonsure.

The treasury of the church is rich in relics, in gold and silver
and jewelled mitres, and in embroidered vestments some of the
latter having been given by the Empress Maria Theresa. There
is, however, hardly anything mediaeval except a very large chalice
from which Holy Communion, under the form of wine, was at
one time given to the laity.

Twelve o'clock having struck, we were conducted to the re-

i886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 697

factory, where the prior, Herr Sigismund Fellocker (a devoted
mineralogist), placed us on his right. A long monastic grace was
said, but there was no reading during the meal, but the busy
hum of cheerful conversation. We sat at a " high table," at right
angles to which two other tables extended (near either wall of
the refectory) opposite its either end.

Being Friday, our fare consisted of maigre soup, omelettes,
sauerkraut, very excellent apple turnovers, and crayfish. Each
monk had before him a small decanter of white wine made at one
of their houses in lower Austria, for at Chrems the vine will not
ripen thoroughly.

At the conclusion of dinner the prior and most of the monks
retired, but the sub-prior invited us, with another guest, our
young monastic guide, and two other monks, to sit again and
taste a better vintage. Other wine was brought, both white and
red, and then coffee ; and droll stories and clerical and political
riddles went round. Much, however, yet remained to see, and
with cordial adieus to the others we left with Brother Columban
for further explorations.

Passing through the pleasant gardens, with their greenhouses
and botanical objects of interest, we next ascended the great,
Babel-like tower of the observatory. Each story of it is devoted
to a different study, that of astronomy being at the summit. As
we ascended we surveyed collections of fossils, of minerals, of
chemical and physical apparatus, of anatomical preparations, and
of zoological specimens. A spacious staircase ascends the centre
of the tower and along its walls, and elsewhere in the tower
were some hundreds of portraits in oil of former students, each
in his powdered wig. They were all anterior to 1789. Each
portrait was numbered, but in the troubles of the revolutionary
wars the list was unfortunately lost, and now no one knew any-
thing about the history, or even the name, of any one youth thus
represented. It seemed to us a most sad sight, that crowd of
pleasant, youthful faces gazing at us, but all utterly unknown.
It was a sort of vision of the forgotten dead.

We were next taken to a very charming structure reminding
us, on a small scale, of the Campo Santo at Pisa. It was a
building forming a parallelogram, perhaps five times as long as
broad, surrounded internally by a sort of cloister with pillars and
open, elegant arches on the side opposite the outer wall. The
elongated opposite sides of this surrounding cloister were con-
nected by five or six transverse passages, each bordered on either
side by other similar pillars and open arches supporting a solid

698 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Feb.,

roof. Each rectangular space thus surrounded by arcaded,
cloister-like walls is a fish-pond, wherein are preserved extraor-
dinarily fine trout and gigantic carp, so that the abbey is thus
well supplied, seeing that no more abstinence is observed than is
incumbent on all Austrian Catholics. The outer walls of the
external cloister were everywhere hung with deer's heads and
antlers, all of which had, we were told, been shot by members
of the community, who go out on hunting excursions into their
own forests, which are well stocked with deer and roebuck, as
well as with pheasants and partridges. The sub-prior told us he
had been a keen sportsman in the earlier days of his religious
life. The abbey possesses much land, which is all cultivated by
hired labor, and their forests could be seen from the abbey win-
dows ascending the sides of some distant mountains. To be-
come a monk in this monastery it is neither necessary to have
any fortune nor to be of noble birth. If, however, the applicant
possesses money it must be added to the common stock on his
reception. The novitiate lasts a year, and the young monk, after
his profession, remains morally free to leave for four years lon-
ger. Before 1848 the arm of the law would have brought back
to the monastery by force any monk who left after such proba-
tion. Now, however, there is no secular compulsion.

Having thus hastily surveyed what the abbey had to show,
we wished to leave ; but the rain began to descend in torrents,
and we dreaded the consequences of a tedious railway journey
back endured with wet clothes and wet they must have been
after traversing the abbey quadrangles and the road to the sta-
tion in such a downpour ! Accordingly we gratefully accepted
Brother Columban's kind invitation to his cell, where for an hour
he amused us by playing very cleverly a succession of pleasing
airs upon the zithern. He shares his cell with another young
monk. Older monks have each a room to themselves. The
professor-monks have each two rooms, the prior has three rooms,
and the abbot a suite of handsome apartments.

The rain having now ceased, our young friend accompanied
us down the short road through the garden, and bade us a kind
adieu at the same postern by which we made our entrance, and
we crept back by our snail-train to our quarters at the Erzherz-
berghof Karl at Linz.

The* following morning Saturday, August 22 we started to
visit the renowned Benedictine monastery of Molk, which no
traveller along the Danube can have failed to notice. It is
reached in four hours by steamer from Linz, which place we left

1 886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 699

at half-past seven, breakfasting on board our very comfortable
boat. This part of the river is less picturesque generally than
the portion between Passau and Linz, but it is more busy, and
below Grein the mountains advance on the river and form a
beautiful landscape, and in this vicinity the steamer shoots down
a rapid with somewhat startling velocity, the passengers being
requested to keep their seats, that the steersman may have an
unimpeded view of what is before him.

The majestic monastery of Molk with its lofty dome stands
out nobly on a height of the Danube's southern shore. It is
a mile from the landing-place to the abbey, which is reached
mainly by a charming walk through woods skirting the Danube.
Winding round the base of the hill on which the abbey stands,
we passed through the main street of the small town of Molk
and ascended a steep road to the great entrance to the monas-
tery, a guide carrying our hand-bags (for we meant, if possible, to
sleep at the abbey) to the abbot's quarters, called the Prelatura.
To reach it we ascended a noble staircase, at the summit of which
was an enormously long corridor in which were full-length
paintings of all the heads of the house of Hapsburg, from long
anterior to the first imperial Rudolph down to the living Aus-
trian kaiser, Francis Joseph ; plenty of space remaining, however,
unoccupied to hold the effigies of many future kaisers.

Opposite the top of this staircase was the entrance to the
abbot's rooms ; he was not, however, within them at our arrival,
but with the rest of the community at dinner. After waiting a
short time the monks came forth, and amongst them a very ge-
nial old gentleman, whom we found to be the prior, who came to-
wards us with an air of cordial amiability, and, having glanced at
our letters, led us towards the abbot, who was by this time ad-
vancing between two religious (who seemed in attendance), with
his gold chain and cross, and wearing a low, beaver, chimney-pot
hat. He asked us our business with a certain brusqueness, but he
soon afterwards put us at our ease, though it was easy to see
we had to do with no " lord " by courtesy, but with the actual
owner of a wide-spreading domain. He kindly consigned us to
the care of the prior, Herr Friedrich Heilmann, for dinner, and
sent word to the librarian to receive us, and went his way. We
entered a long, low, ordinary room which the religious had just
vacated. This was not their regular refectory, but a temporary
dining-room, used while the greater number of the monks were
away for their vacation. Here servants quickly brought us soup,
boiled beef, roast lamb, and salad, with good white wine, followed

7oo A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Feb.,

by excellent coffee. The hospitable prior meanwhile sat by us and
talked of the good sport which their forests afforded sport in
which he no longer took part, having been an inmate of the ab-
bey for more than forty years.

Our brief repast concluded, we visited first the refectory
a magnificent apartment, fit for a palace ; its ceiling elaborately
painted, and its walls adorned with pictures placed between great
gilded caryatides. Passing out through a glazed door, we entered
a spacious balcony whence could be obtained a fine view of the
Danube, and the spots where the first Napoleon had planted his
battalions were pointed out to us. On the other side of this gal-
lery is the library, and here we met advancing to greet us the
venerable librarian, Herr Vincenz Staufer, to whose care the
prior for a time transferred us, inviting us to go to his room,
when he would show us more and take us to our lodgings for
the night. The library is a hall fully as magnificent as the re-
fectory, if not more so, and rich with color and gilding. Here-
in and in certain adjacent apartments are, we were told, sixty
thousand volumes of printed books with four thousand volumes
of manuscripts. Father Staufer was very busy making a new
catalogue, that of the manuscripts being already completed. He
eagerly showed us some of his greatest treasures, including the
original chronicle of the abbey, begun in the twelfth century,
with other manuscripts of much greater antiquity, and mediaeval
copies of Horace and Virgil ; also a copy of the first German
printed Bible, and an account of the discovery of America done
only two years after that great act of Columbus.

Four years previously this library and its librarian had both
had a narrow escape from more or less serious injury, as, while
he was conversing with a visitor in the principal apartment, an
adjacent part of the library was struck by lightning and much
of it overthrown. We rejoiced to find in our kind guide an en-
thusiastic botanist, and in his own two comfortable rooms we
hunted out, with his help, the names of various plants which had
struck us by their beauty and novelty. He then conducted us
to the prior's own rooms, five in number, and very comfortably
furnished. Here we rested a little and then proceeded, under
the prior's guidance, to visit other parts of the abbey. Amongst
these were the Imperial apartments, which are naturally noble
and spacious, but not so magnificent as those we had seen at St.
Florian.

We were then somewhat startled to meet in one of the corri-
dors in the penetralia of the monastery a handsome young lady

i886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 701

walking with a young monk. On nearing them, however, it was
evident it was a brother with his sister, who very respect-
fully kissed the prior's hand. We then found that this young
monk, just ordained, was to sing his first Mass to-morrow, on
which account his nearest relatives his sister and his aunt had
come to be present on the great occasion. A first Mass is made
a great deal of in these monasteries, and the rare ceremony of
a " grand High Mass " was to be celebrated on the occasion.

The abbey church is of the same style as that of St. Florian,
and is very handsome of its kind, with a fine dome and a profu-
sion of marble and gilding. In it are the tombs and monuments
of Leopold I., Margrave of Austria (the founder), and five of his
successors.

We were now conducted to our own rooms to rest. These
were comfortably furnished with spring-beds and all needful ap-
pliances, but with no extravagance. We were soon roused from
our siesta by a friendly visit from the abbot, who came to invite
us to walk with him in his garden and partake of a slight refec-
tion, corresponding to our "afternoon tea." In the pleasure-
grounds were nice walks, one overlooking the Danube and with
a distant view of the mountains of the Semmering pass. After a
short stroll we repaired to a sort of spacious summer-house,
decorated within with figures of the inhabitants (animal and
vegetable) of the four quarters of the globe paintings which
were remarkably fresh, considering that they were done one hun-
dred and thirty years ago. There was one principal table, fur-
nished with ornamented napkins, which were wanting at the
other tables. The " afternoon tea " we found consisted of most
excellent beer, dishes of cold veal, ham and tongue in small slices,
with salad and cheese. The abbot, in his beaver hat, headed the
table, and the prior sat at the bottom ; besides these were the
librarian, one other monk, the young monk freshly ordained, his
sister and aunt, a secular priest who had come to preach on to-
morrow's festival, and a religious from Chremsminster. Other
monks and. guests sat at the other tables, at one or two of which
cards were being played for trifling stakes, and smoking was
general, the excellent and genial prior appearing much to relish
a capacious pipe. The rest of the afternoon was passed in fur-
ther explorations and friendly chat till eight, the hour for supper.
This meal was partaken of by the monks generally in the rather
small room wherein they had dined ; but the guests, who had sat,
as just mentioned, with the abbot in his summer-house, were all
invited to the large and stately refectory, where we were all

7O2 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Feb.,

hospitably entertained, the great hall being illuminated with
candles. The supper consisted of soup, veal, souffle*, and roast
chicken. At first a wine was served made of several vintages
mixed, but afterwards came a choice wine of one vintage. Sup-
per being concluded, we walked together to the Prelatura,
whence the abbot, the newly-ordained priest, and one or two
more had the courtesy to accompany us all to our rooms, includ-
ing the ladies, who were lodged in apartments very near our
own.

The next morning (Sunday) breakfast was brought to our
rooms at seven o'clock coffee, milk and bread, and a liberal
supply of the excellent, home-made butter. The High Mass was
to begin, we understood, at eight o'clock, and we took our place
early at a convenient window of the triforium, which is divided
out into a number of rooms like private boxes, each with a glazed
window looking into the church. The church soon filled with
people, to whom great liberty was allowed of streaming through
the abbey corridors in various directions. Punctually enough
the clergy entered the sanctuary, the monks wearing, not cowls,
but white cottas over their ordinary habit. They came down
from the sanctuary and sat on benches opposite the pulpit, which
was occupied with the clerical guest we had met the day before,
and who, with much earnestness, volubility, and apparent elo-
quence, declaimed for a whole hour. At nine the clergy re-
turned to the sanctuary and soon the Mass began. The abbot
took no part in it beyond sitting in his stall. The young priest
was attended by an assistant priest in a cope in addition to the
deacon and subdeacon. He sat on the abbot's throne at Mass,
and was treated much as if abbot for the day. All the servers
and choir-boys had garlands of flowers twined round one arm, and
there were garlands round the processional candles and cross.
The young priest's aunt and sister were accommodated with
seats in the monks' stalls. The church was pretty full, all its
benches being occupied. The music was florid and was not
sung in the choir, but there was a band and a set of male and fe-
male singers in the western organ-gallery. No introit, gradual,
offertory, or communion was sung, nor did the congregation
take any apparent notice of the Et incarnatus est in the Credo,
but they had rather the air of sympathetic spectators of the im-
posing ceremony.

We were obliged to take a hasty adieu of the abbot, that we
might catch the train which was to take us to St. Polten in time
to visit the monastery of Gottweib the same day. We left with

i886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 703

regret after a very agreeable stay, and with pleasant remem-
brances of the good abbot, librarian, and prior, all of whom had
kindly invited us to come see them again.

A short journey brought us to St. Polten, where we put up at
the Kaiserin Elisabet, fortunately finding accommodation, for
which a week later we should have looked in vain, as grand mili-
tary manoeuvres were then to take place and thirty thousand
troops to be inspected by an archduke. Already troops were
entering, and our hotel was nearly filled with officers. At first
we feared that it would be impossible for us to make the journey
to Gottweib that day, as it seemed that only a carriage with one
horse, called an einspanner, could be obtained one of those one-
sided, uncomfortable-looking vehicles (so common in Austria)
which have a carriage-pole with no horse on one side of it. The
prospect of extra drinkgeld, however, led a zealous porter to
obtain for us an open carriage with a good pair of horses, the
coachman of which engaged to take us to the monastery of Gott-
weib and back for six florins and a half. For the first three-quar-
ters of the journey the way was uninteresting, save for the
batches of pilgrims, each headed by a large crucifix borne aloft,
which were successively passed ; the little pious pictures, for the
most part artistically distressing, which lined the road at fre-
quent intervals (and before one or two of which we saw people
kneeling in prayer), and a large statue of the so popular St. John
Nepomuk. For several miles the road was bordered with dam-
son-trees richly laden with their purple fruit. At the com-
mencement of 'the last quarter of our journey we entered a defile
in the wooded mountains, and we rose gradually to a considerable
elevation, whence much of the course of the Danube was visible.
The object of our journey also stood out very picturesquely at
the summit of a very lofty hill, and the special road to it, diverg-
ing from the highroad between St. Polten and Mautern, was ex-
ceedingly steep, forcing the horses to frequent halts. The town
of Mautern was plainly visible, and visitors coming to Gottweib,
elsewhere than from Molk, would do well to land there and take
the carriage for a short drive to the monastery. The steep last
part of the road was bordered on one side with large, painted
" stations of the cross," but these were so dilapidated that the
subjects could be made out only with great difficulty. We drove
into the great courtyard of the abbey and found that all the com-
munity were at office in the church, which we at once visited
It is much smaller than those of the abbeys previously visited,
and more ancient. In the nave, in spite of stucco rococo orna-

704 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Feb.,

ments, there are plain signs of its original romanesque style, and
the chancel is pointed. The latter, in which is the choir, is much
raised, many steps, centrally placed, leading up to it, and having
on each side of them an opening leading down into a light and
rather lofty crypt. Therein is a modern memorial tomb of the
founder, Altmann, Bishop of Passau, placed, with very bad taste,
on the spot where an altar had been and should still be.

All the altars of this church faced the east. Its organ and
pulpit were gorgeous with a profusion of gilding. In the nave
of the church there were pews as well as open benches.

After the recitation of Vespers and Compline the Litany of
the Saints and many prayers were said in German, after which
benediction was given with the ciborium during the singing of
hymns in German no incense or cope being used.

Service over, we were conducted to the abbot, Herr Rudolph
Gusonbauer, whom we found in his nice suite of well-furnished
apartments. At first he was somewhat disturbed at our advent,
being, as he told us, much occupied ; but when he found we but
intended to make an afternoon call he was all graciousness, and
most kindly insisted on himself showing us the library and its prin-
cipal treasures. He told us that it contained 62,600 volumes, where-
of 1,400 were manuscripts and no less than 1,200 books printed
before the year A.D. 1500. Amongst the manuscripts was one
which had been written in the abbey seven hundred years ago,
on the finest parchment, in such small letters that it made ordi-
nary eyes ache to read it. Yet it was most beautifully written.
Another manuscript was of the sixth century, and there were
others anterior to the foundation of the monastery, which is now
a thousand years old. One very valuable manuscript was a his-
tory of the abbey Chronicon Gottricense. Amongst the printed
books was one of a date anterior to the introduction of type, so
that each page of it was an entire woodcut. I spoke to the ab-
bot of the visit of Dr. Dibdin to the monastery sixty-seven years
ago, and he showed me the portrait of the amiable man who was
then its superior (Abbot Altmann), and who survived till the year
1854, and is now buried in the abbey church.

We then visited the Imperial apartments, to which a truly
royal staircase leads. The rooms were much finer than those
of Molk, and Napoleon I. lodged in them when on his road to
Vienna. From their windows magnificent views are to be ob-
tained ; and, indeed, there are fine views all round the abbey, and
charming wooded scenery to the south that is, away from the
Danube.

1 886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 705

In this abbey there were but fifty monks and two novices,
the number of its inmates having diminished during the last half-
century, owing to its having ceased to be the episcopal seminary
and to its having severed its former connection with a certain
convent in Hungary.

Declining kindly-proffered hospitality for the night, we drove
rapidly back to St. Polten in time to see something of it before
retiring to rest.

There is in that city a convent of English nuns with a sin-
gularly ornate exterior with life-sized figures of saints. The old
Jesuit house is now a barrack. We visited the Franciscan con-
vent, which contains but half a dozen fathers Conventuals. It
was formerly a Carmelite convent, as the altars of its church
prove; but the Emperor Joseph II. transferred the Franciscans
to it and removed the Carmelites.

On the morning of the next day the 24th of August, St. Bar-
tholomew's we entered the small cathedral by eight o'clock, and
found six canons in their stalls just finishing office. Then began
a very peculiar High (?) Mass, which the canons did not remain
to attend, but disappeared one by one through a side-door behind
each row of stalls. There was a fairly numerous congregation
almost half of it composed of men in the benches or open pews
of the nave. There was no deacon or subdeacon, and only two
servers, in their own every-day dress. For music there was the
organ and one male singer in the organ-gallery. No introit, of-
fertory, or communion was sung ; only one of each of the three
sets of petitions of the " Kyrie," only four fragments of the " Glc-
ria " ; of the " Credo " the first sentence, the Et incarnatus est, and
the last sentence were sung, and only one of the three petitions
of the " Agnus Dei." Altogether it was a most slovenly perform-
ance, and yet the church has not here been plundered as else-
where in Europe !

We hastened back by rail to Linz and thence to Gmiinden,
where we took up our quarters at the quiet and comfortable
Belle Vue Hotel, in rooms the windows of which afforded a
charming prospect of the lovely Traun See.

Gmiinden is full of charms for the ordinary visitor, and es-
pecially for the lover of nature. It is a great resort of the great
ones of the earth, and kings and princes have their pleasure-
houses around its lovely lake. The Princess of Wales was staying
in that of the Duke of Cumberland, and the English royal livery
might be seen with the carriage of the Queen-Dowager of Han-
VOL. XLII. 45

;o6 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Feb.,

over. Its mundane attractions, however, are set forth in all the
guide-books, while few matters of Catholic interest came under
our notice ; and the same must be said of our next halting stage
the gay and charming Austrian watering-place, embowered in
lovely mountain scenery, Ischl. Returning, however, in the
twilight from a long walk (on the evening before quitting Gmiin-
den) by the footpath which skirts the eastern shore of the
Traun See, we were struck by hearing, as we passed cottage
after cottage, the voices of those within saying their evening
prayers. At Ischl the parish church was built by the Em-
press Maria Theresa. It is lined throughout with rather good
modern paintings, while comfortable benches or pews occupy
almost all its area. The charm of this town is the ease with
which the glitter of a gay and fashionable throng can be
exchanged for secluded walks in far-stretching pine woods,
which we found richly carpeted with a charming little blue
cyclamen.

The peasants hereabouts very often have their knees naked,
an interval being left between the breeches and gaiters. This,
like the custom of wearing a kilt in the Highlands, may be due to
a wish to avoid the inconvenience, in such a mountain region, of
wearing a garment which, like trousers, must exercise a drag-
ging action on the knee.

After a very brief sojourn at Ischl we left it for that city we
had so long looked forward with especial interest to seeing
namely, Salzburg.

We started at noon by the route passing by Steinach and
Bischofshofen junctions. The first part of the journey led by
the beautiful lake of Hallstadt, which can be seen quite well from
the railway, and is of a wilder and more savage beauty than the
Traun See. As we neared the first junction we gradually ap-
proached the gigantic and precipitous " Grimming Mountain,"
which is 7,697 feet high, from which we again retreated as we went
from Steinach to our second junction. As we receded, however,
he seemed to tower more and more, so as to give rise to the feel
ing that we should never, as it were, get out of the reach of his
eye ; for his top, which every now and again became hidden by
much lower but much nearer hills, rose again and again above
them as we receded further. As we approached Bischofshofen
the valley increased greatly in beauty and the foreground as-
sumed much of an English character. After changing at the
last-named station we entered a most magnificent defile of preci-

i886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 707

pitous and fantastic limestone mountains, which continued almost
to our destination. We reached Salzburg a little after six o'clock
and put up at the H6tel de 1'Europe a most comfortable house,
but at an inconvenient distance from the city. On Sunday, Au-
gust 30, we paid our first visit to the cathedral to hear High
Mass in that church of which Mozart was so long kapellmeister.
The church was to us impressive from its simplicity, its quiet
color and small amount of gilding contrasting strongly with
some of the over-gorgeous churches we had been visiting. It is
an Italian building with a central dome. A nave is provided
with commodious benches, which were well filled for the High
Mass, the music of which was florid but exceedingly fine. A
member of the chapter sang Mass with mitre and crosier, and
there were four clergy in dalmatics, with an assistant priest in a
cope. Five canons assisted in their stalls, or rather on benches
which take the place of stalls.

In the afternoon, however, Vespers and Compline were mum-
bled inaudibly in a monotone by seven canons and some assis-
tants, after which followed exposition with German prayers.

Close to the cathedral is the venerable Benedictine abbey of
St. Peter and also the Franciscan convent (of Observantine Friars),
the jchurch of which is most curious and interesting. Its doors
are quite romanesque, and so are parts of the nave-aisles, while
other parts are early pointed. The chancel is extremely high,
very much more lofty, indeed, than the nave, and in a late flam-
boyant style with a complexly groined roof supported by five
enormously high, round columns without capitals ; and the con-
trast between the excessive length of these columns and the
shortness of those of the nave is such as we have never elsewhere
seen. So far there were specimens of very different mediaeval
styles ; but the eastern and western parts of the church are over-
laid with very late renaissance stucco-work, with unicorns and
other heraldic emblems, while the triforium of the chancel has
on one side Louis XV. windows looking down into the church.
Thus we have here a most interesting example of a church which
has gone on from very ancient times to the present day, always
introducing the new fashions which successively came into vogue,
however bad, and never attempting anything in the shape of re-
storation. As to its internal modern furniture, it is bedizened
with frightful rubbish of all kinds a great contrast to the re-
freshing simplicity of the adjoining cathedral, the only ornaments
within which open to criticism are the monuments of its de-

;o8 A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. [Feb.,

ceased prince-bishops. There are ten of these in the chancel and
transepts. Each is a flat monument (fixed against the wall), form-
ing- a marble frame to an oil-painting of the deceased prelate.
These ten pictures represent ten archbishops, each in a scarlet*
cassock, wig, and lace rochet, kneeling with elbows on a prie-
dieu, with prayer-book in hand, at which he does not look, but
at the spectator ! The marble frame has the usual complement
of eighteenth-century ornaments naked, crying boy-cherubs,
Death's heads and cross-bones, Time's scythe and hour-glass,
bats' wings, mitres, crosiers, and sceptres.

The Abbey of St. Peter is the real forts et origo of the whole
place. From it sprang bishops, cathedral, city, and principality.
We found that it contained more fragments of antiquity than any
other of the monasteries we had previously visited, its outer
door leading into a cloister with romanesque pillars and arches,
and entirely paved with ancient sepulchral monuments. Thus
far we saw at our first visit ; but neither the abbot nor prior being
within, we postponed till the following day our examination of
the more interesting and ancient foundation. On our return to
our hotel we found that the clouds and fog which had en-
shrouded the country round Salzburg since our arrival had
lifted, and we had our first glimpse of its environs. The near
hills, covered with green fields and trees, rose on either side to a
considerable elevation, while behind them lofty mountains tow-
ered, tier upon tier, to great altitudes with most irregular and pic-
turesque outlines.

On the following day we once more bent our steps to St.
Peter's Abbey, calling on the way to see two other Salzburg
churches. One of these was the church of the Immaculate Con-
ception a rather plain church, standing north and south, and
built in the year 1708. On the gospel side of the interior there
was a most singular wooden image of the Blessed Virgin Mary
seated in a chair, with a blue mantle over a tunic, with a lace
fabric over the knees. The other church was that of St. Cajetan,
a round structure of no special interest, though leading out from
the gospel side of the porch was a passage to another chapel, in
the middle of which is a Santa Scala, and beside it a repulsive
Ecce Homo behind an iron grating.

We were very kindly received at St. Peter's by a worthy Fa-
'ther Anselm and the venerable prior, the former of whom took us

* They had all the right to wear scarlet like cardinals.

1 886.] A TOUR IN CATHOLIC TEUTONIA. 709

through the cemetery, with its many interesting monuments and
very ancient catacombs and cave oratories, which are duly de-
scribed in the guide books. This excellent religious was full of
regret at the sad fate which overtook their ancient romanesque
abbey church in 1774. Up to that date it had retained its ancient
character unchanged. The whole interior was decorated with
early frescoes ; the choir was in the chancel, enclosed behind a
wooden rood-screen still bearing its rood aloft. In that fatal year
the community determined to decorate their church in the fashion
of their day. The frescoes were obliterated, and even the lines of
architecture disguised as far as possible by the superposition of
stucco ornaments. The rood-screen and rood were got rid of,
and the choir moved up into a room constructed over the north
aisle with Louis XV. windows looking into the church.

In the church treasure-house we were shown, amongst other
things, a variety of abbatial ornaments. There was a most
beautiful crosier of the fourteenth century, another the shaft of
which consisted of the tusk of a narwhal, and an extremely an-
cient one with an ivory top shaped like the handle of a crotched
walking-stick. There were various late crosiers and mitres of
the usual frightful shape, but some elegant mediaeval ones.
There were also two uncut Gothic chasubles ; and I was much
interested to hear the monks express their admiration for them,
and their certain conviction that sooner or later they must come
into general use in place of the undignified ones which, without
authority, had crept into general use in careless and corrupt times
of atrociously bad taste.

The abbey contains a valuable geological gallery and a collec-
tion of the fishes, birds, and beasts of the principality, amongst the
latter being preserved the stuffed skin of the last of their bears.

Having been invited to join the community dinner, we entered
the refectory, where the abbot met us with cordial greetings.
He repeated very impressively his parts of the monastic grace,
after which he, with twelve monks, five novices, and three guests,
sat down to meat, during the first part of which there was read-
ing from the refectory pulpit. The meal was of the usual simple
but sufficient character, and the wine (which came from their
vineyard at Stein, near Vienna) was most excellent and justified
its well-known reputation.

We were told that the full number of religious of St. Peter's
was fifty, and that they have but six parishes to serve, but that,
nevertheless, the house was quite sufficiently wealthy.

ISLAM. [Feb.,

Certainly the abbot's quarters, to which he kindly invited us
after the repast, had an air of prosperity. They consisted of some
six or seven charming rooms, with an oratory, all very elegantly
furnished, and quite sufficiently so for the use of any secular no-
bleman. Here were very kindly brought for our inspection some
of the bibliographical treasures from their library of sixty thou-
sand volumes. Amongst them was a manuscript "book of life"
of great antiquity. It contained a list of benefactors, with their
anniversaries, amongst which figured the names of the early Car-
lovingian kings.

On leaving St. Peter's we terminated our series of monastic
visits, which had afforded us so much pleasure and interest and
no little edification. We knew that these wealthy and ancient
abbeys were not, and did not profess to be, houses of " strict ob-
servance " ; but in all we met with abundant evidence of a sincere
and virile piety and much learning and patriotism, with ready
kindness and friendliness for us foreigners. Each and all we
left with a hearty aspiration, Ad multos annos, and the trust that
a visitor who should inspect them sixty-seven years hence may
find them as flourishing as we found them sixty-seven years after
the visit of our predecessor, the Rev. Dr. Dibbin.

ISLAM.

[These sonnets, written in reference to the last Russo-Turkish war, but never before pub-
lished, have a bearing also on the present state of the great Eastern question.]

FIVE times five years O shameless wickedness !

Hath Christian Europe propped the Moslem's rule.
Five times five years hath Christian wretchedness

Learnt misery's lessons in oppression's school !
What though an equal law and equal right

By solemn "hats" and "firmans" hath been given?
Who knows not that the Turk in Europe's sight

Hath cast his pledges to the winds of heaven ?

1 886.] ISLAM. 711

And when at length, in writhings of despair,
The trampled worm turned in unhappy hour,

Exultant, like the tiger from his lair,

Sprang the fierce Moslem on the hated Giaour.

Lust, rapine, murder, torture, outrage, blood,

Poured on the land in overwhelming flood.

II.

Unchangeable, unchanging from the first ;

Unquenched, unquenchable his burning rage ;
Uncurbed his passion, and unslaked his thirst ;

He spares nor priest nor people, sex nor age.
No pity stays the all-devouring sword ;

Mercy he laughs the very word to scorn !
Men die by thousands, by the stake or cord,

And women wail the hour that they were born !
Such tale Batak and Philippopolis

With outstretched throat proclaim from East to West.
We fold our arms, and bow our heads, and kiss

The molten calf of our self-interest.
Thus Mammon-taught, we by our altar stand :
And idol-worship still defiles the land !

III.

Nay, but (we hear) not to the Ottoman state,

In will or wish or deed, impute the blame;
Barbarian hirelings of their own fierce hate,

Unauthorized, have wrought these deeds of shame.
How comes it, then, that they who boasting claim

The foremost place in all that demon band,
Though damned, by Europe's righteous word, by name,

Still decked and honored by their master stand?
Unequalled deeds of license and of crime,

Since God of old cast out the Chanaan race,
Accursed have made them in the r61e of time:

Yet still in Stamboul they hold pride of place.
How long, O God ! how long, thy people cry,
Shall be the day of our fierce agony ?

712 ISLAM. [Feb.,

IV.

But now the Powers their anxious counsel take,

And special embassage and envoys send.
Their heads diplomatists and statesmen shake,

Terms and proposals modify and mend.
They tell the sultan " all is for his good :

'Tis madness if their counsel he refuse."
But one hath whispered : " Be it understood

Words are the only weapons we shall use."
And now the conference puts forth its power ;

Complaisant, mends its terms and niends again :
The vizier dallies on from hour to hour,

Then sternly says : " We won't ; you talk in vain ! "
Words! words! mere words! brave words as e'er were

spoken.
But not by words the oppressor's rod is broken !

But as of old, when Israel's favored line

Seemed faithless all, seven thousand yet there were
Who had not bowed the knee at Baal's shrine

Nor with their lips had kissed his image there ;
So now, 'mid Europe's base apathy,

One mighty nation dares to own a heart,
One glorious prince redeems humanity

From Meroz' curse and Meroz' dastard part.
O God of battles ! in thy might arise,

Scatter the heathen, thy right arm display ;
Confound the wisdom of the worldly-wise,

And out of darkness bring the light of day :
Defend the right ; let Christian victory tell
Still fights the Christian's God against the infidel !

1 886.] NEW PUBLICATIONS.' 713

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

CAROLS FOR A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A JOYOUS EASTER. The music
by the Rev. Alfred Young, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul the
Apostle. The words selected and original. New York : The Catholic
Publication Society Co. ; London : Burns & Gates.

The inscription Father Young gives us on the title-page will be found
a truthful indication of the substance of his charming little volume.
"Carols! Carols for you, my Masters songs that will charm the saddest
heart among you to merriment and joy." The singing of carols, particu-
larly at Christmas-time, has always been popular in England and other
European countries. In France they are known as Noels, which seems to
be an abbreviation of the word Emmanuel. Some writers, however, derive
it from natalis dies Nativity day. Certainly there is nothing more pleas-
ing and instructive than this time-honored custom of carol-singing. The
practice is so ancient as to be considered coeval with the celebration of
Christmas itself. We are informed that in the early ages of the church the
bishops were accustomed to sing carols on Christmas day among their
clergy.

That quaint writer, Jeremy Taylor, referring to the " Gloria in Excelsis,"
or hymn sung by the angels on the plains of Bethlehem, says : "As soon
as these blessed choristers had sung their Christmas carol, and taught the
church a hymn to put into her offices for ever in the anniversary of this fes-
tivity, the angels returned into heaven." Thus also Milton in the twelfth
book of Paradise Lost :

" His place of birth a solemn angel tells
To simple shepherds, keeping watch by night ;
They gladly thither haste, and by a quire
Of squadron'd angels

The Puritans denounced not only the singing of carols, but also the
celebration of Christmas itself, as pernicious and unscriptural.

With the revival of Catholic faith and practice in England and America
comes naturally a renewal of the ancient joyous spirit which in Catholic
times made England deserve the title of " Merry." " Beatus populus qui
scit jubilationem ! " exclaims the Psalmist " Blessed is the people that
knoweth how to be merry!" In the beginning of the present century a
distinguished Catholic foreigner, after a tour in England, thus expressed
his mind : " You have led me through a land of closed churches and hushed
bells, of unlighted altars and unstoled priests. It looks as if England were
under an interdict."

Kenelm Digby, speaking of the clergy under the influence of Calvin-
ism, thus contrasts the effect of the change in faith :

" The tartness of their face ripe grapes doth sour,
And night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing."

Well did the poet Spenser make proud Sansfoy the father of Sansjoy.

All this comes to our mind as Father Young sings to us his beautiful

NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb.,

Christmas carols. There are melodies to suit all tastes. Some are broad
and churchly, others are free and florid. Some are also quaint and excel-
lent imitations of similar ancient songs. A remarkable example of this is
the carol, " In Bethlehem, that noble place," evidently composed in one of
the Gregorian modes.

This great diversity of style employed to give fitting expression to the
text is the first thing which would attract the notice of a musical critic. The
spirit of Father Young's musical phrases is never vulgar or commonplace.
That he has sought in this volume, as in his Catholic Hymnal, a refined and
original expression is quite apparent. A hasty glance even at the kind of
hymns and carols he has written or selected for his books gives equal evi-
dence of the good taste which distinguishes the text and music of both.
The Catholic Publication Society Co. issues it in good style.

LIFE OF ST. PHILIP BENIZI, OF THE ORDER OF THE SERVANTS OF MARY,
1233-1285. With some account of the first disciples of the saint. By the
Rev. Peregrine Soulier, priest of the same order. Translated from the
French and revised by the author. London : Burns & Gates ; New
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

The lives of the saints have ever been, next to Holy Scripture, the fa-
vorite reading of souls aspiring to union with God. In the long study of
perfection the teaching of the daily lesson is shared between the Holy
Spirit in the Scriptures and the same Holy Spirit in the lives of devout
men and women. When one has felt the strong impulse of living for God,
such books as tell of the heroes of the Gospel are full of interest are, in
fact, what books of adventure and fiction are to boys at school. Why
should it not be so to all classes of Christians ? Why should the life of a
hero be dull reading because not war nor politics, but the peace of Christ
and the brotherhood of mankind, were the aims of his life? Surely, until
people begin to read, at least a little, for eternity's sake they can hardly
expect to gather much enduring fruit from the privileges of education.

St. Philip Benizi is a character of the highest kind. For six hundred
years six times the life of our republic the order for which he legislated,
the Servites of Mary, have obeyed his laws and rejoiced in their wisdom ;
the whole church has studied and celebrated his virtues; the choicest
spirits of every generation since then have, in spirit, followed his wander-
ings over Europe, his preaching of the doctrines of Christ, his display of
miraculous power. He was a man of his times, adapting the ancient and
unchanging principles of religion to the needs of the men and women
around him, and arousing in them those aspirations which can alone be
gratified by the maxims and practices of the spiritual life.

This volume, a work of love by a member of the saint's order, shows
patient research, careful composition, and great unction. It is well printed
and bound.

THE CHAIR OF PETER. By John Nicholas Murphy. Popular Edition.
^London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication So-
ciety Co.

Mr. Murphy is an Irish barrister of standing and repute, who has been

1 886.] NEW PUB LIC A TIONS. 7 1 5

honored by the Holy Father with the title of a Roman count, which he has
well deserved by his excellent works, written, for the honor and service of
the Catholic religion. We took occasion to praise in the highest terms the
first edition of his Chair of Peter, and we have been pleased to find a
similar judgment expressed by other periodicals, as well those which are
not Catholic as those which are of high character among Catholic reviews
and newspapers. The present edition is much enlarged and improved.
The careful statistics respecting the Catholic hierarchy and population in
various countries, and the minute indexes, together with much general and
miscellaneous information on matters connected with the Roman Church,
make this a very convenient as well as really learned and at the same
time popular manual of instruction on its great and most important theme.
We cannot too cordially recommend it.

ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES, considered in their bearing on the Pas-
toral Office and the establishing of Graded Catholic Schools. By Rev.
Louis Cornelis. Written expressly for clerical students. St. Louis, Mo. :
Amerika Print.

By printing this little pamphlet the author has done a service to re-
ligion. He advocates calmly, reasonably, and convincingly the advantages
of a thorough study of modern languages in training for the priesthood.
We can vouch for every word he says by our own observation and ex-
perience. The number of parishes consisting of mixed nationalities is very
great, especially throughout the West. The pastor is usually of the more
numerous race ; but the spiritual needs of the minority place him, we might
almost say, under a grave obligation to know how to converse in their
language, and he should busy himself to acquire a facility of preaching in
it. The course of studies in our seminaries, now becoming longer and more
leisurely, will enable students to fit themselves better for such emergen-
cies.

What Father Cornelis has to say of graded schools in this connection is
worthy of consideration.

THE DEFENDER OF THE FAITH : The Royal Title, its History and Value.
By Rev. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R. London : Burns & Oates ; New York :
The Catholic Publication Society Co.

Father Bridgett, in addition to his arduous labors as a giver of missions
and retreats, is rendering important service to the truth by his researches
into the history of the past and the works which have been the result of
those researches. At the present time Catholics have reason to congratu-
late themselves that there are so many good workers in this field, such as
Father Forbes-Leslie, Father Morris, Father Stevenson, Mr. Gillow; and
since we have mentioned Mr. Gillow's name, we may say how sincerely we
hope that his invaluable Biographical Dictionary of English Catholics \j\\\
meet with the success and encouragement it so well deserves. It is a work
which forms an epoch in English Catholic literature, and it would be a sub-
ject for extreme regret if it were not to be completed. Father Bridgett's
work has already appeared in substance in the Dublin Review, but it well
deserves republication. The Rev. J. J. Brewer, so well known for his histo-

716 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb.,

rical works, has given in the introduction prepared by him for the publica-
tions of the Master of the Rolls' Reign of Henry VIII. a somewhat inaccurate
account of the transactions connected with the conferring- of the title " De-
fender of the Faith " on the king by Leo X. These transactions and the
book written by the king Father Bridgett has carefully studied, and he gives
in this pamphlet the result of that study. It is well worth reading.

THE NATIVITY PLAY, or Christmas Cantata. By Rev. Gabriel A. Healy,
Rector of St. Bernard's Church, New York. D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

The subject of this cantata is one which repeats the same dear old story
of Christmas with the angels and shepherds. It is made up of a variety of
prose and verse, and to the subject of Christmas proper the Epiphany and
massacre of the infants has been added, which is the cause, no doubt, why
it occupies, as we are informed in the preface, two hours in its performance.
Some childlike representations of this kind are certainly most pleasing,
and no doubt would do much now, as the reverend author truly says they
did in the middle ages, to strengthen the faith and piety of the people ; but we
cannot agree with him in wishing a revival of the old mystery plays which
were in great vogue from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. They
soon expanded from simple and edifying representations into full-blown
theatrical performances by full-grown artists, and thus soon degenerated
into money-making performances and other disorders, and ended in giving
so much scandal that they were formally interdicted in 1545. M. On. le
Roy in his work, Etudes sur les Mysteres, and M. Ch. Mangin in his Origines
du Thtdtre Moderne, show how our present drama found its birth and first
developments in these old mystery-plays. Is there not a well-grounded fear
that the like abuses may also happen in our own day, especially when
there are already so many other inducements offered to our young people to
go upon the stage, now so commonly debased as to be hardly tolerable?

THE MAD PENITENT OF TODI. By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. Notre Dame,
Indiana : Ave Maria Press.

Mrs. Dorsey describes in a graphic and pleasing style the life of Jaco-
pone di Todi, author of the Stabat Mater, both before and after his conver-
sion. There is one instance in this little book of a very common violation
of literary propriety the giving of French names to persons and places not
French, by a servile copying of French writers. Pietro de Morone, who
became Celestine V., is called Pierre de Morvane. Holy men are not in-
fallible or impeccable. Jacopone was blamable for writing squibs upon
Boniface VIII. and associating himself with his opponents. Probably the
severe punishment inflicted on him was unjust, yet the scandalous and
schismatical behavior of some of the Franciscans of that time in respect to
the Holy See made it difficult to discriminate between a good, well-meaning
man who was imprudent and others who were pestilent fanatics.

DECRETA OUATUOR CONCILIORUM PROVINCIALIUM WESTMONASTERIORUM,
1852-1873. Editio secunda. Lond. : Burns et Gates.

This beautifully-printed volume contains the legislation by which the
Catholic Church in England has been established upon its present firm and

1 886.] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 7 1 7

solid basis. The first three councils were celebrated under the presidency
of Cardinal Wiseman, the fourth under that of Archbishop (since then cre-
ated Cardinal) Manning. This collection of decrees is a monument of eccle-
siastical wisdom worthy of the best days of the church. All studious cler-
gymen, especially those who have to take a foremost and active part in
preparing the decrees of provincial and diocesan synods, will find it not
only interesting but extremely valuable.

SIXTH CENTENARY OF ST. PHILIP BENIZI. 1285-1885. In Memoriam.
Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, Chicago. 1885.

Father Morini, of the Orderof the Servites, has issued the pamphlet bear-
ing the above title in a manner especially marked by good taste and elegance.
The occasion of it was furnished by the celebration of the centenary of St.
Philip in the church of the Servite Fathers at Chicago. St. Philip, though not
the original founder of the Servite Order, was its legislator, and the active,
organizing master-workman who put into execution the intentions and ideas
of the seven holy men who were its first founders and fathers. The black
scapular of the Seven Dolors of Mary and the Rosary of the Seven Dolors
belong to this order, and are quite generally objects of pious devotion
among the faithful. We sincerely wish that the American branch of this
venerable order may take deep root and flourish abundantly in our country.

FABIOLA. Illustrated edition. New York : Benzigers. 1886.

Cardinal Wiseman's exquisite romance is an English classic too well
known for words of praise at this late day. The illustrated edition issued in
December, but received by us too late for a notice before Christmas a cir-
cumstance which we regret is a large and really rich and elegant quarto,
printed on excellent paper, with good type and above two hundred illustra-
tions of various sizes and kinds, above thirty of which are full-page. The
binding is in a brilliant style, and we can say of the whole ornamental part
of the volume, what we cannot always say of similar attempts, that it is in
good taste, genuinely artistic, and not of the meretricious sort which is too
common. We believe that the retail price is $6 not extravagant for such
a work. Happy those who have received this illustrated Fabtola as a
Christmas present. It is beyond the means of those who are not very well
supplied with money to spend on books, but those who can afford it ought
to encourage the effort to bring out Catholic works of this kind, and put
within reach of their families a help so attractive and efficacious for gaining
knowledge of the glories of the Catholic religion and awakening in them a
just pride in their faith and its heroes. It would be a happy thought to
issue a similar edition of Cardinal Newman's Callista, which is also a
masterpiece of the same kind with Fabiola.

DER HAUSFREUND : Illustrirter Familien-Kalender des Herald des Glaubens
fur das Jahr 1886. St. Louis, Mo.

Personally we are glad to have this German Catholic almanac, but we
can scarcely expect to increase its circulation among our readers by prais-
ing its merits. Our German brethren excel in this kind of work. They

7 1 8 NEW PUBLICA TIONS. [Feb.,

have a wonderful amount of ingenuity, tact, artistic taste, and talent for
gathering together popular songs, stories, and amusing miscellanies for
young and old people. This is a good almanac, its illustrations are good,
its contents are varied, entertaining, and instructive. We are thankful to
those who sent it. Lebet wohl ! lebet wohl, Hebe Briider ! Lebet wohl
aufs widersehn.

