Full text of "The Catholic world"

TORONTO.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE,

VOL. XLVI.
OCTOBER, 1887, TO MARCH, 1888.

NEW YORK:

THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
6 RARK

1888.

CONTENTS.

Aiguesmortes Charlotte Dunning . . 12
American Hermit, An William D. Kelly, 258

P.eginnings of Georgetown College, The. J.

Fairfax McLaughlin, .... 610
Hoy from Garryowen, A.. Rev. John Tattot

Smith, 390

Case of Nationalization, A. 6". B. Gorman, 153

Catholic University of Louvain, The./?/.

Rev. John J. Keane, . . . .535

Chat about New Books, A.. Maurice Fran-
cis Egan, . . 125, 263, 411, 531, 702, 832

Coming International Scientific Congress of
Catholics, The. Rev. Augustine F.
Hewit 4 6 9

Darwin's Life and Letters, . . . .756
Demurrer to Henry George's Complaint, A.

Robert J. Mahon, ..... 588
Disturbance of the Social Equilibrium./?*^.

Willibald Hackner, 210

Dolores : A Christmas Story. Agnes Power, 470
Dr. Brownson's Road to the Church. Very

Rev. I, T. Hecker, ,

Dr. Brownson and Catholicity (Conclusion).

Very Rev. I. T. Hecker, . . . 222

Emersonian Creed, The. Maude Petre, . 376
Episcopacy no Bond of Unity. Rev. A ugus-

tine F. Heivit, ...... 721

Fragment of a Forthcoming Work. B. King-

l <y* 298

Free Night-Shelter and Bread in Paris. L,B.

Binsse, i 7S

Galileo Galilei and Dr. McGlynn. Rev. J. U.

Heinzle, S.J., IIO

Growth and Vicissitudes of the Shakspere

Tzxl.Appleton Morgan, ... 68
" Heartless, Headless, and Godless." Rev.

Patrick F. McSweeny, D.D., . . .433
How I Became a Catholic. Rev. A ugustine

F. He-wit, 22

1 n North-eastern Mexico. Charles E. Hodson, 761
Ireland in Parliament : A Retrospect. C. M.

O'KeeJfe 676

John Van Alstyne's Factory. Lewis R. Dor-

sa ^ 44, '88, 334, 513, 653, 815

Latest Fashions in Free th inking. A. F. Mar-
shall, 2I

l.eo XIII. and the Catholic University of

America. Right Rev. John J. Keane, . 145

Leo Kill. Very Rev. I. T. Hecker, . . a 9 t

Leo XIII. and the Philosophy of St. Thomas.

-^Rev. John Gmeiner, . . . .367
Let all the People Sing.-/?,*,. Alfred Young, 32!
Let all the People Praise the Lord. Rev.

Alfred Young, 805

Letters of Thackeray. Agnes Repplier, . 593
Louis Pasteur. George Prospero, . . 619,791

Martyr to Science, A. Richard M. John-
ston,

Metropolitan Museum of Art : Collection of

Cypriote Sculpture, ^5

Metropolitan Museum of Art : Collection of
Cypriote Sculpture. Second Paper. Wm.
H. Goodyear, 4 g^

Modern Cotycrus, A. Jos. W. Wilstach, . 103

Negroes in Mississippi, The. Rev. L. A.

743

Dutto, .
New Publications

577

139, 281, 428, 566, 716, 852
Our Catholic Schools./?^. P. A. Baart, . 603

Parisian Working-Classes, The. B. A rchde-

kan-Cody, . . . . . . 81

Parseeism and Buddhism. Merwin-Marie

Snell, 43I

Race Divisions and the School Question, . 736
Radical Fault of the New Orthodoxy. Rev.

A . F. Hetvit, 353

Roman Universities, The. Right Rev. John

J. Keane, 313

Saltillo. Charles E. Hodson 43 8

Seminary for the Colored Missions, The. Rev.

John R. Slattery, 54!

State and the Land, The, .... 94

State Socialism. Rev. Edward McSweeny, 690

Street-Preaching. Rev. Alfred Young, . 499
Summer in the Carpathians, A. Dorothy

King, 505

Three Hundred Dollars and a Cow. T. F.

Galwey, 236

Two Months in French Canada. Mrs. J.

Sadlier, 694

University of Strassburg, The. Right Rev.

John J. Keane, . ... . . . 643

"What shall be the Treatment of Converted

Polygamists ? " 535

With Readers and Correspondents, 134, 272, 420,

559, 708, 843

Wyntertons of Netherwood, The A. M.

Clarke, , 629, 777

CONTENTS.

POETRY.

At One. Francis Howard Williams, . , 652

At the Gates. John E. McMahon, U.S.A., 803

At Twenty-one. Mary Elizabeth Blake, . 173

Fall of the Leaves, The, 221

From the Encheiridion of Epictetus. M. B. M. 389

Hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Frank

Waters, 609

Heart's Need, The, 689

Land of the Harp, The. Charles Henry

Liiders, 93

Leo XIII. : 1887. K faur ice Francis Egan, . 289
Locked Antlers, The. Charles Henry Lti-

ders, 804

Love is Blind. Rev. Alfred Young, . . 628

Ronain on his Island. Katharine Tynan, . 457
Rule of Life, A. Frank Waters, . . .842

Sonnet from Dante. Louise Imogen Guiney, 31

To Leo XIII. Rev. A If red Young, . . 420

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

After School Days .281

Ancient History, . . . . . . 428

Bible Stories for Children, . . . .716

Bodyke, 716

Capital and Labor, 139

Christian Armed, in Verse, .... 139

Ca Ira 566

Clare Vaughan, 281

Directorium Sacerdotale 428

De Montreal a Washington, . . . .716

Ecclesiastical History of Newfoundland, , 852

Elements of Analytic Geometry, . . . 281

English Reader, 'i'he, ..... 281

Elements of Ecclesiastical Law, . . . 428

Essays, Chiefly in Poetry, .... 716

Fortunes of Words, The, ..... 139

Fifty Years of English Song 566

French Navy Captain, A, .... 716

Handbook of the History of Philosophy, . 428

History of the Christian Church, . . . 852

Holy Angels, The, .852

Hundred Years Ago, A, 716

Is there Salvation after Death ? 281

Irish Scholars of the Penal Days, . . . 281

Illustrated Catholic Family Annual for 1888, 566

Indifferentism. ....... 566

Incarnate Word and Devotion to the Sacred

Heart, 716

Intemperance ; or the Evils of Drink, . . 852

Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi, . 566, 716

Life and Letters of St. Teresa, . . . 852

Life of Jean Gabriel Perboyre, . . . 716

Life of Washington, ...... 566

Liguori Leaflets,

Looking Backward 2000-1887,

Man's Birthright,

Most Holy Rosary, The, ....

Matthew Calbraith Perry,

Memoir of Bishop Willson,

Men and Letters,

Menology of England and Wales, .
Manuale Sacerdotum, Diversis eorum, etc.,
Mr. Absalom Billingslea, ....

New Parks beyond the Harlem,

New Raccolta, The, ....

Our Divine Saviour, and other Discourses, .
Ownership and Natural Right, . . .
Ordo Divini Officii recitandi, Missaeque cele-

brandae, etc.,

Old Folks at Home,

Pour 1'Irlande,

Questiones Mechlinenses in Rubricis, etc., .

Republic of the Future,

Reginald Pole, Cardinal Archbishop of Can-
terbury

Richard Lepsius, . . .

Sermons, Moral and Dogmatic, on the Rosary,
Sermons on the Blessed Eucharist, .
Sermons from the Flemish, for all the Sundays
of the year, -

Thoughts on the Holy Gospels,

Toilers' Tracts,

Treatise of Prayer, A,

852
852

281

852
5^0
852
566
85*

852
139

139
428

566

280
566
*39

566
716

852
852

United States Life-Saving Service,
Wide Awake,

281
281

33?

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLVI. MARCH, 1888. No. 276.

EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY.

THE Catholic episcopate, as an organic body under its su-
preme head, is the great bond of unity. In the present con-
tention episcopacy is taken in the sense which is opposite, on
the one side, to every form of polity which is based on the prin-
ciple of equality ex jure divino in the ministry, and on the
other to that form of polity which is based on the principle of
inequality, ex jure divino, in the episcopal hierarchy.

Episcopacy implies the principles of sacramental grace, the
Christian priesthood, and the transmission of gifts by apostoli-
cal succession. It explicitly affirms in its strictest form that
an order of superior ministers in the hierarchy, by a special
consecration derived from the Apostles, is exclusively empow-
ered to continue the line of apostolical succession, and to teach
and rule the clergy and people of the churches over which they
preside.

The whole theory of the church depends on the relation be-
tween it and the justification of individual souls. Justification
is by faith, as the symbols of the Catholic Church and of the
great Protestant societies agree in affirming, according to the
explicit teaching of the Scriptures. Therefore the question of
faith is involved in that of justification. The just live by
faith. How this life is given, how it may be gained, can only be
understood by first knowing what is faith, and how impart-
ed and received. The question, What is saving faith? I pass

over.

The cardinal doctrines of the genuine Protestant orthodoxy
are : that justification is by a peculiar kind of faith alone, and that
the Bible is the only and sufficient rule of faith to each individual
believer. The church, as the collection of the regenerated
children of God, is, therefore, in the first instance and chiefly,

722 EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. [Mar.,

invisible, purely spiritual, a communion of the justified on earth
similar to that which unites these same souls with the spirits of
the just made perfect in heaven.

Outward and visible church-fellowship is an outcome and
a consequence of the inward and invisible union. Faith must be
professed and manifested in good works, acts of religion, of
charity, and of all the moral virtues. The ostensible and appa-
rent inward righteousness of a number of individuals is a reason
why they should recognize one another, associate together,
have common public worship, participate in the sacraments
which they believe the Lord has instituted as outward signs of
grace, and by united efforts promote the cause of Christ in the
world. As for the ministry, it is not strictly a priesthood or a
hierarchy. Priesthood, in any sense in which it is admitted to
belong to any person except Jesus Christ, is equally in all be-
lievers, who are also, in an analogous sense, all kings. Any
collection of true believers suffices to make a complete visible
church. Suppose it to be granted that the pure word of God
and the sacraments duly administered are such and such, any
society of persons professedly believers and regenerate which
has these has all that is essential, whatever additional arrange-
ments not contrary to their first principles may be made by
voluntary agreement. For the sake of order the ministerial
functions are deputed to fit persons, and hence would naturally
arise a clerical profession, even if it had not existed from
the first, among Protestants, by an imitation of the Catholic
Church.

The Catholic doctrine of the church is the opposite of this.
The visible body is prior to the invisible soul of the church. In
the human being the corporeal element of his composition pre-
cedes the spiritual, the matter is the subject of the form. So
in the church. Christ appoints the Apostles by an external,
visible mission. They preach the truth revealed by the Holy
Spirit, embodied in an audible word. The visible sacrament of
baptism regenerates the docile hearer, implanting the habits of
faith, hope, and charity. The baptized becomes a member of
a visible church, with a visible priesthood, sacrifice, and other
sacraments, under a teaching and ruling hierarchy, the custo-
dian and judge of all that pertains to the doctrine and the law
of Christ. The individual Christian receives faith and grace
through the church, and lives, by communion with her soul in
her body, the life of grace which is imparted from her head,
Jesus Christ, by the life-giving Spirit. The church, in its visible,

1 888.] EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. 723

corporate subsistence, is One and Catholic. It is one flock under
one shepherd. Particular churches, distinct but not separate,
are portions of the universal church, and their bishops are not
only local governors and pastors, but are in their solidarity the
teaching and ruling senate of all Christendom, under their chief
bishop and supreme head on earth, who is the delegate and
representative of the Sovereign Lord in heaven.

The Anglican theory is a Via Media between these two ex-
tremes. On the one hand, it makes the visible church come
first, as the medium and instrument of the Holy Spirit in giving
faith, regeneration, and justification. It recognizes the priest-
hood, sacramental grace, the hierarchy, and authority to teach
and rule. On the other hand, it makes the Catholic Church,
as catholic, invisible. On this theory bishops are equal and
independent. The Catholic Church is an ideal, a type and plan,
according to which particular churches are to be constituted,
each in its own separate, individual organic unity and integrity.
They are alike but not the same. They ought to preserve
union, fellowship, harmony with each other, to profess the same
faith, administer the same sacraments, enforce and keep the
same law. But there is no universal legislative and executive
authority and jurisdiction over them to which each bishop with
his particular church is subject, no polity which unites all in-
to one commonwealth, or even into one confederation. Episco-
pal churches are not like towns and counties in a State, or
provinces in a kingdom, but are all separate and independent
principalities or republics.

On this theory the Christian Church, as a universal term, is
analogous to such terras as The State, The Monarchical State,
The Republican State, taken universally. The unity of the
church consists in the oneness of the type or model of church
organization, and in the common origin of all the churches. Its
catholicity consists in the potential multiplication of churches
duly organized in all times and all parts of the world, which is
made actual, to a considerable extent, by a general diffusion of
Christianity organized in episcopal churches essentially true to
their ideal, throughout the world. Its apostolicity consists in
the continuity of doctrine, polity, etc., and of episcopal succes-
sion in an unbroken series of ordinations from the Apostles. So
long as a particular church conforms to the one catholic, apos-
tolic type in essentials, and preserves its succession, it cannot
lapse into heresy or schism, or cease to be a true church, even
though it should be isolated from communion with other

724 EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. [Mar.,

churches. It acknowledges no head on earth but its own
bishop, who is the immediate Vicar of Christ and holds direct-
ly from him as the only Head over all churches. The schism
of a church is a severance of its union with Jesus Christ, which
is effected only by the loss of its own identity with itself in its
original and normal state, an essential alteration, corruption, and
dissolution of its organic subsistence, analogous to death.

Since, therefore, organic unity, like that of a body or a com-
monwealth, subsists only and completely in a diocese, separation
from outward union and communion with the lawful bishop and
the flock under his pastoral care is the only kind of severance
of external Christian fellowship that is properly the deadly sin
of schism which cuts the individual off from the church and
from Christ. It is schism when an intruding bishop invades the
realm of the lawful bishop, when clergy or people make separate
sects, when altar is set up against altar.

Union and harmony, mutual fellowship and co-operation of
bishops and churches with each other throughout the world, if
they exist, of course produce a moral unity, like that which may
be affirmed to exist in Europe when all its distinct nations are
at peace with each other. This universal intercommunion is
acknowledged to be highly desirable and even obligatory.
Those who are responsible for its interruption, or who culpably
hinder its restoration when it has been impaired or broken, si,n.
against the law of Christ. It is a very great evil to have rival
confederations of bishops and churches arrayed in hostility
against each other, mutually accusing and excommunicating
each other as heretics and schismatics, " all wranglers/' and per-
haps in some respects " all wrong." This is the aspect which
Christendom presents to one who looks at it from the Anglican
point of view.

Now, we have a right to expect that Jesus Christ would
create a bond of organic and moral unity in the church, which
should be in itself sufficient to preserve it in this unity in the
world at large, and until the end of time. Moreover, we have
his own explicit declaration that he has done so. It is our con-
tention that episcopacy is not and cannot be this bond. I do
not contend that such a model of church organization as the
Anglican theory supposes would be metaphysically and physi-
cally impossible. If we suppose churches constituted by the
Apostles over a large extent of the world, and suppose that they
remain unaltered, or all developing alike under a constant law
like oaks and pines, which remain like each other to the end

1 888.] EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. 725

without change, though in distant places ; or like rosebuds, in
separate gardens, which bloom alike we may regard such an or-
der of things as sufficient for the ends of the Christian religion.
This is, however, an ideal scheme. In view of the actual char-
acter and condition of mankind, even in the order of Christian
regeneration, it is practically impossible, except on the hypothesis
of a widely-extended and extraordinary intervention of divine
power in the government of human affairs, different from the
actual and general method of the providence of God. There-
fore I contend that the accomplishment of the end of the church
would be morally impossible on the supposition of the theory of
the Via Media.

Let us consider the end of the church in relation to the Faith,
to the Formation of Christendom, and to the Conversion of
Heathendom.

The advantage gained by having the church as the keeper,
witness, teacher, and judge of all that God has revealed in mat-
ters of faith and morals, instead of having Scripture alone, pri-
vately investigated and interpreted, as the Rule of Faith, is this :
Such a church, fully authenticated and endowed by God, being
once found, the individual has a certain and easy way of obtain-
ing complete instruction in all things needful and useful for justi-
fication, sanctification, and salvation ; and he has access to all
the means of grace. If each separate episcopal church has all
the endowments necessary to the fulfilment of this office, so that
the ideal catholic church is truly individuated in a multitude of
particular churches, it is necessary that each church should pos-
sess within itself the principle of its own integral, continuous,
and immutable life. It is a body, not a member of a body. It
is a principality, not a province in a kingdom. Within its own
limits it is sole and supreme possessor, with inalienable and per-
fectly independent sovereign rights.

Now, in the first place, these numerous episcopal principali-
ties could not have been founded and established, each having
the right of domain within its own territory, without the inter-
vention of a universal power, superior to mere episcopacy. In
fact, the Apostles possessed and exercised a universal jurisdiction,
and under the government of the apostolic college, having St.
Peter as its prince, all episcopal sees were parts of one universal
whole, which was the One, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Epis-
copacy supposes a radical and complete change in the ecclesias-
tical polity, when the Apostolic Church, according to a sort of
nebular hypothesis, was resolved into a number of little episco-

726 EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. [Mar.,

pal churches, not having any common centre of revolution, but
each turning on its own axis and moving on a straight line
through space.

Episcopacy, as a polity, is a kind of Congregationalism, the
diocese being substituted for the assembly of believers gathered
in one place of meeting. The diocese may be no more than a
small parish embracing a village or a district within narrow
bounds, with a population of a few hundreds. Or it may be a
large city or district with a million of inhabitants. Size and
number are accidents; what is essential is the division of the
territory within which churches are established by geographi-
cal limits, which protect and bound the supreme and exclusive
jurisdiction of each bishop over the clergy and faithful of his dio-
cese. Episcopacy furnishes no clear and binding rule and law
for fixing these limits, dividing dioceses, or founding new ones.
There is no common and superior authority, and therefore no
method of peaceable adjustment, except that of mutual agree-
ment.

Again, there is no adequate provision for settling differences
between the bishop and his clergy and people, for determining
contested elections to the episcopate, or for exercising any
acts of discipline which may be deemed necessary over a delin-
quent bishop. He has no superior, and is irresponsible, unless
he is made subject to some sort of diocesan synod, which is con-
trary to the genius of episcopal regimen.

When the see becomes vacant it cannot be filled unless a new
bishop be consecrated by other bishops. These bishops, in or-
der to fulfil their office worthily, must judge of the lawful elec-
tion and of the fitness of the candidate. But this introduces an
authority and jurisdiction within a diocese which is exterior to
it, and is incompatible with the independent, integral autonomy
of a church perfect in its own separate, organic unity.

In respect to the office of teaching and feeding the flock, giv-
ing to each one that salutary doctrine and ^ule of life, and those
life-giving sacraments, which are the means of justification and
salvation, episcopacy furnishes no sufficient guarantee for its
faithful fulfilment. The individual believer must be joined to
the communion of his true and lawful bishop. He must partici-
pate in the sacrifice and sacraments offered and administered
duly under his authority. He must receive from him the faith
and law of Christ, feed in his pasture, repose in his fold, and fol-
low him in the way which he walks in as the guide to eternal
life. If all bishops and churches agree and remain in harmony

1 888.] EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. 727

and mutual communion with each other, all is well, and there
is a perfect security. He knows his lawful pastor, and knows
that he will lead him in the way which the Apostles and all the
saints of old have trod. For there is no rival claimant, no dis-
sension about the right way to the celestial city. Universal con-
sent is a proof that the tradition of the Apostles has been pre-
served undefiled, and is a note of truth. But episcopacy fur-
nishes no criterion for determination when rival bishops and
churches claim allegiance, when dissensions arise and it is doubt-
ful where allegiance is due. An individual must then fall back
on private judgment, must interpret Scripture and tradition for
himself, and judge the cause between opposing churches.

It would be necessary that all or the generality of the epis-
copal churches should be indefectible in the faith and in essen-
tial discipline, in order that each one should be a secure and
trustworthy teacher and medium of grace ; that essential unity
should be preserved in the churches, and moral unity or harmo-
nious union should exist among them and be continued.

The Formation of Christendom, according to this theory, also
presupposes the indefectibility and consequent moral unity of
the collective episcopate, together with the docility and fidelity
of the clergy and faithful under their government. Supposing
the bishops everywhere to be like James and John and Paul, the
clergy like Timothy, Titus, Clement, the faithful like the first
true disciples of Christ and the Apostles in a word, that the na-
tions outwardly converted to Christianity have become commu-
nities of saints the formation of a Christendom on the principles
of the Gospel becomes a very easy work. The law of love su-
persedes the need of external authority and law to a very great
extent.

Such a Christendom, the Christian ideal realized in an actual
brotherhood of holy nations, might spread through the world
until it embraced all mankind, by a spontaneous and harmonious
concurrence of all Christians in missionary efforts for the con-
version of the world.

It is perfectly obvious that all this is as purely ideal and vision-
ary as the Republic of Plato or the Utopia of Sir Thomas More.
In the real world, and in the actual Christendom, such a
loose, disjointed episcopacy as that which Anglican theorists
have dreamed of is just as inefficient and impracticable as the
most extreme Congregationalism, or as Quakerism in social and
political constitutions. As well send a vast number of soldiers
organized only in regiments under independent colonels, or nu-

728 EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. [Mar.

merous fleets of war-ships, each one commanded by an inde-
pendent captain, to carry on warfare against powerful enemies,
to conquer strongholds and gain possession of new domains, as
endeavor to subdue mankind to the dominion of Christ and es-
tablish his universal kingdom through the whole world, without
a church constituted under a consolidating polity, apostolic and
catholic in its strict, integral, organic unity.

In fact, the sects which have departed from the centre of
Catholic unity, even those which are Presbyterian or Congre-
gational, with but few, insignificant exceptions, have organized
themselves into societies of greater or lesser extent, embracing
many dioceses or parishes.

Ecclesiastical history shows us that in the earliest ages there
were provinces, exarchates, patriarchates, provincial and plenary
councils, and, from the fourth century down, oecumenical coun-
cils. Metropolitans, primates, patriarchs, with greater or less
jurisdiction over their suffragans, are found existing everywhere
from time immemorial. Even those who deny the jure divino
supremacy of the Roman pontiff acknowledge some sort of uni-
versal primacy whose origin goes far back of the reign of Con-
stantine.

Now, on the theory that the divine constitution of the church
stops short at the episcopate and the organization of separate,
independent episcopal churches, it is evident that by common
consent this polity was found to be inadequate. It was neces-
sary to establish .new societies or confederations on a larger
scale, to constitute a universal church embracing greater and
lesser divisions, in which dioceses were the component parts
and were subject to ecclesiastical laws and a superior execu-
tive power. So far as unity was actually preserved during
the first ten centuries, it is evident that episcopacy, in the sense
of the Anglican theory, was not and could not have been the
bond of unity. There was a higher law, the authority of the
universal, consolidated episcopate, under its supreme head, the
authority of the Holy, Apostolic See of Peter, and of councils
approved and sanctioned by the Pope, which preserved catholic
faith and discipline. The chief heresiarchs, rebels, and disorgan-
izers were bishops who resisted this authority and fell back on
their pretended episcopal rights. They were the authors or
abettors of schisms and heresies, which their successors disown
and condemn. The progenitors of our modern Greeks and
Anglicans were Novatians, Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites,
Donatists, and Photians.

i888.] EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. 729

All these ancient and modern sectaries have resisted and
defied catholic authority, oecumenical councils, and the Holy
See. But they have never consistently professed and acted
upon the theory of episcopal particularism and independence.
" The Church of England " is regarded and spoken of as if it had
a moral personality, with attributes and qualities such as we
justly ascribe to our holy and august Mother, the Catholic
Church. So of other societies, constituted on the episcopal
model, whether they really possess valid orders by succession
from the Apostles or not. What is the " Church of England,"
on the theory we are considering? Only an association of dio-
ceses, held together in an external union by the power of the
crown and parliament. What is the " Protestant Episcopal
Church in the United States," which a certain party is trying to
persuade, so far in vain, to adopt the title of "The Catholic
Church in America " ? It is merely a confederation of dioceses
held together by voluntary agreement, under the common au-
thority of a General Convention, composed of two parts like the
English Parliament, a House of Bishops and a House of cleri-
cal and lay delegates, who are the representatives of the dio-
ceses.

None of the sects pretending to be founded on episcopacy
have ever paid the slightest regard to the sacred and exclusive
rights of diocesan bishops. They invade without any scruple
the territory where legitimate bishops are already ruling, if
these bishops are not in their communion. The absurd cry of
" intrusion " is raised against Catholic bishops who establish
sees on ground which Protestant bishops claim to possess by
prior occupation. The rights of the Bishop of London must
be, forsooth, held sacred, not only over the town where he has
his see, but over the former English colonies which the crown
placed under his jurisdiction. But in the case of Quebec
and New Orleans, or even the ancient patriarchal see of Jerusa-
lem, the governing authorities of Protestant Episcopacy have no
such tender regard for prior and canonical rights.

The Anglican theory of the Via Media is a mere theory, a sys-
tem on paper of a certain school of divines, devised to meet a
difficulty, and to serve as a defence against Rome on one side
and Geneva on the other. John Henry Newman made the most
of it, and tested the capability of the Church of England to receive
and act upon it. It may be regarded as practically exploded.
Some of the best scholars in the Church of England e.g.. Dr.
Lightfoot give up episcopacy as a divine institution, and there

73O EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. [Mar.,

are others who are among the ablest defenders of its apostolic
origin, as Palmer, Bishop Henry Onderdonk, etc., who concede
that it is not essential to the being but only to the well-being of
churches. The various ecclesiastical confederations in the Brit-
ish Empire and in the United States, which are in mutual com-
munion under an episcopate deriving its succession from Queen
Elizabeth's bishops, do not stand, as churches, upon a basis which,
according to any form of the theory of the Via Media, can be
called Catholicism. The common Low-Church Protestantism is
just as orthodox, according to whatever standard of doctrine
they may be supposed to have, as the so-called Anglicanism.
Rationalism, of the extreme type of Stanley, Newton, and even
Freemantle, is tolerated. A kind of Catholicism, as we may call it
by courtesy, is also tolerated to a certain extent, and has spread
to a considerable degree among the clergy and laity. It seems
chiefly to be characterized by high doctrines concerning the
priesthood, the sacraments, the counsels of perfection, and some
other cognate matters, and by great devotion to ritual observ-
ances and decorations. There have been, also, some very zeal-
ous and self-denying efforts to labor among the poorest and
most neglected classes of the people. All this is preparing the
way for the Catholic Church by removing obstacles which Prot-
estantism has heaped up, and by predisposing a great number
toward a very considerable part of the doctrinal and practical
system of the Catholic religion.

As to the church itself, and the idea of its constitution as one,
catholic, and apostolic, I do not think that the old Anglican
theory of the Via Media is the one which prevails among those
who call themselves Catholic. I never held that theory myself.
I was surprised and rather shocked when I heard it boldly enun-
ciated by Bishop Whittingham, and I was unwillingly obliged to
admit the truth of what my father said about it, that it was mere
Congregationalism. What I did hold, when I called myself a
Catholic but not Roman, was the idea of one, universal Christiaji
commonwealth, under the government of the whole episcopate,
which, being assembled, was an oecumenical council in session,
and at all other times an oecumenical council dispersed, and gov-
erning collectively in lesser councils, or singly in each diocese,
but always in dependence, of lesser parts upon greater, and at
last upon one universal and organic whole.

This is certainly the doctrine of the separated Greeks, so far
as they have any, and I think it is prevalent among those who
call themselves Angflo-Catholics.

i888.] EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. 731

It is evident that such an organization is imperfect, and
could not work after the number of bishops was increased and
they were scattered through a large part of the world. (Ecu-
menical councils could meet but seldom, and, when assembled,
the diffused episcopate could only, in a great measure, be repre-
sented by bishops who were formally or tacitly recognized as
delegates. It is necessary, therefore, to acknowledge a power
residing in the church at large to perfect its episcopal regimen,
by confiding legislative and executive authority to a smaller
number, who, not by divine but ecclesiastical right, as metro-
politans, primates, patriarchs, are centres of unity within the les-
ser and greater circles of the ecclesiastical system, and by con-
fiding a universal primacy to one chief bishop, who is the com-
mon centre of unity and the administrative head of the entire
catholic church.

But even on this supposition, of an episcopate composed of
bishops who are all, jure divino, equal, and who have perfected
and supplemented their organization by an unequal hierarchy,
jure ecclesiastico, episcopacy is no sufficient bond of unity. The
keystone of the arch is too weak to support the structure.
Such an ecclesiastical constitution affords no sufficient guaran-
tee for the protection of the established order in the hierarchy
against the ambition of powerful prelates. Still less against the
encroachments and tyranny of kings and other civil powers. It
is not strong enough to keep the church from breaking up into
separate fragments, or from being devastated by schisms and
heresies.

Taking the standpoint of what we have agreed to call by
courtesy Catholicism, without any jure divino papal supremacy,
what spectacle does Christendom present, regarding only those
divisions which have an episcopal hierarchy which really or os-
tensibly is derived from the apostles! There are some twenty
distinct aggregations of bishops, many of which hold no com-
munion with each other. In the East, there are several minor
sects which are condemned as heretical by all the so-called or-
thodox Orientals. Of the orthodox there are several consider-
able bodies, really separated from each other, but preserving a
mutual communion, and having none with any other portion of
Christendom. In the West there are the Lutheran Episcopal
churches of Scandinavia, the Moravians, several Protestant
Episcopal bodies deriving from the Church of England, the lit-
tle Jansenist Church in Holland, the little OM Catholic Church,
and the great Roman Catholic Church, which extends its ramifi-
cations through all parts of the world.

732 EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. [Mar.,

We may neglect the minor divisions and take into view
what our Anglican friends call the three great branches of the
Catholic Church, viz., the Roman, the Greek, and the Anglican.
Their mutual estrangement and hostility is surely a sad spec-
tacle, implies great wrong somewhere, and is most injurious
to the interests of Christianity. It is a great obstacle to faith
in a multitude of individual cases. It is a great hindrance to
the due influence of Christianity in carrying on the work of
the formation of Christendom, and, where that is necessary, its
reformation. It has been and is a most serious impediment to
the missionary work for the conversion of the vast masses of
mankind who are not Christians. The evil is very much en-
hanced and intensified by the existence of so many other sects,
and the separation of such a multitude of nominal Christians,
whose position in the world, influence, and character give them
a great importance, from any one of these branches.

The one remedy for the great evils flowing from divisions
in Christendom is in a comprehensive unification, which shall
bring all nominal Christians to union and harmony, in faith, in
love, in fellowship, and common co-operation for promoting the
universal reign of Christ and obedience to his law on the earth.

The bond which holds the estranged portions of the church
in essential unity is supposed to be episcopacy arid what is in-
volved in it. Those who have broken away from this bond can
only return to essential unity by returning to the episcopal
communion. It is by means of the essential unity that union
and communion must be restored in the universal episcopate
and in the general body of the church. It is natural, therefore,
to look to the Protestant bishops for the unifying influence
which 'shall bring all Protestants together, as a preliminary for
a general reconciliation with the Greek and with the Roman
Church. I do not see any likelihood that any such event will
take place.

It is by episcopacy also that the general reunion must be
brought about. That is, the whole body of the bishops must
mutually agree, the Pope concurring or else set aside altogether,
in a definitive settlement of their differences and a plan of
ecclesiastical reorganization. Can any reasonable man expect
that this will really be done ? Is there any probability that the
Greek Church will ever recognize the Church of England as a
constituent part of the Catholic Church?

As for the Roman Church and the thousand bishops who
own her sway, love for the lapsed churches of the ancient pa-

1 888.] EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. 733

triarchates, for the scattered sheep of Christ everywhere, and
for all the souls whom he has redeemed, will forbid any com-
promise in the faith, or cession of inalienable rights and powers,
which are a sacred trust from the Lord to St. Peter and his
successors.

No human device will ever remedy the evils which have
been produced by schism and heresy. There can never be one
flock and one fold, except under one Shepherd, and he one not
receiving- his office from the flock, but appointed in perpetuity
by the Prince of Pastors himself.

Let us go back now to our starting-point. The primary
question is between the principle that each one is individually
justified by an immediate action of God upon his soul which is
received by faith, and the principle that this is done according
to a general law through a medium, the ordinary and appointed
medium being the Catholic Church. Close upon this is the
question between the principle that Scripture alone is the rule of
faith to each believer in his private capacity, and the principle
that the church is the Teacher from whom the private believer
is to receive the faith. My contention has been that a theory
of the visible, catholic church which makes episcopacy the bond
of its unity is inadequate, and does not sufficiently qualify it
as a medium of grace and a teacher of the faith. Faith is the
root of justification and of all religion, both in respect to doc-
trine and life. The question is therefore radically solved and
settled when the relation of the church to Faith is determined.

The chief and most necessary want is that of a teacher and
rule of faith which is fitted to give, by an easy, certain, and
universal method, complete knowledge of that which God has
revealed as doctrine and precept, so far as this is practically
important for securing everlasting salvation.

The Protestant rule is defective in this respect. The cri-
terion is in the individual. Mystical Protestantism makes the
criterion to be the mind enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Ra-
tionalistic Protestantism makes the natural intellect and reason
the criterion. In either case the individual must be a theolo-
gian or a philosopher for himself, or else he must by accident
or choice become the disciple of some one among many differ-
ing teachers, all confessedly liable to err.

The Via Media professes to remedy this confusion by propos-
ing, in general terms which are apparently a description of the
Catholic rule and criterion, the teaching authority of the
church. But, in fact, this church on close inspection vanishes

734 EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. [Mar.,

into the invisible, and the criterion resolves itself into the one
tor which it professes to be a substitute. There is no concrete,
definite, unquestionable ecclesia docens, endowed with infalli-
bility. Ecclesiastical teaching must be compared with Scrip-
ture and with the records of Tradition. What is worse, there
are different churches which contradict each other.

Anglicanism is not Catholic but Protestant. Just as in phi-
losophy and science objective truth is a domain which, as it
were, lies off in the distance, to be explored and mapped out by
curious and adventurous travellers, so the truths of revelation, on
this theory, stand apart in certain documents, the Sacred Scrip-
tures, or Scripture and Tradition. They are outside of and above
the church. One who has to study the Fathers and Christian
antiquity, as well as the Bible, and make a personal criterion for
himself by which to judge the Roman Church, the Greek, the
Anglican, and the great Protestant denominations, has a harder
task than the one who has only to study the Bible.

I will not deny that a great deal of certain and valuable
knowledge may be gained from Scripture and the Fathers by
those who can study them. But this study will not produce
universal agreement even among the learned and sincere. It is,
moreover, not possible for the mass of mankind.

The only way which can lead all alike, scholars and the un-
learned, adults and children, easily, certainly, and completely to
a knowledge even of those truths of religion which can be discov-
ered and proved by reason, is by divine revelation through liv-
ing, human instruments, who teach others what they have been
taught by God. Much more, the mysteries of the Faith must be
taught by a divine revelation which is embodied in a sure me-
dium.

It is the Catholic doctrine that the Christian reVelation has
been confided to. the church, a visible, universal, perpetual Ec-
clesia Docens, which is indefectible and infallible. It has four
marks by which it is easily distinguished from all pretended,
merely human churches: it is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apos-
tolic. Its bond of unity is the supreme authority which was
committed to St. Peter by Jesus Christ, to be transmitted to his
successors. This bond, running through the Catholic episcopate,
makes it one and indivisible, as the apostolic college was one un-
der St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. This bond alone pre-
served the Catholic Church from the apostolic age, through the
early and middle centuries, from being shattered into fragments
by schisms and heresies. If it were now broken the Catholic

i888.] EPISCOPACY NO BOND OF UNITY. 735

Church would soon be rent asunder by divisions and resolved
into separate sects. By virtue of this principle of unity each
single bishop and every priest is the mouthpiece of the whole
Catholic Church and a minister of grace to the faithful of his
flock. A child can learn from his mother all that the church
teaches of the way of salvation which he needs to know. Those
who are brought up within the church have not to seek for a re-
ligion ; they have it from the beginning. Those who are with-
out have only to seek for the true church, and, when found, re-
ceive its teaching with docile faith. Catholics have a certain
and complete religion. We know the genuine and integral
Christianity. We have no need to go about to restore unity
and reconstruct the church.

All others who bear the Christian name are ever on the
search for a Christianity which will satisfy them and quiet their
anxious, doubting minds and restless hearts. Those who lament
the. divisions of Christendom are seeking to bring about a unity
which shall be more comprehensive than the true Catholic unity
which has never ceased to exist in the true church. Undoubt-
edly the Catholic Church suffers from the separation of so many
millions of baptized Christians from her communion, and desires
their return. If they will not do so their divisions and dissen-
sions must continue and increase, with a general tendency down-
wards toward the abyss of unbelief. Are there any credulous
enough to believe that the Greek Church or the Anglican
Church, the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Methodist Church,
will ever absorb all Christendom, or that an Eclectic Church will
ever be formed by a compromise between all these and the
Catholic Church? There may be a few such. There may be,
also, some who forecast a coalescing of Christianity, Moham-
medanism, Buddhism, and, in general, all religions into a new
world-religion. But those who believe that Jesus Christ is
God, and believe firmly and only in his word, have no reason to
await any gathering of all mankind into religious unity and fel-
lowship, except by their gathering together in the communion of
that church which Jesus Christ has built upon the Rock of
Peter. THOU ART PETER, AND UPON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD
MY CHURCH.

AUGUSTINE F. HEWIT.

736 RACE DIVISIONS AND THE SCHOOL QUESTION. [Mar.,

RACE DIVISIONS AND THE SCHOOL QUESTION.

HON. GEORGE F. HOAR recently contributed to the Boston
Journal an article opening as follows :

" The population of Massachusetts to-day undoubtedly exceeds 2,000,000.
The State census of 1885 shows 1,942,141. Of these 526,867 were of foreign
birth, 244,629 having been born in Ireland ; 919,869 were the children of
parents both of whom are foreign; 1,039,610 had one foreign parent I
47,030 were of unknown parentage ; 556,952 persons had mothers born in
Ireland and 556,835 had fathers born in Ireland; 147,352 persons were born
in British America ; 196,991 had fathers, and 205,766 had mothers, born
there. There must also now be a very large though unascertained num-
ber of children whose parents, although born here, have retained to a very
great extent the opinions, domestic habits, and personal characteristics
that their parents brought from abroad, and are almost as much foreigners
as were those parents thirty or forty years ago. In sixty-eight of our
large towns and cities the classes of persons we have described are a
majority of the population. An eloquent and justly-esteemed clergyman,
in a public speech at Philadelphia the other day, is said to have boasted
that Boston was no longer the Boston of the Winthrops and Adamses, but
had become the Boston of the Collinses and O'Briens."

Many years ago Dr. Allen, of Lowell,* gave to the Massa-
chusetts public an unwilling audience the statistical studies
which have at last compelled such men as Mr. Hoar to seek for
a modus vivendi for the old and the new populations of that State.
Dr. Allen showed in his pamphlets that the divorces were all on
one side, and pretty nearly all the children on the other. Dr.
Allen's was the hand that wrote the writing on the wail, and now
comes the soothsayer to interpret it, and we fear that he is not a
Daniel. Dr. Storer, now of Newport, R. I., formerly of Boston,
read the fateful words aright in his Criminal Statistics, published
shortly after Dr. Allen's pamphlet, and we recommend to Mr.
Hoar and to all students of the social problems in New England
the writings of these two physicians as indispensable aids to
forming a judgment. The most potent factor in the settlement
of both the school question and the race question is not anything
suggested by Mr. Hoar. It is the resistless stream of tendency
first revealed to the public by these distinguished non-Catholic
medical men, Drs. Allen and Storer, and since then shown by

* Changes in New England Population. By Nathan Allen, M.D. Lowell : Stone, Huse
&Co. 1877. The New England Family. By Nathan Allen, M.D. New Haven : Tuttle,
Morehouse & Taylor. 1882. Physical Degeneracy. By Nathan Allen, M.D. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. 1870.

i888.] RACE DIVISIONS AND THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 737

both the State and national census to be sweeping forward
to the inevitable substitution of one race for the other in the
commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Now, there are two classes in non-Catholic Massachusetts who
are studying these alarming lessons of vital statistics fanatics
who wish to decatholicize the Celt, and level-headed politicians
like Mr. Hoar who want to make him and his children thorough-
ly American. As to the first class their position is peculiar.
When the Celt first set foot in Massachusetts the commonwealth
had a religion, and, such as it was, made haste to offer it to him.
But the offer was received with such disdain, or so totally
ignored, that proselytism was changed into persecution petty
persecution in private, and mobs and convent-smelling commit-
tees in public. But neither old Patrick nor old Bridget would so
much as stop on the way to Mass to answer the doleful wooing
of the orthodox or Unitarian Puritan. Then, and ever since
then, the main purpose has been to get the Catholic children, and
chiefly by means of the public schools. This attempt has failed.
Young Patrick and young Bridget, though looking and really
feeling like young Yankees, are Catholics. The young genera-
tion dresses in Yankee style, sits on the same bench at school
with Yankee children, works in the Yankee millionaire's big
factory, has no brogue but the Yankee twang, and yet will have
nothing to do with the Yankee meeting-house not a whit more
than the old folks would. They would have been better Ca-
tholics if they could have had Catholic schooling; but as it was
not their fault, God has found ways to help them, and they
are Catholics. To borrow a comparison from geology, the reli-
gious formation of the State is that of a recent stratum totally
distinct from the old one, and everywhere piercing through it
without mingling with it in the least.

Both the deacon and the schoolmarm undertook to deca-
tholicize the Celt of New England, and both have failed. Se-
cular schools have injured religion, lowered its tone, weakened
its fervor, but they have not wounded it fatally. Catholics love
their religion more than non-Catholics have any conception of,
and this is true in a special manner of the Celt. The depth of
his convictions and the vigor of his Catholic sentiment is little
understood by outsiders. The Teuton, indeed, makes an ex-
cellent Catholic, and has some good qualities which his Irish
brother lacks. But for the high-spirited, aggressive religious
character the people under discussion in Mr. Hoar's paper are
hardly equalled anywhere. So the malignant pest of unreligion,

VOL. XLVL 47

738 RACE DIVISIONS AND THE SCHOOL QUESTION. [Mar.,

sought to be made contagious through the public schools, has
failed to penetrate to the vitals of our Catholic life. And mean-
time we are making great progress in getting our children into
schools strictly religious and Catholic. The fanatics have failed.

But Mr. Hoar is not a fanatic and does not wish to meddle
with the Catholic religion. What he is anxious for is the ming-
ling of the races in such wise and under such influences as shall
produce a type of character worthy of American institutions.
He says, in effect : I, as a public man, must adjust my career to
the providential lines of my State. Now, I see clearly from sta-
tistics and from personal observation that the Catholic Celtic
population is coming into control of Massachusetts. Therefore,
as a statesman, that population must be the field of my endeavor ;
I must wi^the Celts, if not for my political party, at least for
the State and for its peculiar civilization. This appears to be
Mr. Hoar's mind as revealed by the article we are considering,
and it is certainly praiseworthy.

He trusts to education, to the public schools, for the best
part of the work done. "Above all," he says, "*we should make
them [the Celts] see that our common schools can never be a
menace to their religious faith ; we should strain all our re-
sources, then, to the utmost, that the education to be got there
should be better than any other, and keep them open to all
the children of the State and free from partisan and sectarian
control."

But let us ask Mr. Hoar why religious schools will not assist
in making good citizens as well as non-religious ones? Why
does he not say, Let all schools in the State, public and private,
religious and non-religious, endeavor, etc. ? Is it because he
distrusts Catholic schools ? If so, then he ought to say so. Any
man in his station who thinks an educational system which is
surely getting control of vast numbers of the citizens' children is
injurious to public welfare, is bound in conscience to denounce
it. We complain of Mr. Hoar that he argues his case before
the issue is made up. If he and men of his mind think sound
Catholic training is detrimental to American citizenship let them
say so. We say frankly, nay, the official organ of the whole Ca-
tholic Church among us, the Baltimore Council, says frankly, that
the Massachusetts public schools are detrimental to the Chris-
tian religion, and inimical in the long run to the Christian com-
monwealth. Here is our side fairly stated, and it has always
been so ; has he as fairly stated his side ? Has he not got before
the court, which is in this case the general public, without hav-

i888.] RACE DIVISIONS AND THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 739

ing made up tire issue? But if he does not think that training in
a Catholic school is calculated to de-Americanize the children,
then let him withdraw his plea in favor of the public schools as
a necessary part of the process of citizen-making. Or, if he
thinks Catholic schools may be made innocuous by some measure
of State supervision, Catholics are open to fair proposals of com-
promise. It strikes us that his statistics should stimulate Mr.
Hoar's activity in that direction ; for the process of bringing
Celtic children into the world and placing them in Catholic
schools goes right on in Massachusetts, and in such wise as to
settle matters in a way likely to be very unpleasant to the foes
of Christian education.

Is it a fact that purely Catholic schools are anti- American in
tendency? Yes, if to be anti-pubiic-school be anti-American.
Otherwise, No! Can Mr. Hoar or any one else give a particle
of proof that American Catholic schooling breeds monarchists,
or anarchists, or free-lovers, or bribe-takers? No! These
schools are filled by the children of the average Catholic citizen,
to whom they give a fair secular training, an intelligent know-
ledge of Catholic doctrine, a start in a religious habit of life ;
thence at an early age they pass into the work-shop, the factory,
the harvest-field, the store. What we have to fear among the
children of both Catholics and non-Catholics is not so much the
bad citizenship which runs off into destructive social theories,
for that is learned abroad. But we have to fear that bad citi-
zenship which takes to drunkenness, shiftlessness, bribe-taking,
and bribe-giving, and that form of civic sloth called abstention
from the polls. If Mr. Hoar considers an unreligious school a
better antidote for these civil maladies than a religious one, we
disagree with him ; but let him reveal his mind frankly.

But it appears from Mr. Hoar's own testimony that his Celtic
fellow-citizens are already good Americans. We quote again
from his article in the Boston Journal:

" They are satisfied in the main with our institutions and form of gov-
ernment. They take an eager interest in public affairs. They have a pas-
sion for owning and holding land. They have great domestic virtues.
The family tie with them is strong. It will be hard to find in history a
parallel to the generosity exhibited by our Irish immigrants to the kindrec
they left behind them. They have admirable soldierly qualities. They have
the religious feeling in great strength. They have the capacity for rapic
vancement, as any person who will compare the inmates of his househok
or the workmen in shop or field from that race to-day with those of thirty
years ago will agree. They are easily stirred by generous emoti
the great day of our trial they furnished some of our noblest example

740 RACE DIVISIONS AND THE SCHOOL QUESTION. [Mar.,

courage, patriotism, and devotion. They will compare very favorably with
most other nations for industry and thrift."

And it might be further urged, if the public schools are nec-
essary to qualify for American citizenship, what about natural-
ized citizens? In truth, what makes the foreigner a good Ameri-
can citizen is what makes any man such that he is an honest
man and no crank. The good man and the good citizen are not
far apart. In a multitude of cases a foreigner is helped in his
appreciation of our institutions by his knowledge of the institu-
tions of Europe.

The following account of a Thanksgiving sermon in Brook-
lyn is much to the point :

" The Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott, Mr. Beecher's old associate, preached
the sermon, and was frequently interrupted by applause. His subject was
' Elements of Hopefulness in the National Condition,' and he compared
this country to the fire, fed by some unseen influence and burning in spite
of the devil, which Bunyan's Pilgrim saw. He took his auditors with Pil-
grim behind the partition, and showed them the secret forces at work
building up ,the financial and moral qualities of the American nation.
After discussing the Anglo-Saxon race Dr. Abbott turned his attention to
the question of immigration, and declared that this country is getting a
selected population from abroad. He said : ' In spite of the folly of Con-
gress in stationing a marshal at the Custom-House, who forbids even min-
isters who have a fair salary in view to enter our port, we are receiving a
picked class of people. Men cry out that the seven Chicago Anarchists
were foreigners, but they forget that the noble policemen, with their seven
dead and sixty wounded lying about them, were Irishmen. [Applause.]
Because a man is born here is no proof that lie will be an American citi-
zen. The man who from his poverty in Europe sees the flag of America,
and longs to educate his children under it, is a true American. The Irish-
man who wants to be an American is more of an American than the
American who wants to be an Englishman.' [Laughter and applause.]"

Dr. Abbott is right. Honest men are easily made honest
Americans, for the truths underlying our civil polity are self-
evident. Schools help, especially religious ones; for all truth
sooner or later looks to a religious-minded people to be safe-
guarded. But what mainly helps is private virtue, deep per-
sonal conviction, manly courage, in the individual citizen. If
Mr. Hoar thinks " unsectarian " schools better capable of form-
ing such character than religious ones, he is wrong; but what
we mostly complain of is that he does not come out with it
plainly.

But we must express our opinion that there are many Pro-
testants in Massachusetts who will fight hard against the State
schools being such as Mr. Hoar thinks Catholics can perma-

i888.] RACE DIVISIONS AND TtiE SCHOOL QUESTION. 741

nently use. A non-sectarian school, as he understands it, is a
menace and must always be a menace to religion, whether Cath-
olic or non-Catholic. The school forms the man as well as home
does, as well as the church does. Meantime the schools of the
State are still largely under control of the enemies of the Catho-
lic faith. Mr. Hoar may hope much from school influence, but
the present school cannot be a focus for us and the outright
antagonists of the Catholic idea at the same time: he cannot
hope for that. *

The main element in the make-up of a school is not the
school-system, or the school-book, or the school-house, but the
school-teacher. Let system, book, and house be what the law
made them, and be the most innocuous conceivable ; what
teaches best is the teacher. The teacher is the concrete educa-
tional influence/embodying theories, systems, methods in a single
living force ; working by example, by moral tendencies, by ener-
getic presence, by indirect influences, by collateral duties, by
impalpable (but not unplanned) vital relation, often merging the
personalities of the children in his or her own.* Mr. Hoar and
educators of the ultra-secularist type are aware of this, and hope
to use it as a factor in bringing about a change in the Celtic race
among them. But is this a secret of their own? Do not Catho-
lics know it also? Is there any other reason than this same one
why we are hurrying forward our parish schools to the point at
which we can say that all the children of the church are, in their
school life, under the personal influence of teachers of guaran-
teed Catholicity ?