THE CATHOLIC DIRECTORY, ECCLESIASTICAL REGISTER, AND ALMANAC
FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1886. London: Burns & Gates; New-
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

This is the English Catholic Directory for 1886, compiled and edited by
Rev. Canon Johnston, of Cardinal Manning's household, and is a most com-
plete and useful manual 'for England, Scotland, and Wales. Besides con-
taining a list of the archbishops, bishops, and priests of these countries, it
also contains a list of the sovereign pontiffs, the Sacred College of Cardi-
nals, the Sacred Congregations, sees of the Catholic Church of the Latin
Rite and Oriental Rite, and also apostolic delegations, vicariates, and pre-
fectures, as well as much other very valuable information.

LIVES OF THE SAINTS AND BLESSED OF THE THREE ORDERS OF ST.
FRANCIS. Translated from the Aureole Seraphique of the Very Rev.
Father Leon, ex-provincial of the Friars Minor of the Observance.
With a preface by His Eminence Cardinal Manning. Vol. I. 8vo, pp.
552. Taunton : Published by the Franciscan Convent. (For sale by the
Catholic Publication Society Co., New York.)

This is the first volume of a very important work now being issued in
England by the Franciscan fathers. It will be completed in two octavo
volumes. Cardinal Manning in his preface thus speaks of St. Francis :

" The aureola of our Seraphic Father has been always expanding in radiance as through six
hundred years his children have been crowned with him in his Master's kingdom. The title of
this book, now for the first time published in an English translation, has been well chosen. The
Seraphic Aureola of the Three Orders of St. Francis tells us that not only the father of the
household, but the household itself is crowned. The Seraphic Order shares in the name and in
the glory of its head.

" In the day when St. Francis before the bishop in Assisi offered himself by one act of he-
roic self-oblation to his Father in heaven, the love of God transformed him as the iron glowing
from the furnace puts on the nature of fire. He seems to have passed through no tardy progres-
sive changes of fervor, but, like the bush in Horeb, to be at once wrapped in flame and yet not
consumed. The fire which Jesus sent on earth was already kindled in him to its fullest intensity.
Elevated and united to God in love he was changed into a living image of Jesus as we see him in
the Gospels. The book of the Conformities of Francis to our Divine Redeemer is a true delinea-
tion both of the Master and of the servant. Love to God and to all the works of God, living
and without life ; love to man, both the evil and the good ; compassion to all in suffering ; ten-
derness to all infirmity ; gladness in poverty ; joy in contempt ; a habitual vision of God by faith,
by which God was seen in all things, and all things seen in God ; or, in a word, charity and hu-
mility made perfect. This is the outline of Francis and the reflection of the divine original.
With this perfect impression he was stamped in youth as by the signet of the living God ; the
stigmata in Mount Alvernia were only the countersign, and his last conformity to the Son of God
in the days of his Passion upon earth. This is beautifully pictured in the Fioretti of St. Fran-
cis. We are told that when St. Clare and her companions were sitting at S. Maria degli An-
geli surrounded by the brethren, St. Francis began to speak of the love of God. The fire had
kindled within him and he breathed it in his words. They were all wrapped in contemplation
and forgot the food that was before them. The convent and the wood around it seemed to be

1 886.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 719

enveloped in flames. The neighbors came in speed, believing that a fire had broken out. Such
was the power of God with which St. Francis subdued the souls of his first disciples, Bernard,
Egidio, Masseo, and a multitude too long to name. In three years he had five thousand gathered
round him ; and the sound of the feet of those who were coming to him was already heard, as he
said ; and they have never ceased to come to this day.

" Every saint has his special conformity to our Divine Master, but St. Francis seems to be
the express likeness of Jesus conversing among men in the mountains and plains of Galilee and
Judasa, intensely human in all sympathy with the people ; but mysteriously divine in his words
and actions. He was the friend of the poor ; poor himself, with a poverty greater than theirs ;
and the poor of the world have been his special inheritance ; and the rich of the world have made
themselves poor in spirit or in truth to join themselves to him.

" It is this singular perfection, separate from all others, that St. Francis impressed upon his
disciples, and through them upon his order in all time. For six hundred years his children have
multiplied beyond all others. In all lands, of all languages, in every state of life, men and
women, poor and rich, lettered and unlearned, soldier and civilian, layman and priest, princes
and kings, bishops and pontiffs, in whatsoever condition of life they might be, the Franciscan
type is in all the same. Poverty of spirit, love of the poor, tenderness towards all suffering, joy
in all the works of creation, humility of heart, unworldliness in the throng and furnace of the
world, self-concealing piety, and a silent fervor, always aspiring in closer conformity to the hu-
mility and charity of Jesus Christ. Such are the three families of St. Francis, the First Order of
men ; the Second Order of cloistered women ; the religious and the secular members of the Third
Order, bear the same family likeness. St. Louis of France, St. Charles of Milan, St. Elizabeth
of Hungary, St. Elizabeth of Portugal, St. Rose of Viterbo, B. Angela of Foligno, St. Bernar-
dine of Siena, St. Bonaventure the Seraphic Doctor, all these, most diverse in all other things, in
this are all alike, that they bear the likeness of ' the poor man of Assisi.' Whether in the clois-
ter or in the world, at the altar or in the schools, in the court or in the camp, there is the sweet-
ness, the joy, and the confidence which is inspired by the Holy Ghost, by ' the Gift of Piety '
breathing in the words and actions of their life.

11 The vicissitudes of the Church and the revolutions of the world which have diminished
and even extinguished many orders have fallen lightly upon the order of St. Francis. It has had
little to lose, and when that little was lost, it has returned to its primitive state of the poverty
which St. Francis loved so much and bequeathed as the heirloom of his children for ever. Still
more strange : the revolutions of these days, which have wrecked so much, have sometimes left
them in peace ; and sometimes even restored them to their humble homes. The poverty of St.
Francis disarms and converts the world.

" It was in the midst of commercial and luxurious Italy that St. Francis arose to bear witness
against greed and sensuality and selfishness ; and to set fire to the heart of the world cold in
self-indulgence. It is to commercial and luxurious England that the Seraphic Order comes once
more. It came in our thirteenth century, when England was sick with worldliness, and the lot
of the poor was hard ; it comes again in the last days of the nineteenth century when the wealth
of England is piled mountains high upon a toiling and suffering people. The gulfs and chasms
which divide our classes and threaten the peace of our commonwealth can be closed only by the
humility and charity of Jesus Christ. The saints and blessed of the Seraphic Order are to us a
luminous cloud of witnesses, showing by their words and lives that though humility and charity
are the highest reaches of perfection, nevertheless the way is open and easy to all in every state
of life. St. Augustine has said 'no man can say that he cannot love God,' and as St. Leo,
' nothing is beyond the reach of the humble.' "

SADLIERS' CATHOLIC DIRECTORY, ALMANAC, AND ORDO FOR THE YEAR
OF OUR LORD 1886. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

Sadliers* Directory for the United States is out this year several weeks
earlier than usual a great gain for those who are in the habit of using it.
Two editions are published this year. One contains only the reports and
returns for the United States, and is small and cheap. The other contains
the usual returns from Canada, Ireland, etc., is large and bulky, and, of
course, dearer.

720 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb., 1886.

CLOTILDE : A Story of France, and other Stories for Girls. Boston :
Thomas B. Noonan & Co.

Clotilde takes us back to the early days of French history, when
Clovis united the various peoples of France and reigned the first king of
the Franks. Clotilde by her rare beauty won the heart of this stern war-
rior, and by her sweet Christian virtues finally converted him from pagan-
ism. He was baptized by St. Remi, and received from the pope the title
of "Most Christian King," a title the kings of France have borne ever
since. The story furnishes an interesting glimpse of European society in
the fifth century. " St. Genevieve " is a sketch of the patroness of Paris
told in the form of a short story. The book also contains an account of
the monks of St. Bernard, and half a dozen other stories, all of which will
prove attractive reading for the young.

MARY BURTON, and other Stories. Boston : Thomas B. Noonan.

This is a volume of the Golden Crown Library, and contains about a
dozen short stories, the scenes of which are laid in France, Italy, Greece,
and other countries. Each of the stories teaches a useful lesson ; one,
that a contented spirit is a remedy for all the evils in the world ; another
shows the bad effects of exaggeration. The stories, although written with
a moral object in view, are not " too good for youthful human nature " to
read with pleasure.

LOST, and other Tales for Children. Adapted from the French by the
author of Tyborne. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Ca-
tholic Publication Society Co.

Three charming little stories make up the contents of this book, all the
scenes of which are laid in France. The characters introduced are chiefly
children under twelve years old, and the stories are well adapted to in-
terest the young.

LITTLE DICK'S CHRISTMAS CAROLS, and other Tales. By Amy Fowler.
. London : R. Washbourne. (For sale by the Catholic Publication So-
ciety Co.),

This elegantly-bound little volume contains six very good and very in-
teresting stories for boys and girls. There is one thing we protest against,
however; and that is the habit of the London publishers sewing in their
catalogues at the end, thereby making the purchaser pay for what is gene-
rally given free. This little book has only 128 pages, yet there are 32 pages
of a catalogue tacked on to it, so as to make it look as if it were a lanre
book.

of the Commune. By Mrs. Frank Pentrill. Dublin: M.
11 & bon. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)
This handsome little book is dedicated to Rev. J. Hogan, D.D., late of
St. Sulpice, Paris, but now president of St. John's Seminary, near Boston,
Mass. The story is well written, and gives a lively picture of the siege of
Paris by the Prussians, and the actions and doings of the Communists or,
as they are called, the Commune.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL. XLII. MARCH, 1886. No. 252.

EMPEROR JULIAN THE APOSTATE, THE GREAT
SPIRITIST OF THE FOURTH CENTURY.

AMONG the numerous "isms" that are at work in undermin-
ing the Christian belief of many in this country modern spiritism
is one of the most formidable.* Its adherents are counted by
the millions;! its publications are scattered throughout the
land ; ^ and by presenting itself in the garb of an angel of light,
or as a messenger from the dear departed ones in the unseen
realms above, it succeeds in leading many astray from the belief
in Christ and the truths he has taught. That this danger is
by no means confined to such as are outside of the Catholic

* Oliver Wendell Holmes (The Professor at the Breakfast-table, Boston, 1883, p. 15) ob-
serves : "Spiritualism is quietly undermining the traditional ideas of the future state which
have been and are still accepted, not merely in those who believe in it, but in the general senti-
ment of the community, to a larger extent than most good people seem to be aware of."

t Since spiritists usually meet in private or home circles, it is impossible to give a fair esti-
mate of their number. Dr. Eugene Crowell (Spiritualism and Insanity, Boston, 1877, p. 7)
thinks their number in the United States is more than two millions. Dr. Joshua Thorne (Reli-
gio-Philosophical Journal, Chicago, June 20, 1885) says "it is six millions and over in this
country." Alfred Russell Wallace (A Defence of Modern Spiritualism, 6th edition, Boston,

1882, p. 14) even states : " The number of spiritualists in the Union is, according to those who
have the best means of judging, from eight to eleven millions. This is the estimate of Judge
Edmonds, who has had extensive correspondence on the subject with every part of the United
States. The Hon. R. D. Owen, who has also had great opportunities of knowing the facts,
considers it to be approximately correct ; and it is affirmed by the editors of the Year-Book of
Spiritiialism for 1871."

\ Besides numerous books and pamphlets on spiritualism, about twenty spiritualist weeklies
or other periodicals are said to be published in America, one of which alone is reported to
have more than thirty thousand subscribers. See Theologisch-praktische Quartalschrift, Linz,

1883, p. 387.

722 EMPEROR JULIAN THE APOSTATE, [Mar.,

Church the following quotations from a spiritist weekly will
show.

The Religio- Philosophical Journal, May 16, published a commu-
nication from a Michigan gentleman, whose full name and ad-
dress is given, who states : " Among the letters I have recent-
ly received from spiritists and mediums are some from Roman
Catholics." In one of these letters a lady writes :

" I, though a Roman Catholic, am wrapped up in and true to the
cause. . . . The Scriptures of old point vividly to this foundation of facts ;
they are imbued with the same spirit, consequently spiritualism and Ca-
tholicism are one and the same faith. . . . This may seem very strange
language to you, dear sir, coming, as it does, from a stanch Romanist and
a communicant, but such it is. I am one of the most devoted to my reli-
gion and church, still I am a participant in this most abhorred of truths."

This Catholic lady considers herself " honored " that the spirits,
or " controls," have selected her as one of their instruments, and
even asks God to grant her the grace to acquit herself " nobly
and honorably in this holy and efficacious mission."

In another number, June 6, the same weekly published a com-
munication from a Catholic lady of New York. The writer
states :

" I am a member of the Roman Catholic Church. In that church is
found a class of mystic literature which is full of phenomena similar to
modern spiritualism. That style of reading has always fascinated me."

f She also claims having made the acquaintance of the famous
medium, Henry Slade, through whose mediumship a slate she
held in her hand was repeatedly written on by some invisible
agency. " I carried it (the slate)," she observes, " home with me,
and have since showed it to priests of my church. They were
filled with wonder."

In the same journal, June 13, a writer, whose name is given,
observes :

" Upon a time I was a devout Catholic, and before I was acquainted
with spiritualist literature I have no other acquaintance with the system
I was accustomed to think and say that I knew the Roman Catholic
Church to be the one true church of God."

But the writer seems to have lost this conviction after hav-
ing become acquainted with spiritist literature ; for there he be-
lieves to have found phenomena recorded still more marvellous
than the wonders which attest the divine mission of the Catholic
Church. The writer observes :

" If the phenomena of the Catholic religion prove it divine, what are

1 886,] THE GREA T SPIRITIST OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 723

we to say of the still more marvellous phenomena of a system (modern
spiritualism) most of whose adherents emphatically deny the cardinal
dogma of Catholicism viz., the divinity of Jesus ? "

These quotations from but three numbers of a single spirit-
ist weekly deserve being reflected on.

How many similar quotations from writings of Catholics
could be annually culled from all the spiritist publications of
the United States? How many Catholics who never write or
publish a word about it join spiritist circles and partake in
stances, thinking it no harm to converse with spirits of the dear
departed? And how many ill-instructed Catholics do thus
gradually renounce the Catholic religion and embrace that novel
" ism " which pretends to be a new revelation from above ?

II.

Spiritists claim to converse, by various means, with spirits
of the departed of parents, brothers, neighbors, sisters, etc. But
how do they know that these spirits are what they claim to be ?
Often, as Longfellow observes, " things are not what they seem."
Spiritists will answer, these spirits often reveal things which
were known only to such particular persons when living on
earth. Yet here our spiritists overlook that there may be spir-
its who also witnessed those things and now make use of them
to delude people. Besides, spiritists may say that occasionally
these spirits appear in the unmistakable forms of certain deceas-
ed persons, write in their very handwriting, etc. But why could
not also other spirits than those of deceased persons assume such
forms, imitate such handwriting, etc. ?

We know from reliable sources that spirits of doubtful and
mischievous character have often, in different times and countries,
badly deluded people who trusted them. Even some of the
wisest and the most learned of their times were occasionally led
by " spirits " to their ruin. A very instructive example of this
kind is Emperor Julian the Apostate, one of the most learned
men of his age, a brave soldier, an accomplished general, and a
shrewd statesman.*

* The following works have been consulted on the life of Emperor Julian : Edward Gib-
bon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, New York, 1880 ; Henry Hart Milman, D.D.,
The History of Christianity, New York, 1881 ; George Rawlinson, M.A., The Seven Great
Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, New York, 1884 ; CEuvres Completes de Montes-
quieu, Paris, 1835 ; Dr. J. Alzog, Universalgeschichte der christlichen Kirche, Mainz, 1860 ;
Ausgewaehlte Schriften des seligen Theodoretus, Bischofs von Cyrus, Kempten, 1878 ; Des heili-
gen Cyrillus, Erzbischofs von Jerusalem und Kirchenvaters, Katechesen, Kempten, 1871 ; An
Oration of St. Gregory of Nazianzum against Emperor Julian, Latin text, edited by Migne ;
Ammiani Mar cellini qua super sunt, Lipsiae, 1867.

724 EMPEROR JULIAN THE APOSTATE, [Mar.,

In his early youth he had been educated a Christian ; he was
baptized and, as some claim, even ordained lector. Unfortunate
circumstances conspired to make him averse to Christianity ; and
his tutor, Mardonius, endeavored to fill his mind with reverence
and enthusiasm for the gods of Homer and Hesiod. Such sen-
timents were nourished by the writings of the famous orator
Libanius, and by conversations with pagan philosophers, espe-
cially with the far-famed Maximus.

"Thus it came" (as St. Cyril of Alexandria observed) "that he who
had been counted among the faithful, who had been enlightened by baptism
and exercised in the reading of the holy books, having become corrupt by
conversing with reprobate men devoted to paganism, thought of renounc-
ing the (Christian) faith ; and that he who had been educated for the ser-
vice of the church became a servant of the evil spirits."

When Julian was about twenty years old he was initiated in
the mysteries of paganism at Ephesus, by Maximus, who was
also a master of magic arts. St. Gregory of Nazianzum, who for
a while had been a schoolmate of Julian's at Athens, relates, on
the authority of such as gloried in being acquainted with the
secrets of the Apostate, that he had washed off his Christian bap-
tism by sacrificial blood. The manner in which this ceremony
was performed seems to have been as follows : The baptized per-
son to be regenerated to paganism descended into a pit or
trench, and then, through a kind of sieve, the blood of a bull
or ram was poured over his whole person. This ceremony was
evidently a diabolical caricature of Christian baptism.

St. Gregory relates further that Julian was led by the magi-
cian into a dark subterranean cave. The spirits being called
upon, terrible sounds and irightful, fiery spectres are said to have
appeared and filled Julian with such terror as to induce him to
make the sign of the cross, which he had learned to do when
a Christian. Suddenly the demoniacal apparitions vanished.
Again the spirits were called, and again they were put to flight
by the sign of the cross. Julian commenced to waver in his reso-
lution of devoting himself to the worship of the spirits who fled
before the cross.* But the magician declared that the demons
had fled, not because they feared, but only because they detested
that sign. Julian, believing the magician, devoted himself to the
worship of the demons. , k From this time, as his admirer Libanius

* There are numerous cases recorded in which diabolical manifestations were suddenly put
to an end by the sign of the cross or the name of Jesus. See H. Hurter, S.J., Sanctorum
Patrum Opuscula Selecta, vol. i. pp. 105-128, vol. xi. 99-107 ; D. Aug. Rohling, Orakel und
Zauberwunder, Mainz, 1882, pp. 30-37, 79-88.

i886.] THE GREAT SPIRITIST OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 725

relates, Julian continued to live in familiar intercourse with the
gods and goddesses. These descended upon the earth to enjoy
the pleasure of conversing with Julian; sometimes they gently
awoke him from his slumber by touching his hand or hair; they
guided every action of his life and warned him of impending
dangers. So familiar and well acquainted had Julian become
with them that he could readily distinguish the voice of Jupiter
from that of Minerva, or the form of Hercules from that of
Apollo.

in.

Who these gods were with whom Julian was so familiar was
no mystery to the early Christians. Long before the days of
Julian these so-called gods whom the Greeks and Romans wor-
shipped had been compelled, by the exorcisms of the Christians,
to confess who they really were. Minutius Felix, in his Octavius,
declares they are insincere, impure, vagabond spirits or demons
that sometimes conceal themselves behind statues and images
consecrated to them, and give evidence of their presence by in-
spiring soothsayers, by giving oracles, by directing the flight of
birds, by enlivening occasionally the fibres of the entrails of sac-
rificed animals, or by directing the lots. He adds :

"All this, as the greater part of you (pagans) know, the demons confess
of themselves whenever they are expelled from bodies by us (Christians)
through the torments of words and the fires of prayer. Saturn himself,
and Serapis, and Jupiter, and all the demons you (pagans) worship, over-
come by pain, confess what they are. Nor, indeed, do they lie to their
own disgrace, especially since (on such occasions) some of you (pagans)
are present. Believe these witnesses who confessed themselves to be
demons."

Likewise Tertullian,in his Apologeticitm, challenged the pagans
to bring any one possessed by a demon before their tribunals,
adding: " Commanded to speak by any Christian, that spirit will
in truth confess himself to be a demon, as he elsewhere falsely
(claims to be) a god." Then he asks the pagans : " If they are
truly gods, why do they lie, (claiming) to be demons? ... If, on
the other hand, they are demons or angels, why do they else-
where .answer that they take the place of gods?" Therefore
Tertullian draws the conclusion that the so called gods whom
the pagans worship cannot be gods, but are merely lying demons
or devils.

Such, then, were the gods whom Julian worshipped with the

726 EMPEROR JULIAN THE APOSTATE, [Mar.,

blindest zeal. At first he did so secretly ; but on becoming em-
peror he no longer made any mystery of his devotedness to
them. The animal sacrifices he offered at their altars were so
numerous that the expenditures for them threatened to exhaust
the revenue ; hundreds of cattle and countless choice birds from
all parts of the empire were constantly bleeding in honor of
the gods. A historian observes : " Julian was perpetually seen,
himself wielding the sacrificial knife, and exploring with his own
hands the reeking entrails of the victims, to learn the secrets of
futurity." For, as we may infer from remarks of Ammianus
Marcellinus and other contemporary writers, signs made by the
so-called gods on the entrails of sacrificed animals were looked
upon by pagans as a favorite means of learning the secrets of the
future.

Julian is even accused of having, like some other pagan
Roman emperors before him,* occasionally sacrificed to his gods
something better than animals.

Bishop Theodoretus of Cyrus relates that at his time, about
A.D. 450, evidences of Julian's shocking superstition were still
preserved in the city of Carrae, in Mesopotamia, not far from
Cyrus. On his march to Persia Julian had come to the city
mentioned, where a famous pagan temple still existed. With
some choice companions he entered this temple. On their com-
ing out again the doors were carefully locked and sealed.
Moreover, Julian left a guard of soldiers to watch that no one
entered the temple before his return from Persia. But Julian
never returned ; he was killed in battle. When the news of
Julian's death had arrived the temple was opened, and there
they found the dead body of a woman. The body had been cut
open and the liver used, no doubt to learn what Julian wished
to know from his " gods."

Also in the imperial palace at Antioch human corpses, hidden
in boxes, etc., were said to have been found after Julian's death.
" For such things," Theodoret observes, " belong to the worship
of the gods of darkness."

Of course the pagan admirers of Julian do not mention such
facts. But let it not be forgotten that Theodoret was born at
Antioch about AD. 390, only twenty-seven years after Julian's
death. At his time, no doubt, many were yet living who had
known Julian personally ; and from such Theodoret could obtain
reliable information concerning the Apostate.

* See A. Lecanu, Geschichte des Satans, Regensburg, 1863, p. 95.

1 886.] THE GREAT SPIRITIST OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 727

IV.

On one point all historians or biographers of Julian agree :
that he was a most zealous worshipper of the gods. How, then,
did these repay their imperial devotee? What success did he
have in his undertakings after publicly restoring the worship of
the gods on becoming emperor ?

One of his greatest cares was to restore ancient temples of
the gods. In Constantinople, which was then the capital of
the empire, not much could be done for paganism ; for this city,
but recently founded by Constantine, was an essentially Chris-
tian commonwealth. Better prospects for furthering the cause
of paganism Julian expected to find in Antioch, the capital of
Syria, where the pagans were still very numerous. Augurs, ma-
gicians, and priests of Cybele and other so-called deities flocked
to Antioch at the approach of Julian, who ascended the lofty top
of Mount Casius to offer solemn worship to Jupiter Philius, the
pagan tutelary deity of Antioch. He afterwards visited the fa-
mous temple of Apollo in the beautiful grove of Daphne, and, as
he himself related, expected to find there a magnificent proces-
sion, sacrifices, libations, and children, dressed in white, dedicated
to the service of the god Apollo. But what was his surprise on
entering the temple ! He found there only an old pagan priest,
with a single goose for sacrifice. He felt provoked, and deter-
mined to restore the once so famous temple in which Apollo had
been solemnly worshipped, and where he had given oracles.
But, to jiis further chagrin, Julian was told that Apollo had con-
fessed he could not give any oracles in the presence of the re-
mains of Babylas, the martyred bishop of Antioch. To purify
the grove the relics of St. Babylas were removed, and then the
restoration of the temple was energetically commenced. While
the work was going on Julian was surprised by the intelligence
that the temple was on fire. How it originated was a mystery.
Even the famous gilded statue of Apollo was burned to ashes.
The Christians were convinced that Providence had sent down
lightning and destroyed the idol and its temple. Julian's gods
were unable to prevent this failure, which was as humiliating to
themselves as to Julian, their faithful worshipper.

Knowing the Jews to be most bitter enemies of Christianity,
and to refute the Christian conviction that the destroyed temple
of Jerusalem was not to be rebuilt, Julian determined to rebuild
that temple. The Jews of the Roman Empire were invited by
public proclamation to return to the land of their fathers and to

728 EMPEROR JULIAN THE APOSTATE, [Man,

rebuild their temple. From all sides the Jews flocked to Jeru-
salem, and such as could not go personally sent pecuniary assis-
tance. Alypius, the energetic friend of Julian, was appointed to
superintend the work. The eyes of the whole Roman world of
pagans, Jews, and Christians were turned to Jerusalem ; for the
rebuilding of the temple was a matter of great interest to all.
St. Cyril, then bishop of Jerusalem, had confidently predicted
the failure of the enterprise, even after the work had been be-
gun. The pagans and Jews were already beginning to rejoice at
their seeming success.

But all at once a terrific earthquake shook the ground ; a
violent whirlwind scattered the rocks that had been dug up and
the materials that had been collected ; balls of fire repeatedly
burst forth from the earth and burned or killed such as would
continue to work, so that nobody could approach the place
where the foundations were to be laid. With obstinate zeal the
Jews for a while insisted on continuing the work; but finally,
finding themselves opposed by an irresistible, unseen power, they
abandoned the work, humbled and dismayed.

To complete the triumph of Christianity on this occasion a
shining cross appeared in the firmament, and similar crosses were
seen on the garments of those present.*

Again the false gods of Julian were unable to protect the
work of their imperial devotee.

But in Persia Julian was to receive his reward for serving
the gods so faithfully. He inquired of the oracles at Delphi,
Delos, Dodona, and other places if he should wage war against
Persia. The gods encouraged him to do so, promising victory.
The following, according to Theodoret, was the answer of Ares,
or Mars, the god of war :

" Now we gods all hasten to carry the ensigns of victory to the impet-
uous river ; I myself, the violent Ares, expert in war, will lead them."

Relying on such promises, Julian confidently undertook the
expedition ; he dreamed of victory, and, as Theodoret adds, al-
ready thought of his war against the Galileans, as he contemp-
tuously called the Christians, after his victorious return from
Persia. He, indeed, passed " the impetuous river" Tigris but
never to see it again alive. On the memorable 26th of June, A.D.
363, Julian's army was attacked by the Persians and he himself
mortally wounded by a javelin, which, as Ammianus Marcellinus

* See Two Essays on Biblical and Ecclesiastical Miracles, by Cardinal John H. Newman,
London, 1881, pp. 334-347.

i886.] THE GREAT SPIRITIST OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 729

relates, penetrated to his liver. That such was to be his death
was perhaps never thought of by Julian, who examined so many
livers of sacrificial victims to learn the will of the gods or to find
out secrets of the future. During the dangerous battle neither
Ares nor any other god put in an appearance to protect Julian.

Such, then, was the reward he received from the gods for his
faithful service : his short reign of less than two years was a series
of humiliating failures. Julian could certainly not have closed his
life with words more appropriate than those attributed to him by
Theodoret, " Thou hast conquered, Galilean ! " meaning Christ.

A last grand effort had been made by the powers of darkness,
through the instrumentality of Julian, to crush Christianity in the
Roman Empire ; but in vain. Hardly was Julian dead when the
army proclaimed Jovian, a Catholic, emperor. No pagan ever
again ascended the throne of the Roman Caesars, and the re-
ligion of Christ, which Julian had intended to annihilate, still con-
tinues its ever-victorious march, " full of life and youthful vigor."

Modern spiritists may say, What have we to do with Em-
peror Julian ? They may profit by his sad experiences in con-
fidently dealing with irresponsible spirits of more than doubtful
character.

Like many of our modern spiritists, Julian was a man of
great intelligence and wide experience ; and yet deceitful, vaga-
bond, and impure spirits (spiritus insinceri, vagi . . . impiirt), as
Minutius Felix calls the demons worshipped by the pagans, made
him believe that they were gods.

What guarantee have our modern spiritists that they are
not being deluded by similar spirits of darkness, that only pre-
tend to be the spirits of departed dear ones ?

The same kind of spirits that deluded the pagan Romans and
Greeks, so that they were believed to be gods, may now deceive
people by pretending to be the spirits of departed men. No doubt
these spirits may often reveal things true ; but let our spiritists
remember the words of Banquo in Shakspere's " Macbeth " :

" What ! can the devil speak true ?
. . . Oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths ;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence."

To Christians it cannot be a matter of doubt what kind of
spirits are at the bottom of modern spiritism, since the whole

730 EMPEROR JULIAN THE APOSTATE, [Mar.,

drift of this " new revelation " tends to ignore the central dogma
of divine revelation, the redemption through the Incarnate Son
of God, and to substitute in its place something like the Bud-
dhist Karma" that complicated group of affinities for good and
evil generated by a human being during life," as A. P. Sinnett,
the author of Esoteric Buddhism, calls it.

The Apostle St. John (First Epistle iv. 1-3) has given to all
future generations this instruction :

" Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit; but try the spirits, whether
they be of God : because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
By this is the Spirit of God known : every spirit that confesseth Jesus
Christ to have come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that dissolveth
Jesus is not of God."

According to this instruction every Christian must look upon
all spirits that deny the Redemption through the Incarnate Son
of God as lying spirits, no matter what they may pretend to be.

We know that there are good spirits, " ministering spirits,
sent to minister for those who shall receive the inheritance of
salvation" (Heb. i. 14). Such spirits will never teach men any-
thing contrary to the revealed word of God.

Moreover, since the days of Christ countless millions of faith-
ful members of his one true church have departed this life ; but
has it ever happened that the spirit of any such person has re-
vealed to dear friends on earth anything contrary to the doc-
trines of Christ or his church ? It is a very suggestive fact that
modern spiritism flourishes especially among such as are not
baptized, or who, having been baptized, have practically re-
nounced Christ and his church.

The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore has remarked :

" Since such a great number of those who among us call themselves
Christians have not even been cleansed by the sacred laver of baptism,
and have consequently not emerged from darkness to light, nor put on
Christ, what is it to wonder at if they still remain under the power of the
prince of the world, of these darknesses, or if they are at least exposed, un-
protected, to his invasions ? " (No. 39).

God has appointed his church on earth to instruct and guide
men in affairs of the unseen world above, and not invisible spi-
rits whose real character is shrouded in mystery, and whom no
mortal can hold responsible for what they may pretend to reveal.
For this reason also Abraham, in the parable recorded by St.
Luke xvi. 29, 31, replied to the rich man in hell, who requested
that Lazarus be sent from the other world to his brothers to
warn them :

1 886.] THE GREA r SPIRITIST OF THE Fo UR TH CENTUR Y. 73 1

" They have Moses and the prophets : let them hear them. ... If they
hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if one rise
again from the dead."

Spiritists are greatly mistaken in assuming, as some seem
to do, that modern spiritism is a new revelation from above
which is destined to be " the church of the future." The phe-
nomena of modern spiritism are nothing substantially new ; simi-
lar ones are recorded to have been witnessed among various
pagan nations of modern and ancient times. Already Moses
mentions them. We read, for instance, in the book of Deute-
ronomy xviii. 10-12 :

" Neither let there be found among you any one . . . that consulteth
soothsayers, . . . neither let there be any wizard, nor charmer, nor any one
that consulteth pythonic [or familiar] spirits, or fortune-tellers, or that
seeketh the truth from the dead. For the Lord abhorreth all these
things."

Modern spiritism is but a revival of ancient pagan prac-
tices which disappeared before the advance of the religion of
Christ. In proportion as the belief in Christ is lost in so-called
Christian countries the powers of darkness regain their former
influence on men ; and this influence can be destroyed by none
but Him of whom we read : " For this purpose the Son of God
appeared, that he may destroy the works of the devil" (i John iii.
8). This he has done already once in the formerly pagan empire
of Rome. The great St. Athanasius could say * at his time :

" Formerly all was filled with the fraud of the oracles ; and the oracles
at Delphi, Dodona, in Bceotia, Libya, Egypt . . . were admired by the
imagination of men. But now, since Christ is preached everywhere, also
this frenzy has ceased, and no soothsayers are any more found there. For-
merly the demons deceived men with false shows, having taken posses-
sion of fountains, rivers, wood, and stones, and made thus by their delu-
sions the foolish confused. But now, since the divine appearance of the
Word (of God) has taken place, this delusion has come to an end."

Our United States, though often called a Christian country,
is probably as much pagan at present as the Roman Empire
was about the end of the third century. Let us hope that in the
course of time, as before in Rome, the true religion of Christ
will become the religion of this country also. Then the deceit-
ful phenomena of modern spiritism will vanish, as the oracles
of old, as pagan necromancy and the familiar intercourse with
" gods " like those of Julian, have also disappeared before the
light of Christianity.

* On the Incarnation of the Word of God, No. 47.

732

THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.

THE DOCTOR'S FEE.

in.

| (THE young doctor had been set to thinking, and that more
seriously than he had ever thought before about anything out-
side his profession ; but, as he had prognosticated, the hour of
leisure did not come soon. Both Dr. Kelly and himself were so
fully occupied, and their attention so entirely engrossed, that
though they met every day generally two or three times a day
it was only very occasionally that a moment of leisure afford-
ed opportunity for more than the exchange of a few brief sen-
tences of greeting and comment upon the condition of the sick,
their equal care. On the rare occasions when they were acci-
dentally thrown together during an unemployed half-hour Fa-
ther Brian did not recur to their late conversation partly be-
cause he felt that to do so might be injudicious, and partly from
the fact that it seemed useless to touch upon a subject which
could not be handled cursorily with advantage to either speaker
or hearer. He preferred to wait a period of leisure, when it
would be possible to give and obtain that deliberate attention
which the importance and subtlety of the questions concerned
demanded.

And so the summer passed ; its green beauty changed gradu-
ally into the glory of autumn, while typhus still raged in the
river suburb, and the ordinary malarial fever of the climate pre-
vailed in the town itself with unusual severity. The middle of
October had come without bringing the eagerly looked-for frost
which would kill the germs of malaria in the air. The physi-
cians were feeling sensibly the long strain of over- work several
of them being temporarily disabled, thus leaving all the more
labor for those who were still efficient when a welcome variation
of weather at last brought hope of permanent change. Rain
fell in torrents for forty-eight hours. Then as evening ap-
proached the clouds parted, dispersed, melted away, and the
sun went down in a clear sky.

Just as the last line of the dazzling disc disappeared Father
Brian and Dr. Ferrison, coming from different directions, met in
the street by the river and walked on together into the town.

" If the wind "-which was now blowing freshly" lulls,"

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 733

said Father Brian, " we shall have frost to-night. The tempera-
ture has lowered considerably already."

" Yes," said the doctor, " the alteration is very perceptible,
and it is a great relief that it has come at last. But unfortunate-
ly it is not an unmixed good. It will play the wild with some of
my patients, I know."

" Do serious harm, you think ? "

" The sudden fall of temperature will prove fatal with two
cases at least, I fear."

" Green and Tom Brady, I suppose ? " said the priest, looking
much concerned.

" Tom Brady and Mrs. Wilkins," answered the doctor. " As
to poor Green, he is past being either hurt or helped by any-
thing."

" There is no hope at all, then, for him ? '

" Not a shadow of hope," was the reply. " I shall be content
if he goes off quietly. What I apprehend is that mania may
supervene to-night or to-morrow morning, and in that event he
will die in convulsions."

" I have been afraid of this myself," said the priest. " But
there are no signs of it at present. I am just from his bedside,
and he is dozing quietly, as he has been all day."

" He has had a good deal of opium," said the doctor " as
much as I could venture to give him. But didn't you notice
an occasional jerk, a closing of the hands and shutting his eyes
tightly? Those are bad symptoms. I suspected from the first,
as you may remember my telling you, that he was laboring
under incipient mania a potu when the fever attacked him, and I
am convinced now that my judgment was correct."

" But I thought," said the priest, " that you had subdued the
tendency that way, and so averted the danger."

" Only staved it off for a while. Day by day, as the fever ap-
proached its crisis, I have seen more and more plainly what was
coming. This is the tenth day, and he will die to-night, I think."

" Sad for his mother," said Father Brian, with a sigh. " Is it
likely or possible that he will recover consciousness before he
dies ? "

" I hope not," was the answer. Then, noticing the grave, al-
most shocked look on his hearer's face, the speaker added with a
half-smile, " It is for his own sake that I hope so. If he regains
even a delirious consciousness the chances are that he will die in
paroxysms of fearful horror. And so I shall continue to keep
him as much as possible under the influence of opium. I only

734 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.,

wish that I could give him an anaesthetic to help him off, but
this the law don't allow properly enough, it must be confessed,
since, if such an option of treatment existed, it might be abused."

" My friend," said the priest, laying his hand on the young
man's arm, " do you know how shockingly you are talking ? Do
you think it well to jest on such a subject?"

" Upon my word I am not jesting. I mean what I say that,
if I could, I would give the poor fellow an anaesthetic to spare
him and that poor old woman, his mother, some hours of awful
agony. I am doing, or rather I wish I could do, as I would be
done by. If I were in his condition I should regard a sure dose
of chloroform as the greatest kindness a friend could bestow
upon me."

" There is a greater kindness," said the priest, " which I shall
endeavor to bestow upon this unhappy man the reconciling his
soul to God before he dies. And to this end I implore you, my
dear doctor, not to stultify consciousness further. I compre-
hend your motive ; it is, as you look at it, kindness. But, believe
me, it is not the greatest kindness. Let him suffer the tempo-
rary agony you speak of, if so by his soul may be saved."

The doctor felt no inclination to smile at this adjuration, little
as the sentiment expressed could appeal to his sympathy. He
was impressed, almost startled, by the tone and look of the
speaker, and answered earnestly :

" It is not to stultify his senses, but to quiet his nerves, that I
am giving him laudanum in heroic doses. The one faint possi-
bility and very faint it is, I am sorry to say of his regaining
his mind at the last is in the tranquillizing effect of the medicine."

" And you think the end will be to-night ? "

" Most likely. He may ^live till morning, however. Not
longer, I certainly think."

They walked on a few steps in silence, and then, having come
to the point where their ways " diverged, as the doctor glanced
at Father Brian to say good-evening he was struck by the lat-
ter's appearance

" Why, you look very badly, father ! " he exclaimed. " Are
you ill?"

" Not quite well, I'm afraid," was the reply. " I was caught
in the rain last night and had a slight rigor this morning, which
has left a headache and some feverishness. But it will wear off,
no doubt."

" It may, and it may not," said the doctor. " Will you let
me see your pulse, if you please ? You have considerable fever.

i886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 73$

If you will take my advice, Father Brian, you will go home and
go to bed, and take a little care of yourself for the next few days,
or you will bring on an attack of fever."

" I am going home," answered the father; "and," he added,
with his slight but genial laugh, " I will try to follow the rest of
your advice."

The doctor did not laugh, nor was his countenance genial, as
he heard this cautious promise, for he knew what it meant
knew that Father Brian did not intend to let care for his own
health interfere with the'performance of his priestly duties; and
the young man was out of patience. He said nothing, however,
being aware that remonstrance would be useless, but with a part-
ing salutation went his way.

It was with a sad heart that Father Brian walked slowly
homeward. Poor Green was so much in his thoughts that,
though he felt as well as looked badly, he went at once into the
church and knelt long before the tabernacle in earnest, almost
passionate, prayer for the soul which was about to go unshriven,
he feared, into the presence of God. All that he asked for the
unhappy man whom he judged, from what he had heard, to
have been weak but not vicious in character was that he might
recover consciousness sufficiently to receive the sacraments, or
even absolution alone.

Twilight had faded into night, and but for the sanctuary-
lamp he would have been in total darkness when at length he
rose from his knees. He passed into his own house, which ad-
joined the church, and by this time his head and limbs were ach-
ing severely ; but the cup of coffee awaiting him proved very
refreshing, and on leaving the little round table, which Mrs.
Brown, his housekeeper, always arranged with most inviting
neatness, he would have thought the heaviness and sense of dis-
comfort which had not entirely left him might be merely the
effect of fatigue, but for one unmistakable symptom. As he sat
down before the bright wood fire, drew the lamp on the table at
his elbow near to him, and took up his breviary to finish saying
his office, he was distinctly conscious of a wish that it was al-
ready finished. He knew what this signified for it was only
when positively unwell that he ever felt a disinclination to say
his office and, remembering the doctor's advice, determined that
he would try to follow it. Then he opened his book and had
made some progress in his task when Mrs. Brown came in to
remove the tea-things, and expressed both surprise and disap-
probation on perceiving the appearance of the table.

736 THE DOCTOR" s FEE. [Mar.,

" You've eat nothing, father ! " she said reproachfully.

" I have no appetite," he answered. " In fact, I am a little
unwell this evening or was so when I came in. But your
excellent coffee, Mrs. Brown, has done me a world of good. I
feel much better since I drank it."

Mrs. Brown looked what she would have called " dubious "
at this assurance. Coffee was a good thing as far as it went, she
thought, and she prided herself, she often said, on her skill in
making it ; but the waffles and broiled chicken, which she found
untouched, were its natural and necessary concomitants in her
opinion. She would fain have persuaded his reverence to re-
consider the matter and take a little food.

" Many a time a body mayn't feel like eating," she remarked,
" but if they '11 try their appetite '11 come. You try a bit of
this breast, father. It's very tender, and I'll fetch you a hot
waffle to eat with it."

" I wish I could," he said with a smile, " but it is impossible
to-night."

After Mrs. Brown had withdrawn, and he had concluded his
office and laid aside his book, he sat for a minute gazing in the
fire, while considering whether he would go to bed and get what
sleep he could, or sit up waiting for the summons which he felt
sure would come before the night was over; and he had just
decided that it was useless to make the exertion of moving an
exertion to which he found himself very averse when the door-
bell rang loudly.

He rose, put on his overcoat, took his hat and stick, and when
Mrs. Brown appeared an instant afterwards to announce very un-
willingly that there was a sick-call, she found him ready to go out;
nor did she need to tell him where his presence was required, as
he asked at once if it was not Mrs. Green who had sent.

" I should like to speak to the messenger," he said. " I hope
he is here yet? "

" No, he's gone," answered the woman. " He just said
please come as quick as you could, that Mr. Green was in a
awful way ; and when I told him he had better wait and see you
he said he hadn't time: he had to run for the doctor now."

It was quite a long walk to the house of Mrs. Green, and
Father Brian, who had set off at a brisk pace, soon found him-
self constrained to check his impatience and move more deliber-
ately, as he became conscious how very languid he -felt. He
was walking slowly, therefore, when he heard a sharp, ringing
tread following rapidly in his own steps ; and

1 886.] THE DOCTORS FEE. 737

" You see my fears are verified, father," said Dr. Ferrison's
voice at his side. " Poor fellow, I wish I had doubled his doses
to-day ! I knew he was dying that he must die ; and Clayton,
whom I took this morning to see him, agreed entirely with my
judgment of his condition. I was greatly tempted to give him
opium in sufficient quantities to prevent the occurrence of this
phase of the disease ; but his mother, to whom I explained the
whole case, opposed my doing so. I ought to have acted with-
out consulting her."

" No, my dear doctor, that would have been wrong," said
Father Brian. "It was proper to consult her; and, indeed, it
would not have been right to administer the medicine even with
her consent, as in that case death might have been caused by
the drug, not the disease."

" Death was inevitable, and the drug could produce only the
beneficial effect of annihilating pain by lulling consciousness. I
blame myself very much for not having given it."

" I am glad you did not."

" You will change your mind on that point before the night
is over, I fancy," said the doctor.

They were just turning a corner, and he paused suddenly,
the priest following his example. Both listened intently for a
second or two. " Do you hear?" cried the doctor.

" Alas, yes ! " was the response.

The place to which they were going was yet a square off,
but there were sounds on the still, night air which they knew in-
stantly must proceed thence dreadful cries that made the
priest cross himself while he lifted his heart in prayer for the un-
happy soul to whose assistance he was hastening, and that grew
louder and more distressing as they drew near to a respectable-
looking house set a little back from the street, at the open door
of which a group of men were standing.

"They seem to have the whole house spread open ! " said the
doctor impatiently. ." I wonder what the idiots are thinking of
not to shut the doors and windows ! "

At this moment there came a scream of such shrill frenzy
that they stopped involuntarily for an instant, with a sense of un-
controllable horror.

" Heavens ! This is even worse than I expected ! " ejacu-
lated the doctor when the fearful sound had died away.

They were at the house-door by this time, and, nodding silent-
ly to the men, who drew aside to make room for them, walked up
the steps of the dwelling, which, as its appearance indicated,
VOL. XLII. 47

738

THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.,

was that of a small but prosperous tradesman. Entering a nar-
row passage-way, they mounted a still narrower staircase toward
the sick-chamber, from the door of which a brilliant stream of
light was pouring. So violent, indeed, was the transition from
the dimness of the starlight they had just left to the blinding
glare they encountered on turning the last landing of the stair,
that both paused in the shadow outside and waited a few minutes
until their eyes had grown somewhat accustomed to the change
before entering the room.