We say further that the school that he proposes is purely
unreligious, which is what he means by unsectarian. Now,
the Catholics are simply certain to have schools that are in some
true sense not only religious but Catholic. If Mr. Hoar can
bring about an accommodation by which such schools may also
be State schools, he will succeed, in all probability, in securing
not only the good will of Catholics, but also a large influence of
a strictly American character infused into the education of
Catholic children. If, for example, the Poughkeepsie plan, or
something similar, were adopted in Massachusetts, the State
would be safeguarded against the diversion of public money to
sectarian purposes, and the Catholic people be content to use
the public schools. His suggestion, as it now lies before the
public, will but accelerate the building and filling up of Catho-
lic schools entirely under the guidance of the church. There
must be a square issue or a genuine compromise. Mr. Hoar

* See Newman, Idea of a University, London, Pickering, 1873, P- 3-

742 RACE DIVISIONS AND THE SCHOOL QUESTION. [Mar.,

shirks the issue and will not propose a compromise. But the
processes pointed out by Drs. Allen and Storer still go on, and
in no long time must bring Mr. Hoar and the non-Catholics of
Massachusetts to a frame of mind more in accordance with
actual facts. The American people will see finally, if not at
once, that the State, in deciding for or against religion in the
schools, has interfered with rights of conscience. In doing this
the State has interfered in a matter essentially religious. The
division of men's minds proves this, for there is no manner of
doubt that infidels trust to the unreligious schools of the present
State system for the destruction of religion, and all Catholics
trust to religious schools for the religious character of the com-
ing generation.

Either the Catholic children will be trained in schools purely
Catholic, owned and conducted by the church as a private cor-
poration, or the State must change the public schools in such a
manner as to permit Catholic parents to provide Catholic in-
struction in them, whether it be in school-hours or out of
school-hours. There is no escape from this alternative. Mr.
Hoar seems to think that there is. He thinks that there is hope
of putting a stop to the building of Catholic parochial schools
by making the public schools unsectarian. The law of the
church in America as promulgated by the last Plenary Council,
the unanimous purpose of bishops and priests everywhere, the
ever-deepening convictions of the Catholic people and their un-
faltering support as shown in the enormous increase of Catholic
schools, especially in recent years all this ought to be evidence
enough to Mr. Hoar that it is not unsectarian schools but really
religious schools that Catholics can be alone attracted to. Fur-
thermore, in places like New York, for example, where all, per-
haps, that even Mr. Hoar could wish in the unsectarian direction
has been brought about in the public schools, the effect has not
been to retard the progress of the Catholic schools for Catholic
children. Does he labor under the delusion that the Catholic
school is the hobby of the priest? When will he direct his
inquiries deep enough and balance his mind fairly enough to
appreciate the fact that the whole church from Rome outwards,
Pope, bishops, priests, and people, are going to have all Catho-
lic children under Catholic influences, doctrinal and moral and
personal, in their school life ? That this is compatible with a
proper and reasonable supervision of the State over the ex-
penditure of its funds in such schools is practically proved in
England, Ireland, Germany, and across the border in Canada.

1 888.] A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 743

A MARTYR TO SCIENCE.

DR. JOHNSON once said that whenever he found himself in a
place where a monk of former times had been, his feeling was to
kneel and kiss the ground on which he had walked. It was a
bold and a startling speech for the people and the times. It is
not the purpose of this article to praise the monasteries of the
Middle Age, although we know now that except for them al-
most all of the little that was saved of the learning and wisdom
of the ancients would have been lost. The historians, philoso-
phers, and poets of Greece and Rome, such as were spared in the
ravaging search by barbarians and fanatical Christians, owed
their rescue to the humble, devout men who dwelt in the houses
built by themselves in order, by separation from the world, to
become wholly consecrate to religious and charitable uses. Of
their churches at York, Durham, Antwerp, Amiens, Cologne,
Strassburg, and elsewhere, each, like the temple of Ephesus,
remains one of the wonders of the world. Yet the names of
most of their builders died and were buried with them. They
had raised these temples to the glory of the Master to whom all
their being was devoted, and when their work, done for the
most part in secrecy and silence, was ended, they were laid
away in their own crypts by surviving brothers, who then at
once returned to their own unfinished careers. This was all as
the departed had wished ; for they had looked for their rewards
in a different country which they had been allowed to foresee,
wherein rewards were richer, more precious than what could be
bestowed by men, contemporary or to come in future ages, and
they would never lose any of the preciousness that was to make
them so ineffably dear.

But, turning from the general work of these religious, a brief
consideration is asked of an individual monk of that period, who
in the picture-books during the childhood of the oldest among
us was represented as a malignant sorcerer, but whom now all
the world unites in commending not only as the greatest of his
class, at least in the department of earthly science,- but as second,
if to any, only to his namesake who came three hundred years
after him.

It is curious to contemplate the long, winding course taken
by Greek literature after its decay in Athens, to find its way

744 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. [Mar.,

into Europe, and first in the extreme West. Having been exiled
from its native country and found a temporary sojourn in Alex-
andria, where it was gradually grafted by the school of Proclus
on the mystic philosophy of the East, again banished by Theo-
dosius, it was hospitably received by Mahomet and his followers,
and later was as firmly fixed at Cordova as in Bagdad. Thus in-
troduced by the Arabs into Spain, the"0pyarov of Aristotle ef-
fected vast changes in the methods of Christian theological teach-
ing and discussion. Philosophy, termed scholastic from the
schools instituted by Charlemagne, became absorbed into scholas-
tic theology. Herein was a vast change, and it was wrought
necessarily by the conditions of contemporary thought. Very
many great minds in the thirteenth century, minds of extensive
and varied cultivation, were among the enemies of Christianity.
Learned Arabs, Greeks, and Hebrews, sometimes it was found
difficult to oppose in debate by even the most gifted of the Chris-
tian clergy, because the latter were less familiar with dialectic
principles. Thitherto theology had been taught mainly by ref-
erence to the traditions of the church, and by appeals on dis-
puted points to the authority of the Fathers, as those writers
were styled who came next to the Apostolical Fathers who had
been contemporary with the Twelve. Acquaintance with Aris-
totle's philosophy after its introduction by the Arabs into Spain
led naturally, and in not long time, to its employment in reli-
gious controversy, and it seems curious how absorbed became
not only leading but intellects of all degrees in its use. One
reason doubtless was that philosophy/and particularly occult
sciences, the Arabs had studied much more than the other de-
partments of Greek literature, because the former harmonized
to some degree with their own studies of astrology and kindred
subjects. While they knew Aristotle well, they had little know-
ledge of Homer and Sophocles. These last for a time, and a long
time, must give place to the former, who had preceded them in
Europe. Not that the poets were altogether neglected, but
these harmless singers were submitted to harsh treatment at
the universities, which the scholastics dominated to such a de-
gree that, in Oxford especially, during a period of many years,
heads were made sore by clubs and stones for no other cause
than efforts to put other Greeks along by the side of the great
despot of the Lyceum. Plato, for reasons of his own, would have
excluded poets from his Republic. For other causes Aristotle
excluded them for a strangely long period from Europe.

In the mouths of disputants of all grades wranglings must be-

i888.] A MARTYR TO SCIENCE.

745

come numerous like the sands of the sea-shore, and well-nigh as
unprofitable. Roger Bacon was the first to find out clearly
their absurd inutility. He had studied this philosophy first at
Oxford, afterwards at Paris and when he became a Francis-
can monk and returned to his native country, having taken his
abode at the friary hard by the seat of the university, he set
out upon that bold career which was to be attended by many
anguishing sufferings, but followed in time by undying renown.
No man of his generation so well as he knew the enormity of
the evils which were to be combated, none but he foresaw the
trials of the combat. For the feeling had for philosophy by the
Christian prelates had come down to them from the Greeks
along with the books wherein mainly its discipline had been in-
scribed. With the Greeks philosophy was regarded as a some-
thing sacred, almost divine. As such, it was a desecration to
employ it for mere human uses. Roger Bacon was the first to
maintain, if not in the same words, in precisely the same spirit
as his illustrious successor and namesake, that instead of man
having been made for philosophy, philosophy was made for man.
Philosophy, indeed, had come down from heaven, but not for
the purpose of being enshrined in temples before whose altars
mankind must bow in adoration as to a God. But it was a
gift from heaven to man to be accepted with thankfulness, and
to be used, not only as a means of attaining heaven after this
mortal being shall be ended, but of increasing the conveniences
and pleasures, and alleviating the burdens and sufferings, of
this lower life a boon, in fine, to be made available in every
sphere of man's endeavors and hopes for the attainment of good,
spiritual and temporal. None but a sublime genius, and brave
to audacity, could so have opposed himself to the most ancient,
universal, deeply-set prejudices of the world.
was the more magnificent because he was too wise
see the martyrdom which was to come, the son
which was the foreknowledge that it was to com<
brethren.

It was in the year 1240, when twenty-six
having learned all that was in scholastic philosophy he left
the University of Paris and returned ^to Oxford. Long after-
wards he spoke with deep pain of the years upon years that
he had wasted in study to him barren, both at the universities
and then with his brothers at the friary, regretting that he
had not sooner begun the search for the material good
which it was the chief mission of his philosophy to

746 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. [Mar ,

teach mankind. Already he had become well cultured in lan-
guages, and particularly so in mathematics. It was when he had
begun with experimental philosophy that he began to speak with
boldness against unquestioning subjection to the authority of
antiquity in physics. "We are the ancients." No saying of
Lord Bacon has been more highly lauded than this. Yet Roger
Bacon said the same or its equivalent three hundred years
before Francis Bacon was born. The authority of the ancients,
founded on the fact that they were the ancients, was ridiculous
in the mind of this young monk. In what the world calls ancient
times the world was in science in its infancy. We, we moderns,
are the ancients. He would not discredit the achievements of
man when the world was young. But the world is like man,
its life as his life. It must advance and does advance from in-
fancy, through childhood, youth, young manhood, mature age.
A man is older than a child, and has profited, if he has not been
a fool, by the experiences of childhood, and learned by those
experiences to give up and turn away from its mistakes or fall
into irrecoverable disasters. There is much that is touching in
the solemn reverence and the fond affectionateness with which
we remember the remote past even in our own lives. The long
silence of those from whom our earliest lessons came leads us
sometimes to feel reluctant to vary from their teachings, even
when our own experience has shown them to have been errone-
ous. Until Roger Bacon, rather until long after his time, so had
mankind at every period felt towards the wise men of former
periods. There seems to have been a feeling, strong like a con-
viction, that the teachers of remote ages were taught directly
from heaven, and taught all that it was good for mankind to know,
and that it behooved those who came after mainly to gather up
by pious search the things that during the lapse of time had
beerf lost from the inspired wisdom of yore. Such a condition
of the mind* of humanity seems strange in this age, when inquiry
has gone to the extreme of boldness ; but in former times it was
as if .men felt that the eye of God was upon them when they
even imagined the calling in question the sacred wisdom which
the wise of old had received immediately from his mouth.
This huge, time-honored tradition the young monk of Ilchester
was the first who dared to question. " I spent twenty years,"
he said, almost in anger with himself, and referring to the natu-
ral sciences, " in the study of authority ! " And afterwards he
wrote these audacious words: "Do you wish to know what, if I
had the power, I would do with the works of Aristotle ? I

1 888.] A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 747

would burn them up ! " Nothing like this had a human being
ever dared to say regarding this king of men, whose reign had
begun with Alexander of Macedon and was destined to extend
two hundred years longer, to the times of Cosmo de' Medici.

In the silence of his cell the thought had come to this Fran-
ciscan that the despotism of authority in the natural sciences
must be overturned, or the world remain for ever in ignorance
of the things which, next to the true worship of God, it was most
important to know. His studies had led him to the assurance of
having found what were the means for this overthrow so needed
for the weal of mankind. This was experimental science. In
the investigations conducted in the workshop that he had built
he had ascertained many natural facts, and he argued that the
material world was full of such, created therein for man's uses,
which philosophy not only did not know but would have taught
and commanded to ignore ; and then he wrote these memorable
words : " Experimental Science does not receive verity at the
hands of superior sciences. It is she who is the mistress, and
the other sciences are her servants. She has the right, in effect,
to give command to all the sciences, because it is she alone who
certifies and consecrates their resultants. Experimental science,
therefore, is the queen of the sciences and the limit of all specu-
lation." To us, as to his contemporaries, these words sound
injurious to the supremacy of metaphysical truth. '

Fully convinced as to the justice and the strength of his posi-
tion, he began that system of inquiry which was to devolve the
greatest part of its credit upon his countryman who was to come
on long afterwards, following his ideas, but unrestrained by au-
thority and aided by the discoveries of three centuries which
had been made mainly by accident. His first most noted en-
deavors were devoted to the reformation of the Julian Calendar.
Julius Cassar, as all know, had reckoned the length of the year
at three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours a wonderful
approximation to verity in the existing state of astronomical
science. The error of somewhat less than twelve minutes in the
lapse of many centuries had induced a state of confusion that not
only wrought much inconvenience in general, but interfered
more and more seriously with the regulations of the church
respecting proper times for the observance of days of special
religious obligation. That is one of the most eloquent letters
ever written in which Bacon appealed to Pope Clement IV. in
behalf of the rectification of the calendar, whose defects he char-
acterized as havino- become "intolerable to the sage, and the

748 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. [Mar.,

horror of the astronomer." In it were exhibited the solicitude
of a Christian priest, the eager desire for certitude of the man of
science, and the winsome courteousness of the diplomat. It is
most touching to read, after his allusion to the infidel philosoph-
ers, Greek and Arabian, his appeal to that liberal and enlight-
ened prince to signalize and make for ever renowned his ponti-
ficate by an action that would be as benignly serviceable to
Christianity as to science. The hopes entertained were ended by
the death of that eminent pope, and three more centuries must
go by before, under Gregory XIV., would be accomplished
what Bacon so ardently had wished.

It is most sad to contemplate this unhappy miscarriage.
That great genius foresaw the invention of the telescope. The
honor bestowed upon Galileo has been proven to belong in its
greatest part to Roger Bacon, and, but for his imprisonment and
other persecutions, there is little, if indeed any, doubt that he
would actually have invented not only that instrument but the
microscope also. In the Opus Majus submitted to Clement oc-
cur passages which clearly indicate this assumption. Having
noticed the curious reflections from polished surfaces, casting
images, some greater, some smaller than what was real, he was
led to conclude that continued experiment might produce instru-
ments that would magnify to degrees according to the degrees
that human ingenuity and control of metallic substances could
construct. Mankind never has had too much to say in praise of
Sir Isaac Newton ; yet centuries before him Roger Bacon had
struck out the path in the science of optics in the pursuit of
which this philosopher attained such splendid successes. In the
contemplation of the work done by this monk in the midst of
circumstances so adverse to his aims and endeavors, Humboldt
named him " La plus grande apparition du Moyen Age."

The genius of a man who could have escaped that delusion
of the " philosopher's stone " which took such long hold upon
all men's minds in the Middle Age must have been preterhu-
man. Roger Bacon believed with the rest in the transmutation
of the inferior metals into gold and silver ; yet he was not only
free from the superstitions which were indulged by some of the
alchemists, but his practical sense rejected that infinity of fantas-
tic imaginations respecting the influence of the planets and other
agencies in hastening or retarding the process of obtaining the
lapis philosophorum a mineral substance which, by mixing with
the base, would transmute them into the precious metals. He
simply believed that the metals were compound, and that re-

1 888.] A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 749

peated experiment would lead to the discovery of the processes
employed by nature in those combinations. In all his metallur-
gic work, limited as it was in comparison with his other in the
service of science, the mere search for gold and silver, it is most %
probable, was never among his thoughts, especially his desires.
A devotee to experimental science, in what time he could get
from his religious duties, he took an interest in metallurgy, as
he did in other branches. If he fell into the general error re-
specting the convertibility of the inferior metals, the error, so
far as he was concerned, was free as well from the superstitions
as from the frauds into which many who dealt in such practices
were led. Partly these superstitions, mainly these frauds, are
what induced the infamy which has been attached to the name of
alchemy. Yet science admits that it owes much to the alchem-
ists. To one and another of the numerous adepts among them
is to be attributed not only the discovery of phosphorus but the
concentrated acids; and it is almost certain that to Roger Bacon
in special mankind is indebted for the invention of gunpowder.
That a pious and enlightened priest enlightened far above all
the men of his time should have believed in the elixir vita
which f was to abolish death is an idea too absurd to be consid-
ered for a moment in connection with him. In Sir F. Palgrave's
fiction, The Merchant and the Friar, there occurs what seems a
just opinion about the connection of Roger Bacon with the va-
garies of the alchemists in general. He was simply dazzled, ac-
cording to this writer, by his inability, on account of the existing
paucity of known natural principles, to comprehend the possible
extent of the wonderful discoveries that were continually being
eliminated in his workshop, and doubtless he suffered from the
impostures practised in his name by his servants and others
upon the credulity and fears of the vulgar.

And now let us consider briefly the penance that this illus-
trious man underwent for his devotion to the interest of science
a penance more remarkable and more to be compassionated be-
cause he must have foreseen its coming, and that from those of
his own household.

That preternatural gifts in remote former times were be-
stowed by the Creator upon some of the human race, or at least
that such bestowal was permitted by him, and even in cases
wherein the recipients were ignorant of him or hostile to him,
cannot be doubted. When Moses, who had been divinely appoint-
ed the god of Pharao, and Aaron his prophet, turned the rod into
the serpent, " Pharao called the wise men and the magicians ; and

75 o A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. [Mar.,

they also by Egyptian enchantments and certain secrets did in
like manner. And they every one cast down their rods and they
became serpents."* Even as late as St. 'Paul, Simon for a long
time had " bewitched the Samaritans with his sorceries." In
vain these arts were proscribed by the Roman laws as proceed-
ing from the powers of evil. The multitudes were credulous
still, not only to those that were native, but to the practices of
the Thessalian witches, the magi, the sorcerers of Egypt and
Phrygia, and other foreign nations, whose manners and opinions
they were brought by continued conquests of Roman arms to
learn. Christianity must oppose itself to these as to all other
practices of heathenism. St. John, in the Apocalypse (xxi. 8),
we remember, devoted to the second death, in the pool burning
with fire .and brimstone, sorcerers along with the " fearful and
unbelieving, the abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and
idolaters, and all liars." Among Christians, henceforth, arts
which even heathen emperors had condemned must seem yet
more black and diabolical, and be forbidden by yet more cer-
tain and severe restrictions. Natural, therefore, were the jeal-
ousies of the church always of whatever might obstruct the
universal prevalence of the Christian faith. We are now consid-
ering nearly the most unenlightened period of the Middle Age,
a period poor in general culture yet rich in religious fervor.
Ever struggling, the church was struggling yet against the
powers of darkness, and was timorous against everything that
bore even the appearance of an enemy. The Mendicant orders,
newly established, had lost none or little of the energetic devout-
ness of their founders. Called into being in great emergencies,
they were among the chiefest supports to the Papacy, whose for-
tunes were those of the whole church. Besides, human infirmi-
ties belong to men in all conditions, the pious and the wicked.
A very great man always lives in advance of his times, and is
never rightly appreciated because never fully understood by
his contemporaries, even those with whom he lives upon terms
of most intimate relationship. Especially is this the case with
those who, though less, are yet highly gifted, and have those as-
pirations that are found most often and most eager among the
greatest of earth. There is no place so holy, said Thomas &
Kempis, wherein temptations do not enter, and the most insidi-
ous are they which assail those otherwise most unassailable by
evil influences. Leaders of multitudes next below him who
towers far above them are few who, in one form or another,

* Exodus vii. u, 12.

l888 -] A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 75 1

do not undertake to persuade their followers to drag him down
from his threatening height, sometimes in order to cast him to
death. Socrates nearly foresaw the Messias. At least he de-
monstrated the inevitable necessity of his being. In his opinion
God, the great Unknown, could never become known to the
world with satisfaction unless he would clothe himself in human
form, and, descending from heaven, exhibit himself in such form
before the world, so prone not only to evil deeds but evil
opinions. And so, at the instigation of those who stood nearest
to him in men's estimation, his people, to whose weal his whole
being had been devoted, seized upon and slew him even in the
midst of those teachings which, of all that have ever, fallen from
human tongues not divinely inspired, were nearest to the oracles
of God.

Roger Bacon was too far in advance of his time not to fore-
see that his generation would not be led by him, and that for
his persistent refusal to stay behind he must suffer the penalties
common to extraordinary greatness. It was Heine, if we are
not mistaken, who said that wherever there is a great soul there
is Golgotha that is, its active career is to end with martyrdom.
It may have been imprudent, but it was of a part of the integrity
and boldness with which he was in the pursuit of science not to
attempt to conceal the results of any of his work. His brother
Franciscans, timorous like the rest of the Christian world re-
specting the horrors of demonology, looked upon him with sus-
picion and apprehension that grew with the ever-increasing
wonderful discoveries, all of which were proclaimed with the
joyous readiness with which an ardent searcher for truth loves
to make it be known when he has found it. In time these bro-
thers were driven to fear, what outsiders had already charged
upon this monk, so strangely wise, the exhibitor of such start-
ling things that, like the sorcerers, he was possessed of demo-
niacal spirits, and, if not arrested, he would inflict great harm
upon the church in general and the order of Franciscans in par-
ticular ; and so he was ordered to communicate knowledge of his
investigations to no one, under pain of imprisonment and being
fed upon bread and water only. The order was obeyed, the
discoveries he had made were locked most in the recesses of his
own brain and partly in those manuscripts to which he gave the
name of Opus Majus. Extreme penalty for his wisdom was post-
poned for a season by the promptness of his obedience, and in
the course of time occurred events which led to the hope that
the ban of silence would be removed and the student be per-

; 5 2 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. [Mar.,

mitted to pursue the career which, if unmolested, would have
added untold blessings to mankind. Guy Foulquois, a native
of St. Gilles, France, came late to the priesthood. He had been
a soldier, a distinguished lawyer, and a high official at the court
of Louis IX. When his wife died, leaving him with two daugh-
ters, he left the world for the church. He had the good fortune
to enjoy the intimate society of St. Thomas Aquinas and St.
Bonaventure. His mind, from these associations and his pre-
vious studies, had risen to a condition wherein it could note
with pleasure the progress of general enlightenment. Pope
Urban IV. appointed him legate to England, in order to aid in
bringing about a reconciliation between King Henry III. and
Simon de Montfort. Pleased with the service rendered by him,
upon his return he created him Cardinal Bishop of Sabina.
While sojourning in England he did, rather he tried to do, a
work far more important than that of conciliating to the king's
interest that turbulent noble whose factious endeavors were to
be ended only by the defeat at Evesham. He had heard of
some of the discoveries of the Franciscan monk at Oxford, and
he became exceeding anxious to be made acquainted with them.
He succeeded to a limited extent through the connivance of his
agent, Remond de Laon, who managed to evade the surveil-
lance under which the monk was held by his brethren. De-
lighted with what he had obtained, for some years he could
only regret that such a man should be the victim of a prejudice
so hostile to the interests of mankind. But in the year 1265, on
the death of Urban, he was elected to succeed him. In vain he
remonstrated with the cardinals, as a truly pious ecclesiastic
must do when exalted to such eminence. He could not prevail,
and on the 22d day of February of that year assumed the tiara
with the title of Clement IV.

It is most grateful to consider the career of this eminent
pope. Pious as enlightened, humble as great, he dwelt during
all of his pontificate in the town of Viterbo, never for one time
entering the great Eternal City, the capital of Christendom.
The members of his family, though of noble extraction, he kept
far from him, notifying them, early after his ascension, that they
were not to expect any special favors at his hands. Following
his example, his two daughters gave themselves to the church,
becoming nuns in the Abbey of St. Saviour's at Nismes. Often
had he reflected upon what he had learned of the work of the
humble Franciscan, and pitied his contracted life and the igno-
rant fears that had constrained it within its narrow limits. Now,

i888.] A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 753

when he had risen to be head of the church, he bethought him to
do what was possible in the interests as well of science as of
charity. Then he wrote that letter, which is still extant, in
which he adjured him, by the respect which he was bound to
have for the Apostolic See, to send to him in private an account
of the investigations that he had made in behalf of science and
their results. It seems now curious that the head of the church
should use such precautionary means for the attainment of ends
so desirable and benign. But the Franciscan Order were de-
voted to pious works and to the See of Rome. If he must do con-
trary to what they had commanded within their own society, he
will endeavor to do so without the notoriety that would inflict
pain upon followers-so devoted and otherwise so helpful to the
cause of Christianity. Yet in the letter was an allusion to the
restraints under which these writings had been put, and his or-
ders were that, however binding these were, the manuscripts
must be sent notwithstanding. It was thus that the world be-
came acquainted with that Opus Ma/us, without doubt the most
important work in the service of the physical needs of mankind
that had ever yet been done.

We can only speculate what might have been done by Cle-
ment, both for science and its suffering, ablest, and most devoted
votary, but for his advanced age and engrossment not only witfr
the general affairs of the church, but with the settlement of the
Two Sicilies upon the house of Anjou. In less than four years
he died, and Bacon was thus left friendless.

Among the Franciscans was one Tineus, of Alessiano, in the
diocese of Ascoli, Italy. Of an obscure family, he had distin-
guished himself by his devotion to the party who were desirous
of returning to the stricter discipline of their founder, and who,
in distinction to the Recollets, were called Brothers of the Obser-
vance, sometimes Minors Observantines. At the death of St.
Bonaventure he became general of the order. The death of
Clement revived the charges of sorcery against Bacon, and the
hostility became so acrimonious that he was summoned to ap-
pear before a tribunal met at Paris for his trial. He was found
guilty, and the judgment pronounced by D'Ascoli was perpet-
ual imprisonment. He was then not far from being seventy
years old.

So harsh a judgment it is sad to think of at any period.
Yet one cannot forget the hard trials of the church with evils
so manifold that it was impossible in every instance to sepa-
rate the innocent from the guilty. In vain had the laws of

VOL. XLVI. 48

754 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. [Mar.,

the empire endeavored to suppress what were considered the
worst evils that could befall mankind. The infusion of barbaric
blood from the northern regions of Europe had deepened the
belief in diabolic influences. We have seen what was the judg-
ment of St. John upon sorcerers, and we remember that St.
Paul denounced Elymas as a " child of the devil." What
wonder, then, that the Franciscans, an order in which a large
party had already risen who were departing from the stern
rule of the glorious Saint of Assisium, should feel it their
solemn duty to shut for ever the mouth of one among them
whose experiments, with results hitherto unknown, were as-
tounding even more than the most audacious of all the "black
art's " achievements ? We wish we could, know some of the
incidents of this trial. What may have been the bearing of the
accused, whom we know to have been as brave as he was gifted,
as true to the cause of religion as that of science ? He certainly
did not recant, because he would not ; did he defy? What was
said in his defence, even with caution and timidity, by the few
who hoped he might be less wicked than he seemed, or who loved
him too well not to murmur some regrets that his face was to
be withdrawn wholly from their sight, and its aged wearer to
languish the poor remains of life in a dungeon? What affec-
tionate tears were shed at the parting and afterwards in remem-
bering what he was elsewhere than among those horrid imple-
ments of his satanic practices? Answers to these questions we
can imagine onl} T , and then reflect that it could not have been
otherwise. He came into the world before his time, and must
suffer the penalties always inflicted upon premature advents.
The world could not take the mighty strides needed to follow
in his lead. This great truth was felt never so sadly as by our
Lord when to his disciples he spoke these parting words :
" Adhuc mult a habeo vobis dicer e, sed non potestis portare modo" *
He had been charged with casting out devils through Beelze-
bub. Even one of the Twelve, after the Resurrection, before
believing, must lay his hand upon the prints of His wounds.
No ; non possunt modo. They could not bear until another
should come and by degrees lead them up the dazzling heights.
So St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians : " Lac vobis potum dedi,
non escam : nondum enim poteratis, sed nee mine quidem potestis :
adhuc enim carnales estis" f

Tineus of Ascoli was neither a bad man nor a cruel. The
privations of his imprisoned brother probably were not harder

* St. John xvi. 12. t i Cor. iii. 2.

i888.] A MAKTYR TO SCIENCE.

755

than those which he voluntarily inflicted upon himself as the
leader of one of the strictest of monastic orders, chosen from the
straitest of its parties. A Franciscan must not only be, but to
his brethren, the church, and the world he must appear, guilt-
less of whatever derogates from the solemnity of his vows.
Seven years after these events this leader, on the death of
Honorius IV., was raised to the papal throne, taking the name of
Nicholas IV. This honor was due mainly to his reputation for
sanctity and acquaintance with the wants of the church, and
partly to the courage with which he had withstood the pesti-
lence at Sabina during the sitting of the conclave after the
death of his predecessor. Yet he besought the cardinals to
recall their votes, and on his dying bed declared, with a simple
sincerity that no one doubted, " We accepted the purple from,
fear of offending our order." Nor was he hostile to learning.
On the contrary and it seems like a grim mockery he not
only granted large privileges to the University of Lisbon,
founded by King Denis, but he founded himself that at Mont-
pellier. Yet during his pontificate he seems never to have
given a thought to the aged brother who still was lingering in
the prison to which, he had consigned him ten years before, and
it was not until after his death that the sufferer was released
and allowed to return to his native country. While he was
languishing, shut out from the world, some of the irrefragable
truths that he had propounded, in such wise as could not fail to
become known, made here and there impressions upon minds
more cultured and liberal than the rest that induced interven-
tions in his behalf. Besides silence, the coming on of old age,
long absence, subsidence of jealousies among his own brethren,
another factor in the persecutions by which he had been beset,
prevailed at last. An exile of fourscore granted leave to return
to his home! What was left for him was to die. Poignant in
the highest degree doubtless is the suffering of a great soul
which suffers not only unjustly but while laboring for the weal
of its persecutors, who inflict because they cannot rise to see its
good, grand purposes. Resentment is kept in abeyance because
it knows that such inflictions have not been dictated by cruelty
but ignorance, which is as implacable. Sadder words never
came from the mouth of a dying man than those spoken by the
returned exile who, after so many years of anguish, was allowed
to die in his native home: " Je me repens de metre donnt tant
de peine dans VintMt de la science." The illustrious namesake
who appropriated so many of his ideas and almost all of his

756 DARWIN' 's LIFE AND LETTERS. [Mar.,

praise, he also made touching appeals to- foreign nations and
future ages to ignore the things of which never a temptation
came to the humble monk to be guilty. The one anguished in
the recollections of infirmities which it is almost incredible that
such a man would not have been able to cure ; the other, having
none of such sort to remember, must repent only of having been
made to suffer for the time that, as it seemed to him in his dying
hour, had been wasted in the interest of science. So Marcus
Brutus, -after his desertion by the people and after the defeat
of Philippi, turned his eye regretfully back upon the literary
and philosophic pursuits of his youth and young manhood, and
wished he had never left them for the vain purpose of saving a
republic that was already in ruins. Finally, we are reminded
in this connection of the last words of Gregory VII. at Salerno :
" We have loved justice and hated iniquity, and for this we die
in exile."

R. M. JOHNSTON.

DARWIN'S LIFE AND LETTERS.*

READERS of the autobiography of John Stuart Mill and of
Mr. Froude's works on Carlyle will rejoice at the publication of
the life and letters of another of the teachers and guides of our
time. Whether the result will be as disastrous to the influence
and to the reputation of the latter as it was to those of the
former it is too soon to say with certainty, but we are inclined
to think that some, at least, of the magnificence which has
hitherto attached to the unknown will disappear in this case,
too.

These volumes succeed well in giving the reader a clear and
exact knowledge of their subject. Far the larger portion comes
from himself, and the remainder is written by one who was
brought into the closest relations with him. It is in the very
nature of things that the son has not treated the father with
strict impartiality, and he might rightly leave that quality to be
the distinguishing trait of some other biographer. At the same
time we do not think that he would wilfully mislead, although

*The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an Autobiographical Chapter. Edited
by his son, Francis Darwin. In two volumes. New York : D. Appleton & Company. 1887.

i888.] DARWIN>S LIFE AND LETTERS. 757

Mr. Samuel Butler, we see, complains in the Athenceum of unfair
treatment. Of the rights and wrongs in this matter we are not
competent to judge; but, as we have said, we see no reason to
question the general fairness and trustworthiness of the account
of Darwin's life here given.

The work is made up, we may say, of three parts: An auto-
biographical chapter (which is not a fragment but a brief view
of Charles Darwin's whole life) ; a chapter of reminiscences,
written by the editor, giving a picture of the daily home life of
his father; and letters of Charles Darwin, beginning with 1828
and ending in 1882. A chapter is contributed by Prof. Huxley
on the reception of the Origin of Species. The letters make up
far the greater part of both volumes. They are divided into
chapters according to subject matter, with the necessary explana-
tion by the editor.

Charles Darwin's life was, except in a scientific point of
view, uneventful. He was born at Shrewsbury and educated at
its school. He then went to study medicine at Edinburgh, but,
relinquishing the idea of becoming a doctor, he, with the inten-
tion of taking holy orders, went to Cambridge and took his
degree there. An opportunity having presented itself of going
as naturalist in H. M. S. Beagle, he embraced it. Returning
at the end of five years, he married, and after a short time
settled down in the country in the house where he passed the
rest of his life. His purpose of becoming a clergyman was
never carried out, having rather died through neglect than
having been formally relinquished. Inherited wealth placed him
above the necessity of entering into a profession, and conse-
quently he was free to devote himself to scientific study.

In Darwin's character, as it is so clearly and truthfully laid
before the reader of these volumes, there are many things which
compel admiration. His happy home-life (contrasting so favor-
ably with that of Carlvle), his indomitable industry and wonder-
ful power of taking pains, his patience in suffering, the tender-
ness of his heart, the warmth of his affection for his friends, his
veneration for his father and.deference to his wishes, his modesty,
and the absence in him of the vulgar ambition to make a display-
these are a few of the qualities possessed by him which call for
our respect and full recognition. While willingly recognizing
these many admirable features of his character and life, we are
called on to measure him by the very highest standard of human
excellence, as it is estimated by his admirers. He is placed by
them on a level with the greatest men of ancient and modern

758 DARWIN'S LIFE AND LETTERS. [Mar.,

times, and yet the most remarkable thing which his Life and
Letters reveals is the singularly limited and one-sided character
of his mind. Every period of his life proves this ; and unfortu-
nately, as time went on, and after having devoted himself for
many years to his own special studies, this want of remarkable
mental power became more and more clear. " Shrewsbury
school as a means of education to me," he says, " proved a
blank," because he had no taste, and could not acquire one, for
the classics. "During the three years which I spent at Cambridge
my time was wasted, so far as my academical studies were con-
cerned, as completely as at Edinburgh and at school. '* While he
took pleasure in Euclid and in reading Paley, he failed entirely
with algebra through his " not being able to see any meaning in
[its] early stages." This debarred him all through his life, to his
great regret, from " understanding the great leading principles
of mathematics," and, we may add, from receiving that discipline
of mind which mathematics affords. He professes his inability
to enter into metaphysics, or indeed into any kind of abstract
reasoning; and, we may say, has given, in his remarks on the
necessity for belief in a First Cause, ample evidence of that inabil-
ity. Giving his recollections of a conversation with Sir James
Mackintosh, he expresses his surprise at Sir James' interest in
the conversation, for " I was as ignorant as a pig about his sub-
jects of history, politics, and moral philosophy." This was when
he was eighteen years old. The following passage contains the
most startling revelation of his want of power and illustrates the
effect upon his mind of his line of studies. Writing in 1876, when
sixty-seven years of age, he says :

"Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the
works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave
me great pleasure, and even as a school-boy I took intense delight in
Shakspere, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that for-
merly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But
now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry; I have tried
lately to read Shakspere, and found it so intolerably dull that it nau-
seated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music
generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work
on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery,
but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did."

Even in geology his knowledge seems to have been hastily
picked up, and of botany his knowledge, when he made his voy-
age in the Beagle, was of the most superficial character.

In bringing out these surprising limitations we do not, of
course, mean to call in question the universally recognized

1 888.] DARWIN'S LIFE AND LETTERS. 759

ability of Darwin in his own sphere. But in our times the duty
of submission to the authority of scientific men is earnestly in-
culcated and generally acquiesced in far beyond the limits of
what is just, and far beyond what scientific men deserve. The
ascertainment of facts and their verification constitute the sphere
of the scientific specialist. The fact of his being a specialist may
even render him less competent to make just inferences from
those facts than the man who takes a wider view. At all events,
those inferences must be tested by men of more ample culture
and of more fully instructed and informed minds. Mr. George
Ticknor Curtis, in his admirable work, Creation or Evolution ?
a work which has not received the attention which it deserves
has very clearly laid down this principle. " That the doctrine of
evolution is generally admitted by men of science," he says, "is,
admitting the statement to be true, worth this and no more:
that candid, truthful, and competent witnesses, when they speak
of facts they have observed, are entitled to be believed as to the
existence of those facts. When they assume facts which they
do not prove, but which are essential links in the chain of evi-
dence, or when the facts they do prove do not rationally exclude
every other hypothesis excepting their own, the authority even
of the whole body of such persons is of no more account than
that of every other class of intelligent and cultivated men." . . .
" The principles of belief which we apply to the ordinary af-
fairs of life are those which should be applied to scientific and
philosophical theories; and inasmuch as the judicial method of
reasoning upon facts is at once the most satisfactory and the
most in accordance with common sense, I have here under-
taken to apply it to the evidence which is supposed to establish
the hypothesis of animal evolution." The revelation which
these volumes make of the incapacity of the author of the
Origin of Species outside of his own special line will, we trust,
lead to the fuller recognition of the sound principle inculcated
by Mr. Curtis, and infuse into others sufficient confidence to
lead them to judge for themselves the value of theories which
men of science have been seeking to impose on the world.

Another matter of special interest in these volumes is the
attitude of Mr. Darwin towards religious truth, and, what is
more important, the bearing of his special theory of evolution
(or, to speak more accurately, his theory of natural selection) on
the proof of religion. In some degree Mr. Darwin was better
placed than his two great contemporaries of whom we have
already spoken John Stuart Mill and Carlyle. His father

760 DARWIN'S LIFE AND LETTERS. [Mar.,

was a member of the Anglican Establishment, and when his
son failed to carry out the first plan formed for him, that of
becoming a doctor, he was sent to Cambridge with a view to
his becoming a clergyman. Into this plan Darwin entered with-
out much difficulty. At first he fancied that he could not hold
some of the dogmas maintained by the Establishment, but after
reading Pearson and other theological works his objections
vanished. He does not seem to have given any indication of a
vocation to the ministry, and in fact there is very little evidence
of his having given even ordinary attention to this, at that time,
main object of his life. As was said before, the plan of becom-
ing a clergyman rather died out than was actually renounced.

As in so many other things, Darwin's religious insight was
but moderate. But, we are glad to say, he was never actively
irreligious, and even when he sank to his lowest level he never
assumed an openly hostile attitude to natural religion, at all
events. His exact position in the end was this : he had rejected
Christianity as a revelation of God, and, while inclining to a
belief in the existence of a First Cause and of the immortality of
the soul, he could not feel certain of either the one or the
other.

It may be worth while to quote his own words on these
points. In the autobiography, which he wrote in 1876, this
passage occurs :

" I had gradually come to see that the Old Testament was no more to
be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. ... By further reflecting
that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man be-
lieve in the miracles by which Christianity is supported; and that the
more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles
become ; that the men of that time were ignorant and credulous to a
degree almost incomprehensible by us ; that the Gospels cannot be proved
to have been written simultaneously with the events; that they differ in
many too important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be
admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses by such reflections
as these ... I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine
revelation. . . .This disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was
at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress."

The first thing to remark here is that, as he himself acknow-
ledges, there is nothing novel in these objections. The second
thing is that these volumes afford very little evidence of Mr.
Darwin's having given any very serious study to the solution
of his difficulties anything like the study which a serious man
is bound to give. He says in a letter to Dr. Abbott : " I have
never systematically thought much on religion in relation to
I

l888 -] I** NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. 761

science, or on morals in relation to society." In fact, his loss of
religious convictions seems to have been due to the same
neglect which led to that atrophy of mind in other matters
to which we have already alluded. But, without admitting for
a moment that he was justified by the arguments adduced in
giving up his belief in revelation, does not the fact that a man of
Darwin's power of mind succumbed to these difficulties show to
what a disadvantage Protestant principles expose the cause of
revealed religion? Protestantism kills, denies the existence of
a living church in the world, denies the existence of any actu-
ally existing supernatural institution endowed with a divinely
given right of teaching, denies the corresponding duty of un-
questioning submission to any external spiritual authority, sends
its inquirers to make researches about a series of events which
took place eighteen centuries ago; and if they are unable or un-
willing to enter into such a course of inquiry, it logically has no
standpoint for them as intelligent Christians. Such seems to
have been Darwin's case.

The limits at our disposal prevent further examination of
these volumes. But in conclusion we may say that every defen-
der of religion must rejoice at their publication; for that holy
cause cannot but gain in strength by learning the weakness of
its enemies.

IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO.

THE most considerable and interesting town on the Mexican
frontier is Monterey, the capital of the State of Nuevo Leon.
It has upwards of 20,000 inhabitants, and the guide-books .tell
us that it is 168 miles from the Rio Grande and 1,791 feet above
the sea-level. However, travellers by rail do not reckon distance
by miles but hours, and it requires a great number of them to
crawl over the narrow-gauge line from Laredo to Monterey ;
twenty miles an hour is a fair average. But if any one is in a
hurry he has no business in Mexico ; he will fuss and fume
himself into a fever, and all to no purpose. Moreover, on this
route one passes through some very fine mountain scenery
amidst which one would willingly linger. To the stranger the
insignificant but novel incidents of rural life which he wit-
nesses en route possess an interest ; irrigation, goat-herding, min-

762 IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. [Mar.,

ing-, attract attention; and one is not jolted and pounded so
unmercifully as on some of the atrocious lines in Texas, and the
day's travel does not, on the whole, prove tedious. At Bus-
tamente one stops for dinner ; the voracious passenger, who has
tasted nothing since he snatched a hasty breakfast at the hotel,
seven hours previously, is not critical ; he grasps his iron knife
and fork (manufactured, one would suppose, especially for this
country, for one meets with such rubbish nowhere else), and
he attacks with infinite gusto whatever messes of rice, beans, or
leather-like steaks may chance to be in his immediate neighbor-
hood.

If one only had time to visit the town, which is about a
mile distant, one would enjoy a refreshing prospect. I vividly
recall the sense of satisfaction with which, years ago, before the
advent of the iron horse had aroused these sleepy valleys from
their long repose, after weary miles of interminable dust, cactus,
and waste, I rode on a sudden through green lanes with lofty,
overhanging trees, backed by fruitful corn-fields, into the peace-
ful streets of this little Indian town of Bustamente. There are
about 5,000 people here, descendants of the original Tlaxcaltec
tribe ; the town, in fact, is sometimes called Tlaxcala, also San
Miguel Aguayo. The smaller a Mexican town the greater the
number of nomenclatures in which it rejoices, seeking appar-
ently, by a long array of titles, rooted in different languages, to
compensate for its actual insignificance. I said that the place
is peaceful, but this does not always hold good ; some years ago
they got up election riots, a! Cincinnati affair in microcosm, and
certain of the inhabitants took leave of this troublous mundane
state and went over to the majority. I lately enjoyed an inte-
resting chat in the train with the priest, returning, after a visit to
his bishop at Monterey, to his lowly sphere of labor. He seem-
ed .bright and cheery, however, as a Frenchman always does ;
but from Paris to Bustamente is a far call. The papers keep one
more or less in touch of the outside world, though the echo of
the great orb must sound faint and muffled at Tlaxcala. After
all, it matters little in what workshop the task is wrought ; so
that it be executed with fidelity, the toiler will enjoy the con-
sequent repose in the same habitation as his fellow-laborers
from whom he may for a period have been divided by the
exigencies of the hour. " My people are sunk in ignorance,"
said the priest; "mats que faire? Tamper with their crude
beliefs and they will end by believing nothing ; if they only had
some intelligence ! But there is little to work on."

1 888.] IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. 763

Five miles further on we reach Villaldama, a little larger
than Bustamente. Here the people are mainly of Spanish
descent. The name of the place was formerly San Pedro de la
Boca de Leones (St. Peter of the Lions' Mouth), and here was a
hospital or resting-place for the Franciscans on their way from
the interior of Mexico to serve the Texas missions near San
Antonio and at other places. But this neighborhood has been
chiefly remarkable for its mineral wealth, and abandoned Spanish
mines are now being reopened with promise of satisfactory
results. The most noteworthy of these mines was that of
San Antonio de la Yguana, discovered in 1757, which was very
rich in silver and attracted quite a population while the bo-
nanza lasted. Eighteen years later the governor of the State,
undeterred by the burden of an infinity of Castilian titles and
dignities, conveyed himself hither on a tour of inspection, and
reported that he found fifteen Spanish families with thirty-two
workmen engaged in mining ; this must have been after the
first rush and excitement was over. Another governor, in
1806, says that this mine had produced many millions in a few
days, so rich was the ore. The silver was found in loose stones
in a ravine. The miners called it an yguana (lizard), which
disappeared suddenly. We know a gentleman who had a mass
of ore from here weighing twenty-five pounds, and which on be-
ing smelted lost only half a pound in weight. The most import-
ant mining operations now being conducted hereabouts are those
of the Mexican Guadalupe Mining Company. Their office is
at Philadelphia, but the active managers occupy a group of
small houses near the railway between Bustamente and Villal-
dama. . They have not been working many years, but are already
shipping off two or three thousand tons of silver-lead ore a
month to Kansas City to be smelted"; they are, however, con-
structing smelting-works of their own at Laredo, Texas, which
will soon be completed. The work is ably carried on by
Captain James Baxter, formerly an officer of engineers ; he is a
skilled miner, a vigorous administrator, and a genial companion,
and, being surrounded by a staff of Philadelphians of similar
characteristics, the work goes on without friction and with
satisfaction to the shareholders. A mess has been established
in a small building, where the little community, ladies and gen-
tlemen alike, meet three times a day for meals. The mines are
distant fifteen miles, some three or four thousand feet above the
settlement; a small railway has been constructed for the whole
of this distance except two or three miles, and that will soon be

764 IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. [Mar.,

completed. Remarkable engineering skill has been displayed
by Mr. Butterfield, the accomplished young- Texas engineer,
who has grappled successfully with so many obstacles and
corkscrewed his road so cleverly around the mountain-side,
through ravines, and over torrents, that nowhere does the grade
exceed 5, and one traverses the whole twelve miles well within
the hour. It would be hard to surpass this mountain ride for wild
grandeur and rugged sublimity. Here the clean-cut rocky
coping of some long range of heights appears like the fortress
of a race of primeval Titans ; again, as one peers down through
light trellis-work into the pitchy black depths of the gorge, he
involuntarily shudders, knowing that, should the frail support
fail, he would be launched incontinently into the Stygian
abodes and be enabled in person to test the accuracy of the
researches of Dante and Virgil. No such mishap ensuing, one
alights safely at the extremity of the line and sees a long pro-
cession of mules laden with ore winding its way down from
the mines. The company employs several hundred of these
pack-animals, which carry about 300 pounds each ; prior to the
construction of the railway they did all the transportation, but
when the line is completed there will be little work for these
sure-footed quadrupeds.

These mines are a great benefit to the neighborhood, giving,
as they do, regular employment to three or four hundred men
and disbursing in the locality some $10,000 a month. The man-
ager was much exercised at first by the thieving habits of the
workmen ; first a sh'ovel would disappear, then a pickaxe would
go and a crowbar turn up missing. Iron implements cost pro-
digiously in Mexico, few being made in the country and import
dues being excessive. So the captain devised a plan by which
to foil the tactics of these sons of Mercury. He made each gang
answerable for the tools entrusted to it: if anything went all had
their pay docked to make up the loss, but on the missing article
returning the arrears of pay would revert to the laborers ; by
this means they were soon brought to reason. Thieving and
sharp practice is a Mexican characteristic; in order to under-
stand it one must regard things from their point of view. The
struggle for existence and survival of the fittest is a law of na-
ture. Religion comes in to modify this. Now, these Mexicans
have in many cases received but a thin veneering of religion,
conferred on them by Spanish conquistadores not, to judge from
the records of their proceedings, .the sort of people to present
their victims with the best samples of a very pure article : water

1 888.] IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. 765

cannot rise above its source. But this apart. Great ideas take
long to work out; it was centuries, long ages, before the Chris-
tianity they had received effected a very marked change in the
every-day life of the masses of our European forefathers, when
religion, driven by chaotic confusion into monasteries, only
served to render the surrounding darkness yet more dense and
appalling. Witness St. Bernard's testimony, for example. In-
deed, some people think that with our bloated armaments and
diabolical contrivances for the wholesale destruction of our
kind, and our vast cities with their violent contrasts of selfish
wealth and lifelong starvation, of flaunting vice and joyless
penury, we ourselves have not as yet mastered the alphabet of
Christianity. Well, with these considerations before us, is it
any marvel that the Indian, emerged but lately (comparatively)
from the savage state of which foray, sack, and plunder are the
natural accessories,- should still adhere to his ancient mode of
viewing things? He has no particular use, we will say, for nuts,
pins, and crowbars. But he would be lessened in his own es-
teem if, the occasion offering for purloining them, he did not
avail himself of it. The writer remembers two school-fellows
found guilty of appropriating their playmates' goods. Why, to
their comrades they were uncanny objects, viewed with horror,
as if infected with the plague, and were hastily thrust forth from
the establishment. Yet all the time we admired the classical
Spartans, though theft was with them an integral part of a boy's
training. This is how we account for the "smartness" of high and
low in Mexico: their Spanish masters taught them, and that with
wide-spread and enduring success. Spain fleeced its luckless
dependency, as it does Cuba in our day, and the vices of civiliza-
tion and savagery mingled in private life. But a truce to these
criticisms on the foibles of our neighbor; to return to his
country.

The little river Sabinas, which flows through Bustamente
and Villaldama, and whose waters alone made the existence of
these places a possibility, flows onwards through a pass in the
mountains till, after eighteen miles, it brings one to Sabinas, a
town of about the same size as those already mentioned. Some
years ago I went thither with a lawyer to examine the hacienda
of an old Philadelphian established some forty years in the coun-
try. He had taken that royal road to affluence for the foreigner
in Mexico marriage and, after three successive nuptials with
wealthy daughters of the soil, found himself a person of consid-
eration. A town house of large size at Laredo, a similar one at

766 IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. [Mar.,

Sabinas, another with well-stocked garden at the hacienda two
miles from the town, hundreds of acres of corn towering ten feet
above one's head at Christmas, clean and orderly barns and la-
borers' dwellings, and rights in a cattle-range hundreds of thou-
sands of acres in extent what more could soul desire? It was
interesting on this continent, where things are ordinarily so re-
cent, to read the original grant of the water-rights, over 300 years
old, coming direct from the Spanish crown. The writer and his
legal friend strolled round the town one afternoon, magnd
comitante catervd otherwise, with half a hundred gamins at our
heels we being unable to ascertain the why and wherefore of
our brand-new popularity. The day being cool, we wore our
ulsters; next day we learned that two fair men in women's
clothes had appeared and caused a sensation in the streets.
Another Philadelphian we unearthed in the place, a medical man
of intelligence, having injudiciously wedded a tawny descendant
of the Aztecs, and judging that she would cut but a poor figure
in an Eastern salon, had buried himself in this remote spot, which
he lamented that the railroad had approached it being within
eighteen miles and disturbed his isolation. He was, however,
evidently pleased to hold converse with civilized man once more,
and narrated to us his troubles and his lengthy experience of the
Mexican people, especially in collecting fees. The doctor said
that from intolerant bigots many of the richer people had now
become what they styled freethinkers, affirming that they
would believe no more than they could understand ; and our
medical friend said he had vainly endeavored to show them
that as their mental capacity was such that they could under-
stand nothing worth speaking of, their creed could be best ex-
pressed by zero.

But I have dawdled unconscionably on the road, my only ex-
cuse being the genius of the country. The fifty miles of rail be-
tween Villaldama and Monterey are accomplished as rapidly as
may be, though the grandeur of the heights on all sides tempts
one to loiter, and at length we arrive at the plain brown wooden
station of Monterey, where, as these depots do not as yet rejoice
in platforms, the traveller is shot out somewhere or other on the
track, and, picking his way painfully through a labyrinth of rails,
and evading the throng of noisy and importunate porters and
hackmen, at last reaches the road leading to the town, about a
mile distant. Monterey has a most efficient street railroad, some
twelve miles in length, leading to the centre of the town. Near
the station are a number of jaecals, or hovels made of stakes,

i888.] IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. 767

corn-stalks, and mud, and thatched with palm-leaves " a bundle
of sticks which we call our home," as Father Faber somewhere
says. These dwellings, with a jumble of naked children and
howling curs rolling promiscuously in the doorways, would look
squalid enough did not kind Dame Nature considerately cover
them with her graceful robe of green creepers, lovely turquoise
and snowy convolvuli, and glorious golden marigold. Passing
through shady lanes shut in by high, quick-set hedges and lofty
pecan-trees, one reaches the new jail, which is being solidly con-
structed of huge blocks of limestone; then comes the Alameda,
or park, extensive, shady, and cool, but somewhat neglected.
Occupying one side of a plaza, or square, is the fine municipal
college. But the most remarkable object that arrests attention
is the large temple of Nuestra Sefiora de Roble, now approach-
ing completion, which is replacing an ancient church of smaller
size, the tower of which is seen in the background. The nave
and aisles of this new church are complete, and the choir and
central dome, which are now being built, will produce an impos-
ing result. It reminds one of the Brompton Oratory more than
of anything else. It is a pity that the contemplated additions at
the altar end of the church should be portrayed in villanous
perspective on the wall ; it deceives no one, and one resents an
attempted deception, especially in a church. There is a fine,
broad pavement of the glossy red concrete in common use in
Mexico; it is the best flooring for a large building to be met
with. The holy-water stoups are of size corresponding to the
stately dimensions of the edifice itself, and the water was full of
those restless, wriggling abominations, the germs of mosquitoes.
A group of women knelt before an altar, one reciting the rosary,
the others responding. In the eastern corner of the north aisle
is a painting of the apparition of Our Lady of the Oak to the
shepherdess, and a score or so of votive tablets are nailed around
it on the wall. These are rude paintings, on iron plates, of sick
persons in bed or kneeling before the miraculous image, and be-
neath one reads the story of the sickness, vow, and recovery.
The legend of Nuestra Sefiora de Roble is that she appeared in
a hollow oak to a shepherdess on this spot and expressed her
wish that a church should be placed there. The pictures repre-
sent Our Lady as wearing a huge golden crown and a white
satin dress of large dimensions, elaborately embroidered with
gold, over which hangs an ample blue cloak. Half the towns in
Mexico have some such tradition as this, and in every church and
every house is a picture of Nuestra Sefiora de Guadalupe, the

763 IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. [Mar.,

patroness of the country. One would think that the constant
presentation of the flower of pure womanhood should exercise a
refining influence; let us hope that it is so, even should appear-
ances often be otherwise. There never is a bad that could not
be worse. After all, the Mexican women have quiet, modest
manners, and do not deck themselves out like cockatoos, with
vast hats and absurd bonnets, like their fair sisters of the Fifth
Avenue. Mothers carefully guard their daughters; affection for
children is a national characteristic, and a people with this amia-
ble trait is not without virtue. And let any one who, a stranger
in a strange land, has fallen sick in Mexico, truthfully narrate his
experiences. Would one of his own Northern people be likely
to volunteer to take the small-pox-stricken alien into her house
and nurse him with watchful care, not for reward, but from
single-eyed charity? As to the truth or otherwise of the legend
of Nuestra Senora de Roble, we have had no opportunity to in-
quire into it, nor are we much concerned to do so. Protestants
used to ridicule modern miracles, though acknowledging that
many were worked long ages ago. Now, however, they have
their faith-cures in Switzerland, Germany, the United States,
and elsewhere, yet they would pass by this legend unexamined,
with a pitying sneer. Human nature is a bundle of inconsis-
tencies and contradictions; we see what we wish to see, and
close our eyes to the rest. The constantly recurring miracles of
nature, day following night, the tree forming gradually but
surely from the acorn such as these are disregarded by the
many because so common. The law by which the diseased limb
tends constantly to regain its normal condition does not direct
the minds of the masses to a Supreme Will controlling nature.
But to the thoughtful mind the truth or otherwise of a particu-
lar marvel, living, as we do, in a temple hung with marvels, is a
matter of little import; the exception has the effect, however, of
leading some to realize the finger of the Infinite who otherwise
might disregard it, and so makes for righteousness.

Let us seat ourselves on one of the iron benches beneath the
shade of the trees in the handsome Plaza de Zaragoza. Before
us is the white marble fountain, into which the water plashes
from the mouths of four huge dolphins, cool and refreshing ;
over it, between the dense foliage, hangs a corona of purest
azure, for the skies are always clear in these lands. Through
the trees we catch a glimpse of the little cathedral with its two
western towers, and between them the fagade, adorned with
every variety of sacred symbol and grotesque papal tiaras and

l888 -] IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. 769

mermaids, crosses and lions' heads, keys and fabulous beasts.
Within there is little worthy of remark. The high altar, with
its silver frontal backed by a massive reredos, stands in the
nave, and behind it is the bishop's throne, the canons' chairs
ranged around the walls and apse, and a large brass lectern.
The floor is made of pieces of wood six or seven feet long and a
yard wide, and these at either end have grooves sunk into them
to serve as handles. By raising these planks the vaults beneath
the church, which have been employed as places of sepulture,
are reached. The little church of San Francisco, near another
side of the plaza, is similarly floored ; it was formerly the chapel
of the Franciscan convent. The friars of this order were the
missionaries of Mexico, and by the simplicity of their lives and
their singleness of aim did much to counteract the example of
the Spanish conquerors, who, as a history of this State of Nuevo
Leon says, drank down iniquity like water.

The buildings which surround the plaza, and, in fact,
throughout the town, are for the most part constructed of the
limestone with which the neighboring mountains abound ; and
where the owners are fortunately not rich enough to daub the
masonry with plaster to be painted as an absurd burlesque of
stone-work, the effect is very fine. One also sees some of those
curious curled red tiles on the roofs that are found in southern
Spain ; there are quaint twisted columns and arches like those
in the Alhambra in fact, one is constantly reminded of the
Moor. On the opposite side of the plaza to the cathedral is
the City Hall, but recently completed, a very fine building ;
it is surrounded by a broad colonnade, thus facing the main
plaza, two side-streets, and the Plaza del Comercio, a large
square without gardens or ornamentation, a mere stand for hacks
and traders' wagons. On the further side of this plaza is the
handsome Hotel de Hidalgo, the only three-story edifice in the
town, but it is closed and internally incomplete. It was gutted
by fire some time since. No one at present is willing to attempt
it, and by leaving it unfinished the owner avoids taxation. In a
neighboring street an old Spaniard named Vignau keeps the
Hotel Iturbide, the central court, with fountain and dense foli-
age, bananas, oleanders, and roses, surrounded by a wide cloister
on which the various rooms open. It has a monastic appear-
ance, but that impression is rudely dispelled by a large picture
suspended against the wall depicting the combats of a certain
English pugilist, one Thomas Sayers, who is represented as
pounding other half-naked savages into mummies by every vari-

VOL. XLVI. 49

7/o IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. [Mar.,

ety of scientific assault. Seiior Vignau furnishes his guests
with a lengthy document stating his tariff and a score or so
of regulations to which they will be compelled to conform.
The meals are those usual in the country, the chambers are com-
fortably furnished, and on the whole it is .a fairly good hotel.
Not far distant is a really handsome two-story building with
massive bronze railings and medallions, and charmingly refresh-
ing court in the centre ; this is the bank of the magnate of the
frontier, Senor Don Patricio Milmo. He is a fine white-headed
man of sixty, with clear-cut, regular features, keen judgment,
accurate discrimination, and a just 'appreciation of the value of
his words. His brother Daniel is cashier of the Milmo National
Bank of Laredo, Texas, of which Mr. Kelly, of New York, a
connection of the family, is president. No more cultivated gen-
tleman or courteous friend than Mr. Daniel Milmo is to be met
in either republic, as all those will testify who enjoy the pleasure
of his acquaintance. Irishmen appear to do well in Mexico; this
is one instance, to which many others might be added.

The little river of Santa Catarina flows by the town, and, see-
ing some churches a mile off at the foot of the Sierra Madre, we
found a plank bridge over the stream, and, passing through sub-
urban gardens and cottages, proceeded quietly along the road ;
soon, however, a drunken peon from a neighboring grocery
hailed us, expressing cordial friendship and insisting on accom-
panying us. This honor declined, the man drew his knife on
us, and, being unarmed, it became rather puzzling what course
to pursue. To knock our antagonist down and disarm him,
though simple enough^ might involve trouble with the authori-
ties ; on the other hand, these people can not only stab but throw
the knife with great accuracy. After eyeing each other for a
time he of the knife proceeded for a space, and, seating himself,
awaited our arrival. Strolling after him, we fortunately found a
guard-house in a side-street, where the officer, on being appealed
to, took a light from my cigar and said it was only the man's
fun. But this appeal for protection produced the rapid disap-
pearance of our playful friend, and so all ended peacefully,
though it might have been otherwise. This trifling incident is
mentioned to illustrate a feature in the lower grade of Mexican
life. There are some few cantinas, or saloons, in the towns, but
they are above the means of the multitude; these drink at the
groceries. Unfortunately mescal is exceedingly cheap, and,
though their means are small, the peons can yet indulge in intox-
ication. It is not pleasant to enter a store to order tea and sugar '

i888.] IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. 771

and find a peon vomiting over the floor. Apart from that of an
occasional drunkard, little violence is to be feared in a Mexican
town, provided your house be thoroughly bolted, barred, and
safeguarded, and that you possess a reliable watch-dog ; but in
country journeys it is usual to proceed in small parties and to
carry arms. I have journeyed long distances alone, but it is not
advisable; the marauding instinct of pre-Spanish days yet re-
mains in active force, and a good horse, watch, or weapon is a
prize worth fighting for.

Monterey has several very pretty plazas; that of La Purisima
is one of the largest and most pleasing. At one end of it is the
little church of La Purisima, with some monuments of ancient
date. On the other side of the square is the Methodist mission
school for boys; they have twenty-eight in all, nearly half being
boarders, and great part of them are training for the ministry of
their church. Mr. Bryce, the master, finds the work too much
for him. He formerly occupied a chair at the Methodist Col-
lege of Texas, and would probably be more happy there again.
His wife was before her marriage a teacher in the Presbyterian
school for girls. Here there are some thirty or forty scholars,
mostly boarders, with three American ladies as mistresses, the
whole under the direction of a Chicago ladies' society. Both
these sects have their native preacher, who conducts religious
services, holds prayer-meetings, sells or distributes Bibles and
tracts, and attempts similar enterprises in the smaller towns in
the vicinity. A number of the Presbyterian school-girls go
occasionally to houses where they have friends. Neighbors
(inquisitive or sympathetic) are invited in and hear the girls
read, talk, sing hymns, and otherwise endeavor to spread their
principles. One hears varying accounts of Mexican Protestant-
ism, as is natural. I have myself seen something of Baptists and
the two sects just named, and these three are the most active.
The Baptists appear to have the most churches and to be the
narrowest, ignoring the other Protestants. The Methodists and
Presbyterians seek to avoid clashing as much as possible. They
have their monthly papers, published in the City of Mexico,
well printed and illustrated. Two of them, El Evangelista Mexi-
cano and El Faro, are now before me, and there are others.
Some of the matter is pretty good, but, from their position,
these bodies must be proselytizers or nothing, and so a great
portion of their columns is occupied by hostile criticism of
Catholic doctrines, or by exposure of the failings, real or imagi-
nary, of various Mexican clergymen. The Methodist journal

772 IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. [Mar.,

gives an account of the baptism, at one of their meetings, of
several men ; these must have been baptized in infancy, so it
would appear that Catholic baptism goes for nothing in the eyes
of these people. Then there is a long story of the supposed
poisoning of one of their native female teachers. It is of course
assumed that she was intentionally poisoned, that this was done
from religious hostility, and that it was the work of the Jesuits.

There have been and are occasionally popular demonstra-
tions, more or less violent, against the missionaries, and it would
be singular if this were not so. Few people like to hear their
cherished beliefs derided, and the ignorant man's only argument
is personal violence. The advent of the missionaries has pro-
duced a great deal of angry feeling that did not previously exist.
For instance, a Mexican lawyer and man of some education re-
cently said to me: " These Protestant missionaries merely come
here for a living. They are paid by rich societies in the United
States. They are not learned men, and their proper position is
tilling the soil in their own country. If I were governor I
would put them all in prison, or rather put them to death. Las
Casas and the men who originally taught religion to the natives
of this country were devoted apostles, who valued money no
more than the stones under their feet. Why should we leave
the church of all lands and all ages for an institution set up by
Luther and Henry VIII. for their own immoral purposes?"
This is the view of the educated Mexican Catholic; the devout
peon will not be more tolerant. An English lady some time in
the country says that converts are gained by judiciously sub-
sidizing the very poor in times of distress. These adherents,
however, are of dubious fidelity, for they sneak off to Mass be-
fore the missionary is out of bed, and when death threatens call
in the priest.

This corresponds with what one has heard elsewhere, and
whatever the belief or unbelief of the Mexico of the future may
be, it is most unlikely that it will be Protestantism. A Baptist
minister in these parts, a year or two ago, entered Mexican ter-
ritory -from Texas by rail, having with him a huge luncheon-
basket apparently filled with tracts. The custom-house officials,
however, on proceeding to search beneath this pious crust, dis-
covered hams, canned meats, and similar articles subject to
enormous duties, and these they promptly confiscated, leaving
to the divine his papers, and with the wholesome precepts con-
tained therein he possibly regaled himself. However, this gen-
tleman has ever since been an object of suspicion to the authori-

i888.] IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. 773

ties, and I was lately told of his being in prison for attempting
to smuggle a buggy, though that is no doubt a good story. The
cashier of one of the banks in San Antonio told me that he was
surprised to recognize in a reverend-looking individual in black
who entered the bank a quondam Mexican scout who had
served under him many years previously when he held rank in
the army. " Why, Joey, what on earth are you doing in those
clothes ? " said the colonel, all amazed. " Missionary, sir ! " was
the reply ; then, with a wink exquisitely comical, " I never got a
hundred dollars a month for scouting, colonel." I lately saw
a missionary in the train piously poring over a pocket Bible;
he was soon in high controversy with a Mexican. " I shall pos-
sibly come into the fold some day/' said the latter, " but tell me
one thing and I will giveyou a thousand dollars : whom did Cain
marry ?" And hereupon, having discomfited the preacher, he be-
came jubilant. The divine, replying that the name of the first
murderer's lady was not recorded, retired and consoled himself
with that useful handbook, Prendergast's Spanish Method. Some
days later I saw him boarding the cars in company with a broad-
backed female of Teutonic proportions, presumably his wife.
" Why," as Max O'Rell says in his Filles de John Bull, " does a
married clergyman appear so comical an anomaly? " In some of
the Eastern patriarchates the parish priests, we believe, are in-
variably family men, and this, Protestants think, does not impair
their efficiency. Still, an African traveller is unmarried, a naval
or military officer is unmarried, or else marred that, at any
rate, is the view they take of it in England. St. Paul says that
the unmarried man will care for the Lord, but the married one
for his wife ; and fully granting that this applies to laity as well
as clergy, one naturally demands a higher standard from the
master than the scholar. " Two gowns do not go well together,"
says some one in Victor Hugo's Toilers of t lie Sea. True, there
are bad priests, and scandals are not a few in some parts of
Mexico. Yet Judas and Nicolas have always had their succes-
sors, as is but natural. Still, the fervent Catholic traveller in
Mexico is apt to exclaim : " Happy the land where priestly vo-
cations are carefully tested, and those only dedicated to the
sacred ministry who possess the very exceptional qualities need-
ful for so solitary and painful a life ! "

Well, as to these Protestant missions and missionaries in
Mexico let us be fair and charitable. Here is a nation, to say
the least of it, needing improvement; in Chicago and Boston
are wealthy and benevolent men and women wishful to benefit

774 I N NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. [Mar.,

their kind ; the religion in which they were nurtured is Pro-
testantism, which has conserved much Catholic doctrine ; they
fancy that it is a panacea for all spiritual ills. I have not found
these American missionaries so ignorant as some Mexicans
would represent ; they appear to be respectable, well-conduct-
ed people. But what they and their employers cannot see is
that to upset established beliefs is a very serious matter. They
want to persuade the people to disbelieve this doctrine but to
retain that one, to disown the authority of the church but to
accept that of the Bible. They will find that their destructive
arguments will not cease to operate at the point where they in-
tend them to. Protestantism is arrested rationalism. . If they
succeed in arousing the questioning spirit it will sweep away
their own tenets as well as those they assail. A most amiable
Protestant missionary lady told me that she would ordinarily
trust no Mexican servant. However, securing one who was a
" church-member" (of the mission, that is), she relaxed her vigi-
lance, and her finger-rings vanished as if her maid had been a
mere Catholic ! So we will leave the Mexican Protestant bodies,
Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian,
and what not, with their four thousand church-members, all told,
and their comfortable domesticated apostles. They may stir up
bigotry and ill-feeling, and in some measure upset what religion
the people have ; but I doubt of permanent results. Revolving
such considerations, I left the hospitable Methodist establish-
ment, and, strolling down the street, dropped into the little
suburban Santuario de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, some ten
years old. Over the entrance we read : " Non fecit taliter omni
nationi" Within, a group of women in their black ribosas
kneel before the image of the Lily of Israel ; all is quiet, hushed,
devout. Will our Protestant friends replace all that this is and
all that this signifies with their discordant sects ?

We leave the city of Monterey, passing between lofty, mas-
sive walls of limestone, above which rises the dark foliage of
the orange brightened by luscious clusters of the golden apples
of the Hesperides. I have eaten this fruit in Spain, California,
Florida, Africa, the West Indies; in none of these places does
it equal the large compact fruit of Monterey, with its rind no
thicker than a kid glove. Beyond these pleasant gardens are
fruitful corn-fields, which for miles occupy the valleys and
plains adjoining the town, and looking back one sees the city
nestling betwixt the overhanging heights of the Sierra Madre
and the Silla, the latter the most exact copy of the American

IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. 775

military saddle imaginable. The confined position of Monterey
makes it warm in summer; in the winter it is pleasant enough.
It might, too, be healthy, but filth confined for centuries in deep',
sunless vaults instead of being put to its legitimate purpose of
fertilizing the soil revenges itself on the ignorant or thriftless
populace. Who can wonder if fevers of various sorts are fre-
quent, and the town compelled to pay the usual penalty for
outraged natural law ? On the outskirts of the town, raised on a
slight eminence, is the bishop's palace, now used as a barrack;
dismounted guns, shot, and military d6bris lie around, for forty
years ago General Taylor fought two actions at Monterey, in
which many Americans who afterwards commanded great armies
in the great civil war served as captains or lieutenants. General
Grant also gained his first distinction in the street-fighting at
the battle of Monterey. In the town is the Virgin Bridge, so
called from the apparition of the Blessed Virgin to the Mexican
soldiery, advising them that they should win the (first) battle,
which was verified by the event. The present successors of
these troops are said to be far more orderly and presentable in
every way than their predecessors, but there is yet room for
improvement. They more than carry out the late Dr. Nicholl's
precept to live on a dime a day, for they have but a real as a
daily allowance to provide food, clothes, cigarettes, every-
thing; no wonder the service is unpopular.

The one thing at Monterey having a real practical interest
for Americans is the bathing establishment four miles north
of the city, called Topo Chico Springs. It is reached by a
street railroad which crosses the main line of rail near the sta-
tion. This health-resort is new, but deserves to be better known.
The waters, for certain diseases, are said to be unsurpassed, if
equalled, on this continent. There is only a small village near
the baths, so man is unable by his negligence to contaminate
air and water as at Monterey. There is a good stone hotel,
quite new, and in process of enlargement; it is managed by
Americans as, in fact, the whole settlement is and Mr. Cook,
who presides over the culinary department, prides himself on
being able to -infer from a guest's appearance the kind of fare
that will prove most acceptable to his palate. There is a cozy
drawing-room with piano, easy-chairs, books, Mexican orna-
ments and curios, and a pleasant little society to beguile the
evening hours. The rooms have good Brussels carpets, clean
beds, chests of drawers and ample mirrors (luxuries not ordi-
narily found in Mexican hotels), and each chamber has its own

776 IN NORTH-EASTERN MEXICO. [Mar.,

little gallery outside its French window, where one may remain
undisturbed and contemplate the surrounding scenery. Charges
at the hotel are exceedingly moderate, and every effort is made
to give satisfaction. The bath-houses are spacious, airy, clean,
and excellent in every respect, and compare favorably with
those at Langenschwalbach, Schlangenbad, Leuk, San Moritz,
or any of the celebrated European resorts. There are swim-
ming-baths and a great number of private ones, and several
American and German medical men are in attendance.

There are hot and sulphur springs, the hot water as warm
as one can bear with comfort, 106 F. An elaborate analysis of
its mineral contents has been made by one of the scientists who
accompanied the Emperor Maximilian. We cannot reproduce
this in extenso, but there is oxide of iron, lime, magnesia, soda,
silica, and subphosphate of alumina. The sulphur spring con-
tains white sulphur, silica, iodine, magnesia, potash, soda, and
sulphuretted hydrogen ; its flow of water is about 60,000 gallons
per hour. Dr. McMaster, who resided some years at the well-
known Hot Springs of Arkansas, and who has visited the ther-
mal springs of New Mexico and California, is unstinted in his
praise, saying that rheumatism with all its various complica-
tions, liver and kidney complaints, catarrh, blood-poisoning, skin
diseases, etc., yield readily to this water. The testimony of
other physicians is to the same effect. Hard by some Ameri-
cans have recently established a dairy, importing their cows
from Texas. They obtain a ready sale for their milk at fifty
cents a gallon and butter at seventy-five cents a pound, and
ought to do well, as good butter could not be had here before
their arrival. On the whole, the Northerner in search of health,
rest, or change might do worse than pay a visit to Topo Chico
Springs.

illO) Mexico. CHARLES E. HODSON.

i8S8.] THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. 777

THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOODf

(CONCLUDED.)

SCARCELY two months had elapsed since I had last seen Neth-
ervvood Court; the roses had not ceased to blossom in its gar-

dens, the glory of the summer had not departed from its woods
and groves, the birds still sang among its leafy thickets, and yet
how changed the scene appeared to me as I once more drove
up the familiar avenue ! The splendor of an August sunset was
flooding the air, and through the spaces between the stately
limes I could see the blaze of beauty on the terraces and lawns
the brilliant scarlet of geraniums, the deep ultramarine of sal-
vias, the rosy pink of graceful oleanders, and the creamy white
of the royal magnolias which displayed their shining foliage on
the west front of the house. As usual on summer evenings, I
found the hall-door open, so I entered unattended, crossed the
wide vestibule, and gently pushed back the portals of the li-
brary, thinking I might probably find there the master of the
mansion. The room was untenanted, however, so I traversed
its spacious length and knocked at the door of an inner and
much smaller apartment which Capt. Wynterton was in the
habit of using as .a study. " Come in," said his well-known voice,
and in a moment more we were shaking hands.

After a few brief words of greeting I seated myself by the
window, Capt. Wynterton remaining standing on the hearth-
rug. He was the first to break the silence.

"I am so glad you have come, Temple," he said. "You
know what trouble I am in?"

" Yes," I replied. " Sir Philip Fletcher was with me this
morning ; I have heard all."

" What is your opinion ?" he asked.

" My opinion is that you are entirely in his power. His con-
duct is ungenerous, not to use a harsher word."

Capt. Wynterton shivered and turned round to the fire, for
the evening was somewhat chilly, aiifl some logs were burning
on the hearth. The look of misery on his face went to my heart.

" I might have known that boy would be my ruin," he said,
speaking with evident effort. " It is my own fault ; I have only
myself to blame. I may as well tell you at once what has

778 THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. [Mar.,

been concealed from you too long : Hubert is not my own
child."

I got up and moved to his side, and there was a few mo-
ments' pause. " Tell me all about it," I said at length.

Had the announcement come upon me with the force of a
startling surprise, I am not sure that I should have been able to
repress all outward manifestations of astonishment ; but it was
merely the confirmation of my long-standing conviction, and
I therefore remained perfectly unmoved, to all appearance at
least. Capt. Wynterton was too completely absorbed to notice
my calmness or think it wanted accounting for ; perhaps he
attributed it to my professional training, for lawyers, like priests
and doctors, have many strange tales to hear. He drew for-
ward an arm-chair for me, seated himself in another not far off,
and began his recital.

" You remember how passionately I longed for an heir in
the early days of my married life. My dear wife often used to
check me when I expressed myself too' strongly on the subject,
reminding me in her gentle way that God knows best what is
good for us. It would have been well for me if I had heeded
her pious admonitions ; but as one year after another went by
without bringing any hope of a child, my impatient eagerness
increased, until at last 1 felt that if this one great wish of my
heart were denied me I could find no enjoyment in all the nu-
merous blessings God was showering down unceasingly on my
thankless head. You know how we went abroad for the sake
of my wife's health, and how after some time we had the joyful
assurance that God was about to bestow on us the earnestly-
coveted gift of a child." He paused, overcome by emotion, and
I came to his relief.

" I distinctly recollect the letter in which you told me you
were intending to return to England as soon as possible, in or-
der that the heir might be born at Netherwood. The next time
you wrote it was to relate your compulsory halt at Bordeaux,
your terrible anxiety about your wife, the boy's birth, and her
critical illness." I stopped speaking, and Capt. Wynterton re-
sumed his narrative.

" There was an old saying one of our masters used to be fond
of quoting when we were a^t school, * Satan is complaisant to eager
wishers' and I am a proof of how fatally true that saying is. To
my great grief and disappointment, our son died a few hours
after his birth, and his mother's life was despaired of. For more
than a week she lay in a state of unconsciousness, while I hung

i888.] THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. 779

over her in speechless sorrow, fearing each hour would be her
last. But one morning the doctor detected a slight improve-
ment, a flicker, as it were, of returning consciousness, and at the
close of his visit he told me that what he now most dreaded
was the effect which the knowledge of the baby's death might
have upon his patient, who was certain to ask for her child in
the event of her regaining the power of speech. Then, with the
swiftness of lightning, there came upon me the temptation to
which, alas ! I yielded the idea of substituting a living child for
my' own dead one, and thus both providing myself with an heir
and sparing the feelings of my wife. The doctor acquiesced at
once, for he regarded the question from a purely medical point
of view, and the plan was accordingly carried out. Some peo-
ple in an humble class of life and in straitened circumstances,
to whose family twins had just been added, were induced to
part with one of their newly-born sons, and the affair was so
cleverly managed that no one except the doctor, the nurse, and
myself suspected anything about it. You know my history
from that day, so I have nothing more to tell ; but you can
never know the misery, the remorse, the vain regret which it
has been my lot to endure. Only when it was too late did I see
what I had done in its true colors ; especially when Beatrice was
born, and I felt that I had deprived my daughter of her inheri-
tance and robbed her of her birthright, my self-reproach knew
no bounds. And now it seems as if I were to be the means of
destroying the happiness of her life ! "

" Poor Beatrice ! " I could not help exclaiming. " I am afraid
it is a sad business for her, however it may turn out. Does she
know anything yet? Have you told her what Sir Philip's er-
rand was ? There is no time to be lost ; the inquest on M. Mori-
zot is to be held the day after to-morrow."

I was horror-struck to see the effect of my words. Capt.
Wynterton turned white to the very lips, grasped the arm of
his chair as if for support, and turning towards me with a quick
movement, " What did you say the man's name was?" he in-
quired eagerly.

"Morizot," I replied " Jean-Baptiste Morizot. I saw the
name on a letter which had come for him ; the landlord asked
me what he was to do with it. I, think the post-mark was
Lyons. Did you know him, Wynterton?"

"Sir Philip said he was a dark young man, about Hubert's
age, who had lately come from the south of France," he contin-
ued, without heeding my question. " Morizot was the name of

780 THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. [Mar.,

Hubert's parents. The curse has come upon me, in truth, for
I do believe the unhappy boy has killed his own brother! "

"Impossible!" 1 exclaimed. But as I uttered the word my
heart misgave me, for 1 remembered what had been said to me
that very morning: " They might be mistaken for one another''
" The similarity of name is a strange coincidence," I remarked
aloud, " but I have known stranger. No doubt there are plenty
more families of that name, though it is a peculiar one. I see
no reason to conclude that he is even a distant relative."

" I could tell if I saw him,'' pursued Capt. Wynterton, " for
I distinctly remember, when the two infants were shown to me,
I rejected the one because it had a purple mark on its cheek.
Those marks are seldom, if ever, got rid of. Do you happen to
know if he had one?"

I was obliged, ^reluctantly, to own that both Fletcher and the
landlord of the lodging-house had mentioned this disfigurement
to me. " I knew it ! " cried my friend : " Hubert's hand is stained
with the blood of his twin-brother ! Alas ! alas ! would that I
had died before this disgrace came upon me ! "

No words can say how deeply I felt for Ambrose Wynterton
as he sat leaning his head on his hand, the large tears rolling
down his cheeks. I pressed his hand in silent sympathy. " I
do not see that you did do so very wrong in adopting the child,
after all," I said at length. " You did it for your wife's sake,
from a desire to spare her pain."

" No, no, Temple," he rejoined, looking up ; a it is of no use
trying to gloss it over or palliate what I did. I interfered with
Providence and practised a gross deception. I had set my
whole heart on having an heir; nay, more, I determined to have
one, and cared not at what cost of honor and principle. Now I
must bear the consequences. God knows I am heavily pun-
ished !"

" Better be punished in this world than in the next," I said,
with a sigh. u But this thing must not be known, the secret must
be kept to the end. Besides, we have yet to ascertain whether
the man was really Hubert's brother. I cannot take it for
granted in the way you do. The matter must be investigated.
The first thing to be done is to decide about Sir Philip's propo-
sal, the acceptance or refusal of which involves so much to every
one concerned," I concluded, trying to recall the thoughts of my
unhappy friend to the business about which I had come down.

He looked up at me with an expression in which humiliation,
misery, and remorse were blended in a manner that I cannot

i888.] THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. 781

attempt to describe. "'I sent for you to decide that question,"
he replied in a weary tone. " I will tell you what Father Quen-
tin said. I believe his judgment is sound. He advised me to
state the case to Beatrice without any attempt to influence or
persuade her, and he doubted not she would be willing to make
the sacrifice, and I, he said, must be willing to accept it."

" That is exactly what I think," I said with decision, "and I
am glad that his opinion so fully coincides with my own. I do
not see that you have any room for hesitation, Wynterton. Bea-
trice is a good girl and devotedly attached to you ; she would
do anything to spare you sorrow, and I am sure you will have
no difficulty in gaining her consent."

' "Perhaps not," he rejoined, " but I shrink from letting her
know what is required of her. It seems such a shame that this
fair young girl in the springtide of happiness should have her
whole life blighted for my sake, who am a miserable old man,
with one foot, so to speak, in the grave. I cannot bear to think
that my child must thus suffer for her father's fault! "

" You forget," I said, " that it is for Hubert's sake, not yours,
she will do this. She will see nothing but his guilt and his
wrong-doing as having been the means of bringing this misery
on us all. Whatever you do, pray do not undeceive her as to
the relationship in which she stands to him ! "

" No, I will not. Father Quentin warned me to be careful to
conceal that secret. Let me tell you something more he said :
he reminded me that God never lays on his children burdens
that they cannot bear, nor duties which they have not strength
to fulfil ; who knows, he added, but that in some way of which
we little dream this trial may be lightened for Beatrice ? either
some way of escape may be made for her, or, if it come to the
worst and she is forced to marry a man who does not scorn to
make his own profit out of his friend's misfortunes, her self-sac-
rifice may be rewarded even in this life, sunshine may .once more
return after the storm, and her lot be less dark than we are now
inclined to fear that it will prove."

" I rejoice to hear that Father Quentin takes so sensible and
hopeful a view of the subject," I said. " That ought to encour-
age and cheer you, my dear friend ; do not be so much cast
down about this sad affair. There is no doubt as to what is to
be done now : Beatrice must be told, for I think I can venture
to assert that even in the event of her marrying Sir Philip, as it
appears she must, the unhappiness entailed on her can scarcely
be as great as that which will inevitably come upon her if mat-

782 THE WYNTERTONS OF NETIJERWOOD. [Mar.,

ters are left to take their course. I am thoroughly convinced
that he will show no mercy, and his evidence will insure a ver-
dict of manslaughter, possibly of wilful murder, against Hu-
bert."

" It would be different if Sir Philip were an absolute
stranger," Capt. Wynterton said, " though even in that case 1
am sure Beatrice could never bring herself to like him; but, as
it is, she has a strong aversion to him, and I tell you plainly that
I fully share her feeling."

" His conduct in regard to the unfortunate occurrence which
has given him so much power over you certainly places his
character in no very advantageous light," I replied, " and he
cannot be said to be either generous or high-minded. But, on
the other hand, you must not forget that you cannot, under ex-
isting circumstances, bring yourself to look at him fairly. He
is sincerely fond of Beatrice, after his fashion, and if he does not
make her really happy I do not think he will make her miser-
able. There is one thing against the marriage, however he is
not a Catholic."

"As to that," her father said, "he can scarcely be called a
Protestant, at least in the ordinary acceptation of the word, for
he told me he had no definite religious beliefs, and no prejudices
either. He added that, if Beatrice agreed to marry him, he
would at once consent to place himself under instruction with
a view to being received into the church. So that obstacle, at
least, is removed. I had better see her at once, I suppose," he
concluded, with a sigh.

I noted his pallid and weary face, and the air of exhaustion
with which he stretched out his hand to ring the bell. " Not to-
night," I said ; " it is getting late, and you are evidently tired
out. To-morrow will be quite time enough, and you will feel
refreshed then, I hope."

He readily assented, glad to delay, even for a few brief
hours, the interview he so much dreaded. I wished him good-
night and left him, as I had several letters to write.

Before repairing to my room I turned my steps in the direc-
tion of the chapel, and there I found Beatrice kneeling at the
feet of an image of Our Lady of Dolors, engaged in saying her
beads. If sorrow is to come upon her, there can be no better
preparation for meeting it, I thought, as I knelt beside her and
silently joined my prayers to hers.

1 888.] THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. 783

in.

Well and wisely has it been said that when confronted with
an unlooked-for crisis we are what we have made ourselves,
since it is repeated action which prepares us for sudden choice.

Beatrice Wynterton's life had hitherto been all sunshine and
summer ; she had been sheltered from every rough wind and
screened from every untoward blast; her path had been strewn
with roses, and every pebble likely to wound her delicate feet
had been as far as possible removed out of her way. Yet the
storm, when it came, did not find her unprepared, nor did it leave
her utterly prostrate. For under her soft and girlish exterior
she possessed her father's strength of will, and a high and daunt-
less courage inherited from the long line of illustrious ances- 4
tors to which her mother had belonged. She had, moreover,
never breathed any other atmosphere than that of a truly Chris-
tian home; for Capt. Wynterton had been most careful in the
choice of those to whom her education had been confided, and
her religious education could not have fallen into better hands
than those of Father Quentin. She had already learnt to make
duty, not inclination, the guide of her actions, and in all things
to consider rather how she might please God than how she might
gratify self. She understood the beauty and value of sacrifice,
and, by the daily and hourly practice of renunciation in regard to
matters so small as often to be imperceptible to the eyes of those
around her, she had trained herself both to see clearly what
she ought to do, and also to face unflinchingly the consequences
of her decision in the painful and trying circumstances in which
she was about to be placed. The reader will perhaps deem me
partial, and I fully admit that such maturity of mind and charac-
ter is rarely to be met with in a girl of nineteen. But the por-
trait, of Beatrice is no fancy sketch it is, on the contrary, taken
from real life ; she is no imaginary woman, but a creature of
flesh and blood, and I think that her conduct will, in the sequel,
be found to justify my praise.

The next day was Wednesday, the morning on which Mass
was ordinarily said in the chapel of Netherwood Court, and the
whole household was assembled there as usual. My thoughts
were naturally a good deal preoccupied by the interview so
soon to be held, and I could scarcely take my eyes from Bea-
trice and her father. The latter had evidently passed a sleep-
less night, and I was shocked to see the change which the last
two days had made in his appearance. In the clear morning

784 THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHER WOOD. [Mar.,

light he looked haggard and broken ; he seemed to have sud*
denly grown twenty years older, and his step, usually so elastic,
was slow and weary as he prepared to leave the chapel.

There was not much said during breakfast-time. Capt.
Wynterton's appetite had forsaken him. Beatrice looked anx-
ious and distressed. From the little that had been told her al-
ready she evidently gathered that something worse was yet to
come, and was agitated by the painful suspense in which she
was held. When we rose from the table Capt. Wynterton beck-
oned to his daughter to go with him into his study, whither I
followed them, feeling certain that my presence, far from being
a restraint, would make matters easier for both father and child.
Nor was I wrong, for no sooner had the door closed behind us
than Capt. Wynterton turned to me with the words: "You
must tell her, Temple."

"Beatrice," I began, "you know that Hubert has got into
trouble, and is consequently obliged to keep out of the way for
a time. We would fain have spared you all further knowledge
of his misdeeds, were it not that you, and you alone, can save
him from exposure and shield your father's name from public
disgrace." Then in as few words as possible I told her what had
occurred, without, however, mentioning the price at which Sir
Philip's silence might be purchased.

She was horrified at the story. " How dreadful," she ex-
claimed, "to think that Hubert has actually killed some one!
How sorry he must have been when he found the man was
really dead ! What will become of him ? Will he be put in
prison and tried for murder?"

" I have told you, my dear child, that it rests in your power
to save him from punishment and your father from dishonor."

" It rests in my power ? " she repeated. " 1 do not understand
what you mean, Mr. Temple." She looked from me to her
father, and as her eyes rested on his dejected countenance her
whole heart seemed to go out towards him in sympathy and
love. " Dear father," she said, " if there is anything I can do,
tell me at once, and it shall be done."

" Do not promise too rashly, my child," Capt. Wynterton
interposed ; "it involves a great sacrifice on your part."

"Nothing can be a sacrifice that I do for you, papa," she
promptly replied. " What do I not owe to you ? You have
been everything to me, father and mother too ; I wish I could
spare you all pain and bear this grief instead of you. Besides,
Hubert is my brother as well as your son " (here a spasm passed

1 888.] THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. 785

over Capt. Wynterton's features) ; "it is my duty to help him if
I can. What is it, Mr. Temple, that 1 can do or relinquish ? "

I fancy the idea that suggested itself to her mind was that of
relinquishing her fortune. I own that it cost me an effort to
tell this generous, warm-hearted girl what was required of her,
but I accomplished my task. She listened in silence; her eyes
dropped and her lips quivered. I could see that a struggle,
short and sharp, was going on within. Almost mechanically she
pulled to pieces a flower she was holding in her hand, and as
the bright petals floated slowly to the ground it seemed to me
an emblem of the ruthless destruction of her own hopes and
dreams of happiness. When she again looked up a change had
come over her countenance, as when, on a summer's day, a chill
mist suddenly rolls up, blotting out the sun and making the
world look dull and gray.

" It is very mean of Sir Philip to trade on our misfortunes,
but 1 will do as he wishes," she said. Then she turned to her
father, threw her arms around him, and burst into tears. " He
must not take me from you, father dear," she sobbed, burying
her face on his breast. " Promise you will stay with me always,
always ! "

" My darling! " he murmured, fondly stroking her head, " my
own sweet child ! "

I am a matter-of-fact man of business, but I confess that my
own eyes were not dry as I rose and left the room.

A few hours later the telegraph wires carried to Sir Philip
the message he desired to receive, and with the words, " Bea-
trice consents" Hubert was saved from exposure and protected
from punishment.

Capt. Wynterton appeared completely shattered. The shock
he had received on first hearing of Hubert's grievous misconduct,
the various emotions which followed, the acute humiliation he
endured at finding himself at the mercy of a man whom he dis-
liked, and the bitter pang it cost him to solicit such a sacrifice
at the hand of his only and beloved child, were more than his
bodily powers were able to endure, and his physical prostration
was evidently so great that when he besought me not to leave
him, as I was intending to do in order to return to town imme-
diately after luncheon, I felt unable to refuse his request that I
would remain until the morrow, supported as it was by the ad-
ditional plea that he had determined to make a fresh will with-
out delay. So we sat together through the hot summer after-

VOL. XLVI. 50

786 THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. [Mar.,

noon, in the study where we had spent so many happy hours,
but where I was never to sit again beside the companion of my
youth. " God bless you, Temple!" he said, when our business
was finished. " God bless and reward you for all you have been
to me and mine ! No one, surely, had ever a truer or more
faithful friend."

I had not long retired to rest that night when I was aroused
by a hurried knocking at my door. It was Capt. Wynterton's
valet. He begged me to come at once to his master, who ap-
peared seriously ill. The doctor, summoned in haste, pro-
nounced the attack to be a severe paralytic seizure, and said
that, though his patient might rally, it could only be for a few
hours, and that the end was apparently not far off. We kept
our vigil by the sufferer's bed, Father Quentin, Beatrice and I,
until dawn gave way to sunrise, and sunrise to the brightness of
the morning. The broad casement window stood wide open,
and the song of birds and the scent of flowers penetrated into
the chamber of death, as if to dissipate its gloom and fill it with
the presence of life and the promise of joy. At length the An-
gelas bell rang from the tower of the church Ambrose Wynter-
ton had built in the far-off days when his heart beat high with
hope; and, now that he was stretched upon his dying bed, the
familiar sound aroused his slumbering senses. Once more he
opened his eyes, and, faithful to the pious habit of a lifetime,
feebly attempted to make for the last time the sign of our re-
demption : " Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of death,'' we heard him whisper, and then
he ceased to breathe.

It was the day appointed for the inquest, and I was only just
able to reach London in order to be present at it. Sir Philip
Fletcher gave his evidence with ready facility and perfect as-
surance, and, nothing being known which could in the least
degree suggest Hubert Wynterton's name in connection with
the circumstances attending Morizot's death, the jury found no
difficulty in returning the verdict usual in such cases, and affirm-
ing that he destroyed himself while of unsound mind. They
were evidently under the impression that he had lost heavily at
cards, and then, in despair at having gambled away his em-
ployer's money, had put an end to his existence. One man,
somewhat shrewder than the rest, put several awkward questions
to Sir Philip as to whether he had seen any one leave the house,
but his cool self-possession carried him safely through the dan-
ger, and the manner in which he told how his slumber had been

i888.] THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. 787

disturbed by the report of fire-arms, and how he had rushed
across the street to find the house empty and deserted, was
truthful enough to carry conviction to any mind. The inquiries
I subsequently caused to be made in regard to Morizot, who had
come over to England on business connected with a Lyons firm
in whose employ he was, established beyond a doubt the mel-
ancholy fact that Hubert had, unawares, incurred the guilt of
fratricide.

When the funeral was over I communicated to Hubert and
Beatrice, in the presence of Father Quentin, the last wishes of
Capt. Wynterton as contained in the will which, with a presenti-
ment, I believe, of his approaching end, he had so recently in-
structed me to draw up. The shock to Beatrice was naturally
very great, and her grief even more bitter than that occasioned
by her father's death, for it is less painful to part from those we
love than to sever ourselves from our ideal of them. She had
so profoundly loved and reverenced her father that she could
not bear to think him less than perfect, and, though she would
neither blame him herself nor allow any one else to do so, it was
not difficult to see how her honorable and sensitive nature re-
coiled from the thought of the deceit he had practised. The
only form in which she gave open expression to her feelings was
that of intense sympathy for the mental suffering he must have
undergone, and of eager anxiety that the secret of Hubert's real
origin should be for ever buried in the grave of her beloved
parent. On this point I reassured her, and thought it wiser to
spare her all knowledge of the relation irr which poor Morizot
had stood to Hubert, as also of the amount of the latter's debts
and the extent of his misdoings.

The reader already knows that Hubert was no favorite of
mine, but I am in fairness bound to confess that his conduct on
the present occasion was such as to change my long-standing
dislike into pitying compassion. He was so penitent, so hum-
ble, so repentant, so full of sorrow for all his misdeeds, and for
the manner in which they had hastened, if not occasioned, the
death of his adoptive father. He acquiesced without a murmur
when he found himself disinherited, considering the loss of the
estate to be as in fact it was the due punishment of the fatal
act in which all his wrong-doing had culminated, and he de-
clared himself willing to carry out Capt. Wynterton's desire
that he should in future reside out of England. On this condi-
tion his debts were to be paid, and he was moreover to have a
thousand pounds down, besides an allowance of five hundred

788 THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. [Mar.,

pounds a year for his life. " It is surprising how much good
one often finds where one least expects it," I remarked to Father
Quentin when the painful interview was over.

"Yes," he replied, " Hubert's character is a weak one; he is
passionate and impulsive, and has unfortunately altogether failed
to acquire self-control."

" It is deplorable," I rejoined, "to think he should have gone
so far astray, when we remember that he is not yet twenty-one.
Do you think he will really reform ? I am afraid his present
mood will too soon pass away,"

" He is humble, and therefore I have hope of him," the
charitable priest answered; "and even a't his worst he did not
altogether abandon the practice of his religion, though he has,
I fear, been sadly careless and remiss. The longer I live the
more convinced am I that there are no sins so fatal as pride and
apostasy, and it is these which, as a rule, prepare the way for
final impenitence."

I must add that subsequent events proved the correctness of
Father Quentin's view of the case. Hubert settled on a sheep-
farm in the neighborhood of Buenos Ayres, and when last 1
heard of him he was leading a quiet, steady life, and altogether
doing very well.

Sir Philip Fletcher undoubtedly desired to marry Beatrice
for her own sake, but it cannot be supposed that he became less
eager to secure her hand now that she was the mistress of Neth-
erwood. He behaved extremely well, however, and showed
both consideration for her feelings and deference to her wishes.
Though deeply in love with her, he readily assented to her pro-
posal that the marriage should be postponed for a year, an in-
terval which she intended to pass in complete retirement, under
the roof of a widowed sister of the Mr. Newburgh whose name
has already been mentioned in these pages. This lady, who
owned a small estate in the lowlands of Scotland, had offered
Beatrice a temporary home in her house.

But man proposes and God disposes. In the following spring
Sir Philip was thrown from his horse while out hunting, sus-
taining severe injuries, from the effects of which he died about
three weeks afterwards. He had fulfilled his promise of placing
himself under instruction, and was, I believe, received into the
church in his last hours.

Thus Beatrice found herself without claims of duty, ties of
kindred, or anything that could prevent her from carrying out
the desire she had secretly cherished ever since the death of her

1 888.] THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. 789

father, and devoting her life to prayer, penance, and expiation.
She therefore caused the Netherwood estate to be sold, and out
of the proceeds of the sale placed in the hands of trustees a sum
sufficient to yield a yearly interest of five hundred pounds, and
thus furnish the income allotted to Hubert. After founding
Masses in perpetuity for the souls of her father and mother, Sir
Philip Fletcher, and Jean-Baptiste Morizot, the victim of Hu-
bert's violence, she arranged that the whole remainder of the
purchase-money, with the exception of the amount required for
her dowry, should be made over to the bishop of the diocese,
and thus restored to the church, in the event of her remaining
in the convent where she purposed trying her vocation. She
had always had a great devotion to St. Teresa, and a strong
attraction to the venerable and illustrious order of Mt. Carmel,
and she finally decided to enter a convent of that order in Spain,
over which a sister of her mother was at the time ruling as
prioress.

After the lapse of rather less than two years I found myself,
towards the close of a brilliant summer day, ascending one of
a range of hills which are situated in a picturesque and beauti-
ful district of Spain. It was my first visit to that land of ro-
mance, and my rapturous admiration caused not a little amuse-
ment to Father Quentin, who was my companion on this occa-
sion, and was himself well acquainted with the country, having
been in his earlier days professor in the College of Valladolid.

" You seem to fancy you have found the earthly paradise,"
he said with a smile, " and certainly this road is steep and rug-
ged enough to be the path to heaven ! "

As we gradually ascended, the prospect became more and
more enchanting ; beyond the hills lay mountains, beautiful in
form and clothed with pine-forests to their summit, while on one
side the view was terminated by the Sierra Nevada, a splendid
mass, towering above all the subordinate objects in regal majes-
ty, while the rays of the setting sun tinged the eternal snow.
Our path lay through groves of olives and oranges, through
woods of cypress and ilex, here and there skirting or crossing
a clear and crystal stream, while from time to time the sound of
a bell, made soft and musical by distance, was heard from some
village church. When at length we reached our destination
and rang at the outer gate of a convent which is situated
on the summit of a hill, nothing could be more beautiful than

790 THE WYNTERTONS OF NETHERWOOD. [Mar.,

the view which was unfolded to our gaze, and in spite of
my fatigue I felt almost sorry that we had no further to go.

Beatrice Wynterton was to be professed on the morrow, and
it was in order to assist at the ceremony that Father Quentin
and I had journeyed southwards. Being an accomplished Span-
ish scholar, he was able to accede to her earnest request and
preach on the occasion. I think no one who heard that sermon
could ever forget it, or cease to remember how the holy priest
poured forth the treasures of his matured wisdom and fervent
piety, as he spoke, in terms which moved all hearts, of the ne-
cessity of suffering, its merit, and its glorious reward. " Ere
long," he said in conclusion, " our Lord will say to each of his
faithful servants, whether toiling in the world and bearing ' the
burden of the day and the heats,' or hidden from the eye of man
in the solemn seclusion of the cloister: 'My child, long enough
thou hast carried the cross ; now is the time for the crown.' '

At the conclusion of the ceremony Beatrice prostrated her.
self on the pall of brown serge, while the nuns chanted the Te
Deum. The last notes died away and she lay prostrate still ; nor,
prompt though she had ever been to answer to the call of duty
and respond to the voice of obedience, did she rise when com-
manded to do so. In that supreme moment, the consummation,
as it were, of her sacrifice, God had taken her to himself. She
was already numbered with his saints in glory everlasting.