All was still now in that room, with the exception of a gasp-
ing moan faintly audible at intervals. But when the doctor, im-
patient to get to the bedside, stepped noiselessly across the
threshold, followed with equal caution by the priest, the silence
was broken suddenly and sharply. The wretched man, who had
been lying exhausted after the subsidence of the paroxysm so
lately over, started up, a ghastly and horrible object. His
quivering body was naked to the waist, his long arms wildly out-
stretched, the short black hair, which ^was very thick, bristled
straight on end above his forehead, and his livid, distorted coun-
tenance and blazing eyes expressed the extremity of supernatural
fear. Uttering a piercing cry, half-shriek, half-wail, he had al-
most thrown himself headlong from the bed ere the watchers
beside him, whose guard had been somewhat relaxed when he
became quiet a few minutes before, could lay hands on him
again.

The scene that followed was indescribably terrible a clus-
ter of men knotted together on the bed, presenting to the eye
but a confused mass of half-clad figures swaying to and fro in a
desperate struggle. One athletic frame was extended crosswise
of the couch over the knees of the sufferer, thus pinning down
his lower limbs under a weight which even the superhuman
efforts of delirium could not entirely resist ; while it required all
the muscle and nerve of four strong men to hold his writhing and
convulsed form. Four to one as they were, it almost seemed an
unequal contest of strength on their part ; for every now and
then he succeeded in wrenching his arms partly free of control,
to grapple and fight with demoniac fury. The men had relieved
themselves of the restraint of their coats, and the rest of their
clothing was soon torn by his maniac grasp and hanging in strips
about their persons. The shoulders of two of the number, indeed,
were as bare as his own, and streaming with blood where he had
fastened his finger-nails into their flesh. And through it all were
sounding the horrent, unearthly yells and ravings that struck on

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 739

the ear with the incisive sharpness of acute physical pain. Hell
was yawning- around him ; he saw the red flames, he saw the
devils, black, hideous shapes, hovering- all about him ! So he
cried out with ravings and blasphemies that curdled the blood of
his hearers and sickened their very souls.

" You'll have to fetch in more assistance," said one of the men,
looking up, his face bathed in perspiration, to the doctor. " Send
out for more men, and we'll take it by turns; for this is goin' to
last all night. My strength's pretty nigh spent for the present."

" And mine, too," said another, with a gasp.

" Call up Ivins and Johnson. They was to come. I expect
they're down-stairs now," exclaimed a third.

" It'll take six men to hold him before much longer," said the
first speaker a moment later, as the feet of those who had been
summoned from below were heard ascending the stairs.

The priest and the physician stood by, silent, powerless.

" You can do nothing to quiet this frenzy? " said the former.

The doctor shook his head. " Nothing, so long as the par-
oxysm lasts. When the next intermission comes I will try to
get him to swallow a dose of chloral or laudanum. But " con-
tinued the young man, then checked himself and motioned the
other to follow him from the room. " I can see that you are
very unwell, father," he said, the moment they were outside the
door. " Pardon me, but I think you ought to go home. You
can do poor Green no good by staying : he will not recover con-
sciousness before he dies."

" He will ! " said a voice beside them, in a tone of suppressed
excitement ; and the two gentlemen, turning almost with a start,
so sudden and unexpected was the exclamation, saw Mrs. Green,
the mother of the unfortunate man, who had approached unper-
ceived by either of them. She was pale and trembling, and her
dull-colored blue eyes had in them a look of mortal anguish ; but
there was an expression of resolution on her face, and she made
an effort to control her agitation as she went on :

" Don't go, father ! Don't leave him while there's breath in
his body ! God is merciful ; he will surely hear my prayers. I
don't ask for his life to be spared, but only that he may come to
his senses enough to get the absolution. Oh, don't leave him ! "

Father Brian hastened to relieve her anxiety. " Compose
yourself, my poor child," he said : " I am not going to leave him.
I will join my prayers to yours, and we will not despair of being
heard while, as you say, there is .breath in his body. But

" I know what you're going to say, father ! " she interrupted

74 o THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.,

nervously. "Yes, I'll try to be resigned if my prayers are not
granted. But I have faith that God will hear me ; I know the
Blessed Mother will plead for me ! It isn't," she went on rapid-
ly, "as if he had been a wicked man. He was a good son al-
ways and a good neighbor. Nobody can say anything agin'
him. The only thing was, he would drink. That was wrong :
oh ! how many times I told him so. But he never hurt anybody
but his own self by that. Surely," she cried passionately, " God
will have mercy on him, and on me who have tried to serve
Him faithful these many years ! "

" ' O woman, great is thy faith ; may it be done to thee as
thou wilt ' ! " thought Father Brian ; while, without waiting for
a reply, Mrs. Green left them as abruptly as she had appeared.
His eye followed her, and through the open door of the sick-
room rested on her bowed figure, that crouched in a kneeling
position at the foot of her son's bed. " You see I must remain,"
he said to the doctor. And they, too, returned to the bedside.

When at last the intermission for which Dr. Ferrison had
been waiting occurred, an effort was made to administer a seda-
tive, but without success. There being no possibility of appeal-
ing to the intelligence of the man, the doctor endeavored to pour
a spoonful of laudanum down his throat by force, but was com-
pelled to desist from the attempt, not only because there was
danger of producing strangulation, but, too, it roused the sufferer
from the brief rest which he so much needed, and which was a
great relief to his attendants as well as to himself; and as the
faintest touch startled him, it was out of the question to give him
the medicine hypodermically.

All night long he raved and struggled, with occasional short
lulls of stupor. Toward morning the duration of these pauses
increased and his strength evidently lessened. He would start
up with convulsive fury, but, after a comparatively brief par-
oxysm, fall back on his pillows exhausted, and utter a succession
of moaning wails .which were, if possible, more distressful than
the fierce cries that preceded them, then relapse again to insen-
sibility.

And all night long the poor woman who knelt at the foot of
his bed cried to God for him without ceasing, and implored help
from the Mother of Mercy. She rose finally after a longer in-
terval than usual had 'passed without his making any sign, and,
going to his side, bent over him. As she did so she started and
seemed^ to cower back. A change had come over his face since
her eye had rested on it last, at the time she spoke to Father

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 741

Brian, It wore now that indescribable look which she had seen
too often in her life not to recognize at a glance. The end, she
knew, was very near ; apparently he had already sunk into the
coma that so commonly precedes dissolution.

For a moment she stood paralyzed ; then, seizing one of the
limp hands that lay now so passive, " Willie ! Willie ! O my
son, can't you hear me? Willie!" she called, her voice rising
gradually, until the last word was a cry of sharp agony.

There was a flicker of the eyelids, they lifted slowly, and the
glazing eyes looked at her rationally, but with a wondering in-
quiry which she answered instantly.

" You are dying, my son," she said. " Here is the priest."

His eyes closed, as if without volition on his part, for the
expression of his face indicated consciousness. When the priest
placed the crucifix to his lips he made an effort to kiss it, and
on its being put into his hand his fingers closed over it.

"The doctor the doctor! Oh, call the doctor!" cried the
poor mother in a shrill whisper, while the priest spoke words of
exhortation and encouragement to the dying man.

The doctor, who had not left the house, but had lain down in
an adjoining apartment without undressing, was already there.
Awakened from a light slumber by Mrs. Green's first call to her
son, he rose and hurried to the room. But he shook his head in
answer to the mute entreaty with which she looked toward him,
and, turning to the priest, said rapidly in a low voice : " Do
what you think necessary at once. His life must be reckoned
by minutes now."

" You hear what I am saying, my son? " the father asked in a
clear, slow tone. " You repent of your sins, and have a firm
faith and hope in the mercy of God ? "

With a visible effort the eyes unclosed and looked up, weak
and glazing, but with full intelligence and an eager gaze of awak-
ened hope.

" Follow me, then, with your whole heart, in the act of con-
trition I am about to make for you," Father Brian continued,
"and I will then give you absolution."

Dr. Ferrison put his finger on the pulse that was beating very
feebly, and, watching the face of the dying man, perceived that,
though life was fluttering, as it were, on his lips, his mind was un-
obscured and joined earnestly in what the priest was saying. At
the concluding words of the absolution his eyes moved slightly,
turning their gaze from Father Brian, on whom they had been
fixed, and glancing upward for an instant with an expression of

THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.,

fervent thanksgiving. Then they fell again and rested on his
mother, while the faintest shadow of a smile crossed his mouth ;
and as the priest's voice pronounced those words which so often
seem to loose the clinging bonds of life, " Depart, Christian
soul," the spirit went forth in one long-drawn but quiet breath.

When the last flicker of life was over in that soft, lingering
sigh, the eyes closing naturally and the face composing itself
into what looked a placid slumber, Dr. Ferrison folded his arms
and stood motionless while the remainder of the prayers were
recited. It seemed scarcely credible to him that the calm, dead
face, lying with the impress of a peaceful spirit on it, could be the
same countenance so lately contorted in the agonies of unearthly
terror. And why such a change, the young physician asked
himself? He would have staked his professional reputation that
the case must end either in convulsions or coma. All his know-
ledge and experience, which were considerable for a man of his
age, convinced him that such a termination was inevitable ; and
when he beheld the man's eyes open with the light of reason in
them, he had felt, scientifically speaking, confounded.

Suddenly, as he marvelled, the echo of Mrs. Green's voice
came to his memory with as startling distinctness as if it was
really sounding in his ears : " I have faith that God will hear
me ; I know the Blessed Mother will plead for me ! "

He turned almost impatiently from the thought which ob-
truded itself on his mind, that here might be the explanation of
what he considered so extraordinary ; but at the same time his
gaze instinctively wandered toward the poor woman whose faith
and hope he had esteemed superstitious folly. And a new sur-
prise awaited him. Her face was nearly as much transformed as
was that of her son. Kneeling beside the dead body of her only
child, her countenance expressed not merely resignation and
tranquillity, but happiness ! Later, no doubt, would come the
natural grief of a bereaved mother, the sense of loneliness and
desolation inevitable under the circumstances. She would miss
the familiar presence which was all that gave any color of plea-
sure and hope to her life. But she did not think of this now.
Her only consciousness was that the dread which had haunted
her for years, poisoning all possibility of comfort or ease of mind,
was over, and for ever. Her " poor Willie " was safe safe in
the mercy of his God. No fear henceforth that he might die
suddenly and unabsolved. She was happy in this knowledge.
The plain, coarse features were irradiated with a supernatural joy
which made them for the moment beautiful ; and as the young

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 743

man glanced from her upraised brow to that of the priest, it
seemed to him that on both was the reflex of a light from above.
For the first time in his life he felt that, placed between these
two people so dissimilar in all but one thing, their common faith,
he was standing on holy ground.

The east was golden, though the sun had not yet appeared
above the horizon, when Father Brian and the doctor left the
house now darkened by the shadow of death. They walked for
some distance without speaking, along the silent and empty
street.

" Father Brian/' said Dr. Ferrison at last, rather abruptly, " I
should like to ask you a question."

" I will answer it if I can," responded the other.

" You believe, I know, in the immortality of the soul.
Where do you suppose that soul which has just left the body
is?"

" In purgatory, I hope," answered the priest.

The young man turned and looked at the speaker.

" You are serious in saying that? " he inquired.

" Perfectly serious," was the reply.

" You hope that it is in purgatory ? "

" I hope and believe so."

" I was under the impression that purgatory is considered to
be a place of suffering," said the doctor.

" Necessarily, since it is a place of purgation," answered the
priest. " But it is also a place of hope ; and since whoever goes
to purgatory will sqo'ner or later enter heaven, it is a very safe
first stage of one's journey on leaving this life."

" It seems to me it would be better to go straight to heaven,"
observed the doctor. " If there is such a place ! " he added
mentally.

" No," said the priest. " If this were possible it would not
be desirable, as I think I can demonstrate to you. It is not pos-
sible, however. Nothing defiled can enter heaven ; and as the
vast majority of human beings are imperfect in virtue, even when,
as we say theologically, in a state of grace that is, in com-
munion with the church and obedient to her instruction it is
imperatively essential that each soul shall be purged of the dross
of sin that defiles it at death, before it can enter the visible pre-
sence of God. And we have only to look at the matter from a
common-sense point of view to discover the wisdom of this divine
ordination. Take, for instance, the case of the man of whom we

744 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.,

are speaking. You heard what his mother said, that he was not
a bad man. All that I have learned from others about him con-
firms the truth of this statement. But can you conceive that his
soul, if unassoiled, would be a fit inhabitant for heaven? or
would heaven be a place of happiness to it ? His life in this
world was a very negative one, both as regarded virtue and vice.
His amiability and kindliness of character were merely natural
virtues and natural virtues do not merit supernatural reward-
while the intemperance which was his habitual fault was more
an infirmity than a vice, He did not violate charity, but neither
did he much practise it ; and, though not a practical Catholic, he
was one in belief, confessed his faith before men, and received the
last absolution. Now, what would you do with such a soul as
this ? It is not good enough for heaven ; it is not bad enough
for hell. Looking at the question _hypothetically, what would
you do with it ? "

The doctor shook his head. He felt himself unequal to hypo-
thetizing on such unfamiliar ground ; but he would have been
pleased to hear the conclusion of the priest's explanation, and
was sorry, consequently, when the latter paused at the door of
his church and said with a smile :

" It is not worth while, I suppose, to ask you to come in and
assist at the Mass which I am going to offer for the repose of
this soul ? "

" I think I should like to hear Mass some time," said the doc-
tor a little hesitatingly, as if apologizing to himself for such an
admission, " but not to-day. I am going home to try and get an
hour or two's sleep before breakfast. Good-morning."

" Good-morning," returned Father Brian, as he mounted the
steps to the church-door and put his hand in his pocket for the
key. But before he had fitted it into the lock Dr. Ferrison, who
had walked away a few steps, was back again.

" At the risk of making myself a nuisance," the young man
said, " I must again urge you to pay a little attention to your
health, Father Brian. You look wretchedly."

" I feel used up just now," Father Brian acknowledged, " but
a little rest and a few doses of quinine will set me up. How
much quinine shall I take ? "

The doctor pulled out his note-book and wrote a prescription.
"I'll leave it at Gowan's as I pass by," he said, "and will tell
them to make it up and send to you at once. And you ought to
take it at once, and keep quiet to-day."

" I will," said the priest.

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 745

IV.

He did keep quiet, but was unable to take the medicine, as
before leaving- the altar he was shaking in a hard chill, which
was followed in due course by a high fever. It was not until
evening that he could venture to try the quinine.

" Look on the mantel-piece, Simon, and bring me a little
round box you will find there," he said to his faithful factotum,
who, coming in from the Refuge as usual that morning for orders,
at his own entreaty had remained in attendance on the father all
day.

After a blundering search he discovered the box, opened it,
and, laying down the cover, carried the other part to the bedside.
Father Brian raised himself up, counted out five pills, and, asking
for a glass of water, swallowed them. They looked rather small,
he thought, for one-grain pills, and after he had lain down a
doubt suggested itself to his mind as to whether he had taken
the right quantity. He requested Simon to bring the box to
him again with the lamp, that he might see the prescription.

" Dose, five pills every four hours," he read aloud. " I was
right, yes." And he was about to give the box back to the boy
when his eye happened to fall on the line above the one of direc-
tions which he had been looking at " 20 grs. morphine."

With a slight start he held the words a little nearer to his
sight, and, taking the latnp from Simon's hand, examined them
closely. The writing was at once cramped and clumsy, but per-
fectly legible. He saw that a mistake had been made, either in
the medicine itself or the labelling a mistake which might prove
very serious, if he had taken five grains of morphine.

" Give me my coat, will you, Simon ? " he said after a minute's
thought, pointing to a chair on which the garment was hanging.
"Thank you. Now ask Mrs. Brown to step here, if she pleases.'*

From the pocket of his coat he extracted his note-book, and
wrote a line of explanation, which he sent with the pill-box to Dr.
Ferrison.

" Is anything the matter, father? " inquired the housekeeper,
entering by one door as Simon departed on his errand through
the other.

" Yes, Mrs. Brown. That is, I am a little afraid I have
taken a dose of morphine in place of quinine," answered he,
" and I wish you would go and make some very strong coffee,
and let me have it as soon as possible."

Mrs. Brown uttered an exclamation of horror, and was pitch-

746 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.,

ing toward the door as fast as her rather superabundance of flesh
would permit. " I'll run for a doctor! " she cried breathlessly.

" Stop, stop, stop ! " said Father Brian. " Pray don't alarm
yourself so unnecessarily. I have already sent for the doctor ;
and if you will go at once and make the coffee "

"Yes, father, I will," she said, and hurried out of the room,
crossing herself as she went.

Father Brian, left alone, rose, walked across the floor to a
table on which was a pitcher and glass, and drank two goblet-
fuls of water; after which he retired back to bed and awaited
patiently the doctor's arrival. If he found the time long there
was no indication of the fact in the expression of his countenance,
as he lay with closed eyes, taking a general review of his life,
and making an act of contrition for his sins and shortcomings.
He was by no means certain that it was morphine which he had
swallowed, thinking it probable that the mistake was in the
labelling, not the drug ; but even if it was morphine he thought
that the water, and the coffee which Mrs. Brown soon brought,
and of which he drank a good deal, would together so thorough-
ly dilute and neutralize the opiate as to render it harmless, or at
least prevent serious danger.

Simon, meanwhile, had some difficulty in finding Dr. Ferrison,
who was not at home when inquired for at his boarding-house.
Following him from place to place, the messenger at last suc-
ceeded in overtaking him and delivering Father Brian's note.
An examination of the medicine convinced the doctor that it was
morphine, and, very much alarmed, he set off at once to see
about it.

But, great as was his hurry to get to Father Brian, he could
not restrain the impulse of indignation which prompted him to
stop on his way at the drug-store in which the prescription had
been made up, and inform the clerk to whom he had given it of
the mischief he had done.

" Morphine made up for quinine ! " exclaimed the druggist
himself, Mr. Gowan, none of the clerks being present. " You
must be mistaken, Dr. Ferrison," he said. " My clerks are all
too well trained to do such a thing as that. Gregory particu-
larlyyou say you gave it to him ? "

" Yes."

' Then I'll engage it's all right," said the man confidently.

" Will you tell me why the box is labelled * morphine,' then ? "
demanded the doctor, pointing to the word on the box-cover as
he spoke.

1 886.] ' THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 747

Mr. Gowan's face changed as his eye, following Dr. Ferrison's
gloved finger, rested on the writing. He recognized it, and re-
ceived mechanically two of the pills. " I'll look at your prescrip-
tion ; it is on file. Perhaps the mistake was yours."

" That's likely ! " said the young man ironically. " Give me
a box of mustard, if you please."

Having received which, he departed in haste, leaving Mr.
Gowan exceedingly disturbed in mind. He stood tasting and
smelling one of the pills which Dr. Ferrison had placed in his
hand, while waiting impatiently for the return of the clerks ; and
presently they came in three in number, including his son, a
boy of fourteen, whom he had lately, as he would have expressed
himself, put behind the counter. A few questions soon elicited
the fact that the head-clerk, Gregory, had deputed the making-
tip of what he considered such a simple prescription to the boy
James Gowan, who loudly protested that Gregory had told him
morphine ; Gregory, of course, as vehemently declaring that he
had told him quinine.

"What did you tell him anything for?" demanded the drug-
gist with a frown. " Why didn't you make it up yourself ? "

" Because Dr. Ferrison gave me two other prescriptions at
the same time that required very careful compounding ; and
this was so plain

"You said morphine / " cried the boy in a half-whining, half-
defiant tone. " I asked you three times over, and you said mcr-
phine"

The clerk's face, which had been pale since he heard of the
affair, turned crimson at this reiterated accusation ; but, disdain-
ing to reply to his assailant, he turned to his employer.

"You know, Mr. Gowan, it's impossible that I could have
told him to write down twenty grains of morphine in one-grain
pills five pills to a dose ! He wrote down the prescription to
my dictation, before he started to weigh it out and "

" I wrote down just what you told me, and you said mor-
phine ! " interrupted the boy, who seemed to think that his only
justification consisted in the repetition of this asseveration.

Mr. Gowan, though a good-natured man, was in a rage. He
felt that the character of his establishment was compromised ;
and, moreover, he was concerned for the priest, whom he knew
very well and much respected. He discharged the clerk on the
spot, promised the boy that he should have a lesson in the morn-
ing that he would remember, and having thus, as he conceived,
done his part in expiation of such an outrage, as he termed it, he

; 4 8 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.,

went at once to see how the priest was, and to express his regret
for the mistake made.

Poor Father Brian was undergoing the mauvais quart cTheure
which necessarily follows the taking a wrong dose of medicine.
In answer to Mr. Gowan's inquiries Mrs. Brown replied that
Dr. Ferrison had given the father an emetic and he could not see
any one : he was very sick.

" So much the better ! " thought the druggist as he turned
away from the door. " If he can throw the opiate off his
stomach he will be all right."

The good priest himself was of the same opinion ; and when
an hour later he found himself apparently rid of the " perilous
stuff" which he had taken into his stomach, and established by
the fire in his sitting-room, with a bowl of cracked ice on the
table at his elbow, glowing logs and dancing flames throwing a
red and cheerful light over the apartment, and his young friend
the doctor sitting opposite him, his face beamed with satisfaction
and benevolence. It is true that his head ached, and that his
stomach, though quiescent from exhaustion, kept him constantly
in mind of how much it was irritated and disgusted by the treat-
ment it had received. But he endured these unpleasant condi-
tions with patience ignoring them, in fact, to appearance, and
seeming disposed to be thoroughly content with the turn which
matters had taken.

The doctor, on the contrary, was exasperated to a degree that
made it difficult for him to affect the outward composure which
he compelled himself to maintain. He was burning with impa-
tience to deal with the unprofitable clerk whose carelessness had
proved so disastrous. " He shall be punished, the miserable
fool ! I'll take him before Williams the first thing to-morrow
morning ! " the young man was saying to himself, when Father
Brian interrupted his amiable thoughts,

" Are you ever ill?" he asked, with a smile.

" Very seldom," was the reply. "I don't remember ever to
have had a serious illness in my life."

' You are fortunate in one sense, and unfortunate in another,"
said the priest. " Fortunate inasmuch as that the greatest tem-
poral blessing we can enjoy is health ; but to be able to enjoy it,
or I should rather say to appreciate it, we must sometimes real-
ize what St. Thomas would call the pain of loss with regard to
it. And speaking of St. Thomas reminds me I received this
morning some books I ordered to be sent me from my library,
which is not here. Among them is one that I must recommend

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 749

to you, and which I wish very much that you would read an
abridged translation of The Sumrna. I mean," he explained, see-
ing by the other's face that he had never before heard the name
even of the book, " the great theological work of St. Thomas
Aquinas. Now that the frost has come, you will have a little
leisure from professional work, it is to be hoped. By the way,
how are all the sick getting on to-day ? "

" Very well on the whole. Mrs. Wilkins died this morning,
but Brady is a little better, and I think may recover. They
were the only two of my own patients about whom I felt any
uneasiness ; and Clayton tells me that his and Worthington's
are all going on well."

" I am sorry for the poor woman and her family," said Father
Brian, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

" I hope you are not beginning to feel sleepy," said the doc-
tor quickly.

" No, not the least so."

" Why did you close your eyes, then ? "

Father Brian smiled at the suspicious tone in which the ques-
tion was asked, but looked grave again as he replied :

" I was saying a De Profundis for Mrs. Wilkins. She was not
a Catholic, but I trust she was in good faith in her religious be-
lief ; and the prayer can do her no harm, if no good."

Looking up as he concluded speaking, Father Brian was
struck by the expression of the doctor's face. " Tell me what
you are thinking," he said.

The young man hesitated ; then, seeing that the priest was
waiting for his reply, he answered frankly : " To say the truth,
I was thinking that your religion must be a very fatiguing one.
This morning, ill as you were, you stopped, before going home,
to perform a religious ceremony in connection with the man by
whose death-bed you had spent the night, instead of at once
taking the rest you so much needed. And it seems to me you
would not feel much like praying just now, particularly for a
person in whom you had no interest, with whom you were not
even acquainted."

" We should feel an interest in every human soul," answered
the father. " But I am sorry," he continued, with a smile, " that
my religion looks so formidable to you. That is because you do
not understand it. If you would examine and reflect "

He paused as a quick glint of the eye indicated that some
sudden thought was crossing the mind of his companion.

" I have been reflecting at odd times," said the latter. " The

THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.,

subject never interested me at all until last summer, when, as
you may remember, we were speaking of it once or twice. I
was struck then by the reasonableness of several of the ideas
which you advanced. Particularly I wondered that it had never
occurred to me before to consider the impossibility of judging
justly about that of which one is ignorant. It was really a shock
to my self-respect when I suddenly became aware that I have
been doing all my life exactly what I always had such a scorn of
doing taking for granted a good deal that I was taught, instead
of examining for myself. It is strange that I could have done
this, because it is an instinct of my nature, if I may use such an
expression, to demand proof before accepting any assertion. I
recollect perfectly that in my earliest childhood I used to ask my
mother some very embarrassing questions, of how she knew that
there was a God, how she could be sure that the Bible was true ;
and her replies never satisfied me. When I grew older the his-
tory of Henry VIII. 's denunciation of Luther's course of action,
and of his subsequently following Luther's example, settled the
subject of religion for me. My parents were then dead, so that I
was not trammelled by regard for their opinion and feelings as
I might have been had they lived, as to outward expression and
I rejected Protestantism with hearty disgust. Christianity I
considered it though you tell me that Protestantism is not
Christianity."

" Only a very mutilated form of it a form so mutilated and
consequently so illogical that it is marvellous that any intellec-
tual mind, looking at it from either a common-sense, an historical,
or a theological point of view, can fail to perceive how utterly
untenable are its pretensions. You did perceive this, it appears,
and your difficulty is elementary ; you called yourself a mate-
rialist, I recollect. Materialist is a generic term ; are you posi-
tivist, agnostic, pessimist "

" Neither one of the three," interposed the doctor, with a
smile, " nor yet a Buddhist. I have no creed of any kind. The
word scepticism has a conventional meaning attached to it which
does not altogether fit my case, but it more nearly expresses my
state of mind, which is emphatically one of doubt, than any other
word I can think of. It seems to me we are so surrounded by
mystery that it is but an exercise of imagination to attempt an
explanation of the inexplicable."

[; What is imagination? " asked the priest.

" In the sense in which I use the word it means an ideal con-
ception of a thing."

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 751

" And what is a conception ? "

The young man hesitated ; then, after an instant of thought,
said : " A picture in the mind."

" Mind itself what is that? " pursued the father.

" Ah ! now we are coming to the breakers," cried the doctor
lightly. " There is a wide difference of opinion on that point,"
he went on. " Mr. Huxley would tell you "

" We are talking seriously," interrupted Father Brian, trying
to maintain a grave face. " Let Mr. Huxley's vagaries alone.
What I propose is to get to the bottom of things. What is
mind, I ask you ? "

" My mind is a blank so far as this subject is concerned, I
must confess," replied the doctor.

" And is it possible that you are satisfied to rest in such igno-
ble ignorance ? forgive the word ! " demanded Father Brian,
speaking now with unaffected gravity.

" As to that, I do not know how am I to know? that it is
ignoble ignorance."

" Are you willing to be convinced that it is, and to correct
it?"

" Not only willing, but I shall be glad to do so. Varying
Plato's prayer a little, I can very sincerely say, ' O God if
there be a God enlighten my soul if I have a soul ' ! "

" With these dispositions, I think your prayer will be
granted," said the priest. And after refreshing himself with a
piece of ice he forthwith began the process of enlightenment.

" A fundamental principle in ethics as well as in physics is
that to demonstrate any given proposition we must take as a
starting-point one admitted fact on and from which to deduce
our argument," he said. " I propose to prove to you, first, the
immateriality of the human soul; secondly, the existence of
God ; thirdly, the divine origin and exclusive authority of the
Catholic Church."

With hand extended, fore-finger and thumb meeting and form-
ing a large O, Father Brian had unconsciously been speaking in
the measured and impressive tone habitual with him when he
preached ; and though looking straight at his one auditor the
while, it was not until the conclusion of his exordium that his
eye took in the expression of that hearer's face. He paused then
suddenly, and his low but singularly mirthful laugh rang out, to
the surprise, and somewhat to the embarrassment, of his young
friend.

" Excuse me," said the reverend gentleman, " but there was

752 THE DOCTOR' s FEE. [Mar.,

such a quizzical look of surprise, verging on dismay, in your face
that it was irresistibly amusing. Don't disclaim. It was rather
startling, naturally enough, to be made suddenly aware that } r ou
were expected to listen to a sermon and a long sermon, as the
firstly, secondly, and thirdly promised. The fact is, I am afraid
I have too much the trick of the trade about me : too often
forget, when talking, that I am not in the pulpit. * On the pre-
sent occasion,' however, I of course intended to glance very has-
tily over the wide field I have indicated, my object being merely
to direct your attention to the subject, and excite your interest
sufficiently to induce you to go to that fountain of intellectual as
well as spiritual light, St. Thomas. So now to proceed."

Waving away with a motion of his hand the disclaimer which
the young man was still anxious to make, he went on, but in a
more conversational tone than before:

" We will begin with that self-evident fact which even the
school of Mr. Huxley and Mr. Tyndall has never attempted to
deny man exists. Next comes the question, What is man? I
answer, Man is a being of dual nature: a material body animated
by an immaterial principle, the soul or spirit. I prove the mate-
riality of his body by showing that if you detach a minor part
of this body from the major part to which is joined the soul, the
part detached is man no longer, but mere animal matter that,
speedily losing its organization as human flesh, is resolved by
natural process to its elements ; and that the same result happens
to the whole body itself as soon as the soul is separated from it.
I prove further the distinct individuality of the two natures,
material and immaterial, by reminding you how often these na-
tures are at variance with one another in inclination. To illus-
trate familiarly, I doubt whether either you or I have passed
twenty-four hours during the last month in which the body has
not said, ' I am tired let me rest ' ; to which appeal the spirit
has replied, * No, I must do this or that thing before resting.'
It is the same with them in more important matters. Look at a
man disposed to the sin of intemperance. He knows that he is
injuring himself, his fortune, his family, by the indulgence of this
sensitive appetite (to use a schoolman term), and he struggles
against the habit. If the spiritual nature is strongest he controls
himself; if the animal nature predominates he yields to its
promptings and becomes a drunkard. Again, the separableness
of the two natures is manifested in the fact that although the
reciprocal action and reaction between them is positive and gen-
erally very great, it nevertheless often happens that one can suf-

i886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 753

fer intensely without the slightest participation in its pain on
the part of the other. Thus a man may be enduring- the greatest
stress of mental anxiety and unhappiness, yet at the same time
enjoy perfect bodily health; or while in agonizing bodily pain
he may be serene and cheerful in mind.

" The next point I make is that the soul is the principle of
life, and that it is immaterial. I will show you this by another
illustration. Suppose that you meet a man on the street, shake
hands and are standing talking to him, when a pistol is acciden-
tally discharged near by, the bullet of which passes through his
heart, killing him instantly. His lifeless form sinks to the ground,
and you bend over it. All that your material senses are capable
of perceiving is still before you the eyes that so lately met
your glance, the lips which put into vibration a column of air
conveying sound to your ears, the hand that grasped your own.
But is all the man, with whom you were talking just now, there ?
No ; the man is dead : this is only his body, a mere mould of clay.
A minute ago this mould of clay thought, moved, felt : you
might spurn it now with your foot, or you might hold the flame
of a candle to its fingers, and it would not be conscious either of
indignity or of pain. What has caused so great a change? The
absence of that which animated this body the principle of life,
the soul. Can you deny that this principle existed when the man
walked up to you ? Can you deny that it is absent as he lies be-
fore you ? "

" No," answered the doctor, " I cannot deny that. So far
your reasoning seems to me conclusive, unanswerable. But
though you have demonstrated the immateriality of the soul or
mind, you have not proved its indestructibility, or, as you, I sup-
pose, would say, its immortality. To appearance it goes out and
becomes extinct, like the flame of a candle. What proof have
you that it still exists apart from the body ? "

" No direct evidence in the natural order, since it is through
our senses that our souls are cognitive of their surroundings, of
each other, even of their own material existence. When, there-
fore, a soul is separated from its corporeity it becomes intan-
gible to the corporal sense ; hence we cannot follow it with our
perceptive faculties, any more than we can follow with our eyes
the figure of a man who leaves us by going out of a room and
shutting the door behind him. The man disappears from our
sight because that sight cannot pierce the opaque walls that en-
close its range of vision ; the soul vanishes from our perception
because that perception is confined to the world of sense, out of
VOL. XLII. 48

754 THE DOCTOR'S FEE. [Mar.,

which the soul has passed. But does the fact that it has passed
beyond the domain of sense prove that it has ceased to exist ?
No more, analogically speaking, than the fact that your eyes
cannot see the man outside of a closed door proves that he is
not there. It is, you must concede, by logic and analogy that
the observation of crude facts has been gradually developed into
method and formed into a generality termed knowledge."

-Yes."

" Knowledge teaches us that matter is indestructible. Take a
drop of water, a grain of dust, the smallest imaginable particle of
matter, and, though the process of division may be carried to the
extent of rendering its atoms invisible and impalpable to sense,
it would be as possible to destroy the world as to annihilate a
single one of those atoms. Man's body is material, we have seen ;
therefore, in its component parts, imperishable. Now, what is
this body in relation to the soul by which it is animated ? A
garment that enfolds, and a servant that obeys its master ; an in-
strument used by the mind as a workman uses his tools. Which
of the two, then body or spirit is the higher nature? You
must admit that the spirit is. And can you conceive it possible
that the higher nature ' goes out and becomes extinct ' while the
lower is inannihilable ? Is not such a presumption altogether
contrary to reason ? I will show you presently what St. Thomas
says on the subject ; but first let us recur for a moment to our
starting-point man exists and examine the logical sequence of
the proposition.

" What is the first principle of logic? It is that there can be
no effect without a cause, that it is impossible for something to
come from nothing. Man is ; therefore he is something. Being
something, he is either cause or effect. Is he cause ? No ; he
did not antedate but succeeded the creation of the world. I, as a .
Christian, hold that the world was created first, and man after-
wards ; you, as a materialist, contend that matter existed how,
you say not and gradually resolved and evolved itself into na-
ture and man. So we stand here on common ground, agreeing
that man is not cause. Since he is not cause he must be effect,
and as effect he must have a cause. What is this cause ? Chris-
tianity says God ; materialism says matter. Let us analyze the
two theories. We will call them so for the sake of argument.
Now"

" A moment," here interposed the doctor. " I am sorry to in-
terrupt you, and sorry to lose what you were about to say, but
I am afraid that you are over-exerting yourself."

1 886.] THE DOCTOR'S FEE. 755

" I think not," answered Father Brian. " You had better let
me go on and keep my mind active. I am not at all sleepy as
yet, but am beginning to have a slight premonition that I might
easily become so. I feel a little tired, with a consciousness that
it would be very agreeable to go to bed. I can resist these sen-
sations without difficulty at present ; but if I permit myself to let
down in the least degree, it will be hard to rouse myself, I am
sure."

" If your stomach could bear a little coffee " began the doc-
tor, but the padre shook his head, put a piece of ice in his mouth,
and resumed :

" Man is not cause ; therefore he is effect ; therefore he has
a cause. Is matter this cause ?

" I have contrasted the relative character of spirit and of
matter in their combination as man ; let us now note the differ-
ence of the two intrinsically. The spiritual being man, and the
inanimate substance matter, are most essentially opposite in na-
ture. Man is endowed with life, intelligence, and volition ; his
motives and actions are positive, self-controlled, and may be
unique. Matter is lifeless ; it does not act, but is acted upon
(by a force of which I shall speak later), and its operations are
negative, circumscribed, uniform, and immutable, proceeding
always in a circle. The spirit or mind of man (speaking hastily
as I am, I cannot pause to distinguish between soul, or spirit, and
mind, but use the three words indiscriminately) the mind of man
is cultivable. Take a savage, and you may teach him, or he may
teach himself by observation and experience, some of the habits
and ways of thinking of civilized life; take a civilized but igno-
rant man, and he may be educated, in a degree refined ; take a
thoroughly educated and cultivated man, and he is constantly
advancing to higher culture. Even man's body, from its associa-
tion with mind, is improvable to a certain limit. Compare a
peasant and a fine gentleman the disparity between them is al-
most immeasurable.

" Now turn to matter, the earth on which we live, and out of
which our bodies are formed. Here we find a regular recur-
rence of certain phenomena : the alternation of light and dark-
ness, which we call day and night, the flow of the ocean tides,
the revolution of the seasons. There is no change here. The
days are not longer or shorter, nor have the seasons varied in
any respect, since Cheops built his pyramid in the valley of the
Nile, or Romulus founded the Eternal City on the banks of the
Tiber. Man sweeps over the face of the globe, inventing Ian-

756 THE FAIR OF BERGAMO. [Mar.,

guage, establishing governments and laws ; cities spring up at
his touch, empires rise and flourish. Can a mountain move, or
can a tree think ?

" And materialism tells you that from this matter, itself with-
out life, there emanates life ! in a word, that something has
come from nothing.

" Matter is not man's cause. What is?

" Once more let me illustrate. A man who has never heard
of steam as a motive power happens to see a train of cars run-
ning on a railroad-track beside which he is passing. He stops to
stare with amazement at the strange, huge animal such it looks
to him at a first glance to be which is drawing the carriages
along. But he is an intelligent man, and on closer inspection he
perceives that the engine is not a living thing but a piece of
mechanism. It does not occur to him to question whether it
was self-created, or evolved by chance from its elements, wood
and metal. On the contrary, he thinks, ' What a marvellous mind
it was that conceived and executed such a work as this ! ' So
we, my friend, beholding the earth and man the one so admir-
ably organized (for that which is called the life of matter, vegeta-
tion, is not vitality but organization), the other, in the words of
the Psalmist, so curiously and wonderfully made must logically
exclaim : ' This effect has a Cause ; this world has a Creator ; there
is a God.' "

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE FAIR OF BERGAMO.

THERE is an adage that those are blessed who expect nothing,
for they shall not be disappointed. Now, I did expect something,
and, to confirm the adage, I was grievously disappointed. I had
been stopping at Milan, and I had heard so much of the annual
fair of Bergamo that I determined to seize the opportunity of
inspecting its wonders. It is held in the very hot season the
close of August and beginning of September is " very charac-
teristic," so I was told, and attracts to it the inhabitants of the
remote valleys and mountainous districts of the Pennine Alps.
I was disappointed : there is nothing like making a clean breast
of it. As a fair it was a failure ; still, as a study of Italian life it
had its peculiar features, and I jotted them in my note-book.

1 886.] THE FAIR OF BERGAMO. 757

Like Laurence Sterne, " I pity the man who can travel from
Dan to Beersheba and cry, Tis all barren."

The journey from the Lombard capital is not far little more
than an hour by express cars. The locomotive sweeps in a lei-
surely Italian way, be it observed, for an express through plains
bursting- with fertility.

I fortunately met an agreeable companion, an American, in
that far-away region, lively as a musical box and practical as a
mill-wheel. But he had a too freely expressed contempt for anti-
quity. He was one of those go-ahead men who would turn
church steeples into telegraph-posts and parcel out the Coliseum
into building-lots. He was generous and off-handed in his deal-
ings ; most globe-voyaging Americans are, and have completely
taken the shine out of British tourists on the European Continent.
Englishmen, as I heard a discriminating hotel clerk remark at
Geneva, nowadays " count their change " ; Americans do not
take the trouble. Besides, they give more commissions to the
painters, are sweet on knickknackery, and submit to extortion
with an infinite grace.

Bergamo is like Brussels in one respect there is a high town
and a low town ; there the resemblance ceases. The low town,
if more affected by the business folk, is quite as important and
respectable as the high town, which has a slightly stronger flavor
of the aristocratic. There is a gap between them. The high
town is built on a terrace of the hills, that rise up precipitously
here, and looks in the distance as if it were a painted town or an
act-drop, so brilliant are the colors and strong the contrast of
white houses, red-tiled roofs, and yellowish church-domes with
the green of the foliage, the gray of the hill-tops, and the sap-
phire of the sky behind. The air must be healthy, although omi-
nous vapors do spring up from the flat country round ; for the
lakes of Como and Iseo are near, and appetizing breezes are born
occasionally in the mountains and come down like a gift on the
dwellers on the plains. Fields of Indian corn, out of which the
staple Italian dish polenta is made, are numerous in the neigh-
borhood. Polenta is one with the hasty-pudding doled out to
the poor during the Irish famine, and which they did not take
kindly to very often. Italians laugh and grow fat upon it, and
snap their fingers at dear beef. Polenta and uccelliihQ bodies
of the little birds bedded in the savory mess form a dish dainty
enough to be set before a king. The dusty road from the rail-
way depot to the inn is bordered with rows of horse-chestnuts
and howling mendicants, both in remarkable luxuriance. Never

75 8 THE FAIR OF BERGAMO. [Man,

has it been given to me to gaze upon horse-chestnuts with finer
fruit nor mendicants with a more varied stock of ailments and
deformities. Heaven help the latter ! Let us pity them substan-
tially and pass. Omnibuses ply between the depot and the
lower town; thfe distance is not quite three hundred yards, but
the horses are trained to make it appear much longer. They
switch their tails with a haughty spirit, and lift their hoofs super-
ciliously as if they had passed their childhood learning to mark
time in a cavalry regiment, and move along in a sort of zigzag
trot with great action and very small pace.

We were housed in the Golden Hat. A roomy hat it was.
In the spacious, dark, low, cool apartment into which we entered
directly from the street, tables were set, and knives and forks and
fingers yes, fingers were busily worked by crowds of small
farmers who had come to the fair. Hale men with swarthy, fur-
rowed cheeks they were, and with much of the Munster peasant
in expression and dress and manner. The only singularity of
costume to be noticed was a colored night-cap, or wishing-cap,
worn under the ordinary- hat. In one corner was a tall, elderly
man with a mien of noble dignity ; he was bald, had a grand
Roman nose and a patriarchal beard. He was sitting in appa-
rent silent obliviousness of the seething, sordid world around.
He would have been invaluable in a studio where orders for
Platos were plentiful. I ensconced myself in the shade and
watched this mysterious philosopher. A group of noisy farm-
ers were bargaining behind a pillar, gesticulating violently,
and now and again clearing their throats with a gulp of wine.
One of them proposed that they should go out and take another
look at the ox over the price of which they were chaffering.
They left their glasses behind them, not quite finished. The
mysterious philosopher rose, stealthily approached the table,
drained the glasses to the lees one after another, and calmly re-
sumed his seat and his aspect of spiritual contemplativeness. In
a room behind, opening on the inn-yard, eating and drinking and
talking were also going on. I suppose there was a philosopher
in a corner there, too. Very merry people they were, and tem-
perate, except in their language. They would waste an hour
beating down twenty lire to nineteen. Young Italy, with burnt-
sienna face, pressed in and out, and old Italy, with parchment
face, kept its seat and smoked or inhaled snuff. Such snuff shade
of Lundy Foot ! I saw a man produce a brown paper parcel from
his waistcoat-pocket and sniff its contents. Those contents were
common tobacco ground to dust. While middle-aged Italy was

1 886.] THE FAIR OF BERGAMO. 759

deep in macaroni or rice dressed with grease, Italy of young man-
hood's period went in for bumpers of the sour purple wine of
Barbera with the flavor of the muscat in it, or of the sweet amber
wine of Asti. One brand of the Asti, the spumante, has an ex-
hilarating effervescence and would make an excellent cheap sub-
stitute for champagne, only I fear it will not bear exportation.
The only wine I know that is like it is the vin de Vouvray one gets
in the Touraine a mixture suggestive of perry and the ginger-ale
of Belfast. How fortunate, I reflected, that such beverages as these
and that mild cordial, rosolio, and the natural lemonade were the
favorites in this sultry clime of quick tempers and sharp steel, and
not the potent, fiery potion known elsewhere as rye! Talkative
as well as merry were these Italians. Mark that circle of heads ;
those crones in cotton-print dresses, with Madras handkerchiefs
swathing their hair, needed no sheet of society gossip. Let us
hope their conversation was not scandalous, for the sake of the
rosaries they carried. But tongues will wag. Outside in the
broad market-place there was cracking of whips and a chorus of
loudly-pitched voices and strange ejaculations blent with the rural
discord of the farm-yard. Lean pigs and shorn sheep, both with
ears long as rabbits, squealed and bleated, and calves were hus-
tled about, and teams of dwarfish steers, harnessed to huge wag-
ons, chewed the cud of patience.

My American proposed that we should sally forth and search
for the fun of the fair. The boom of a big drum directed us to
the booths. There was a row of them : a diorama ; a fat woman
(how she must have perspired that broiling day!); a wild-beast
show consisting of a monkey and two white mice; an anatomical
museum which professed to contain the embalmed remains of
Milly Christine, the South Carolina phenomenon, patronized by
all the crowned heads of Europe; and an exhibition of feats of
strength and tight rope performances on the model of that in the
Princess of Trebizond. Further on there was the skeleton of a
whale caught off the coast of France ; beside it an academy where
an educated seal held forth ; and lo ! cheek by jowl with the pho-
cine habitat was enthroned under an enormous umbrella, ample as
a cart-wheel or the famous hat of Nell Gwynn, our old friend Mrs.
Jarley with her inimitable wax-works. The dear, portly dame
was suffering from the temperature. She was not the cheerful
woman she used to be. My American was anxious to interview
the seal, and I accompanied him. I had often heard of the talking
fish, but this was the first chance I had of seeing him in the flesh,
I had almost written. The American heard him distinctly say

;6o THE FAIR OF BERGAMO. [Mar.,

"ma-ma," but he had better hearing than I. This seal, like the
Pompeian funambulist, was " truly a wondrous fellow." He turned
on his own axis in the bath to the melody (?) of a hand-organ ; he
beat the water with his fins, and took fish from the hands of his
mistress, who expatiated on his bulldog face, his calf's eyes, and
his tiger's teeth. But he accomplished a more artful feat than
these. When his mistress left, and the American poked him with
his stick, he rose with a gaze of human reproach, lifted the hinged
covering of his bath with his head, and shut himself out from
public view.