A. M. CLARKE.

i888.] Louis PASTEUR. 791

LOUIS PASTEUR,
ii.

PASTEUR'S studies on vinegar had taught him many things,
and on turning to the question of wine he came, as usual, with a
preconceived idea as to its fermentation. He felt quite convinced
wine does not " work" to the extent that is generally supposed.
As it is composed of many different bodies, special ethers are
undoubtedly formed, and reactions may likewise take place be-
tween the other substances. According to Pasteur, the " age-
ing" of wine was due to the oxygen of the air, which in dis-
solving became mixed with the wine. It is, however, absolutely
necessary in wine-making t'o oxygenize it to a certain extent.
Therefore he thought the changes which wine undergoes, render-
ing it either acid, sharp or sour, might probably be brought
about by the presence of a microscopic fungus. Chaptal, in his
work on wine-making, had announced the existence of a flower
to which he gave the name of Mycoderma vini, and which, in his
idea, was not injurious to wine ; it develops rapidly on newly-
made wine, but does not multiply on that which has been in cask
a long time. With the Mycoderma aceti, which Pasteur had dis-
covered in vinegar, the contrary takes place : far from thriving
on fresh wines, it finds its full nourishment in old vintages. Thus
it arrives that as the wines "age " the Mycoderma vini dies and
is replaced by the Mycoderma aceti ; the latter develops rapidly,
nourishing itself at first from the cells of the dead Mycoderma
vini. In hot weather wine frequently turns, and various reasons
were given for this. Pasteur declared it was owing to fermen-
tation caused by an organized ferment, proceeding undoubtedly
from germs existing in the grapes at gathering-time, or else
from bad grapes such as are inevitably to be met with in every
vintage. Being fully convinced that the alterations in them are
due to the presence of a microscopic fungus, the germs of which
exist from the moment of the fermentation of the grape, he at
once understood that were the wine raised to a temperature of
55 or 60 centigrade* for a few moments only, it would be
saved from all deterioration. He at once tried the experi-
ment, and, having heated some bottles to 60, he placed them in
a cellar after they had cooled. At the expiration of six weeks

* 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

792 Louis PASTEUR. [Mar.,

he examined them, and no deposit whatever had formed, where-
as in other unheated bottles of the same vintage a deposit was
quite perceptible ; this latter increased rapidly, and on micro-
scopic examination was found to be mixed with a coloring mat-
ter which had become quite insoluble. But Pasteur, as his son-
in-law tells us, in nowise claimed to originate the process of
wine-heating ; he but placed it on a scientific basis.

Notwithstanding these results Pasteur clearly perceived the
general disbelief in his heating theory, which was supposed by
the incredulous to injure the taste, color, and clearness of the
wine. He first requested persons in society to give their
opinion, which was almost universally in favor of the heated
wines; then he appealed to wine-merchants, etc., and in 1865 a
sub-commission was appointed to come and examine a large
number of specimens at the Ecole Normale. At this tasting a
slight preference was shown for the heated wines, which had
been previously pointed out to the commissioners. Pasteur re-
quested these gentlemen to return, when, at a second meeting,
the heated and unheated wines would be offered them without
any indication whatever. After many tastings Pasteur, aston-
ished at the wonderful delicacy of palate shown by the com-
missioners, used a little artifice. He offered them two glasses
taken from the same bottle. It was quite amusing to see the
hesitations, some pronouncing in favor of the first glass, others
preferring the second. In fine, it was admitted that the differ-
ence existing between the heated and unheated wines was so
imperceptible that all those concerned should feel grateful to
the man through whose suggestions such a simple process for
neutralizing the causes of deterioration had been advised. Not
long elapsed before wine began to be heated in barrels, and thus
the benefit derived from this method of preservation became
more generally spread.

Pasteur's first studies on virulent diseases were made in 1856.
Hitherto their causes were supposed to exist in the atomic move-
ments which belong to bodies undergoing molecular change,
and to possess the power of communicating themselves to the
various constituents of the living body. Pasteur's researches on
fermentation, and the discoveries resulting from them, changed
these theories.

His attention was first directed to that dreadful malady
known as splenic fever in horses, malignant pustule in man,
maladie de sang in cows, and sang de rate in sheep. In one year
France alone has sustained a loss amounting to fifteen or twenty

i888.] Louis PASTEUR. 793

millions of francs from this fearful disease. Spain, Italy, Hun-
gary, Brazil, Russia, where it is known as the "Siberian plague,"
and Egypt, where it is supposed to be one of the ten plagues of
Egypt, have all seen their flocks and herds destroyed by the
splenic fever. No cause could be assigned for this disease, and
research was all the more difficult as it seldom presented the
same symptoms in the different animals, and was consequently
supposed to vary according to the species smitten with it. Per-
sons immediately employed about animals are the most fre-
quently attacked by malignant pustule, therefore no doubt ex-
isted as to its having precisely the same origin as splenic fever.
The faintest scratch is sufficient to let in the virus ; or a sting
from a fly which has sucked the blood of an animal dead from
splenic fever is also a frequent cause of this malady.

Pasteur at once began experimenting, associating in his
labors M. Joubert, one of his old Ecole Normale pupils. In 1877
he declared before the Academic des Sciences that the only
agent of splenic fever was, without doubt, the bacilli in the
blood, the existence of which Drs. Rayer and Davaine had de-
tected in 1850. Carrying his investigations still further, Pasteur
found two distinct viruses, one of which, requiring air, formed
the agent of simple splenic fever, communicated by one living
animal to another. But when contagion was brought after
death and putrefaction had set in, then the disease assumed the
name of septic&mia, this terrible malady being produced by an
ancerobic microbe, which, requiring no air for its life, invaded
the organs and blood as soon as all the oxygen was consumed.
Pasteur, having procured specimens of the blood of animals,
some of which had died from splenic fever and others of septicce-
mia, cultivated the two viruses so successfully that he was able
to produce either disease by inoculation.

Having made these discoveries, the next idea which pre-
sented itself to him was that of finding some means to arrest the
ravages of the disease, and to this point he now turned all his
thoughts. After much reflection on the phenomena of vaccina-
tion he felt convinced that if he could arrive at attenuating the
virus of splenic fever by an artificial culture, and then inoculate
with the virus thus attenuated, he would have found the pro-
phylactic remedy of the disease. But a difficulty here pre-
sented itself in the double form of generation which the microbe
of splenic fever presents. The parasites of virulent diseases
generally develop themselves simply by fission, and at first Pas-
teur believed this microbe to be reproduced in this manner

794 Louis PASTEUR. [Mar.,

only. Soon, however, he saw that although the microbes
showed themselves at first under the form of transparent fila-
ments, yet after exposure to the air they soon presented spores
in certain numbers all along 1 the filaments. After a short time
these spores merged into the filaments, thus forming one mass
of germs. In this lay the great difficulty in attenuating the
splenic-fever microbe, for these germs might be exposed to the
air for a considerable time, in fact for years, their virulence re-
maining unabated. Therefore, finding the oxygen of the air an
insufficient aid in this case, he set to work to find in what condi-
tion the production of spores could be rendered impossible.
These researches were pursued by Pasteur and his two assist-
ants, M. Chamberland and M. Roux, for some time with the
greatest secrecy, none of the three workers wishing to give
utterance to any of his hopes until certain of success.

At last the day of triumph arrived when Pasteur was able
to affirm that "it is impossible to cultivate the splenic microbe
in neutralized chicken infusion at 44 or 45, but at 42 or 43 it
is easily done, and no spores are produced."

Thus at this degree of temperature, and in contact with pure
air, a culture of parasites of splenic fever, free of all germs, can
be kept up. If the contagium is then tried on animals, after
having been exposed to the heat and air for two, four, six, eight,
or ten days, its virulence will be found to vary according to the
time of its exposure, and thus it offers a series of attenuated
viruses. In the case of vaccination it was thought advisable,
and almost necessary, to use two vaccines, one feeble, the other
much stronger, allowing an interval of twelve or fifteen days
to elapse between the two inoculations. Pasteur, moreover, de-
clared that by his various cultivations of the different viruses he
could not only vaccinate against the disease, but at will inoculate
splenic fever at whatever degree of violence he desired.

Immediately after the communication of this great discovery
to the Academic des Sciences, in the early part of 1881, Pasteur
was invited by the Baron de la Rochette, President of the So-
ci6t6 d'Agriculture of Melun, to come and make publicly an
experiment of splenic-fever vaccination. He accepted the invi-
tation, the society offering to place sixty sheep at his dispo-
sal. He decided to treat them in the following manner: Ten
were to be left untouched, twenty-five were to be vaccinated
with two viruses of unequal force at twelve or fifteen days' inter-
val. A few days later these same twenty-five sheep, together
with the other twenty-five, were all to be inoculated with the

i888.] Louis PASTEUR. 795

virus of the most violent splenic fever. A similar experiment
would be tried on ten cows. Six were to be vaccinated, the
remaining four being left untouched, the whole of them to be
inoculated with the most violent splenic-fever virus on the same
day as the fifty sheep. Pasteur declared positively that all the
twenty-five unvaccinated sheep would die, whereas the twenty-
five vaccinated ones would resist the violent virus ; that the six
vaccinated cows would not be touched by the disease, whilst
the four unvaccinated, if they escaped death, would still be very
ill. The Academic des Sciences, rather startled by the boldness
of these declarations and being less imbued than Pasteur with
\.\&&foiquisau'Ve, begged him to be more prudent, as, if the ex-
periments failed, the Academic would be compromised to a cer-
tain extent by his previous assurances of success.

On the 5th of May, 1881, the trials began at a farm in the
commune of Pouilly-le-Fort, at a short distance from Melun, in
the Department of Seine-et-Marne. The Agricultural Society
requested that a goat might be substituted for one of the sheep
in the batch of twenty-five which were not to undergo vaccina-
tion. The inoculations were performed with the syringe of
Pravaz, and in this first vaccination twenty-four sheep, six cows,
and one goat each received five drops of the attenuated splenic-
fever virus. On the i/th of May a second inoculation took
place, the virus used being a little stronger than the first, and
on the 3ist of May all the animals, vaccinated and unvacci-
nated, were inoculated with the violent splenic-fever virus.
Two days later it was found that Pasteur's predictions were
fulfilled almost to the letter. Of the twenty-five #vaccinated
sheep twenty-one were dead, as was the goat ; two sheep were
dying, and the remaining one was so ill that it could not live
beyond the day. The non-vaccinated cows were in a state of
high fever ; they could no longer eat, and had immense swell-
ings behind the shoulder at the point of vaccination. The vac-
cinated animals, on the contrary, were in perfect health. Before
the end of that year Pasteur had inoculated 33,946 animals ; by
the end of 1883 about -500,000 had been vaccinated. Thencefor-
ward the results obtained were marvellous, and comparison was
easy, as many cattle-owners inoculated but half their flocks in
the beginning, in order to convince themselves of .the efficacy
of the method. It was only when the non-vaccinated fell vic-
tims to the terrible malady that they were clearly convinced of
the value of the remedy. Pasteur, although knowing the period
of immunity after vaccination to last for a much longer time,

796 Louis PASTEUR. [Mar.,

recommended the operation to be repeated every year in March
and April, as at that time of the year splenic fever has not made
its appearance.

But, having found the remedy for the disease, Pasteur
could not rest until he discovered the origin of the malady.
Various causes had been assigned, some tracing it to the
excess of red globules in the blood of the animals, and this,
in its turn, to the over-richness of the pasture land, affirming
that the disease was unknown in districts where the soil is
sandy. Pasteur did not share this opinion, but felt convinced,
from his minute study of the parasite, that the germs were in all
probability contained in the food. After many trials in certain
stricken districts, he came to the following conclusion : Upon the
death of an animal from splenic fever the body is buried on the
spot, when the knacker's establishment is not near. The body
naturally putrefies ; even when not cut up, blood always issues
from it, and thus the earth in the neighborhood of the body be-
comes contaminated. As the bodies were frequently buried in
pasture-fields, Pasteur at once thought the food eaten by the ani-
mals grazing in such fields might be the medium for the in-
troduction of the disease. Having learned that a diseased sheep
had been buried in a field belonging to a farm near Chartres, he
collected some of the earth around the spot, and, having examined
it, found, as he expected, that it contained the spores of the
splenic microbe. He inoculated some guinea-pigs with them,
and at once produced splenic fever and death. In a meadow of
the Jura Pasteur tried the same experiments, and in a field two
years after the dead animals had been buried in it, and after
sowing, reaping, and ploughing, he still found the deadly spores.

It might have been supposed these germs would have com-
pletely sunk into the depths of the earth washed down by rain ;
but even were such the case, Pasteur showed that earth-worms
bring them back to the surface, these germs being easily found
in the deposits of earth left on the surface by the worms. Thus
he declared that the germs of the malady would unquestionably
be found where the soil was richest, as in districts where the
soil is poor and chalky the earth-worms do not find subsistence ;
were the body of an animal which had succumbed to splenic
fever to be buried in such a place, the germs would sink into
the earth and remain there. Thus he showed that in the
Beauce, one of the richest and most fertile districts in France,
the disease formerly made immense havoc, whereas in Sologne,
where the soil is sandy, it is almost unknown. From these facts

i888.] Louis PASTEUR. 797

he concluded that if sufficient care were taken with regard to
dead animals, and inoculations regularly performed on the liv-
ing, this scourge would disappear, and with it the malignant pus-
tule from which men suffer.

Pasteur's microbean theories were of the utmost value in dif-
ferent cases of medicine and surgery, and many of the most learned
hospital practitioners in Paris had recourse to him for aid in cases
of puerperal fever, typhoid fever, a terrible disease of the bones
and marrow known under the name of osteomyelitis, etc. After
minute study of these maladies Pasteur declared that they were
all caused by the presence of a microbe in the blood, which mi-
crobe he not only found but cultivated, as he had done with that
of splenic fever and fowl cholera. Having found that all these
diseases owed their origin to a parasite, Pasteur determined to
devote his studies to a malady which attacked equally both the
human race and the lower animals. It was with this object in
view that he undertook his marvellous experiments on hydro-
phobia. Before his time it had defied all analysis, and its cure
was deemed impossible. He set to work, nevertheless, with a
confident expectation of finding for this, as for other diseases, a
sure remedy. In his researches for the special microbe of hy-
drophobia he was doomed to be disappointed, however, as the
microbe in the saliva of rabid animals is not special to their dis-
eased state, but exists equally in the saliva of perfectly healthy
ones. Maurice Raynaud had clearly proved that the saliva of a
man attacked with hydrophobia, if inoculated "to an animal, will
cause death much more rapidly than even the rabic virus itself,
and thirty-six hours after death the saliva still retains its virulent
properties.

So far back as 1821, a highly interesting article, by Magendie,
appeared in his Journal de Physiologic experimental, and he may
be looked on as the inventor of the method of successive inocu-
lations from animal to animal. Later on we find M. Galtier, a
professor at the Veterinary School of Lyons, who in the inocu-
lations, substituted rabbits for dogs, because in them the period
of incubation of the malady is much shorter.

On this point Pasteur made important microscopic examina-
tions, and discovered in the tissues and blood of animals that had
been thus inoculated a particular microbe, which he likewise
found in the saliva of children who had died from various mala-
dies, and even in that of adults in a perfectly healthy state.

To Dr. Dubou6, of Pau, belongs the honor of having first
proved the real seat of hydrophobia to lie in the brain and

798 Louis PASTEUR. [Mar.,

spinal marrow. Until his time it had been generally believed
that the rabic virus was carried into the system by the blood
of the animal bitten, but Dr. Duboue pointed out that the rabic
virus must be carried by the nerves and nervous fibres. The
length of time elapsing between the bite and the moment at
which the disease manifested itself afforded to him a proof
amounting to demonstration of what he advanced, since, were
the virus carried by the blood, the rapidity with which it circu-
lates would make the period of incubation much shorter. Thus,
when Pasteur undertook his studies on hydrophobia he found
the field cleared, scientifically, but the finishing touch was still
required in order to bring forth a practical result from these
discoveries. He began his labors by seeking the particular mi-
crobe of hydrophobia, in which research disappointment awaited
him ; but as a compensation he made the discovery of the nor-
mal saliva-microbe. One of the first communications of Pasteur
on this subject was made in May, 1881, in which he declared that
he agreed with the statement made by Dr. Dubou6 two years
before : the seat of hydrophobia lay in the nervous system, and
the rabic virus was to be found equally, if not even more, viru-
lent in the brain than in the saliva of men and dogs whose
death had been caused by rabies. He likewise announced
that he had been able to diminish the period of incubation, and
felt certain that he could communicate the disease either by
simple inoculation or by trepanning, using for this purpose
some of the brain substance of a mad dog in a pure state.

Then followed the trials of inoculation from rabbit to rabbit,
and the discovery that the virus obtained by successive inocu-
lations was always maintained in a state of purity and at the
same degree of virulence ; moreover, all the marrow of these
rabbits was rabic. For the purpose of inoculation this marrow
is cut into pieces about two inches long, which are suspended in
numbered vials, in which the air is kept dry by pieces of
potash. The time during which they retain their virulence
varies according to the thickness of the pieces and the lowness
of the temperature in which they are kept. The process of in-
oculation is performed by mixing a piece of the marrow with a
little broth which has been heated to at least 115 centigrade
for the purpose of destroying germs, and then injecting it
under the skin by means of a Pravaz syringe. The injections
are continued during ten days, the first being made with marrow
devoid of all virulence. On each succeeding day a marrow of
a more recent date, and consequently more violent, is inoculated,

!888.] Louis PASTEUR. 799

until at the tenth injection the marrow used is almost fresh, hav-
ing been bottled for a day or two only. By this process a dog
is rendered quite refractory to hydrophobia, and it may be in-
oculated with the most violent rabic virus, either under the skin
or on the surface of the brain, without the malady making its
appearance. ^

Pasteur had operated, in this manner, on fifty dogs, none of
which had become mad, when on the 6th of July, 1885, an Alsa-
tian boy, aged nine years, who had been bitten by a mad dog at
eight o'clock in the morning on the 4th of July, was brought to
him in his laboratory. The child had fourteen bites, the principal
of which had been cauterized with carbolic acid twelve hours
after the accident. The day of his arrival there was the weekly
assembly of the Academic des Sciences. Pasteur assisted at it
and begged Dr. Vulpian* and Dr. Grancher, professors of the Fa-
culte de Medecine, to come and see the child. Having examined
his wounds, they declared that as he would undoubtedly fall a
victim to hydrophobia, Pasteur would be justified in trying his
method on the boy. After much hesitation he at length con-
sented, and the same evening, in presence of these two physi-
cians, and sixty hours after the child had been bitten, the first
inoculation was made.

The marrow used was from a rabbit which had died mad on
the 2ist of June. During the ten following days new inoculations
were made, each time with a more virulent vaccine, with the re-
sult that towards the middle of August the child, was out of
danger and returned to Alsace. Thus passed off triumphantly
Pasteur's first trial of his vaccine on a human being. On the ist
of March, 1886, Pasteur read a report to the Academic des Sci-
ences, announcing the result of the first series of persons inocu-
lated according to his method. Up to that date 350 persons had
been inoculated, and out of the number only one had succumbed,
a little girl of ten named Louise Pelletier, who, having been se-
verely bitten on the head the most dangerous of all places was
only brought to Pasteur thirty-seven days after the accident. All
the others were cured, and the death of the child was not surpris-
ing ; in fact, feeling certain she was doomed to fall a victim to the
bites she had received, some of his assistants tried to dissuade
Pasteur from inoculating her, but he declared that all efforts
should be made to save her, in spite of the little chance of suc-
cess. From the date of Joseph Meister's treatment up to Octo-
ber, 1886, more than 1,200 persons have been inoculated at the

* Dr. Vulpian died last spring.

8oo Louis PASTEUR. [Mar.,

laboratory for bites from mad dogs, and out of this number only
six or seven have died.

Pasteur is now engaged on important experiments for the
modification of his vaccine, in order to apply it to wolf-bites, and
his method of vaccination in such cases is likewise undergoing a
change. He was much dissatisfied with the results obtained
on the Russians who arrived at his laboratory at the beginning
of last year. The first group, from Smolensk, was composed
of eighteen men and one woman, all of whom had been bitten by
a mad wolf on the 28th of February. They had been cauterized,
and, the municipality of Beloe having furnished them with the
necessary funds, they started for Paris, arriving thereon the I3th
of March, 1886. The inoculations began immediately, but out
of the nineteen persons three fell victims to hydrophobia. The
others were cured. It must not be lost sight of that fifteen days
had elapsed before they were inoculated, and their wounds were
fearful to behold ; a tooth of the wolf was found embedded in the
temporal bone of one of the men. Nine other Russians arrived
at the laboratory, from Wladimir, on the 8th of April. They
h'ad been bitten on the 25th of March and cauterized six hours
after. Pasteur, thinking the three Russians of the first group had
succumbed for want of a sufficient number of inoculations, ad-
ministered three each day, instead of one ; he likewise proposed
to make them two series of inoculations of fifteen injections each.
However, before the end of the second series one of the patients
died, on the igth of April, and Dr. Vicknevsky, who accompanied
them, preferred to leave Paris. Of the eight remaining Russians
one died on the return journey, and another succumbed on
reaching Russia. The other six recovered.

After these deaths numbers of journals began to cry down
the Pasteur method, but most unjustly. It should be borne in
mind that in neither of the two groups of Russians had hot iron
been used for cauterizing ; in one instance azotic acid was em-
ployed, in the other carbolic acid. During the time which pass-
ed before reaching Paris probably their nervous systems had
been hard at work, and these different and grave causes must
have all been completely unfavorable to the full success of the
inoculations. 'The day is probably not far distant when Pas-
teur's system will be so perfected that it will be as successful
with the lupine as with the canine virus. In Russia, at all
events, where terrible ravages are committed each winter by the
wolves, and where hydrophobia exists in an endemical state,
much attention is bestowed on the study of his preventive treat-

1 888.] Louis PASTEUR. 801

ment. At the present writing two Russians, Drs. Ounkowsky
and Parchewsky, have already left the laboratory, carrying vari-
ous vials and instruments necessary for their operations, and a
trepanned rabbit which is certain to die in a week. Should a
longer journey be necessary more rabbits must be taken, so
that when the first dies the second may be at once trepanned
and inoculated with the marrow of the first. A third Rus-
sian, Dr. Kronglevsky, a professor of the Faculty of Medicine
at St. Petersburg, is still studying the Pasteur method in the
laboratory of the Rue d'Ulm.

Two American physicians, one from New York, the other from
Philadelphia, have likewise taken away the precious little ani-
mals. Two Italian doctors from Rome and Naples, a celebrated
physician from Stockholm, a Spaniard from Madrid, and a Por-
tuguese from Lisbon, have left Paris full of admiration for Pas-
teur, and animated with the firm hope that success may attend
their experiments.

On reflection, what can be simpler than the entire proceed-
ing? It does not require anything that cannot be easily pro-
cured, and in conscientious hands all due precautions will be
taken for maintaining the perfect purity of the air during the
preparation of the vaccine. We therefore trust that before long
each capital will be endowed with an establishment where the
inoculations can take place. It must never be lost sight of, how-
ever, that the first thing to do for a person bitten by a rabid
animal is to cauterize the wound.

Dr. Tardieu, an eminent Parisian physician, after much
study of the question, has shown in his report to the Comite
d'Hygiene that the medium period of incubation generally lasts
about forty-eight days for face-bites, whilst for wounds on the
limbs it may be usually estimated at seventy days. He affirms
that in patients under twenty years of age it lasts about forty-
one days, whereas over twenty it is generally about sixty-seven.
These figures are not given as absolute rules, but they prove
clearly the great utility of cauterization, and on this point Pas-
teur himself is most explicit.

Some have sought to find a resemblance between the vaccine
of small-pox and that of hydrophobia. This is, however, a vast
error. For ordinary vaccination we all know that a very small
particle of vaccine is used, and even that small quantity produ-
ces a malady more or less developed according to various con-
stitutions ; whereas the hydrophobic vaccination is continued
during ten days, the injected virus is strengthened by successive

VOL. XLVI. 51

8o2 Louis PASTEUR. [Mar.,

passages from rabbit to rabbit, and the patient under treatment
experiences no disagreeable sensation whatever. In fact, the
virus used by Pasteur is so violent that an eminent French phy-
sician, who once assisted at the inoculations in the Rue d'Ulm,
declared he was completely stupefie 1 at the boldness of Pasteur.

Much still remains to be said on hydrophobia ; even when
these lines appear, the Pasteur method may have reached a still
higher degree of perfection, for its inventor is not a man to rest
quietly on his laurels his motto has always been "en avant.^ If
we have interested the reader, and inspired him with some of
our own feelings of enthusiasm in this great work, which in all
parts of the world is called upon to render incalculable services,
then indeed we shall not have written in vain.

Since Pasteur's microbean theories have been received, Dr.
Verneuil, one of the greatest French medical celebrities, has
taken seriously under consideration the possibility of pulmonary
consumption being due to the presence of a microbe. He has
opened a subscription for the purpose of erecting an institution
for receiving consumptive patients alone, and the first name on
the list of donors was that of Pasteur, his offering being accom-
panied with the following letter, which we find reproduced in
the Gazette hebdomadaire de Mtdecine et de Chirurgie, and address-
ed to Dr. Verneuil :

" MY DEAR COLLEAGUE :

" I send you my modest offering. Accept it, I beg of you, as a proof
that I enter, heart and soul, into your most excellent work.

" Allow me to add that I am very happy to give you, thus publicly, a
mark of my personal sympathy. You are one of the great converts to
those ideas which have succeeded in gaining all unprejudiced minds with-
in the space of only a few years.

"Let us leave those whose ideas are behind the age to attempt the re-
vival of the most antiquated of medical doctrines, that of the spontaneity
of virulent and contagious maladies. However desperate their efforts may
be. they will not prevent future generations from always going forward
towards the increasing light of the microbean doctrines.

" With the expression of all my sympathy, L. PASTEUR."

The day is probably not far distant when all voices will unite
in one general song of praise to the illustrious man whose life
has been spent ever working for the general good. It may truly
be said of him that few existences have presented a more per-
fect model of a life devoted to ends beneficial to all humanity.

GEORGE PROSPERO.

1 888.] Ar THE GATES. 803

AT THE GATES.

Lo, He stands at the gate and knocks,

And thou wilt not let Him in !
The lofty chamber rocks

With the shouts and the cymbals' din;
And the thousand lights that glow
On smooth limbs white as snow,

Gleam back in arcs of fire
From jeweled cups, whose wine
Makes each eye with frenzy shine,

And kindles man's mad desire.
Fierce 'gainst each massive rafter
Beat the drunken cries, and the laughter
Rings out 'gainst the carven blocks

Of the palace of Death and Sin.
Lo, He stands at the gate and knocks,

And thou wilt not let Him in!
The brazen portals stand
Unmoved 'neath His nail-pierced hand ;
Alone with the night and the rain,
Alone with the longing pain

For the souls that He yearns to win,
With an endless patience He waits,
Thy Saviour and mine, at the gates,

And thou wilt not let Him in !

O foolish heart, awake !

O blind ! thy gates throw wide
To the loving Christ who died

In anguish for thy sake !

Lo, the garish splendor dies

In the tender light of His eyes;

The throbs of His Sacred Heart,
As it beats for thee, strike dumb
The clamor of horn and drum,

And Riot and Sin depart,

For the silence of peace is come.

No longer the arches rock

With the shouts and the cymbals' din ;

804 THE LOCKED ANTLERS. [Mar.,

Alone with the night and the rain,
Alone with their gnawing pain,

Stand the spectres of Death and Sin-
Yea, they stand at the gates and knock,

And He will not let them in !

JOHN E. MCMAHON, U.S.A.

THE LOCKED ANTLERS.

THIS is the spot where they died,
With none to observe them

Save their mute fellows, wide-eyed,
But helpless to serve them.

Here in the forest they met
Their fronts grimly lowered

As unto battle they set

Their prowess untoward ;

Met, and these antlers of might
Their prongs interlocking

Head unto head fettered tight,
The foes as if mocking.

Held them, their blent, hurried breath

Blown hot in their faces-
Held them till thirst ushered death

To seal their embraces.

Servants of Hatred, and slaves

To Pride and to Passion,
Look you ! what terrible graves

Death loveth to fashion !

Here lie the mouldering rags

Of Passion rude strangled
Here lie the skulls of the stags,

With horns intertangled.

CHARLES HENRY L(JDERS.

1 888.] LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD ! 805

LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD!

THE Vespers had all been sung, and a true, sweet, heart-
entrancing Vespers they were true in that every antiphon
and psalm had been chanted, and as well the chapter and the
hymn appointed for the festival, with the Virgin's glorious can-
ticle, followed by the duly ordered prayer, the versicles and re-
sponses. When the devout words of the Salve Regina had
ceased, a galaxy of lights gleamed upon the altar and shed their
radiance upon the white-robed choir of men and boys ranged in
their due rank on either side, from whose voices no other tone
had been heard but that which fitly joined the chanting of the
priest the tones of the church's own true song, sweet, intelli-
gent, devout, and heart-uplifting, the song of many centuries,
heard from age to age, which saintly hearts had inspired and
saintly voices loved to sing from childhood to the hour that
summoned them away from earth to sing the meaning of all
song in heaven.

There was a heartiness and a holy joy in the chanting of the
singers; a well-ordered, edifying seemliness in the observance of
all the proper ceremonies directed by the ritual; and such a
brightness and happiness shone upon the faces of all the choris-
ters, as from side to side of the lustrous choir rolled forth the
waves of antiphonal melody, that I thought: Here might the
holy Psalmist find, apart from the noisy clamor of the world,
a chosen number who truly sing, as he himself sang of old:
" Lcetatus sum in his qua dicta sunt mihi: In domum Domini ibimus.
Stantes erant pedes nostri in atriis tuis Jerusalem ! " I was glad
when they said unto me : Let us go into the house of the Lord.
Our feet have been wont to stand within thy gates, O Jerusa-
lem !

Now the lights upon the altar are all shining, and the service
of adoration and praise of the Blessed Sacrament goes on, and,
amid the rising clouds of incense, the full-voiced choir in double
chorus chant the laudatory ascription : Genitori, Genitoque, Laus et
jubilatio :

" Honor, laud, and praise addressing

To the Father and the Son,
Might ascribe we, virtue, blessing,

And eternal benison.
Holy Ghost from both progressing,
Equal Praise to thee be done ! "

806 LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD! [Mar. ?

All knees are bended and all heads bow low as, during a mo-
ment of impressive silence of all music and song, the Benediction
of the Sacramental Victim is given ; and then, in joyful acclaim,
rises again the psalm of praise, heard once before at Vespers,
calling upon upon whom ? Each other among the choristers ?
Not only so, but upon all the people to unite in the general out-
pouring of thankful hearts, the burden of whose tuneful song is :
Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, laudate eum omnes populi ! O
praise the Lord, all ye nations ; praise him, all ye people. For his
mercy is confirmed upon us, and the truth of the Lord remaineth
for ever !

Yet not one note of melody was heard from one of the
crowded congregation present !

I had heard other such invitations from the clear, sweet
voices of the two bright-faced boy choristers, who, standing be-
fore the altar, had intoned the psalms, Confitebor and Laudate
pueri : " I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart, in the
assembly of the righteous and in the congregation." " Praise ye
the Lord, O ye children ; praise ye the name of the Lord. From
the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, the name
of the Lord is worthy to be praised." But from the beginning
to the end of the service not one of the people uttered a sound.

The Benediction is over, and now I see the long line of chor-
isters departing from the Sanctuary; and as they go I hear them
singing a parting hymn whose words are a loving lingering
upon the same glad theme of praise :

" The day of praise is done ;

The evening shadows fall ;
Yet pass not from us with the sun,
True Light that lightenest all !

" Around thy throne on high,
Where night can never be,
The white-robed harpers of the skies
Bring ceaseless hymns io thee.

" Too faint our anthems here ;
Too soon of praise we tire ;
But oh ! the strains how full and clear
Of that eternal choir !

" Yet, Lord, to thy dear will
If thou attune the heart,
We in thine angels' music still
May bear an humble part.

i888.] * LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD ! 807

" Shine thou within us, then,

A Day that knows no end.
Till songs of angels and of men
In perfect praise shall blend ! "

The notes of the sweet melody die away ; the procession of
choristers has passed out of the choir; the lights upon the altar
are extinguished ; the people rise and depart, and I am left
alone, to think. For a thought has persistently intruded itself
upon my mind from the beginning of Vespers to the close of the
Benediction and through the singing of the recessional hymn a
thought that comes to me in the form of a question: What is the
chief object, among all possible purposes sought by the church,
in calling a congregation of people together at this Vesper ser-
vice or at any public service ?

The cause which has thrust this question upon me is quite
evident. From the beginning to the end of this otherwise per-
fectly celebrated and charmingly devout service my mind has
suffered a painful sense of oppression, caused by the silence of
the people, which was all the more oppressive because, on this
particular occasion, there was such a large congregation present,
numbering very nearly two thousand souls. We of the choir
were undoubtedly filled with the joy of the festival, and mani-
fested the gladness of our hearts, as nature and grace equally
prompted, by " coming before the Lord with a song, and making
a cheerful noise to him with psalms," but the vast, crowded nave
seemed dismal, dull, and irresponsive.

I am not long in finding what I am sure must be the general
intention of the church in having the people assembled congre-
gationally for divine worship. It surely is Prayer, for that em-
braces all the offerings of human hearts to God. But what kind
of prayer is that which specially befits human hearts to offer in
common, in a united assembly, which is, as it were, the voice of
an assembly ? It is unquestionably the prayer of Praise.

People may come to the church at any hour and upon any day,
and pray, alone or in company with devout friends, before the
altar ; and pray as they may desire, for pardon of sin, for bless-
ings needed by themselves or others. They may pray with in-
tent and power of intercession for the living and the dead.
They may come and throw themselves at the feet of God, and
there pray with rapturous contemplation, and fly With wings of
love into the embrace of the All-Holy and Perfect by the loftiest
of all prayers, the Prayer of Union. But though the soul in its
glorious liberty may never be denied the use of any or all of

8o8 LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD ! [Mar.,

these pinions of the spirit upon which to soar, untrammelled by
time or space, into the bosom of its God, and even thus employ
its powers during the season when, obedient to the divine sum-
mons of the church, it comes to unite itself with the voice
of " the church assembled for Praise," it may not now, I re-
flected, separate itself in spirit, and neither ought it to separate
itself in voice, from the united chorus of Praise, and thus deprive
God of the very offering he expects to receive, and the chief, if I
may not also say the only, object or purpose upon which the church
decrees the assembling of people together for religious worship.

I am writing this essay to bring this point home to my
readers, many of whom, I venture to assert, have never reflect-,
ed upon the essential reason lying at the bottom of the strict
obligation to come to Mass, or of the object sought by the
church in the celebration of Vespers and calling the people to
be present at such services.

They are not called there to pray as they please. They are
called there by the church to praise God, first and last ; and they
have no spiritual liberty to ignore that purpose altogether and
cheat God of the praise of their hearts nor of their mouths
either, if they are not dumb while they selfishly spend the
whole time begging God for all sorts of private blessings, tem-
poral and spiritual; praying for this and praying for that, busy
enough in supplication in order to get something from God,
but never dreaming that the first reason of all for their being
there is to give something to God, the only thing that a creature
can give him, and the only thing the Catholic Church was
founded to give, and that is Praise. Yes, Divine Praise is the
one purpose which takes precedence of all other purposes, as it
is the end for which public religious worship is established ; and
yet I think he would not be far wrong who should say that if
it be not the last of all the motives present to the minds of the
people, as an assembly, at Mass or Vespers, or the last one that
draws them thither, it is certainly the least.

I said, as an assembly. For it must be borne in mind that the
church does not call the people together at her official services
as individuals, but that they may form a representative body of
the worshipping church gathered together in the name and by
the authority of Christ, the Head of the church. Ubi Christ us
ibi ecclesia Where Christ is, there is the church. Where is
Christ? "Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in
My name, there am I in the midst of them." It is undoubtedly
the realization of a divine idea that worshippers should unite
together in the more solemn acts of worship, for such a commu-

i888.] LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD ! 809

nion in worship is as universal as the notion and practice of
religious worship itself.

That Praise should be esteemed as the first and chief purpose
of a religious assembly is beyond question. Let us examine
what is the primary, fundamental idea of those two public, com-
mon services of the Catholic Church the Holy Mass and that
part of the Divine Office called Vespers.

The Mass is a sacrifice. Whence is derived the notion and
purpose of sacrifice? Of all human religious institutions, no
act of worship can be shown to have been so ancient, coeval as
it .was with the first life of mankind upon the earth, or so univer-
sal in its acceptation and practice by every nation. Whatever
false interpretations of it there may have been, so surely as wor-
ship in any sense is of divine institution the act of sacrifice is
none the less so. Upon what ethical principle is sacrifice
founded ? Upon the obligation of the creature to recognize the
supreme sovereignty of the Creator. By the sacrifice of what
one is and of what one has, man makes an act of abnegation of
his own self-sovereignty and of all right to assert himself as the
lord and master, or as being in any sense the maker of his own
being or of any other creature, and consequently renounces
all claim of honor or praise as rightfully ascribed to himself.
To God alone belongs all praise for the existence and life of
all creatures. To question that truth would be the word of the
fool, who says in his heart, There -is no God; desiring in his
heart to exalt himself, and to be looked upon by his fellow-
beings and other creatures "as a god." Then why should he
make any act of sacrifice to any other being, and offer the trib-
ute of praise which he thinks due to himself? This was the
folly of Adam, and in the foolishness of this arrogant self-
sovereignty, this original sin of wishing to be " as a god," and
hence by nature led to deny God the supreme praise which is
his due, lies the secret of the universal tendency of the whole
human race to do the same.

We now plainly see the ethical necessity for the institution
of the act of sacrifice : not only as a testimony of God's supreme
sovereignty, to whom all praise is due, but also as an act of re-
paration on the part of the human race to the outraged majesty
of God on account of the original sin of the race and its manifold
consequences. Worship, Sacrifice, Praise are all' correlative.

Sacrifices in blood-shedding and offerings of the fruits of
the earth could have no meaning or value except as being
vivid and forcible external manifestations of the spiritual in-
terior sacrifice of Praise, the obligation of which their practice

8 io LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD ! [Mar.,

enforced, and which, in the new religion revealed by the Saviour
of the world, took the place of the former typical sacrifices of
other creatures exacted of mankind. But the humanity of
Adam neither would nor could offer this worthy sacrifice of
praise, on account of its prevaricated nature. This alone could
be rendered by the humanity of Christ, through and by whom
alone can man receive strength by divine grace to renounce his
own assumption of self-sovereignty, and offer the meed of praise
demanded by the supreme, creative sovereignty of God. This
is signified and expressed in the doctrine of redemption as
taught by the Catholic Church, and also in all her official prayers
of worship, every one of which concludes with ''per Dominum
nostrum Jesum Christum " through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Mass is, then, the external form of divine Christian wor-
ship, which fully embodies and expresses the interior, spiritual
sacrifice of Praise due from man to God. That it is also in its
expression an external act of sacrificial worship needs no apolo-
gy, since every human interior act naturally demands the cor-
responding exterior word, or form-expression, of it.

The Mass is the Christian's obligatory spiritual sacrifice of
Praise. That is why it is called Eucharist, or Thanksgiving ;
and it is the only fully worthy means of offering the interior,
spiritual sacrifice of Praise an obligation on the part of man
which he cannot shirk from taking a responsible, active part in ;
apart that he cannot delegate to another, not even to the sacrific-
ing priest. When the priest is about to enter upon that portion
of the Mass in which he is to pronounce the sacrificial words of
Consecration, he turns to the people and says to them : " Pray,
brethren, that my and your sacrifice may be acceptable to God
the Father Almighty," and their response indicates what is the
spirit of that sacrifice : " May the Lord receive the sacrifice
from thy hands to the praise and glory of his name, to our
benefit and to that of all his holy church." Read the various
Prefaces preceding the Sanctus, and see what sublime ascrip-
tions they are of praise to the Thrice Holy One; begun by the
priest again presenting the chief motive of the sacrifice, and
the people acknowledging it in those beautiful salutations and
responses: " Sursum Corda ! " " Lift ye up your hearts!"
" We lift them up to the Lord." " Let us give thanks to our
Lord God." "It is meet and just so to do." I need not quote
further from the language of this divine service of Praise, which
all know the Mass so exhaustively realizes, whether regarded
as a whole or taken in its minutest details of language or in-
comparably expressive ceremonies.

i888.] LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD ! 811

What is the service of Vespers? An educated Catholic
ought to know that it is one part of a complete, well-ordered
service of divine Praise, beginning with Matins, followed by
Lauds and the Little Hours Prime, Tierce, Sext, and Nones ;
altogether combined making what is called the Divine Office,
the recitation of which is of daily obligation upon all priests
and monks. It is made up of portions of Holy Scripture,
prayers and sacred anthems and hymns, the greater part being
taken from the Psalms of David; the office for Sunday com-
prising no less than forty-two of them, the rest of the entire
Psalter being divided up between the other days of the week.

Unquestionably the intention attached to this Divine Office by
the mind of the church is that of Praise. It is the rule in mon-
asteries that the whole of this office be recited and in great part
chanted every day, as is said, "in choir" that is, by all the
monks, assembled together congregationally, to the performance
of which duty the monks of some orders are obliged to rise and
sing nearly one-half of the office during the night, sending up
the grateful psalm of praise to God while the greater part of the
world is asleep, or while many who may be awake are dishon-
oring God by sin and self-indulgence.

In good old Catholic times it was almost everywhere a com-
mon custom in Christendom for great numbers of pious Christians
to visit and attend even the night offices in the churches of the
monks, with whose voices they mingled their own with great
delight and fervor of heart, deeply impressed with the sense of
the obligation of praising God and inspired by the holy example
set them of offering this sacrifice of the praise of their mouths.
In a former century there used to be a pious confraternity of
this sort in Paris, styled " Confraternitas Beatse Mariae Parisi-
ensis surgentium ad Matutinas "The Parisian Confraternity
of the Blessed Virgin of those who rise for Matins.

The opening words of the office furnish the key to the spirit
of the whole : " Domine, labia mea aperies, et os meum annuntiabit
laudem tuam"Q Lord, thou shalt open my lips, and my mouth
shall declare thy praise. Then to a most wonderful melody is
sung the 94th Psalm : " Oh ! come let us praise the Lord with glad-
ness, let us joyfully sing to God our Saviour. Let us come be-
fore his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise to
him with psalms."

Of all the various portions, or so-called " hours," of the office
the church has selected that of Vespers, and appointed it to be
chanted in all churches, whether parochial or monastic, because
of its appropriate length, the seasonable hour for its celebration,

812 LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD ! [Mar.,

and from the fact that this " hour " of praise was one which had
always been more commonly attended by the'people, and was
therefore one which they understood best and were more accus-
tomed to take an active part in. In former times the conclusion
of the office called Compline was always sung as a part of Ves-
pers, as indeed it is in many places to-day in Europe. This Di-
vine Office of Praise is one of the most ancient and most perma-
nently enduring and established institutions of the Catholic
Church for the public common celebration of divine worship.

If it could be celebrated according to the standard desired by
the church in the style and form of its chanting, with due per-
formance of all the ceremonies of the ritual; and if the people
could be sufficiently instructed so as to have an intelligent appre-
ciation of its language and an aesthetic appreciation of its mar-
vellous melodies, its sublime rhythm and its unrivalled beauties
of devout tone-expression, it would be impossible to imagine a
common congregational form of a service of praise that could
rival it in suitability and adaptability to their spiritual needs.

The liturgical services of Holy Mass and Vespers are, then,
services of Divine Praise, which, if they were not so, would
not be worthy services of religious worship at all, for the
chief end of worship, as I have shown, is Praise. The Chris-
tian religion in its spiritual sacrifice of praise has fulfilled all the
former typical sacrifices, whose ultimate object could have no
other meaning. The Christian Praise is at once the praise of
Reparation and Perfection. As a sacrifice of reparatory praise
it is based upon the principle of the virtue of obedience, thus re-
pairing the vice of human disobedience and refusal to acknow-
ledge the supreme sovereignty of God ; whence we derive the
reason for the obligation of "hearing " Mass a term whose use is
fraught with unfortunate consequences, giving rise to the pre-
sent practical separation of the people from union with the sac-
rificial act of divine worship ; for it is not simply hearing or at-
tending Mass that is meant by the obligatory decree, but uniting
themselves with the priest in its celebration.

As a sacrifice of perfect Praise it is an oblation based upon
the principle of the virtue of Charity, or Divine Love the New
Sacrifice which is made possible to prevaricated human nature
by the divine grace of regeneration in the Christian humanity.
And now the light of day is fading in the church where I
sit and think, and the air, so lately tremulous with song, seems
hushed into a reposeful silence by the winged shadows of the
twilight as they hover, now over altar and shrine and counte-
nance of pictured saint, now higher over lofty column and carved

i888.] LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD! 813

capital and upon the deep embrasures of the storied windows,
till they soar fluttering upward and are lost to sight amid the
fretted groins of the deep, embowered roof. Again there comes
back to me an echo of the parting hymn sung by the choristers :

" The day of praise is done,

The evening shadows fall,
Yet pass not from us with the sun,
True Light that lightenest all ! "

Glimmering far in the distance I see the twinkling olive star of
the Sanctuary, as though it were an evening star flashing like a
jewel upon the hem of the heaven-bright mantle of that True
Light who, as a Sun of glory, was enthroned upon the altar's
firmament to shed his beaming rays of light and peace and bene-
diction upon the throng of loving hearts prostrate before him,
and now has sunk beneath the horizon to rest in his evening
Tabernacle of repose. And I ask myself : Why is this service of
the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament so eagerly sought by
worshippers; what brings together such crowds of people; and
what is the principal occupation of these pious souls in presence
of their Sacramental God? Out of the whole number of people
how many came here this afternoon expressly to praise him ?
In how many minds was the thought uppermost that this is a
blissful moment granted to them to offer to their loving God the
grateful sacrifice of Praise ? What would be the honest reply
if I questioned one coming from High Mass, Vespers, or Benedic-
tion, and asked how much of the time of divine worship he had
employed in acts of praise? Would it not be that he had come
for this or that special intention ; to pray for some temporal or
spiritual favor; that he took the opportunity of saying his pen-
ance, or reciting the beads, making acts of contrition, or fulfilling
the conditions of some novena; meanwhile enjoying the delight-
ful singing by the choir, and gazing with admiration upon the
splendid ceremonies? But of Praise? O yes! in a general
way, of course. But, to make distinct acts of that nature, it
really never crossed his mind. Yet here is the Catholic Church
establishing these divine services, and perpetuating them through
all time precisely for that end.

And now my thinking has served me well ; for the reason of
the lack of due appreciation of this chief motive of worship is
at once apparent. The manner in which the services in our
churches are nowadays conducted is such as to impress the
minds of the people that, if Praise be indeed the chief motive,
such is not their part in them. That is the duty of the clergy,
and possibly of the choir also. It is for them to do all the prais-

8 14 LET ALL THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE LORD ! [Mar.,

ing while the people occupy themselves with silently praying for
themselves and others. They instinctively and justly reason
that if Praise is expected of them, and they should honestly at-
tempt to unite in it, they would be obliged to speak up as boldly
as they felt or sing out as sweetly as they could ; and entering
into the courts of the sanctuary, they would devoutly say with
the clergy, and heartily mean what they say : " O Lord, thou
shalt open my lips, and my mouth shall declare thy Praise."

Again I say the divine services are services of the worship
of Praise Praise by the clergy, the choir, and the people. Shut
the mouths of those who sing the song of Praise unto the Lord,
and it is not exaggerating the truth to say that they who are
thus silenced will cease to think of Praise as any prominent or
urgent purpose of their presence, and leave it to those who can
open their lips and declare it.

These are hard, blunt facts and stubborn conclusions. Are
my readers surprised, then, that I am pleading so earnestly for
congregational singing?

With one other thought and a grave one it is, and deserv-
ing of larger development than I can give here I leave the sub-
ject now. Why do we lament that in our day faith is growing
cold? Why is infidelity so successful in spreading its poison
among the masses ? I have already indicated the reason in the
course of this essay. Our age is witnessing one of the very
worst exhibitions of the spirit of the fallen nature of Adam the
world has ever seen the spirit of self-sovereignty, self-do-
minion, self-conceit ; the arrogant assumption of the ability, by
nature, not only to discover all truth, but as well of creating it,
and consequently seeking to deny to God the honor, glory, and
Praise due to him as Creator, and the lowly worship of loving
obedience to his divine laws as Lord of all. And are we not
aiding and abetting this satanic war against the Most High
God by putting our hands upon the mouths of his own lov-
ing children, whose hearts are burning within their breasts to
find utterance, and forbidding them to raise their voices and
thus drown, with the all-powerful accents of the Word of God,
this hellish clamor of the world, the flesh, and the devil? Their
hearts are full enough, and out of the fulness of those hearts
they would eagerly and joyfully, if so bidden, speak and sing
the words of divine Praise ; and as the full tide of holy song
would rise in waves of sublime majesty to heaven from the
sanctuaries of faith, who would not feel that with these true,
loyal souls their bond to God was safe against all attempts of
the enemy to weaken or to rend it ? ALFRED YOUNG.

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 815

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY,

XIV.
IN THE MOONLIGHT.

PAUL MURRAY was neither a sage nor a saint, and had he
combined the qualities of both he would still have been human.
He was simply a very young man, high-principled, and gene-
rously gifted by nature, and steadied, moreover, not alone by
common sense but by a profoundly-rooted religious faith. Still,
he had never been specially devout, not even when he had felt it
his duty, as the eldest and best-beloved son of a typical Irish
mother, to examine seriously whether he could not gratify her
most ardently cherished desire for his vocation. But he was sin-
cere all through, and incapable of pretences. He had inquired
diligently whether her wish might not be the token of a higher
leading, but with his eyes wide open he had seen what seemed
his destined path stretching across the every-day level of Chris-
tian duty. Apparently it was to be a commonplace and dusty
road, leading to no eminences of opportunity, opening up no
vistas of delight. Nevertheless he had set himself to plod along
it with a gay heart and an easy conscience. He never went out
of his way to seek for trouble, and his thoughts, when they
plunged into the future, had been busied chiefly with the prob-
lems which affect the mass of men rarely with personal consid-
erations.

But now, when the horizon had suddenly expanded before
his eyes, when without effort of his own he had been lifted out
of the rut and endowed with wings, he would have been more or
less than human if a great elation had not threatened to intoxi-
cate him with the sense of power. All that men toil for and
grow old before they grasp, even when most successful ; all that
they seek in haste through hidden and ignoble ways, was to be
put into his hands at the very threshold, and yet bear on it
no taint of dishonesty or self-seeking. True, it was restricted in
its use by an obligation of honor and of conscience, but the obli-
gation was one by which he felt that he would have chosen to
bind himself under any circumstances. No matter how strictly
he might read it, it would leave him practically free; his hands
would hold a visible sceptre. He might go where he would ;
he might command whatever he desired ; he might do all that
he pleased.

816 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Mar.,

He was still on the road leading towards home when these
suggestions occurred to him. His mind, which had been sober-
ed, almost arrested in its action, by the weight of Mr. Van Al-
styne's unexpected communication, regained its resilience at a
bound. He was too excited to go indoors. The night was fine
and still after the storm, and as he went up the easy rise leading
to the knoll of which he had spoken as the best site for the
church, the round, yellow moon floated above the low hills to the
east as if to share his solitude.

He might do all that he pleased. His thoughts returned to
harp once more on that chord. He was in the full flush of
youth and strength, and his heart, which until within the last few
days had been as untouched and virginal as that of a pure young
girl, became in an instant fully conscious of itself. He owned,
with a quick throb of mingled hope and fear, that his ability to
please himself would be curiously curtailed, even abrogated, un-
less he could persuade Zipporah Colton to come more than half-
way to meet him.

' He had felt rather than thought about her hitherto ; his fan-
cies had hovered about her like moths about a candle, and he
had run the risk of singeing his wings almost as heedlessly.
He had been aware that a new thread had entered the tissue of
his destiny, but as yet he had instinctively refrained from exam-
ining the effect it would be likely to have upon the pattern.
Even now his thoughts, although he tried to bring them into or-
der, were tinged with the double glow coming from their natu-
ral elevation and the special exaltation of the moment.

To a young man capable of that rare thing, a unique, pure,
and serious passion, the girl who awakes it is never an ordinary
creature of flesh and blood. In herself she may be the essence
of the commonplace, but to him she shines through a glorified
mist, she is haloed with all virtues, she is hedged around with a
rose-thicket, impenetrable save to the destined prince at the one
fortunate hour. She has been revealed to him by he knows not
what unlooked-for miracle, and at first he hardly cares to hope
that the unexpected flash has been a mutual illumination. Her
remoteness is but one lure the more to his imagination ; when
he forms a desire it is not that she were nearer, but that he may
find in himself force enough to overpass the happy obstacles that
lie between them. If, ordinarily, there are not many obstacles
to surmount, it is because ordinarily there is no question of such
a passion of the soul involved. In the spring the pairing season
comes, the birds of a locality and a feather flock together, and

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE^S FACTORY. 817

the new nests are built without other prevision of consequences
than is implied in that instinctive reliance on Providence which
experience seldom fails to justify. The world, otherwise, would
lapse speedily into the sterility of decay, affording meanwhile,
in its decline, an unexpected opportunity to political economists
of the laissez-faire school for testing the value of the Malthusian
theory. The love which brings about such unions is without
doubt a true one, since the pivot on which the round world
turns must be made of solid stuff; nevertheless it is, perhaps, not
often that of which the saying holds immutably, that its course
did never yet run smooth.

To Paul Murray, as he stood alone in the still night, the
moonlight flooding the wide, familiar levels which his eyes be-
held but of which his thoughts took no cognizance, there grew
into unmistakable distinctness the obstacle which from the first
had so daunted him that he had turned from it instinctively, even
while persisting in his gaze on what lay beyond. He came not
merely of that race whose existence has been a crucifixion for six
centuries, but of blood which on both sides had been poured out
like water through martyrs and confessors, even though it red-
dened still with shame as it contemplated what it counted as its
sole disgrace, its one apostate. There was a Murray now living
who had lost his vocation, trampled on his faith, imperilled his
soul for the love of a woman ; there were children of his whom
Paul had never seen, though of one of them the daily journals
brought him frequent news, since he was the governor of a
neighboring State and talked of as a candidate for the presi-
dency children who had been taught to despise the religion of
their fathers and to blush when reminded of their lineage. Un-
til now Paul had thought most often of this uncle a feeble old
man, and said to be in his dotage with a scornful, indignant
wonder ; to-night he brooded over him with a self-pitying, dan-
gerous compassion.

He had very little actual knowledge concerning that nomi-
nally Protestant life with which he was strictly contemporary.
Brought up himself to revere the same ideals and hold the same
beliefs with his fathers, immersed in affairs and occupied with
thoughts which had no immediate reference to such matters, he
had never studied the phenomena presented by a generation
drifting rapidly away from dogmatic belief toward an easy and
complaisant liberalism. To him a Protestant was still what the
name had implied in the family traditions a bitter but sincere
believer, to whose bitterness much might be forgiven on account

VOL. XLVI. 52 *

8r8 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Mar.,

of his sincerity, since he was still undergoing the penalty threat-
ened unto the third and fourth generation of those who forget
God and turn away from his law. The only convert whom he
had personally known was Father Seetin, and such of his own
experiences as the old priest had recounted to him in their
somewhat familiar intercourse had been of a sort which did not
run counter to this impression.

Miss Colton, indeed (his thoughts reverted to her after hav-
ing made, in a much briefer space, the round thus indicated),
did not seem personally bigoted. If she were she would hardly
accompany his sister to daily Mass, as she was still doing. But
that, after all, meant nothing. There was no prohibition on her
side which forbade such action, and on Sundays she invariably
went elsewhere. Her convictions, though erroneous, were
doubtless as deeply rooted as his own. If she loved him
Paul stopped, frightened, despite himself, by the strong shudder
which thrilled him as that thought took form ; a moment later he
took courage and pursued it. Perhaps in that case she might
even be willing to sink their differences and marry him in spite
of them. But could he, dared he, in honor and conscience, seek
to make her love him when he knew that he must demand even
more than that? It was not alone his obligation to consider the
expressed mind of the church with regard to such marriages
which bound him. The authority which imposed that obliga-
tion could release from it under given conditions and for sub-
stantial reasons. But he had given his word to his mother on
her death-bed, and he knew himself incapable of violating it.
Suppose the girl he loved were made of stuff so like his own
that she, too, would be unable to deny or even question the faith
she had sucked in with her mother's milk?

It was a thought characteristically Irish as well as Catholic
the instinct of a race whose glory it has been to be perse-
cuted and to stand steadfast, as well as the word of a faith
which, because it gives a certainty profounder than conviction,
which goes deeper than the reason ever sounded, and puts its
tendrils about life itself, fails to comprehend, even when it sees,
that readiness to be blown about by every wind of doctrine
which is of the essence of heresy. By a not unnatural contra-
diction, the attitude which he trembled to find in Zipporah Col-
ton was at the same tirae one which would have ennobled her in
his eyes nay, which did so now ; for, with a lover's veritable
instinct, he heightened every wall of separation between them and
made every abyss bottomless. Why, else, does Love have wings ?

1888.]

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY.

819

He turned and looked all about him at the field of which he
was to be the master, and where the eyes of his imagination be-
held already the hive which was to be; the new industries that
he would introduce ; the opportunities it would be his duty to
open up for thousands to make of this life something more
desirable than a mere round of ill-paid, grinding toil. At his
left the stream flowed tranquilly, broader here than elsewhere,
interrupted sometimes in its course by mossy boulders, around
which it poured with a song and a dash of silvery foam, shaded
now and again by wide-branching trees, illumined all along its
path by often-broken, as often-renewed gleams of light from the
far-off skies. What a paradise life might be made if here,
where the last Adam was to be left free to transmute into bless-
ing the curse of labor pronounced upon the first, the one drop
which would make the cup of his existence brim to the lip were
not withheld! What a renewal of the patriarch's vision, where
angels might continually come and go, to keep open and illu-
mine the way leading visibly from earth to heaven!

A week earlier and no such dreams as these would have
come to disturb the easy rhythm of Paul Murray's pulses. He
had grown accustomed in certain ways to the management of
wealth, and Mr. Van Alstyne's gift would have occurred to him
Only as adding the power of expansion and the seal of contin-
uity to his already familiar efforts. He thought of that, but
without impatience, though he sighed as he turned once more
to face the light. Wealth, in its vulgar aspects, would have had
no power to dazzle him, as it would have none to gild his dis-
appointment should one await him. Now, as before, he could
not fail to welcome it as a gift of God, which would multiply
indefinitely his powers of service. But how strange that the
touch of a girl's hand, the sound of a girl's voice, the sight of
dusky lashes sweeping a blushing cheek, should have come in a
day to have power either to deepen into ecstasy or else to rob
of zest all other goods of life ! How willingly, were it in his
power, he would throw all else aside, and be but too content
with poverty and labor, if so he might have her, and with her
a quiet conscience !

820 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Mar.,

xv.

IN MARY ANNE'S KITCHEN.

MARY ANNE MURRAY and Fanny were alone together in the
long kitchen at the back of the house about ten o'clock the fol-
lowing morning. Davie was off in a meadow adjoining Mr. Van
Alstyne's grounds, surveying the breaking-in of a colt con-
cerning whose destination he entertained prophetic hopes.
Certainly its training had been taken in hand the very next
morning after he had announced his coming birthday to the
owner of it. Fanny, in a blue gingham bib, her fair locks
tucked beneath a knotted kerchief, her little arms bare to the
elbows, was taking her weekly initiation into household mys-
teries at the hands of her sister. She stood on a stool in front
of a floury moulding-board, across which the clambering vines
about the end window were casting flickering shadows. She
had been concocting vanilla cookies, and had an array of them
before her, which she was marking elaborately with a three-
tined fork, preparatory to laying them in a baking-pan. The
front gate opened and shut, and Fanny, lifting her eyes from
this operation, presently beheld an anxious-faced woman, with
one rosy baby in her arms, and another, just able to toddle,
clinging to her skirt, coming down the walk at the side of the
house, evidently on her way to the kitchen-door.

" Here comes Mrs. Lant, Sissy," she said in a low voice,
turning to Mary Anne, who was at some distance, testing the
heat of the oven. " Did brother Paul tell you ? Davie says Job
Strong says he had to help carry Mr. Lant home again last
night, an' Davie guesses he'll have to go this time. Isn't it
awful?"

Mary Anne rose quickly from her stooping posture and
came over to the table. " That will do, Fanny dear," she said.
" I wish the men would not speak about such things before
Davie. These are ready now, and you may wash your hands
and keep the children out in the garden while I talk to Mrs.
Lant."

A characteristically timid knock on the half-open door an-
nounced Mrs. Lant ; the next instant she set it wide, and with
her disengaged hand urged forward the little Bessie, whose own
inclination was to hang back and bury her face in her mother's
gown. A newly-baked cooky in Fanny's hand speedily tempted

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 821

her out of her shyness, and Mrs. Lant, relieved of both her
babies, came and sat down at the end of the table where Mary
Anne was busy. They looked at each other with sorrowful
comprehension and simultaneous sighs.

Mrs. Lant was the wife of the man whom Paul Murray had
picked up on the road the evening before ; he was an assistant-
engineer, whose intelligence and general ability had already
earned him promotion, as they would have continued to do but
for the fatal habit into which he had lately relapsed after an un-
precedentedly long interval of self-restraint. He belonged in
the neighborhood, although he had been in John Van Alstyne's
employment but two years, coming there from a mill at the
Corners, whence he had been discharged on account of drunk-
enness. Mr. Van Alstyne had taken him on in a capacity be-
neath his abilities, solely at the entreaty of his wife, whom he
had known all through her girlhood in the village. Lant had
signed the pledge at the time, and observed it so faithfully that
he had risen from one step to another until early in the past
summer, when the prevailing epidemic had carried off a crippled
little son of whom he was passionately fond. He celebrated
the interval before the funeral with a spree of an aggravated
character, but apparently settled down again into sobriety
directly afterwards. But he lost then the control he had been
slowly gaining over his appetite, and, a second relapse having
also been condoned, he had now fallen again, notwithstanding
the peremptory warning addressed him by his employer.

"It don't seem one bit of use, Miss Murray," the woman
began, the sobbing sigh in her voice which betrays a recent
convulsion " Eben, he can't help it. Ma says it's a judgment
on me, an' that I hadn't any call to go an' marry a man without
no fear o' God before his eyes, an' the love o' liquor in his
bones. But I thought," her voice beginning to shake again, and
finally ending in a cry" I thought if there was any way o' sav-
in' him it would be by lovin' him, an' God knows I did that an'
do it still. But he can't there an't no use."

There are some griefs which the most compassionate heart
can find no words to soothe. Mary Anne said nothing ; she only
laid her hand on Mrs. Lant's shoulder and stroked it gently
from time to time, while the poor creature, her head buried in
her arms, which she had flung out upon the table, was shaken
with the tempest of her sorrow.

" I ben driven round from pillar to post, an' from post to
pillar, ever since I married him a'rnost, an' I'd kind o' got over

22 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Mar.,

hopin' it would ever be any better," she began again. " But
when he'd kep' stiddy for a year an' more, an' we moved into
the new house all by ourselves last fall, I thought mebbe things
had begun to take a turn. But they han't. He says to me only
this mornin', when he come to himself, ' It's all up, Almira Jane,'
says he ; ' there an't no good o* my strivin' any more. It comes
at me like a tiger, an' I got to give in. But I won't be a mill-
stone round your neck no more; I'll go off an' hang myself quiet
somewhere, an' then folks '11 help you with the children ! ' An'
he '11 do it, too. That's what I was afraid of the last time, but
I never heard him say it out before."

"O no! "said Mary Anne, horrified. " He won't do that;
we must do something we must contrive some plan. I'm afraid
I'm afraid my brother cannot keep him on. He went off
and left his engine yesterday, and, but for some one else noticing,
there might have been an accident."

" Yes, I know," returned Mrs. Lant ; "Job Strong told me
when he helped bring him in last night. An' I talked to him
cross-like about it when he first came to ; for indeed, Miss Mur-
ray, I'm 'most wore out with worry. But it an't so much his
fault, do you think? " looking earnestly at Mary Anne. " It's a
disease, like. His father was just the same when he was young,
but he reformed an' was stiddy for years, an' then he took to it
again at the end. When it's in the blood so, there don't seem
any way to get it out."

" Only the grace of God," said Mary Anne softly.

"Yes, I know; but that he han't got. He was so down this
mornin' that he cried, an' I cried along with him an' tried to
cheer him up. An' 1 said to him that the minister 'd be here to-
morrow, an' why wouldn't he go down with me to church an'
swear off solemn-like? But he says: ' It's all very well for
you, Almira Jane, but what have I got to swear by." 1

It was an old story, to which Mary Anne had listened more
than once before. It was to her entreaties that Eben Lant had
owed his last reprieve. But now she felt herself powerless, and
had only her silent tears by way of answer. Mrs. Lant wiped
away with the corner of her apron those that kept welling down
her own cheeks as she talked.

" I know Eben can't keep on here at the fact'ry, an' so does
he; that's what makes him give right up so. * If I can't quit it
here,' he says, ' where the boss treats you like a man an' goes
out of his way to give you a hand, how 'm I goin' to do it any-
wheres else ?' An' it's true, Miss Murray how is he ? He fell

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 823

off asleep again then, an' I got up as soon as it was light, an' I
walked 'way out to ma's at East Milton. I thought if she'd take
the two biggest little girls I could get somebody, mebbe, to
keep the baby for me between hours, an' perhaps Mr. Murray
would take me on at the mill. I'm used to it I used to work
over at the Corners before I met Eben there an' got married.
But ma couldn't," she went on, with another hopeless sigh ; "she
said she'd like to, an' I s'pose she would, but when a woman
marries again where there's children already she can't do just
as she wants to. I'm clear beat out ; I don't know what to
do/'

" It seems very hard," said Mary Anne, " that it should be
you who must try to earn money, with a husband so young and
strong."

" He ant strong when he's got that the matter with him !
An' why shouldn't I go to work that way to help him, if only I
could? I han't got no call to turn my back on him just for
that. If he was bed-ridden, or anything, folks 'ud think it was
all right; an' why not now, when what he's got is more 'n twice
as bad again ? But I can't I don't see any way to turn. I
s'pose I'll have to go into the county house until the baby's
weaned, an' then I'll have to leave them there when I come out!"

" I told ma," Mrs. Lant sighed out again, after an interval of
silence, " what Eben said this morning, an' I thought God for-
give me ! she seemed to ketch right on to it. She said he was
a reprobate, an' there wa'n't no kind o* use in tryin' to do any-
thing for such, an* that the churchyard was the best place for
'em. Isn't it strange, Miss Murray, how your own flesh an'
blood is the very hardest to you sometimes? She said old Mr.
Lant was just such another, for, if he hadn't ben, the Lord would
'a took him when he was turned round an' joined the church an'
was a-walkin' straight, instid o* waitin' until he tumbled down
in a drunken fit after so many years. An' it is hard to see
through, but oh! Miss Murray, if I believed it about my Eben,
it 'd only make me stick closer to him, because he hadn't any-
body but me to look to. But I don't believe it."

"O no!" said Mary Anne, "you mustn't believe it. It isn't
right to say such things, nor to think them. The mercy of God
is above all his works. Poor Mr. Lant! he is nobody's enemy
but his own."

"Indeed he isn't, Miss Murray. There isn't a feeliner heart,
nor a better husband, nor a kinder father when he is himself."

"Couldn't you leave the children with him if you go into the

824 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Mar.,

mill?" suggested Mary Anne. "I feel sure my brother would
employ you.''

" He'd feel too ashamed, I'm afraid ; but that an't all. I
dasn't do it. O Miss Murray, I never meant to tell anybody, but
I must tell you you an't like folks: you can feel for a person.
I never said it even to ma, but she lived nigh us then, an' she
suspected it from the way he went on, an' she never could abide
him since. It was him lamed little Eben ; he ivould stand him
up on his shoulder, spite of all I could do, when he'd had too
much once, an' he let him fall. But that sobered him, an' kep'
him so straight that I was a'most thankful for it. He was so
bright an' cute, the little fellow, an' Eben he had such a longin'
to make up to him in some way for what he'd done. He had
all his plans laid to give him the best o' schoolin'. He had be-
gun to put money in the bank an' all, just gittin' ready for that,
an* then he died. Everything seems to go against Eben; he
never has any chance ! An' all along I knew what you say 's
true about the grace o' God. I kep' tremblin' all the time that
things seemed comin' right without that, an' I kep' hopin' an'
prayin' that somehow or other he'd git low enough to go down
on his knees an' cry out for help in the only place where there
is any. But now I don't know what to think. If anything like
what he said should happen to my Eben I should go mad. I
couldn't stand it ! O my God, it would be too awful hard to
bear!" Her head went down again on the table. Mary Anne
sank on her knees beside her, crying too.

"Dont cry so, dear," she said presently ; " we can manage it
some way. Perhaps Mr. Lant can get some jobs among the
farmers I want a man to do some things here about the gar-
den next week and you can bring all the children to me in the
mornings and come for them noons and nights. I' will look after
them. I believe Mr. Lant will take another turn. I have known
men worse than he, who did, after all, give up drinking and keep
sober until the end of their lives. You mustn't give up. You
must go right on praying for him, and so will I."

Mrs. Lant looked up through her tears with a pitiful smile.
"God in heaven bless you for that word, Miss Murray! But you
are too good I couldn't trouble you like that. I never thought "
she stopped, and then broke out again in a different tone :
" I wont lie to you about it I can't. I come here just longin
to hear you say that, when I found ma couldn't. I felt sure you
would if there wasn't any other way. There isn't anybody like
you in the world. Would you speak to Mr. Murray for me,

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 825

please? If it was me that took to drinkin' he wouldn't turn
Eben away, nor think he ought to put me out o' doors either.
Now would he?"

Fanny came up to the open window with the child fretting
in her arms. " I guess baby wants you, Mrs. Lant,'' she said ;
" I can't keep her quiet any longer."

" Bring her in, dear," said Mary Anne, rising hastily, " and
then put the cakes in the oven and look after them. I must go
into the mill for a minute. You'll sit here, won't you, Mrs.
Lant, until I come back ? "

" I'm afraid I mustn't stay very long," said the poor woman,
turning to take her baby. " I'll wait an* see that the oven 's all
right for the little girl, but I left Janey in next-door when I
come over, an' I ought to get back. Mr. Lant, he an't very
well this morning, an' he was in bed yet." This gloss was
added for the juvenile ears of Fanny. Except to Miss Murray
and to " ma," Mrs. Lant always .kept a brave front, and, from the
force of habit, still drew a veil over her wounds, even when she
knew that it was threadbare and utterly transparent.

Mary Anne returned in a few minutes. There was a little
furrow between her eyes which had not been there when she
left the kitchen, but her voice was, as usual, quiet and self-con-
tained.

" I did not see my brother, Mrs. Lant," she said ; " he has
gone to town on business. Mr. Van Alstyne was in the office,
and I spoke to him. He is not willing to break his rule about
employing married women as factory hands when their children
are so young as yours. He says there will be plenty of work
for your husband when they begin digging for the new mill
.next week."

" I'm afraid Eben won't like that," said the wife, sighing.
" It'll be such a come-down for him after what he's ben a-doin'
lately. But don't you fret about it, Miss Murray ; I know you
done your best for him."

But, sympathetic as she was, it was not Mrs. Lant's troubles
which were now lifting Mary Anne's eyebrows and lowering
the corners of her mouth. Mr. Van Alstyne's words as he
parted from her at the mill entrance were still ringing in her
ears.

" I don't quite know what took your brother to Riverside
to-day," he had said in answer to her question; "but it is a
pretty good day for a drive, and I suspect that Miss Colton's
being there may have had something to do with it. He took

826 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Mar.,

my buggy to the train this morning and will fetch her back in it
to supper. An attractive young lady that! "

XVI.
"A PERSON AT THE CENTRE.''

MR. COLTON'S house bore so good a reputation as a place of
entertainment for members of the Methodist itinerancy that
there was nothing unusual in the fact that toward noon on Sat-
urday a gentleman in a brand-new suit of clerical black and a
clean but badly-tied white " choker " rang the door-bell and
sent down his name to its mistress. Under ordinary circum-
stances Mrs. Colton would not have received this announcement
with especial pleasure. In her own way she was as religious as
her husband, and perhaps even more wedded to the opinions she
had accepted as most in conformity with her own, but there was
a warmth of nature and an effusiveness about him which occa-
sionally overflowed into extraordinary conduits, with the toler-
ably certain result of diminishing the home supplies, and with
this she was not at all in sympathy. Nor, except at Conference
times, when she accepted the office of hostess as a recognized
duty, did she really enjoy the chance guests who came to her
door at dinner or supper hour, as to a house of call where their
cloth entitled them to welcome. But to-day she had her own
reasons for being pleased to see her visitor, and went to greet
him, if not with a smiling face, at least with not too unrelenting
a composure.

u (j^tfd'-morning, Sister Colton," he said, rising and offering her
a pudgy hand. ** As I have seen your daughter so much more
recently than you have, I thought I would call and let you know
she seems to be in excellent health and spirits."

" Zipporah is at home just now, thank you, Brother Meeker,"
said Mrs. Colton, returning his greeting and then seating herself
in a bolt-upright position at some distance from the easy-chair
into which her guest was subsiding ; " she came up yesterday."

Notwithstanding the nature of her reason for welcoming Mr.
Meeker's advent, Mrs. Colton's voice, at the first mention of
Zipporah's name, had involuntarily taken on a more than ordi-
nary constraint. Zip and her mother were very like in some
respects, and not least so in an instinctive sense of feminine re-
serve and dignity, against which it was extremely easy to offend.
There are mothers who accept on behalf of their daughters

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY.

827

every masculine tribute of the sort Mr. Meeker had offered as
undoubted compliments, to be treasured as an Indian treasures
scalps, indifferent whether they be red, or black, or gray ; but
Mrs. Colton was not of their number. At this moment she felt
that her curiosity concerning the girl's surroundings would be
allayed at too dear a cost if she had to purchase its satisfac-
tion either by questioning her guest or even by seeming to lis-
ten with too evident attention to anything he might have to vol-
unteer. At the same time her resolve to obtain whatever infor-
mation he possessed on that score remained unshaken.

Brother Meeker was himself rather non-plused by the like-
lihood of meeting Zipporah at dinner. The novelist's omnis-
cience is so limited in its scope that it is hard to say whether
nature or grace had most to do with the fact that at this
period of the Reverend Adoniram Meeker's life the most
ardent of his irascible propensities was a tepid rancor, not
often, and not easily, heated into effervescence. That task, how-
ever, had been recently accomplished by Zipporah Colton, and
though under ordinary circumstances his emotion might never
have bubbled over into speech, yet his presence in town on
business connected with his approaching marriage, his need of
a good dinner, and the fact that he had travelled in the same
train with Paul Murray that morning, and so been reminded
anew of the affront he had received, all combined to make
Brother Meeker feel that the providential moment for action
had arrived. Such, at least, had been his persuasion until he
listened to the unexpected news with which Mrs. Colton had
replied to his first greeting. His interior kaleidoscope got a
new shake on the instant. He began to doubt whether it were
wise to provoke another encounter with so ready-tongued a
young woman, even under cover of her parents. Of course he
ought to be able to count on their support under the circum-
stances ; but then, could he, as a matter of fact? He looked at
Mrs. Colton and thought her expression unpropitious. And at
this point his conscience came up to the help of his timidity, and
while still bearing him unimpeachable witness that he had no
intention of unveiling his personal wound, yet proposed a doubt
as to whether his smarting under one might not give the color
of mere self-indulgence to what he felt like saying. He was
a conscientious man, Brother Meeker, and he kept on revolv-
ing this doubt, his lips, meanwhile, engaged in more ordinary
platitudes of speech, until Mr. Colton came ir to dinner. He
entered alone, to the secret relief of his wife, who had expected

828 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [Mar.,

to see her daughters with him, and who learned with pleasure
that they had gone home with their brother. She was con-
scious of one of those inexplicable maternal intuitions which
assured her that Zip's presence would be superfluous if she
were to accomplish her purpose of using her husband in skil-
fully pumping her guest on the subject of Milton Centre and
the nature of its special attractions.

, As for Brother Meeker, his courage began to revive again,
and with it that ineradicable propensity to gossip which the late
Henry Fawcett, as Mr. Leslie Stephen records, thought that no
man worth his salt is ever without. As to his conscience, he
had, in fact, a rather strong case against it, inasmuch as Zip had
wounded his esprit de corps rather more severely than his private
susceptibilities. He felt entirely sure that he had been well
within the limit of both his right and his duty in warning one
whom he considered as a lamb of his flock of what he thought a
dangerous occasion, and, while a cool rejoinder or a civil silence
on her part would not have surprised him, such a rebuff as
he had actually experienced was .too much for his official dig-
nity. Even the late Mrs. Meeker had never ventured to such
lengths profane.

" Well, now, it is a pity Zip didn't come home with me," Mr.
Colton said, as the dessert was being set on the table ; " be-
tween you we should have heard all about the village you are
running together. Church and school, eh? I haven't had a
chance to talk much to her yet, but you ought to be doing pretty
big things down there."

" Well, I suppose we ought to," said Brother Meeker,
dubiously, " but but the church services are intermittent
nowadays, you know. And as for the school, since Brother
Jones's time the preacher in charge hasn't had much to do
with it."

" How is that?"

" Well, Mr. Van Alstyne is a sort of an autocrat, as it ware,
and the house that has always been used as the parsonage
belonged to him, though he always gave it rent-free. It was
very commodious, too very commodious I may say," interject-
ed Brother Meeker with a sigh. " But Brother Jones and the
Romish priest at Milton Corners got into some difficulty about
the Irish children, and Mr. Van Alstyne unfortunately took the
part of the priest and told Brother Jones he must stop going
into the school to talk to them. He was rather peremptory
about it, I have heard, and Brother Jones, on his side, insisted

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 829

so strongly on his Christian liberty that Mr. Van Alstyne
refused to give the use of the parsonage after the end of that
year, and cut down his subscription so largely in other ways
that it has not been possible since to provide full support for a
resident pastor. So my hands are tied, as it ware. And then
there is a great deal of backsliding to contend with. Some of the
people have got into the habit of going over to the Presbyterian
church at the Corners when there is no preaching, instead of
coming to East Milton, and continue it occasionally even when
there is ; and some, especially of the mill-hands, lounge about
and do not go at all." -

" A good, rousing revival is what you want," said Mr. Colton,
looking interested.

" Yes, if it could be got up ; but there don't seem to be much
material to work on. Mr. Van Alstyne's attitude has been
unfortunate in more ways than one. He has been a sort of
petty Providence, as it ware, in the village for these many years,
and his example in always staying away from the meetings has
been prejudicial, as I may say. Besides that, the fact of his
contributing so largely to the resources of the church got the
people into a habit of depending on him, and so they don't
take the interest they ought to."

" He must be a curious sort of a mixture," said Mr. Colton.
" There seems to be no limit to his liberality when he chooses to
exercise it, by all I could hear when I was down there, and. what
my daughter has been telling us. But he is evidently as queer
as Dick's hat-band."

" Well, that is true enough. His generosity hasn't any
bounds except his whims, so far as I have been able to judge.
His daughter-in-law, who resides with him a very charming
lady, too has hinted to me that his eccentricities really seem to
surpass the limits of good plain sense at times. But I wouldn't
feel prepared to go to that length exactly, from anything I have
been able to observe myself. There is a certain method in his
madness, if I may use the expression."

" You'd better set Zip at him," suggested the father with a
complacent smile; " she seems to have found the way into his
good graces at the first try. He gave her a blank check for
some commissions he entrusted her with yesterday, and seems to
have left her completely free as to how she^ should fill it up.
Who was it she bought a piano for, Martha? "

"One of the school-children. Murray was the name,
think."

830 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. {Mar.,

" Oh ! Murray is the manager at the mill. Yes, that is quite
in keeping with what I know of Mr. Van Alstyne." Brother
Meeker paused to clear his throat and to consider. " I have
been rather unfortunate in my attempts to see 'Miss Zipporah
thus far," he said finally. " I don't get to the Centre very often
except on my regular Sundays, and she is never there on those
occasions."

" She goes to Milton Corners every week to visit a friend she
has there," explained Mrs. Colton.

" Yes, I know ; but if she could feel like stopping over and
helping me a little in the way of taking a class at Sabbath-school,
we might keep up some sort of service every Lord's Day, even
when I cannot be there. All that is wanted is some one with a
little influence to make a start, and others would join in. I own
I had great hopes when 1 heard who was to have the school
this session, but thus far I have been disappointed."

"She gets rather tired of teaching on week-days, I suppose,"
said Mrs. Colton, " and feels like resting and enjoying some
young company. There isn't much, I believe, in Milton Centre?
Help Brother Meeker to some more pudding, Thomas."

11 1 will take just a morsel, thank you. No ; there is not a great
deal. Brother Crandall has two grown daughters, but I don't
know as they would be very congenial. And there's well,
there's the manager's sister, Miss Murray. I believe Miss Zip-
porah has made quite friends with her. I did hear that they
walk over to church together pretty nearly every morning be-
fore daylight. I can't say of my own knowledge that it is so.
And then there is young Murray himself." Brother Meeker
cleared his throat again, and applied himself to his pudding.

"What's that?" said Mr. Colton. "The Murrays are Ro-
manists, aren't they ? "

u Well, they are, unfortunately. The fact is, what with the
priest over at the Corners who is, as you might say, a renegade
Methodist himself, having been brought up by most excellent
parents, I am told and the superior position and ability of young
Murray, Romanism has a much securer footing down our way
than it otherwise would have. As Mrs. William Van Alstyne
was saying to me but yesterday, her father-in-law seems so tak-
en up with the Murrays that there is no predicting to what
lengths he won't go to please them. I " Brother Meeker
hawked once more and then prepared for his plunge " the fact
is, I have felt it my duty to hint to you that "he glanced at
Mrs. Colton, and saw, or thought he saw, a danger-signal that

1 888.]

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY.

831

shunted him*a little from his first position " Romanism, as we
all know, is very insidious, and your daughter, being at an age
when its fascinations, especially when embodied by other young
persons, as it ware, of both sexes, are more enticing, if one
might so speak, than when the judgment is matured I in fact I
have once tried to warn her, but without much success. It may
be that your advice, as her parents, would be more acceptable."

Brother Meeker had got his budget pretty well emptied by
this time, and it may be hoped that he experienced an interior re-
lief, but outwardly and for the moment he could hardly be sup-
posed to draw any perceptible satisfaction from his efforts.

" O pshaw ! " said Mr. Colton good-humoredly, shoving his
chair back from the table as he spoke. " I wouldn't fret on the
score of Zip's Romanizing, if I were you. You say you don't
know for a fact that she goes to church with Miss Murray,
whereas I have it from her own lips that she has attended ser-
vice with the Cadwalladers every single Sunday. As to get-
ting up before daylight to go on week-days ! He don't know
Zip, does he, Martha?"

" I don't think he does ! " said Mrs. Colton, bridling. The
allusion to the likelihood of religious perversion, entirely sin-
cere on the preacher's part, had with her also fallen on momen-
tarily deaf ears, and for the life of her she could no longer
refrain from the little, feminine, personal dig which she thought
Brother Meeker deserved " not as well as he might, consider-
ing ! I can't imagine any reason he can have for supposing
Zipporah so susceptible that every chance acquaintance she
makes need be supposed dangerous to her! "

"Can I give you a lift anywhere, dominie?" asked Mr.
Colton, as they all rose. " There's the buggy at the door, and I
am due at the office just on the nail to-day, for Nat is going
up-town with his sisters, and there is no one else to take his
place."

Brother Meeker felt the invitation most opportune. For a
man who had with some difficulty collared himself, " as it ware,"
and discharged what he now felt to have been a painful duty,
his immediate reward was not great, and his impulse to get
away from it was rather urgent. He got his good-byes said,
therefore, and was well out of sight by the time Mrs. Colton's
first flush of feminine triumph had sufficiently subsided to per-
mit her to regret having indulged her little temper so soon.
What was the man hinting at about "young Murray"? and why
couldn't she have held her tongue a minute longer, at all events,

832 A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar.,

and got at all he had in mind ? But for him she wbuld still be
in ignorance that there was any " young Murray?" in existence,
who need cause her any manner of anxiety. There was still
Zip, who might be interrogated, to be sure; but the subject
would be a difficult one to broach now, even if it were her
mother's way to try to take a bull out of a china-shop by its
horns, which it never had been.

LEWIS R. DORSAY.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

Katharine Regina, by Walter Besant (New York : Harper &
Bros.), and Miser Far ebr other, by B. L. Farjeon, same publishers,
are sure of a large sale. Besant is a favorite just now, because
he persuades his readers that in following his characters they
are helping along a great reform in the lives of the working-
people of London. Mr. Besant is a humanitarian ; he thinks
that people can be made and kept good by clean rooms, fresh air,
baths, good music, and innocent amusements. There is no doubt
that the horrible crowding, the lack of any substitute for the
pleasures of the gin-shop or of the beer-saloon, the monotonous
toil of the poor in large cities, affect them and their children as
the absence of sunshine affects plants. There are sins to which
the penury of the poor makes temptation easy. But Mr. Be-
sant's plans for a large pleasure-palace for working men and
women, and for the securing of fresh air, comfortable rooms, and
rational amusements for them, would prove abortive if directed
only by the "religion of humanity." The impression one gets
from Mr. Besant's novels is that he, a man of heart and talent,
kindly takes care of the people whom God forgets ! God, if
recognized at all, is always a long distance away in Mr. Besant's
schemes. He and his people are expert in the art of helping
themselves, and, if they have any time to spare, they are willing
to help God in managing the world ! In Katharine Regina, as in
All Sorts and Conditions of Men, the problem of providing better
homes for working-girls is considered. Mr. Besant is dissatis-
fied with institutions such as the late Mr. Stewart planned for
them. He thinks they ought to be allowed to receive young

1888.]

A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

833

men in the evenings. From all this we gather that Mr. Besant
has nothing better, in spite of all his elaborate and interesting
writing on the subject, to offer than the old plan of providing
for lonely girls that is, by marriage.

Mr. Besant is a keen observer, and his sympathy is always
alert for the sufferings of the London poor. He shows that no
creature is so helpless as a young girl of good principles cast
on the world without preparation for the battle of life. Kath-
arine tries to be a governess. The market is over-crowded ;
she loses her places and comes very near to despair and death,
when she is saved by the return of her lover and marriage. Mr.
Besant does well to point out the ulcers at the root of a social
system which substitutes selfishness for Christian charity, which
helps Dives to ignore Lazarus by teaching him that a machine-
like system of alms giving may quiet his conscience. But Mr.
Besant would do well to remember that the elevation that may
come from clean and well-ventilated rooms and popular con-
certs cannot reach much beyond the surface. It is foolish to
teach the mass of people that amusements and luxuries should
be some of the objects of life, and that these things belong of
right to them. Mr. Besant seems to follow Mr. John Bright in
this abortive and dangerous teaching. Mr. Besant, in Katharine
Regina, shows in the character of the young German, Dittmer,
two of the remedies which must be internally applied and by
themselves to the great mass of men to-day before they can be-
gin to feel that poverty may be made endurable. These reme-
dies are persistent industry and frugality. The young German
is poor, yet he does not suffer; he is hopeful ; he enjoys a mod-
erate amount of play alter his work. If many of our young
American clerks who see no "future" before them had the
self-denial to appreciate these remedies, there would be more
happiness among them.

" ' I have learnt what I could mathematics, languages, book-keeping,
short-hand, physical geography, commercial and political history, and the
present condition of trade over all the world. I know every harbor and its
exports and imports, and the principal merchants who carry on its trade.

"'Modern trade wants all this knowledge. There will very soon be no
more English merchants, because our young men will not learn the new
conditions of trade. In every office there must be clerks who can writ<
and speak foreign languages. Your young men will not learn them, and
your schools cannot teach them. Then we come over we who have
learned them. For my part, I can write and read English, Swedish, Dan-
ish, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and German. Do you think we shall
be content to stay here as clerks ? No, no. Do you think that
VOL. XLVI. 53

34 A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar.

come here to sit down with forty pounds a year? We are cheap, we Ger-
man clerks. You say so. Mein Gott ! you will find us dear. We are learn-
ing your trade ; we find out your customers and your correspondents ; we
learn your profits, and we undersell you. We do not go away. We remain.
And presently, instead of an English house, there will be a German house
in its place, because your young men are so stupid that they will not
learn.

" ' I study English commerce I study how it began and why it is now
coming to an end. The English clerk will not learn anything, and expects
to be paid like an Amtsrichter at least. In Deutschland we learn, a^d we
are poor at first. Ja wohl ! we are poor, but we can wait. It is your high
salaries in your army, in your navy, in your church, in your trade, in
your administration, which ruin Great Britain. Everywhere the German
merchant drives out the Englishman and the American ; your commerce
goes out of your hands; for the moment only it remains in London,
thanks to the Germans and the Jews. When we have taken Antwerp it
will all go there all and where will be your London then ? All all
shall be Deutsch.' "

Dittmer here puts his finger on some truths that Americans,
as well as Englishmen, are learning, and will fully learn when it
is too late. Katharine Regina, as a novel, is not worth much.
As a suggestive essay on a great social question it has value.

Mr. Farjeon gained his reputation by a supposed resem-
blance to Dickens. If this ever existed it has now entirely dis-
appeared. Miser Farebrother has no depth of any kind. It is a
crude story, whose personages seem to be painted mechanically
on a hard, flat surface. There is the distractingly amiable young
woman, who is the daughter of an utterly bad old man, the vil-
lanous and doting mother of an evil and ungrateful son, the
perfect young man, the murder, the trial of the wrong person,
the acquittal, and the death of .the wicked people. The rest
can easily be supplied by any reader of novels.

The author of St. Elmo, Mrs. Augusta Evans Wilson, was
once the most popular of American novelists. But this was
about the time of the war. Then St. Elmo was a frequent sub-
ject of conversation and admiration among young ladies. If
there are ladies now alive who read St. Elmo when it first came
out, it may edify them to verify the impressions of their youth
by means of At the Mercy of Tiberius, Mrs. Evans Wilson's latest
book. It was, perhaps, in St. Elmo, that the world was told that
"man is a limitless microcosm." At any rate, there were many
similarly fine sayings in it, and there are many more fine sayings
in At the Mercy of Tiberius. But we are anxious to know whether
the young ladies of 1863, who are now the young ladies of 1888
for nobody ever really grows old will find the satisfaction in

1 888.] A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 835

this new book which they found in the other? We fear not;
for Helen Mar in The Scottish Chiefs, and even Catharine Seton
in The Abbot, are in 1888 not what they were in 1863. We are
the same, of course, but the books have somehow changed.

At the Mercy of Tiberius is not a story of ancient Rome. It
is a tale of Ancient and Modern Nowhere. The people in it are
supposed to live in one of the Southern States. Beryl is the
heroine's name. Her mother has been disowned by her proud
father because she married a foreigner named Ignace Brentano.
Beryl supports her by making sketches and painting Christ-
mas cards. But Beryl resolves to meet her grandfather and to
wrest some money, badly needed by her mother, from him.
They meet. They are well matched. Their vocabulary is lim-
itless. He begins:

"'Are you some exiled goddess travelling incognito? ' [in other days
Mrs, Evans Wilson would have written incognita or are we more critical
now?] ' If we lived in the " piping days of Pan," I should flatter myself that
"ox-eyed Juno" had honored me with a call as a reward of my care of
her favorite bird.' "

When the proud general finds out who she is he stares "at
the majestic form and the faultless face looking so proudly down
upon him as from an inaccessible height," and he draws his
breath "with a labored, hissing sound/' "A stranger," she
cries, " but a lady, every inch. I demand the respect due from
a gentleman." For a moment they eye each other "as gladia-
tors awaiting the signal"; then General Darrington springs up,
and " with a bow, stately and profound as if made to a duchess/'
he replies, "And in the name of Southern chivalry, I swear you
shall receive it." She " begins to walk slowly up and down the
floor; and smothering an oath under his heavy moustache, the
old man sinks back in his chair." She throws up her hand
" with an imperious gesture, not of deprecation but of interdict,
and all the strong calm in her face seemed shivered by a pas-
sionate gust that made her eyes gleam like steel under an elec-
tric flash."

The general and hrs granddaughter "go on" in this way for
some time. They part in anger, and that same night the gen-
eral is murdered. "Tiberius" is the prosecuting attorney in
the case against Beryl for the murder of her grandfather. His
real name is Lennox Dunbar, and we are informed that he was
like a bust of Tiberius. During the trial the agony of suspense
and three-syllabled words is terrible. The mildest thing is this
speech :

836 A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar.,

"There is no heaven on earth, but the nearest approach to it, the out-
lying suburbs whence we get bewildering glimpses of beatitude beyond, is
the season of courtship and betrothal, In the magical days of sweet-
heartdom a silvery, glorifying glamour wraps the world, brims jagged black
chasms with glittering mist, paves rugged paths with its shimmering
folds, and tenderly covers very deep in rose-leaves the clay feet of our
idols. That wonderful light shines only once full upon us, but the mem-
ory of it streams all along the succeeding journey; follows us up the arid
heights, throws its mellow after-glow on the darkening road, as we go
swiftly down the slippery hill of life.''

Classic names and allusions strew the pages of At the Mercy
of Tiberius like broken rainbows. Beryl, after uttering the most
.impassioned speeches, flavored with a consommt made from
Lempriere's Dictionary and an encyclopaedia, is imprisoned for
the murder of her grandfather. To add pathos to Beryl's
imprisonment Mrs. Evans Wilson tells us that she was born on
the Fourth of July "Independence Day." Lennox Dunbar,
the " Tiberius," falls in love with Beryl. After a number of im-
probable episodes it is found that Beryl's brother tried to steal
General Darrington's valuables, and that during a struggle
General Darrington was killed by lightning. The erring
brother becomes a Jesuit and dies an edifying death among his
Jesuit friends " cowled monks," in the picturesque language of
the author. Notwithstanding the two pagan mottoes from Em-
erson which adorn the title-page, the book shows genuine re-
spect for Christianity.

One of the most charming young women in modern fiction
; is Helen Eustis in "Azalia,'' one of Joel Chandler Harris's
short stories collected in his last book, Free Joe, and Other Geor-
gian Sketches (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons). The ti-
tle "Azalia" would, judging by the ordinary short story, lead
-one to suppose it was a girl's name, and t'hat the girl was per-
haps an untutored Cracker maiden who, meeting a "city chap,"
fell in love with him and died in the most pathetic way. It is
an agreeable disappointment to find that Azalia is the name of a
place in Georgia. Helen is a witty and unaffected Bostonian.
Mr. Harris does not tell us this ; he lets- us make Helen's ac-
quaintance. Miss Tewksbury, Helen's aunt, is afraid of the Ku-
klux, and when the young lady is ordered to Azalia for her
health Miss Tewksbury 's fear of danger becomes almost a cer-
tainty.

"'Dr. Buxton/ Helen says, * is a life-long Democrat, consequently he
must know all about it. Father used to tell him he liked his medicine bet-
ter than his politics, bitter as some of it was; but in a case of this kind Dr.

i888.] A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 837

Buxton's politics have a distinct value. He will give us the grips, the
signs, and the passwords, dear aunt, and I dare say we shall get along
comfortably.' ''

And they do. Their experiences in the South are pleasant.
Goolsby, the book-agent, is delightful. He says to the ex-Con-
federate General Garwood, speaking of a book he is selling:

" ' It's a history of our own great conflict, The Rise and Fall of the Re-
bellion, by Schuyler Paddleford. I don't know what the blamed publishers
wanted to put it " rebellion " for. I told 'em, says I, " Gentlemen, it'll be up-
hill work with this in the Sunny South. Call it 'The Conflict,'" says I.
But they wouldn't listen, and now I have to work like a blind nigger split-
tin' rails. If sech a book is got to be circulated around here, it better be
circulated by some good Southron a man that's a kind of antidote to the
poison, as it were.' ''

The discussions between General Garwood and Miss Tewks-
bury on slavery are amusing. Miss Tewksbury insists that
there was no good in slavery :

" ' You must admit that but for slavery the negroes who are here would
be savages in Africa. As it is, they have had the benefit of more than two
hundred years' contact with the white race. If they are at all fitted for citi-
zenship, the result is due to the civilizing influence of slavery. It seems to
me that they are vastly better off as American citizens, even though they
have endured the discipline of slavery, than they would be as savages in
Africa.' "

" Azalia," with its pleasant atmosphere, in which good-hu-
mor plays the part of oxygen, is an excellent story. The other
tales in the book possess that unaffectedness and spontaneity
characteristic of Mr. Harris' method, from which nothing could
be more different than that of the other Southern writer, Mrs.
Augusta Evans Wilson.

Mr. Marion Crawford's industry and versatility seem bound-
less. Marzids Crucifix is hardly noticed when Among the
Immortals is announced and Paul Patoff (New York : Hough-
ton, Mifflin & Co.) actually appears. It shows no falling off
in style; Mr. Crawford's style is lucid, elegant, and always
adapted to his subject. He is a master of the art of narra-
tion, though by no means of the art of construction. And his
power and his lack of power are plainly manifested in Paul
Patoff. The young diplomatist, the son of an English mother
who hates him, is a strong and real character; "the moral suf-
ferings of his childhood had killed the natural affections in him,
and there had remained nothing in their stead but a strong
sense of duty to his nearest relations." Madame Patoft's love
is wrapped up in her son Alexander, an effeminate dandy. She

838 A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar.,

has always preferred Alexander to Paul. And so strong becomes
her dislike to the latter that, being a fixed idea constantly dwelt
upon by a morbid mind, it leads her to attempt to kill the son
she hates. Mr. Crawford's wonderful descriptions of life in
Constantinople the Mohammedan celebration in the cathedral
of Santa Sophia, the scenes in the Bazaar, the death of the
Turkish lady almost make us forget the repulsiveness of the
subject. The effect of maternal dislike on a character so well
balanced as that of Paul Patoff has been carefully studied, it is
true. But all Mr. Crawford's skill cannot make the reader ac-
cept Madame Patoft's condition of mind as anything but mon-
strously impossible. A mother could prefer one son to another,
but the mother who could twice attempt to kill the son she
disliked exists only in fiction. Alexander Patoff and his brother
visit the mosque of Santa Sophia on the last night of the feast
of Ramadan. Alexander had insulted a Turkish woman during
the day and caused his brother much anxiety, as Paul was an
attaM of legation and he feared that his career might be in-
jured by his brother's indiscretion. During the ceremonies Alex-
ander disappears. It would be certain death for a Frank, par-
ticularly a Russian, to venture among the fanatics in the body of
the mosque, or even into the street. Paul and his attendant only
know that he has disappeared. Alexander and all traces of him
are lost. Madame Patoff assumes at once that the son she hates
has killed the son she loves. When Paul, whose impassive
nature has been touched by the vision of a sweet and womanly
English girl, proposes to her, he is met with the spectre of
his supposed crime. His mother assists in exciting the doubts of
Hermione, the girl who has promised to marry him, and he
goes away, vowing to bring his brother back or not to return
himself. The adventures that follow are as exciting as any in
the Arabian Nights. By means of the almoft preternatural
shrewdness of Balsamides Bey, Alexander is found in a cell
where he has been kept for over a year. The Turkish lady
whom he had affronted decoyed him to her palace, and, having
played a practical joke on him, had kept him prisoner, being
afraid either to kill or release him. Here the story ought to
end, but Mr. Crawford tacks to it a kind of supplement. Alex-
ander endeavors to induce Hermione to discard Paul ; Hermi-
one hesitates, and Madame Patoff, to help along Alexander in
his suit, tries to murder her other son. Finally this obnoxious
woman goes raving mad. Alexander's cowardice and selfish-
ness are made apparent to Hermione, and the usual marriage-

i888.] A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 839

bells ring. Mr. Griggs' speeches to the American " scientist "
are particularly good. Professor Carver insists that Christians
in arguing with "scientists" always fall back on faith and
refuse to listen to reason. " When you can disprove our posi-
tion," answers Mr. Griggs, " we will listen to your proof. But
since the whole human race, as far as we can ascertain, without
any exception whatsoever, has believed always in the survival of
the soul after death, allow me to say that when you deny the
existence of the soul the onus probandi lies with you, and not
with us."

For the Right, by Karl Emil Franzos (New York: Harper
& Bros.), is introduced by a rather rambling preface written
by George Macdonald. The scene is laid in the Lower Carpa-
thians. Taras Barabola, a just man but a proud one, resolves
that the wrongs done his people shall be righted. He resists
the desire of the peasants to help themselves by arms. He ap-
peals to the law, and fails. He appeals to the emperor, and
fails. Then he becomes an outlaw for justice's sake, and, acting
according to his private interpretation of the right, commits
wrongs as grievous as those done by the Polish landlords. In
one or two places the translator indulges herself in the use of
the word " Romish " several times. For the Right is an in-
structive book, and a strong argument, although Mr. George
Macdonald does not seem to see it, against the cherished privi-
lege of private judgment in matters of faith and morals. Taras
is shot in the end a victim of oppression, an untutored con-
science, and pride.