We rambled on till we came to avenues of stalls branching off
from a little piazza with a fountain. Toys, pipes, metal studs,
looking-glasses, pious pictures, " Brummagem " ware in earrings
and breast-pins, and cheap photographs of works of art alternated
with potatoes and tomatoes, ices and lemonade, plums and peaches,
figs and grapes, pears and ready-made polenta. Peasant maidens
without veil or fan, and in slippered feet, trooped along side by
side with shopkeepers' daughters with veil, and fan, and para-
sol, and high-heeled bottines that would not discredit Paris. This
was not the only hint of French civilization to obtrude itself.
There^was a placard advertising LUomo-Donna of Dumas the
younger over a book-stall. I was curious in examining those books
to ascertain what manner of mental pabulum was sought after by
Bergamo. There were novels by Antonio Bresciani, including,
among others, Olderico, or the Pontifical Zouave ; there was Souve-
nirs of the Tyrol Campaign, by a Garibaldian volunteer; there was
the story of Raffaello and the Bella Fornarina, and burning dis-
grace to the vender! there was a pair of villanous pamphlets
entitled Gli Amori of two discrowned female sovereigns.

There is a conservatory of music in Bergamo though it does
not rank as a great town ; has a population of but forty thousand
and many celebrated singers (Rubini, a native, among the rest)
studied there. The tomb of Donizetti, who was also born there,
is to be seen in the church of St. Mary the Major, in the upper
town, opposite that of his master, Giovanni Mayr. I could not
prevail on my practical friend to climb the ascent in order to
visit it.

" No, sir," he said. " Elias Howe is the one composer 1 rec-
ognize ; the only fantasias I believe in are those executed on a
sewing-machine."

A play-bill announced a new opera for that night (for Berga-
mo has its opera-house)" La Notte di Natale." But there was
no use in asking my American to patronize a stall. He had seen

1 8 86.] THE FAIR OF BERGAMO. 761

an opera once, and he volunteered to tell me what this would be
like. A man in black would come on and bawl that was the
tenor; then a woman in white would come on and screech that
was the contralto ; another man in black would howl that was
the baritone ; another woman, but she in sky-blue, would whine
that was the soprano ; and then a burly ruffian in red would
bring a dagger out of his sleeve and his voice out of his boots
that was the basso-profundo.

" But there is a plot," I gently remonstrated between two
laughs. " Surely they are not always the same ?"

" Yes, sir," he said" always. Plot: love, jealousy, murder.
Finale: chorus of bawling, screeching, howling, whining, and
leather lungs from those boots, with a little caterwauling and a
too-loo-e-ty thrown in. There, sir," wound up my American,
" that's your opera ! How do you like it ? "

We took a ride outside the town. A dwarf stood at a cross-
ing with a tirelire in his hand and rattled it before the Ameri-
can. My companion was bountiful and dropped a few soldi into
it. More beggars pestered us. My American fell into a brown
study as we continued on, until we reached a silk-factory. When
I pointed it out to him he brightened up.

" Ah ! " he said, " there is something more pleasing to God
than this highway mendicancy ; that means industry, intelli-
gence, domestic comfort. This country, with its mulberries and
olives, its dairy-farms and splendid wheat-tracts with those irri-
gating canals, should be a rich country. When will some apos-
tle rise to teach this people that to labor is to pray ? "

Evening was failing as we returned. We overtook a bearded
Capuchin on the road and gave him a lift. He was as handsome
a man as ever wore a uniform in a Royal Guard erect, with a re-
fined face, a bold, frank brow, and a pleasing and intelligent eye.
He was in the dress of his order, which took the American's
fancy vastly. . He was bareheaded but for a tiny black skull-
cap ; a habit of a coarse brown stuff, girdled at the waist and
falling down to his sandalled feet, a pointed cowl hanging behind
his shoulders, was the only outer garment he wore. He was
urbane and cheerful. The American began mildly bantering
him on his costume, and asked him why he did not wear clothes
like other men.

" Have you no soldiers in the United States ? " he asked
slily.

" We have, and good ones. I was with Sherman."

" Do they wear uniforms? " pursued the friar.

762 THE FAIR OF BERGAMO. [Mar.,

" Why, certainly."

" Well, this is mine. I am a soldier of the faith."

The American, I am glad to record, asked . him to take
charge of some money to distribute in help to the deserving ; and
I am confident that amiable and willing friar discharged his
trust well, for he looked and spoke like one who knew the poor
and felt for them. He was no idler, either, for I afterwards
learned that he was chaplain to a lunatic asylum and was a man
beloved for his kindness and revered for his worth.

Night had dropped its curtain as we re-entered the town, and
the fair Bergamese were wending their way to the opera-house.
What a pretty animation bevies of young girls in simple muslin
robes, with a silken sash round the waist and the graceful black
veil on the head, lent to the streets ! On they tripped in this
their every-day costume, without shawl or other covering, so
grateful is the Italian summer clime after the sun has gone down.
They had only to put on a pair of gloves and they were in even-
ing dress. But there were a few coquettes, who looked as if they
had stepped out of a portrait-gallery of the Grand Monarque's
court. They had powdered their hair, and there they passed
through the roar and bustle of the fair, unremarked and unan-
noyed. The cavaliers with them were their fathers or their
brothers ; for in Italy, as in France, the unmarried female is never
permitted abroad with any male escort but a relative. I was
almost enticed to follow with the current to hear " La Notte di
Natale," but there was my American. What was to be done to
while avvay the tedium of the hours? Luckily there was a re-
source there was a circus in the town.

I have a weakness for the sawdust. My business never made
me a looker-on in Vienna that I did not hie to Rentz's ; my first
night's visit in Madrid is invariably to Price's. I know nearly
every circus-proprietor in the world personally. I could not re-
sist the temptation of a view of the performances of the troupe of
Signor Guillaume.

The bright, particular star of the equestrian firmament of
Bergamo should she not be called a planet, seeing that she
shone in an orbit? was Miss Ella, an English lassie. Miss Vic-
toria, another English lassie, had been the luminary of Giotti's
circus at Geneva. The English rule the roost in hippodramatic
spheres., My American took leave to remark, sir, that Jimmy
Robinson, the best bare-back rider in the world, was a citizen
of the United States, he was; whereupon I quietly crushed him
by remarking in return that his fellow-citizen rejoiced in the bap-

1 886.] BY SUMMER SEAS. 763

tismal appellation of Michael Fitzgerald, which is as Irish as a
pig or a potato ; and Ireland, it must be vouchsafed, is not yet
American.

The doings in the arena were of the usual kind, but the
clowns were more than usually dreary, and the spectators laughed
with a glee that was refreshing in its childishness. One clown
had a happy thought a thought worthy of the jester in half-
mourning in the burlesque of The Last Days of Pompeii. He got
himself up in a Dolly Varden suit a fashion then common in
Italy. Pleasant it was under the shadow of the olives to meet a
foreign reproduction of Dickens' creation

" Just as the artist caught her,
As down that English lane she tripped,
In flowery chintz, hat sideways tipped,
Trim-bodied, bright-eyed, roguish-lipped
The locksmith's pretty daughter."

I have mentioned this circus because of a scene in which a
rider personated " the resurrection of Italy." He emerged as a
dude with a cigar in his mouth ; he read of a patriotic movement
and flung away his cigar ; he then appeared in rifle uniform and
lastly in a red shirt as a Garibaldian. " Garibaldi's hymn " was
played, but there was no extraordinary enthusiasm. A Pontifi-
cal Zouave galloped in, and after a gallant fight was killed ; and
then came an Italian carabineer, whom he of the red shirt lugged
off his horse by the hair. Thus is history chronicled in the ring.
The only time the Garibaldians met the Pontifical Zouaves they
were beaten, and when the royal troops met the Garibaldians it
was not the former who were defeated. But Mentana and
Aspromonte, seen through the glittering medium of the foot-
lights, are Garibaldian victories.

BY SUMMER SEAS.

STAR OF THE SEA, these placid waves beside,

Which mirror in their depths the silver sheen
The pale moon radiates upon the tide

From the blue skies whereof is she the queen,
A dream comes to me of returning ships,

And some sweet shrine that, dedicate to thee,
The mariners, with reverential lips,

Hail in their songs afar, Star of the Sea.

764 BY SUMMER SEAS. [Mar.,

And, as I dream, the life about me takes

The image of an ocean to mine eyes,
The farther edge of whose expanses breaks

Upon the starlit shores of Paradise ;
While o'er the bosom of its billows swift,

Which hasten on and outward ceaselessly,
My soul seems floating like a boat adrift,

Whither the currents run, Star of the Sea.

Lamp of our life, not thine, forsooth, the fault

If eyes that turn from them away their gaze
Fail to discern at times in yonder vault

The clear effulgence of thy constant rays :
However fierce the storm, or dark the night,

Or mountainous the seething surges be,
The lustre of thy light glows warm and bright

Before the steadfast search, Star of the Sea.

Even the erring ones who steer astray,

In quest of pleasure, where false beacons lure,
Can, if they turn them back while yet they may,

By thy sure guidance their safety secure ;
For on lifeVocean vast there is no wave,

Drifting or driven on a treacherous lee,
O'er which, the wanderer to warn and save,

Shine not thy blessed beams, Star of the Sea.

Star of the Sea, these placid waves beside,

That mirror in their depths the liquid light
The pale moon radiates upon the tide

From the blue sky she traverses to-night,
Guide us aright, that when our homing ships

Enter the harbor of Eternity
We, like the mariners, with thankful lips,

May hail thee in our songs, Star of the Sea.

i886.] ANSWERED AT LAST. 765

ANSWERED AT LAST.

A TRUE STORY.

IT was the end of October, and there were very few people in
London, and, callers being in consequence not very numerous at
my office, I imagined that I should find no difficulty in getting
away early on a certain Friday morning in order to proceed to
an out-of-the-way corner of England where business required
my presence. Unfortunately, just as I was preparing to start
one of my clients, who happened to be passing through town,
came to consult me upon a matter of urgent importance. He
was, moreover, a person to whom, on account of his advanced
age and high social standing, it would have been impossible in
any case to refuse an interview ; and hence it came to pass that
when at length he took his leave I found that it was barely pos-
sible for me to catch the midday express. I promised the cab-
man double fare if he would take me to Paddington in time, but
it was of no use, and I arrived at the Great Western terminus
only to hear the faint shriek of the departing engine. This was
annoying, but there was nothing to be done, so I sent off a tele-
gram to inform Mr. Moreland, the gentleman at whose house I
was expected, that I could not arrive until the last train, the only
other one which stopped at the little station where I had to
alight. Having despatched my message, I purchased a supply
of newspapers, hoping to while away not too wearily the time
which must perforce elapse before I could begin my journey.

It was not a romantic journey, nor one which could be con-
sidered interesting in any way. I was accustomed to make such
very frequently ; for I belonged at that period of my life to a
leading firm of London solicitors, and sometimes hardly a week
passed without my having to run down to one part of the coun-
try or another to transact business on behalf of some client. My
present errand took me to Darnesfield Court, a solitary country-
house situated at a short distance from a small village in the
west of England. It did not belong to Mr. Moreland, but he had
taken it for a year in order to be near his only daughter, who
had recently married a gentleman whose property was situated
in the neighborhood. Since the death of her mother this daugh-
ter had been her father's constant friend and companion ; thus he

766 ANSWERED AT LAST. [Mar.,

naturally felt lonely without her, especially as he was an old man
and his sons were all out in the world.

The hour for starting came at last, and as we steamed slowly
out of the station far indeed was I from anticipating the startling
spectacle of which I was to be the involuntary witness before
many more hours had gone by. If I now write down the singular
story the most singular, indeed, I have ever met with in the
course of my experience, professional or otherwise >it is in the
hope not merely of interesting the reader for the space of a brief
half-hour, but of convincing him, in these days when it is the
fashion openly to deny the supernatural, or else practically to
leave it out of sight altogether, that not only does the Creator
govern in a general and more extended sense the course of events
in the world which he has made, but that every occurrence in the
life of each individual is permitted or appointed by an over-
ruling Providence, and forms a part of the vast system by means of
which his divine and beneficent purposes are furthered and car-
ried out.

In due time I found myself at Westhampton, where Mr.
Moreland's dog-cart was awaiting me. The night was very
dark, so dark as to necessitate extreme caution on the part of the
servant who was driving ; and, what with the slowness of the
pace and the coldness of the weather for it was unusually cold
for the time of year the distance from the station seemed to
have extended itself, and the way appeared longer and lonelier
than I could have imagined a four miles drive along a country
road could possibly be. The clock of the adjacent church was
striking eleven as we drew up before the door of Darnesfield
Court, and the light and warmth of the hospitable mansion were
very welcome to me as I entered the hall. Jarvis, the butler, re-
ceived me with polite apologies. " Master hopes you will ex-
cuse his having gone to bed, sir," he explained ; " he was very
tired this evening, and is, besides, in the habit of always retiring
early. But supper is quite ready, if you will please to walk into
the library."

I followed him with alacrity. The well-lighted room looked
the picture of cheerful comfort, and the nicely-arranged supper-
table bore a most inviting aspect. I told Jarvis I did not need
his services, so he quitted the apartment and I began my meal
without delay. It was quickly concluded, and I pushed back
my chair and got up with the intention of ringing the bell ; but I
was sleepy and tired, and the temptation presented by a com-
fortable easy-chair which stood beside the bright wood fire

i886.] ANSWERED AT LAST. 767

proved too strong for me. I paused, sat down, and in less than
five minutes was sound asleep, profoundly oblivious of the in-
terests of Jarvis, who was probably quite as sleepy as I was.
My slumbers, as I afterwards found, must have lasted about half
an hour. They certainly would not have been as peaceful as they
were, had I dreamt of what was to follow. Some slight noise, I
know not of what nature, having aroused me, I rose from my
seat, and before winding up my watch I proceeded to compare
it with the timepiece on the mantel-shelf. Having done this, I
replaced it in my waistcoat pocket and took out my pipe, which I
was about to fill when all at once the door was unceremoniously
burst open, and a girl rushed into the room, followed closely by
a man, who caught hold of her round the waist. I can see it all
now as if it were yesterday the look of horror in her dilated
eyes, the agonized gesture which seemed to entreat for mercy,
the uplifted hands, the pleading lips, the wild despair with which
she cowered before her murderer. Yes, her murderer; for in an-
other moment the man had drawn a dagger from the pocket of
his coat and plunged it into her breast. Ail this passed, I need
hardly say, in less time than it takes me to write these lines, and
the moment I beheld her fall forwards to the ground I sprang to
the door with the double object of procuring assistance for the
victim, should she still be within the reach of aid, and also of se-
curing the assassin.

"Jarvis, Jarvis ! " I called as I passed through the open door,
which I closed behind me "Jarvis, where are you ? For Hea-
ven's sake come at once ! "

" Yes, sir, coming directly," said that functionary placidly
and sleepily, as he emerged from a door which led to the lower
regions. But when he caught sight of me the expression of his
face changed.

" There is murder going on in the library ! " I gasped out. We
paused an instant at the door: the silence of death seemed to
reign within. Then I cautiously turned the handle, and, looking
in, we saw no trace whatever of the horrors I had just witnessed !
The room was exactly as it had been when I sat down to sup-
per ; both the intruders had entirely disappeared, and there was
not even one single spot of blood upon the carpet. Murderer,
victim, dagger, every trace of the crime, had vanished into air ;
and as I related to the servant the scene I had just witnessed, I
saw from his countenance that he received the tale with a mixed
feeling of incredulity and contempt.

" There are no ghosts in this house, sir," he said when I

768 ANSWERED AT LAST. [Mar.,

stopped speaking " at least I never heard of any. I made all the
doors fast, too, an hour or more ago, and no one could have
passed through the hall without my seeing him. There is no
young lady in the house at present, either, nor any gentleman,
except yourself and master. So you see, sir, you must have
been dreaming," he wound up in a triumphant and conclusive
tone the tone of a man who has proved a fact even to demon-
stration.

I knew quite well, as well as I do at the moment I am writ-
ing, that I had not been dreaming, that I never was more thor-
oughly awake than I was when an involuntary witness of the
spectacle I have just described. I could, therefore, only suppose
that some terrible crime had in time past been committed in the
library, and that this fact furnished an explanation of the appari-
tion I had beheld. However, I felt the butler had the best of
me, and the feeling was not an agreeable one.

" Show me my room, please," I said in as unconcerned a tone
as I could assume, and I followed the man up-stairs to the apart-
ment assigned to my use. He lit the candles upon the dressing-
table, wished me good-night, and left me. But I suppose few of
my readers will be surprised to hear that it was long before I
could attempt going to bed.

I sat down before the fire and began to think. No house
could be less weird, uncanny, and suggestive of ghosts than
Darnesfield Court. I had seen many country-houses, but never
did I meet with one more prosy, practical, and suggestive of
solid, every-day comfort. There was no touch of romance or
sentiment about it ; it was painfully and pitilessly matter-of-fact,
both inside and out. There was no ruined tower, half-clothed in
ivy, no moat where stately swans could swim at their leisure ;
there were no secret staircases, no winding passages, no hidden
rooms cleverly contrived between massive walls. It was just
such a house as every one must have seen twenty times over
solid, substantial, built of red brick, with a large gravelled space
in front. The family to which it belonged had preserved the
faith even among the worst storms of persecution, and the pre-
sent owner was a man distinguished for virtue and piety, having
erected the beautiful little church which adjoined his grounds in
order to provide for the spiritual wants of the increasing number
of Catholics in the neighborhood, many of them converts whom
the teaching and example of the admirable priest who acted as
his chaplain had led to seek admission into the true fold. But
all this formed no adequate reason for rejecting the idea that the

1 8 86.] ANSWERED AT LAST. 769

mansion was haunted an idea which shaped itself all the more
definitely in my brain the longer I mused upon the subject.

It was three o'clock in the morning before I lay down to
seek repose, and I did not fall asleep until the Angelus, sounding
from the tower of the church, told me that a new day had begun.

II.

The breakfast hour at Darnesfield Court was fashionably late,
for the simple reason that the present master of the house did
not, as he was wont to confess with outspoken frankness, really
know what to do with his time. I was not quite ready when the
gong sounded, and as I slowly descended the broad staircase and
crossed the spacious hall on my way to the dining-room I ac-
knowledge that I felt somewhat uncomfortable, for I knew that
the butler would have been beforehand with me in acquainting
his master with the story of the last night's apparition.

Although my host received me with the utmost courtesy,
there was a slight constraint perceptible in his manner, and I
knew in a moment, as I shook hands with him, that my surmise
was correct, and he had already been made acquainted with the
singular occurrence of the previous night. He eyed me some-
what curiously, but did not broach the subject that was evidently
uppermost in his mind until I began to speak of it.

" Did you know that this house was haunted, Mr. Moreland ?"
I inquired, as I took an egg from its resting-place beneath the
snowy napkin.

" Oh ! dear, no," was his ready reply. " Nor can I believe it to
be so, either. It is not a very old house, and had I had any sus-
picion that it was haunted I should on no consideration have
taken it, for I have the greatest dislike to that sort of thing."

" Well," I rejoined, " how, then, can you explain what I wit-
nessed last night ? " And I related in detail the incident which is
already known to the reader, and to which my host listened at-
tentively. But I saw that he regarded it as the delusion of a dis-
ordered brain.

" It must have been an optical illusion," he remarked senten-
tiously when I had concluded " a very singular optical illusion,
no doubt. I have recently read a book on the subject, a most
interesting book. When the nerves of the eye

" An optical illusion! " I broke in. " Indeed that is impossi-
ble ; I am not an imaginative or fanciful man. There never was
any one less excitable or more prosy than myself. Pray do not
VOL. XLII. 49

7;o ANSWERED AT LAST. [Mar.,

talk to me about illusions. The thing was no mere fancy ; I saw
it all as plainly as I now see you."

" Well," he resumed, "then you must have been dreaming;
dreams are very real sometimes. What with the motion of the
train and the drive through the night-air, no doubt you felt
sleepy. I dare say something you had been reading, some tale
of horrors, may be, or perhaps some criminal case you may have
been engaged in getting up lately, recurred to your mind in
rather a startling manner just as you were about to awake."

" Nothing of the sort," I answered, not without some warmth.
" I assure you, my dear sir, I was as fully awake as I am now.
I can assert it most emphatically. The door was burst open, and
I heard as well as saw the two rush in."

Mr. Moreland looked down, and a somewhat peculiar smile
played upon his lips. I felt that I was in danger of losing my
temper, but checked the irritable impulse and said, with a forced
attempt at jocularity : " You will tell me next that I had an attack
of delirium tremens ! "

To my surprise my host rejoined with grave politeness : " I
need not say that I could not have ventured to hint at such a
thing, if the suggestion had not come from yourself ; but I hope,
my dear Mr. Furnival, that you will not be offended if I proceed
to add that this is an alternative that strikes me as by no means
an impossible one. As you are no doubt aware, all the best
medical authorities agree that delirium tremens may be brought
on by want of sleep or an undue stress laid on the brain, though
in the vast majority of cases it arises from indulgence in alcoholic
drinks. Every one knows how hard you work, and my butler
tells me that you drink no wine, so you cannot take offence at
what I -have said."

I bowed, and Mr. Moreland continued: " I wish I had been
down-stairs myself; I ought to have been there to receive you.
It is high time that I apologized for not having done so. The
truth is, I am an old man, and I had ridden a good many miles in
the morning and was tired. Besides, I thought your train would
be late. The last train generally is behind time."

Here a welcome interruption was created by the entrance of
a servant, who informed his master that the solicitor with whom
I was to confer respecting the transfer of some property had
already arrived from the county town and was waiting in the
library. But though no more was then said on the subject, I
could not get it out of my thoughts all day ; and I must confess
that I found the business I had come down to arrange more

i886.] ANSWERED AT LAST. 771

wearisome than business had ever been before, and that I got
through it far more slowly than is my wont, and did not succeed
as readily as I usually do in making either my client's wishes or
my own ideas clear to my fellow-lawyer.

The next day was Sunday, and Father Hubert, the parish
priest, dined at the Court, according to a long-established and
invariable custom, with which Mr. Moreland, who was himself
an excellent Catholic of the good, old-fashioned type, had no in-
clination to interfere. The conversation, as was natural, revert-
ed to the subject of the apparition. Father Hubert had heard a
garbled account of the matter from some of the villagers to
whom Jarvis had been talking, and he listened with much inte-
rest to the story I told him. He said that he had never heard
of any ghost in connection with the house, which was scarcely a
hundred years old, adding that there was nothing in the history
of its owner which could seem to point, however remotely, in
the direction of a mysterious tragedy, much less of a terrible
crime. Despite all that was said, my own conviction remained
unshaken that the apparition was a real one ; but I felt that I was
considered to be the victim of a strange hallucination one of
those delusions to which an active and overworked brain renders
many persons liable.

On the Monday I was engaged to shoot over the well-stocked
preserves of an old college-friend, whose country-seat was about
twelve miles from Darnesfield. I was to remain to dinner, driv-
ing back afterwards to Mr. Moreland's, as I had to return to
town by the first train on Tuesday morning. It was a relief to me
to turn my back upon the house, which I believed to be haunted ;
and as, after an early and solitary breakfast, I drove rapidly away
in the direction of Lancaster Park, my spirits rose with every
mile I left behind me. They would, perhaps, have scarcely been
so elastic had I known whom I was to see before the day was
done !

As almost all the guests, excepting those who were staying
in the house, came from a distance, the dinner-hour had been
fixed for half-past six. Country dinner-parties are apt to be
rather dull affairs, and this one proved no exception to the rule.
It was not a brilliant gathering which assembled in the drawing-
room. My hosts, the Lancasters, were typical specimens of a
Country gentleman and his wife, and there were several people
exactly like them, only older or younger, graver or gayer, as the
case might be. Of one of the persons who composed the company
I had scarcely a glimpse until we were all seated at table, as whilst

ANSWERED AT LAST. [Mar.,

we were in the drawing-room she had her back turned to me,
and was engaged in conversing with a tall, thin man, who, stand-
ing before her, bent on her glances of unmistakable admiration.

"That is Mr. Somerset," Mrs. Lancaster explained to me in
an undertone" a younger brother of Sir Edward Somerset, the
proprietor of Darnesfield ; and the young lady he is talking to is
a Miss Rutherford. He is desperately in love with her, but I
fancy her heart is bestowed elsewhere."

Mr. Somerset took Miss Rutherford in to dinner ; they were
opposite to me, rather lower down the table, and after the first
glance I directed towards her I seemed to see no one else. My
whole attention was riveted upon her, and I could scarcely take
my eyes from her face. She was exceedingly pretty ; yet it was
not her beauty that fascinated me for I had seen many more
beautiful women but to my utter amazement I recognized in
her the girl whom I had seen murdered in the library of Darnes-
field Court. There she sat in her youthful freshness and inno-
cent enjoyment, chattering gaily to her admirer ; but it was im-
possible to be mistaken as to her identity. I looked and looked
again, gazed and gazed once more, and every time I became
more thoroughly and utterly convinced that I was right. She
was simply dressed in a gown of soft, pale pink material, cut
square at the neck ; and in her corsage and in her hair she wore
some delicate-hued, late-flowering natural roses, which heighten-
ed the effect of her exquisite complexion and dark brown eyes
and hair. Truly, she had not much in common with the agonized,
scared, terror-stricken woman whom I had seen cowering before
the uplifted dagger; and yet I could recognize each feature : the
shape of her face, the turn of her figure, the very form of her
hands everything about her, in fact, was the same. The identity
was undeniable, indisputable. I grew absent and distracted, so
that the prosy dowager to whom it was my duty to talk, finding
me rather a dull companion, addressed herself in preference to a
simpering captain of dragoons who sat on her other hand.

As soon as the ladies quitted the dining-room I excused my-
self to Mr. Lancaster on the plea that I was tired after my day
in the open air, and begged him to allow me to take my depar-
ture at once, especially as I had to be back in London at so early
an hour the next morning. So the dog-cart was brought round,
and I returned to Darnesfield Court, astonishing Mr. Moreland
not a little by my unexpected appearance.

" Why, Mr. Furnival," he exclaimed, " I did not expect to see
you for a l.ong time yet! Do you know that it is only nine

i886.] ANSWERED AT LAST. 773

o'clock? What is the matter? Are you ill? You have not
seen another ghost, surely ! "

"No, I have not seen a ghost," I replied gravely; " I have
seen the lady."

" The lady ! What lady ? "

" Why, the lady I saw in the library the other evening; the
bodily form of the phantom-shape I saw in the apparition."

My host removed his cigar from his lips with an impatient
gesture. " I do wish," he exclaimed almost pettishly, " you
could get that nonsense out of your head. Do you mean to say
you have seen it over again? Pray, where did it happen this
time ? In the drive or out on the open road ? "

"You do not understand me," I said, as I seated myself by
the fire. " I do not say that I have seen the tragedy acted over
again, but I have seen one of the dramatis persona. She sat
opposite to me at dinner. I recognized her at once ; there is no
possible doubt about it. She is a handsome girl, with beautiful
hair, and rather a peculiar manner of parting her lips when she
smiles. Her name is Miss Rutherford."

At this point it was evident from the expression of Mr.
Moreland's face that he began to entertain serious doubts of my
sanity. "Whatever are you talking about?" he cried, startled
out of his usual serenity. " You cannot mean Marian Ruther-
ford ; she is my daughter's great friend. They are like sisters.
Are you going to tell me she is murdered ? "

" On the contrary," I replied, " did you not hear me say that
she was at Mr. Lancaster's house to-night, and that I sat oppo-
site to her at the dinner-table ? She is as much alive as you or
I ; but, bright and blooming as she is, she is none other than
the girl who rushed into the library the other night, white and
scared and terrified, pursued by her murderer."

" What a very singular thing," Mr. Moreland remarked, " that
you should have taken up this idea ! You are the last man I
should have suspected of such vagaries. And "now that your
delusion has taken this personal turn, the matter has gone quite
beyond a joke. One thing I really must beg of you, and that is,
not to breathe a word of this to any one. Suppose it got round
to Miss Rutherford, how extremely unpleasant it would be for
her and all of us ! No ; the ghost-story has got wind, and has no
doubt by this time received innumerable additions, but what you
have just mentioned to me must not go any further."

I promised secrecy, and Mr. Moreland continued : " Miss
Rutherford is an orphan and my ward, for she has no near rela-

774 ANSWERED AT LAST. [Mar. 7

tives living. I am very fond of her, and should be glad to see
her suitably married ; but I am afraid that her marriage can
hardly be a happy one if she perseveres in keeping to her pre-
sent engagement. Between ourselves, I should only be too glad
to see it broken off, and am using all my influence to induce her
to give up her intended husband, who is handsome and fascinat-
ing, and that sort of thing, but not the sort of man a girl should
trust herself to for life. He is a Spaniard of good family ; his
parents settled in Mexico before he was born. I am afraid he is
addicted to one or two very bad habits, besides having a fiery
and unrestrained temper. But he can be charming when he
chooses, and has a great hold over Marian, who is deeply attach-
ed to him, though she deplores his want of principle." Thus the
old man continued to run on, and, as I plainly perceived the sub-
ject of the apparition to be an unwelcome topic, I let it drop, and
soon afterwards we parted for the night. As I lay down to rest
I could not help wondering what was the import of the strange
spectacle I had witnessed, and why I had been permitted to be-
hold it. Cut bono ? I said to myself over and over again ; for, as
the reader will readily understand, the matter was now invested
with an additional and far deeper interest, since one of the phan-
tom actors had been seen by me as a living reality. Was I to
see the other also? And if so, when and where would the meet-
ing take place ?

On rising the next morning I found that a dense, damp fog
had succeeded to the brilliant autumnal sunshine of the preced-
ing day ; and when, after a hurried breakfast, I bade farewell to
Mr. Moreland and drove away from his door, I felt that the mist
which shrouded the landscape in its veil of gloom was not thicker
or more impenetrable than the mystery connected with Marian
Rutherford and the scene in the library. Had that mystery
some undiscoverable relation to a long-forgotten past? Or
might it possibly contain a foreshadowing of a yet unimagined
future? Had it been shown to me for some hidden purpose
which at present I could not divine, but which in due time would
be revealed to me ?

III.

Never have I been able to account to myself for the uncon-
trollable impulse which prompted me, one dreary afternoon
about two months subsequent to my visit to Darnestield Court,
to return home from my office on foot, especially as the weather

i886.] ANSWERED AT LAST. 775

was not pleasant enough to furnish an inducement for departing
from my almost invariable custom of travelling by omnibus.

On the occasion of>which I speak I had walked down Oxford
Street, transacting some trifling business on the way, and then
directed my steps homewards. When I reached Hyde Park the
crowd of carriages, and indeed of vehicles of every description,
was greater than usual, and, habituated though I am to thread
my way between menacing coal-wagons and dive with dex-
terity beneath the heads of advancing cab-horses, I was obliged to
wait several minutes before I was able to cross the road. I was
looking impatiently around me, thinking how foolish I had been
to take this long walk on a gusty, disagreeable day, and feeling
certain that I should be caught in the rain before I could reach
my home, when all at once my attention was forcibly arrested
and my roving thoughts were brought to a sudden standstill.
Close to my right hand, on the curbstone where I was standing,
I became aware of the presence of a gentleman whose face was
strangely familiar to me. He was tall and handsome, with curly
black hair and regular, finely-cut features. But though his ap-
pearance was decidedly striking, I could not at first remember
where I had seen him before. At that moment there was an op-
portunity for crossing the road ; we traversed it side by side, and
as I looked again at the stranger the truth flashed upon me with
the force and directness of an intuition he was the phantom
murderer of Darnesfield Court! Without thinking why I did
so, I followed the mysterious unknown as with rapid, active
steps he walked on, shaping his course in a slanting direction
so as finally to emerge from the Park opposite Exhibition Road.

Down this road he went until he came to the post-office,
which is situated on the right-hand side; there he paused, and,
availing himself of the shelter afforded by the roofing over the
street for it was now raining fast stood still for a moment
under the gas-lamp, and, putting his hand into the breast-pocket
of his overcoat, took out, with a quick gesture only too well re-
membered by me, not this time a dagger, but a packet of letters,
which, after a rapid survey, he slipped into the box. I had gone
up quite close to him, under pretence of consulting the clock, and
before walking away he turned and suddenly looked me in the
face. His eyes met mine, and I felt more than ever certain of
his identity. He went down the road as far as it goes, then, turn-
ing to the left, walked past the church of the Oratorian Fathers,
stopping at a house a little further on, the door of which he
opened with a latch-key, thus proving that he lived there. A

776 ANSWERED AT LAST. [Man,

card with Apartments for Gentlemen \.Q\& me that it was a lodging-
house ; and it was not difficult on the following day to ascertain
his name. It was Dei Mar, the landlady informed me Mr. Alfonso
Del Mar; and she added that he was a Spaniard. " I might have
guessed that," I said to myself ; " he has the look of a haughty
hidalgo." As I walked away it suddenly occurred to my mind
that Mr. Moreland had said that the gentleman to whom Miss
Rutherford was engaged was Spanish. Could it be possible that
her present lover was identical with what I could not but sup-
pose to be her future murderer? The truth must be discovered ;
I wrote immediately to Mr. Moreland ostensibly for some other
object and in his reply he informed me that my surmise was
correct, and that Del Mar was the name of Miss Rutherford's
affianced husband.

The reader will not need to be told that this identification of
the principal actor in the tragedy I had 1 witnessed furnished me
with a subject for long and serious thought and for mature and
anxious deliberation. I hesitated as to what course of action it
was best to take, or whether it would not be better to abstain
from action altogether, since I could think of none that would do
any good. With Mr. Moreland there was manifestly nothing to
be done, since he had shown himself determined not to take the
matter up, and I knew that if I persisted in urging him to do so
he would only grow angry with me and tell me in plain terms
that I must be a madman. Ought I to acquaint Miss Rutherford
with the whole story, with a view to warning her before it should
be too late and her life irretrievably linked with that of Mr. Del
Mar? But then there was my promise of secrecy, and if I were
to break it, and she believed me, either in part or whole, I should
probably only make her miserable and myself disliked ; for what
girl ever consented to give up a lover on the strength of such
testimony as I could bring forward as to the danger involved in
a marriage with him ? And if, on the other hand, I said to my-
self, she refused altogether to give credit to my story, I should
not fail to bring down upon myself an amount of ridicule and
contempt which I felt hardly prepared to encounter.

Therefore, after much hesitation and manifold reflections, I
finally decided to keep silence ; and when, a few months subse-
quently, I heard, not without a sense of relief, that Marian's en-
gagement was broken off, I considered my resolution to have
been a wise one, and the subject of the apparition became less
frequently present to my thoughts, and as time went on gradually
faded from them altogether.

i886.] ANSWERED AT LAST. 777

About twelve months later, indeed, the impression was to a
certain extent renewed, for I happened incidentally to be told
that Miss Rutherford was dead, and that circumstances of a pecu-
liarly melancholy and mysterious nature were connected with
her death. What these circumstances were I was unable fully
to ascertain, as my informant only knew that the unfortunate
young lady had been found dead, and that the matter had been
hushed up, as there was a strong- suspicion pointing in the direc-
tion of suicide. Of Mr. Moreland I had lost sight altogether, and
my own life was just then so full of sorrow and anxiety that the
cares and labors of the present quickly effaced the recollection of
my vision that most weird and mysterious among my memories
of the past.

IV.

I am not engaged in writing my own autobiography, and it
would be alien to the purpose of the present story were I to at-
tempt to narrate the chain of circumstances by means of which I
found myself, after an interval of ten or twelve years, an inmate
of the accident ward belonging to a large hospital in one of the
principal towns of Australia. A compound fracture of one of my
lower limbs necessitated a somewhat lengthened period of repose,
and the enforced captivity proved very irksome to me. Slowly
and wearily the weeks dragged by, until I was at length pro-
nounced convalescent, and it wanted but two or three days to
the time fixed for my quitting the hospital, when one evening a
man who was a stranger in the place was brought into the ward,
having been seriously hurt in the course of a drunken quarrel
with some rough associates in a tavern.

The bed next to mine happening to be vacant, the new-comer
was placed in it ; his injury was pronounced by the doctor to be
severe, but not necessarily mortal. It was of such a nature as
to leave the sufferer in full possession of his consciousness, as I
presently discovered ; for, in the stillness of the night, the pa-
tient, being in too great pain to sleep, commenced talking to
himself in an undertone. Perhaps he was unaware that he was
speaking aloud, or perhaps he imagined that, as he spoke Span-
ish, no one of those around, if they chanced to overhear, could
understand what he said. However, since that language is per-
fectly familiar to me, I could understand every word he uttered
every word, that is, which reached my ears ; for frequently the
sick man's mutterings became inaudible, or intervals of slumber

778 ANSWERED AT LAST. [Mar.,

on my own part rendered me for a time oblivious of my sur-
roundings. On the whole I slept but little, however ; for, listen-
ing at first from mere idle curiosity, I soon found my interest
excited in no small degree, for it was manifest that the Spaniard
was a prey to remorse on account of some crime, the recollec-
tion of which lay heavily on his mind and caused him poignant
regret. What was the nature of that crime his self-communings
did not disclose, but I gathered that it was an act of violence,
connected in some way with my own country ; for as his
thoughts apparently travelled back over by-gone years, he con-
stantly mentioned English scenes and English people, some of
whose names were familiar to me and seemed to evoke dim
memories of a long-forgotten past. Was it a dream, or was it
something the sick man said as he tossed restlessly from side to
side, that gave definite form to those shadowy reminiscences, and
recalled to my mental sight with startling vividness a tragedy
to which for years my thoughts had not reverted, but which
could never be entirely effaced from my remembrance namely,
the mysterious phantom-scene it had been my lot to behold in
the library of Darnesfield Court? The scene, the actors, rose up
before me as if all were being enacted over again then and there ;
and at the same time a suspicion started up within my mind
a suspicion which gradually strengthened into conviction and
forced itself upon me with irresistible power that the sufferer at
my side was the Spanish gentleman to whom Miss Rutherford
had been engaged, and that it was by his hand that she had
come to her untimely end. Thus, by one of those remarkable
coincidences in which we should find it difficult to believe, did
they not so constantly occur, I was now brought into immediate
proximity with the man who had committed the crime that I had
seen in anticipation.

The next morning my first thought was the desire to gain
sight of the individual who so deeply interested me ; but on look-
ing anxiously towards his bed I perceived that he had fallen into
a heavy sleep, and, his countenance being averted from me, it
was impossible to obtain a glimpse of his features a glimpse
which would either go to corroborate the truth of my surmise
or prove my suspicions to be unfounded. On my inquiring his
name of the nurse, to my surprise she said that it was Albert
Davis. Then, seeing the puzzled expression on my face, she
added : " He does not look much like an Englishman, certainly."

I could now move about with the aid of a stick, and therefore
as soon as I was dressed I went to my neighbor's bedside. One

1 886.] ANSWERED AT LAST. 779

glance sufficed to convince me that I had guessed aright ; supposi-
tion became certainty as soon as my eyes fell on the face of the
Spaniard, in whom, changed, care-worn, prematurely aged as he
was, no one could fail to recognize the actor in that dark drama,
the proud and passionate Del Mar. There was the same black
curly hair, there were the same finely-cut features, the same pecu-
liar lower lip, which gave a haughty, almost ill-tempered expres-
sion to the countenance, though the cheek was now flushed with
fever and the naturally lustrous eyes sparkled with an unnatural
brilliancy. I asked the sick man how he was, adding that I was
sure he had been in pain in the night. He looked surprised at
being addressed in Spanish, and answered in the same language.

-'A thousand thanks," he said, with the courtesy of his nation.
"I could not sleep, it is true, but my wound is slight ; 1 shall
soon recover."

After a few commonplace remarks, and the proffer of my
services if I could be of any use to him, I asked, Had he not
lived in England ?

An expression of pain passed over the stranger's face ; with a
slight moan he turned away, closing his eyes wearily as he utter-
ed the monosyllabic reply "yes."

At this moment the surgeon came round, and I had no more
opportunity of conversing with my neighbor that day. When
night came he was delirious, and until I fell asleep it was pitiful
to hear his wanderings; how he went back to the days of 'his
early youth, when he was an innocent child, his reminiscences
being ever and anon mingled with outbursts of lamentation and
* bitter self-reproach.

When I awoke the next day the nurse was standing by his
side. " Poor fellow ! " she said, turning to me, " he is very bad,
though he will not allow it himself. The doctor says he would
certainly have recovered even if the injury were worse than it
is, were it not that his constitution is ruined through habitual
intemperance and the wild life he has led of late years. His
blood is in a bad state, and he may sink rapidly ; he ought to be
warned of his danger."

I asked if I might be allowed to speak to him, and, since he
was a Catholic, ascertain whether he was desirous to see a priest.
Consent was readily given, and I moved at once to his bedside,
conscious that there was no time to be lost. The fit of fever had
passed away, and he lay back on his pillow in a state of exhaus-
tion. I endeavored gently to acquaint him with his perilous
condition, and urged him to accept the ministrations of a priest.

78o ANSWERED AT LAST. [Mar.,

But he would not believe my statement or accede to my pro-
posal. " Not yet," he murmured ; " when I am better, perhapsr
I shall soon recover. I cannot, I will not die ! "

Finding I could prevail nothing, I changed my tactics. " I
know who you are," 1 said. " Your name is not Albert Davis ;
it is Alfonso Dei Mar."

The sick man stared wildly at me. " Who are you," he
asked, " and what do you know about me ? "

"Not only do I know your real name," I continued, "but I
know that you have on your conscience a terrible crime, which
makes you afraid to die, afraid to appear before the tribunal of
God."

Del Mar's countenance became ghastly. " Hush, hush ! " he
cried. " Do not say that ; it is false, it is false ! "

" Is it false," I pursued, " that you were affianced to Marian
Rutherford, that you quarrelled with her at Darnesfield Court,
and that one evening you stabbed her to the heart? "

This was a bold venture on my part, and I was almost ap-
palled at the effect it produced. There was a gurgle in the
man's throat as he vainly strove to articulate ; cold drops stood
on his brow, his lips writhed as in bodily torture, he grasped
my wrist with his burning hand.

" Did she die," he exclaimed " oh ! tell me, did she die ? Was
that accursed blow fatal?" And when he read the answer on
my countenance, "Alas! then I am a murderer," he ejaculat-
ed. " Dios mios, I am a murderer. Ay di mi, ay di mi ! "

He lay back upon his pillow, moaning feebly, and I was
obliged to call for assistance, as I perceived that the violence of*
his emotion had caused his wound to bleed afresh. The doctor
insisted on quiet, but after a time the sick man's eye sought
mine, and with an imperious gesture he summoned me to his
side.

" My sin has found me out at last," he said. " I thought no
human eye witnessed it ; sometimes I have even persuaded my-
self that the whole was a hideous dream. Ever since that fatal
night a curse has pursued me. I have failed in everything. I
have been a wanderer and an outcast. I have plunged into wild
excitement in order to escape from the remembrance which
haunted me. I have endeavored to drown my remorse with in-
toxicating drink. But tell me, if you saw it, why did you not
deliver me up to justice? Why did you not let them hang me
as a murderer? How much it would have spared me ! If you
only knew what these years have been ! And now the end has

r886.] ANSWERED AT LAST. 781

come, and it is too late for hope, too late for repentance, too late
for forgiveness ! "

I said all I could to soothe the sufferer; I reminded him of
the infinite mercy of God, of the Sacrament of Penance open to
sinners, of the welcome the church prepares for the penitent
prodigal. And then I left him, that I might seek the priest and
ask him to be in readiness should Del Mar consent to see him.
He promised to come to the ward that same evening, and fer-
vently did I pray that he might not come in vain as far as my
poor friend was concerned.

Through the mercy of Heaven the good priest's persuasions
were effectual. The next morning Del Mar, who, though for
long years he had neglected to approach the sacraments, had
never denied the faith, was reconciled to the church and made
his peace with God, promising that if spared to recover he
would lead a life of penance and atonement for his sin. But
this was not to be ; although at first he seemed to have passed
safely over the worst crisis, and was even pronounced out of
danger, yet blood-poisoning set in and he sank rapidly. I saw
him again two or three times before his death, but I never dis-
closed to him the manner in which I had become possessed of
his secret and made aware of the crime long before the thought
of it had taken shape in his brain. Nor did he question me
much on the subject, but evidently took it for granted that I
had somehow been an unobserved spectator of the terrible scene,
and had concealed the fact from motives of prudence from
inability to trace the culprit, perhaps, or from lack of sufficient
evidence to convict him, or, more likely still, from fear of at-
tracting to myself suspicion of guilt which it would be difficult,
nay, impossible, to disprove. At any rate, he doubtless concluded
that I had had good reasons of my own for not appearing in the
matter and revealing what had occurred in those brief moments
of frenzied passion moments which he was to expiate by years
of bitter remorse.

I told him Miss Rutherford was supposed to have committed
suicide, but I naturally forbore frqm interrogating him as to the
circumstances which led to the crime, though I was curious to
know its immediate motive. On this point, however, during
our last interview, he voluntarily enlightened me.

" Though all was broken off between Miss Rutherford and
myself," he said, "and I was on the eve of sailing for America,
some evil impulse impelled me, before I should leave England
for ever, once more to revisit the place where I had first become

782 ANSWERED AT LAST. [Mar.,

acquainted with her. I believe my good angel tried to deter
me, for innumerable obstacles opposed themselves to the execu-
tion of my project, but each one only made me more determin-
ed to realize it. Mr. Moreland had left Darnesfield Court, but I
was well acquainted with the Somersets, to whom, as you doubt-
less know, the mansion belonged, and who were again occupy-
ing it. To their house I went, ostensibly for the purpose of
paying them a parting visit, but really to see Marian once more.
I found that she had recently become engaged to Henry Somer-
set. I saw her walking with him in the grounds, as she had for-
merly walked with me ; and, my jealous temperament leading
me to imagine that preference for him had caused her to reject
me, I resolved to reproach her with her perfidy. In vain I
watched for an opportunity of speaking to her alone, but when
the time to take leave arrived I contrived, under some pretext
or other, to draw her aside for a moment, and beg her, for the
sake of the love she once bore me, to grant me an interview
that evening after the household had retired, as I wished the
fact of our meeting to be a secret. Bewildered and astonished,
she had not time to collect her thoughts, and before she was
aware of what she was doing she had given her consent. She
let me in at the front door, which was, as I had foreseen, left
unbolted that night for the convenience of the son of the house,
who had gone to a ball in the neighborhood. I reproached her,
as I had intended ; she was a very high spirited girl, and, irri-
tated by my injustice, retorted in a manner which stung me to
madness, and, my hot blood getting the better of me, I lost every
vestige of self-control. Terrified at my vehemence and at the
menaces I uttered, she fled from me into the library and you
know the rest. Instead of leaving for South America in the
steamer in which I had taken my passage, I let it start without
me and embarked under a false name for Australia on the next
vessel which happened to be sailing. But for the knowledge I
so unexpectedly found you to possess of a crime I deemed
known only to God and to myself, I should never have sum-
moned up courage to see a priest, and my miserable life would
in all probability have been terminated by a yet more miserable
death."

On the following day Del Mar received the last sacraments,
and expired some hours later in excellent dispositions, having re-
peatedly made acts of humble contrition and complete resigna-
tion to the will of God. The last words he was heard to utter
were, Jesus, pardon ! Mary, help ! And may we not feel assured

1 886.] CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 783

that when he passed into the presence of his Judge the sentence
pronounced on him was a merciful one?

I saw hitiilaid in his lonely grave, and as I turned away from
the cemetery I no longer asked myself for what end I had be-
held the mysterious apparition. No longer did I exclaim, Cui
bono f for I had found the key to the enigma, and my oft-repeat-
ed question was answered at last.

CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS.

THE friendships among mankind are themes for frequent
thoughtful speculation. The needs and obligations of other re-
lations in this life are of sufficiently easy understanding and ex-
position. It is not so with friendships. The subtlety of their
essence, the absence of regularity in their formation, the varieties
among the strains that they will endure, have seemed ever to
hinder their reduction to ascertained terms. Husbands and
wives, parents and children, brothers, sisters, and other kindred,
colleagues in whatever department of endeavor, magistrate and
private citizen, clergy and laity all know well what these owe
among one another. But who shall say the same of friends ?
The poets and the philosophers have said some beautiful things
and some contemptuous, and all maintain that perfect friendships
are most rare. " Rarum genus ! " exclaimed Cicero. Said Lilly
in Endymion :

" Friendship ! of all things the
Most rare, and therefore most rare because most
Excellent."

So nigh is friendship akin to love that the Greeks, and after
them the Romans, gave to it a name derived from that dear
word. English-speaking people have done differently, but nei-
ther can they, any more than could the ancients, define the boun-
dary between the two.

There is something quite interesting in reflections upon the
few friendships among eminent persons that have been handed
down through the literatures of the ages. Curious illustrations
some of them are. Take that of Orestes and Pylades, exhibited
by their becoming principal and accessory to the murder of the
mother of the one and the aunt of the other, the accessory re-

784 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. [Mar.,

warded for his part with the hand of another parricide, Electra,
the tale of whose sufferings makes up one of the greatest essays
of the tragic muse.

Then Theseus and Pirithous. The history of the friendship
of these two heroes affords somewhat of humor, grim though it
be. Plutarch, after an account of the help rendered by the for-
mer to Adrastus of Thebes, thus proceeds :

" The friendship of Theseus and Pirithous is said to have commenced on
this occasion. Theseus being much celebrated for his strength and valor,
Pirithous was desirous to prove it, and therefore drove away his oxen from
Marathon. When he heard that Theseus pursued him in arms he did not
fly, but turned back to meet him. But as soon as they beheld one another
each was so struck with admiration of the other's person and courage that
they laid aside all thoughts of fighting ; and Pirithous, first giving Theseus
his hand, bade him be judge in this cause himself, and he would willingly
abide by his sentence. Theseus in his turn left the cause to him and de-
sired him to be his friend and fellow-warrior. Then they confirmed their
friendship with an oath."

This reminds us somewhat of the inception of the alliance
between Robin Hood and Little John. The historian does not
record whether or not the oxen were restored, but we conclude
that perhaps the robbery was treated as a harmless practical
joke, and that both were thankful for the happy result to which
it had led.

We are not informed as to the age of the king of the Lapithae
at the beginning of the confederate achievements of these dis-
tinguished cronies ; but Theseus was now fifty years old, and
seemed to have lost no part of the ardor which had been wont
to impel him to the obtaining of wives by conquest and rape,
although now foreseeing that he must wait some years longer
for the fruition of his next endeavor. His comrade also, what-
ever may have been the number of his years and of his wives,
was equally impressed by the infantile beauty that had capti-
vated the veteran lover. Let us hear Plutarch again :

" The two friends went together to Sparta, and, having seen the girl
(Helen, then nine years old) dancing in the temple of Diana Orthia, carried
her off and fled. The pursuers that were sent after them following no
further than Tegea, they thought themselves secure, and, having traversed
Peloponnesus, they entered into an agreement that he who should gain
Helen by lot should have her to wife, but be obliged to assist in providing
a wife for the other. In consequence of these terms, the lots being cast,
she fell to Theseus, who received the virgin and conveyed her, as she was
not yet marriageable, to Aphidnae. Here he placed his mother with her
and committed them to the care of his friend Aphidnus, charging him to

i886.] CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 785

keep them with the utmost secrecy and safety; whilst, to pay his debt of
service to Pirithous, himself travelled with him into Epirus, with a view to
the daughter of Aidoneus, king of the Molossians. This prince named his
wife Proserpine, his daughter Core, and his dog Cerberus. With this dog he
commanded all his daughter's suitors to fight, promising her to him who
should overcome him. But understanding that Pirithous came not with
an intention to court his daughter, but to carry her off by force, he seized
both him and his friend, destroyed Pirithous immediately by means of his
dog, and shut up Theseus in close prison."

These and similar friendships among the great doubtless were
in the mind of Addison when (in Cato) he wrote :

"The friendships of the world are oft
Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure."

The last was indeed costly to both ; for Theseus, though deliv-
ered from prison by Hercules, was destined for his baleful work,
confederate and single, to be cast down the Scyrian promontory ;
and Virgil represents him afterwards in Tartarus, ever repeating
to the shades therein the admonitory words,

"Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere divos."

As for the friendship of Damon and Pythias, its story would
seem to have been handed down for the purpose mainly of il-
lustrating how rarely, under the government of such a prince
as Dionysius, can exist a friendship which is very common in
modern times, particularly among free peoples, wherein on every
business-day in every year men become sureties for the perform-
ance of the most difficult obligations and abiding by the most
stringent penalties, not only in behalf of friends, but of others
whom they believe to have the sense of honor which alone is
necessary to save from losses. The return of Damon did indeed
operate as a surprise upon the despot, so great as to induce a
solicitation to be admitted into a friendship so far beyond all his
notions of what was possible to humanity.

We cannot be too thankful for the account given by Cicero
of the friendship of Scipio and Laslius. Not that we have been
made familiar with any special incidents of their mutual render-
ing of services. Yet in the mouth of the less eminent of these
two were put some of the sweetest words that were ever spoken.
In this treatise (De Amicitid] may be seen, we think, the justice of
what was said in the beginning of this article about the subtlety
that makes any definite exposition concerning friendship impossi-
ble. We know not what depth of sorrow had been felt by the
VOL. XLII. 50

786 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. [Mar.,

survivor when death, in circumstances of special horror, took from
his embrace the beloved companion in military and civic achieve-
ments ; but his absence shortly afterwards from the college of
augurs in the gardens of Decius Brutus was found to have been
attributed erroneously to his indulgence of grief instead of being
detained at home by sickness. We are led by Cicero, who lets
him discourse upon the subject with his sons-in-law, to notice
how different is friendship from love, how far below it, indeed, if
measured by the feelings that arise when lovers have seen their
best beloved depart from this life. " Moveor" calmly said the
survivor, " sed non egeo medicina" Indeed, it appears that he was
afraid to indulge in grief to any extent. " Mcerere hoc ejus eventu
vereor ne invidi magis quam amid sit." All grief has yielded to
the sweetness mostly of remembering of what sort was the illus-
trious man whose companionship he had enjoyed so long, and
partly in speculating upon the exalted estate to which he believes
him to have risen. It is very entertaining to listen to such elo-
quent discourse from one in whom there seems no feeling, or
almost no feeling, of regret, and muse upon the reflections which
this disciple of the Stoics makes upon a relation that left such
solace on its dissolution, summing up with the conclusion that
friendship friendship that is to endure throughout life (than
which nothing is more difficult or more rare) can obtain only
among the good. Such had been the friendship of ^Emilius and
Luscinius, of Curius and Coruncanius. Yet what shall we say
of the instance given, though with lofty indignation, of Blossius
Cumanus and Tiberius Gracchus, which survived the tomb, and
was avowed by the survivor when pleading for money before
the consuls, Lasnas and Rupilius, before whom he declared that
such had been his affection for the great tribune that if the latter
had asked him to put the torch to the Capitol he would have
complied? " Videtis quam nefaria vox!" exclaimed the aged
patriot. Yet the instance disproved his theory.

Here it seems apposite to remark that those friendships that
have become historic have subsisted for the greater part between
men who were not equals, and that the warmth of their devotion
has been in inverse ratio to the inequality. But for Theseus we
might never have heard of Pirithous. Yet it was the latter who
took the initiative in that famous alliance ; and we know too
much of the temper of him who had vanquished the Minotaur,
the Bull of Marathon, and the Centaurs to be in much doubt
how he would have behaved had the Spartan princess fallen to
the other's lot. So of Pylades, in whom the fierce blood of the

1 886.] CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 787

Atridas had been mingled with the unwarlike of the Phocian.
He became never the leader, but was ever the follower, both in
the assassination of Clytemnestra and the expedition into Taurica
Chersonesus. So of Pythias, whose name, it is probable, would
never have been transmitted but for his standing bail for the dis-
tinguished disciple of Pythagoras. Even of Lselius the most of
what we know is from the pen of the great orator who, in his
name, put forth that splendid panegyric. In this his sense of
inferiority is apparent in the praise he bestowed, and a pardon-
able pride in having enjoyed the friendship of such a man, the
recollection of which subdued most of the grief at his death. It
was exquisite tact, the selection of the lesser but more devoted
friend. We cannot but suspect that in the other case the most
eloquent words in the discourse would have been employed upon
his own and the renowned deeds of the rest of the Scipios.

The same may be said, and with greater fitness, of the friend-
ship of David and Jonathan. The initiative is from the inferior.
Not all of the prophetic gift imparted by tasting the honey-comb
at Beth-aven had been lost, and in the stripling holding in his
hand the Philistine's head he recognized a rising star before
which his father's would disappear. Most pathetic is the history
of this friendship, beginning at first sight :

"And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And
David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse the Beth-lehemite.

" And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul,
that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan
loved him as his own soul.

"Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as
his own soul."

It is touching to consider the ministrations in this alliance,
all on the part of the inferior, the melancholy Jonathan. Pur-
sued by the frightened jealousy of the king, David flees from
Ramah to the faithful prince, by whom he is hidden in the field.
Even here protection is bespoke for himself and his house when
the fugitive, his enemies being overcome, shall rise to the king-
dom :

" And thou shalt not only while yet I live show me the kindness of the
Lord, that I die not :

" But also thou shalt not cut off thy kindness from my house for ever ;
no, not when the Lord hath cut off the enemies of David every one of
them from the face of the earth.

" So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, Let
the Lord even require it at the hand of David's enemies.

;88 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. [Mar.,

" And Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him as
he loved his own soul."

Once, and once only, is it recorded that the feeling of David
was the stronger. Yet even this may be attributed to gratitude
for his rescue more than response to the love that at such risk
had been expended upon him :

" And as soon as the lad was gone, David arose out of a place towards the
south, and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed himself three times :
and they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David ex-
ceeded.

"And Jonathan said to David, Go in peace, forasmuch as we have
sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying, The Lord be between
me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed for ever.

" And he arose and departed and Jonathan went into the city."

Yet another service and another reminder are made in the
wilderness of Ziph :

"And Jonathan, Saul's son, arose and went to David in the wilderness,
and strengthened his hand in God.

" And he said unto him, Fear not : for the hand of Saul my father shall
not find thee ; and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto
thee: and that also Saul my father knoweth.

"And they two made a covenant before the Lord ; and David abode in
the wood, and Jonathan went to his house."

It was a merciful subdual of the prophetic inspiration of
Jonathan when, always sad but ever hoping, he fondly dreamed
of becoming second to the loved of his soul in the coming king-
dom. Beautiful was the song of the royal poet over the bodies
of father and son at Gilboa ; but there is no noticeable difference
in the sorrow he felt for both over the praises he bestowed :

" From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of
Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty.

" Saul and Jonathan were lovely in their lives, and in death they were
not divided : they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.

" Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet,
with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel.

"How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle. O Jonathan !
thou wast slain in thine high places.

" I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan : very pleasant hast
thou been unto me : thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of
woman.

" How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished ! "

A beautiful song. Amid high-sounding strains of lament for

1 886.] CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 789

the fall of the powerful is interluded one, tender and brief, for
the friend, not so much for the sake of the survivor's love as of
that of the dead, which was passing the love of woman. It is
the most interesting in all the annals of friendship, and, like most
others, whether among the powerful v or the lowly, the wise or
the simple, its incipiency and its preponderance of fondness were
with the one whose capacities were the least for every purpose
except that of ever-abiding affection and unalterable faithfulness
to its behests.

In other historic though less noted friendships, as that be-
tween Sts. Cuthbert and Herbert, and that between Xystus
II. and St. Lawrence, may be seen also the greater devotion of
the lesser friend. The humble monk of Derwentwater besought
the great bishop of Lindisfarne to obtain for him the felicity of
dying at the same hour with him, and the request was kindly
granted. So the poor deacon, following behind the great pontiff
as he was led to execution, put forth a similar request ; and his
lamentation was subdued when assured that after three days
more, to be spent in distributing among the poor the treasures
of the church, he should get also his crown of martyrdom and
rejoin his beloved in a better world.

Other thoughts come to the mind while reflecting upon these
and the common friendships of the world. There is among man-
kind a respect for friendship that may be named almost unique.
There is no term that indicates pitifulness like " friendless." For
rare as may be the friendships that are reasonably cemented, and
that continue long faithful and fond, yet how few so poor as not
to have one or more whom they may justly call friends. To no
condition of human life do not friendships of some sort seem to
have a necessity peculiar to themselves, differing from and inde-
pendent of that pertaining to other conditions. The possession
of wives and children, the possession or pursuit of riches, power,
and honor, seldom if ever are satisfactory without the added
possession of friends. The division that friendships allow in
felicities, the solace they impart in miseries, are unlike those in
any other relation. Perhaps causes of this are their calmness,
their comparative freedom from eagerness things that render
communion among those who feel them, whether often or seldom
together, whether dwelling near or remote, so practicable and
even. The husband, to be content, must live with his wife, and a
parent among or near his children. But the dearest friends may
dwell far apart, and the pressure of life that has separated them
alters not the sweetness of communions that are only silent.

790 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. [Mar.,

When death comes to one, if tears flow not as at the departure
of those bound by a more passionate feeling-, the minds of sur-
vivors are often more true to the memory of this bond than to
some of those which in life were stronger.

As to the origin of friendship it is useless to speculate ; so as
to the occasions of its cementation ; so as to the inherent fitness
of particular classes of persons for its fondest and most faithful
manifestations. If the loves between men and women often seem
capricious or dependent upon accidents, what shall we say of the
friendships of this life ? In all this earth there is nothing that, if
not accidental, seems so incomprehensibly capricious. In loves
dissimilarities, whether of person or of mind and disposition,
oftener than otherwise are what first united them. The man
with dark hue and eyes commonly finds the maid with the
blonde and blue. The maid light-hearted and petite is com-
monly won by the man lofty and saturnine. In loves the things
are sought which the seekers do not already possess. It is a law
like that of lower nature which delights in oppositions or in
compositions, and will not be content with one of its kind though
most excellent. We notice often how variant from the leaf of a
tree is its flower, and how variant from both the fruit. What
thousands of compositions dot every vernal landscape !

But friendships cannot be traced commonly either to unlike-
nesses or likenesses. The unlike and the like sort in circumstan-
ces that often seem as accidental as the fall of leaves that have
been lifted by the wind and deposited softly upon the bosoms of
others that were brought by a contrary. As for the dependence
of friendships upon special characteristics of mind and temper,
and that they cannot exist except among the good, nothing
seems more remote from being facts. Not only do friendships
subsist among the bad, but they subsist between the good and
the bad. There is hardly any community, however small, where-
in friendships of greater or less intensity are not found that
seem most incongruous; wherein the conduct, the sentiments,
the aspirations of one friend are unexceptionable, and those of
the other, if not degraded, seem to be ever tending downwards.
What is yet more curious among such is that the example of one
has seldom appeared to have been salutary, nor that of the other
pernicious. There may be reprimands frequent and earnest, and
acceptance of them, whether with or without resentment, cer-
tainly without amendment; yet alliances continue to subsist, if
seldom offensive, at least always defensive, and the one with all
his virtuous conduct, sentiments, and aspirations will risk all he

1 8 86.] CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 791

values most highly in public opinion to defend his comrade and
rescue him from punishment that he knows would be just.

Much has been said about the defence rendered by members
of the bar to those who have been charged with crimes of vari-
ous magnitude, and the world outside of courts has its stereo-
typed words of condemnation for conduct seeming to them in-
consistent with the conservatism of tranquillity, honor, and re-
spect for law for which men of this profession ought to be par-
ticularly distinguished. Yet among these brave, ardent, persis-
tent defences one may often see what is only a discharge of what
is felt to be a behest of friendship of more or less affectionateness,
whose risks and sacrifices are the greater as the danger is more
threatening and public hostility and prosecution more exacer-
bated. For even the felon when arrested seeks aid, not always
from counsel who are most distinguished, but rather from him
whom he knows and likes most, on whose reciprocation of his
good- will he relies for successful rendering of the service he so
sorely needs more trustingly than he would rely upon the supe-
rior adroitness and eloquence of the greatest advocate.

As to the rarity of friendships asserted by the good Laelius,
he was referring, of course, to such as that which marked the
companionship of himself with the illustrious man whose de-
parture he contemplated with feelings so calm and painless.
Friendships may indeed be not only rare but impossible when
the highest heights of ambition admit but one among the sealers,
if only two in number, to attain. The instance is yet to be found
wherein of two friends, equal in every particular and both de-
sirous of renown, one stepped aside and allowed the other to
plant his foot upon the acme of public honors. But there is no
rarity of devoted friendships among the multitudes friendships
that delight in services that it is even sweeter to bestow than it
is to receive.

The poets have been prone to lament the evanescence of
friendships. But this is rather from the fact that their spirits
are tuned to a sensibility so high that they set an inadequate
value on what is* possible to the multitudes who are not so fine.ly
and tensely strung. Their Iamentati5ns are for the absence of
those emotions which only spirits like them can feel, ethereal
and of some semblance to the divine. But let any man of ex-
perience count up, if he will, the number of those which have
been wholly dissolved in the period of his observations. How
few among them have been found grossly unfaithful ! We will
not say that the friendships of human life have been more en-

792 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. [Mar, T

during in the main than its loves, though we are not quite sure
of being wrong if we should. For loves, though more ardent,
are more exacting, and they often lose all because dissatisfied
and complaining of what seems to them the little they receive
compared with the abundance they bestow. Loves demand re-
iterated assurances and proofs which lovers, on the one hand,
sometimes grow resentful for the few they receive, and, on the
other, grow weary of their repeated rendering. -Hence the num-
bers of the neglects of parents, of the disinheritances of children,
and especially of divorces of husbands and wives, that would be
multiplied ten thousand-fold except partly for the scandal to be
incurred, partly for the inconveniences resultant to families, but
mainly the restraining laws of the church and the state.

" A question was started whether the state of marriage was natural to
man. Johnson ' Sir, it is so far from being natural for man to live in a
state of marriage that we find all the motives which they have for remain-
ing in that connection, and the restraints which civilized society imposes
to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.' " *

These were the words of one of the most loving and devoted of
husbands, who during the whole of his widowed life mourned
the departure of the wife of his bosom.

On the other hand, friendships receive and bestow with little
jealousy, and some of their dearest results follow services in
which those who bestow are hardly conscious of the exertion
which they cost. It is not often, we believe, that friendships
that have once been fond are dissolved, at least to the degree as
to become hostilities. Such an end shocks the minds even of
the simple and humble. On the contrary, such friendships usu-
ally survive even the tomb, and the affection felt by those who
have departed are often inherited and treasured by their children.
Common life abounds in them, and, though not demonstrative,
self-asserting, and exacting like loves, they impart to the multi-
fold misfortunes of this lower life a solace without which they
would be far harder to endure. They help to support poverty,
exile, imprisonment, the loss of kindred, youth, health, honor,
name, even loves; and as old wine is the sweeter, so, after the
lapse of long time, thoughts of them are more comforting and
more fond.

We would not be understood as maintaining that friendship
is either superior or equal to love ; for love is undoubtedly the

* Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson.

1 886.] CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 793

supreme of all the emotions of the human heart. It is the very
exaltation of its supremacy more than all other causes that gives
rise to the jealousies by which it is often so sorely beset. To
these jealousies friendship itself sometimes makes the incipient if
not controlling- occasion. We remember, in Dickens' Household
Words, a somewhat blas6 account of the loss of one friend by an-
other after the marriage of the former. " I had an old friend "
the bachelor's story about thus ran " and he got married. After
some time I went to see him and his wife. As 1 entered the
room something stood up, having on my old friend's clothes,
standing in his shoes, speaking in his voice. But it was not my
old friend ; he was gone."

In this instance, as in most others of the dissolutions of friend-
ship, is to be noticed the manner in which they occur. Sad as
they may be to all parties, they are seldom accompanied by vio-
lence, and more seldom are succeeded by enmities. Such friend-
ships commonly subside^beneath the pressure of life, that substi-
tutes other ties in their stead, and, instead of being rudely cast
aside, become only obsolete. " Sunt remissions usus elucndc?" as
the elder Cato used to say, " dissuendce magis quam discindendce"
Whereas loves when dissolved are dissolved for the most part
abruptly, if not with anger and violence ; hearts once beating in
happy unison are torn and bleeding, and if hate does not suc-
ceed it is mainly because pride or pious submission keeps it
away.

Loves and friendships happy they who may claim, or who
may believe they can claim, to have both, genuine and constant.
Not all are blessed with the greater ; but the less hardly any is
so poor as to be wholly without.

794 "ENGLISH HOBBES! " "IRISH D OGGES /" [Mar.,

"ENGLISH HOBBES!" " IRISH DOGGES ! "

THE taunts one race casts upon another are very often based
on something in itself most praiseworthy. What one nation
cannot forgive in another is a virtue, or an article of superior
value ; such is generally selected for an insult. The strong ani-
mal powers of the English are construed by the French as a
reproach ; the latter dwell on British coarseness in the man, and
the bony framework and large teeth in the woman. The delicate
cookery, grace, and light-heartedness of the French have furnish-
ed English literature with an endless vista of sneers. At one
period the common name for Welshmen was crogans, possibly
because the poorer sort ate in messes from a crock, as, in the
Anglo-Saxon laws, certain knots of men called potwealleras appear
to have been so termed because they belonged to one fire and
boiled their food in one pot. The famous Statutes of Kilkenny,
after enacting various penalties against those who imitated or
had dealings with the Gaelic Irish, ordained that differences
should not be made between English born in England and Eng-
lish born in Ireland by calling the former " English Hobbes," or
clowns, and the latter " Irish Dogges." The term of contempt
used by the Irish meant an elf, or oaf, a loutish field-hand or
laborer ; yet the typical Saxon who did more to win, hold, and
exploit Britain than any other was the small farmer, who in edu-
cation and character came nearest to the man called a hobbe
and later " Hodge." In Ireland the word hobbe was also em-
ployed for a small, cheap horse such as farming folk raise and
use ; and the term was naturally opposed as an inferior to the
highly.-bred animal. That the helpful rustic sprite, the laborer
and the beast, for all of whom and of which the term was in use,
were unfit for sneering allusions signified nothing to the time
and people. Reiteration makes a taunt hateful, whether it have
a meaning or not. The only escape is to accept it as an honor,
as the Flemish nobles did the Spanish insult of " beggars," and
as in England and Ireland the words Tory, Whig, and Radical
have been assumed by those who were called so in scorn. The
English sneer against the Irish was something more than it looks
on the surface. It was meant to wound much more than we

1 886.] "ENGLISH HOBBES! ""IRISH DOGGESl " 79$

imagine who consider that to call a man a dog is never a grievous
matter, and sometimes as a "sad dog "* is half a compliment.
There was some national insult underlying the term, when applied
to an Irishman, which relieved it from commonplace as a term
of disdain. The Irish were still largely given to hunting and
the raising of cattle. Moreover, their old literature, which was
in full vogue, and at that period undergoing a rejuvenescence,
contained many allusions to that noble dog, the staghound :

*' Do bi Sgedlan a's Bran ar eill
og Fionn reid iona thoid."

" Sgeolan and Bran were leashed
In mild Fionn's hand "

"and each of the Fionna had his own hound and our sweet-
tongued dogs in full cry," is John O'Daly's paraphrase of one
of Oisin's hunting ballads as chanted by that pagan hero to St.
Patrick. Other famous hounds are plenty ; such were Buadhach
Mor and Ablach Og, let slip at the chase of Sleeve Truim by
Oisin himself ; and Uacht Ar and Ard na Feirb, by Mac Brea-
sail. The name of Oscar's deerhound was Mac an Truim, and
Gaol's was Leim ar Luth ; Garraidh unleashed three Fearan
and Foghar and Maoin. Other names of beasts fit to pull down
boar and stag are Coingiol, Gruaim, Aircis, Raon, Coir the
Black, and White Dealbh. In the Book of Rights Aedha, the
King of Conail, is entitled to women, bondmen, drinking-horns
(cuirri), swords, " and three hounds for his forest hunting-shed."
Various breeds of dogs from Great Britain and Ireland have
been celebrated in Europe from as early an epoch as there is
record in the annals and tradkions of classic nations, and to the
present day the fleetest coursers of the hare are Irish. At the
time that the eastern parts of Ireland were settled by the Nor-
man-Welsh the dog was still an animal of the first importance
in native eyes. It was like the horse to the Arab. Perhaps it
marked a difference from the natives that the Ostmen of Dublin,
turbulent vassals of those kings of Ireland who could maintain a
claim to be Ard-righ, buried with the body of their suzerain,
Donogh Mac Murragh, King of Leinster, after they had treach-
erously murdered him, the carcass of a dog. This was just be-
fore Dermod, his son, invited over the Norman- Welsh with the
ambiguous permission of Henry II. In 1335, so a document
proves, Edward III. was in the habit of importing hawks and
greyhounds from Ireland. Their own contempt for the dog

796 "ENGLISH HOBBES! " "IRISH DOGGES ! " [Mar.,

which, as we shall see, was Christian in its origin and the oc-
currence of boasts about their hounds uttered by the native
party, must have given the English colonists and their partisans
the occasion to use " dogge " as a doubly bitter term of con-
tempt. On the one hand, moreover, the status of the dog had
fallen from its position among their own remote ancestors of
Germany and northern Gaul ; on the other, the hostile Irish
chieftains of their own epoch, as well as legendary heroes of the
latter, were apt to have " dog " in their names. The doughty
Johan de Courci (A.D. 1177) warred against a Mac Duinnshleibhe
(Dunlevy) who was called Cu Uladh, war-dog of Ulster a name
he lived up to by worrying the invaders in many a hard-fought
round. Another Cu Uladh (O'Morna) is mentioned by the Four
Masters under A.D. 1391 ; he was the head of the family Mac
Giolla Muire (Gillimurry, Gilmer, Gilmore) and chief over seve-
ral tribes. In his metrical legends of the heroic age of Ireland
Aubrey de Vere chants the magical and warlike deeds of the
being after whom these chieftains in all probability were popu-
larly named. He has set in fine English one of those after-
thoughts by which people evolve an anecdote out of a supposed
etymology. Whilst he was yet a boy the great national hero,
Cuchullain, is supposed to have ceased to call himself Setanta
and to have assumed the name by which he is known in Irish
legend :

" Next he told

How to that child, Setanta first, there fell
Cuchullain's nobler name. ' To Emain near
There dwelt an armorer Cullain was his name
That earliest rose, and latest with his forge
Reddened the night ; mail-clad in might of his
The Red Branch knights forth rode ; the bard, the chief
Claimed him for friend. One day, when Conor's self
Partook his feast, the armorer held discourse :
'The Gods have made my house a house of fame ;
The craftsmen grin and grudge because I prosper ;
The forest bandits hunger for my goods,
Yea, and would eat mine anvil if they might
Trow ye what saves me, sirs ? A Hound is mine ;
Each eve I loose him ; lion-like is he ;
The blood of many a rogue is on his mouth ;
The bravest, if they hear him bay far off,
Flee like a deer! ' Setanta's shout rang loud
That moment at the gate, and, with it blent,
The baying of that hound ! ' The boy is dead ! '
King Conor cried in horror. Forth they rushed
There stood he, bright and calm, his rigid hands

1836.] "ENGLISH HOBBES ! ""IRISH DOGGES ! " 797

Clasping the dead hound's throat ! They wept for joy ;
The armorer wept for grief. ' My friend is dead !
My friend that kept my house and me at peace ;
My friend that loved his lord ! ' Setanta heard
Then first that cry forth issuing from the heart
Of him whose labor wins his children's bread.
That cry he honors yet. Red-cheeked he spake :
' Cullain ! unwittingly I did thee wrong !
I make amends. I, child of kings, henceforth
Abide, thy watch-hound, warder of thy house.'
Thenceforth the Hound of Cullain was his name,
And Cullain's house well warded."

The first syllable of this name does appear to mean dog 1 . But
Cuchullain does not stand alone in the Keltic past ; he has been
connected with Sirius, the dog-star, and also, like the mythical
Arthur of Britain, with Arcturus, the Great Bear.

It is painful to remember that the hounds which were the
boast and joy of the native Irish in their life in forest and hills
should have been used to track them when fugitives before the
merciless viceroys of the English kings and queens. Elizabeth,
cruel as she was vain, her mouth full of godliness and her de-
spatches urging the wholesale poisoning of rebellious chiefs
and their families, had in the Earl of Essex a minion just to her
mind. He is recorded to have used packs of bloodhounds, eight
hundred in all, to track the native Irish in their fastnesses. The
staghounds, of which Sgeolan and Bran are the heroic represen-
tatives, appear to have descended from a mixture of bloodhound
and greyhound. The bulldog or the mastiff was in the early
Christian centuries imported from Britain for use in the arena at
Rome. The mastiff was certainly known in Asia at a very re-
mote period, for he is seen on the Assyrian bas-reliefs and is still
found on the Indian uplands. But this is enough to show that
the dog, far from suggesting a degraded idea to the old Irish,
was, on the contrary, a beast of honor. It may be safely ac-
cepted that in a large number of cases the favorite Old, Middle,
and New Irish names, in which, alone or combined, one sees Cu,
Con, and Conn, have for their earliest meaning Hound.

In this trait the Irish have high classical precedent, showing
once more their nearness to the Greeks. The cu, cuin of Irish,
the ci, cyn of Welsh, the KVGOV, KVVOS of Greek stand side by side
rather than derive one from the other. It would be hard to
count the Greek names having that root. The brave Athenian
at Marathon who held the Persian ship till both hands were
chopped off, and then seized it with his teeth, was fitly named

798 "ENGLISH HOBBES ! " "IRISH DOGGES ! " [Mar.,

Kunsegirus, for his pluck was like that of a bulldog. A town in
Arcadia was Kunaethrae ; another in Locris of the Opuntii, Kunos ;
and a suburb of Athens, Kunosarges, or White Dog a name that
recalls the novels of Bret Harte. The Kunourii were a tribe of
Greece said by Herodotus to be aboriginal. Kunosoura was one
of the nurses of the infant Jove on Cretan Ida ; Kuniska was a
daughter of Archidamus, King of Sparta, and Kuno was the
Greek rendering of the name Spaka, she-dog, in Median, as the
herdsman's wife was called who brought up Cyrus the Great.
As in Ireland, so among the primitive Greeks, the dog appears to
have been held in enough esteem to give his name to a great many
persons of rank. Homer has honored him so far as to make of
the old hound of Odusseus by all odds the most pathetic figure
in the Odyssey.

But the dog-name is essentially heathen, and wherever in
Ireland we find Cu or Con we may be sure, in nine cases out of
ten, that here the Christian cloak over the pagan body lets the
old nakedness shine through. Along with Christianity the Jew-
ish reformers taught the Greeks and Romans many national pre-
judices. Five centuries later they influenced the Arabs still
more strongly against the dog, that indispensable comrade of the
wandering tribes, that most faithful cousin to the most treacher-
ous beast, the wolf. Why the Jews hated the dog may be guess-
ed when we look to the land where they waxed populous and
strong, and which they plundered of jewels and portable pro-
perty when they left. Near their own towns during the stay in
Egypt was Kunopolis, as the Greeks called it, the Anup of the
Egyptians, a great temple-city, in which the river Nile was wor-
shipped under the form of Anubis, the dog or jackal-headed
genius, whose constellation was the dog-star. The Mosaic laws
register the Hebrew loathing for that degraded worship. Hence,
for the next sixty centuries or so dog has remained a term of
reviling in the Hebrew, Christian, and Mohammedan worlds ; any
cruelty practised toward a domestic, in his forgiveness of inju-
ries more Christian than the Christians themselves, has had war-
rant and excuse ever since ; and this winter has seen in the United
States a panic regarding that mysterious disease, hydrophobia,
which is doing the greatest injustice to a noble beast.

II.

Places and persons in the East and in eastern Europe have this
allusion to the dog. Western Europe is not different. Westward

1 886.] "ENGLISH HOB BE s / ""IRISH DOGGES! " 799

of the Straits of Hercules, says Polybius, dwell the Konii. The
most western inhabitants of Europe, says Herodotus, living beyond
the Keltoi, are the Kynesii : "These Keltoi are found beyond
the Columns of Hercules ; they border on the Kynnesians, the
most remote of all the nations who inhabit the western parts of
Europe." Do not these indications point to a nation of shep-
herds in western Spain, Ireland, and Britain who held the dog
in so much regard that they called themselves after him, as clans
among the Indians are named after a favorite animal? Only
partly Keltic, in fact, the report of their existence would come
to Greek ears through Greco-Kelts ; we may suppose them to
have reached the stage of development when, out of the conflict-
ing clans bearing the names of various beasts, that called the Dog
had become the master and given its name to the nation. In
Caesar's time the hare, cock, and duck were taboo in Britain, point-
ing to the existence of clans bearing those names. For we find in
races where the clan-system is most primitive that the members
of a given clan, named after an animal, dare not kill it. We
know that the Cimbri that people which form a bone of conten-
tion as to their nationality between snarling archaeologists kept
war-dogs as a part of their military system ; these and the brav-
est of the women would defend the wagon-forts which were the
last refuge of that extraordinary roving race. Odd, that Cimber
should contain once more that little, almost changeless, root kin,
root of the living Welsh name for dog, which only suffered be-
fore the following b the common change into m ! Greeks and
Romans record as singular that the Kelts used dogs in war, but
their own ancestors did the like : Corinth was fabled to have
been saved from sacking by fifty trained war-dogs, and in certain
attacks on the Gauls mentioned by Strabo bloodhounds were
used. So that when Shakspere wrote this for Antony to utter,

" Cry ' Havoc ! ' and let slip the dogs of war,"

the figurative and poetical phrase was hardly removed from the
solid ground of daily fact. War-dogs that is, bloodhounds
were in that year employed in Ireland and Scotland to hound the
men who refused to be dragooned into Protestants or acknowledge
the right of their recreant nobles to sell them to the English gov-
ernment. The grimness of this scene may be contrasted with
the amusements of the great O'Connell two centuries and a half
later. It was with a pack of hounds, not bloodhounds but their
dwarfed descendants, that O'Connell used to beguile his win-
ter hours a pack of little beagles not more than ten inches

800 "ENGLISH HOBBES! " "IRISH DOGGES! " [Mar.

high. They represented well enough the gradual shrinkage of
Ireland's forests and game. To-day we learn that even fox-
hunting is likely to receive its death-blow at the hands of the
peasantry.

The prominence of the dog in old Keltic place and person
names makes one suspect the existence of an element in the early
population of Europe, and particularly of the British Isles and
adjacent parts of the Continent, of a race more purely pastoral
and nomadic than the Keltic. It would be well if some one bet-
ter fitted than the present writer would thoroughly sift the
legends and mythology of the Irish and such records as can be
lound of the old British, the Welsh, and the Picts, in order to
trace how much if any of the racial characteristics of the Irish
can be assigned to a substratum of populace over which the
Keltic wave of conquerors passed, never to ebb again. If there
is anything in physiognomy, this is at least curious : that on ex-
amining the beautiful drawings of the Japanese which represent
their hermits, Buddhist saints, and wise men, one is amazed at the
strongly- marked Scottish and north-of-Ireland faces to be seen
at the other extremity of Asia. Something more than coinci-
dence must account for the likeness between Japanese old men
in the carvings and pictures, and " hard-featured " Highlanders
and Irishmen.

The clan-system and fosterage are found throughout Asia, as,
indeed, they existed and exist among the aboriginal Americans.
A friendship as binding as that of foster-brotherhood was arti-
ficially established between two and sometimes three men among
both Kelts and Scandinavians. The latter sometimes transfused
the blood from the arms of the contracting parties in a rude tent
made by loosening the turf and prying it up so as to accommo-
date two persons. Here blood-friendship was sworn, as if to take
mother-earth for a witness that the grave should be the portion
of him who neglected to help his brother in distress. Strange
to say, we have in Lucian, the Asiatic Greek, an account of a some-
what similar contract. In his Toxaris there are charming stories
told by the " Scyth " to illustrate his nation's cult of friendship.
Blood-friendship was attested by cutting the veins, dipping
swords in the mingled life-fluid, and tasting the same. A man
could have a second friend of this kind, but no more ! So when
the Scythian ambassador Arsacomas demands of Leucanor, who
was a rich Grecian prince on the Bosphorus, the hand of his
daughter, and Leucanor scoffingly asks the simple man whether
he has flocks, pastures, and wagons, which are the riches of no-

1 886.] "ENGLISH HOBBES ! " u IRISH DOGGES / " 801

mads, he answers, No, but I have Two Friends. How those two
avenge the insult and get him the princess cannot be told here ;
Tooke's translation of Lucian gives it in full. It may be noted,
however, that Toxaris apparently a Greek translation of bow-
man the name Lucian gives his grave Scyth, might be held
an argument in favor of the meaning " bowman " which is- attri-
buted to the word Scyth and thence to the word Scot. What
is more important just here is to note that, in the story of the
blood-friend, when the one swims the river in the face of his foes
to offer himself in ransom of his captive blood-brother, the swim-
mer utters the word ziris, whereupon the enemy cease shoot-
ing at him. This word ziris may be the same as the Irish word
sirim, to beg, beseech, in the indicative mood " I beg." The
man who said it was a Scyth ; the army that understood it was
Sarmatian. Are we to believe that several Keltic nations of the
Euxine were known to the Greeks of the first and second cen-
turies A.D. by those names ? For, wide as the net of Lucian was,
and exaggerate as he might, such points had to be true to facts
or the story would not have had the necessary realism to his au-
ditors. Possibly, owing to the number of migrations of Keltic
nations, that word sirim had become an international term, be-
ing part of a very early lingua Franca in the East. At any rate,
its outcropping in Lucian shows how hasty those have been
who brush aside the early Irish traditions that point to the East.
The more one examines, the more it seems probable, that on the
one hand " Scythia " contained Keltic nations down to Christian
times ; on the other, that Ireland and Great Britain were very
far from being purely Keltic, but had a substratum of Turanian,
or very nearly pure nomadic, races.

ill.

In Irish political affairs questions of agriculture have played
a large part. Yet the tilling of the soil does not seem to be the
best line for Ireland. Rather is it pasturing, because of her
moist climate and frequent cloud and fog. For the same reason
manufactures ought to have flourished in order to supplement the
weakness of crops, as in America the rivalry of the Western States
made men turn that way in the Eastern. By means of infamous
legislation, by means of the British guinea, by taking every ad-
vantage of discords arising from religious differences, a nation in
whose mouths " fair play " is ever heard as an adjuration to
others curbed the commerce of Ireland and crushed her manufac-

VOL. XLII. 51

802 "ENGLISH HOBBES ! " "IRISH DOGGES / " [Mar.,

ttires. Doubtless it was partly owing to the fitness for pastures of
a large part of Irish land that nomadic habits were retained long
after they disappeared from the greater part of western Europe.
When the Irish emigrate to America in larger numbers than the
country can absorb on farms, readily and at once, they are seen
to congregate in towns. They have little real love for agricul-
ture, though for centuries compelled to be farmers or starve.
This may partly explain why, under apparently favorable cir-
cumstances, reforms in Irish land tenure do not work as ex-
pected. The nomad element shows in the readiness of gangs
of laborers to exploit Scotland and England, in their eagerness to
join the army, the little difficulty in inducing them to emigrate.
Go back to Edmund Spenser's age and see how nomadic must
have been the race he describes. Spenser himself records the
prevalent opinion of a " Scythian " substructure in the population,
the word Scythian being chosen from a perhaps chance resem-
blance between Scot and Scyth, but the meaning the old classical
one of a nomadic race, like the Turkish and Tatar tribes about
the Caspian. Spenser did not invent ; he reported. Irish histo-
rians of patriotic worth the most sterling are those who conjec-
ture and bring reasons for a nomad first occupation of Ireland.
Their persistence in attributing a " Scythian " ancestry to the
Irish may be accounted for, but only partially, by the curious
migrations of Keltic nations from the Asian plateau and, in his-
torical times, back again. It is also founded on similarities be-
tween customs and rites called somewhat vaguely Druidic and
those discovered in Persia, Trans-Oxiana, the Punjaub, and north-
ern India. Many things among the Greek and Latin writers
warrant the belief that among the " Scythians " were extensive
nations of Kelts who were in relations, sometimes of conquerors,
sometimes of allies, sometimes of tributaries, with the partially
Greek nations about the Bosphorus. Pliny uses the Persian cus-
toms of magic to explain the British. Contempt for " Scythians "
is apparent enough among the Greeks, and from them the
Romans took the same tone. Now, is it not curious that the
Irish historians, whose education was classical and who seldom
rose to the effort of national historical essays without obtaining
an unusual degree of the classical learning common to their day
should have so far sunk the self-conceit natural to all men as
to indicate these contemned Scyths as their ancestors ? To me
this fact goes a great way to establish by internal evidence that
they had very serious and circumstantial native records of the
past, foreshortened, of course, in the historical perspective and

1 886.] "ENGLISH HOBBES ! ""IRISH DOGGES ! " 803

colored by a forced admixture with Biblical names, as we find in
all the European nations, but none the less credible because,
when formed, the policy of the Druids forced scholars to retain
long- lists of names and long- records of fact in memory, and for-
bade the setting down of national records in runic, oghamic, or
old Greco-Gaulish letters. " The Scythians sacrifice to the god
Scymitar," says a character in Lucian's Jupiter Tragcedus (second
century A.D.); and Solinus, a writer of the same epoch, says of
the British islanders, "The chief glory of the men is in their
arms."