Not long ago most people, not specialists in the literature of
the world, mentioned Fernan Caballero as the one modern Span-
ish novelist. Her La Gaviota was translated into all the mod-
ern languages, and the Alvareda Family was as well known as
Sardou's famous Benoiton domestic circle. But Fernan Cabal-
lero has of late 'been lost sight of in the increasing number of
Spanish writers who reflect, more or less, the realism of French
fiction, whose influence rules in that department of literature.
The Italians have almost outdone the French in the nastiest of
their imitations ol Zola and De Maupassant. So far as we know
the Spaniards have no Zola, although they have several Daudets.
Perez Galdos is the best known of these. He aimed to be a re-
alist, and yet he is not without idealism. But the influence of
the French writers is evident, as it is evident in the works of all
Continental writers of fiction, and even in those of Ameri-
cans. Mr. Howells, for instance, has not escaped it, and the

A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Man,

etTcct ot Bal.-ac's i rotUau on Silas Laphain may be easily

traced.

Perez Galdos is a writer of talent, aiul an artist who pavs
strict repaid to the form ot his work. It is said that he is a
Catholic, and that he has steadily refused to connect himselt with
any of the Spanish secret societies. In Lion Rock pronounced
Rock after the Calabi ian manner his latest novel, printed in
New York by Wm. S. Gottsberger, he shows a certain respect
for the mysteries of Faith, and yet he delights in holding up to
ridicule many things to which Catholics owe and payreveutu e.
Bigotry, intolerance, that travesty of religion which sets the let-
ter above the spirit, which substitutes extravagant formulas for
the charity of which St. Paul speaks, offer fair material for the
pen of the satirist. One may forgive gibes which strike the ex-
crescences the barnacles, as it were on the surface ; but when
in Gloria^ a very powerful novel, Selior Galdos advoc ^iud

of Spinozism as a substitute for the Catholic religion in Sp.
one wonders how deep his supposed Catholicity is.

Lto* Rock is an elaborate attack on what Seftor Galdos con-
siders the exa- 1 religious devotion of Spanish women.
He damages his case, however, by over-coloring his pictr
He makes Le*on Roch a very high type of a free-thinker. He is
a Christian m all but belief. He accepts the effects of Chris-
tianitv on civilization, without admitting its divine foundation.
He is represented as naturally good, naturally patient, and of
the highest order of intellect, while his wife, Maria, is of inferior
fibre in every way. He typifies the persecuted and long-suffer-
spirit of unbelief, while she, with all the faults of a passion*
ate, vain, narrow-minded, and impulsive \\

.e Catholic religion as opposed to the saintliness of libc
L6on Roch is not an atheist exacth >, nor Galdos would h.

on his readers a fair chance of deciding between the effect
free-thinking and of exaggerated devotion on the modern Sp
ish character, had he not handicapped all his religious >
ters with foibles or vices. Tt .er hypocrites or fools.

There is one priest, an Italian, who ha- merit, but even he

i rrou nded by a d isagrc , : naosphere.

In fact, Leon, suffering as he is represented to be, occa-
ally utters sentiments which would h.

tempered woman than Maria. Maria force .i to

promise that he will S of free-thinkers, on

one condition, which he puts into these words: "You may go
s on Si

i888.] A CHAT ABOUT N&w BOOKS.

but without picviously selecting your coniessor." He even

niscs to go to Mass with her every Sunday. She mail
that he shall go to confession. In this scene the i; oi

Sefior v argument is most apparent. No really religious

woman would be SO foolish atul so i^nora; > imagine that

could make her husband religious by pc'i suasion or Cot
And Maria, were she true to nature instead of a mere puppet
Waldos', would have trusted that even the mere formal act of
assisting at Mass might lead to better things, ami have lux MI
content with concessions which were important steps in her
direction. Besides, she would not have been ready either to
accept or reject his concessions until she had consulted toer
confessor. We are led to believe that Maria was the slave of
her director, yet she invariably acts in accordance with her own
will, or rather that of Seftor Galdos. Pepita Fiicar, his other
heroine, is not at all devout. She is a married woman when she
meets L&on again. He is present at the sick-bed of her child,
who is on the verge of death from croup. The suspense of the
mother is intensely portrayed, and, indeed, this episode is the
best in the book; but Pepita, who takes the place of Maria in
Leon's affection, makes the most violent love to him at the bed-
side of her child. This is very nasty. Lon, as usual, recalls
her to a sense of her duty. But Seflor Galdos leaves us no doubt
that he prefers Pepita, who is willing at any moment to break
the Sixth Commandment, to Maria, who is supremely chaste
but a devotee. Even according to Galdos, Maria, who confesses
often, is a better woman than Pepita, who may possibly go to
confession once a year.

Maria, torn by jealousy, at last dies. L6on, with " saintly "
patience and incorrigible self-conceit, preaches to everybody
who will listen. The way is made smooth for his marriage
with Pepita, when her husband, supposed for a few pages to
be dead, suddenly appears, and L6on and Pepita separate.
This is the end.

Galdos has great talent; some of his descriptions are charm-
iiiiT: he has that literary knack which all trotting! must have,
just now, to produce interest; but there is a falseness in the
"labored attempt he makes to show how saintly an unbeliever is,
andhowunsaintly believers are, that rums all confidence in his
-realism" and spoils the best points ol an admirably wi.

novel.

Mr Daniel Connolly's Household Library of
</i Full and Choice Selections from the Irish America l\>cts and a

842 A RULE OF LIFE. [Mar.,

Complete Department of Authentic Biographical Notes, is a livre de
luxe. It is published by the author. The seriousness of his
purpose and the exquisiteness of his taste, in addition to the
expenditure of time and money which were necessary to
create such a work, deserve the appreciation of all lovers of
good poetry. Mr. Connolly has labored with enthusiasm and
industry. No more satisfactory book on the subject could have
been made. Representative selections from nearly every Irish
poet deserving of the name are included here. It is the only
collection in which may be found an anthology of Irish poetry
for the last twenty-five years. Mr. Connolly's taste is as good
as it is catholic. He does not refuse some poems of Mr. James
Whitcomb Riley, who is Irish only by a slender thread of blood,
and he makes us acquainted with some of the latest writers
whose claims to Irish blood are more evident and whose poet-
ical status is fixed by excellent work Miss Tynan, Miss
Guiney, and Mr. James Jeffrey Roche.

A RULE OF LIFE.

To do, each day, its work, however small ;

To see, each day, that something has been done ;
To rear, each day, life's solemn fane more tall,

Still near and nearer to the blessed sun

This is to live life well : the task, begun,
Never to be relinquished, though beset

By faint-heart fears and sorrows many a one ;
This is to live that life may claim no debt
Unpaid, when summons the Great Arbiter

To the dread audit of the Last Account,
When Death shall close the balance, and refer

Life's books to Him who claims a full amount.
One day's work little on the whole may touch,
Yet many a little added maketh much.

FRANK WATERS.

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 843

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

A YOUNG GIRL'S CONVERSION.

" The story of my conversion ! Why, it was so simple it would not be worth
telling."

This was my reply when the suggestion was made to me ; but I was still asked
to consider it, and, thinking, it came to me that it might be an act of gratitude for
so great a grace, and so I began to write.

In my youth I was far enough away from the Catholic Church. " A daughter
of the Puritans " for my ancestors crossed in the Mayflower I only knew of the
church to feel a supreme pity for her children as ignorant, idolatrous, and super-
stitious. How 1 had acquired these ideas I cannot tell, for neither by my
parents nor teachers had such things been directly said, but I suppose the whole
atmosphere of my surroundings led to it, and especially the books I read.

When I was about fifteen the good Providence of God threw me into the
society of a Catholic. She was a lady of great intelligence, refined, enthusiastic,
and warm-hearted indeed, one who could not fail to win both respect and love.
I had known her for two or three months when my mother said to me one

evening: " I have just heard that Miss H is a Catholic, and I do- not think

well of your being so much with her.' 7

" A Catholic ! " I replied ; " why, that is impossible. She could not be a Cath-
olic and I not know it in all this time."

I thought it over, and made up my mind to inquire about it. The next day I
asked a mutual acquaintance, and, to my surprise, heard that it was really so.

One, then, could be intelligent and be a Catholic ! This was a new thought to
me, and I made up my mind to watch her every word and act, and see what a
Catholic really was.

I saw her now very often, and after a little while led up the conversation to her
faith. Now, I thought, I shall see something of the superstition and idolatry of
Catholics. "I wonder," I said, "that in these days one like you can give up her
reason and intelligence to the guidance of priests."

" What if I give myself to the guidance of a divine and infallible authority ? "
she answered.

" Oh ! that is another thing. If there were a divine and infallible authority it
would be wisdom indeed to be guided by it/'

" Do you believe the words of our Lord when he speaks of establishing his
church ? "

" Yes," I said ; " at least I have read them a hundred times
heart." For if there was anything I felt sure of, it was my knoj
Scriptures; from my earliest youth I had been to Sunday!
Sunday, and our principal exercise had been reading and le<
New Testament and parts of the Old.

" Well," she said, " let us recall his words : ' Upon this rock f>rfr-bmild my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. % . . Go ye, therefore, and
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost, and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of
the world. . . And the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, will

844 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Mar.,

teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind whatsoever I have said to
you, and he will teach you all truth.' Do you remember these words of our
Lord?"

" Yes," I said, absently, '' I remember them." While in my heart I said, " Did
our Lord really say all this, and, if he did, what does it mean ? "

" Do you remember, too," she went on, "that when he sent his apostles to
teach and preach he said, ' He that heareth you, heareth me ; and he that despiseth
you, despiseth me ' ? Does not this look as if our Lord left us teachers who had
authority, and whom he would guide always in all truth ? If they could teach
error would not the gates of hell have prevailed against the church of Christ ? ' ;

I could not say anything to this, for these words of our Lord were solemn
words, and must mean something, and what could they mean but a divine and
infallible authority ?

Such conversations came often now in our intercourse. The subject of the
church as a divine teacher took precedence of all others with me ; that admitted,
everything else came as a matter of course. Still, I was much interested in seeing
what the Scriptures said of other Catholic dogmas, and my surprise was great
to read in them all that the church teaches in regard to Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
I saw that they said she was full of grace, blessed among women, that the Lord
was with her, and that t{ie Holy, which should be born of her, should be called
the Son of God. I saw, too, that Mary herself had said that all generations
should call her blessed. When I read these things I felt as if I had read before
with my eyes only, and not with my intelligence.

But what wonderful revelations of love opened up to me when I read, in this
new light, the promises of our Lord when he instituted the sacrament of his
Body and Blood ! I wondered how I could ever have thought that such strong,
simple, and plain words, such solemn^and wonderful words, could mean nothing, or
the very opposite of what they said.

I had not as yet spoken of these thoughts and conversations to my parents,
for it all seemed so strange and unexpected to me that I scarcely knew where
I stood.

I still watched my friend to see what were the fruits of Catholic faith. I
found her life most edifying, and step by step I was led on, until I felt that I must
ask my father for that privilege of liberty of conscience that, as a Protestant, he
could not reasonably refuse.

I knew that I should pain him to the heart's core, and he was a most loving
father ; but God's claims were first, and it had to be done.

How well I remember that evening when I first opened my heart to him ! With
the blood of the Puritans in his veins, and the faith of the Puritans in his heart, he
walked before God, according to his light, pure, upright, and devout. He had,
outside of his life-long prejudices, a very logical mind, and he was true now to his
principles. With a. sad heart he gave me the liberty I asked, only begging that I
would wait awhile and read more, and talk with those whom he would bring
to me.

My father thought that I was influenced by the power which Catholic worship
has over the senses ; but though I felt deeply the great beauty of the Catholic
liturgy, and was impressed by the music and paintings and architecture, still I
was too much my father's daughter to be led by these things; it would have
to be the head and not the heart or imagination that would take me into the
church.

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 845

The Annual Conference of ministers was about meeting, and we always en-
tertamed some at our house. When they came and heard of my state of mind,
each one made an effort to enlighten me in regard to the truth. The minister of
the church which we attended, too, had many talks with me. My father was not
always well pleased with these conversations, for one of them admitted in one of
them that he had always believed that purgatory was a very reasonable and al-
most necessary doctrine, and another would not admit that the words, " the
church is the pillar and ground of truth," could be found in the New Testament,
and was very uncomfortably silent when they were found.

Those were painful days, full of discussions and controversies, in which,
though my arguments prevailed, none the less did my heart suffer. I think the
last point was reached when my mother, who followed more her impulses and
emotions, said that she would rather see me dead than to see me a Catholic.

I had before this been presented to a Catholic priest, dear Father Starr so
gentle, so kind-hearted ! I remember well my feeling of surprise, mixed with a
little bit of humiliation, when he gave me a small catechism to read and study.
Dear little catechism ! How I learned to love it ! In simplest words, that a
child could understand, was the whole Christian faith given by Christ to his
apostles to teach and to preach. On every page was text after text of Holy Scrip-
ture, the two going together the written word of God and the living voice of the
church. ,

Time passed on, and I felt that the final step must be taken. God had given
me the gift of faith, and I must now profess it before God and man ; so at the
altar of God, one Sunday after Vespers, I was made by baptism a child of the
Holy Catholic Church. I was at this time about seventeen years old.

What can I say of the new life into which I now entered ? It almost seemed
as if our Lord were living in the world again, and that I heard his voice day by
day, and received from his very hand the wondrous gift of his own Body and
Blood. The world with a divine and infallible teacher, and our Lord truly pre-
sent in the sacrament of his love, was indeed a very different world ; it seemed
almost heaven upon earth.

Many years have passed since then, and every day I have thanked God more
and more for this gift above all price the gift of faith.

And here the story of my conversion should properly end, but there are one
or two incidents that happened later that I would like to speak of.

About two years after my conversion my mother said to me one Sunday
evening : " I have had a very strange interview this afternoon. A lady met me as
I came down the steps of the church, and asked me if I had not a daughter who
had become a Catholic. When I replied in the affirmative she said she had two
sons who had become Catholics, and one of them was studying for the priesthood.
She said she thought it might be a consolation, under the circumstances, for us
to see each other and talk together. She walked with me some distance, and
told me that although she had felt this change of faith in her sons very much,
still she would not, by a word even, bring them back, if she could. They were
happy and full of peace, and she thought they could serve God where they were."

I listened with interest, and was glad of the interview, hoping it might be
some comfort and help to my mother. I had almost forgotten the whole inci-
dent, when one evening, at the house of my first Catholic friend, who was now
married, and while we were celebrating, by a little festivity, the baptism of a son
for whom I had been godmother, a gentleman called and was presented to me.

846- WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Mar.,

I found that he was a convert, and was soon convinced that he was the son
of the lady who had had that interview with my mother. Had he, I wondered,
heard my name or of my conversion ? He spoke of his brother, to whom he was
deeply attached. He was studying abroad and was soon to be ordained a priest.
I was very much interested, for converts in those days were not so frequently met
with as now, and it was a pleasure to me to hear how they had come into the
church.

Our acquaintance ripened, and ended in our receiving together another sac-
rament of the Holy Catholic Church the sacrament of Matrimony. The dear
brother is now an influential priest, whose writings are well known both here and
abroad.

I think I should beg pardon for introducing these last incidents ; but since I
write as an act of thanksgiving I could not pass over the temporal blessings that
followed my coming into the church ; for our Lord's promise was truly fulfilled to
me, that "every one that hath left parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, or
lands, for the kingdom of God's sake, shall receive a hundred-fold in this pre-
sent time " may he grant me grace so to be faithful as to obtain the rest of the
promise ! " and in the world to come, life everlasting."

ANTHONY COMSTOCK.

Anthony Comstock is not perfection, but he hates bad pictures, obscene
statues, and impure reading, and therefore he has our sympathy. In his little
book, Morals vs. Art (J. S. Ogilvie & Co., New York and Chicago), Mr. Comstock
argues his case and does it well. We challenge any fair man to read it without
saying, Well done, Anthony Comstock ! The reader will stand a short extract :
" We are charged with lack of judgment. It is, however, a little significant of good
judgment and wise and judicious management somewhere, by some one at least,
that out of one hundred and twenty-one indictments secured by us, brought to
trial since January i, 1887, conviction has been secured in one hundred and
eighteen cases.'' " From January i, 1887, to December 21, 1887, 87 persons were
arrested, 121 convictions or pleas of guilty, 98 sentences imposed, making a total
of 88 years, 7 months, and 25 days' imprisonment, and fines amounting to $6,005.
There were seized and destroyed 27 obscene papers, 107 obscene books, 792 ob-
scene figures, 20,643 obscene pictures, 25,300 obscene circulars, songs, etc., 56
articles of indecent or immoral use, 2,908 negatives for printing or making obscene
photographs, over one-half a ton of lottery circulars ; also, more than a ton of
gambling implements, etc. 7 '

As to the protest of some New York artists against Mr. Comstock and the
Society for the Suppression of Vice, it amounts to this : " What is not obscene to
an expert is not obscene to the general public.'' You might as well say the same
of the physician's books on anatomy. You might as well say that the dissecting-
room should be open to the public. You might as well say that the studio full
of nude living models may be the recreation-room of the artist's boys and girls.

Let the " experts/' Mr. Comstock says in effect, keep their nudities in their
studios and private galleries, whither the general public does not enter. But the
indiscriminate sale of objects dangerous to morality is as much a matter for the
attention of the policeman and the magistrate as the selling of intoxicants to
minors. The law has guardianship over the public morals as well as over the
public health, and plain jurymen and honest judges have notably proved Mr.

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 847

Comstock right and the lovers of the nude to be wrong. Art for art's sake is
not, we think, true art ; at any rate, art has no vocation to destroy the modesty of
the young and minister to the pruriency of the profligate.

If forced to choose, we had rather suppress vice with Anthony Comstock than
propagate French art with the Society of American Artists.

SILVER AND GOLD.

Pere Caussade, in his little book, Abandonment to Divine Providence (Ben-
zigers), says: "A soul becomes subject to the divine action the moment a good
will is formed in the heart."

I am asked : How does this good will show itself ?

I answer : By loving everything as God loves it.

I am asked again : But suppose I love my dinner ; I love and enjoy the taste
of the food, the feeling of satiety ; and I enjoy my appetite?

I answer : Very well ; that was all right with the Jews. God's will was to give
them a good dinner as a reward. Did he not give them the land flowing with
milk and honey ? But the Christian is invited to a higher reward, and therefore
his love cannot lawfully rest upon what the love of the Jews could. He is called
to a far higher love.

The Jews could pay silver over the counter : that was all God asked from them.
From us he demands nothing less than gold. Why did he demand silver of them
and gold of us ? Because he gave them a silver prize, but us he gives a golden
on e. I. T. HECKER.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY AND VERACITY.

" So far as my experience goes," wrote Professor Huxley not long since in the
Nineteenth Century, " men of science are neither better nor worse than the rest
of the world. . . . We have our full share of original sin; need, greed, and vain-
glory beset us as they do other mortals. . . . But, for all that, there is one moral
benefit which the pursuit of science unquestionably bestows. It keeps the esti-
mate of the value of evidence up to the proper mark ; and we are constantly
receiving lessons, and sometimes very sharp ones, on the nature of proof. Men
of science will always act up to their standard of veracity when mankind in gen-
eral leave off sinning ; but that standard appears to me to be higher among them
than in any other class of the community."

What there is of pre-eminent virtue, that is to say, in Professor Huxley, belongs
to him in his capacity as a " man of science "; what remains to him of " vainglory ''
and inveracity, remains chiefly because the rest of us are still sinners. Should we
simultaneously cry peccavi and mend our ways, the professor would rise at once
to that higher plane on which his " standard of veracity '' is already planted, and
make admissions which he is still withholding because he finds us not yet able to
bear them. Already the exigencies of science have put him in a position whence
he can good-naturedly chaff the "Bishop of Manchester'' forgiving away all, and
more than, he has, in his haste to placate the scientists, and remind him that there
is really no occasion for theology to admit that there is any " antagonism between
the 'regular economy of nature' and the 'regular economy of prayer.' No
one," adds the professor, "is entitled to say a priori that any given so-called
miraculous event is impossible ; and no one is entitled to say d priori that prayer
for some change in the ordinary course of nature cannot possibly avail. . . . The
belief in the efficacy of prayer depends upon the assumption that there is Some-

848 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Mar.,

body, somewhere, who is strong enough to deal with the earth and its contents as
men deal with the things and events which they are strong enough to modify or
control ; and who is capable of being moved by appeals such as men make to one
another. The belief does not even involve theism ; for our earth is an insignificant
part of the solar system, while the solar system is hardly worth speaking of in re-
lation to the All ; and, for anything that can be proved to the contrary, there may
be beings endowed with full powers over our system, yet, practically, as insignificant
as ourselves in relation to the universe. . . . For we are not justified in saying that
it is impossible for beings having the nature of men, only vastly more powerful,
to exist ; and if they do exist they may act as and when we ask them to do so,
just as our brother men act. . . . Certainly I do not lack faith in the constancy of
natural order. But I am not less convinced that if I were to ask the Bishop of
Manchester to do me a kindness which lay within his power, he would do it. And
I am unable to see that his action on my request involves any violation of the
order of nature. . . . How is the case altered if my request is preferred to some
imaginary superior being, or to the Most High Being, who, by the supposition, is
able to arrest disease, or make the sun stand still in the heavens, just as easily as
I can stop my watch or make it indicate any hour that pleases me ? ''

Certainly this is very handsome behavior, so far as it goes, on the part of Pro-
fessor Huxley. What he says is not only true in fact, but even on his lips it sounds
as honest as any one could expect, considering the low moral condition of the
general public to which it is addressed. No, brethren, he says in effect to the
bishops, it is not because we scientific people know what the order of nature is
that we are obliged to laugh at you, but only because of " the inadequacy of the
evidence to prove any given case of such (miraculous) occurrences which has been
adduced. ... I do not know any body of scientific men who could be got to
listen without the strongest expressions of disgusted repudiation to the exposition
of a pretended scientific discovery which had no better evidence to show for itself
than the story of the devils entering a herd of swine, or of the fig-tree that was
blasted for bearing no figs, when it was not the season of figs.' Whether such
events are possible or impossible no man can say ; but scientific ethics can and
does declare that the profession of belief in them, on the evidence of documents
of unknown date and of unknown authorship, is immoral. Theological apologists
who insist that morality will vanish if their dogmas are exploded would do well
to consider the fact that, in the matter of intellectual veracity, science is already
a, long way ahead of the churches"

Well, the professor having already owned up to "vainglory," not much ac-
count need be made of this brag. One may grant him, too, the private possession
of all the veracity he has any use for. It is only our weakness, and that of " the
bishops," that made him yield to the temptation of trying to throw dust in our
eyes. Privately, or with other good scientists, he smiles at his little joke in pre-
tending that the evidence for a " scientific discovery " and the evidence for any
historical fact whatever may be coupled together in such a fashion. Of course.
he says, we all know that the alleged fact in the first case is subject to experi-
ment under given conditions, and its verification depends on that process and not
on the character or the number of the alleged witnesses. But what I said was
good enough gag for people who are idiotic enough either to be or to play at
being Christians. You observe, I gave them another bit of the same stuff further
on, about there being as much "sheer fetichism among the Roman populace now
as there was eighteen hundred years ago." No doubt, if you, who are truth-

i888.J WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 849

tellers like myself, ask how I know that the people who " ascend the steps of the
Ara Coeli Church about Twelfth Day" in Rome are worshipping idols, I admit
at once that I was talking arrant a priori nonsense, and evolving their mental
condition wholly from my inner consciousness, independent of evidence. But
what would you have ? Hadn't I been roasting the bishops of Manchester, Car-
lisle, and Bedford in their own frying-pan, and was it more than common Humanity
on my part to throw in something soothing in the way of a gibe at what I knew
they heartily hated ?

STORY OF A CONVERSION.

I was baptised in infancy, my parents being members of the Episcopal
Church, which I was taught to respect as the "true church." My first religious
impressions were received from my mother, who used to entertain and instruct
me with those beautiful stories from the Bible that are so wonderful and de-
lightful to a child ; and quite early in life I read the Bible through from begin-
ning to the end, obtaining a clearer idea of its contents, and perhaps a greater
reverence for it, than I otherwise could have done. I learned nothing of Catho-
licity, excepting that it was practised by the ignorant and superstitious. I be-
came conscious very early in life of my need of religion, and longed to be able to
call myself a Christian, not considering myself entitled to the name when my
creed was so vague and indefinite. My marriage with a Presbyterian gentleman
opened a field for thought and study before unknown to me, and I read with
special interest, among others, some theological works of Dr. Woods, of An-
dover, and of Dr. McCosh. I also listened to eloquent preachers, and saw and
learned much sincere piety among the members of this sect. Presbyterianism
was therefore, to me, the first stepping-stone to Catholicity, by stimulating
thought in the direction of religion and giving me examples of piety outside my
own church.

I tried honestly to follow the teaching of Dr. Watts in the little poem :

" Seize upon truth where'er 'tis found,

Among your friends, among your foes,
On Christian or on heathen ground ;
The flower's divine, where'er it grows :
Neglect the prickles, and assume the rose,"

and I believed in an invisible church, which included all in the world who hon-
estly tried to practise the teachings of our Lord. In listening to sermons I be-
lieved it possible to extract some good from the most tedious (as those both
learned and simple often seemed to me), and I think I never failed to receive
this reward for patient listening. I read the Bible carefully and prayerfully, mak-
ing my own interpretations, but I found no resting-place amid the variety of
sects. I saw the doctrines of Penance and Extreme Unction plainly written in
the New Testament, but it did not occur to me that they were taught anywhere
else, until, in conversation with a Protestant friend on the subject, she said re-
proachfully, " These are Catholic doctrines." In the course of time I met Pro-
testants who were interested in Catholicity and who discoursed upon it fre-
quently; but I avoided the subject, and, as much as possible, the otherwise plea-
sant friends who enjoyed these speculations. My husband, however, was in
earnest, and was after a few years converted, and I was extremely distressed
when he took our child to Mass.
VOL. XLVI.-- -54

850 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Mar.,

After this event I could not refuse to give the subject due consideration, nor
to read the Catholic books he was pleased to bring me. I also made friends
among pious and devoted Catholics and distinguished theologians, who greatly
helped to dispel the clouds that had hitherto darkened my mind. The church
I had so long ignored rose to the dignity of a Christian church, a teacher of
truth instead of error, and so I advanced another step on the difficult road. I
had given little attention to the question of infallibility, which is the chief point to
be decided ; for having once found the infallible church, her teachings are, of
course, to be accepted. And would it be possible for a wise and good God to
leave his creatures a fallible church for their guidance?

I did not believe the dogma of the Real Presence, as I could not understand
it, and I objected to devotion to the Blessed Virgin. I wenf one evening to
the Redemptorist church in New York, with a party of Protestants, to hear
a sermon on devotion to the Blessed Virgin, by a noted priest of this order. The
crowd was so great that I was obliged to sit on one of the steps outside the
Sanctuary. The sermon interested me, but I was chiefly attracted by the sea
of upturned faces with rapt expression, such as I had never seen on any crowd
of listeners. Toward the close of the sermon the speaker bade them " kneel to
the Mother of God," and I was surprised to see the congregation, with one
accord, fall on their knees. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament followed the
sermon, and again the people knelt with great devotion, my Protestant friends
doing the same, because, as they afterwards said, " when you are in Rome you
must do as the Romans do." But I stood up, honestly believing that I would
dishonor God by even seeming to kneel. A priest who was near the sacristy
door requested my husband to ask me to leave the church if I would not kneel ;
but fortunately I sat down and was permitted to remain.

One of our party afterwards said to me that the priest would lose his influ-
ence over these people if even one person were seen to stand during this cere-
mony. It was an educated man who told me this ; he had written an interesting
book ; but he was ignorant, as so many are, of religious matters.

A third and most important step in my conversion was the pointing out
by a friend of discrepancies ii) the Book of Common Prayer such as the teach-
ing in the liturgy of baptismal regeneration, which is opposed in the " Articles " ;
the conferring of the power to forgive sins in the ordination of the clergy, which
is so little practised as to be unknown to most people, and so forth a most pain-
ful discovery ; for, though glad to learn truth " where'er 'tis found," I was un-
willing to see the structure on which I had always stood show any signs of
weakness.

I still considered it my duty to attend the Episcopal Church, but I could not
pray, and the sermons conveyed no meaning to my mind. I became bewildered
and unhappy, apparently losing sight of the truths I had originally believed. One
Sunday, after listening to a sermon by the eloquent Dr. Hawks, I returned home
in an unusually desponding frame of mind. My heart and eyes were full of tears,
and I said : " Am I so insignificant that God does not remember me ? Is there
not some little service that I could render him, if he would remember me and
make me a Christian ? " And God heard me, as he heard the little boy who prayed
for bread (a story told in a touching poem by Dr. Hawks). I was directed that
day to a priest, from whom I received instruction, and through the goodness of
God I was led into his holy church. I received conditional baptism, and the
" Faith " I asked for " of the church of God." I received First Communion, and
I became heart and soul a Catholic.

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 851

This event occurred nearly thirty-three years ago, and I am more thankful
for the gift of Faith than for anything else in the world.

I cannot retrace the exact steps by which I was led to believe in the presence
of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, but it was probably a simple belief in the
words of Holy Scripture, as literally interpreted by the Roman Catholic Church :
"Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke, and gave to his disciples ; and said :
Take ye and eat : This is my body. And taking the chalice, he gave thanks ; and
gave to them, saying : Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testa-
ment, which shall be shed for many for the remission of sins." After having
once received our Lord in the Holy Communion I could no longer doubt.

To ,

On Receiving a Gift of Writing- Paper.

My willing pen doth much thy gift commend,

And finds thereon a pathway clear and free ;
But didst thou ponder well, my generous friend,

The risk of trusting such unspotted leaves with me ?

Wilt thou stand sponsor for the erring thoughts,

The words of folly, and the sense unknit,
The sad erasures, and the ugly blots

Which may, perchance, deface the whole of it ?

Thy stainless gift is like the beauteous soul.
Which God entrusts, alas ! to faithless hands ;

On which we trace, at will, as on a scroll,

Much more than wisdom prompts or truth commands.

If then, in haste, in passion, or in guile,

My wayward pen shall slip, and aught indite
Upon these spotless leaves that may defile

A form so chaste, a face so fair and bright

I will bethink me of His mercy and His grace

Who, when He gives a soul to sinful men,
Still grants a kindly power to efface

Its guilty stains and make it pure again,

ALFRED YOUNG.

8 5 2

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

[Mar.,

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

SERMONS FROM THE FLEMISH. 8 vols. New York, Cincinnati, and

Chicago : Benziger Bros.

The decree of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore enjoining the
preaching of five-minute sermons at every Low Mass on Sundays and
holydays has given a special value to collections of short sermons.
Several of these collections have already appeared, partly in consequence
of, and partly to help in the carrying out of, this decree. We have great
pleasure in welcoming this collection, new to English readers, but well
known and of proved worth in Belgium. It is the work of various writers.
Trie volumes already published contain sermons for every Sunday in the
year. For some Sundays there are as many as eleven sermons, the num-
ber never being less than five (except for Palm Sunday). These Sunday
sermons fill six volumes. The seventh volume consists of homilies for
each Sunday and of meditations on the Gospels. The eighth volume (and
the last published so far) contains the sermons on the feasts of our Lord.
Their length averages seven pages.

These sermons deal chiefly with the moral precepts of the Gospels, and
seek to enforce the ordinary obligations of the Christian. They are sim-
ple and direct, and, avoiding rhetoric and verbiage, bring home with great
force and power and ample illustration those truths which every Catholic
is required to learn and to practise. Each sermon has one or two clear,
well-defined points, to the enforcement of which the whole discourse is
devoted; and not unfrequently the earnestness which is their chief charac-
teristic rises to eloquence. The translation is, on the whole, well done.
We believe that five thousand copies have already been sold abroad, and,
considering that the work is only sold in complete sets, this is a good indi-
cation of its merit. We hope that it may meet with a corresponding suc-
cess in this country.

INTEMPERANCE ; or, The Evils of Drink. A poem. Third edition. To-
gether with an appendix containing temperance songs and poems.
By the Rev. J. Casey, P.P., author of Our Thirst for Drink ; Its Cause
and Cure. Dublin : James Duffy & Sons.

This little volume contains much homely, direct, powerful moral teach-
ing clothed in simple verse. The author is an Irish priest who loves God
and his countrymen, and can write good songs; hence this publication.
The songs are particularly good, some of them touching, all of them ex-
ceedingly useful in conducting temperance " rallies," arousing the emo-
tions of all classes, and awakening the attention of the stupid, the igno-
rant, and the depraved. One of these songs well sung is worth twenty
average temperance discourses, especially as they are set to such popular
tunes as "The Wearing of the Green,'' "John Anderson, my Joe," etc.

The book has been in print in its present shape for over two years, and
should by this time be in the hands of all active Catholic temperance men ;
but we fear that it has not been properly brought to the notice of the
Catholic public in this country.

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 853

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF NEWFOUNDLAND. By the Very Rev. M. F.
Howley, D.D., Prefect-Apostolic of St. George's, West Newfoundland.
Boston : Doyle & Whittle.

The learned author calls the bleak island of which he writes so well
in this book his country, and he loves it tenderly. He says that it has
been the passion of his life to gather the materials of his work, describing
its religious history, snatching up eagerly every atom of information that
might tell of the early navigators who came to its misty shores many of
whom never lived to leave them every local tradition of neighborhoods,
parishes, even families, "every anecdote of the olden time, every scrap of
manuscript; every inscription or epitaph having the slightest pretension
to antiquity, every vestige of the former occupation of Newfoundland,
whether civil, military, or ecclesiastical. 7 ' He has rendered a valuable ser-
vice to his countrymen and made a readable book for the intelligent reader
who cannot claim that honor.

We read in this volume of the trials of the Catholic colonists, their
fortitude in bearing the persecutions of the government in early days, their
constancy in the practise of their religion, their public spirit in steadfastly
resisting their oppressors, their noble generosity in condoning all past
offences when peace came. All this is well told, and makes us thank God
that their children are worthy of their heroic sires, as we discover from
those chapters which tell of the progress of religion in later times.

The book contains some valuable maps and several engravings. The
publishers have done their part in first-rate style.

A MENOLOGY OF ENGLAND AND WALES; or, Brief Memorials of the An-
cient British and English Saints, arranged according to the calendar.
By Richard Stanton, priest of the Oratory. London: Burns & Gates;
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

The fathers of the London Oratory have already distinguished them-
selves in sacred biography. Not to mention the Oratorian Series of the
Lives of the Saints, published many years ago, Father Bowden's Miniature
Lives of the Saints have had an unprecedented success, which they fully
deserved. The recent beatification of those who suffered for the faith in
England in the times of Henry, Elizabeth, and James was brought about, to
a very large extent, by the efforts and labors of the fathers of the Ora-
tory. The cardinal archbishop and the bishops of the province of West
minster did well, then, in committing to them the preparation of a work
designed as a means of promoting a more general devotion to the saints
of the country entrusted to their spiritual care.

The scope of this work is indicated by the title Menology. It is some-
thing more than a calendar or martyrology. The term Menology is use
in religious orders for the account of their saints and other members
tinguished for their holy lives, arranged according to the days on whici
thev died. On the other hand, the lives are brief' 4 brief memorials
title-page calls them. For example, Alban Butler's life of St. Dunstan is
more than twice the length of the life contained in this volume. In tl
way the main object of the work has been kept in view, which is to provide
for each day in the year a brief memoir suitable for fostering devotion t
the saint of that day. To accomplish this satisfactorily long study has
been required. For as a really good short sermon often involves more
labor than a long and rambling discourse, so the summing up in a few

854 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

lines of the chief incidents of a saint's career, the seizing upon and indicat-
ing in concise terms his special traits of character and the inmost sources
of his exterior life, require long study and a rare gift of condensation. And
so this work is the outcome of great industry. In order to ascertain the
names of those whom it should include, no less than one hundred and
twenty-two calendars (many of them in MS.) have been consulted, and
eighteen martyrologies some of these, too, not yet printed. For the lives
themselves no available source has been neglected. An important and
interesting feature of the volume is the account of those who have given
up their lives for the faith in post-Reformation times. For these the
archives of the diocese of Westminster have been rendered accessible
to Father Stanton. He has had, too, the assistance of many scholars in
different parts of the world. As the result of all these combined efforts,
we have a volume for which, on the whole, the Catholics of England, and
of all other countries who take an interest in the propagation of the faith,
cannot but feel the greatest gratitude to Father Stanton and to all who
have contributed to its publication.

NEW PARKS BEYOND THE HARLEM. By John Mullaly. New York : Re-
cord and Guide Office.

In the hot and sparsely wooded regions of Hindostan the man who
plants a grove of trees is regarded as the greatest benefactor of his kind,
and his name is held in benediction by posterity. Now, we consider that
the man whose forethought has planned and whose public spirit has se-
cured large and attractive breathing-spaces for the crowded population of
our great city has also the highest claim to the gratitude of his fellow-citi-
zens. And this is the work that Mr. Mullaly, almost single-handed, has
virtually accomplished for New York. His interesting account of the loca-
tion, character, and extent of the t( New Parks beyond the Harlem '' is, we
confess, an agreeable surprise to us. We had no idea that such ample
provision was being made for the wants of our growing city, in this direc-
tion ; and we are pretty sure that most persons who take up his book will
find an equally agreeable surprise in store for them. Whether we con-
sider their extent or their varied character, these new parks will be a
splendid acquisition to a city that so sadly needs such surroundings. New
York has no suburbs, and, were it not for the Central Park, it would be
difficult to find a breath of woodland air within a reasonable distance of
the city. It cannot be denied that the Central Park is now in reality cen-
tral, and as a recreation ground is already inadequate to meet the growing
wants of the metropolis. Other and more extensive play-grounds for the
people are needed, and in the " New Parks beyond the Harlem " they are
supplied.

While reading over Mr. Mullaly's brilliant descriptions of Van Cort-
landt, Bronx, and Pelham Bay Parks we felt an almost irresistible impulse
to go right off and visit them, but our enthusiasm was restrained by the
expiring echoes of the latest blizzard from the West, and so we contented
ourselves with looking over the exquisite bits of landscape with which the
book is copiously illustrated. The project of securing these new parks
for the public, the steps that led to their selection, and the difficulties en-
countered are all vividly set forth in this work. Its power of language
and beauty of illustration make the book worthy of its well-known
author and of the cause it advocates. -

1 888 -J NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 855

LOOKING BACKWARD-2ooa-i88 7 . By Edward Bellamy. Boston : Ticknor

The preoccupation of men's minds with the social problem is faith-
fully mirrored in a great deal of the light literature now current in all
tongues. True, the labor question, and the condition of the poor as af-
fected by it, have afforded an occasional theme for the more prolific novel-
ists lor the last half-century. Mrs. Trollope turned an honest penny by de-
picting, in Michael Armstrong, the horrors of child-life in English cotton
factories ; Mrs. Gaskell twice or thrice used her knowledge of Manchester
operatives to deepen the colors on her canvases ; Charlotte Bronte, who
was interested solely in the emotional life of individuals, and had little
or no care for humanity in general, nevertheless found the " strike " to
abound in picturesque material. In France there was Victor Hugo, ar-
raigning society in a grandiose mixture of sounding sense and bombas-
tic nonsense, and, among ourselves, Mrs. Stowe, laying the train which
abolished the compulsory servitude of a race. But instances like these
were, after all, sporadic, and in most cases could not be held significant of
any popular tendency. They were for the most part in the nature of " art
for art's sake," and in that they differed, as we think, from the more or
jess important works of recent fiction of which Mr. Bellamy's present ven-
ture is a specimen. These are the outgrowth of a deepening public senti-
ment impatient of old expedients, and resolved on some effort to shift the
burdens and equalize the rewards of labor.

Mr. Bellamy's remedy is State socialism, to some modified form of
which sound thinkers on all sides are doubtless looking as the direction
from which light must finally come. His man of the nineteenth century,
who falls into a mesmeric sleep in 1887 and wakes in the year 2000, finds
all Americans of that date absolutely freed from care for the morrow and
anxiety for the day, by a state which is itself the only employer of labor
and the only distributor of its products. That variety of envy which arises
from the sight of the unequal distribution of material goods has been made
impossible by the expedient of annually allotting to each man and woman
of the community an exactly equal share of all there is to be divided.
The " insoluble labor problem " of all the ages has been solved, for " when
the nation became the sole employer, all the citizens, by virtue of their
citizenship, became employees, to be distributed according to the needs of
industry." In other words, the principle of military service, as it is under-
stood to-day, furnishes to the republic of the bi-millennial epoch the
model for the final settlement of the labor question, and the "common
enemy " against whom all combine is no longer a hostile state, but hun-
ger, cold, and want, the foes of every state. From the age of twenty-four
to that of forty-five every able-bodied man and woman serves the commu-
nity in that branch of labor for which nature and inclination fit him,
though no one is allowed to make election of his calling until after having
served the first three years in whatever capacity " his superiors '' assign
him. The more difficult and trying tasks, such as mining, have the short-
est hours of labor. The more skilful, intelligent, and able citizens receive
no greater share of the nation's goods than the weak, the imbecile, or the
manual laborer, but they are expected to do a greater amount of whatever
work they have chosen to do. The basis of allotment for material goods
is humanity ; the just claim of each springs from the fact that he is a man.

856

NE w PUB LIC A TIONS.

[Mar.,

"All men who do their best do the same. A man's endowments, however
godlike, merely fix the measure of his duty." There is no longer any
money, and hence the love of it can no longer engender evil. America
(always in the year 2000) is only one among a community of enlightened
nations, so that even in the case of foreign exchange all balances are set-
tled in national staples. Neither are there any jails, not because there are
absolutely no crimes, but because criminals are recognized as suffering
from ancestral diseases, and are treated in the hospitals, their detention or
other remedial treatment being doubled as to length or intensity if, on
being accused, they are found to make a false plea in excuse. This con-
tingency rarely arises, lying also having gone out of fashion. "The lie of
fear," explains "Dr. Leete,' 7 "was the refuge of cowardice, and the lie of
fraud the device of the cheat. . . . Because we are now all social equals,
and no man has either anything to fear or anything to gain from another
by deceiving him, the contempt of falsehood is so universal that it is rare-
ly, as I told you, that a criminal in other respects will be found willing to
lie."

It was just at this point that Mr. Bellamy's Utopia began to look a little
hazy to us. His book is entertaining, and in several respects it is more
than that. Grant his implicit assumption that the unequal distribution
of material goods is the source of all miseries the human race is subject
to, and he has a good deal to say for himself. No one can deny that such
inequality does count for very much in the great total, but to believe
that a mere rectification of this item would make the balance swing true
is to admit an extremely short-sighted credulity. The total absence of
the religious motive, in spite of vague allusions now and again to the
"fatherhood of God/' and a characteristically humanitarian "sermon"
preached toward the close of the book, sharply accents a materialism
which finds another expression in the remark, quoted from an author of
the bi-millennial year, that "the vacuum left in the minds of men and
women by the absence of care for one's livelihood has been entirely taken
up by the tender passion/' The question of the family, indeed, though
treated at some length, has been rather evaded than answered by Mr.
Bellamy. He says, it is true, that neither sex having anything but love
to ask from the other, there are no longer any marriages but those of pure
inclination which is a solution extremely suggestive of that given con-
cerning the absolute reign of truth in "the year 2000." Mr. Bellamy, in
fact, contributes not very much of value to current discussion of the theme
he essays. There is much that society might equitably and legitimately
organize to do in the way of equalizing burdens, reguJating trade, destroy-
ing monopolies, and opening avenues to willing labor. But supposing it
to do all that can be done in that direction, the race then, like the indi-
vidual now, would die of weariness, were nothing better in store for it.
In the midst of poverty and anguish it is possible already to live in some-
thing nobler than resignation, in something fuller than content. But that
is because it is now possible, under the hardest of actual conditions, for
regenerated man to transcend his material environment and live the life
of joy which is above nature. It is because he seems so dead to this fact
that Mr. Bellamy's book is most unreal.

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 857

THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS : How they came to be in manner and
form as they are. By Francis W. Upham, LL.D. New York : Phillips
& Hunt.

This book is written to refute the errors and calumnies of infidels con-
cerning the Four Gospels, and is a valuable addition to apologetical litera-
ture. The author is a believer in the authenticity of the Gospels, and has
plainly made a deep study of the evidences which are calculated to estab-
lish it. He has mainly in view the difficulties presented by Strauss and
Renan, though he notices more obscure and later controversialists on the
same side. Being a Protestant, we can hardly expect to find him fixing
definitely enough the authority by which the canon of the New Testament
was established ; yet he has much to say on this point that is useful to
Biblical students, and especially so to persons in all states of life who
have to contend with anti-Christian scoffers. His theory of an oral Gos-
pel as in use before a written one is worthy of attention and is suggestive
of the Catholic doctrine of apostolical tradition. He holds a reasonable
view of inspiration and is orthodox as to our Lord's Divinity. It is notice-
able that he affirms the first part of St. Luke's Gospel to be a transcript of
"the Memoir of the Holy Virgin" concerning the events which trans-
pired from the message of the Angel Gabriel till the finding in the Temple.
Altogether a learned, well-written, and, as far as it goes, a sound treatise
on the greatest of all books. The author has added an index with explan-
atory notes, which will be of much assistance.

MEMOIR OF BISHOP WILLSON, first Bishop of Hobart, Tasmania. By
Bishop Ullathorne. New York : The Catholic Publication Society;
London : Burns & Gates.

The venerable Bishop of Birmingham gives us in this little volume a
sketch of a noble and heroic soul. Bishop Willson was a man whose life,
especially its earlier years, was full of incidents of a peculiarly instructive
kind for men who have to Contend against obstacles to their vocation.
How much "a plain man " can do for God is here told, and well told.

LIGUORI LEAFLETS; or, Holy Thoughts for Every Day in the Month, with
some Additional Practices of Catholic Devotion, etc. Edited by Elea-
nor C. Donnelly. With an introduction by Very Rev. Thomas Cooke
Middleton, D.D., O.S.A. Philadelphia: Frank A. Fasy. 1887.
A book of one hundred and thirty-eight pages, small enough for the
vest-pocket, and containing selections fr,om the writings of St. Alphonsus
for the mornings and evenings of the thirty-one days of the month. The
uses of such little manuals are well understood by all intelligent Catho-
lics, or ought to be. The great range of St. Alphonsus 1 writings, and es-
pecially his deep spirit of fervor and unction, make them especially apt for
making such a compilation. Miss Donnelly's poetical dedication to Cardi-
nal Gibbons is a real gem, and we hope will appear among her other poet-
ical writings in future publications of them.

MR. ABSALOM BILLINGSLEA, AND OTHER GEORGIA FOLK. By Richard M.

Johnston. New York : Harper & Brothers. 1888.

This collection of Georgia stories which were published in magazines
is in Mr. Johnston's usual vein. Pathos and humor are intermingled, and
the peculiar features of country-life in Georgia, as it used to be, with the
peculiar dialect, are photographed with minute fidelity,
very entertaining reading.

858 NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [Mar.,

LIFE AND LETTERS OF ST. TERESA. Vol. II. By Henry J. Coleridge, S.J.
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.; London: Burns &
Gates.

We have in this biography a most interesting picture of the strong and
beautiful character of the saint, a faithful account of her many super-
natural favors, as far as they are known, and a carefully prepared record
of her foundations. The letters add greatly to the completeness of the
biography. Only the most important of them, however, are published.
The work will be completed in three volumes, and will rank as one of the
best lives of the saints that we have. We have read through the first vol-
ume, and are now reading the second, and in our opinion Father Coleridge
has succeeded in this work as well as he did in writing The Life and Letters
of St. Francis Xavier.

THE HOLY ANGELS. By the Rev. R. O'Kennedy (of the diocese of Lim-
erick). New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London :
Burns & Gates.

This is an admirable book, at once compendious, clear, and interesting.
It treats in the catechetical form all the subjects suggested by its title
as, for example, the nature and excellence of the angels ; the fall and pun-
ishment of those among them who prevaricated; guardian angels; the
fallen spirits in their relations to men, and the safeguards against their at-
tacks ; the subject of magic in our days ; and, finally, the state of man be-
fore and after the fall, and the glory of the blessed in heaven. That the
matter is. sound is guaranteed by the imprimatur of Cardinal Manning ; and
that the manner is excellent and the typography nearly perfect is a testi-
mony which we very gladly render.

HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. By George Park Fisher, D.D.,
LL.D., Titus Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale University.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1887.

We doubt not that the writer of this book has striven to fulfil his
" honest desire to avoid all unfairness," but the impartial and critical
school to which he belongs, in their very attempts to explain in a purely
human way divine facts, only show the futility of such efforts.

The scope of church history, he tells us, is the description of the " rise
and progress of that community of which Jesus of Nazareth was the foun-
der/' Accordingly he sketches the work of Christ and his apostles in
founding the church, and reviews the extension of their labors by their
followers up to the present time. A glorious work indeed for one who,
with the human qualifications requisite, has, in addition, spiritual discern-
ment of the things that are Christ's. To these sacred annals the Chris-
tian looks for evidences that his faith is divine ; for assurances that his
hope, if he fights the good fight, is certain ; and for instruction in holy
living and dying. Every believer must have his hagiology of some kind.
If it be not Linus, Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Augustine, Ber-
nard, Francis, Dominic, and Xavier, it will be Wickliff, Huss, Luther,
Cranmer, Calvin, Knox, and Wesley. Some living chain must link us
back to the time when Christ taught.

Professor Fisher gives in some respects a well-defined account of the
earliest period of the church. Originally, he declares, it was "the body
of disciples with the apostles at their head " (p. 15). Concerning its or-
ganization he says: "The injunctions to the apostles to superintend the

1888.]

NE w PUB LIC A TIONS.

859

flock and the rites of baptism and the Lord's Supper imply definite asso-
ciation" (p. 35). "To the apostles [was] given the power of the keys and
the power of binding and loosing that is, the authority to exercise Chris-
tian discipline and legislative or judicial function in connection with the
planting of the Gospel " (p. 37). Concerning the New Testament Scrip-
tures he writes : " It was no part of the intention of the apostles and their
helpers to create a permanent literature, nor did they foresee that their
writings, which were called into being by special wants and emergencies,
often by an inability to visit in person the churches which they addressed,
would be compiled into a volume and stand in the eyes of posterity on a
level with the law and the prophets. For a considerable time the words
and works of Jesus were orally related by the apostles, and by other wit-
nesses, to their converts. As the apostles for a number of years spent
much time together at Jerusalem, this oral teaching would naturally tend
to assume a stereotyped form. This fact of an oral tradition preceding
written narratives must be taken into account in explaining the character-
istics of the first three Gospels " (p. 42). In another work, entitled The
Grounds of Thdstic and Christian Belief (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1883), the author says: "The persons and transactions through
which revelation is made ... are anterior to the Scriptures that relate
them '' (p. 414). " Christianity was not made by the Scriptures. On the
contrary, the Scriptures are the product of the church " (p. 415).

With such a notion of the apostolical church, how, pray, does he de-
fend the Congregationalist system ? He appeals to the following text of
Holy Scripture : "All ye are brethren" (Matt, xxiii. 8), and argues from
it that " the original basis of ecclesiastical organization "was " the fraternal
equality of believers '' (p. 35). But does not this argument militate just as
strongly against apostolic as against hierarchical authority? It certainly
does. The equality of believers should surely have no greater organic
force after the apostles were dead than before. His argument, therefore,
fails to establish his point. In his conception of the church there are here
two ideas that destroy each other. He advances another argument from
Scripture : " Instead of a sacerdotal order there was a universal priest-
hood " : " Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy
priesthood. . . . But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood "
(i Pet. ii. 5, 9) (p. 35). We answer that in these passages there is only
the declaration of a universal priesthood (which doctrine the Catholic
Church has always held), but this does not preclude an order of true sacri-
ficial priesthood in addition. In this instance his reasoning is fallacious.

Another defence of his church theory is his assumption that the con-
nection of the churches originally was not organic. Against this theory
we oppose the following facts : (i) The teaching of the apostles produced
doctrinal unity ; their authority could not be ignored ; they certainly were
not inferior to the seventy-two to whom Christ said : " He that hear-
eth you heareth me, and he that despiseth you despiseth me " (Luke x. 16).
(2) There was only one baptism. (3) There was intercommunion. (4)
There was a common worship, without which intercommunion would have
been impossible. Is not doctrinal, sacramental, and liturgical union or-
ganic? Yes; and it is precisely the unity which is a note of the true
church.

That the church maintained this kind of unity by the Papal bond of

86o NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar., 1888.

unity for centuries is admitted by all. Professor Fisher says : " The church
stood forth after the middle of the second century as a distinct body. It
claimed to be, in opposition to heretical and schismatical parties, the
' Catholic Church.' Membership in this one visible church was believed to
be necessary to salvation. . . . The unity of the church was cemented by
the episcopate by the bishops as successors of the apostles. The episco-
pate, like the apostolate in which Peter was the centre of unity, was a unit"
(p. 57). How is this fact to be accounted for ? Is it credible that the church
could maintain her original unity without also maintaining heroriginal doc-
trine ? Could unity be perpetuated without the continuance of the author-
ity which produced it? Would not this be to suppose an effect without a
cause? Again, were the sacraments instituted to be perpetual? If
they were, is not the perpetuity of doctrine implied also? Was not
the doctrine of the apostles given for all time ? If this was a bond of
unity in the beginning, must it not always be so? There is a perpetual
living witness that answers these questions the church. The Catholic
Church has a twofold verification : first, the external fact that she extends
back and merges into the apostolic church ; secondly, that there is such
an internal coherence in her doctrines that to change one is to destroy
all of them. Developments consequent upon her extension, the persecu-
tions she has suffered, the peaceful conquests she has won, the different
moral and intellectual conditions of her children and the world, have only
manifested more clearly the perfect harmony of her teaching and the per-
petuity of her life.

BOOKS RECEIVED.
Mention in this place does not preclude extended notice in subsequent numbers.

IRELAND'S CAUSE IN ENGLAND'S PARLIAMENT. By Justin McCarthy, M.P. With Preface by

John Boyle O'Reilly. Boston: Ticknor & Co.
SHAKSPEARE IN FACT AND IN CRITICISM. By Appleton Morgan, A.M., LL.B. New York :

William Evarts Benjamin.
SONGS OF A LIFETIME. By Eliza Allen Starr, author of Patron Saints and Pilgrims and

Shrines. Published by the Author, St. Joseph's Cottage, No. 229 Huron St., Chicago, 111.
KMMANUEL ; or, The Infancy and the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ reproduced in the

Mysteries of the Tabernacle. By Mrs. Abel Ram, author of The Most Beautiful among

the Children of Men. New York : Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London : Burns &

Oates.
THE SCHOLASTIC ANNUAL FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1888. ByJ. A Lyons, University

of Notre Dame.

MANUAL OF THE ANTI-MASONIC LEAGUE. With a Brief of His Holiness Pope Leo XIII. Mar-
shall, 111. : Church Progress Printing House.

MORALS vs. ART. By Anthony Comstock. New York and Chicago : J. S. Ogilvie & Co.
SERMON preached at the Solemn Benediction and Installation of the Right Rev. Camillus

Beardwood, first Lord Abbot of the Cistercian Monastery, Mount St. Joseph's, Roscrea, by

Father Antoninus Keane, O.P. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son.
UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS ; or, Travels in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Samoa,

and other Pacific Islands. By Maturin M. Ballou. Boston : Ticknor & Co.
THE HEREAFTER. Twenty-three Answers, by as many Religious Teachers, to the Question,

What are the Strongest Proofs and- Arguments in Support of the Belief in a Life Hereafter?

Boston : D. Lothrop Company.
REPORT OF THE COMMISSION to Investigate and Report the Most Humane and Practical

Method of Carrying into Effect the Sentence of Death in Capital Cases. Transmitted to

the Legislature of the State of New York.
ADDRESS ON THE PRESENT CONDITION AND PROGRESS OF POPULAR EDUCATION IN THE CITY

OF NEW YORK. Delivered by J. Edward Simmons, LL.D. Published by order of the

Board. New York : Hall of the Board of Education.
THE BAD CHRISTIAN ; or, Sermons on the Seven Deadly Sins, and the different Sins against

God and our Neighbor which flow therefrom. By Rev. Francis Hunolt, S. J. New York :

Benziger Bros.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL. XLVII. APRIL, 1888. No. 277.

REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE

MADE TO A DEVOUT SERVANT OF OUR LORD, CALLED MOTHER

JULIANA,

An Anchorite of Norwich, who lived in the days of King Ed-ward III.
, THE SIXTH CHAPTER.

IN this shewing was given a lesson to my understanding,
That our soule should wiselie learne to cleave to God's good-

nes;
And at the same time the custome we have of our praier was

minded :
How that to make many meanes* we are usedf for unknowing

of loving.

Then sawe I venlie, that unto God it is far more of worshippe
And true delight that we faithfullie pray to Himself of His

goodnes,

Cleaving thereunto with stedfast belief and with true under-
standing
His grace preventing, than if we made all the meanes that heart

thinketh.
For all these meanes in themselves are too little, and not right

full worshippe ;
But in His goodnes is all the whole, and right nought there

faileth.

Thus, if we pray to God because of His Body all holy,
Or as well for His all precious Blood, His sweet holy Passion ;

* Meane medium. t Used accustomed.

2 REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. [April,

For His most worshippfull bleeding Woundes and His dear

worthy Dying ;

With all the blessed kindnes filled unto life everlasting
That we may have fro* all these meanes it is of God's goodnes.
And if we pray Him because of His sweet Mother's love that

did bear Him ;
All the strong helpe that we have of her praier, it is of His

goodnes.

And if we pray Him because of His holy Cross that He died on,
All the vertue we have of that Cross it is of His goodnes. '
Likewise, the same, all the helpe that we have of the saints and

the angels ;

All the dear worthie love that for God we bear to the Blessed,
Our holy, endles friendship with them, it is of God's goodnes.
Thus the meanes that the goodnes of God hath ordeined for to

helpe us,

Aiding and comforting us in this life, be full faire and many.
Of which the chiefe is the blessed kindf that He took of the

Maiden.

This is the principall, with all that went before and came after
Which belongeth to our redemption and endles salvation.
Wherefore it pleaseth God that by meanes we worshippe and

seeke Him,

Understanding and knowing that He is of all thing the good-
nes.

But the praier we make to the goodnes of God is the highest ;
Coming down to us, unto the lowest part of our needing ;
Quick'ning our soule, and making it live unto God in all vertue,
Nearest in kind and readiest in grace, thus making us perfect.
This is the grace that our soule be seeking, and shall till in

heaven

God be known by us verilie, in whom we all are beclosed.
Man in his kind goeth upright ; and the soule of his body
Like to a full faire purse is sparred,:): and when he be needing,
God doth open and sparre it againe with full courteous mercie.
That it is He who doth this it is shewed above in the saying
" He cometh down to us, unto the lowest part of our needing."
For He hath trulie of all that He made of His goodnes no

hatred,

Ne no disdaine to serve us in all that belongeth to nature,
Out of His love to the soule that He made in His image and

likenes,

* Fro -from. \ Kind nature % humanity. \ Sparred enriched, filled.

1888.]

REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE.

For as the body is cladd in the cloath, and the flesh in skin
likewise ;

And as the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the bulke is deep

hidden,
So are we cladd and enclosed both body and soule in God's

goodnes.
Yea, and more homelie ;* for all these things waste away and

soon vanish,
Whiles His goodnes is whole and more nere to us without a

likenes.
For that we cleave to Him with all our mightes, the Lover

desireth

That we wilfullie be evermore cleaving close to His goodnes.
For of all thing that heart thinketh, it most pleaseth God, and us

speedeth ;f

Seeing our soule is so preciouslie loved of Him that is highest ;
That it doth over-passe the knowing and wit of all creatures,
Namelie : no being created may wit how much and how sweetlie,
Ne how kindlie and tenderlie we are beloved by our Maker.
Wherefore we maie by His grace and His helpe stand in ghost-
lie beholding,

With everlasting marvailing in this high, over-passing
Love past all measure that our Lord hath to us of His goodnes.
Therefore we freelie maie aske all we will of our Lover, with

rev'rence ;

Seeing our will is to have onlie God, and His will is to have us.
Soothlie, we never maie cease of our willing, ne of our loving,
Until we have Him in the fullhead of joye that is promised.
It is His will we be busie here in knowing and loving,
Until cometh the time we shall be fullnlled in heaven.
Then cometh ending of willing, and Love alone reigneth forever.

* Homelie intimately. t Speedeth- profits.

4 DOGMA AND SYMBOLISM. [April,

DOGMA AND SYMBOLISM.

SOME years ago Mr. Matthew Arnold, in addressing his
Liberal friends, made the following noteworthy prediction:

" I persist in thinking," he said, " that the prevailing form for the
Christianity of the future will be the form of Catholicism ; but a Catho-
licism purged, opening itself to the light and air, having the consciousness
of its own poetry, freed from its sacerdotal despotism, and freed from its
pseudo-scientific apparatus of superannuated dogma. Its forms will be
retained, as symbolizing with the force and charm of poetry a few cardinal
facts and ideas, simple, indeed, but indispensable and inexhaustible, and on
which our race could lay hold only by materializing them."*

These words, which deserve close attention as summing up
the views of many that do not agree with Mr. Arnold on any
other point, will furnish the text upon which I shall proceed
briefly to comment. All alike, Catholics and non-Catholics, we
have a deep interest in the question how far the teachings of
modern men of science, the alleged results of critical investiga-
tions, and the principles of the prevailing philosophies can or
ought to be allowed an influence on that living creed which has,
for nearly two thousand years, been in contact with European
civilization. Is a transformed Catholicism possible? What can
the Roman Church surrender as not essential to her truth and
authority? What must she retain if she would exist at all?
Mr. Arnold has suggested the true answer, though it is not ex-
actly what he supposes. And there are reasons at the present
time why we should state that answer in plain terms.

There is no denying the superiority of the Catholic Church
as poetry. By this charm, and this alone, it will survive when
the confessedly unpoetical Protestant sects are dead and buried.
Mr. Arnold, who is a poet of great and austere excellence, may
be allowed to bear witness to the wealth of unconscious poetry
which is incarnate in Catholicism. On this point Catholics are
not likely to quarrel with him. But I must demur to his conclu-
sion. He wants the flower without the root, symbolism con-
sciously retained while its meaning is poured away. Why had the
middle ages such an exquisite and fruitful symbolism ? Surely
because they were the ages of faith. Why, again, did not the
all-embracing, deeply significant symbolism of the Greeks and
Romans keep its hold on the centuries after Christ ? What was

* Mixed Essays, second edition, p. 121.

1 888.] DOGMA AND SYMBOLISM. 5

it that swept the pagan mythology out of life, while permitting
it always to be studied in the schools? Must we not answer, Its
falsehood, its ascertained discrepancy with truth and fact? 'Re-
ligions, said Mr. Leslie Stephen, die of being found out. And
they are found out when their dogmatic assertions will not stand
the test of reason, experience, history, although their poetical
work, as art and literature, remains undiminished. Poetry, as
the shadowing forth of divine mysteries which are the soul's
salvation, is indeed a mighty power; but it can never be a sub-
stitute for belief in God, or hide the nakedness of an existence
from which the hope of immortality has been taken. Is there,
in fact, a solitary instance of religion surviving among a people
when its creed, however poetical, had turned out to be a false-
hood? And who can seriously maintain that the Christian
Church will prove an exception? No; when the brains are out
the man must die. A creedless church is a phantom ; it may
exist as a state establishment: it never can continue in its own
strength. So evident does this appear to me that I have a diffi-
culty in crediting Mr. Arnold, or any one else, with maintaining
the opposite.

Nor is there the faintest sign of the dogma of the church be-
coming feeble. What syllable, having dogmatic weight, has
been retracted 03^ the Holy See during the course of this per-
plexed century? Is there the slightest pretence for saying that
the church has yielded an inch to Agnosticism, Materialism, or
the anti-dogmatic principle in the discussions innumerable,
touching on every point that could be raised, which have sprung
out of the French Revolution and its consequences all over the
world? If we sum up the whole negative philosophy under one
head and call it Phenomenism, where is there a point in it which
the Catholic hierarchy, or the schools of theologians, or the
clergy, or the people in any corporate capacity whatever, have
admitted? Mr. Arnold, in short, may prophesy that Catholicism
is going to be transformed into something else ; but no sign
of the process can he or we discern. Judging by facts, his
"Christianity of the future" is a distant ideal, if we must not
rather describe it as a pious aspiration, or a wish that is hardly
a hope.

So far, indeed, from the dogmatism of our creeds being a
source of weakness, it is the one distinctive character, the very
life and essence, of Catholicism, and makes of the Roman Church
a reality compared with which all other churches and schools
of thought are shadows. I fully grant, as Carlyle showed sixty

6 DOGMA AND SYMBOLISM. [April,

years ago, that the motive-power of the age is not faith but
physical science. We are living in the Mechanical Era, and the
multitudes of men think rather how they shall subdue and ac-
quire for themselves the elements of the visible than how to
build up a moral character fit for the world to come. But in
this universal decay of religion, while the spiritual is forgotten
or called in question, and God is but a name, and eternity the
realm of death, and man's earthly life reckoned the whole of his
existence, the great Christian dogmas come out, like stars in the
sky overhead, all the more vivid and solemn for the prevailing
darkness. They are the only points of light which a man intent
on keeping the path of moral rectitude, of true and noble human-
ity, can discern. But where do they steadfastly shine ? Only
in the heaven of the Catholic Church. Outside it, away from it,
religion has become for the most part clouds and mist through
which hardly a ray of meaning glimmers. The churches of
the Reformation are sinking into Pantheism, or Agnosticism, or a
" faint, possible Theism." They have, in fact, yielded to the pro-
cess of transformation which Mr. Arnold recommends. Their
creeds are understood to be convenient symbols, bodying forth
the unknown and satisfying the need we all have of meeting on
a common ground as human beings, members of the same species
and involved in a like destiny. But with the lapse from objec-
tive dogma to mere sentiment has come for Protestant commu-
nities the " beginning of the end." Their days are numbered.
Other forms of humanitarian emotion have an advantage over
them, first as being novel, and, next and chiefly, as not entail-
ing a constant strife between the dogmas expressed and the
scientific habit of mind which must be supposed to prevail in
the congregation. It would be easy, were it not superfluous, to
illustrate these statements by what has taken place during the
last fifteen or twenty years in the Reformed churches of Ger-
many, England, and America. Everywhere among Protes-
tants dogma is tending to lose its historical worth and to ad-
dress the imagination only ; and everywhere it is dying out.

But something more. It will be observed that I speak of
Theism and the Christian dogmas per modum unius, as though
they were all of a piece, and to question Christianity were to
endanger belief in a Personal, Living God. Such, in fact, we
cannot deny it, has been the case. I do not at all mean that
Theism depends for its truth on Revelation. But does it not,
in our century and under the stress of the physical-science
movement, depend on Revelation for its effective power? I ap-

1 888.] DOGMA AND SYMBOLISM. 7

peal to the experience of those who know the world and have
studied the facts of civilized life. A Theist who is not, or does
not mean to be, a Christian, will find himself approximating little
by little to the side of those who have renounced Theism also
and are Pantheists, Agnostics, or Materialists. His affinities,
so to speak, are in the wrong direction. If he remains true to
his belief he is solitary ; there hangs over his life and action
an incompleteness perpetually suggesting that he has not
reached the full term of his thought. He reasons soundly, but
his energies are every way impeded. What is it, he cannot but
ask himself, that comes between him and his fellow-man, divid-
ing them from one another? And where is the binding-prin-
ciple to be found? The answer suggested by Theism to his per-
plexities is Providence ; and when he looks for Providence in
history, he must needs come to the consideration of Christ and
his religion, with its dogmas, symbols, and institutions filling
by anticipation or by their results the canvas of human records
from end to end. While most significant it is that men like Mr.
Arnold and his Positivist friends, who begin by resolving
Christianity into a myth, should, as though driven onward by
force of logic, never pause till they have made of God and the
immortal spirit within us unverifiable suppositions which it is
our duty, they tell us, to put on one side. The abandonment of
dogma means, and is intended to mean, practical Atheism. And,
again, if we hold by Theism as the light of life real, undoubt-
ing, prayerful Theism are we not, in the eyes of Mr. Arnold,
assuming the main point at issue? after which we might as well
close with the Christian religion in its antiquated, and to him
impossible, form. I believe the usual Agnostic, whether Eng-
lish-speaking or German, and above all the scientific defenders
and exponents of that creed such as Lange or Professor Du
Bois Reymond would agree with him. The problem, there
fore, is simplified, and we have only to ask ourselves what the
Catholic Church would gain by making Theism an open ques-
tion, and interpreting her traditional symbolism by that rubric.
About the solution of the problem so stated I think we need
not trouble. Catholicism, be its fortunes in the future, humanly
speaking, what they may, will not end amid " inextinguishable
laughter," as "that sorriest of farces, a pickle-herring tragedy."
When it ceases to dogmatize it will cease to be. 'But the point
to which I would draw attention and it may well astonish us
is that, on the showing of scientific men themselves, nothing
whatever has been discovered, nothing proved or in the slight-

8 DOGMA AND SYMBOLISM. [April,

est degree ascertained, by physical science, on which a denial of
Theism can be legitimately grounded. So far as the Catholic
Church is bound up with that greatest of affirmations the ex-
istence of a Personal God, to whom the whole of creation is an
instrument for the carrying out of his Will it remains pre-
cisely where it was before the name of physical science had been
heard in modern times. That science, as actually taught, neither
affirms nor denies God arid the supernatural. In the presence
of these truths of reason and revelation it is not Agnostic, much
less Atheistic. It is simply dumb. We do not cast out religion
because it nowhere appears in the theorems of Euclid. When
our premises and process are algebraic, we hardly expect a
metaphysical or a moral statement in the conclusion. Now, the
whole of what Mr. Arnold calls verification by experience is of
this kind and belongs to mathematics and the study of matter.
There is, indeed, an experience which brings to light the intui-
tions of morality, the first principles of reason, and the divine
aspects of the universe. But to that experience Mr. Arnold
would refuse an objective value ; he would call it emotion. The
test and proof he demands can be furnished by physical science
alone. How astonishing it is, I say then, that physical science
turns round at this point and declines to intermeddle with such
problems, as beyond her competence ! She cannot decide
whether we possess another organ of knowledge, whether
hyper-physical. intuitions are given us, or what we mean by
them. Between theology and physics there is no antagonism,
if only because they have nothing in common. Or, to speak more
accurately, while physics cannot but supply data to reason, for
its arguments from design, from efficient and final causes and
from the beauty of things visible to their Divine Exemplar, it
remains true that, merely as physics, the lower science can make
no assertions in the province of the higher, and theology is to it
a sealed volume. Hence it is by no means on the ground of
experimental knowledge, nor at all in the name of " science,"
that Catholicism can be required to disown her dogmas. Their
truth or falsehood must be proved by other than physical meth-
ods. Be they merely the poetry of the unknown and unknow-
able, or a real adumbration, in time and through visible media, of
things eternal, evident it surely is that weighing and measuring,
or the employment of the u scientific imagination " in other
words, of the clear images of matter in motion will not decide
one way or the other. It is the religious faculty within us that
judges 'here ; " spiritual things must be spiritually discerned" ;

1 888.] DOGMA AND SYMBOLISM. 9

and the reason which we rightly invoke as creating natural relig-
ion in the heart of man is a light that reads the world and life as
manifestations of spirit, not as products or illusions of the five
senses. It is one thing to hear the words of an epic poem,
another to grasp their meaning. And religion deals with phe-
nomena as the poet deals with words ; but the meaning was
first of all in the poet's mind, and the true and everlasting sig-
nificance of the universe is in the mind of God, to which religion
has access. Does any scientific authority deny that such access
can be or has been ? He does so at his own risk ; for science,
from the nature of the case, says neither yea nor nay.

" You never," writes Professor Tyndall on a cognate question, " hear
the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of Uniformity speaking
of impossibilities in nature. They never say, what they are constantly
charged with saying, that it is impossible for the Builder of the universe
to alter his work. Their business is not with the possible.''* And again :
"As regards knowledge, physical science is polar. In one sense it knows,
or is destined to know, everything. In another sense it knows nothing.
Science understands much of this intermediate phase of things that we
call nature, of which it is the product ; but science knows nothing of the
origin or destiny of nature. Who or what made the sun, and gave his
rays their alleged power? Who or what made and bestowed upon the ul-
timate particles of matter their wondrous power of varied interaction ?
Science does not know; the mystery, though pushed back, remains unal-
tered.'^

I wish our Royal Societies, and scientific associations at
home and abroad, could be persuaded to adopt these words
as their motto, " Science is polar." By all means. That is
what religious men have ever contended. There are two
poles of knowledge, the material and the spiritual, both ob-
jective, neither of them an illusion or a dream of poetry. Hu-
man life turns upon them, and the whole desire of a reasonable
man should be that, if they are kept perfectly distinct, the one is
not denied in favor of the other. But they do not make an
ordered universe if, while the less important is insisted on with
ever-growing iteration, that other, for the sake of which nature
itself is, be treated as fiction and idle seeming. After many
centuries we are at last, it appears, beginning to learn some-
thing of that "intermediate phase" of reality which we term
nature, and the ascertained exposition of which is physical
science. It is a matter for congratulation. But our moral be-
ing requires that we should know something, too, of the " origin
and destiny," as of nature, so of ourselves, who cannot find hap-

* Fragments of Science, fifth edition, p. 45 6 - * Ibld ' p ' ^'

io DOGMA AND SYMBOLISM. [April,

piness, or exercise the highest faculties within us, or be aught
save highly-organized animals, unless in our thoughts we go be-
yond " nature,'* and discover why we are placed here and
what is expected of us. The fact that we can ask these ques-
tions, that they are reasonable and intelligible and not to be put
by, is surely an indication that somewhere the answer to them
has been or will be given. Life cannot fall into harmony unless
both its poles are real. " Science " is one pole, and explicates
the material. What, then, is the other pole, which explicates
the immaterial? Can it be imaginary? If so, where is the bal-
ance in things?

We want real physics and real metaphysics, and no delusion
anywhere. A symbolism founded on fact may be sacred and
venerable; but if it paints nothing except our fancies, let it be
kept for moments when we are not serious. The other pole of
knowledge, about which our religion revolves, must not be fan-
tastic. And here is physical science affirming that it knows no
reason why religion should be fantastic ; that, for all it has ever
been able to learn, there may be a miracle-working God, the
Creator of a spiritual soul in man, who has revealed himself in
Jesus Christ, and whose message may have taken the shape of
church and Bible. For with the " transcendental" it .does not
concern itself ; and it has, and can have, no prejudices a priori
against religion ; nor can it ever be justified in saying that his-
tory has not within it a miraculous element. To achieve its own
high purposes physical science goes upon the " uniformity of
nature." But to the physicist, let us remember, the principle
of uniformity has only an experimental value. He does not re-
ceive it as an intuition of reason ; to him it is, in the language
of Kant, synthetic indeed, but not h priori in other words, not a
necessary truth, but a working hypothesis and the summing up
of experience so far. In like manner, he knows only sequence,
not causation ; the correlations of things as they fall under his
ken, not their causes ; the results, it may be, of the action of
spiritual powers in this visible world, but never the spiritual
powers themselves. Though he uses reason incessantly, he has
no theory of it, for it is an instrument given to him by the high-
er science we call logic, and he is not a logician at all, but
a searcher into matter, space, and motion, and their conse-
quences.

Xhus he has left " ample room and verge enough" for any
science of the supersensible, whether of God or man, which can
make good its footing in the region where physics does not

i888.] DOGMA AND SYMBOLISM. n

penetrate. Certain leaders of thought believe that there is no
such region ; but so do not the greatest. When we hear the
most eminent names in science we hear the names of men who
eagerly proclaim that there are infinite aspects of reality which
their science will never reveal. On the other hand, we see the
Catholic Church, refusing to physical knowledge none of the
empirical axioms for which it contends, but maintaining that to
her has been confided the revelation of the Unseen. If that mes-
sage were only sentiment, if her business were to cultivate hu-
man emotions, her symbolism would be altogether different
from what it is, and she would enforce no dogmas, or " affirma-
tions concerning the Eternal," on her children. But allow that
the Unseen is equally, though not by the same process, attain-
able as the earthly and the visible ; that God is not a chimera,
and that man is a spirit; and it will then appear that every
point of the church's symbolism is dogmatic, and that the sign
and the significance of it stand or fall together.

And so we reply to Mr. Arnold, that if he deems so highly
of the symbolism, it is to be presumed that its substance is
more beautiful still ; but, if he is determined to make away
with the substance, not all the kind wishes in the world will
rescue the symbolism. Here, then, I conclude, we have one
measure of the church's stability the truths of Natural Relig-
ion as implied and culminating in Theism. Science does not
even pretend to assail those truths ; and a church that surren-
dered them would be the same instant, as a church, annihilated.
Is there a future for Theism ? To that extent there is one for
the Roman Communion, founded and set up as it is in Theism.
Or, is Mr. Arnold right in Literature and Dogma, and is the
"assumption," common to all the churches, that there is ''a
Great Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor
of the universe," unverifiable? Is it only an imagination, and
not a known and certain truth? In that case the mission of the
church is over, and we must find consolation where we may ;
some perhaps in poetry, but the serious-minded, surely, in the
one refuge that would then be left them the silence of despair.

WILLIAM BARRY.

12 THE LAITY. [April,

THE LAITY.

IF next Sunday all the men and women in New York, be-
tween eighteen and sixty, who sincerely declare themselves to
be Catholics, and sincerely believe themselves to be Catholics,
were to take it into their heads to go to Mass, does any one for
a moment suppose that the churches of the city, even with the
average of five successive Masses each, would be able to ac-
commodate more than a fraction of them? The same will hold
good of any other of our cities. This is without including the
great numbers who have fallen completely away into practical
and avowed indifference to religion. It may be answered, and
with truth, that very many of these non-attendant yet professing
Catholics are non-attendant because they are wilfully leading
more or less sinful lives, and, being unwilling to abandon evil,
abstain, therefore, first from the sacraments and then from pub-
lic worship even. But, conceding this, it will be admitted that
it would be a step at least towards reforming the lives of these
persons if they could be induced to be present at public worship.
There is an optimistic and a pessimistic way of looking at the state
of religion, as at most other things, yet one does not need to be
either an optimist or a pessimist to desire in every legitimate and
practical way to enlarge the field in which the elevating truths
and saving graces of Christ's church can be brought into play.
Some five years ago the late Father Formby published a pam-
phlet attempting to explain why it is that, as he took for granted,
there is a growth of unbelief among the educated classes in
Europe. Like Mgr. Gaume, he seemed to find the cause to be
in the ordinary curriculum of academic studies, in which most of
the literary culture is founded upon the writings of pagans.
Other writers, very many writers indeed, have affirmed that the
decay or neglect of the traditional music of the liturgy is largely
responsible.

It is beyond dispute that in modern times the Catholic laity
in general, although performing their personal duties as Chris-
tians, are, in their relation to the public interests of religion, too
often like dumb oxen. So far as the liturgy goes, no one who
is aware of its magnificent but unused possibilities can avoid a
feeling of wonder that the Catholic laity should have ceased to
take the share in the public worship of the church to which they
are clearly shown to be entitled, as well by the structure of

1 888.] THE LAITY. 13

the liturgy itself as by its language and rubrics. Recently a
New York daily paper, a propos of a Protestant theological dis-
pute and of the assembly which was convened to settle it, in-
dulged in some flippant remarks on the early (Ecumenical Coun-
cils, likening them, on account of their heated debates, the parti-
san activity sometimes manifested in anticipation of these coun-
cils, and the great popular interest taken in them, to our modern
political conventions. It is certain that in the first centuries of
the church a living interest was shown in religious discussions
and in points of ecclesiastical discipline by the public at large, both
laymen and clerics. Even the most subtle of the philosophical
principles which underlie the doctrine of the Incarnation seem
to have been debated in the highways, the workshops, the marts
of trade and industry, by even the ordinary unlettered citizens of
Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria, with as much earnest-
ness as similar men of our own time and country would employ
over free-trade and protection. Indeed, until quite late in the
middle ages the laity were accustomed not only to be seen in
the churches but to have their voices heard there, and that not
merely in set portions of the divine office, but also in delibera-
tions on the policy of the church. So far as the church was
concerned, there was no profanum vulgus except the excom-
municate.

Every public function of the church supposes the laity to be
actively, not passively, present ; as participators, not simply as
spectators. A very forcible instance o'f this is in the ordination
of priests, where, if anywhere, one might be pardoned for imagin-
ing the laity to have no right but that of edified spectators. But
what is the fact ? In the ritual for ordination the laity are actu-
ally summoned to express their opinion as to the worthiness of
those about to receive the sacrament of order, and the words of
the summons declare this to be not merely a polite or ceremoni-
ous formula, but a genuine right of the laity, although certainly
not a legal but a moral right. The laity are plainly declared to
be most deeply concerned of all in the choice of fit subjects for
the priesthood. Here is a translation of a part of the ordination
service :

"The bishop addresses the clergy and people in the following words :
4 Inasmuch, dearly beloved brethren, as both the master'of a vessel and
the passengers have either a common feeling of security or a common
fear, in like manner those who have a common interest should have a
common opinion. For not uselessly, indeed, was it established by the
Fathers that in the election of those who are to be employed for the mm-

14 THE LAITY. [April,

istry of the altar the people also should be consulted, because what many
may be ignorant of concerning the life and conduct of the candidate is
sometimes known to a few, and besides it is necessary in order that the
faithful may the more readily yield obedience to him when ordained whose
ordination they sanctioned by their consent.

" ' Indeed, so far as appears to me, the conduct of this deacon, who with
the assistance of the Lord is about to be ordained to the priesthood, is com-
mendable and pleasing to God, and worthy, in my opinion, of an increase of
ecclesiastical honor. But, lest one or a few might be influenced by friend-
ship or prejudiced by affection, the opinion of many should be sought.
Wherefore, whatsoever you know of his conduct or morals, whatsoever
you think of his merit, freely make known ; ^ind give him this testimony
for the priesthood as he shall deserve, and not from any motives of affec-
tion. Should any one, therefore, have anything against him, let him, for
God's sake and for the honor of God, come forward and speak ; neverthe-
less, let him be mindful of his own condition.'

" Here the bishop pauses," etc.

May not one cause of the lack of spirit among the laity, of
which there is now so much complaint, be a deeper, or, at all
events, a more intangible, cause than that of music or liturgy, al-
though both of these have undoubtedly contributed their share?

A query is in order here. One flagrant error of Protestant-
ism is that it reduces religion to a purely personal and private
matter, independent of any organized institution, thus tending
to render religion altogether subjective in its scope, the logi-
cal end of which tendency is the denial of the objective reality
of religious truth in other words, scepticism. The query is:
Would not a tendency towards the same lamentable end natu-
rally arise from a condition of things which more and more had
the effect of separating the great body of the Catholic laity from
active participation in the institutional phases of religion ?

Under the Jewish dispensation the public work of religion
was conducted exclusively by the tribe of Levi. But the new
dispensation recognizes no such thing as a sacerdotal caste.
Balmes, in his Protestantism and Catholicity^ devotes most of
a long chapter to proving^ that not only has the clergy of the
Catholic Church never constituted a caste, but that Christianity
has always opposed the growth of any tendency towards the
spirit of caste in its clergy. Nevertheless, although the clergy
are not and never have been a caste, there is room for an in-
quiry. It is this : Has not the Providence of God, for temporary
ends, perhaps, so shaped things that there has developed a ten-
dency among the clergy towards a sort of professional feeling
such as instinctively, as it were, resents as an intrusion any par-
ticipation of outsiders in the sacred functions ? Is there not a

1 888.] THE LAITY. I5

certain exaggerated feeling of condescension towards the laity,
a certain feeling of exclusive possession in the church and in the
belongings of the church, displayed among a large number of
the priesthood ? Is it not worth while to inquire whether that
same Providence is not now pointing to a return to the older and
more normal state of union without confusion of the clergy and
people ? Which may most truly be called the normal state, the
present one or the one whose traces are found everywhere in
the ritual? Is not the present state of things to a great extent a
mere survival of a former adjustment of the church to abnormal
environments, most of which have disappeared with the lapse
of ages? What share in the cultivation of this exclusive, pro-
fessional feeling among the clergy is to be imputed to a con-
dition of things now rapidly passing away ?

Enter a church during the performance of some solemn
function. Around the altar, blazing with lights, are gathered
reverend men vested in rich garments of antique splendor.
They are all in motion, or, at all events, each has a part, the
voice of each is heard, and everything is conducted with decent
order and impressive dignity. Even to the unbelieving stranger
the spectacle is interesting, perhaps strikingly beautiful. That
is the clergy. But it is all shut in by a barrier, the sanctuary-
railing. Outside that barrier, and filling the edifice, is a great
throng dressed in sombre, every-day attire, and giving out not
a sound, making scarcely a motion. The complete silence, the
almost breathless hush, of the vast assembly outside the sanc-
tuary is, in fact, one of the remarkable and impressive features
of the occasion. This is the laity, and, to all appearances at
least, they are taking no other part than that of most respectful
spectators. Do the laity understand what is being said and
done within the sanctuary ? In a general sense they do. In a
particular sense scarcely any of them do. Of course there is no
secrecy whatever in the function. But look into any one of the
prayer-books which are in the hands of the laity in that great
congregation, and in many of them you shall not find a line or a
word calculated to guide you through the function. After all
is over, look into one of the service-books which the reverend
clergy within the sanctuary-railing were using at the time, and
perhaps it will astonish you to find that the language of the
ceremonial then employed assumed that all the faithful present,
laity as well as clergy, were taking part ; the laity not merely
as dumb witnesses, but as prayerful and tuneful worshippers.
Now and then one reads in a Catholic book or periodical an

16 THE LAITY. [April,

edifying tale relating how some distinguished layman, a great
statesman, perhaps, or a dashing soldier, was wont to experience
pious and humble satisfaction in serving a priest at Mass. Yet
the liturgy was manifestly composed with the supposition that
every one of the faithful present in the church would serve the
Mass, so far at least as making all the responses. To be sure,
the disappearance of Latin as the spoken tongue throughout the
lands where the Latin rite was first introduced, and the survival
of Latin as the language of the liturgy, to some extent accounts
for the discrepancy between theory and practice as to the part
of the laity in the church services ; but only to some extent.
There is something exceedingly suggestive in the fact of this
passive attitude of the laity seeming to be absolutely complai-
sant. Heretofore the laity have been happy in their mute, ad-
miring devotion. A change may come, however ; there are
those who think they perceive its first approaches, and who
would read in this the most hopeful presages of an increase of
spiritual vigor and manliness in the members of a hymn-singing,
many-voiced church of the near future.

If the sanctuary-railing at times seems like a barrier, it may
perhaps be well to remember that there was a period when it
was intended for the very purpose of exclusion, or, at any rate,
to be typical of exclusion. Four centuries ago, or even but one
century ago and less, the state, in Europe, not only " protect-
ed " but patronized the church. There was a time when em-
perors, kings, dukes, counts, ay, and even petty knights, were
often very much inclined to "run " the church, as we Americans
would put it. The " right " of investiture, of appointment of
bishops, parish priests, abbots, priors, and other dignitaries of
the church or of the religious orders, and other similar rights,
were constantly claimed and exercised by civil rulers without a
shadow of justice. The liberty of religion, the very administra-
tion of the sacraments, were in danger from these intruders, and
the consequent defensive attitude of the church took form in
architectural developments such as those chancels raised high
above the general level of the church-floor, shut off by rood-
screens, or surrounded by massive railings, strong enough to
serve as real physical barriers in case of an emergency. The
ponderous and sometimes forbidding sanctuary-railing still sur-
vives, centuries after the purpose for which it was first devised,
and thus seems still to symbolize a certain exclusiveness of feel-
ing, a certain distrust which in the past was necessary and
wholesome.

i888.] THE LAITY. 17

The appurtenances of worship and discipline referred to had
their reason ; and so will those of the future development of
Catholic religious life have their reason each reason working
in its time and place for the common good. The cause of
Catholicity is to be in the future, as it has been in the past, the
cause of true civilization. But no great idea can pass through
the civilization of a great people without being modified, and
this applies to religion/ One may be permitted to ask, Ought
any mere historical survivals, which are not related to the
essence of faith, be allowed to prevent a close union of all those
who are faithful to the truth?

In what the writer has said above he begs not to be misun-
derstood. He makes no complaint; there is no complaint to
make. But this is an era when the old order is undergoing
radical changes, in the social, industrial, and political world, and
one is justified in inquiring how far changes can occur in the
religious world without injury to what is necessarily unchange-
able in it, and one is justified also in inquiring how are we pre-
pared to meet these changes. There are two sides to the
church, the human and the divine. The human side will, in the
natural order of things, tend to adjust itself to its environment,
and the divine side will seek men's souls on lines laid down by
their peculiar civilization. If Catholicity in the person of its
missionaries could wear the mandarin's feather in China and
could live on a vegetable diet according to the Brahman code in
India, it can certainly adjust itself to the conditions of the free
citizen of the United States. What stamps the Catholic Church
as a divine institution, and not a mere national or race cult, is its
equal adaptability, without straining the bonds of unity and per-
petuity, to all of God's children on earth without difficulty as to
time or place, to the middle ages, to the nineteenth century, to
the United States as well as to Japan.

We do not want either national churches or " personal "
churches ; we need nothing but the One, Catholic, Apostolic, and
Roman Church, in the full sense of that majestic term the only
church in which all that is true in the national and personal can
attain an adequate realization. The subject of this paper is one
that ought to be discussed without trenching either on the
rights of the clergy or the duties of the laity ; on the contrary,
an intelligent discussion would tend rather to bring these rights
and duties more clearly into view.

Our modern and American civilization is favorable to the
development of the Catholic religion, and yet this civilization

VOL. XLVII. 2

i8 A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI. \\ [April,

may be perverted. The perversion of our popular tendencies
would be, in religion, the merging- of priest and people into one,
enhancing the lay element at the expense of the divine rights of
the church a perversion abhorrent to every one of sound Catho-
lic faith. Equally abhorrent would be the effrontery ot any man,
caste, institution, or nation which should undertake to set the
human above the divine, to set up, for instance, Americanism
vs. Catholicity. Catholics are disciples of Christ first, last, and
all the time. When that ceases to make us better Americans
the republic is undone. In short, the qualities of American
citizenship are such as to fit good Americans in an especial man-
ner to be good Catholics. One object of this paper has been
to inquire just how the completion of this fitness can best be
worked out. A LAYMAN.

A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI.

IN a recent number of the Century magazine there appeared
an article on " The Catacombs of Rome," by Professor Philip
Schaff, D.D. The article, though brief, was profusely illustrat-
ed, and was accorded the place of honor. The tone of the
writer is professedly candid and orthodox, and his readers are
given to understand that in this short paper they have the re-
sults of archaeological research in the Roman Catacombs fully
and fairly summarized. This certainly is the impression Profes-
sor Schaff has sought to produce on the minds of his extensive
audience, and we believe he has largely succeeded. The writer,
it is true, makes no claim to original investigation ; he simply
leaves us to infer that he visited the Catacombs in the ordinary
tourist fashion. But he does claim to be quite familiar with the
best and latest literature on the subject, and he mentions a num-
ber of works by the most noted authors, whose researches he in-
timates having mastered, and so his acquaintance with the sub-
ject must needs be accurate and profound. It is not our pur-
pose to dispute the extent of his knowledge or the sources
whence it was derived. Our cause of complaint against the
learned professor is that he tells only a very small part of what
he knows. We venture to call him to account simply because
we are convinced that he wilfully conceals facts and statements
from the general public which it ought to know facts without
the knowledge of which any sketch of the Catacombs must
necessarily be inaccurate and misleading.

1888.] A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI. 19

The most hopeful feature of the intellectual development of
our time is that the great majority of intelligent people nowa-
days want to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth in relation to every subject to which their attention is
called, so that one-sided views and suppression of facts are de-
precated by all honest men ; and in a magazine like the Century,
that caters to the broadest intelligence of the land, they are
strangely out of place. But unfortunately the literary bias in-
herited through generations dies slowly and much of what is
every day written is still a conspiracy against Catholic truth.
The testimony of the Catacombs is so distinctly and decidedly
Catholic that it is difficult to understand how any writer can
afford to openly ignore the fact, much less to controvert it. But
Professor Schaff not only ignores it, but, by suppression of evi-
dence and covert insinuation, tries to convey the idea that there
is nothing distinctively Catholic to be found in the Catacombs
or their contents.

The Roman archaeologist, John Baptist de' Rossi, is uni-
versally accepted as the highest authority on the Catacombs
and all that they contain. He is the chief authority to whom
the reverend professor appeals, and De' Rossi shall be our high
court of appeal also, for his works are before us.

The first statements in the article to which we take exception
are those where it is asserted that the Catacombs were used for
sepulture only, and not for places of refuge or worship. It is
no doubt true, as the writer observes, that even the Christian
burial clubs were in the beginning protected by Roman law, and
their cemeteries, though under ground, were to some extent
public. But in the year 257 an edict was issued by the Em-
peror Valerian forbidding not only " all Christian assemblies,"
but also "all visits to places called cemeteries." And Pope
Sixtus II., who in the following year, 258, was surprised by the
pagans while ministering to his flock in the cemetery of Praetex-
tatus, was hurried off before the tribunals and condemned to
death with several of his followers. This fact is well established,
both from the famous appeal of the deacon St. Lawrence at the
trial, and the well-preserved inscription of Pope Damasus dis-
covered by De' Rossi in the Papal Crypt of the Catacomb of St.
Callixtus. It is also well authenticated that on more than one
occasion when the Christians were seen to enter their cemeteries,
or were found at worship there by the pagan persecutors, the
narrow passages or galleries were closed up and the worship,
pers were thus buried alive. St. Gregory of Tours, in his work
De Gloria Martyrum, mentions an instance where a whole con-

20 A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI. [April,

gregation was walled in in this manner, and when the chamber
was re-opened the skeletons of men, women, and children were
discovered strewn about, and even the silver cruets which had
been taken down for the celebration of the sacred mysteries
were found there, silent witnesses to the religious character of
the assembly. When so many of the cubicula were undoubt-
edly chapels and so many of the arcosolia altars, there must
have been a good deal of worship ; and it looks rather suspicious
to question the fact. But the reverend professor is cautious. He
cannot, of course, pass over the most interesting features of the
Catacombs without some recognition. And so he tells us that
"the little oratories with altars and episcopal chairs cut in the
tufa are probably of later construction, and could accommodate
only a few persons at a time. They were suited for funeral
services and private devotion, but not for public worship."
Does De' Rossi say, or any other great authority or* the Cata-
combs except Professor Schaff, that all " the little oratories with
altars are probably of later construction " ? To deny that some
of the chambers in the Catacombs were used as places of Chris-
tian worship during the early ages is, says De' Rossi, "to close
one's eyes to the light of the sun at noonday." Take, for exam-
ple, the subterranean chapel discovered in the cemetery of St.
Agnes by Marchi in 1841. This structure, 45 feet in length, 7
feet in width, and two stories in height, with chancel and a lumi-
nare, certainly afforde^i accommodations for something more
than "funeral services and private devotion." And this ora-
tory was constructed, according to De' Rossi, not later than the
first years of the fourth century. There is no question but that
the Roman Catacombs were in the beginning built as places of
sepulture only. In the cemeteries constructed during the first
and second centuries there was no provision made for assembly
or worship, but in the Catacombs of the third and fourth cen-
turies there was provision made for both ; and the evidence is
ample that, from the middle of the third century at least, the
Christians took refuge in the Catacombs and worshipped there
in times of persecution. History as well as archaeology wit-
nesses to this, so that there is no reasonable ground for doubt
in the matter.

Referring to St. Petronilla, whose name is so intimately asso-
ciated with the very interesting catacomb on the Via Ardeatina,
Professor Schaff ventures a remark so irrelevant and so un-
founded that his motive cannot well be mistaken. " The Roman
divines," he says, "reluctant to admit that the first pope had
any children (though his marriage is beyond a doubt from the

1 888.] A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI. 2 i

record ot the Gospels which mention his mother-in-law), un-
derstand Petronilla to be a spiritual daughter, as Mark was a
spiritual son, of the apostle." Now, as a matter of fact, the
" Roman divines " never had any reluctance to admit that St.
Peter had children, and the vast majority of them have lived
and died in the belief that St. Peter had a daughter, for such
has been the common tradition in the church for ages ; but that
the St. Petronilla above referred to was his actual daughter is
so exceedingly improbable that we feel quite sure Professor
Schaff himself does not believe a word of it. He brings the
. question up simply because it serves his purpose to have a fling
at the u Roman divines," that is all. The lady Aurelia Petro-
nilla, who is associated both in name and fame with one of the
noblest houses in Rome, could hardly have been born and raised
in a fisherman's hut on the distant shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Few objects found in the Catacombs excite our veneration
more than the glass vases stained with blood the blood o/ the
martyrs. But Professor Schaff shatters our idols with a stroke
of his pen. The blood-red stains that arouse our emotion were
not made by blood at all ; they are only the dregs of wine sac-
ramental wine possibly, but still wine. Now, there is nothing
to which the early records of the Christian faith bear such abun-
dant testimony as the care taken by the Christians in the times
of persecution to preserve the sacred remains of their martyred
brethren, and especially their blood. Sponges, cloths, and vessels
of various kinds, that were used to collect the generous blood of
the athletes of Christ, are to be found in their tombs. The ear-
liest records relating to the Catacombs frequently refer to these
touching memorials of Christian zeal and veneration. Such
writers as St. Ambrose and Prudentius speak of this pious cus-
tom and the evidences they had of it before their eyes. But we
must not forget that our court of appeal is not early history but
recent archaeology. Though quite a number of vials with un-
mistakable stains upon them have been discovered in recent
times in or near the tombs of the martyrs, it is of course most
difficult to have them subjected to a regular chemical analysis
after the lapse of so many centuries. One, however, that was
found in 1872 in the cemetery of St. Saturninus afforded oppor-
tunity for this test. This vessel contained a semi-liquid fluid
which had the appearance of blood. It was submitted to De'
Rossi for examination, and under the supervision of his brother,
Michele de' Rossi, was subjected to a most thorough chemical
and microscopic analysis, which resulted in establishing that
the fluid was originally blood beyond the possibility of even a

22 A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI. [April,

scientific doubt. We strongly suspect that when the reverend
professor throws doubt on the blood theory he aims a blow at
relics in general and at the blood of St. Januarius in particu-
lar, which liquefies every year and is a continuous Catholic
miracle.

From blood to instruments of torture is a transition natural
enough. Whatever l: the fertile imagination of credulous peo-
ple" may think to the contrary, Professor Schaff insists that the
so-called instruments of torture found in the Catacombs " are
simply instruments of handicraft." Perhaps they are both !
The iron head of a hatchet found firmly embedded in the head of
a martyr by Bosio was doubtless an " instrument of handicraft,"
but was it not also an instrument of torture and death ? De'
Rossi himself found plumbatce in the crypt of St. Cecilia. And
speaking of this subject in general, he says: " Many times even
in our own days have we had the opportunity of seeing and
handling the material proofs of the mutilations and various tor-
tures undergone by those buried in the Roman Catacombs ;
and of the religious care of the ancient Christians in gathering
up all that they could of the mangled bodies and the mutilated
limbs, and depositing them in an honored place and wrapping
them in precious coverings."

The eschatology of the early Christians, if we accept the
statement of Professor Schaff, was as crude as that of the red
Indians or any other savages. They buried the implements
of their handicraft with the dead, because " the idea prevailed
to a large extent (amongst them) that the future life was a con-
tinuation of the occupations and amusements of the present."
This certainly is a new discovery, and the credit of it belongs
to the reverend professor. For up to the present moment the
Christian world has been laboring under the supposition that
the first converts to Christianity received the fulness of Gos-
pel light and truth from the apostles and their immediate suc-
cessors, and hence their conceptions of the future life were
spiritual and orthodox, not material and heretical, as this
statement would imply. It is needless to say that the circum-
stances which led up to this remarkable discovery are not
recorded. The anthropomorphic idea of God, and some con-
sequent errors in regard to the future life, found a foothold
in later years among some of the simple anchorites of the
Libyan deserts ; but the faithful of Rome were always free from
such gross errors. Living, as they did, at the very centre of
Christian orthodoxy, they were constantly nourished with sound
doctrine, and the belief of Rome was the standard and the test

1 8 88.] A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI. 23

of Christian belief throughout the world, and was frequently
appealed to by the great champions of the Christian cause in
the East as well as in the West. There is not, therefore, any real
foundation for supposing that the fervent flock which followed
the Divine Shepherd through centuries of tears and blood had
any misconceptions as to the character of the eternal reward
he would bestow upon them for their fidelity. For him they
lived, for him they died, and the possession of him was the
reward exceeding great after which they sought. The New Je-
rusalem might stand out before them with its walls and gates
and battlements, but the Lord God was its glory, and the Lamb
was its light, and their vision its peace and rest and joy, and the
occupation of the blessed within its walls.