Lucian's delightful story of Arsacomas, the Scyth ambassa-
dor, shows the correspondence between some nations covered by
that name and Irish tribes. The king whose bride the friend of
Arsacomas stole was ruler of the Machlyans, nomads who had
flocks, cushioned chariots, and gold beakers in their possession,
who lived near the Euxine, but also had relations with northern
India, where a nation of the same name is mentioned. The Scy-
thian friend of Arsacomas pretends to be an Alan, and we are
told that between Scyths and Alans the only difference was their
respective fashions of wearing the hair short or long. Remem-
ber the " glibbes," or long locks, of the Irish in Elizabeth's day ;
then consider the likeness of " Alan " (a great name among the
Bretons who came from the Welsh of Britain) and " Machlyans "
with the names of clans in the British Isles and decide whether
there is not at least a very pretty puzzle to account for so many
parallels between the Keltic inhabitants of these islands and na-
tions on the Euxine during the first Christian centuries. Be-
sides these dim hints of a Kelticism the Alani show in history a
character eminently Keltic. In the fourth century of our era the
Huns defeated them on the Tanais ; one part retreated to the Cau-
casus, where they were defeated by Genghis Khan in 1221 and
utterly wiped out of national existence by Batu Khan in 1237.
The other part made alliance with their conquerors, the Huns,
and helped them to invade Pannonia and drive out the Goths.
In 406 they entered Gaul with the Vandals and Suevi, and many
settled near Orleans. Summoned by Theodoric to meet Attila
at Chalons, they deserted the Gothic emperor at a critical mo-
ment and very nearly turned that victory into a defeat. A sec-
tion which settled in Spain was equally hostile to the Visigoths,
and were defeated by them A.D. 418. They seem to have been
nomads, but not pure nomads rather Keltic ; that is to say,
ready to emigrate, ready to make war, but also very capable of
establishing themselves firmly when circumstances were at all

804 "ENGLISH HOBBES! ""IRISH DOGGES! " [Mar.,

favorable. Such facts cause one to view askance historians of
to-day and of the past who talk glibly of the extermination of
races who assert, for example, that the Saxons did not mix
with the conquered British, or the Danes and English of the
Pale with the native Irish, or the Keltic tribes of an earlier
epoch with quite different races who held Ireland before their
coming. In Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland the
dummy, Eudoxus, chides Irenseus, who is Spenser, for believing
the legend of a Scythian origin of the first people in Ireland, say-
ing that in this he does " very boldly " :

"'Truly I must confess I doe soe,' answers Irenseus, 'but yet not soe
absolutely as you suppose. I doe herein relye upon those Bardes or Irish
chroniclers, though the Irish themselves, through theyr ignoraunce in mat-
ters of learning and deepe judgement, doe most constantly beleve and
avouch them ; but unto them besides I add my owne reading; and out of
them both togither, with comparison of times, likewise of manners and
customes, affinitye of woordes and names, propertyes of natures and uses,
resemblances of rytes and ceremonyes, monumentes of churches and
tombes, and many other like circumstances, I doe gather a likelihood of
truth ; not certaynly affirming anything, but by conferring 'of times, lan-
guages, monuments, and such like I doe hunte out a probabilitye of things
which I leave to your judgement to beleve or refuse. The Bards and
Irish chroniclers themselves, though through desire of pleasing perhaps
to much, and through ignorance of arte and purer learning, they have cloud-
ed the trueth of those times, yet there appeareth amongest them some
reliques of the true antiquitye, though disguised, which a well-eyed man
may happely discover and find out.' ''

IV.

For many generations it has been the fashion to scoff at the
Scythian myth in the origins of the Scots of Eire and Alba, but
a wider acquaintance with the roving and partially settled nations
of Central Asia makes one look again, and with increased respect,
at this persistent tradition among the Irish. Under the Keltic
population of Wales antiquarians have discovered traces of a
race alien in physique, probably alien in color, language, and
polity. Without jumping to the conclusion that in this layer we
come upon the stone age at once, it may well be that we find the
age of bronze weapons in the persons of an earlier population of
nomads akin to Turks, Finns, and Tatars. It is tempting, per-
haps too tempting to be sound philology, to identify the heroic
name Fiann among the Irish with a vague tradition of a Finnish
folk driven before the Keltic wave into the mountains and deserts
of Ireland, only to emerge, after amalgamation of conquerors with

1886.] "ENGLISH HOBBES! " "IRISH DOGGES ! "

conquered, as a mighty hero in the scattered fragments of a na-
tional epos. This Finnish nation driven before the Kelts from
the Persian plateaus to Ireland may be the origin of the mythical
Fenius Farsadh Fiann the Persian or Parthian. In Old Ire-
land the literary and minstrel customs have a strong Asian tinge.
A late traveller in Central Asia, on the confines of the Russian
and Chinese possessions, describing certain mixed Mongol-Tatar
tribes, might be writing of the Irish bards as they once passed
from sept to sept singing the native legends under the noses of
Welsh, Norman, and English intruders who understood imper-
fectly or not at all the language of their tenants or of the half-
tributary tribes in their vicinage ; such, for instance, as the bard
Maolruanad Mac Carroll, called Camshuilech from a defect in his
eyes, who was treacherously murdered by the Norman, Welsh,
and English colonists in 1333 along with Earl Jean de Berming-
ham, their commander and deliverer from Edward Bruce.

" The Kirghese Oilantchis travel from one collection of tents to another,
perpetuating their ancient* traditions and singing love-songs, some of
which latter they compose on the spot. . . . Their songs are full of feeling
and tenderness, and such widespread celebrity do some of the Oilantchis
attain that whole auls (camps) are eager to do them honor. The theme of
Sart songs is invariably the feats of valor of their Palvans, or heroes, or
else love adventures. . . . The Sart music is made to suit the varying theme,
being now tender, soft, and pleasant, and then harsh, abrupt, and shrill.
The songs of the, Kirghese have not this variety, but have a character of
their own."

The sun-worship of the pagan Irish is found even among the
Tatars who are called Mohammedan. Lansdell noticed that
whenever they slaughtered an animal the Tatars looked toward
the sun and muttered a prayer. Some of the blood was poured
on the ground and covered with dust in order to propitiate good
and avert bad luck. The Kirghese have an epic called " Manas "
after a giant, an epos called the Samyatei, and other tales and
traditions like the pristine literature of the Irish. They love
songs and repartee, fight with great joy at the elections of chiefs,
employ professional " keeners " at funerals, and have feasts
(wakes) at the tomb.

Granted its presence in Ireland, can we predicate a Tatar
element in the Kelts of the rest of Europe? The Keltic nations
in history are the greatest nomads, or, it would be truer to say,
the greatest conquering wanderers, of the world. Over-running
Italy again and again, sacking Rome more than once in historical
times, devastating Spain, Africa, and Asia Minor, ruining Greece,

8o6 "ENGLISH HOBBES ! ""IRISH DOGGES ! " [Mar.,

founding dynasties in this land and that, the Kelt seems ubiqui-
tous. We are learning many things of early Europe from early
Ireland by process of analogy. Can we argue here from the Irish
to the other Kelts ? We find an apparent nomad substratum under
the Kelt in the Emerald Isle. And by nomad is now meant, not
merely a similarity of customs between the old Irish and existing
nomads, such as the one just instanced, but faces and figures that
recall Finno-Turkic races, nay, real analogies of speech embedded
in the Irish language which point to some such pristine affinity
between Mongol-Tatar races and Keltic as might arise had there
been some blending of the stocks thousands of years ago. Sup-
pose, for instance, a conquering Keltic stock deficient in women
should overrun a country of Mongols, kill off most of the men,
and take the women for wives, concubines, and slaves. Then
those women would be apt, having the teaching of the children
in their hands, to infuse in the language an important quantity of
words, idioms, and phrase-forms. Suppose, to give the example
locality, the Kelts arrive in Ireland from Scandinavia by way of
Britain or from Spain, or from both lands during the same
epoch, and find nomads of the type of Finns, Lapps, Turks, or
Kalmuks in possession. Lacking women, they take wives of the
nomads. We might be able to explain from an amalgamation of
the two races why the Irish often drop a strong consonant from
between two vowels, as a air for athair, father, when we find that
the Finns say sata, hundred, but saan, of a hundred, tdlotta or
taloa, house, tomutta or tomua, dust. Like the Irish, the Fin-
nish ear seems extremely sensitive. In speaking English the
Irish often add vowels where we do not use them. They say
Charles for Charls, newees for news, and so on. Foreign words
are treated in the same way by the Finns, only they take liberties
with the consonants, and if two come together will often drop
one entirely. Thus the German schnur becomes nuora ; the name
Stephan, Tehvan. The Hungarians pronounce shnur, sinor ;
stall, istallo ; scola, iscola. Hungarian owes the power of its
poetry to the freedom it has in placing the words in the sentence,
the emphatic taking the lead. Ki vette meg az drat? "Who
bought has the watch?" So in the Irish sentence the important
word is placed first. In Irish the obsolete feminine of Mac (son
of) which is Ni (daughter of) makes one think of the Hungarian
affix ne, from no, woman or wife. Thus Csaszar, emperor, be-
comes Csaszarne, empress. Kirdly, king, becomes kiralynt, queen.
Fcrj\ husband, reminds one of Irish fear, the prefix ver t meaning
man, which we meet in Vercingetorix, Vergil, and other Gaulish

1 886.] "ENGLISH HOBBES ! ""IRISH DOGGES ! " 8o/

and Gallo-Roman names. In ember, man, we may get scent of
the derivation of Irish ban (mbari) woman, which in turn may
lead us to our own word " woman." for which our dictionaries
give us such a forced derivation. The curious rule in Irish that
the leading vowel in words of several syllables gives the key to
the rest of the vowels, and compels a change in them all, is dis-
tinctive of Finnish.

It would be wrong to leave the impression that these analo-
gies are in the nature of proof positive that there is a Finno-
Turkish element in the old Irish tongue; it is only noticed as
one of a series of hints which point that way. To settle such a
question needs much time and labor in a new field, and by mere-
ly mentioning it one incurs, perhaps justly, the anger of pro-
found scholars who move slowly though sometimes, alas ! not
surely from point to point of their arguments. It would also
be foolish for Irishmen to reject the theory because the nomad
stands less high than the Semite or the Aryan in the estimation of
the world. To this great race belong the Hungarians, one of the
handsomest and most chivalrous of nations ; the Finns and Lapps,
who have a wonderful epos in the Kalevala ; and in all probability
the Babylonians, who laid the foundations of our sciences of ma-
thematics and astronomy. Dr. Isaac Taylor has shown that the
Etruscans were of this stock, both from their history and the tes-
timony of what remains of their language; we know how highly
civilized they were and how much they contributed to the litera-
ture and art, the religion and military strength, of the Roman com-
monwealth. The writer remembers rousing the wrath of an honest
Hungarian gentleman by alluding to the ethnological and lingual
ties between Hungarians and Turks, and the belief which has gra-
dually grown among students of Babylonia that the Assyrians got
their civilization in large part from an old Turanian race akin to
Turk and Hun. He had no great opinion of Babylonians, and the
unspeakable Turk he abhorred. Therefore he hastily concluded
that his nation was insulted. In truth it would take a book to show
all the things for which the world is indebted to these races. In
Irishmen, therefore, it need rouse no fear of belittlernent if one
argues to a Turanian element in their composition. It would
merely explain a little better their pastoral tendency as against
the stronger agricultural element in the English. Jt would show
why so many famous men have had the dog as an honor-badge in
their names, and why their ancestors felt a peculiar contempt for,
and superiority to, an " English hobbe."

8o8 NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [Mar.,

THE NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MIS-
SISSIPPI.

IT was a Norman, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, who, depart-
ing from Canada and navigating- the Mississippi down to the
Gulf of Mexico, took possession, in the name of Louis XIV., King
of France and Navarre, on the 9th of April, 1682, of the immense
territory he had explored, and which was henceforth claimed
as a French possession, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to
those of the newly-discovered river, to which he gave the name
of Colbert, after having called the vast country which it watered
Louisiana. It is well known that he perished before he could,
with the ample means put at his disposal by his sovereign, colon-
ize the province of which he had been appointed viceroy.

Lemoyne d'Iberville, one of the most distinguished officers
of the French navy, and famous for his many exploits, was the
second explorer after La Salle. On the 2d of March, 1699, he
entered the Mississippi by the Gulf of Mexico, to which at that
time it carried a prodigious quantity of driftwood. This was
an indication which helped him, as it did subsequent navigators,
to find the mouth of the river. Iberville was born in Canada,
but of Norman origin ; for Charles Lemoyne, his father, was bap-
tized in the church of St. Remy in Dieppe on the 2d of August,
1626. He descended from Louis Lemoyne, lord of the manor
of Aviron, in the neighborhood of Evreux, who had been en-
nobled in 1471.

Charles Lemoyne, the father of Iberville and of numerous
other sons, all of distinguished merit, had settled in Canada in
1641 and had married Catherine Thierry, a woman of great
worth, a Norman like himself, and born at St. Denis le Petit, a
village of the diocese of Rouen. He was the proprietor of the
manor of Iberville, within the commune of Thil-Manneville, an
ancient fief, now belonging to the Le Bourgeois family of Dieppe.
Iberville, in his expedition to Louisiana, was accompanied by
two of his brothers, Bienville and Sauvolle. The Mississippi, on
whose banks now lies a populous parish called the Parish of
Iberville, may be said to have been the river with many names;
for Garcilasso, in his history of Hernando de Soto, calls it Rio
Grande or Chicagua ; Barcia, another Spanish author, calls it Rio
de la Palisada ; then came La Salle, who named it Colbert ; Tonti.

1 886.] NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 809

his faithful companion and lieutenant, designates it as the Missis-
sippi ; Bossu says that the Indian word for it was Meschassipi,
which means agglomeration of waters ; Chateaubriand has it Mes-
ckacM.

Iberville used the oar and the sail to overcome the current of
the mighty stream. On both sides he saw nothing but a des-
ert wilderness, fields of tall weeds, innumerable cane-brakes, and
dense forests which looked like the contemporaries of the crea-
tion of the world. For a long distance there was not a village to
be seen, not even a solitary hut. The complete absence of all
signs of human life was beginning to be oppressive. Iberville
did not recognize the localities described by Hennepin and
Tonti, probably on account of the changes which had taken
place during the seventeen or eighteen years that had elapsed
since their visit. It appears that in those days changes in the
Lower Delta of the Mississippi were exceedingly frequent and of
more common occurrence than in our times. Charlevoix men-
tions how considerable they had been in the course of a few
years. Tonti, in 1685, had been compelled to carry further up
on the bank of the river the column erected in 1682 by La
Salle and cast down by some cause or other.

At last Iberville arrived at the village of the Quinipissas,
where the chief of that tribe delivered to him the letter, or
" speaking bark," which Tonti had left for La Salle in case the
latter, for whom he had instituted a search for ninety miles along
the coast west and east of the Mississippi, should make his ap-
pearance. Retracing his steps, Iberville went to the Bay of Bi-
loxi, where he constructed a fort, of which he gave the com-
mand to Sauvolle. He then sailed for France. Sauvolle died
on the 22d of July, 1701. It was believed by some that the cause
of his death was yellow fever.

Iberville continued to devote himself to the settlement of the
French colony until he died, in 1706, of yellow fever in one of the
West India islands. On Bienville then, who had become the
governor of Louisiana, rested the whole burden of providing for
the wants of this infant establishment, so distant from Canada
and France, the only points to which he could look for assist-
ance.

At that time the bishop of Quebec was under the ecclesi-
astical jurisdiction of the archbishop of Rouen, for Canada was
a dependency of that Norman diocese a circumstance which
shows the importance and influence of the Norman element in
the discovery and colonization of the domains of France on the

8io NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [Mar.,

continent of North America. The Jesuits, of whom many were
Normans, had rendered great services to Canada, where they had
been actively instrumental in gaining for the French- the affec-
tion and confidence of the aborigines. True, some of them had
been horribly tortured by those whom they had tried to con-
vert to Christianity, but, on the whole, they had secured a wide-
spread influence over the savages. They soon turned their eyes
towards Louisiana, to which they hastened as missionaries, in
spite of the long distance that separated them from this newly-
opened field of action, and despite the perils that they had to en-
counter through fierce tribes in a journey of more than fifteen
hundred miles ; and they were generally successful in their mis-
sion of peace, conciliation, and conversion.

In 1717 Bienville ordered the ground upon which now is the
cathedral and Jackson Square to be cleared and the plan of a town
to be laid out by the engineer Latour. A few houses were built
of wood, but on their being .destroyed by a hurricane some of
them were rebuilt of bricks, and the town began to enlarge itself
gradually and give some signs of vitality. It was named New
Orleans, in compliment to the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of
France. Although still an humble village, it became in 1722 the
seat of government.

In October, 1726, Perier had succeeded Bienville as gover-
nor. The Western, or Company of the Indies, had the adminis-
tration of the colony. In 1727 Ursuline nuns and a few Jesuits
were, by virtue of a covenant with that company, sent to New
Orleans, principally for the purpose, on the part of the nuns, of
taking charge of a hospital. Besides, it was in consideration also
to provide for the education of the children of the colonists and
to minister to the spiritual wants of the community.

The Ursulines were seven in number. According to the
stipulations of the contract, they were transported at the cost
of the Western Company, with four servants, and they had re-
ceived each, before their departure, as a gratuity the sum of five
hundred livres. They were immediately put in possession of the
hospital, in which they were to reside until a more convenient
dwelling should be built for their use. The company was bound
to concede to the hospital a lot of ground measuring eight ar-
pens fronting on the Mississippi, by the usual depth of forty.
The object of this concession was the establishment of a plan-
tation capable of supplying the wants of the Ursulines and of
affording to them a sufficient remuneration for their services in
the hospital. These eight arpens with the usual depth were to

1 886.] NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 81 1

be located below New Orleans and as near to it as possible.
Each of the nuns was to receive six hundred livres a year until
their plantation should be in full cultivation, or should have
been furnished by the company with eight negroes on the or-
dinary conditions on which they were sold to the colonists. It
was expressly stipulated that if the nuns ceased to serve in the
hospital as agreed upon they would forfeit the plantation and
the immovables attached to the hospital, and would retain only
the negroes and other movables.

As to the Jesuits who were to come to Louisiana at the same
time with the Ursulines, their superior was to reside in New Or-
leans, but could not exercise therein any ecclesiastical functions
without the permission of the superior of the Capuchins under
whose spiritual jurisdiction New Orleans happened to be placed.
The Jesuits were transported at the cost of the company. Be-
fore their departure, and as a gratuity, each one received one
hundred and fifty livres. During the first two years of their
residence in Louisiana they were to be paid severally at the rate
of eight hundred livres annually, and afterward that salary was
to be reduced to six hundred livres. A concession of eight
arpens of land fronting on the river, with the usual depth (forty
arpens), was made to them in the neighborhood of New Or-
leans. They long dwelt on a plantation above the large tho-
roughfare now known as Canal Street. A house and a chapel
were constructed for them, and they soon became very influen-
tial in Louisiana. Thus New Orleans was abundantly provided
with spiritual assistance, being flanked on the left by the Ursu-
lines, and on the right by the Jesuits.

The religious corporation of the Ursulines was instituted in
1537 by Arfgele de Brescia. The main object was the education
of the faithful and the nursing of the sick in hospitals. This insti-
tution, being patronized by the pope and by the dignitaries of the
Catholic Church, spread rapidly and obtained an ever-increasing
degree of development which continues to this day.

This religious community of nuns, who departed from the port
of Lorient, in France, on the 22d of February, 1727, and who
arrived in New Orleans on the 7th of August of said year, was
composed of eleven persons, including^the mother-superior, named
Tranchepain de St. Augustin. She belonged to a rich Huguenot
family. She had abjured in the hands of the grand- vicar of the
archbishop of Rouen, and had taken the veil among the Ursu-
lines in 1699. They were all of the heroic Norman race, and

812 NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [Mar.,

were received in New Orleans with demonstrations of joy and
deep sympathy.

Madeleine Hachard,then a novice, but who subsequently took
the black veil in New Orleans, and from whose letters to her
father in France I intend to quote as largely as the limits of this
article will permit, wrote to him, immediately after having reached
her destination in Louisiana:

"Fathers and mothers were transported with joy on seeing us, and said
they would no longer think of returning to France, now that they could
procure instruction for their daughters. There is a struggle here among
the people as to which of them will be foremost in supplying our wants,
and this is done in such a way as to put us under obligation almost to every-
body."

The monastery destined for the nuns not being ready for their
reception, they were provisionally established in a house which
Governor Bienville had just vacated, and it was only in 1734 that
they took complete possession of the edifice which had been con-
structed for their accommodation. Before that occurrence three
of the sisters died, among whom was the mother-superior, Marie
Tranchepain. The survivors, in their circular-letter on this sad
event, said " that she had died, like Moses, in sight of the Land
of Chanaan." Immediately after their arrival they opened their
school with great success and much to the satisfaction of the
population.

Madeleine Hachard, who, when she pronounced her vows,
became Sister St. Stanislas, was the daughter of a burgher of
Rouen. It was a very pious family, for one of her brothers was
a priest ; another was religiously inclined, and she hoped to see
him join the sacred orders, with a keen desire that he should
become a Jesuit missionary. One of her sisters was* a nun, and
two others were aspiring to the same position.

Madeleine Hachard had evidently a good and affectionate
heart, a mind of some culture, and a remarkable degree of instruc-
tion for her sex at the time in which she lived. Although very
religious, she was not bigoted. Her disposition was cheerful,
affable; and she trusted firmly in God. She kept on the even
tenor of her gentle ways without ever allowing herself to be
ruffled by anything. It is impossible to read her letters without
appreciating such a lovely character. The motive of all her
actions, the leading principle of her life, was the passion to sacri-
fice herself for the service of God and the welfare and salvation
of her fellow-creatures.

1 886.] NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 813

She thought that the city of Rouen should be proud of hav-
ing- given birth to those who had discovered the Mississippi and
had been the first pioneers of Louisiana. She hoped that the
priests and nuns of Normandy who were so zealously at work for
the instruction of the "poor savages" of the colony and for the
salvation of their souls would do their utmost to induce their
compatriots to' undertake the discovery of new fields of useful-
ness. She expressed herself happy to know that the Indians
think that Normandy is the most glorious province of France,
and believe that the Normans never fail in anything that they
set their hearts upon.

Sister Madeleine Hachard in religion St. Stanislas died af-
ter having been, during thirty five years, an excellent teacher for
the youth of New Orleans, and after having fulfilled in a most
exemplary manner all the duties incumbent upon her. The
whole community deplored her death. She left in the hands of
her Ursuline sisters a large manuscript volume, supposed to be
a diary, and which it would be very interesting to examine, if it
could be found.

This mission of the Ursuline nuns and their settlement in
Louisiana was organized by the Jesuit, Rev. Father De Beaubois,
who departed before them for New Orleans to make preparations
for their reception.

On the 22d of February, 1727, Madeleine Hachard wrote to
her father from Lorient, where she was to embark :

" If I appeared to leave you, my dear father, my dear mother, and all
my family, with a dry eye, and even with joy, my heart did not grieve the
less. I even confess that, at the last moment, I had to go through a very
hard struggle ; but now the sacrifice is made, and I compliment myself on
having obeyed the Sovereign Master of our destiny.

"On my arriving in Paris with my companions I was most graciously
received by the Ursulines de St. Jacques. We hoped to make a very short
stay in that city, but, to our dismay, we soon learned that probably our
sojourn in it would be prolonged one month, because the ship that was to
carry us to Louisiana would not be ready before this lapse of time. We had
to submit patiently to this contrariety. Fortunately the affectionate hos-
pitality and the good manners of the Ursuline dames, with whom we had
the honor to be, rendered less painful our disappointment in being thus
detained in Paris. Such were their demonstrations of friendship that to
havQ remained with them would have been a happy lot. I will not deny to
you that, in connection with this subject, I was tempted in this terrestrial
paradise, and that the temptation was of the strongest; but the Lord has
supported and guarded me, and, fortified by his grace, I have preferred a
sojourn in New Orleans to one in Paris. When we had to part many tears
were shed. I felt how profoundly attached I was to these sisters, and how

814 NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [Man,

easily I should have accustomed myself to live in that agreeable and holy
community; but, my dear father, when God speaks one must obey."

On the 8th of December, 1726, at five o'clock in the morning,
she departed with two other Ursulines and two Jesuits, Father
Doutreleau and Father Crucy, who were to accompany the nuns
to Louisiana. The journey to Lorient through Brittany, on exe-
crable roads and in cold and rainy weather, was 'exceedingly fa-
tiguing and full of mishaps. It lasted more than ten long days.
She relates in very good humor trials which might have soured
an angel. As a specimen of that humor I translate a portion of
her letter, in which she says to her father:

" I must not forget to tell you that during the whole journey Father
Crucy and myself were always in a state of warfare, His superior, Father
Davangour, had requested me to watch over him, and the mother-superior
of the Convent de St. Jacques had requested him to be my director. So
that, from time to time, we reciprocally exchanged remonstrances and rep-
rimands all done in a sportive manner, of course. My nature is not mel-
ancholy, as you know, and the good, dear father has the same tempera-
ment. There was laughter at our expense occasionally, but, as we are the
youngest of the party, it was not unbecoming in us to be a source of amuse-
ment to our friends.

" We take with us a locksmith, a cabinet-maker, and several other me-
chanics, and also a Moor [probably she meant a negro]. We also have a
very beautiful kitten, who wished to become one of our community, as she
took it for granted, according to all appearances, that there are as many
mice in Louisiana as in France.

" I do not care about the rumors afloat in Rouen that I have not de-
parted from that city, where I am now reported to have been seen by dif-
ferent persons. It is glorious for me to be in two distant cities at the
same time. It puts me on a par with Frangois Xavier, that great Apostle
of the Indies and Japan, who is reported to have shown himself frequently
in several places at the same moment which is looked upon as a great
prodigy. Unluckily, my dear father, I am not a sufficiently great saint
to perform such miracles. To a certainty I am not in Rouen, but in
Lorient, where I continue to be very lively and cheerful, and very well
satisfied with my vocation, whose duties I am resolved to fulfil as com-
pletely as may be in my power."

The impressions produced upon Sister Hachard on her ar-
rival in New Orleans are vividly reproduced in her letters to her
father, and are valuable as being, no doubt, truthfully descrip-
tive of what she actually saw.

"Although," she writes, " I do not as yet know perfectly the province
called Louisiana, still I will attempt, dear father, to give you some details
about it. I assure you that I can hardly realize that I am on the banks
of the Mississippi, because there is here, in certain things, as much mag-
nificence as in France, and as much politeness and refinement. Gold and

1 886.] NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 815

velvet stuffs are commonly used, although they cost three times as much
as in Rouen. Corn-bread costs ten cents a pound, eggs from forty-five to
fifty cents a dozen, milk fifteen cents for a measure which is half that of
France. We have pineapples the most excellent of all fruit peas and
wild beans, water-melons, potatoes, sabotines which are very much like our
gray renette apples an abundance of figs and pecans, walnut and hickory
nuts, which, when eaten too green, act as astringents on the throat. There
are also pumpkins. I do not speak of many other kinds of fruit of which
I have heard, but with which I am still unacquainted.

"As to meat, we live on wild beef, venison, wild geese and turkey and
a sort of swan, hares, chickens, ducks, teals, pheasants, partridges, quails,
and other game. The river abounds in monstrously large fishes, among
which the sheepshead must be mentioned as excellent; and we have also
rays, carps, and an infinite number of other fishes unknown in France. A
great use is made of chocolate and coffee with milk. We eat bread made of
half rice and half wheat-flour. We have wild grapes larger than those of
France. They do not grow in bunches, but are put on the table in plates
in the fashion that prunes are served.''

Probably she means the wild grapes which the Creoles call socos,
and the Anglo-Saxons muscadines.

She continues to say in her gastronomic account :

"The dish most in favor is rice boiled with milk and what is called
sagamiti, which consists of Indian corn pounded in a mortar and boiled in
water with butter or lard. The whole people of Louisiana regard as most
excellent this kind of food."

It was borrowed from the savages, as the name indicates.

This is certainly the Land of Chanaan. It is impossible, there-
fore, not to be confirmed in the suspicion that the horrible descrip-
tions of famine sent to the metropolis, and the constant applica-
tions for provisions addressed to the home government by the
authorities of the colony- were dictated by the desire to have
materials with which to trade with the Indians, who were rep-
resented as very " sociable," and who were but too readily-
disposed to exchange their furs and other articles of commerce
for the products of France, which in their eyes had the merit of
novelty. It may not be unfair to suppose that what was so
clamorously asked for under the plea of suppressing famine was
frequently sold to the colonists and to the Indians at an advan-
tageous profit. It is difficult to conceive how, in the early days
of the colony's existence, a sparse population of a few hundred
souls should have been threatened with starvation, when, with a
fishing-rod and a gun, with shot and powder, food could be pro-
cured that would have been the pride and the delight of an epi-
curean in France. How did De Soto and his thousand mailed

8i6 NORMANS ON THE BANKS 'OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [Mar.,

warriors, with their horses caparisoned in armor, live during
three years in the inmost depths of our wilderness, without any
communication with the outside world?

" The Mississippi," writes the nun, " is the greatest river in North Ame-
rica, with the exception of the St. Lawrence. An infinite number of rivers
fall into it. Over two thousand miles is the length of its course. It can-
not be ascended nor descended by large vessels, but only by small boats
carrying from twelve to fifteen people. It is lined on its banks with very
large and tall trees. The rapidity of the current having an undermining
effect, the banks cave in and fall into the stream with those trees in such
quantity that in some places they obstruct the river. It would cost the
hardest kind of work and .immense disbursements to render this river
navigable and susceptible of being ascended and descended by large ves-
sels. Besides, there are sand-bars from distance to distance. It would be
necessary to give them a sloping edge.

"Although we are here nearer the sun than in Rouen, we do not suffer
from too much heat ; and the winter is moderate, not lasting more than
three months, during which we have only white frosts. We are told that
Louisiana is three times as large as France. The lands are very fertile and
produce annually several crops. There are reeds and wild canes which rise
to the height of fifteen to twenty feet; a variety of trees, among which the
cotton-tree although no cotton grows on it sycamores, mulberries, chest-
nut-trees, fig-trees, almond-trees, lemon-trees, orange-trees, pomegranate-
trees. These lands are the finest in the world, but to be cultivated would
require another population. A man who should work them only two days
in the week would have food enough for the whole year. But most of the
people live in idleness, addicting themselves only to hunting and fishing.
The commerce of the Western Company with the Indians in furs, bear-
skins, and other merchandise is very considerable.

" Our lodgings are as good as could be desired while waiting for the
completion of our convent. There is no religious community that has been
so well accommodated at the beginning of its existence. When we arrived
here the Rev. Father de Beaubois told us that one single blast of the
north wind had killed nine of his negroes. It is a loss of nine thousand
livres. Fifteen days ago the Company of the Indies gave us eight slaves ;
two ran away; we kept a fine-looking negress to serve us, and we sent the
rest to work on our plantation, which is only three miles from this town.
On that plantation an overseer and his wife attend to our interests.

" I will not speak to you, my dear father, of the morals of the laity of
this country, as I neither know nor wish to know them. They are said to
have very slanderous tongues and to be very corrupt. But a good many
are very honest people. None of those impure girls who are said to have
been sent here by force are to be found. None have come so far."

The trials and discomforts during the five months which the
voyage of the nuns lasted from Lorient to New Orleans are
related with graphic simplicity and without complaint. Three
times they met with hostile privateers. * The decks were cleared

1 886.] NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 817

for combat, and the women were sent down below to the best
place of safety ; but the enemy, intimidated by this show of reso-
lute defiance, concluded not to attack. Three times the vessel
was threatened with being- completely wrecked, with the loss of
all on board. The courage of Madeleine Hachard never failed
heron these occasions, for it was inspired by the most implicit
reliance on the mercy of God, who, she believed, would decree
what was best for her, whether she perished or not.

The nuns were hospitably received by Devergis, who com-
manded at the Balize and was then establishing a fort on a one-
half acre island at the entrance of the river. He supplied them
with pirogues, which, at that time, were scooped trees, in which
there was space enough to contain sixteen persons.

" Ours were not so large," she writes. " We had to divide into three
bands. The reverend mother-superior occupied one of the pirogues with
the youngest sisters, among whom I was included. We were accompanied
by Father Doutreleau and Father Crucy. The rest of our sisters took
possession of the second pirogue, with a Mr. Massy and two of our ser-
vants. There was a third smaller pirogue for the mechanics and the ser-
vants in the employment of the reverend fathers.' 7

It seems that the ship in which the nuns came had remained
outside the bar and did not attempt to bring them up to New
Orleans.

"The trials and fatigues of our [five months' sea-voyage are not to be
compared with what we had to endure during the seven days which it took
us to come from the Balize to New Orleans a distance of about ninety
miles. What renders the journey so fatiguing is the necessity of building
huts every night on the bank of the river. This was to be done an hour
before sunset, so as to have time to erect our mosquito-bars and prepare
our supper; because as soon as the sun disappears from the horizon there
is a regular battle to be fought against the mosquitoes. Other insects are
quite as redoubtable as the mosquitoes and equally pitiless. Sometimes
they fill up the air so densely that one would almost suppose that they could
be cut with a knife. Their bites are quite venomous and torturing. There
is no habitation and no cultivation between the Balize and New Orleans,
except within a short distance of that town. A wilderness of tall forests
extends all along the banks, and their only inhabitants are snakes, adders,
scorpions, crocodiles, vipers, toads, and other reptiles, which, however, do
us no harm. We became acquainted with an immense variety of them.
The weeds are so tall and so thick that it is impossible to build huts except
on the immediate margin of the river. Our sailors every evening drove
canes or poles into the ground around every mattress, in the shape of a
small arbor, over which they hung an ample sheet of very light linen. We
slept on these mattresses without undressing, two of us in the same bed.
VOL. XLII. 52

8i8 NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [Mar.,

These pieces of linen had to be laid over us very tightly and carefully, in
order not to allow the slightest aperture for the mosquitoes to come in.

" We slept twice in the midst of almost liquid mud and of a deluge of
rain which made our mattresses float under us, with an accompaniment of
thunder, lightning, and wind. Several of our sisters were much incom-
moded ; they took severe colds and fluxions. They had a swelling of the
legs and faces. One of them became very ill. As to myself, although I
was drenched like my companions, I stood it very well and my health was
not affected. Besides, we had, when in the pirogues, to put up with the in-
commodity of not being able to sit down, to stand up, to kneel, or even to
move at all. We were perched up on the top of our trunks and baggage,
to which we had to cling, and on the slightest movement we were threat-
ened with the capsizing of the boat and with becoming the food of fishes.
Whenever the pirogue stopped we ventured on a change of position and
on giving some relief to our cramped limbs. During the day we ate bis-
cuit and salt meat cooked the preceding evening on shore. One is sur-
prised when considering the fortitude supplied by God to those who rely
on him in trying circumstances. It demonstrates that he never permits
that we be tempted beyond our powers of resistance, giving us grace pro-
portioned to the severity of the trials he imposes. It is true that our ar-
dent desire to reach the promised land helped us in supporting with joy
every painful circumstance.

" When we were within twenty-four or thirty miles of the town we be-
gan to meet some inhabitants. There was a struggle among them as to
which would welcome us with the most cordial and affectionate hospitality.
They attempted to force us into their houses, and greeted us with accla-
mations of joy. We met, much beyond our expectation, quite a number of
honest people who had come from Canada and France to settle in this
country. We had the promise of numerous boarders. Some even pressed
it upon us without being disposed to wait for further delays. Fathers and
mothers rejoice at our coming. They are enthusiastic over our arrival.
They say that they will no longer think of returning to France, because
they now have the means and opportunity of educating their daughters.
This good disposition makes them attentive to supply our wants with the
greatest profusion, and really we are overwhelmed with obligations almost
toward everybody.

" We have on our side the commandant, Paris, and his wife, who are
persons full of merit, and whose amiable society is really captivating. In
three years he has acquired the esteem of the whole country. His con-
duct is above censure. His whole time is devoted to rendering justice
and to serving the interests of the company in a manner so gentle and so
insinuating that he has almost entirely appeased all the troubles and the
discord which had prevailed in this town. He has established a well-regu-
lated police. He wars against vice ; he drives away all those who lead a
scandalous life ; he punishes corporally all the women of bad repute. A
law-suit is ended in three or four days. For the most trifling theft one is
hung or broken on the wheel. The Superior Council is supreme. There
is no appeal from its decisions. Although there are judges in the most
distant parts of the country, yet litigants come here even from the Illinois
district to submit their cases to this tribunal,

1 886.] NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 819

"Mr. De La Chaise, director general of the company, has never ceased
to be exceedingly kind and gracious, and has never refused anything that
we ask."

On the 24th of April, 1728, she wrote her last letter to her
father.

"The river here," she said, " is larger than the Seine at Rouen. On
the other side of the Mississippi that is, on the right side there are some
small barracks where are lodged the slaves of the company. New Orleans
is situated on the left bank of the Mississippi, and not on the shore of
Lake Pontchartrain, as represented on the map which you have purchased.
It is true that the whole stream does not flow in front of the town ; for
above it divides and forms three arms, which reunite below it, fall into the
main river, and run with velocity to the Gulf of Mexico."

It is impossible to understand this passage unless we suppose
that the innocent and cloistered nun mistook crevasses above the
town for three arms of the river.

In this letter to her father she complains for the first time of
her health being affected :

" I have lately had several attacks of fever. Yesterday I took a dose
of emetic to cure myself. It is the ordinary remedy in this country.

" Governor Perier had placed with us as a boarder a lady who is
separated from her husband ; but as she showed signs of being tired of the
convent, and as she attempted to hold secret communications with a person
outside, the governor had a prison constructed on our premises. With
the consent of her husband she was locked up in it until she can be sent
back to France. This is the way that things are carried on here.

" On our side of the river there is a well- conditioned levee, and all along
this levee or embankment there is, on the side of the town, a large ditch
for the drainage of the water that may come into it. This ditch is palisaded
with lumber."

Madeleine Hachard must have been delighted with the sacred
mission she had accepted and the duties imposed upon her as a
missionary, a school-teacher, and a hospital nurse, for she certainly
looks on the bright side of the humble spot where she is to
work. Thus she enthusiastically writes to her father:

"Our town is very handsome, well constructed, and regularly built, as
much as I could judge on the day of our arrival ; for ever since that day
we have remained cloistered in our dwelling. We had been given a very
poor idea of this place by individuals who had not witnessed its progress
for several years. Since then a great deal has been done to improve this
capital of the colony.

" The streets are very large and straight ; the main street is near three
miles in length ; the houses are well built, with upright joists filled with
mortar between the interstices, and the exterior whitewashed with slack-
lime. In the interior they are wainscoted. These houses have many

820 NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [Mar.,

openings, and their roofs are made with boards, which are small planks
cut in the shape of slates and imitating them to perfection in solidity and
beauty. The colonists are very'proud of their capital. Suffice it to say that
there is a song currently sung here which emphatically declares that New
Orleans is as beautiful as Paris. Beyond that it is impossible to go.

" The fact is that although I am not to be persuaded by the song, which
can have effect only on those who have not seen Paris, New Orleans
aggrandizes itself and may become in the course of time as large and im-
portant as the principal cities of France, if workmen migrate to this place,
and if it becomes populated in proportion to the extent of the plan on
which it has been laid out.

" The women here are extremely ignorant as to the means of securing
their salvation, but they are very expert in the art of displaying their
vanity. There is so much luxury in this town that there is no distinction
among the classes, so far as dress goes. The magnificence of display is
equal in all. Most of them reduce themselves and their families to the hard
lot of living at home on nothing but sagamite, and flaunt abroad in robes
of velvet and damask ornamented with the most costly ribbons. The wo-
men here paint and rouge to hide the ravages of time, and wear on their
faces, as an embellishment, small black patches. Finally, the evil spirit has
prepared for himself a large empire in this country. But this does not
make us lose the hope of counteracting him, as God demonstrates by an
infinity of examples that he loves to show his strength in the very weak-
ness of his agents. The more powerful is the enemy the more encouraged
we are to combat him. What is very pleasant to us is the docility of the
children, who can be moulded as one pleases. As to the negroes, it is easy
to instruct them as soon as they learn French. I will not say as much of
the savages, whom it is impossible to baptize without trembling on account
of their natural inclination to sin, particularly the women, who under an air
of modesty hide all the passions of the beast.

"Whilst waiting for the final construction of our convent, which will be
a solid brick edifice of large dimensions, we reside in the finest house of the
town. It is a two-story building with an attic, containing all the apart-
ments which we need, with six doors in the first story for egress and in-
gress. In all the stories there are large windows, but with no glass. The
frames are closed with very thin linen admitting of as much light as
glass."

This house had been vacated by Bienville to establish the nuns
provisionally. Its situation was southeast between Bienville and
St. Louis Streets, that run perpendicularly to the river, and Royal
and Chartres, that run in a parallel line to it. The monastery in
the course of construction was at the other extremity of the
town at the angle formed by the south side of Arsenal Street.

" We have," says Madeleine Hachard, "a poultry-yard, and a garden at
the extremity of which are enormous and indigenous trees of a really pro-
digious size. This, however, has its inconvenience, for it procures for us
the daily visit of a multitude of mosquitoes. At this very moment there
are several of them hovering around me and seemingly bent upon assas-

1 8 86.] NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. '821

sinating your poor daughter. These insects come at sunset and retire to
the woods at sunrise.

" Governor Perier and his wife, who is very amiable and of great piety,
do us the honor of often visiting our establishment. The king's lieutenant
[a sort of lieutenant-governor, who commands a town or a locality for the
king in the absence of the governor] is a perfect gentleman and an old
officer. They and the rest of the population load us with presents. We
have been given two cows with their calves, a sow and its little pigs, also
hens, musk-ducks, turkeys, and geese for our poultry-yard. The inhabi-
tants, seeing that we refuse to be paid for instructing day-scholars, are
penetrated with gratitude and aid us to the full extent of their power.
The marks of protection which we receive from the highest in the land
cause us to be respected by the whole population. This would not continue
long if we did not sustain by our actions the exalted opinion they have
of us.

" We drink beer. Our most common food is rice boiled with milk, small
wild beans, meat and fish. But in the summer we consume but very little
meat. During that season it can be procured only twice a week, and it
is not easy to preserve it. Game can be had during the whole winter in
abundance. The hunting season begins in October. At about thirty miles
from our town a great many wild beeves are caught [probably she means
buffaloes]. We pay for it three cents per pound, as we do for venison. This
meat is superior to the beef and mutton that you eat in Rouen.

" Wild ducks, teals, geese, water-fowls, and other game are very cheap
but in general we abstain from buying any of it, as we do not wish to accustom
ourselves to live too luxuriously. Finally, it is a charming country during
the winter. We have oysters and carps of a prodigious size, which are deli-
cious, water-melons, French melons, potatoes that is, big roots that are
baked under ashes like chestnuts, of which they have the taste, but are
sweeter, softer, and excellent. All this, my father, is exactly as I relate to
you. I say nothing of what I have not had personal experience. There
are many other kinds of food of which I have not yet tasted, and to which,
therefore, I do not allude.

"As to the fruits of the country, there are many which we do not
find very good, except peaches and figs, which are in abundance. Such a
quantity of them is sent to us from the neighboring plantations that
we utilize them in making confitures. With blackberries we make a jelly
which is very fine. Rev. Father de Beaubois has the finest garden in the
town. It is full of orange-trees which produce oranges exceedingly sweet.
The other day he made us a present of three hundred sour ones, which we
have confited.

" During the Holy Week we had exhortations and conferences, that were
attended by almost two hundred persons. We had the Tenebrce and the
Miserere set to music and accompanied by instruments. At Easter we had
also the whole Mass set to music with quartettes and admirably sung. The
convents of France, with all their brilliancy, seldom do as much.
* "All this has a very good effect and ends in attracting the public.
Some come from a beginning of devotion, others from curiosity; and it
necessarily follows that they have to listen to a sermon from Father de
Beaubois, whose zeal is without limits, and who verily believes that he can

822 NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [Mar. r

convert everybody. But before he succeeds in this pious design he has
yet a great deal of work to do ; for besides debauchery, bad faith, and,
finally, all the other vices prevail here more than anywhere else, but it must
be added that they thus prevail with an abundance which is beyond all
measure. As to the girls of a loose character, although they are carefully
watched and severely punished by their being made to ride a wooden
horse, and by having them whipped by all the soldiers of the garrison, yet
there are enough of them to fill up a large refuge-asylum. A thief is tried
in two days. He is either hung or broken on the wheel, whether he be a
white man, a negro, or a savage. There is no distinction and no mercy.

" Our small community increases from day to day. We have twenty
boarders. Eight of them have made their first communion to-day. We
have also three lady boarders and three orphans who pay nothing and
whom we have received from charity, seven slave boarders whom we are
to instruct and prepare for baptism and their first communion, a large num-
ber of day-scholars, besides many black and Indian women who attend our
school during two hours every day.

"The usage here is to marry girls from twelve to fourteen years old.
Numbers of them had been married at that age before our arrival, without
their knowing whether there was one single God or many. Judge of the
rest. But since we have been here none have been permitted to marry
without having received religious instruction from us.

" We are now accustomed to the sight of black people ; lately we have
been given two other negresses to board with us, one six years old and the
other seventeen, to be instructed in our religion. At the same time they
will serve us. Should it become the fashion for negresses to adorn their
faces with patches, in imitation of the white ladies, those patches would
have to be white. It certainly would look funny.

"You see, my dear father, that there are here causes enough to stimu-
late our zeal. I cannot express to you the pleasure we find in instructing
these youth. It is enough to consider the need they have of it. We have
boarders, from twelve to fifteen years old, who had never gone to confes-
sion, and who had even never heard Mass, having been reared on planta-
tions fifteen or eighteen miles from the town, without any spiritual assis-
tance and without ever having heard the name of God. They look on the
most common information which we give as an oracle coming from our
lips. We have the comfort to find in them much docility and much ardor
for instruction. All of them would like to become nuns which is not to
the taste of Rev. Father de Beaubois. Our most worthy superior thinks
it would be much better that they should become Christian mothers in
order to establish religion in this country by their good examples.

" It must be admitted that in this foreign land Christianity is almost
unknown. It is true that there are a great many honest people, according
to the ways and judgment of the world, but there is not the slightest ap-
pearance of devotion, or even Christianity. We should be very happy if
we could inaugurate here the reign of religion with the help of our reve-
rend father-superior and some Capuchins, who exert themselves to the
utmost for that purpose. As to oui selves, we do our best and spare no
efforts.

" Your city of Rouen, my dear father, ought to be proud of having

1 886.] NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 823

given birth to Cavelier de La Salle, and to so many missionaries and other
people who have worked zealously for the conversion and civilization of
the poor savages. It is, perhaps, for this reason that the savages of Louis-
iana have so much esteem for the Normans, and consider their province as
much superior to any other in France. They believe that there is no en-
terprise in which Normans will not succeed. This conviction would be
much strengthened if they were made acquainted with the exploits of the
Dukes of Normandy, with the bravery of the Normans in the Holy Land
and with their conquest of England and other kingdoms. But we are not
here for that ; if they wish to know something about it let them get the
information from others or read histories."

I may, perhaps, be permitted here to observe in a parenthesis
that there have been many discussions, which have led to no posi-
tive and settled results, about the extent of the knowledge which
it is proper to impart to the primitive ignorance of man. It is
believed by some that too much of it would shake the basis of re-
ligion and society. I doubt it. Religion is not of this world, it
is true, but it is in it and for its special benefit. It is a part of
the history of mankind, and therefore men and women should be
made acquainted with the history of their race in all its ramifica-
tions, profane and religious, and with an accurate and impartial
exhibition of its bright and dark sides. History would be better
understood when thus studied as a complete whole, and not in a
disconnected manner. Piety has no solid foundation if it should
rest on ignorance and not on the knowledge of evil and its awful
consequences. An eminent divine has said that, when looking at
the grand figure of Christ, one must not fail to notice the devil
crouching in the background and sometimes peeping over the
shoulder of the Master.

It is to the credit of the Ursulines that, with the assistance of
the Jesuits, they established in New Orleans the first school for
the education of the daughters of Louisiana. As Christians and
as Normans it is a merit which they can rightly claim.

The Ursulines kept on the even tenor of their way until the
Spaniards landed in New Orleans on the 5th of March, 1766.
Their number then increased by the accession of Spanish nuns,
who became predominant. When the French Republic took
possession of Louisiana in 1803 by cession from Spain, merely to
deliver it over to the United States, the majority of the nuns
showed the greatest excitement and indignation. They loudly
proclaimed that they did not accept this change and would take
refuge in Cuba. The French colonial prefect, Laussat, called
upon them to ascertain if this really was their intention and to
remove what apprehensions they might have. The Sister Mar-

824 NORMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [Mar.,

garita Dulievre de San Ignacio, a native of Nantes and long a
resident of La Rochelle, expressed herself in the most energetic
terms against the new government, which she declared to be
revolutionary, impious, and sacrilegious. She reproached it with
the hideous crimes which it had perpetrated from 1789 to 1803 in
France ; and she added that Laussat's promises of protection were
mendacious, because it was well known that he was soon to trans-
fer Louisiana to the Republic of the United States, which was no
better in any respect than the godless French Republic. The
other nuns were frightened at the vehemence of the language of
their sister, and feared that the prefect might take some harsh
measures against them. But he refrained from it in considera-
tion of the age of the nun, who was more than a septuagenarian,
and finally consented to their emigration when convinced that
they had resolved upon it of their own free-will and with the ap-
probation of the ecclesiastical authority to which they were sub-
jected.

On the 2Qth of May, 1803, sixteen nuns, escorted by the Vicar-
General Harfell, by the Marquis of Casacalvo one of the com-
missioners of Spain for the delivery of Louisiana to the United
States and by the ex-governor, General Salcedo, left their con-
vent at ten o'clock at night by the church door opening on Ursu-
line Street, and went on board of the vessel which was to trans-
port them to Havana. They exchanged on their departure the
most affectionate and sisterly embraces with the six nuns who had
resolved to remain. They went away with empty hands, carry-
ing with them no property of any value save the papers and
archives of their community, which were transported to Havana,
and which should have remained in New Orleans. They left,
however, in the possession of the sisters who clung to their old
convent an engraving representing the landing of the Ursulines
at New Orleans in 1727. It was made at that epoch, and is a
relic which would be valuable in the eye of any antiquarian.

The rest of the history of the Ursulines of Louisiana does not
fall within the scope of this article.

1 886.] DICKY DOYLE'S DIARY. 825

DICKY DOYLE'S DIARY.

A BOY with a long, mobile mouth ready to curve in a broad
smile, and with a shock of hair overhanging his forehead such
was Dicky Doyle at fifteen when he drew himself in his diary,
turn-down collar, belted jacket, long, slim legs, and all. On
the recurring Sundays this boy noted down: "Chapel at eight,
breakfast nine " ; or, " Sunday frosty home ; breakfast hot " ;
or, " Went to chapel at eight, home at nine ; Mr. Mayne came
to breakfast " entries that mark the diary of a young Catholic
familiar with early Mass. In after-years he became the well-
known artist of humorous illustrations whose signature, with a
little dicky-bird perched upon it, was familiar in Punch, in the
Christmas books of Dickens, and in works of Thackeray, Leigh
Hunt, Ruskin, and others. His love of children and fairy-folk
stamped his more fanciful work with his own character of fresh-
ness, gayety, and delicate grace of feeling. Who that has ever
seen that folio of elves can forget how Richard Doyle peopled
Fairyland ?

Well, here he was, a boy in 1840, beginning to write a diary.
" Hope I may be skinned alive by wild-cats if I don't go on with
it." The wish is illustrated by a glimpse of the shock-headed lad
running amid an outburst of cats prancing mad. Soon he is " so
sick with this book" that he " won't let any one see it at least for
a year" little dreaming that a quarto fac-simile of it, writing,
sketches, and all, would be given to the world forty-five years
after, at the close of 1885. The diary was begun in obedience to
his father's wish that he should try to acquire an artist's habit of
observation and of noting those observations with the pencil. It
has been published by his co-religionist, J. Hungerford Pollen,
two years after Richard Doyle's death, to show the progress of
his genius as a boy and to tell its own tale of the early home-days
of an artist who worked out celebrity, a Catholic who had a public
name, a friend so dearly prized that to the last, though he might
be ceremoniously " Richard," he was privately " Dicky Doyle."

Fond of hard work, fond of books, fond of fun these were his
three characteristics. The boy's home-circle in 1840 counted
four brothers with turn-down collars, and two sisters with lit-
tle, low-necked gowns, in one of the old-fashioned houses of Cam-
bridge Terrace, Hyde Park. They had daily lessons from a

826 DICKY DOYLE'S DIARY. [Mar.,

tutor, and had also lessons in music, dancing, and fencing". He
fears his violin practice is like " the singing of an asthmatic don-
key or the conversation of an insane cat " ; but he calls music,
" next to painting-, the most delightful of pursuits." Dancing he
holds in genuine boyish horror. " That revolting species of amuse-
ment, the dance," is taught by " a specimen of animated nature
of rather tall proportions, with falling shoulders, a powerful pair
of legs, and a peculiarly bitter smile." Fencing he finds hard
work in warm weather, and pictures himself and his brother,
armed and masked, leaning against opposite walls, limp as rags.
It was an artistic family, and every Sunday the " show" is men-
tioned the boys' exhibition of the drawings of the week to their
father, who was himself an artist of repute in his day.

Dick had already begun to be a hard worker. Early in
January he finished the series of comic pictures called The
Tournament, all but the title-page, " and I expect to have it done
next week, and then ' Hurrah ! ' Don't you be too sure though,
perhaps they won't be published at all." But they were, as we
find on the 3d of March the boyish rejoicings, as usual sparsely
punctuated : " Oh my goodness me fifty hot pressed copies of
The Tournament. I won't believe it. Hurrah!" Then, for next
day, " As soon as I got up this morning I ran to have a look at
the fifty copies. ... Of course they looked beautiful. ... It is
a wonder I was able to eat any dinner." He begins at once
Quentin Durward on a sheet of double elephanttrue industry,
not made an idler by a first success. But is it success? The
engraver comes with his bill. Master Dick does a lively draw-
ing of three policemen, in glazed hats, grotesquely grim, fat, and
grinning, literally running away with him full speed to prison.
Of course his father paid the bill, and the boy was not run away
with, as his wild imagination pictured. On the contrary, out of
his earnings seven and-sixpence a copy by private sale he re-
funded the money to his father, and afterwards ordered two
more fifties from the engraver. The humorous set of pictures
was shown far and wide in London drawing-rooms, and was ad-
mired, amongst others, by Count d'Orsay. Meanwhile Dicky
was hard at work again, as we see him in his own diary sketches,
with the little white dog Ruff patiently sitting beside the easel,
while he paints for hours, always in the old-fashioned boyish
belted jacket and with the thatch-roof of hair falling in a thick
curve almost into his eyes. Once he had written: " I was up
early. Good boy. I really begin to suspect I am getting better
I do. ... Now just imagine if I was was [sic] walking along

i886.] DICKY DOYLE'S DIARY. 827

coolly and suddenly saw The Tournament in a shop window. Oh
crikey it would be enough to turn me inside out."

At the end of May a little picture occurs showing the backs
of two boys and a dog, all looking in at a shop-window, and the
writing tells how his brother brought the alarm that " my thing"
was to be seen in Piccadilly. The boys and Ruff rushed out to
behold it, "and there to my consternation was the identical cul-
prit lying on its back in the bottom shelf of the window. This
certainly is something beyond belief."

Not many boys of fifteen have ever enjoyed such a cause of
consternation. The other important work of the year was a
commission for envelope designs comic, of course, for the bent
of his genius was decided now. Historical subjects and pic-
tures from romance had been his first ambition ; landscape art
had a charm for him, and we see him out in the Park planning a
great amount of drawing from nature. But the moment the
public were set laughing by his humor fate fixed upon him for a
master of the ludicrous, an artist of innocent fun.

Already he had the first element of success zest for work.
The excitement of hard work he calls delicious, and votes that in
comparison with the ferment of preparing for Christmas the
holidays are dull. Yet, like most artists of mature growth, the
boy-artist had his trying fits of depression, hating everything
he had done, till he felt as if he could not go on. At such times,
he remarks wisely, one can only wait, or go on ; " either is bet-
ter than committing violence on my person." A sketch shows
his own idea of himself, with flying hair and jacket, plunging into
a pond, where a pair of ill-fated legs are already sticking up
among the rushes. Neither does he elect to go into solitary
situations like "the cur wot shunned society." Probably he wait-
ed when work came to a standstill ; there is a sketch of him and
the dog Ruff both huddled into a sort of niche or nook, where
there is just room for the boy to sit down with drawn-up knees,
and hair in his eyes, and mouth down at the corners, while the
fluffy white dog begs piteously, as if imploring Dicky to get up
and do something, like a sensible boy.

When his work brings money he craves for books. One day
he notes with glee that he has a light-blue purse lined with white,
with ivory rings and tassels, and that this blue purse is groaning
under the weight of coin " fit to bust itself." He burns to rush
off to the bookseller's just to save the precious purse from " bust-
ing." The greatest joy of his indoor life was an illustrated book
or a luxurious read. He was a critical young reader. For in-

828 DICKY DOYLE'S DIARY. [Mar.,

stance, when he has drawn a historical picture of Richard Cceur
de Lion pardoning his brother John, his frank and naive re-
marks in the diary are capital : " I pardon him, said Richard,
and wish I could as easily forget his injuries as he will my par-
don." That is in the English history, but Dicky wonders if he
really said it or not. " Such a thing as that might be so easily
invented though I don't know it is almost too fine for that."
Clever lad ! Truth is finer than fiction, and hearts say better
things than historians could invent.

Another bright comment, but of a humorous kind, was made
by the boy on an anecdote which he has heard and written down
for illustration. After the siege of a town in Batavia by the
Dutch troops the inhabitants took it into their heads that the
cannon ought to be propitiated ; and they came during the night
and worshipped the Dutch guns, laying offerings of fruit and
other luxuries on top of them. Dicky draws the worshippers,
and the sentry and recumbent soldiers peeping out of the cor-
ners of their eyes at the provisions that they will seize upon as
a windfall the minute the Batavians are gone. The zeal of the
natives was ill-judged, he remarks ; those good-natured blacks
ought to have known that they were inflicting mental agony
upon the cannon by leaving the food on their backs, where they
could not get at it, instead of putting it into their mouths.

Like most boys, he was keenly interested in everything con-
nected with soldiers. " If I were not going to be an artist," he
wrote, " I would like best to be an officer in the Life-Guards.
There is scarcely anything so delicious to me as a review." At
fifteen he had acquired perfect mastery of the figures and action
of men and horses, and of the effect of crowds, and, improving
with practice, his review sketches were stirring and brilliant be-
fore the end of the year. He describes the inspections at the
Park, and how the old Duke of Wellington would appear after
the lines had been long waiting " the hero of Waterloo mount-
ed upon an animal of small proportions, which contrives to jog
him into the air in an awful manner, while he calmly surveys the
sky above his head."

This was the year of the marriage of Queen Victoria, and also
of the impulsive and freak-like invasion of Boulogne by Prince
Louis Napoleon, who, though he made a dash and failed in 1840,
had better luck next time and became emperor. The boy gives
his views on the marriage and the invasion, and his sketches too.
A sketch of a garlanded cake accompanies the entry, early in the
year : " The confectioners have been commanded to supply her

i8S6.] DICKY DOYLE'S DIARY. 829

majesty with a great beast of a plum-cake some ten feet in cir-
cumference, to be followed up by a hundred others of a more
decent size, which are to be distributed among her majesty's
"friends." The royal marriage-day arrives : he sketches his rue-
ful face waiting at the window for the rain to stop pouring. It
ceased, and he dashed out, in company with his brother, guarded
by an umbrella the worse for wear. The crowds were good-
humored, as usual, " all except the old women with coal-scut-
tle bonnets and green umbrellas." The two boys jostled their
way to get a good view. Dicky drew, in his diary, the bri-
dal carriage, with the arms of England blazoned on the panel,
and with a cluster of footmen standing up at the back and look-
ing across the roof at the burly coachman. The bride appears
within, and Prince Albert with a white bow on his shoulder.
" The cheers were tremendous," writes Dick, with becoming
loyalty, "and Henry and I waved our hats and screamed with
all our might. . . . The queen, with a large veil over her head,
looked actually beautiful."

His account of the other great event begins boyishly :
" Here's fun ! " and Prince Napoleon, an inch tall, and with his
hat crooked, struts in the margin. He has invaded Boulogne
with fifty men. On the next page we see him and his troops
careering down a street, accompanied by a dog in barking sur-
prise, and with the townsfolk staring. " A little battle " turn-
ed unfavorably, and Dicky relates how the invaders did not
run, but just tried to reach their boats in the quickest possible
way, but all cramming into one, they upset and were distribut-
ed about in the water ; and the episode ends with a minute
sketch of the leader with the imperial features riding on a buoy
far out at sea. The grewsome look of the face is one of the
marvels of Dicky's pencil.

Smaller events made subjects for most of the sketches the
bear at the Zoological Gardens nearly on his head on the bear-pit
pole, trying to get the visitor's bun, held out on a stick ; the man
in the street selling silver rings for a penny, and the other man
preaching energetically with three or four little boys for his con-
gregation ; the footmen in livery on the drawing-room day, with
their long silk stockings, which he informs us were of pale pink,
picking their steps in agony down the muddy street and trying
to smile superbly, while the crowd rejoices in the troubles of the
pink calves. Dicky had an eye for everything, and became if,
indeed, he was not from the beginning a marvellous observer.
But, above all, he excelled in crowds. Some of the boy's sketches

830 DICKY DOYLE 's DIARY. [Mar.,

remind one of Hogarth ; and he could draw, in the theatre or in
the street, backs more expressive than faces.

The fairies had begun already to take possession of him, or
rather he had begun to lay open fairyland and to jot down with
his pencil the portraits of the tricksy elves. They have not
wings, but they are the most fairy-like fairies ever beheld all
alive, gay, mischievous, but only in fun ; little creatures with
jesters' caps, holding each other by leg and hand to slip down
a wall in the margin, or nailing up or balancing in their place
the letters of the day of the week which Master Dick had
reached in his diary. At the top of December two of them
are hard at work hacking and hewing at the Christmas pudding.
Christmas was coming much too soon for Dick, and he draws in
the margin a grim, relentless man whom he imagines the month
of December to be like, because when people have a great deal
of work to get through in preparation for Christmas December
hurries down upon them without mercy. " Whenever a month
knows that it is wanted to come as slowly as it conveniently can,
so sure is it to come at the rate of a black-whiskered policeman
running with energy after a small youth."

Dick had been preparing for his father a procession of whim-
sical little figures, and as early as the I4th of November he had
been afraid he would never be able to put down a quarter of the
ideas that crowded into his head. At this date in his diary the
boy sketched himself lying in bed helplessly, with the tumbled
hair covering his forehead, while crowds of little figures whirled
down upon him like a shower, or clutched the bed-clothes and
scrambled up from the floor. Even if he were to strike a light,
he says, he could not put down his ideas upon paper before morn-
ing; so he turned his thoughts to other things, as we see by the
sketch of the dimly-lighted room, where he stands like a boy-
ghost with a pointed night-cap, and dresses a figure and shakes
hands with it. " First jumping out of bed, I seize upon a chair
by brute force and plant it in the middle of the floor; becoming
possessed of a coat, I then place it upon the back of the chair ;
a pair of trousers in a reclining posture adds to the picturesque
effect already produced, and I, becoming enraptured at the sight,
fetch four boots and place a leg in each ; but stay, something yet
was wanting I seized a hat, and, placing it on one side of the
gentleman's head, gave at once to the whole a light, cheerful, and
even playful appearance."

An example of a procession such as he was preparing for the
Christmas show is drawn as an ornamental border to two pages

1 886.] "THE CHURCHMAN:' 831

of this most original diary. At the foot of the page the figures
start, go running and scrambling up a ladder at the side, follow
fast along the top, hurrying more and more as they near the
opposite corner of the open pages, and there we see that they are
about to disappear through a small round hole in a wall. In this
hole a pair of legs are seen flying through ; a dog is springing to
follow, and a stout old gentleman, with flying coat-tails, is gath-
ering himself up to haste away through the hole or to stick in it.
All the other figures are tending onwards to the hole, like a fan-
tastic march doomed to struggle through such little openings as
we find in dreams. ^

Of course the boy who invented these things had in him a
spark of the immortal fire of genius and a glow of humor that
was never dimmed through life. But there are many less famous
folk who could take hints from the diary of Dicky Doyle. The
faculty of drawing humorous marginal sketches is not an un-
common one ; nor is it always a sign of the artistic gift. But
those who h'ave it might make a quarto book worth keeping, if
they were to write a journal briefly and brighten its pages with
pencil-sketches that would call up a smile in after-days.

" THE CHURCHMAN:'

IT was foolish to expect that the recent revival in this city
among the Episcopalians might renew their faith in the great
revealed truths of Christianity and increase their charity towards
God and man. Such is the usual effect of missions among Catho-
lics. But with the Episcopalians the effect seems to be no great
increase of the love of God and a notable lessening of their love
for their neighbor. The superficiality of Broad-Churchmen and
their strong tendency to agnosticism, the formalism of Ritualists
together with the general doctrinal indifference of the average
church-goer, called for some powerful movement towards better
things ; undoubtedly a revival of religion in this sect was greatly
needed. The revival came and went, and one fruit of it is abuse
of the Catholic religion. We trust sincerely that it has had a
good effect upon some ; but it is sad to think that in others it has
only stirred up sectarian bile and bigotry. It has had apparent-
ly only that effect on the author of the following article, which
we clip from the editorial columns of "The Churchman" in its
issue of the i6th of January :

832 "THE CHURCHMAN^ [Mar.,

" Since the Syllabus of Pius IX. it is quite evident that no devout
Roman Catholic can yield an undivided allegiance to the government of
the United States. It is impossible for any man to hold that the decisions
of the pope are supreme and irreformable in all matters of faith and morals,
and at the same time to yield entire allegiance to any State. This con-
sideration has now become all the more important since the publication of
the recent Encyclical, in which Roman Catholics are urged as such to take
an active part in political affairs for the expressed purpose of extending the
influence *and power of the Papal See. If the Emperor of Germany, for
instance, were to insist upon reserving to himself a certain definite claim
upon the supreme obedience of all Germans coming to this country, it is
quite certain that the allowance of this claim by a German seeking naturali-
zation would be rightfully considered a bar to his citizenship. The allowance
of a similar claim on the part of the Bishop of Rome by a Roman Catholic
alien seeking naturalization ought also to be regarded as a sufficient rea-
son for denying his request. And if this country is to continue to be free,
it is to this complexion we must come at last. The conflict between Rome
and national independence is irrepressible."

In this article there is not a word of truth, and there seems to
be not an atom of fairness in the writer's animus. It is all abusive
invective and false accusation.

It is not true that the doctrines of Christianity, as embodied
by the Catholic Church, and the free institutions of our repub-
lic are in conflict. The Catholic religion can save men, indeed,
under any form of civil government, and knows how to find the
authority of God in any legitimately-constituted state; nay, more,
the true religion can flourish under a bad government, bad in form
and bad in practice. Did not Christianity grow from infancy to
manhood under the Roman emperors ? And in our own times has
not Catholicity steadily advanced amid the confiscations and im-
prisonments of Bismarck's tyranny? Did not the church struggle
into a wide and safe harbor in Ireland against the storm of in-
credible fury hurled against her by that institution which "The
Churchman" is fond of calling " the mother-church of England " ?
But the church is no friend of arbitrary power. Catholics have,
indeed, here and there favored absolutism, but they have had
to quarrel with their religious principles to do it, and gene-
rally, as in the case of the Gallican Church, with their religious
superiors at the centre of Catholicity. For the true home of
the Catholic religion is among a people politically free. It
must be so, because the application of religious aid to the human
soul in the Catholic Church necessitates, for its normal action,
free men assisted by a free clergy. Catholicity is productive of
civil freedom. Historians tell us that the example of those re-
ligious republics, the Benedictine abbeys, was the origin of

1 886.] "THE CHURCHMAN:' 833

the free Catholic states of the middle ages. The centre of
Catholic authority at Rome fostered the establishment and
growth of the Italian republics ; when they were assailed by
the Ghibelline factions and the ambition of the empire the
Papacy fought and suffered for them for centuries. Nowhere
has Catholicity better flourished than where hand-in-hand with
love of freedom, and the study of its principles, and the practise
of its rights. Witness the founding and maintenance of free
states in all Italy ; of the free cities of Germany, the Hanseatic
towns; Switzerland whose very origin as a nation is monastic
down to the little but perennial blossoms of Catholic civil liberty
in the republics of Andorra and San Marino. And is there no
similar lesson this side the ocean? When the Spanish colonies
threw off the yoke did they rush into the arms of " the mother-
church of England "? Has Episcopalianism made any headway
in free Mexico ? Have not the clergy and Catholics of Brazil but
just now succeeded in emancipating the blacks of that country
against all the furious resistance of that foremost bulwark of Pro-
testantism, Freemasonry a society to which the writer we have
quoted, perhaps, and certainly very many of his clerical brethren,
belong? And does Catholicity feel out of place in free America?
Is "The Churchman " aware of any signs of its withering up and
vanishing away in this free atmosphere ?

But of the religious revolution of the sixteenth century it may
be said that it was as much due to the tyranny and greed of mon-
archs as to any spiritual motives, good or bad, among the people ;
and of the Anglican Church in particular that it allied itself with
persecution and despotism wherever and whenever it could. No
people could learn to be free from studying Anglicanism ; its
religious authority is not simply arbitrary, but is rooted in the
arbitrary will of purely civil rulers. There is not a bishop, dean,
prebend, canon, or other high dignitary in " the mother-church of
England " chosen otherwise than by the party leader be he Jew,
Christian, or infidel in momentary possession of the right to dis-
tribute the spoils of office. If the case is different in the daugh-
ter-church of America it is because American liberty has had too
powerful a teaching to be resisted.

A fair contrast between the Catholic and Anglican spirit was
displayed at the opening of the American Revolution. The
Catholics, clergy and people, were on the side of liberty. The
"churchmen," at least as far as the clergy were concerned, were
almost to a man on the side of King George. It was a bigoted
clique of Protestants in the Colonial Assembly of New York

VOL. XLII. 53

834 "TffE CHURCHMAN:' [Mar.,

who said such things of the Catholic faith that John Carroll, the
Catholic priest, and Benjamin Franklin, the philosopher, were
balked in their efforts to bring Catholic Canada into the new re-
public. The Catholic Church had taught the modern nations of
the world how to be free, founding those civil liberties which
went down at the Reformation, and by Catholic Americans and
Catholic Frenchmen helped to liberate the American colonies.
The Anglican branch on this continent contributed the praying
and preaching of her American clergy to extinguish the spirit
of freedom here. When the country was free the " Protestant
Episcopal Church " was taught a form of electing its bishops and
clergy by the free institutions of this republic. When there
arose a necessity for more freedom in church polity Anglican-
ism must take its cue from the civil state. But every nation has
learned the true principles of liberty from the Catholic Church.
Twelve hundred years before the Declaration of Independence
was written Gregory the Great had proclaimed our fundamental
political truth : Omnes sunt pares. And if the Anglican Church
did not maintain a hateful form of monarchy in the United States
and make itself the state church it was not from lack of the will.

And a yet better field for evidence of our estimate of the re-
lative influence of true and false Catholicity is to be had in the
history of Ireland. How has Protestant England treated Catho-
lic Ireland? Of all tyrannies, of all persecutions, of all bigotries
recorded in the history of the human race, none has surpassed,
even in the most barbarous times, the conduct of " The Church-
man s " model Christianity towards the Irish people. The squire
and the parson were the two factors ; one furnished the brute-
force and the other the moral suasion in the work of enslaving
Ireland. One succeeded in stealing the material substance of
the people ; the other failed in robbing them of their souls' wel-
fare only by a miracle of divine mercy and the people's enlight-
ened convictions of conscience. It is a standing monument of
Protestant effrontery that the simulacrum of the departed Irish
Establishment, with its debris of hungry and wrangling clergy,
should have the face to stay in Ireland at all. And in this nine-
teenth century England's Carlyles and Froudes blame their coun-
try, riot for her unutterable cruelties to the Irish, but for not
stamping out the people who clung to their own faith and their
own soil.

And if the leaders of the Irish people are beginning to ex-
pound to the masses the radical opinions of the great Catholic
theologians on political government and the right of men to

1 886.] "Tffjs CHURCHMAN:' 835

property in the land, it is because the tyranny and bigotry of
Anglicanism have given them occasion to do so. There is a time
in the history of all nations when the providence of God brings
them face to face with the prime truths which lie at the base of
society ; at the sacrifice of all things else they are compelled to
declare to all mankind the first principles of social order. At
the present moment the Irish people at home in the parent isle,
and the many millions of the race in every part of the world, are
affirming principles of civil freedom and of the distribution of
the temporal gifts of God which may well cause landlordism and
Anglican state-churchism to look for a troubled future. And
from no source are these principles so largely drawn as from the
great doctors of Catholic truth.

The truth is and the writer we have quoted ought to know
it, if he knows what he is writing about that free states have re-
peatedly risen under the action of the church's principles, and
been peopled and governed for ages by her children. The civil
state has existed for ages in accord with the church, each possess-
ing its own autonomy intact. And he ought to know that Ang-
licanism has nowhere in this wide world, in much of which it
has had sway these three hundred years, ever called forth or ma-
terially helped to establish a single true republic. Why not?
Because the native plant can only flourish " by law established,"
and with " our sovereign lord the king'' or " our sovereign lady
the queen " as the ecclesiastical head. Any growth different
from this is too exotic and weak a plant to spare any fruit avail-
able for the aspirations of men in the civil order.

The writer will vainly search for any decision of the Catholic-
Church, unless wilfully perverted from its meaning, inimical to
the free institutions of our republic or of any other free state.
There is no principle in the foundations of our political institu-
tions or in our civic life in conflict with Christianity as taught by
the Roman Catholic Church ; but much, on the contrary, and
that easily perceived by unbiassed minds, which upholds them.
The assertion to the contrary has no support whatever, and it is
evidence of shallowness of mind or of a perverted conscience or
an egregious bigotry to make it.

If he needed an actual witness near at home he has it in the
struggle over the Freedom of Worship Bill in this State. On
which side are the bigots? Who are the deniers of religious
liberty to their fellow-citizens? Who are acting from motives
of stupid, despotic tyranny? Not one practical member of the

836 THE VENERABLE MARY OF ACRED A AND [Mar.,

Catholic, or, if it suits some tastes better, the Roman Catholic,
Church !

What does the writer wish ? That we should obey legisla-
tures and judges deciding on questions of faith and morals?
Does he suppose that if any judge should take it into his head 'to
give a decision touching faith or morals contrary to the church's
decision, that he should find Catholics obeying Caesar rather than
Christ? Would he be willing to obey in such a case? Is he a
statolater? If he is he but follows the traditions of his church,
but is false to those of his country, if he have the honor to be an
American. Would he have the supremacy of the state estab-
lished over the church, as is the case with " our mother-church
of England " ? The Catholic Church knows how to make mar-
tyrs, but not slaves.

We feel that an apology is due to our readers for placing such
an article before them as the one we have taken from " The
Churchman." It is not our custom. Its intrinsic merit has not
called for it, because it has none. We only departed from our
custom because, after some thought, we feared that it might be
the occasion of mischief.

THE VENERABLE MARY OF AGREDA AND PHILIP
IV., KING OF SPAIN.*

WEST of Zaragoza, in old Castile, is the small town of Agreda
at the foot of Moncaldo, with the tall, slender spire of its cathe-
dral rising above picturesque battlements, and a small stream
called the Quieles flowing gently through its streets, spanned
by the single arch of an old stone bridge. The chief interest in
the place centres in the memory of the Venerable Madre Maria
de Jesus, commonly known as Mary of Agreda, author of the
famous Mistica Ciudad de Dios, which excited so great a contro-
versy in the seventeenth century, and is still read, and regarded
as one of the most remarkable mystical works in the church.

Maria de Jesus was born in Agreda in 1602, and in her very
girlhood showed, by her thoughtful turn of mind, her instinctive
shrinking from the world, and her angelic piety, that she was
destined to something extraordinary and supernatural. She was
attractive in person, with the dark eyes and olive complexion

* La Sceur Marie d^ Agreda et Philippe IV. Par M. de Lavigne. Paris.

1 886.] PHILIP IV., KING OF SPAIN. 837

peculiar to the Spanish ; and she grew still more beautiful under
the refining influences of a spiritual life, her face becoming al-
most luminous under strong religious emotion, but without losing
its feminine sweetness and modesty. At the age of fifteen she
decided to embrace the monastic life, and such was already her
moral ascendency that she induced her whole family to follow her
example. Her father, whose name was Francisco Coronel, and
her two brothers, gave up their patrimony, and, leaving their na-
tive place for ever, entered the Order of St. Francis in the pro-
vince of Burgos. Mary, with her mother and sister, converted the
paternal mansion into a Franciscan convent, which in a few years
became renowned throughout Castile and Aragon. In this con-
genial life Mary's soul at once expanded and rose to the loftier
heights of piety. The wants of her physical nature were almost
forgotten or disregarded. Her prolonged vigils, leaving her only
two hours of sleep ; her continual fasts on one slight meal a day,
and that of vegetables alone ; her other austerities of all kinds,
persevered in with a heroism more than feminine ; her long pray-
ers and meditations on the life and teachings of our Lord ; her
supernatural contemplations, and, finally, the state of mystic death
at which she arrived, in which the soul becomes the passive and
yet concurrent instrument of divine grace all contributed to
give her a great reputation for sanctity. At the age of twenty-
five she was elected superior of the house, which office she con-
tinued to hold till her death, with the exception of three years.
At thirty-five she began her Mystical City of God, which was the
fruit of her daily meditations and rapt states of contemplation.
When this work appeared it was hailed with almost unanimous
applause by the bishops of Spain. The Spanish Inquisition, al-
ways rigid in its censorship, regarded it as almost, if not wholly,
of divine revelation. The Sorbonne at Paris held thirty-two stan-
ces, in which five hundred and fifty doctors discussed its merits,
but finally condemned it with true national hostility to Spain. At
Rome it was indeed placed on the Index, but was removed short-
ly after by command of the pope himself, some say at the solici-
tation of the King of Spain. Though no formal approbation has
ever been given to the work, Pope Alexander VIII. authorized
its circulation, and Clement IX. forbade its being placed on the
Index. Its discussion, however, has delayed the process for the
canonization of its author, though no one ever doubted her sin-
cerity, her earnest convictions, and the saintliness of her charac-
ter. In it she displays a mind thoroughly imbued with the re-
ligious spirit, and, though without education, strictly speaking,

838 THE VENERABLE MARY OF AGREDA AND [Mar,,

shows a knowledge of Scripture, a depth of theological learning,
and a correctness of scholastic terms that are truly surprising.
The work is not untinctured with the bad taste of the time, and
to thoroughly understand it the reader should know something
of the tone of piety in the age it was written. The style, how-
ever, is dignified, and yet easy ; and some of her descriptions
have a certain grandeur, as in the Passion, where Satan and his
angels are represented as following Christ to Mount Calvary
bound in chains, forced to become witnesses of his sufferings and
death, and smitten to the ground at the moment of the Consum-
matum est.

So renowned had Mary of Agreda become for her sanctity
that King Philip IV., on his way from Madrid to Zaragoza to
put down the rebellion in Catalonia, stopped several hours at the
convent of Agreda to have an interview with her and commend
the interests of his kingdom to her prayers. This was on the
loth of July, 1643, and so profoundly was the king impressed by
her bearing and conversation that he entered into a confidential
correspondence with her that lasted twenty-two years that is,
till her death in 1665.

Philip IV. began to reign in the sixteenth year of his age
(1620), and naturally fell under the influence of the Conde-Duque
de Olivarez, who was his prime minister and practically the ruler
of the kingdom. Olivarez was ambitious to restore Spain to
its former supremacy in Europe, but by his rash policy he only
diminished its power and plunged it into disasters from which it
has never recovered. It lost its possessions in the Netherlands
after a disastrous war. Portugal proclaimed its independence
under the house of Braganza, which led to further losses in
South America, the East Indies, etc. Catalonia rebelled. And,
as the conclusion of so many reverses, the treaty of the Pyrenees
assured to France the possession of Roussillon, Artois, and Alsace
at the marriage of the Infanta Maria Teresa to Louis XIV.

Philip IV. sought consolation for so many disasters in the cul-
tivation of literature and the arts, of which he was an enlightened
patron. He gathered around him men of talent, such as artists
and eminent writers, especially of plays, and his reign became
the most brilliant period of the Spanish drama. Cervantes had
not long been dead. Lope de Vega had arrived at an honored
old age. Montalvan still wielded his graceful, versatile pen.
Quevedo, at once statesman and poet, made himself a power by
his spirited and pungent satires. And Calderon, king of dra-
matic poets, had not only authority over everything relating to

1 886.] PHILIP IV., KING OF SPAIN. 839

the stage, but was admitted to the royal intimacy and made
Knight of Santiago. Philip himself sacrificed to the Muses. He
wrote several comedies, one of which became famous : Dar su
vida por su dama a title that has something chivalric in its
sound. He even took part in the improvisations of extempo-
raneous dramas then popular at court, in which bearded hidalgos
figured as actors, as well as the king, whose exterior advantages
and cultivated tastes gave him pre-eminence. His reign, too,
was illustrated by many celebrated masters of painting, such as
Zurbaran, Pacheco, Alonso Cano, Murillo, and Velasquez. He
made Velasquez painter to the royal family, and daily visited him
in his studio. No one who has visited the Royal Gallery at
Madrid and seen the wonderful productions of this great painter
but has paused before his glorious portrait of Philip IV. on
horseback with a feeling akin to gratitude ; for if he was a weak
ruler, ill-fitted for such a critical time, he made his country rival
Italy by his appreciation of the arts, and left it all these monu-
ments of imperishable fame.

But there is another side to the character of Philip. Fond of
pleasure as he was, and averse to the cares of government, he
had the national zeal for the faith and a strong sense at least at
times of his religious obligations. His private life, to be sure,
was not free from scandals, but he blushed, at least, for his faults ;
he condemned them himself, and in his better moments aspired
to a higher life. The Ven. Marina de Escobar, in a vision, saw
a golden chain from heaven attached to the heart of Philip IV.,
conferring on him a special love for the faith and zeal for its pro-
tection, an instance of which we have when the Prince of Wales,
afterwards Charles I., made his romantic visit to Spain to woo
the Infanta Maria. Philip, seeing how greatly the interests of
religion were involved in this proposed alliance, prostrated him-
self before the crucifix at his bedside and cried with true Spanish
fervor: " O Lord! I swear to thee by the crucified union of God
and man which I adore in thee, on whose feet I press my lips,
that not only shall the coming of the Prince of Wales not prevail
with me, in anything touching thy holy Catholic religion, to go a
step beyond that which thy vicar, the Roman pontiff, may re-
solve, but that I will keep my resolution even if it were to in-
volve the loss of all the kingdoms which by thy favor and mercy
I possess."

It was this religious side of Philip's character that led him to
seek with so much respect the counsels and prayers of Mary of
Agreda, and keep up a correspondence with her for so many

840 THE VENERABLE MARY OF ACRED A AND [Mar.,

years. His letters to her constitute a journal of the principal
events of his reign. They display no solid political principles,
or lofty views as a ruler, but show him to have been not without
a sense of his moral responsibilities, and by no means the mere
careless, pleasure-loving prince he has generally been represent-
ed. He recounts his defeats and disasters, his want of means,
his private sorrows arising from the illness of the queen and the
loss of his children. He discusses questions that affect his tran-
quillity of conscience, and expresses deep penitence for his faults.
After more than two centuries they are of interest as revealing
the true character of the man and the secret aspirations of his
soul. They are of value also from an historical point of view,
for they furnish the key to several enigmas of the time.

These letters also throw fresh light on the saintly nun of
Agreda. When we consider that Spain was then one of the
leading kingdoms of Europe ; that its kings, of the proud race of
Hapsburg, were hedged around with divinity, as it were, and
only approached with the most rigid etiquette, we are astonished
at the freedom and dignified simplicity with which this humble
recluse, sprung from the people, addressed her sovereign. There
is no flattery, no adulation, and no disposition to profit by her
moral influence over him. Her letters display great loyalty, but
little knowledge of politics. She does not attach much import-
ance to actual events; they are only of moment to her as furnish-
ing opportunities of applying and enforcing the religious truths
that were the daily food of her own soul. Hers was not the
voice to rouse the king to any other warfare but the spiritual
combat, though she evidently possessed great energy and firm-
ness of character. They show, too, her knowledge of the hu-
man heart, and are a proof of her profound piety a piety of a
practical, common-sense kind that never goes beyond the bounds
of prudence, which is somewhat surprising in one who led so
supernatural, and what is often called " visionary," life. Each
letter is a brief treatise on some question of faith and piety, tend-
ing to rouse the conscience and moral courage of the king.

Philip, in writing Mary of Agreda, folded his paper in two
lengthwise, and wrote only on one column, leaving the other blank
for her reply. By this means his letter was returned to him with
the answer. The original letters were preserved in the king's
cabinet, and after his death were scattered and doubtless lost.
But Mary of Agreda kept a copy of them, which was afterwards
deposited in the archives of Simancas, but only twenty-one of
the king's letters with her replies have come down to us.

i886.] PHILIP IV., KING OF SPAIN. 841

The king's first letter is 'dated " Zaragoza, October 4, 1643."
Olivarez had been dismissed the January before, and Philip, alter
directing the affairs of the kingdom himself for six months, had
appointed Don Luis de Haro prime minister. Portugal had
declared its independence. Catalonia was in a state of insurrec-
tion. After enjoining secrecy as to the correspondence on Mary
of Agreda the king continues :

" Since I saw you I have felt new courage. The proofs of your interest,
and the promise to pray for me and the welfare of my kingdom, have re-
stored my confidence and given me the strength my heart needed. As I then
told you, when I left Madrid I felt all human means had failed me. 1 could
only look to Heaven for the accomplishment of my plans. . . . Our frontier
on the side of Portugal is devastated by the people of that country, rebels
against God and their lawful king. The affairs in Flanders are growing
worse, and everything indicates a rebellion unless God provides a remedy.
As to Spain, though my presence here is of benefit, I fear if the provinces
are not encouraged by some success they will become demoralized and dis-
affected towards the monarchy. Our situation is certainly very critical
every way, and yet I assure you this is not what afflicts me the most, but
the thought that God is angry with us.

" Do not write me after the manner of the world, which is not always
sincere, but according to the inspiration of God, before whom I declare (and
I have just received him) that in all things and everywhere I wish to obey
his holy law and fulfil the duties he has imposed on me as king. I hope he
will, in his mercy, have pity on us and open to us a way of extrication
from these difficulties. . . . The greatest favor his blessed hand can be-
stow on me is to inflict on my person alone the chastisement my sins have
drawn on this kingdom, for I alone merit it, and not my people, who have
always been, and always will be, true Catholics. I await your reply to con-
sole me, depending on your intercession with our Lord that he may vouch-
safe to enlighten me and draw me from the cruel anguish in which I am
plunged."

Mary of Agreda in her reply says :

" Sire, the lack of confidence in ourselves, so reasonable when we con-
sider the fragile character of our human nature, formed of clay, is not an
obstacle to the marvellous designs of the Lord ; on the contrary, it pro-
motes and hastens them, as was the case with King David when, acknow-
ledging and weeping for his sins, he promised thenceforth to love and
serve the Lord. ... I acknowledge that the kingdom and monarchy are
in great danger. These wars, these dissensions among Christian kings and
princes, are chastisements sent by the Most High before pardoning our
offences against him. These chastisements in themselves are a proof of
his Divine Majesty's love for this country and the monarchy, which already
owe him so much gratitude. But when past errors have been renounced
before the Lord, then his divine goodness knows how to change his threats,
punishments, and severity into consolations, favors, and benefits. I trust
through the clemency of the Most High that if your majesty perseveres in

842 THE VENERABLE MARY OF AGREDA AND [Mar.,

your good and holy resolutions, if you induce others to follow the same
course, correcting what is evil, administering requisite justice without hu-
man consideration, rewarding the good, and taking care that the poor are
not humbled for the reason that they are poor for God himself became
poor in this world for our sakes but seeking rather to raise them up on
account of their lowliness, and, on the other hand, humbling the pride of
the rich and the haughty whenever they forget the requirements of the
divine law, which is the same for all men, then I trust the mercy and jus-
tice of Heaven will bring everything to a happy termination. ... I pro-
mise your majesty with all sincerity and devotion to consecrate to the Lord
my poor prayers, labors, and sufferings, and those of our community, to
obtain of him, by the intermediation of his holy Mother, conceived with-
out sin, all that you so ardently desire. May God increase your majesty's
courage, grant you peace and prosperity, and render you a happy and for-
tunate king.''

Philip thus replies:

" Sr. Maria de Jesus, your letter afforded me the greatest pleasure and
increased my courage. I feel that the prayers and exercises of yourself
and your community will obtain from our Lord what this kingdom most
needs for its peace and tranquillity. The moment has come for you to pray,
for my army is on the point of beginning the campaign, and any day may
produce important results. The more I fear I do not on my part merit that
the issue should be fortunate, the more necessary it is that they who are
good should pray God for me. He knows how sincerely I desire to submit
to his holy law as man, and to fulfil my obligations as king ; that I am
doing in this respect all I can do, vigilant in having justice administered
with firmness and impartiality, and pursuing a straightforward course in
all things relating to the service of God ; but it is impossible to repair in so
short a time the evil it has taken so long a period to produce. ... I desire
to accomplish the will of the Lord in all things. If I fail in any respect it
will be from my frailty as man, and not as a wicked man. Therefore I beg
of you in a particular manner, if you learn the will of God, to make it
known to me/for I am willing to submit to it in all things. I would offer
my life with good-will, if the sacrifice would lead to the deliverance of my
kingdom and the peace of the Christian world."

Mary of Agreda says in her next letter:

" In defending the cause of the Most High your majesty is only defend-
ing your own cause. God loves great courage because it effects great
things. And anything great accomplished by human weakness and lowli-
ness is a proof of the Almighty's assistance. I desire great courage for
your majesty, therefore, because you have need of it to repair the mis-
fortunes of the nation. Arm yourself, then, with force. The most effica-
cious is that which God gives by his grace, and he will not refuse it if, in
seeking it, you are penitent for the past and wish to do right in the future.
The testimony of a good conscience will give confidence in God, courage
against man and the devil, and the energy to accomplish great things.

" I have promised your majesty many times to pray for you and invoke
the divine protection in your behalf. I repeat to-day, in presence of the

i886.] PHILIP IV., KING OF SPAIN. 843

Most High, that all my prayers, all my meditations, have no other end
than to obtain from the Almighty the salvation of your majesty and the
happiness and tranquillity of this realm. I offer all that my humble sub-
mission to God's will can merit in expiation of all the offences your majesty
may have committed against him. ... I have offered my life to God for the
glory of his holy church and the peace of this kingdom.''

Philip was now expecting supplies of gold and silver from the
famous mines of Potosi, so necessary to carry on his wars, and he
was the more anxious for their safe arrival on account of five
galleons, loaded with treasure, destroyed by the French three
years previous. Accordingly he writes, December, 1643 :

" I am expecting from hour to hour the arrival of some galleons by the
help of God. I trust he will bring them safely into port ; nevertheless, I
beg you to aid me by imploring the Divine Majesty to grant me this favor.
I know I do not deserve it. I merit great chastisement, but I trust he will
not permit the total destruction of this monarchy."

At the end of his next letter, Philip, after recommending the
queen to the prayers of Mary of Agreda, adds :

" In spite of my numerous occupations I seize every instant I can to
read the history you sent me [the Mistica Cmdad}. It interests me deeply,
and I have read a large part of it already. It is a very remarkable work,
and most suitable for this holy time of Lent."

Several years' letters are now unfortunately missing. During
this time died, October 6, 1645, Queen Elizabeth de Bourbon,
daughter of Henry IV. of France " the best queen," says Bos-
suet, " that Spain ever had." The year after died the Infant Don
Baltazar Carlos, heir to the throne, at the age of seventeen.
This was a sad blow to Philip, but when, after great precautions,
it was announced to him, his only expression of grief was : " I
must only be the more devoted to my people, and regard them
as my surviving children," and he slowly withdrew into his cham-
ber. It is on this occasion we have a glimpse of the supernatural
side of Mary of Agreda's life. The death of the young prince
was revealed to her while engaged in prayer. The account of
her visions concerning his death, his detention in Purgatory, and
his final entrance into heaven, written down for the consolation
of the king at his own command, are very curious, and in parts
sublime, reminding one of the Divine Poet of Italy. We give
only a short extract :

"Finally, the day of the Circumcision, the first day of the year 1647,
being at prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the convent church,
towards three o'clock in the afternoon, I saw the soul of the prince issuing

844 THE VENERABLE MARY OF AGREDA AND [Mar.,

from Purgatory. He was clothed with glory, and in the presence of God
prayed me to make known to his father what I had just seen.

" I realized and heard the Almighty command the guardian angel of the
prince and other ministering spirits to descend into Purgatory and draw
therefrom this blessed soul, that it might be received into eternal bliss.
The angels obeyed, and in a few moments brought his soul with them into
the presence of the Lord. With like swiftness was it purified, adorned,
illuminated, and clothed with wonderful gifts. In an instant the Beatific
Vision was revealed to him, at which his soul became more beautiful, more
resplendent than several suns combined.

"As soon as his soul was thus glorified the first movement he made was
to break out into the canticle in the fifty-first chapter of Ecclesiasticus,
beginning with these words : ' I will give glory to thee, O Lord, O King,
and I will praise thee, O God, my Saviour ! '

"Angels and saints united in expressing their joy at his bites. The
Queen of Heaven received him as her child : the rest, as brother and com-
panion; and on all sides could be seen the accidental joy experienced by
the saints when a soul is admitted to the participation of the blessedness of
heaven, so far beyond what the eye hath seen, or the ear heard, or it hath
entered into the heart of man to conceive."

The king's next letter that has been found is dated June 12,
1652. After speaking of the disturbances in Andalusia, the sieges
of Barcelona, Gravelines, and Turin, and of the multiplied offences
against God, he writes :

" It is evident that the evil enemy is profiting thereby to injure Chris-
tianity, and this afflicts me more than my personal sufferings, for I ask my-
self if this is not the consequence of my sins and the negligence with which
I have fulfilled the obligations God has imposed on me. He knows how
much I desire to please him, how much I fear to offend him ; but I fear
also my own weakness, and therefore I beg you to aid me with your prayers,
for if God be propitiated he will allay and check the disturbance in which
we are involved."

Mary of Agreda replies :

" Sire, it would avail nothing as a remedy to the trouble that overwhelms
your majesty to possess all the gold and silver in the world, or rule over
the whole globe from the east to the west, and from the north to the south,
or have at your command all the men of valor who have lived since the
time of Adam, if the eternal God, the author of all nature and the dispenser
of grace, does not co-operate by his divine favor. . . . Victory belongeth
to him. Triumph is in his hands. Events are directed by his uncreated
knowledge. Success is accorded by his clemency, and consolation by his
mercy. If we obtain too promptly what we desire we cease to love God.
Accordingly if his divine wisdom defers a benefit it is to keep us the longer
from straying away from him. To remain faithful to him we should, there-
fore, consider ourselves as beggars, for abundance and wealth generally
render us selfish and indifferent. The first angel was lost through satiety.
His misfortune was that he had nothing at the moment to wish for, and he

1 886.] PHILIP IV., KING OF SPAIN. 845

would not have been cast out if the possession of so many benefits had not
blinded him as to his future wants. The other angels had also received
many gifts and favors, but they did not forget they still had much more to
receive from God, and therefore they remained humble. They were like
the seraphim Isaias tells us were around the throne of God, who had two
wings wherewith they did fly, and other wings wherewith they covered their
faces and their feet; these indicating repose, the others motion repose, as
symbolizing the possession of all good ; motion, as the symbol of aspira-
tion and desire. They flew and they reposed. So whatever we obtain from
God, we must not forget there is always more to expect from him.

" Our condition is exceedingly low and vile. As long as we are in want
we pray. When we succeed we forget. That is why the Most High gives
and retains, grants and withholds, in order that, grateful for the benefits
he has already bestowed, we may still pursue him to beg for what we yet
need."

It is said that Philip fell into evil courses after the death of
the queen and Don Baltazar, and " a celebrated beata " was sent
to admonish him, who filled him with salutary terror by threat-
ening- him with the wrath of God a prophetic intimation, for
shortly after he barely escaped falling victim to a plot against his
life and the crown. This affected him deeply and brought him
back to a sense of duty. There is nothing to prove that this
beata was Mary of Agreda, but it does not seem improbable. At
all events, the king's relapse gives double significance to many
passages in her letters, such as the following :

" I compare God to the sun. If there are clouds and mists we lose sight
of it, we are deprived of light ; but as soon as the air is purified and grows
clear we behold the sun again, we feel it, we enjoy it, we have our part in
its influences and benefits. There are no clouds more dense than our pas-
sions and evil inclinations. If they are gratified they hide from us the
divine sun of righteousness which is God. They deprive us of good influ-
ences. We are left in the midst of darkness, exposed to continual falls into
an unfathomable abyss. . . . But if we resist and mortify them as soon as
they occur to our thoughts, we are enlightened by grace ; we turn towards
God ; we begin to feel his influence ; a more powerful light falls on our souls ;
a stronger love animates our will ; we feel more strength within to over-
come what had seemed insurmountable, and more ardor in serving God ;
we recognize that without the breath of his immutable being we cannot
undertake perilous enterprises, that if we are armed with divine strength
our victory is certain, by the aid of his right hand we shall conquer our
enemies. But the great difficulty is to renounce ourselves. We remain
concentrated in ourselves and act like creatures whose minds are diseased
and who are abandoned of God.''

The following extract is from her letter on hearing of the
capitulation of Barcelona :

" St. Augustine says there is no greater misfortune than the happiness

846 THE VENERABLE MARY OF AGREDA AND [Mar.,

of the sinner, and when God permits him to be happy in his iniquity it is
because his wrath is only the greater. He only leaves him without chastise-
ment in this world in order to chastise him the more rigorously in the life
to come, What would it serve a man to have the wisdom of Solomon, the
beauty of Absalom, the strength of Samson, the long life of Henoch, the
wealth of Croesus, and the power of Caesar, if his soul is endangered there-
by ? Though all his life be prosperous and happy, of what account are the
goods he hardly possesses before he has to resign them ? The life of man is
only a flower that springeth up in the morning, blooms at mid-day, and
in the evening is already faded and withered. . . . One of the most perfect
qualities of divine mercy is that it accords prosperity and success with such
weight and measure that the desire for what we still need serves as a re-
mora (check) to our passions,* a counterpoise to satiety, a spur to incite us
to have recourse to the immutable being of God, a motive to love and
please him as one on whom depends the supply of our wants. The great-
est acquirement of the human mind, the best proof of wisdom, is to be
able to resist prosperity so as not to be lifted up by it, and adversity so as
not to be cast down by it."

"Of all the chastisements inflicted by the power of the Most High, the
severest rigor of divine justice is to abandon a soul to its sins. . . . There
is a maxim of the philosophers that privations are more or less hard to
bear according to the greater or less value of the good one is deprived of.
Now, sin deprives us of grace, which is the participation of God and the
benefit of being his children and the heirs of eternal glory. Whence we
may conclude that the greatest of evils and of chastisements is to be left in
the sin that deprives us of such benefits."

"The entire life of man is only an instant compared with eternity, and
God wishes this brief time to be employed in preparing, and meriting by
means of our tribulations, the crown of eternal bliss. Who would not,
then, accept with joy the suffering that is only temporary in order to ob-
tain that which is eternal ? There is nothing more valuable than time,
and the best use we can make of it is in suffering that by which we can ac-
quire such an inexpressible benefit."

The king writes her in 1653 :

" How true what you say in your letter ! The most hardened sinner can-
not refuse to acknowledge the difference there is between the state of grace
and that of guilt, but such is our weakness that we yield rather to evil than
to good. Against all reason do we allow ourselves to be led away by our
appetites, regardless of our highest interests. Therefore do I dwell with
satisfaction on the examples you mention. They will aid me in escaping
from similar evils and in seeking the incomparable benefits of divine
grace."

" Remora de nuestras passiones" an image often used by the old Spanish writers from a
small fish (the echeneis remord) which, it was once believed, had the power of stopping a vessel in
the midst of its course. It is employed also by the ancient Greek and Latin authors, such as
Aristotle, Ovid, and Lucan. Pliny says the echeneis stopped the galley of Periander, tyrant
of Corinth. Another is said to have arrested the vessel of Antony in the midst of the battle of
Actium, commenting on which Dom Benito Feijoo, in his Encyclopedia, says that the only
remora that checked Antony in his course was the beauty of Cleopatra,

1 886.] PHILIP IV., KING OF SPAIN. 847

And again he writes :

" I no longer allow myself to be cast down by my troubles. On the
contrary, I rejoice, for they seem to me light in comparison with the ex-
amples you cite from Holy Scripture, which prove how necessary afflictions
in this life are for our salvation, and how dangerous prosperity is, since it
has caused the downfall of so many."

Mary of Agreda thus replies to this:

" Sire, patience in our trials is a laudable virtue, but it is still better to
receive them with joy. Doctors, however, only find this degree of perfec-
tion in souls of the highest courage. Your majesty, therefore, must not
allow yourself to be cast down by anything that befalls you."

In 1657 the king thus commences one of his letters:

" I am always afflicted at the failure of a letter from you, especially when
this is caused by ill-health. My sorrow is then double. I rejoice, however,
to hear you are better. I feel great interest in the state of your health and
the continuation of the counsels you give me. I appreciate their value,
and earnestly desire to put them in practice, but fear lest I fail through my
weakness and sins."

The following year he again says :

" Your illness caused me great anxiety"and distress, especially when I
heard it was dangerous, for I regard you with deep affection. The depriva-
tion would have been a great trial had our Lord called you to eternal rest,
but I trust he will not deprive me of your counsels and close the door
through which I look for remedy in my greatest woes."

Mary of Agreda thus writes in reply :

" Your majesty condescends to value the prolongation of my life, where-
as I consider it so useless that I wish I could sacrifice it in the service of
the Most High and in that of your majesty. My only anxiety and wish in
this valley of tears is that God, whose goodness is so immense and whose
mercy is infinite, be not offended with us, but afford us his protection ; that
his holy faith be maintained and practised ; that your throne be surround-
ed by prosperity and happiness; and that your majesty may be saved. . . .
The famine and war that weigh so heavily upon us have been sent us for
our sins. . . . We see that under the ancient law the Hebrews, men and
women, with the priesthood, humbled their hearts by fasting, clothed them-
selves in sackcloth, and made ^their children prostrate themselves before
the altar in the temple, and instead of losing life, honor, and liberty, which
they were in danger of, they obtained security, glory, victory, and riches.
I am deeply afflicted, my heart is rent, when I see that no one gives a thought
to this remedy. It seems as though all fear of the divine justice were lost.
And yet the blows that have fallen so severely upon us are loud warnings.
... In the deepest recesses of my seclusion I will aid your majesty as
much as is in my power. I will invoke by my cries, my tears, the mercy
of the Most High."

848 A PLEA FOR THE INDIAN. [Mar.,

' The remaining letters have never been found. Mary of
Agreda died on Whitsunday, May 24, 1665, aged sixty-three.

The long continuance and regularity of this correspondence
show how much value the king attached to it. The letters of
Mary of Agreda invariably stimulated his conscience, roused
his moral energy, and afforded him so much consolation amid
the misfortunes of his reign and almost continual ill-health that
when they were delayed he always expressed his regret as if his
chief solace was wanting. He died four months after her, Sep-
tember 17, 1665. after blessing his children and saying to his heir:
" God grant that you may be happier than I ! "

A PLEA FOR THE INDIAN.

AN ounce of experience is worth many pounds of theory, and
it would be well if those who are given to theorizing were to
bear this in mind. Some cunningly-devised scheme of philan-
thropy may appear fair and fascinating on paper. Some plan
of political economy may seem the very one, in the eyes of
the originator, to answer every requirement. But when these
schemes of philanthropy, these plans of political economy, pass
from the ideal into the real, then experience soon detects the
latent flaws and relegates them to a place on the library shelf,
where in the abstract, like Plato's Republic, they may live im-
mortally without harm to mankind, or else sink into the obscuri-
ty which befitted them. Such are the thoughts that occur as one
reads from time to time, in magazine or journal, some proposed
solutions for the Indian problem. Men, and women too, living
far away from the scene of action, without even a passing sense
of their unfitness, will undertake to interfere with the control and
welfare of the still savage population, and offer their suggestions
to the general government. One does not object to the interest
they show in the poor red men, but one must deprecate the man-
ner in which it is [evinced. Did it never occur to a political
economist that in such matters he might derive valuable counsel
from those living among the savages for many years as their
spiritual guides and apostles ? What course of action would the
Catholic missionary desire to see in force? Truly a practical
question, and one which they are capable of answering from their
long experience. We do not mean to imply that priests should

1 8 86.] A PLEA FOR THE INDIAN. 849

mix in politics or the " black-robe " turn a government politician.
Far from it! Only this: men who have been for years in the
practice of a profession or a trade are generally admitted to have
some weight and authority in matters belonging to their avoca-
tion. Why does this not hold good of missionaries? Who can
vie with them in the knowledge of the savage tribes to-whom
they have devoted their lives ? Who can take a more real- and
genuine interest in their welfare ? Who can be more desirous
of seeing them civilized and prosperous ? Who can have such
an insight into the character and habits of these races ? Who
can know better what will conduce to their development or their
destruction? And what must weigh deeply with Catholic phi-
lanthropists must be the consciousness that these men's opinions
and verdicts will be biassed by no self-seeking, since they are
men who by their profession have renounced all hope or wish
of earthly honors or riches. Moreover, they seek not the mere
humanizing of the savages, but the transforming of what is in-
tensely animal into the real and spiritual life of devout Catholics.
The government looks upon the Indian, or should look upon him,
as a man with the duties of a possible if not actual citizen of the
republic at no distant day. The priest does not overlook this,
but considers it as not the one thing necessary nor the primary
object of their civilization ; for with the eyes of faith he sees in
them "the citizens of a better country, even one to come," in
view of which we have here no abiding city. The efforts of the
missionary are directed, then, in the first place, to the imprinting
on the minds of the savages those notions which make them
conscious of their moral responsibility towards God, and, as a
natural consequence, of their duties towards their fellow-men.
He does not endeavor to give them a distorted and exaggerated
estimate of the benefits of civilization, as is the wont of the would-
be leaders of modern thought, according to whom human happi-
ness should increase in proportion to the acquirement of creature
comforts the greatest amount of wealth, pleasure, and ease, with
the least expenditure of vital force, being the summum bonum
of existence in their ethics. The missionary does not, indeed,
inculcate such ideas as these, but he lays a sure and solid foun-
dation for the fabric of true culture, made up of the threads of
virtues theological and moral. He not only preaches by word
of mouth, but by that more emphatic and convincing way of
practice. He first sets the example which he would have fol-
lowed, and in his own person makes civilization attractive.
VOL. XLII. 54

850 A PLEA FOR THE INDIAN. [Mar.,

Were such a one to be asked his opinion as ,to the manner of
treating the red men, what would be his answer?

Consulting that best of teachers experience he would say, in
the first place : Keep the Indians, for the present at least, per-
fectly isolated from white men. The necessity of this separation
has been demonstrated over and over again. Throw the redskin
into the company of the pale-faces and the result is a complete
degradation of the man ; he loses the natural virtues he had, but
not his vices, and acquires in addition the very worst habits of
the other race without their good points. The same effect is
produced if the process be reversed and white settlers be intro-
duced among the Indians." And yet these very points, so strong-
ly opposed by the missionary, are the ones put forward as the
best and surest means of civilizing the savage tribes. The weak
spot in this policy escapes the attention of its advocates namely,
that to expect such beneficial results from intercourse supposes a
sort of exemplary superiority on one side which will raise the
other to an equal height. Very fine indeed in the ideal ! But in
reality what sort of a white population do we find on the border-
lands ? Is it a highly moral and civilized one ? Or is it not usu-
ally largely, even preponderatingly, made up of the scum and
dregs of society ; a motley collection of adventurers and fortune-
hunters with one aim and purpose in life that of enriching them-
selves in any way that offers ? Their code of morality is brief, and
may be summed up in a few words which exemplify some of the
cant phrases of the modern illuminati : " Let the fittest survive " ;
" Man is but a highly-developed animal " ; " There is no God,
nor devil, nor future life." The conclusions to such premises
are readily deduced by the frontiersmen.

Are these the civilizing elements which are to leaven the In-
dian race and transform them into good citizens of the republic ?
In the ideal the theory might hold. Imagine a community of
honest, God-fearing, industrious farmers and artisans, with their
well-educated and well-behaved families, settled in the midst of
savagedom. As by magic the hitherto fallow lands yield copious
crops more than ample to supply the wants of the community.
The new-built granaries groan with abundance, and their over-
flow procures for the fortunate owners all the domestic articles
they need. Cattle, sleek and contented, graze in the meadows,
and on the hillsides flocks of sheep crop the toothsome pasture.
The central spot of the village is the church, with its neighbor-
ing school. All is order, peace, contentment, prosperity in a
word, Arcadia realized. But has it ever been realized by the pro-

1 886.] A PLEA FOR THE INDIAN. 851

cess above advocated? Never; but the very reverse has again
and again resulted. One instance will suffice the case of the
non-Catholic Spokanes, sunk in every kind of vice and degrada-
tion. On the other hand, has the system of isolation proved suc-
cessful ? In all confidence we can affirm that it has, and point
to the Mission of St. Ignatius in the Kalispel country doubtless
known to many by the graphic sketch of Mr. Smalley in the Cen-
tury Magazine for January, 1885. Here the very best results are
being daily obtained. Nor is the day distant when the Flatheads
and other neighboring tribes will become good citizens of a pros-
perous State. But the ways of God are slow as the saying
goes, " The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding
fine." The sun does not burst upon the world all of a sudden in
its meridian splendor, but gradually from the deep darkness of
night appears the first faint dawn, increasing steadily until at
noon in the zenith it floods the world with light. So in the moral
order after the gloom of savagery comes the first ray of enlight.
enment to the mind : too much light would daze and stupefy.
Man's mental grasp is very finite, and he must acquire knowledge
by degrees. The Indian in many respects is but a child, and in
his development must be treated accordingly. And yet his ill-
advised well-wishers would have him trained and developed into
a full-blown civilized American citizen whilst at present the bud
is still in embryo. They are too eager for progress ; they speak
as if they would advise a farmer who wished to produce a rich
crop to perform all the various processes of cultivation collec-
tively plough, sow, fertilize, irrigate, ail in close succession,
without giving nature a breathing-time, as it were, between the
different stages. The effect is null, for order reigns in nature-
first the seed, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. Pa-
tience, therefore, is needed with the Indian ; he cannot pass from
a savage life into a full-developed civilization in a single genera-
tion.

All history tells the same story. Every nation has had its
day of comparative barbarism, and has taken many centuries to
reach its present state of nineteenth-century maturity ; though,
if truth were to be told, beneath the thin veneer of civilized man-
ners much of the barbarian still remains even in the most highly-
cultured European. The one, in his simplicity, openly shows
his claws ; the other conceals them beneath the silken glove.
Search into the mode of life of the poor in thickly-inhabited
manufacturing towns or in rural districts, and the difference be-
tween many of them and the savage is one of degree, not kind :

852 A PLEA FOR THE INDIAN. [Mar.,

the same nature produces like effects. But this is not a defence
of savagery ; it only aims at getting for the Indian a fair hearing
and a chance of life and happiness. Some one may say : " Chances
he has had in abundance he has not profited by them ; if he had
he would be further advanced in the social state than he is. Or
if he has not had the opportunities demanded, why has not the
church, his advocate, been more active in furthering his pro-
gress?" an opportune question, which very many Catholics an-
swer as best they can. The church has done what she could in
the past. With the meagre forces at her disposal she has made
the best possible use of her soldiers, the missionaries of God.
They were and are very few in number in comparison with the
vastness of the campaign. They had everything to surmount,
foreigners in a strange land, with no moral or pecuniary support
from American Catholics. They have struggled on against these
great odds and accomplished prodigies in the sight of God ; for
men have no knowledge of their feats. The tribes that have been
civilized by the "black- robes" are worthy to be compared with the
primitive Christians for their fervor and edification. The aged
missionary goes to his grave lamenting the good that could be
and is not done. American Catholics have much to answer for
their apathy regarding the evangelization of the Indians. May
a spark of apostolic zeal fall upon willing hearts ! A twofold
good can be accomplished the savage can be transformed into
an exemplary Catholic whose citizenship is in heaven, and at the
same time fitted to become a worthy and useful citizen of the
United States. One word more upon a point which has been al-
ready implicitly touched upon the abolition of tribal distinc-
tions and rule. In a nascent society the tribal system is a natural
sequel to the patriarchal. First comes the family with its head,
then groups of families with some recognized chief who is su-
perior by virtue of his ability, sagacity, prudence, or prowess in
war. Although in a sense supreme, still he has his council of
elders for advisers, whom he consults on all important matters.
When the religion of Christ has conquered his mind and heart,
then the " black-robe " becomes his most valued counsellor, and
there is that perfect agreement between church and state which
in ages past proved so beneficial to European society when in
process of formation. Before the Indian can arrive at fully-de-
veloped civilized modes of life he must pass through the prepa-
ratory stages infancy, boyhood, youth, manhood, the prime of
life : he cannot by a hot-house forcing be transformed at once
into a full-grown social and political man. Patience, then, is

1 886.] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 853

our plea, but this is only passive. An active element is needed
namely, interested and able Catholic advocates for the Indians.
Protestant philanthropists and politicians are making themselves
heard on all sides. True philanthropy should be a sufficient mo-
tive for Catholic hearts who feel that the only real civilizing, re-
generating power i$ that of their holy faith.

NEW PUBLICATIONS,

THE THIRTY YEARS. OUR LORD'S INFANCY AND HIDDEN LIFE. By H.
J. Coleridge, S.J. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic
Publication Society Co. 1885.

This volume completes the whole first part of our Lord's Life, by Fa-
ther Coleridge. Some few points in it have interested us particularly,
on account of some previous investigations of these points in other au-
thors which have led us to the same result which Father Coleridge has
arrived at. One of these is the cause of the apparently inhospitable
reception which Joseph and Mary met with at Bethlehem. Pious writers
and preachers commonly come down hard on these people of Bethlehem,
and on the innkeeper, and exaggerate the inconvenience to which the
Blessed Virgin was subjected, by representing it as wiTfully inflicted by
hard-hearted kinsfolk through contempt of a poor relation. We think
this view of the case groundless and absurd. The Lord ordered it so that
poverty, humility, and suffering were the attendants of his human birth ;
but the proximate cause was a natural, unavoidable impossibility of finding
in a pressing emergency suitable lodgings in a village overcrowded by an
influx of guests. Father Coleridge looks at it in the same light.

It has always been a very great puzzle for t,hose who suppose that the
Wise Men from the East came to Bethlehem about a fortnight after the
Nativity to explain how the Holy Family could remain about a month after
their departure in Bethlehem unmolested by Herod, and even go boldly to
the Temple to accomplish the rite of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin.
Father Coleridge solves the difficulty, and we have become at last satis-
fied that he is right about the matter, by supposing that St. Joseph went to
Nazareth for a short time after the birth of our Lord, returned to Beth-
lehem with the intention of taking up his residence in the town, and there
remained for several months. The star, he supposes, appeared to the Wise
Men on Christmas day. Their journey to Jerusalem lasted four or five
months. The very night after their departure from Bethlehem St. Joseph
fled into Egypt with the Blessed Virgin and the Infant Lord, and after his
return from Egypt changed his intention of living at Bethlehem and went
to live at Nazareth because he was afraid of Archelaus. All this chimes
in very well with the theory, which seems to us the most probable one,
that Jesus Christ was born December 25, A.u.C. 747=5 B.C. The Wise Men
came in May or June, 748. The Holy Family remained in Egypt until the
spring of 750, at which time Herod died. Archelaus had been deposed and
a Roman governor substituted for him at Jerusalem before the Lord was

854 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

twelve years old, and there was, therefore, no danger in the visit of the
Holy Family to Jerusalem to keep the Passover, which occurred during his
thirteenth year. In treating of our Lord's visit to the school of the doc-
tors in the Temple, Father Coleridge expresses the opinion that Simeon,
who received Jesus into his arms at the time of the purification of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, was the famous Rabbi Simeon, son of Hillel, and fa-
ther of Gamaliel ; that he was still living at the tim'e of our Lord's visit to
the Temple in his thirteenth year, and was probably present on the occa-
sion of his interview with the doctors.

We are promised the publication of the remaining volumes, which will
make Father Coleridge's work complete, regularly and without undue de-
lay ; and there is no reason to fear that this promise will not be fulfilled, as
all who are interested in sacred studies must hope it will be.

THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM. By the Rev. J. J. Moriarty, LL.D. New
York : Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London : Burns & Gates.

Dr. Moriarty has a very happy faculty of presenting Catholic doctrine
in a way to attract the attention and to win the respect and good-will of
Protestants. His works are noticed in a very friendly and appreciative
manner by the secular press, and obtain a wide and continual circulation.
His latest work, treating of the importance of the study of religion, the
rule of faith, and the four marks of the true church, published in an unu-
sually handsome form, is marked by the same excellent style, happy use of
quotations from distinguished and popular writers who are not Catholics,
the same kind and respectful manner toward his readers, and the same con-
clusive and popular method of argument which have made his previous
works, particularly Stumbling Blocks made Stepping Stones, so successful.
It is a work fitted to do much good, and the high commendation which it
has already received from some secular newspapers is an augury that it
will be as favorably received and as extensively circulated as the author's
previous works have been.

THE LIFE OF THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. By William J.
Fitzpatrick, F.S.A. (2*vols.) London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.;
New York : Benzingers. 1886.

Father Burke's countless friends and admirers in both hemispheres will
welcome the publication of his biography. It is one of the most entertain-
ing books we have ever come across, and if it is not extremely and widely
popular we shall be at a loss to find any reason for its failure, unless it be
that its cost may hinder its general circulation. All the children of Erin,
in their own home and throughout the whole world, must, of course, re-
ceive with enthusiasm the life of one of the greatest and best, most gifted
and most unselfish, most religious and most patriotic of Irishmen and Irish
priests which this age has produced. There is nothing, however, in the
principles, the language, the character, or the career of the illustrious
Dominican which can render the history of his life in any exclusive sense
an object of interest to his own countrymen alone, or even to those only
who are Catholics, in England, America, and other countries. As a man,
a scholar, an orator, a philanthropist, his qualities were so remarkable and
so genial, and there was so much in his character and career of the heroic,
that he must win admiration from all sorts of men who can appreciate such
traits, as in point of fact he did, during his too short public career as an

1 886.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 855

orator, from -almost all men in this country? and, in a more restricted sphere,
wherever he was known during his whole life. Every one knows that the
exuberance of the humorous and playful temperament which nature had
given to Father Burke was one of his most salient personal characteristics.
The frolicsome spirit possessed him in his childhood, and most persons of
calm and prudent judgment will think that it was not always kept within
due bounds in after-life. Mr. Fitzpatrick has filled his volumes with anec-
dotes and witticisms and drolleries from the days of Father Burke's child-
hood and his after-life which are racy and rich, and help to make his
volumes, as we have said they are, most entertaining reading. We think
that some pruning in this respect would have been more judicious on the
author's part, although his great abundance in personal details and descrip-
tion, and the minuteness of his narrative, on the whole make his memoir
extremely life-like and realistic. Moreover, Mr. Fitzpatrick does full jus-
tice to the graver and more important parts of his task, and has devoted
an amount of careful research and conscientious labor to its fulfilment,
and has shown a tact and skill in arranging his materials, which entitle him
to rank among the few very successful writers of biographical memoirs.
The gayety of Father Burke in social intercourse, the continual play of his
spirit of humor, was only the flashing of the drops on his laboring oar,
which he plied incessantly in his various avocations while employed in ar-
duous duties at San Clemente in Rome, in England and Ireland, filling im-
portant offices and actively engaged in priestly work in the convents of his
order, and during the course of his sermons and lectures in the United
States; besides his deep and thorough studies and multifarious reading,
which filled up to overflowing the exhaustless reservoir of his intellect,
memory, and imagination. The amount of labor which he accomplished
was simply wonderful, and together with this was joined an endurance of
sickness and suffering, especially in the last ten years of his life, finishing
with the last heroic effort, which took him literally from his death-bed into
the pulpit to plead for orphans who were in danger of dying from starva-
tion. All this is graphically told, and the whole history of the develop-
ment and exercise of Father Burke's varied and remarkable endowments
is fully and minutely laid open. The author is also careful, in his devoted
fidelity and piety towards his illustrious friend, to disclose beneath the bril-
liant exterior of the scholar and orator of genius and wit, the deep fund of
religious virtue which was under the surface and mostly hidden from view ;
the humility which was insensible to adulation and averse from worldly
honors, the habit of prayer and penance, the love of poverty, the purity,
the ardent faith and charity, the disinterestedness and integrity, the sacer-
dotal and religious zeal, which kept Father Burke always a true priest and
a genuine disciple of St. Dominic, without a shadow or stain on his reputa-
tion, throughout a career in which a man of only ordinary firmness and
stability of interior virtue would have been in danger of at least giving way
to the illusions of pride and ambition. The innocence of the frolicsome
boy, the humility of the applauded orator, the patience of the wearied, suf-
fering warrior of faith and charity, the resignation and hope of the dying
Christian, the tribute of supreme respect and affection from the highest
and the humblest alike to the dead priest, the noble monument of the clois-
tral church of Tallaght erected over his grave to honor his memory, are
witnesses to a grace of God and a generous co-operation with it in Father

856 NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. [Mar.,

Burke by which his shining intellectual gifts and achievements were hal-
lowed and elevated, and the best of all panegyrics deserved that he was a
good as well as a great man in his day and sphere.

A LITERARY AND BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY ; or, Bibliographical Dictionary
of the English Catholics from the breach with Rome in 1534 to the
present time. By Joseph Gillow. (Vol. II.) London : Burns & Gates ;
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

After the well-deserved praise which the first volume of this work has
received from every quarter Catholic, Protestant, and purely literary and
scientific it is needless to do more than mention the publication of the
second volume, and to say that it fully maintains the standard of its prede-
cessor. Indeed, some improvements have been made, such as giving fuller
lives of the more important persons and placing catch-letters at the head
of each page to facilitate reference. The volume begins with Lord Dacre
and ends with Bishop Gradwell, and includes many lives of special interest,
such as those of Bishop Gardiner, Bishop Fox, and Dryden of former times,
and of those of Fathers Faber, Formby, and Dalgairns of our own days. It
is an invaluable work for the student of English history, whether religious
or secular.

A CHILD OF MARY. By Christian Reid. Reprinted from the Awe Maria.
Notre Dame, Ind. : Joseph A. Lyons. 1886. (For sale by the Catholic
Publication Society Co.)

Miss Fisher has long since won a high place among our American fe-
male novelists. A Child of Mary is one of her minor, less-ambitious pro-
ductions, but quite worthy of her pen, a prettily-written, attractive, and
edifying story. It is all about a Catholic girl, on the father's side an
American springing from one of the old families, very rich, genteel, and
Episcopalian, of one of the Southern Atlantic States ; on the mother's side
and by education French, an orphan, an heiress, a devout Catholic, who
'lives in her Southern uncle's family, and becomes the foundress of a Ca-
tholic church as well as in general an " angel and minister of grace " in the
town of Clarendon.

The story teaches one excellent lesson, which is the importance and
utility of making churches neat, tasteful, and ritually correct in all re-
spects, and also of giving to all the externals of divine worship, vest-
ments, ceremonies, music/etc., as much completeness and beauty as possi-
ble. Some Catholics even some ecclesiastics have very inadequate
perceptions, or mistaken notions, on these points. Some appear to think
that a sort of Puritan simplicity suits better the modern age and the pre-^
sent condition of both cultivated and unlettered Christians. They have a
fancy that, in a special sense, people of a religious disposition who by edu-
cation are Protestants would be more easily converted if Catholicism were
modified in many of its accidentals. This is a grievous misapprehension.
Renee Leigh was sound in her views, happily Father Gerard sustained her
fully, and Mr. Stanmore was a genuine, thorough convert, who drank the
pure milk of the word with a wholesome appetite, not asking for sugar
and water to weaken it. Renee was wrong, however, on one point. She
insisted that Mr. Stanmore could have no certitude respecting truths of
the Christian religion except by way of the infallible authority of the
Catholic Church. But it was necessary for him, first of all, to be certain

1 886.] NE w PUBLICA TIONS. 857

of this divine, infallible authority, received through the apostles from
Jesus Christ. And such a clear thinker as Miss Fisher will easily perceive
that the same indisputable facts and irrefragable arguments by which we
prove the divine origin and institution, and the infallible authority, of the
Catholic Church, will equally avail for other doctrines of Christian and
Catholic faith. If the story had been carefully examined by one of the
theologians of the University of Notre Dame this mistake would have
been rectified. This is a convenient opportunity to suggest that exposi-
tions of theological doctrines ought always to receive such an examination
before they are published.

The exact truth which would have made Renee's argument with Stan-
more solid in all its parts is that the ordinary, the best, the easiest, the
most suitable way for the majority of persons, of receiving doctrines of
faith, is through the explicit teaching of the church ; and that the only
way of knowing certainly all the revealed truths of faith and morals is
this same teaching. Nevertheless, there is an indirect way of receiving
the testimony of the church, there is a way of apprehending the motives
of the credibility of Christianity, and of obtaining a certain conviction of
some of its most necessary truths, which does not require or presuppose
an explicit knowledge of the exclusive and infallible authority of the one
true church. Solid and firm convictions of the divine truths which have
been preserved by the surviving traditions of the old religion among the
new, separated sects, are the basis and starting-point of a perfect conver-
sion to the entire Catholic faith in the case of many intelligent and reli-
gious Protestants, who do not abandon or discredit anything which was true
and good in the belief and the practical piety of their earlier, imperfect
condition ; but add to it, follow it to its logical consequences, and bring it
to completeness and perfection. Indeed, Miss Fisher describes just such a
process in the instance of Mr. Stanmore. The accomplished author of the
story has our cordial encouragement and best wishes for new efforts and
continued success in her literary career.

CREMORE: A VILLAGE IDYL. By Will MacDermott. New York : D. & J.
Sadlier & Co. 1886.

In his preface the author of Cremore says that he " is not aware of
travelling in the footsteps of any previous Irish bard." He will hardly be
accused of following in the footsteps of any bard of whatever nationality.
His unfettered soul seems also to have scorned the beaten path of correct
grammatical construction and punctuation. Imagine the bewilderment
occasioned the reader by stanzas such as this :

" Our farmer's name was John McCue
His sires had held that very farm
For years that run to Brian Boru
For him it had a magic charm
It woke the years that long have fled
When Freedom gave its brightest ray
E'en at his nod the noble dead
Came forth to fight in fancy's play
Those heroes of the past, those nervers of to-day."

In speaking of Ireland's wrongs the poet breaks out thus :

858 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

" . . . the sun fore'er will set
E'er we forget the iron prongs,
The leather thongs, the scaffold gongs,
The baby's pang on bay'net raised."

Assuredly the spectacle of a " baby's pang " raised on a bayonet, if once
seen, could never be forgotten.

Cremore is the name of an Irish village, and the idyl deals with the love
of John McCue's daughter for the hero, young " De Vere, " and the vil-
lainies of a certain " Captain Ben," who when he hears

11 That old McCue, a Romish friar,
Had hid amid his yellow corn,"

gives vent to his villainy in the following neat and bloodthirsty couplet :

" By Heaven's aid I'll show my ire,
And from yon Romish spire I'll hang this popish friar. "

The bard describes the home of " Captain Ben " :
" His castle rose in stately prose."

It is difficult to conceive how the castle could rise in stately prose, but it is
evident that it does not rise in stately verse. " De Vere " attempts to res-
cue the priest from the hands of " Captain Ben " and his gang ; and a gen-
eral fight ensues, which is described in verses that boldly defy grammar
and sense :

" They dance, they prance, to the sound of steel,

Some fall to rise and some to sleep,

Their last and earthly stage a reel,

'Mid brains and blood a ghastly heap,"
etc., etc.

The bard closes his remarkable effort by lamenting that his grandfather
and another relative had not lived to read the poem. Readers of the idyl
will probably rejoice that the venerable gentlemen were spared the in-
fliction.

CLEOPATRA. By Henry Greville. Boston : Ticknor & Co. 1886.

Madame Durand, who writes under the well-known nom-de-plume of
Henry Greville, is undoubtedly a clever writer, and possesses a certain
dash and brilliancy of style; but one lays down her novel Cleopatra with a
sense of weariness, yes, and of disgust. It is full of bathos, of false senti-
mentality, and of false ideals. Cleopatra, the heroine, is described as a
creature of great beauty, purity, and loftiness of character, but it is impos-
sible to reconcile her actions with a Christian ideal of a noble woman.
Because she had set her'heart on securing riches and a great position, and
in order to escape from an unpleasant life with a married sister, she marries
an old general, full of years and honors and the gout. For a while May
and December live happily together ; but at length there comes a youth
upon the scene the story is laid in Russia a young Swede, whose dark
eyes say, " I adore you," etc. The usual amount of sickly sentimentality
follows; the great passion which has sprung to life in an instant between
the Swede and Cleopatra must be obeyed at all odds; and Cleopatra, after
some hesitation, is persuaded to ask for a divorce from her aged husband,
who is informed by her of the state of affairs. The old general is also

1 886.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 859

described as great and noble ; he shrinks from the disgrace of a divorce,
and so to release his wife resolves to kill himself.

" One single jewel was wanting in the crown of this rich, brave, happy man renunciation.
He felt this palm descending upon his head from the sky that smiled above him. While the
eyes of the poor lovers filled with tears, his old heart, which always beat generously, throbbed
with pride and joy at the thought that he could perform one more good deed before leaving this
world."

The good deed which this old man contemplates is self-murder. Not
only is divorce ennobled, but the crime of suicide also. These two wretched
sins, which only too often stain the annals of this age, are in particular in-
stances glorified with the garb of virtue. Cleopatra prevents the old
general from performing this noble act ; he is at length persuaded to con-
sent to a divorce, which is obtained after much difficulty ; Cleopatra mar-
ries her Swedish lover, and dies upon her wedding night. Such is a brief
outline of a book which will be read by thousands, and whose author is
said by a critic in the Literary World to be "actuated by high and noble
impulses." And again : " Henry Greville is idyllic, in the sense that most
of her stories may be read with pleasure by the innocent maiden and the
sophisticated man of the world." Surely this story is not one of these.

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. Edited by Rosa
Mulholland. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1886.

This edition of Robinson Crusoe is prepared especially for Catholic
children. The reasons for a special edition are given by Miss Mulholland
in her preface :

" So many editions of this famous old book have been published, and are still coming out
every day, that it would seem almost unnecessary to prepare one specially for the use of Catholic
schools and the pleasure of Catholic firesides.

" However, those with whom the book is a favorite will readily admit that there are to be
found in it, as it stands in the original, many passages which render it not quite desirable reading
for little ones of the faith to which Daniel Defoe did not belong, though he shows us Crusoe
struck with wonder at the devotion and heroism of a Catholic priest.

" It has been thought well, therefore, to leave out those portions of Crusoe's adventures,
though the greater part of the omission has been made with regret. So many strong moral les-
sons are conveyed through the pages of this fascinating book that only the interests of those
whose minds are not yet ripe enough to take in the meaning of all those moral lessons would
warrant its curtailment.

" Notwithstanding this, the necessary omissions have been made, so that neither teachers
aor parents need hesitate to put the present volume into the hands of boy or girl under their
control."

MATILDA, PRINCESS OF ENGLAND : A Romance of the Crusades. By
Madame Sophie Cottin, author of Elizabeth. From the French, by
Jennie W. Raum. New York : W. S. Gottsberger. 1885.

Of course, a romance by Madame Cottin is a good one. Matilda is
partly an historical romance and partly an invention, after the model of
Scott's incomparable Talisman, The author, being a Catholic, keeps her
story clear of the blunders and misrepresentations with which some simi-
lar works of fiction are defaced. Those who like romantic tales of this de-
scription will find that they can read this^story with pleasure.

WAIFS OF A CHRISTMAS MORNING, AND OTHER TALES. By Josephine Han-
nan. Illustrated by Isabel M. Whitegreave. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son.

This is a very pretty story-book, both inside and out. It contains three

860 NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. [Mar., 1 886.

quietly-told tales, simple and healthy in tone ; and its simple blue and gilt
cover is very pleasing to the eye.

CHARLES A. GILLIG'S NEW GUIDE TO LONDON and important suburban
districts. Specially compiled for the use of travellers, with maps and
illustrations. London : Gillig's United States Exchange, 9 Strand,
Charing Cross ; Chicago : Rand, McNally & Co.

This is an excellent hand-book for travellers visiting London. Its in-
formation is concise, yet sufficient for all ordinary purposes ; and, what is
better still, it is correct.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

THE CATHOLIC PRIESTHOOD. By Rev. Michael Muller, C.SS.R. New York and Cincinnati :
Fr. Pustet & Co.; St. Louis : B. Herder ; New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis : Benziger
Bros.

THE ALTAR MANUAL, for the use of the reverend clergy ; containing the Gospels and Epistles
for Sundays and Festivals. Boston : Thos. B. Noonan.

DELSARTE SYSTEM OF DRAMATIC EXPRESSION. By Genevieve Stebbins. Original illustra-
tions. New York : Edgar S. Werner.

OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL SUCCOR : A Manual of Devotion for every day in the month. By
Rev. Thomas Livius, C.SS.R. London : Burns & Gates; New York : The Catholic Pub-
lication Society Co.

AN IRON CROWN: A Tale of the Great Republic. Chicago : T. S. Denison.

HOFFMAN'S CATHOLIC DIRECTORY, ALMANAC, AND CLERGY LIST QUARTERLY. For the
year of our Lord 1886. Hoffman Bros., Catholic Publishers, Milwaukee and Chicago.
Price 50 cents.

THE BIRTHDAY BOOK OF OUR DEAD. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son.

PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

FIRST LECTURE OF THE ST. Louis CATHOLIC LECTURE BUREAU COURSE. "The Light of
the World." By the Rt. Rev. John J. Keane, D.D., Bishop of Richmond, Va.

TREATISE ON PRAYER. By Rev. F. Girardy, C SS.R. New Orleans, La.

SECOND LECTURE OF THE ST. Louis CATHOLIC LECTURE BUREAU COURSE. " Man's Aim in
Society." By the Rev. Thos. O'Gorman, Merriam Park, Minn.

DIGEST OF LAWS GOVERNING THE ISSUE OF MUNICIPAL BONDS. Published by S. Kean & Co.,
Bankers, Chicago. Compiled by C. G. Neely, of the Chicago bar.

THE CITY OF REFUGE ; or, Mary, Help of Christians. London : Burns & Oates ; New York :
The Catholic Publication Society Co.

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT OF ST. IGNATIUS. Translated by a member of the Order of
Mercy, authoress of Life of Catherine McAuley. New York : The Catholic Publication So-
ciety Co. ; London : Burns & Oates.

A DEFENCE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. Being an answer to a recent pamphlet entitled Paul,
the first Protestant. By Rev. William J. Burns, S J. Kingston, Jamaica.

CORNEILLE'S TRAGEDY POLYEUCTUS, THE CHRISTIAN MARTYR. Translated into English
blank-verse by Walter Federan Nokes. Interleaved with the French text. Librairie
Hachette et Cie., London, Paris, Boston.

THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD. A sermon delivered in the Church of St. Dominic's Priory,
Woodchester. By the Rt. Rev. John Cuthbert Hedley, O.S.B., Bishop of Newport and
Menevia. London : Burns & Oates.

WORDS SPOKEN AT THE MONTH'S MIND OF HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY, ARCH-
BISHOP OF NEW YORK. By Most Rev. M. A. Corrigan, D.D., Archbishop-elect. New
York : Benziger Bros.

ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF OUR MOST HOLY LORD LEO XIII., BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE,
CONCERNING THE CHRISTIAN C9NSTITUTION OF STATES. London : J. Donovan, 27 Well-
ington Street, Strand.

SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF ST. MARY'S INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL FOR BOYS OF THE CITY
OF BALTIMORE. Carroll P. O., Baltimore Co., Md. : Printing Department of St. Mary's
Industrial School.

HEAR THE OTHER SIDE. Freedom of worship : the merits, principles, and practicability of the
measure explained and vindicated. New York : Willis McDonald & Co.

TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NEW YORK CATHOLIC PROTECTORY TO THE
LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE AND TO THE COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CITY. Salesroom
and reception office, 415 Broome Street.

The Catholic world

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