When Professor Schaff comes to speak of the pictures found
in the Catacombs he is particularly one-sided in his treatment
of the subject. He carefully refrains from all allusion to the
many distinctively Catholic devotional scenes depicted there,
and he insinuates that the representations of the Blessed Virgin
are confined to the figures of the Orantes and are at best some-
what doubtful. Here are his words; " A woman in a pray-
ing posture frequently appears on the walls of the Catacombs.
Roman Catholic archaeologists see in that figure the earliest
representation of the Virgin Mary praying for sinners. Others
interpret it as the mother-church, or as both combined." Is
this a fair statement to make when pictures of the Blessed Vir-
gin, some with her name actually inscribed upon them, abound
in the Catacombs? Nor can these pictures be conveniently
thrust aside as of later date, for De' Rossi himself declares that
the picture of the Madonna and Child discovered in the ceme-
tery of St. Priscilla belongs to the first age of Christian art.
Indeed if we accept the judgment of archaeology in the matter,
we are justified in saying that the artist who painted this par-
ticular picture might well have received his instruction in the
Christian faith from the lips of St. Peter or St. Paul. This we
admit to be " the earliest representation of the Virgin Mary " as
yet revealed to us in the Catacombs. In this same cemetery
of St. Priscilla, too, we have paintings of the Annunciation, the
Adoration by the Magi, and the Finding of our Lord in the Tem-
ple. The Adoration by the Magi was a favorite subject in early
Christian art. De' Rossi mentions over twenty paintings and
a still greater number of sculptures in which it appears, and, as a
matter of course, the Holy Child is almost invariably represent-
ed in the arms of his Blessed Mother. This group of subjects
belongs for the most part to the latter half of the third and the

24 A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI. [April,

beginning of the fourth centuries. The Blessed Virgin is also
found depicted alone or in company with some of the saints, as
SS. Peter and Paul. So numerous are the paintings and sculp-
tures in which she is represented that when they are passed
over by any writer pretending to give a general account of the
Catacombs and their contents, it naturally excites suspicion.
And when we find so prominent a subject of early Christian art
slurred over in a single sentence, we cannot help thinking that
the author's prejudices have something to do with it. The
devotion of the primitive Christians to the Mother of Christ
has never been a matter of conjecture but of historical fact.
Almost every breath of ancient tradition comes down to us
laden with the sweet incense of her praise ; and in every creed
of primitive Christianity, whether composed by the apostles
or depicted on the walls of the Roman Catacombs, her place
in the Christian covenant is recognized and her prerogatives set
forth.

Professor Schaff finds evidences of only two sacraments
in the Roman Catacombs. Archaeologists who have spent
years in original investigation claim to have found evidences
of five. The evidences for four of these, at least, seem to us
quite satisfactory. The other three it would be somewhat
difficult to depict. This, however, is a point that will al-
ways be in dispute, and we shall not press it here. We will
pass on at once to the closing statements of the reverend
professor in the article before us. He admits that "some
epitaphs'* found in these ancient cemeteries " contain a re-
quest to the dead in heaven to pray for the living on earth."
It would, in truth, be very rash to deny it, seeing that one
of the chambers in the catacomb of St. Callixtus furnishes
us with a regular litany of the kind, beginning with the
words, " Mayest thou live in the Lord and pray for us,"
" Mayest thou live in peace and pray for us," and ending
with the invocation, "Ask for us in thy prayers, because we
know thou art in Christ." But when he comes to speak of
prayer for the dead he adopts his usual tactics. " At a later
period," he says, a we find requests for intercession in behalf
of the departed when once, chiefly through the influence of Pope
Gregory /., purgatory became an article of general belief in the
Western Church." (The italics are ours.) " But," he contin-
ues, " the overwhelming testimony of the oldest Christian epi-
taphs is that the pious dead are already in the enjoyment of
peace ; and this accords with our Saviour's promise to the peni-
tent thief, and with St. Paul's desire to depart and be with

i888.] A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI. 25

Christ, which is better." There are several insinuations con-
veyed m these two sentences, and they are all ialse. And
really we think the reverend professor must have had some mis-
givings about them himself when he wrote them. Is it not to
be inferred from these statements, first, that the early Christians
did not hold to the doctrine of prayer for the dead or practise
it ; second, that purgatory was not an article of general belief
amongst them ; third, that before the doctrine of purgatory
was foisted on the church by Pope Gregory I., but not after-
wards, the common belief was that the pious dead went straight
to heaven? Now, if the cumulative results of archasological
research in the Roman Catacombs warrant us in making any
positive statement at all, it is that the Communion of Saints is
the doctrine of all others most fully established by the testi-
mony of the Catacombs. That there is a community of prayers
and good offices between the living and the dead is a belief
which the very earliest, as well as the very latest, monuments
sustain. Why, the whole sacred character of these cemeteries is
based on this belief. And the desire so universally manifested
by the early Christians to be buried close to the tombs of the
martyrs is a palpable demonstration of it. So that the doctrine
of the Communion of Saints is justly considered the key to the
Catacombs. And the doctrine of the Communion of Saints not
only supposes that the blessed dead may be invoked to pray for
the living, which the reverend professor admits to have been
practised, but moreover that the living may pray for the dead
with profit to the souls of the faithful departed. Nor are peti-
tions of this kind wanting among the early epitaphs in the Ro-
man cemeteries. Two such are found in St. Callixtus' of very an-
cient date, and prove the great antiquity of our Requiescat in pace.
Other inscriptions establish the fact that the prayers of the
martyrs generally were invoked for the dead. Now, if the early
Christians practised prayer for the dead, they must certainly
have believed in a future state when prayer might avail, and
that state was neither heaven nor hell. What was it, then ? Can
the reverend professor tell ? Pope Gregory I. was, according
to him, the man who first proclaimed the remarkable discovery,
and through his influence chiefly the Christian world was led to
accept a doctrine it had not heard of before. This, is somewhat
alarming, for Pope St. Gregory the Great died in the seventh
century ; and if the doctrines of the Christian religion were not
universally known and received by that time when were they ?
We confess we are rather at a loss to account for the reverend
professor's selection of St. Gregory the Great as the Apostle of

26 A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERI. [April,

Purgatory. For Origen and St. Cyprian, who lived in the third
century, St. Ambrose and St. Jerome, who lived in the fourth,
and St. Augustine, who lived in the fifth, speak quite as defi-
nitely on the subject of prayer for the dead, the temporal pun-
ishment due on account of sin, and purification after death,
as Pope St. Gregory the Great. Indeed, St. Augustine has far
more to say on the subject than anybody else in the early
church ; and if the development of the doctrine of purgatory
can be ascribed to any one in particular, he ought to have the
credit of it. But all such statements are so unfounded that we
can hardly believe they are ever made in good faith by those
who are at all familiar with the belief and practice of the primi-
tive church. We beg leave, moreover, to state that it is still
the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the common belief of
the faithful, that all truly pious souls who depart this life in the
perfect love of God go straight to heaven, without one mo-
ment's purgatory. It is only when the love of God is imperfect
and the debt of sin is in some way unsatisfied that " the wood
and hay and stubble " have to be consumed in purgatory. Many
of our separated brethren in these latter days are taking kindly
to the doctrine of purgatory, and we are sorry to find the Pro-
testantism of Professor Schaffso unprogressive. But if he him-
self rejects the consoling belief, surely he ought not to conceal
its antiquity from the American public or distort it in their
eyes.

To every student of Christian archaeology the name of
Pope Damasus is clarum et venerabile nomen, for there is no other
name so closely entwined with its conquests. This pontiff, who
ruled the church in the last half of the fourth century from
366 to 384 may well be considered the first Christian archae-
ologist. For to his enlightened zeal are we indebted for the
most interesting discoveries that have recently been made in the
Roman Catacombs. He was only one generation removed from
the last general persecution under the Emperor Diocletian, so
that in his days the memories of the martyrs were still fragrant
and their graves still fresh, and he devoted himself to their pre-
servation. In nearly every one of the ancient cemeteries we
find the proofs of his pious care ; and were it not for his labors
by far the most intelligible portions of the Catacombs would
be a blank to us at the present day. Under his direction were
set up those splendidly-engraved marble tablets which have
given the clue to modern research and identification. The
more important inscriptions were his own composition, and
were engraved by his favorite artist, Furius Filocalus. He also

1 888.] A CLEAR CASE OF SUPPRESSIO VERL 27

put a stop to the destructive changes that the thoughtless zeal
of the Romans, to make themselves graves close to the tombs of
the martyrs, had wrought in so many of the cemeteries. And
he denied himself the great consolation of burial in the Cata-
combs, because, as he said, " he was afraid to disturb the holy
ashes of the saints." Yet this grand old figure, this presiding
genius of the Catacombs, receives not a word of recognition from
Professor Schaff, doubtless because it did not suit his purpose to
bring so early and so enlightened a pope into public view. We
call attention to this because it is rare to find any notice of the
Roman Catacombs in which the name of Pope Damasus does
not appear. The Goths and Vandals destroyed much of his
work ; they despoiled and desecrated the sacred shrines he had
erected around the martyrs' tombs, and scattered the monu-
ments of his zeal ; but they could not deface his name or destroy
the enduring results of his labor. And whenever a fragment of
a Damasine inscription is picked up in the Roman cemeteries
to-day, it invariably leads to new and important discoveries.
Nothing else so rejoices the heart and arouses the hopes of the
modern archaeologist as the sight of a piece of marble bearing
the trace of the well-known characters engraved by the cunning
hand of Pope Damasus' artist.

It should be distinctly understood that the evidence to be
drawn from the Catacombs is corroborative rather than con-
structive. You can verify from it the general accuracy of Chris-
tian tradition and the reliability of the ancient authors whose
writings have come down to our time; but you cannot build up
a system of religious history upon it, such as has been built up
on the great archaeological discoveries made in Egypt and
Assyria. The records of the Catacombs concern the dead.
They illustrate immortal life arid hope, and convey but little
direct information about every-day life and its affairs. The
monuments placed there were not set up by kings or priests
to proclaim their deeds or their doctrines, but by sincere
Christians to manifest their reverence for the blessed dead and
their faith in the Saviour of the world and his salvation. This
is the dominant idea that pervades these ancient cities of the
dead and that impresses itself on all who enter their sacred
precincts. The details of Christian life and practice are revealed
only in so far as they relate to the dead or were required by
the necessities of the living in times of persecution.

The Catacombs, as places of refuge or abode, were a tem-
porary expedient, and we have no right to look for more than
partial views of Christian life and conviction in them. Their

28 A HYMN TO THE SAVIOUR OF MEN. [April,

testimony, nevertheless, is invaluable and confirms beyond the
possibility of all honest doubt the general traditions of the
church, and sets the seal of antiquity on some of the most dis-
tinctly Catholic doctrines ; so that across the wide gap of
seventeen centuries we can extend the hand of Christian bro-
therhood to those who reared them, and claim to be one with
them in faith and hope and charity.

In the magnificent results of scientific attainment which go to
make the triumph of our age there is nothing more remarkable
than the great discoveries in the domain of -archaeology and
the confirmation they lend to the dim traditions of the prehis-
toric past. The shadowy forms of the heroic ages have put
on flesh and blood, and the very myths themselves have been
clothed with reality. The traditions of mankind have been shown
to be more trustworthy than all the theories and speculations of
pseudo-philosophy, and the lesson is taught us that the folk-lore
of the nations, however legendary it may seem, has always some
foundation in fact.

REV. EDWARD B. BRADY, C.S.P.

A HYMN TO THE SAVIOUR OF MEN.

FROM sins of deed, of word, of mind,

From every sin of each degree,
From sin, my Saviour dear and kind,

My Saviour God, deliver me!

My dying Saviour on the Cross,

Save me through life from sin's control,

That the dark shadow of thy loss
Dwell not for ever on my soul.

My living Saviour on the Throne,

When I am in my lonely grave,
O Thou who didst for sin atone,

My living Saviour, save me, save !

W. G. Dix.

i888.] THE COLONEL'S STORY. 29

THE COLONEL'S STORY.

WE had been discussing mesmerism and spirit-rapping.

" Where physical agencies are used, "said old Colonel G ,

" there is room for deceit. I know of an instance of real, con-
tinual clairvoyance, as wonderful as any of the phenomena you
have related, though it had nothing to do with the spirit-
world."

" Le.t us have it ! Tell us your story ! " we all cried, prepar-
ing for a treat ; for we knew that the colonel, while not at all
addicted to fiction, had an abundant fund of stories. Our senior
by many years, he had travelled much, seen much, and learned
much. He never invented, but narrated curious facts that he
could vouch for, adventures that had befallen him or to which
he had been an eye-witness. Withal, he was not very talkative,
and his narratives were the more prized because he was so
sparing of them.

The old man threw his cigar into the fire, took a sip of claret
punch, and told us the following remarkable story :

Juan de Villafafia was the youngest son of one of the proud-
est grandees who claimed the right to remain with covered head
in the presence of the king of Spain. Passionately fond of
study, an eager inquirer into the mysteries of the most abtruse
sciences, the young nobleman was a ripe scholar and a profound
thinker, ill-fitted for the hollow gayeties of the court. His man-
ner was absent and eccentric, his speech as candid as a child's ;
but if his mind was absorbed in the pursuit of knowledge, his
heart seemed to overflow with love for suffering mankind. The
poor, the helpless, were the objects of his constant solicitude,
and, the better to serve them, he studied medicine with an
eagerness and zeal which were crowned with rare success.
Many were the cures he performed in the wretched suburbs of
Madrid. The poor people looked upon him as a saint gifted
with miraculous healing power.

The old Marquis de Villafafia did not relish the.idea of his
son becoming a physician or a sort of Brother of Charity ; if the
army did not suit him, there was the refuge of younger sons,
the church, where the family influence would secure him a
bishop's mitre. In obedience to the paternal wishes Juan de

30 THE COLONEL'S STORY. [April,

Villafana studied for the priesthood, and he was on the eve of
being ordained when an adventure befell him which was to
change his fate and make him the hero of this true story.

King Carlos was ill ; he suffered from an unknown malady
which baffled the skill of the court physician ; he pined and
wasted slowly, retaining his mental faculties, but unable to make
the least physical exertion. He still received his grandees at
the ceremonious court levee, and one morning he graciously
invited the Marquis de Villafana, whom he held in great
esteem, to bring his son Juan the next day to receive the assur-
ance of the royal favor and protection.

It was no easy matter to prevail on the young man to make
his appearance at court; but he could not decline the royal in-
vitation, and on the following day he accompanied his father to
the palace and was admitted to the regal chamber.

Villafana, approaching the sumptuous couch upon which his
sovereign reclined, bowed low, and, taking the hand the king
graciously held out to him, raised it to his lips. In doing so
his gaze rested dreamily on the emaciated and pallid sufferer;
suddenly the young man recoiled, exclaiming : " Good heavens !
your majesty has taken poison ! "

Horror-struck at this startling announcement, the king fell
back in a swoon. A short, awful pause ensued, followed by a
confused uproar. The court physician and certain favorite
courtiers surrounded the young man and dragged him out of
the king's chamber, with loud denunciations of "Madman!"
"Fool!" "Traitor!" Juan de Villafana followed them unre-
sistingly, his pale face wearing an expression of solemn awe and
tender pity, as he repeated in a prophetic tone : " His majesty
has been poisoned ! I see the working of the fatal drug in his
veins ; / know the hand that poured it ! "

The old marquis, on recovering from his stupefaction, had
hastened to follow his son. With the help of some friends he
succeeded in getting him safely out of the palace. But the
young seer had said too much ; he must not live to name the
guilty wretch whom he knew. That same evening, as Juan de
Villafana was going to see a sick man in the suburb, he was
attacked by two hired assassins. He fought for his life and
killed one of his assailants ; the other bravo fled.

The young student was horrified. He had shed the blood
of a human being! He felt himself unworthy of the priest-
hood ; his blood-stained hands should not touch the sacred
Host. Then he detested the corrupt atmosphere of the court ;

I888.J THE COLONEL'S STORY. 31

his place should not be there. Bidding farewell to his aged
father, he set off, a voluntary exile from his native land.

The king did not die of the poison. Juan had left in the
hands of the marquis a prescription for the royal sufferer. He
had made to him, besides, revelations so precise that the mar-
quis could not hesitate to communicate them to the king. The
court physician and a certain grandee upon whom the queen
looked with too much favor were banished.

The life of the wanderer became an eventful one. The ves-
sel on which he had taken passage for America was attacked by
pirates and fell into their hands after a bloody conflict. Villa-
fana, unmindful of danger, was ministering to the wounded in
the ship's cabin, which he had transformed into an ambulance.
When the pirates, maddened by the resistance of the crew and
their own losses, boarded the vessel, they commenced an indis-
criminate slaughter. The pirate chief, rushing into the cabin,
found the unconcerned physician busy with his work of mercy.
The serenity of the young man struck the hardened bandit with
admiration.

" Ah ! you are a surgeon ! " said he. " Many of my men are
wounded, and I will spare your life for their sake. Leave these
dogs to be thrown to the fishes, and you come on board of my
brig."

" Not one of your men will I touch unless these unfortunates
are permitted to live," was the quiet and decided answer.

" What ! " exclaimed the pirate, and he uttered a blasphe-
mous oath, " you resist my orders! Obey, or you shall die a
horrible death."

"- You can kill me, senor, but that will not cure your com-
rades ; their lives are linked to the lives of these poor men."

" Demonio / . . . Well, let it be as you say. Cure them all ; I
will hang you afterwards for yur impudence."

" As you will." And Villafafia resumed his work at the bed-
side of the poor wretches, who had listened with agonizing
anxiety to this dialogue.

The pirate captain did not carry out his threat. He, as well
as his crew, soon learned to look upon Villafafia with supersti-
tious awe. They treated him kindly, but they kept him a
prisoner. Where could they have found another physician like
this strange, gentle, and fearless man ? During two long years
Villafafia was compelled to live in the company of these out-
laws ; but all this time his influence over them was growing
stronger every day and gradually detaching them from their

32 THE COLONEL'S STORY. [April,

life of crime. They had ceased murdering their captives; they
gave up pillaging at last, and the captain, assembling his crew
one day, announced to them that their association was at an
end ; he had resolved upon trying to lead henceforth the life of
an honest man, and he urged them to do likewise. They landed
on the coast of Mexico and parted company.

Villafafia was free. He proceeded to the city of Mexico,
where he commenced practising medicine. He soon became
famous for his wonderful cures and the eccentricity of his man-
ner, which had become abrupt and wild. He would stop a man
on the street and tell him: "You are sick, you have such a
disease; swallow this and you will be cured/' If the patient,
frightened by the earnestness of his manner, took the medicine,
he was saved ; if, repulsing him as a quack or a madman, he
refused, he died.

Adventures of this sort led people to think the " mad doctor,"
as he was called by many, an adept in witchcraft; others believ-
ed that immaculate sanctity only could perform such wonders.
He was sent for by wealthy patients, who rewarded him lib-
erally ; but he sought the poor and unfortunate, and the gold
taken from the palace was not long in finding its way to the
hovel. Abstemious in his habits, always poorly clad, living in a
garret, the benevolent doctor seemed to have constituted him-
self the disbursing agent of the rich for the benefit of the
poor.

The good man, however, came very near falling a victim to
the superstitions of the times. Returning home one afternoon,
after a toilsome day's work in the wretched jacales of the
suburbs, he met a funeral procession on its way to the ceme-
tery. In the old Spanish colonies it is customary to carry the
coffin uncovered ; the lid is put on only when the corpse is ready
to be lowered to its last resting-place. The body is usually
decked in all the finery of this world ; that of a child is crowned
with flowers. I have seen one to which little gauze wings had
been adapted ; the cheeks were rouged and the glassy eyes held
open by artificial means. A numerous escort of children,
dressed in white, walked on each side, strewing the road with
cut flowers which they carried in small baskets. The people
say that when an innocent child dies it is an angel returning to
heaven, and there is, therefore, more cause for joy than grief.

In this instance the corpse was that of a lovely young girl,
upon whose radiant countenance the hand of death had but
lightly pressed its mysterious seal. Villafafia had stopped, and

i888.] THE COLONEL'S STORY. 33

he awaited, hat in hand, the passage of the procession. As the
coffin came abreast of him he gazed sadly at the youthful form
so soon doomed to be turned to dust. All at once he started
wildly, a cry of horror burst from his lips, and, springing into
the middle of the street, he confronted the astonished bearers.

" Stop ! " he cried " on your lives, stop ! That child is not
dead ! Do you wish to bury her alive ? "

The dishevelled hair and disordered dress of the doctor, his
thin features bronzed by long exposure to the tropical sun, his
dark eyes shining with a wild and mysterious light everything
about him gave him the appearance of a madman. The people
attempted to drive him back, but he resisted, repeating aloud:
" She is alive, I tell you ! Would you commit a crime ? "

Much confusion ensued, and Villafafia would have suffered
violence at the hands of the crowd had not the dead girl's
father interposed. Overwhelmed with grief, he was following
the dead body of his beloved child, when his attention was
roused by the tumult, and he heard the last words of the doc-
tor. Rushing forward and forcing his way through the ex-
cited crowd, he caught Villafafia by the arm.

" Man ! " cried the bereaved parent " man, what is that you
have said? My Pepita alive ? Answer! Do not trifle with a
father's heart ; do not awake insane hopes only to make my
despair more bitter. Speak! On your life, is she alive?"

" Sefior," replied Villafafia who had recovered his compo-
sure, " upon my last hopes of salvation I swear to you that your
daughter is at this moment alive. Take her back to your house,
and, God permitting, I will restore her to your love."

" Come, then," said the old man, " bring her back to life and
all my wealth shall be yours. But," he added, or rather hissed,
" deceive me, and I will tear out your heart ! "

Villafafia shrugged his shoulders, and, taking the poor
father's arm, walked back to the house, where a weeping mother
mourned the loss of her last-born. The young girl was laid
upon a bed and all the paraphernalia of death was removed by
order of the doctor, who, having despatched a messenger to the
nearest pharmacy for certain drugs, carefully prepared a mix-
ture. He forced a spoon between the clenched teeth of the girl,
and poured in, drop by drop, a spoonful of the liquid. He then
took his seat by the bedside, and, having consulted his watch,
addressed at last the unhappy father, who, silent and trembling
with anxiety, had followed eagerly his every movement.

" Senor," said he, " in fifteen minutes I shall give her another

VOL. XL VII. 3

34 THE COLONEL'S STORY. [April,

dose; in another fifteen minutes, with the grace of God, she will
revive."

And taking a breviary which he always carried with him, he
commenced reading.

A tomb-like silence reigned in the room. The eyes of those
members of the family who had been permitted to remain were
fixed on the beauteous young face, which, cold and rigid as mar-
ble, looked still paler under the raven curls that crowned it.
The monotonous ticking of a clock in the adjoining room was
the only sound heard, keeping time with the throbs of the old
Mexican's heart. The grief-stricken man was leaning against
the wall at the foot of the bed. He, too, would have seemed
dead but for the tremulous working of his lips. He was praying.
But what is it that makes his eyes dilate and flash with
mingled fear and hope? Is it a mere fancy, an optical delusion,
or has a fugitive flush colored the marble-like cheeks of his
child ? The doctor lays aside his book. Another spoonful of
the life-giving cordial is forced between the pale lips. Not a
word is spoken. How slow the ticking of that clock! Surely
another quarter is passed. Listen ! that deep-drawn sigh came
from the bed ! Villafana's forbidding gesture checks the father,
ready to rush forward. The old man falls on his knees ; big
tears course down his furrowed cheeks; his chest heaves con-
vulsively, but not a sound is heard. Again ! again ! The regu-
lar, soft breathing is now audible to all. The beautiful head
moves slightly, and the cheek, now tinged with life's blood,
rests on the pillow.

" Mama ! Querida Mama ! "

The first word of the child awaking from her dream of
death has been the name of the dear mother, who, still plunged
alone in her darkened chamber, was not aware that her heart's
treasure was restored to her.

The old father embraced Villafana's knees and offered him a
fortune ; every one blessed the strange doctor as the saver of
Pepita.

<l Give what you please to the poor," he said meekly. " I
have been but the humble instrument of a merciful God ; they
are his children."

The story of this miraculous cure soon spread, and, as is
usually the case, was greatly magnified. It was reported that
the strange doctor had the power to raise the dead. The
authorities sent for Villafafia and subjected him to a rigid ex-
amination.

i888.] THE COLONEL'S STORY. 35

" You have been denounced as an impostor and a magi-
cian," he was told ; " on the other hand, the poor people look
upon you as a holy prophet. The strange power you claim
you have never used for evil, so we cannot condemn you ; but
you are giving us trouble. The age of miracles has gone by, and
so has that of witchcraft, yet the superstitious will always make
you better or worse than you are. Under the circumstances
I think the most prudent thing you pan do is to leave the
country."

The hint was as good as an order. Villafafia left Mexico
and sailed for the West Indies. He landed at Kingston,
Jamaica.

There his acquaintance with my grandfather began. My
aunt she was then a child often years was lying at the point
of death. The best medical talent in Kingston had been called
in consultation and the verdict of the assembled faculty left no
hope. My grandmother was almost distracted. An old color-
ed servant, seeing her despair, told her of a Spanish doctor who
lived in the sailors' quarter and was said to have made some
wonderful cures among the poor people. Old Sophy knew of
one case, an aged negress, paralyzed of all her limbs for over
five years, whom the strange doctor had made well and hearty
after a few weeks' treatment. Why not send for him ? He might
cure Miss Eliza. My grandmother caught at the suggestion.
" Pshaw ! it must be some quack," remarked her husband when
she broached the matter to him ; " but since you wish it, my
dear, I will see him."

Sophy was summoned and made to tell all she knew of the
whereabouts of the Spanish doctor such was the only name by
which she could designate him. My grandfather drove to the
sailors' quarter and with no little trouble succeeded in discover-
ing Villafafia. The first impression was far from favorable ; the
Spanish doctor had all the appearance of an escaped patient of
a lunatic asylum. On the drive home, however, my grandfather
was greatly surprised at the depth of learning and soundness of
judgment revealed by his companion. He did not know what
to make of him.

On entering the sick-chamber, where my grandmother sat,
anxiously expecting their coming, the doctor bowed and cast a
glance towards the bed, but did not go near it. Catching the
imploring look of my grandmother, he said to her in a tone of
sympathy :

"Poor mother! what anguish you have suffered. But

36 THE COLONEL'S STORY. [April,

grieve no longer; you shall soon see your child in good health.
Your physician has mistaken the disease. It can be cured."

My grandmother burst into tears and exchanged a look of
despair with her husband. This man had not come near
enough to see the child's face; he had not touched her: surely
he spoke thus only to deceive her.

" You mistake, dear madam," remarked the doctor, who
seemed to read her thoughts ; " there is not a shadow of a doubt
in my mind. I know your daughter's disease, and I know the
remedy for it."

To dwell on the details of the. treatment would be uninte-
resting. In a few days my aunt was well. Mere gold could not
have cancelled the debt of gratitude contracted by the happy
parents. A strong feeling of friendship had sprung up between
my grandfather and the doctor during those few days. These
two men understood each other; there was congeniality of
heart and soul between them, and they became friends for life.
My grandfather urged the doctor to take up his abode with him
as a member of the family. The old man demurred : his poor
patients needed him ; it was his wont to give consultations at
his rooms; sometimes he took in some poor wretch and kept
him there until he could say to him, "Go thy ways; thou art
cured." Grandfather overruled all these objections. There
was a wing to the house, with a private entrance ; there the
doctor could establish an hospital, if he saw fit ; but he must be
one of the family, have his seat at the family board and his place
in the family circle. He yielded.

Dr. Villafana was a singular personage. He was of middle
height, with a spare frame, and always dressed in black gar-
ments of a clerical cut. His gray hair, as fine as silk, floated
back from a lofty and intellectual forehead. He wore his white
beard very full, which gave him a patriarchal air; but his
bronzed features and bushy black eye-brows, his large, de^p-set,
dark eyes, now gazing dreamily, now beaming with tenderness,
and anon shining with a strange light, made an undefinable im-
pression on one who saw him for the first time. He was so
careless in his dress as to appear almost slovenly ; but woman's
influence soon corrected this. Surrounded with loving care,
the old wanderer felt as though he were in the midst of his own
family ; his heart, so full of the love of mankind, yearned, per-
haps unconsciously, for those dear ties of home and kindred he
had renounced so many years ago.

He became the idol of the household, especially of the chil-

i888.] THE COLONELS STORY. 37

dren, for whom he always had some toy or cake, an inexhaustible
fund of stories, and the most amusing inventions. He was
generally regular and abstemious in his habits. However sump-
tuous the feast spread before him, his breakfast consisted of a
single cup of chocolate and a glass of water ; his dinner of a
plate of soup and one glass of wine. This taken, he would draw
back his chair, light a cigarette a great privilege in those days,
when smoking in a lady's presence was not tolerated and con-
verse during the remainder of the meal.

Villafafia had retained from his seafaring experience a sin-
gular affection for the poor s,ailors, and when a ship entered the
port he never failed to visit their boarding-houses, to inquire if
any were sick or in want. On such occasions he was sometimes
induced to drink a glass of grog with the jolly tars. The effect
of this was to make him more talkative, less unwilling to speak
of himself and of his past life; even then he never volunteered
confidences, but was more easily drawn out.

Grandfather had questioned him freely regarding the strange
power he had of recognizing a disease at the first glance, and,
simultaneously, the remedy that would infallibly cure it.

" I cannot explain this, my dear friend," the doctor would
answer ; " it is a gift of God. As I look at a patient I see him
internally, better even than if his body were cut open before me
on the dissecting-table. I see the part diseased, and, intuitively,
the medicine that will cure it. If the disease be incurable, which
is seldom the case, I see this also, and I could tell how many
days, hours, and minutes the patient will live. Sometimes the
medicines I prescribe are in accord with my knowledge of the
medical science ; but at other times they are entirely at
variance, and yet I know they are the right ones for all my
books may say to the contrary. I cannot say exactly when
this power manifested itself. It came to me gradually, I be-
lieve. The discovery of the poisoning of the king was the first
spontaneous manifestation flf which I was aware. It was irre-
sistible. The whole scene rose before my eyes. I saw the
crime committed, and I could not have helped speaking out if
my head had been on the block."

If the ignorant people feared Villafafia as a sorcerer or
blessed him as a saint, polite society felt a positive dread of his
mysterious power. If he read so surely the hidden ills of the
flesh, might- he not also read the secrets of the soul ? Few were
willing to stand the test; a spotless soul is even more rare than
a perfectly sound body. The ladies, especially, feared the doc-

38 THE COLONEL'S STORY. [April,

tor's penetrating gaze ; not for their mental blemishes, poor
lambs, but think of a man reading them through ! a man for
whom, as he told one of them once, u the milliner's art and the
hair-dresser's cunning devices had no secrets."

I could tell you many instances of this extraordinary power
of mind and body reading, were I not afraid to tire you. I will
close with one extraordinary manifestation which, overstepping
the bounds of actual reality, went so far as to remove the veil
of futurity.

One evening, the family being assembled as usual in the
drawing-room, Villafafia sat moodily in a dark corner, taking
no part in the conversation, and his gaze fastened on my grand-
father with a strange expression of sadness. My grandfather,
noticing at last his moodiness, asked him :

" What is the matter, doctor? You look very gloomy this
evening. Is anything wrong with you ? "

" With me, no," replied the old man, with a deep sigh.
" Would to heaven that I could divert the blow from your head
and bring it on mine ! "

" You speak in riddles, my friend ; what danger threatens
me?"

" Alas ! you cannot see it. You are rich, rich in worldly
treasures, rich in heavenly blessings ; you are happy and make
others happy. For what inscrutable design will God strike one
of his most faithful servants? I know not, but I see the storm
coming. You are like a noble and mighty oak spreading its
branches afar; many find shelter under its protecting shade;
even I, the poor wandering dog, have found my place there ;
but the storm is coming, I tell you. The oak shall be stricken
down and the branches scattered to the winds. As for me,
poor outcast, after seeing the wreck of all I love, I shall die
alone as I have lived."

Having spoken these ominous words, the old man rose, and,
bowing silently to the awe-struck family, retired to his room.

My grandmother cast a look of alarm on her husband, who,
shaking off the involuntary gloom caused by this mysterious
prophecy, laughed pleasantly, saying : " The old gentleman is
in one of his moods to-night, and has gone too far; no man can
read the future."

A few weeks after this incident the leading commercial firm
of Kingston failed under most disastrous circumstances, the
resident partner having died suddenly and the cashier abscond-
ed, leaving everything in dire confusion. My grandfather had

1 888.] THE COLONEL'S STORY. 39

endorsed the firm's paper to the amount of nearly a million of
dollars. He found himself involved in interminable law-suits.
Finally the whole matter was thrown into chancery and his
estates were sequestered. It was comparative ruin. Soon after
this my grandfather was taken sick, and in a few days he was
lying- at the point of death. Villafafia remained night and day
by his friend's bedside ; anxious and gloomy, his careworn face
no longer wore that serene expression, the result of conscious
power. He doubted. He assembled the family and told them,
the big tears coursing down his face the while.

" God has withdrawn from me ! I, who have picked up
dying paupers, the victims of vice and crime, and restored them
to life I can do nothing for my best friend, for the man I love
more than brother or father. I see the disease, alas! but I no
longer see the remedy. I have tried all that human science can
do, but science is unavailing. The father's disease is a strange,
unknown disease of which I can find no precedent in our medi-
cal annals. I am going to call in consultation the leading mem-
bers of the faculty. God grant that they may find my diagno-
sis wrong ! "

The three most famous physicians in the town met near the
sick man's bed ; they examined him, they scrutinized the treat-
ment that had been followed their unanimous verdict was,
" All has been done that could be done. There is no hope."

My grandfather died. A few days later my grandmother
followed her husband to the grave. The household was broken
up, the family dispersed; By a strange fatality all went differ-
ent ways, some to the United States, some to Cuba, others to
Europe. My uncle remained in Kingston to look after the
chancery suit.

During the confusion caused by these deaths Villafana dis-
appeared and nothing could be learned of his whereabouts.

About six months after this a former servant of the family,
the same old nurse Sophy I mentioned before, met my uncle and
told him she had discovered the Spanish doctor, in an almost
dying condition, in a miserable hut on the edge of the town.
It was late in the evening, but uncle started at once for the place
indicated, taking Sophy along with him. He found the old
man lying on a wretched bed, feeble, fearfully emaciated, dying.
"O doctor!" cried my uncle, grasping his old friend's
hand, " how could you be so cruel? You, my father's dearest
friend, you in this condition ! Why did you hide from us ? Do
you doubt our love and respect ? "

40 THE COLONEL'S STORY. [April,

" No, no, my son ; but I could not stay there. He was gone,
gone for ever ! I could not save him. God had punished me
for not using properly, perhaps, his great gift. Since that day I
have been praying for death to relieve me of a burdensome life.
The merciful Judge has heard my prayer ; to-day I received
the last sacrament. I am ready to die."

" But you cannot stay here. You must come home with me.
I am going to have your room made ready for you, and early in
the morning I shall be here to fetch you. In the meantime you
must see Dr. B and have a nurse to stay with you."

" It is useless," said the old man, smiling feebly ; " do you
remember the prophecy? The old dog shall die alone. . . . But
I grieve you ; pardon me, my son. I have already seen a brother
physician ; for the rest, do as you wish, but remember that the
decrees of Heaven cannot be set aside by the will of man."

Notwithstanding this protest, Dr. B was called in, who

prescribed for the patient, but gave my uncle little hope. Old
Sophy the best of nurses was installed for the night in the
sick-room, and my uncle left at a late hour, to make prepara-
tion for receiving his father's old friend next morning.

Just before dawn the doctor, who seemed quite collected
and free from pain, bade Sophy go to the kitchen and prepare
him some hot drink. When the woman returned Juan de Villa-
fafia was lying dead, his hands crossed over his breast, an in-
effable smile upon his wan features.

" And you say this story is true, colonel ?"

" Upon my honor as a soldier, every word of it."

P. F. DE GOURNAY.

i888.] ST. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS. 41

TWO SINGERS.

" WOULD I could sing a song," a poet said,
" And let the tears that ail earth's suffering ones have shed

Run trembling down my voice,
With children's glee when happy hours are sped,
And strong men's sighs at some regretted choice,
And stifled groans of all the world's oppressed,
And madmen's laughter mingled with the rest
Then would immortal fame to me belong:
Ail men could hear their own lives' echoes in my song ! "

" Ah ! why should men weep twice," another said,
" First o'er a wrong, then at the wrong remembered ?

Oh ! let me sing instead

A glorious strain that will make men forget
Life's wounds and scourges and its black regret,
And long for Heaven with such intensity
That Heaven in their own hearts will come to be:
Time's mighty hammers might assail in vain
They could not beat to lasting silence that refrain ! "

MARGARET H. LAWLESS.

ST. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS.

THE Irish officers the Blakes and O'Donnells serving in
the Spanish army, were sadly scandalized when, in 1750, Father
Feyjoo, the learned Benedictine, roundly asserted in his Teatro
Critico that serpents never existed in Hibernia, and, as a conse-
quence, St. Patrick never banished them ! Had this audacious
statement been put forth by a layman the Irish officers would
have known how to answer him ; they were as fearless as their
own swords and perfect masters of that weapon, and would have
found it the simplest thing in the world to demonstrate the thau-
maturgic powers of St. Patrick,

" And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks."

42 ST. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS. [April,

But unfortunately the author of this intolerable assertion, which
to their minds stripped their national apostle of half his renown,
was a gownsman

*' That never set a squadron in the field,
Nor the division of a battle knew
More than a spinster."

Father Feyjoo was "theAddison of Spain" a perfect master
of the pen but miserably ignorant of carte and tierce- At the
same time it must be acknowledged that their erudition was not
equivalent to their knowledge of the sword exercise, and, as a
consequence, they were obliged to submit to the astonishing dic-
tum of Father Feyjoo in sullen silence. To demonstrate his
statement Father Feyjoo quoted a Latin author named Solinus,
who lived two hundred years before St. Patrick, and who
roundly asserts in his Polykistoria that Hibernia was at that
time exempt from venomous reptiles.

One thing Father Feyjoo compelled the gallant exiles to con-
fess the Irish language is wholly destitute of a true name for
the serpent ! Now, if the reptile were indigenous to the country,
he argued, the natives would have devised at a very early
period a true name for it. For a name, as Father Feyjoo main-
tained, on the authority of Aristotle, is " a sound or its sign, sig-
nificant of itself, but no part of which is significant." For in-
stance, the word " Sun " is a true name, but the term " Orb of
day " is a compound epithet or paraphrase. Each of its mem-
bers, taken separately, has a complete meaning. It is therefore
not a name. Now, the Irish epithet for the serpent resembles
this. It is Athar nimhe, " the father of poison" a most appro-
priate epithet certainly, but unquestionably not a true name.
We read in Father King's Irish version of the Bible (commonly
attributed to Bishop Bedell) a description of the serpent in the
following words: Anois do bhi an nathair nimhe ni budh ceal-
guidhe, etc. "Now the serpent was the craftiest creature," etc.
(Genesis, chapter iii.) From Genesis, as well as from a hundred
other parts of the Bible, it is perfectly evident that the Irish lexi-
con furnished no true name for the snake. The creature was at
all times a stranger to the Gaelic-speaking people of Ireland.
As evidence of all this, the repeated and persevering efforts that
have been made from time to time to plant Ireland with snakes
to make them at home in the country have invariably proved
egregious failures. These efforts began so early as the time of
the Venerable Bede, and have continued down to our own day.

i888.] ST. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS. 43

11 In the ancient writings of the saints of Ireland," says Bede,
" we read that attempts were often made by way of experiment
to introduce, in brazen vessels, serpents into that country. But
when they had accomplished half the voyage they were found
lying dead in their brazen vessels." The importers were appa-
rently apprehensive that they would eat their way out if placed
in wooden vessels, so they enclosed them in brass. But it was
all in vain. " Nay, the very dust gathered in Ireland," says
Cambrensis,* who wrote in the twelfth century, "if carried to
foreign lands and shaken on snakes, will cause them to die.
With my own eyes 1 have seen," he adds, " a strap of Irish
leather placed in a circle round a toad. I have seen the crea-
ture crawl to one side in an effort to pass out, but the moment
it touched the leather it fell back as if it received a blow. Then,
crawling to the opposite side, it made a similar attempt, but
fell back in the same way. Finally it attempted to dig a hole in
the centre and bury itself in the ground, so as to escape contact
with the leather. We have even heard it stated by English
merchants," continues Cambrensis, " that, having anchored in
an Irish harbor, they sometimes found a toad concealed in the
bottom of the ship. Taking the creature by the paw, they as-
cended to the deck and flung it on the shore, where, to the
astonishment of the spectators, it turned up its belly, grovelled
on its back, burst, and died."

He then goes on to tell a story of a boy lying in a field in
England. A snake crawled stealthily and noiselessly to the
sleeper's side, entered his open mouth, and glided into his stom-
ach. Coiling itself up in his bowels, it gnawed his entrails and
inflicted on him the most excruciating pain. He roared aloud
with agony. But no medical skill, no purgative or emetic dose,
afforded him the least relief. He was repeatedly advised to go
to Ireland as his only resource. He finally complied with this
advice, and was no sooner landed than a draught of water from
a blessed well expelled the reptile and restored him to health.
"No reptile," says Bede, u is found in the fields of Hibernia.
No serpent can exist there. Nay, when attempts have been
made to import snakes from England they have perished on the
voyage. The winds from the west, the pure air of Ireland,
caused their immediate death, and they expired as soon as it
reached them. Almost everything belonging to that country
seems to be an antidote to poison."

In addition to these ancient authors, who cannot be accused
of undue partiality for Ireland, we have the testimony of Dona-

* Topographia Distinctio, i. cap. 29.

44 ST. PA TRICK AND THE SERPENTS. [April,

tus, Bishop of Fiesole, who, in a beautiful Latin poem written in
the ninth century, expressly says that in his time neither ser-
pents nor frogs were known to exist in Erin. In the English
version of the Latin poem, which will be found in O'Halloran's
History of Ireland, not only the serpent but the frog is de-
scribed as a stranger to Ireland. O'Reilly in his Irish Dic-
tionary confirms this statement. He says that the frog is " an
animal not found in Ireland before the reign of William III. of
England, whose Dutch troops first introduced it amongst us."
This is corroborated by the evidence of modern scientists. " It
would appear," says Thomas Bell in his work on British Rep-
tiles, " not only that the snake is not indigenous to Ireland, but
that several attempts to introduce it have totally failed. In this
order (ophidia) there is not now, nor, I believe, ever was there,
any species indigenous to Ireland."

The last of the attempts alluded to by the learned Thomas
Bell took place, we believe, in 1835. In that year a Scottish
publication entitled the New Philosophic Journal proclaimed, with
a great flourish of trumpets, that Ireland had been success-
fully colonized with snakes, owing to the persevering industry
of certain enlightened Britons who had assiduously labored to
obtain on Irish soil a permanent habitat for those interesting
natives of England. This thriving colony of poisonous rep-
tiles had been planted in the immediate vicinity of St. Patrick's
grave, " where," continued the New Philosophic Journal, " they
.are multiplying rapidly." This announcement was made with
evident satisfaction, being much of a piece with other advan-
tages which Ireland has derived from her connection with the
" sister country." Had the colony of snakes been a colony of
Scotsmen the learned editor of the New Philosophic Journal
could hardly have been better pleased. One of the readers of
that journal was struck with this remarkable exuberance of
feeling. He wrote at once to an acquaintance in Downpatrick,
asking him if the newly-planted colony were really in as pros-
perous a condition as the journalist asserted. Not one of his
correspondents (and he wrote to several) had ever heard of
the colony. Finally he addressed James Clelland, Esq., of Rath
Gael House, County Down. From this gentleman he received
a most satisfactory reply, as follows : " The report of my having
introduced snakes into this country is correct. Being curious
to ascertain whether the climate of Ireland is destructive to
that class of reptiles, about six years ago I purchased half a
dozen in Covent Garden, London. They had been taken some

1 8 88.] Sr. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS. 45

time and were quite tame and familiar. I turned them loose in
my garden. They immediately rambled away. One of them
was killed at Milecross, three miles distant, in about a week
after its liberation, and three others were shortly after killed
within that distance of the place where they were turned loose ;
it is highly probable that the remaining two met with the same
fate, falling victims to a reward which, it appears, was offered
for their destruction." Commenting on this letter, in his work
on British Reptiles, Thomas Bell says : " Such is the most accu-
rate and authentic account which I have yet obtained respect-
ing this curious fact in the geographical distribution of those
animals ; and it certainly does not appear that the failure of
these attempts to introduce snakes into Ireland is to be attri-
buted to anything connected with climate or other local cir-
cumstance, but rather to the prejudices of the inhabitants,
which lead to their destruction. Nor is there reason to believe
that their absence from Ireland is other than purely accidental"
(p- 55)- This is a very instructive paragraph and merits con-
sideration. A hint is apparently thrown out with the view of
consoling the friends of Ireland under their disappointment.
They should not lose heart, Mr. Bell seems to think, owing to
their past experience. Though they have hitherto failed, there
is no reason why they should not ultimately succeed ! " Ire-
land," said Grattan, "is the hundred-handed giant, presenting in
every hand a gift to England " ! What is more natural than
that England in return should enrich the native country of
Grattan with a quid pro quo in a form so perfectly consonant to
the disposition of the giver as a colony of serpents?

A negative argument on this subject may be derived from
the local nomenclature of Ireland. The Irish-speaking people
have bestowed upon some part or other of their native island
the name of every animal which the country has produced.
There is the " Rock of the Seals " (Ron charraig), the " Mountain
of the Stags" (Sliabh-boc), the " Hill of the Midges " (Croag-na-
miol), the " Vale of the Badgers," and so on. But no locality is
designated as the " Haunt of the Snakes." From which the
inference is not unnatural that these reptiles never inhabited
the country.

Light is thrown on the question by what we, know of the
Druids. It is perfectly evident, from the literary remains of
Caesar, Pliny, and Cicero, that those Celtic sages, the Druids,
made a profound impression on the intellectual classes of ancient
Greece and Rome. Their name is derived by Pliny from the

46 ST. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS. [April,

Greek word dpv$* which signifies an oak, because that gigantic
tree, from its lofty elevation, its venerable appearance, its silent
majesty, sublime expansion, and prodigious age, was regarded
with silent awe by the religious Druids as a natural image of the
Supreme Being. " Ayak^a dk AioS KehriKOv, vipf^Xr/ dpvZ " A
lofty oak the statue of the Celtic Jupiter," says a Greek author.
Under its wide and umbrageous boughs those primeval seers
offered sacrifice to the invisible ruler of the world. Now, it is
a very instructive fact that, like so many hierophants of pa-
ganism, the Irish Druids were serpent-worshippers. The most
remarkable of their druidical charms was the anguineum, or
snake's egg. They wore this charm, sheathed in gold like a
talisman, on their breast. It is, says Pliny, about the size of a
small apple, and has a cartilaginous rind studded with cavities
like those on the arms of a polypus. A genuine specimen of
this egg, when thrown into the water, would, it was believed,
float against the current. This extraordinary form of idolatry
was diffused over the whole face of the earth. It is perhaps the
most surprising feature in the character of man that he should
be found in all times and all places, before the advent of Christ,
bending down in adoration of the serpent ! How an object of
abhorrence could be exalted into an object of religious venera-
tion " must be referred to the subtility of the arch-enemy him-
self." It must be confessed, however, that there is in the natu-
ral appearance of the serpent something weird and startling
that cannot fail to fill the unsophisticated mind with astonish-
ment. As Sanchoniathan, quoted by Eusebius, says : " The ser-
pent alone of all animals, without legs or arms or any of the
usual appliances for locomotion, still moves with singular ce-
lerity," and, he might have added, grace ; for no one who has
watched the serpent slowly gliding over the ground, with his
head erect and his body following, apparently without exer-
tion, can fail to be struck with the peculiar beauty of his mo-
tion. Milton describes the serpent which tempted Eve as not
only beautiful but brilliant :

" His head

Crested aloft and carbuncle his eyes ;
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires that on the grass
Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape," etc.

Eusebius says that the Persians worshipped the first principle
under the form of a serpent. They dedicated temples to these

* It is hard to imagine how the Druids should come to speak Greek.

1 388.] ST. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS. 47

animals, in which they performed sacrifices and celebrated fes-
tivals and orgies, " esteeming them the greatest of gods and gov-
ernors of the universe." Live serpents were kept at Babylon
as objects of adoration, or at least of veneration, as seems evi-
dent from the history of Bel and the Dragon, in which we read :
" In that same place there was a great dragon which they of
Babylon worshipped ; and the king said unto Daniel, ' Wilt
thou say this god is of brass ? Lo ! he eateth and drinketh !
Thou canst not say he is no living God ! ' " Serpent-worship was
intimately connected with Sabaism, for the most prevailing em-
blem of the solar god was the serpent, and wherever the Sabae-
an idolatry was the religion the serpent was the sacred symbol.
Lucan addresses them in his Pharsalia as innoxious divinities:

Vos quoque, qui cunctis innoxia numina terra
Serpitis aurato nitidi fulgore Dracones (lib. ix. 727).

"Ye dragons, too, resplendent with radiant gold,
Harmless to all the inhabitants of earth," etc.

In Greece the great centre of serpent-worship was Epidau-
rus, where stood the famous temple of Esculapius, in which ser-
pents were kept, some thirty feet long. Live serpents were al-
ways kept in the sanctuaries of Esculapius, because at one time,
as was alleged, the god assumed the appearance of that reptile.
" Wherever the devil reigned," says the Rev. John B. Deane,*
" the serpent was held in some peculiar veneration. In Egypt
they worshipped the serpent as the emblem of good. In Hin-
dostan, Scandinavia, and Mexico the)'- considered it, on the con-
trary, the characteristic of the evil principle."

Strange as it may appear, serpent-worship was not confined
to pagans. A sect of early heretics was famous, or rather in-
famous, for this besotted form of superstition. They are known
in church history as Ophidas: Nam serpentem magnificant in tan-
turn ut ilium etiam ipsi Christ i prceferant i.e., They magnify the
serpent to such a degree that they even prefer him to Christ
himself, says a contemporary (Tertullian). To the serpent we
are indebted, according to' these fanatics, for our knowledge of
the origin of good and evil. Moses, by divine command, con-
structed a serpent of brass, and whoever directed his eyes to
this image recovered his health. In the Gospel, Christ adverts,
they tell us, to the power of the serpent, and even imitates him
when he says: " As Moses exalted the serpent in the desert, so
it behooves the Son of Man to be exalted " (Dcscriptio Haret.,

* The Worship of the Serpent, by the Rev. John B. Deane.

48 ST. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS. [April,

xlvii.) We are indebted to Tertullian for our knowledge of
these heretics, whom in his eloquent pages he has " damned to
everlasting fame." Ranke informs us (p. 160, vii.) that the
Jesuits in 1603 had to combat in Lithuania the remains of the
serpent-worship which still lingered in that country (History
of the Popes).

Now, if it be true, as, from the unanimous testimony of Greek
and Latin authors, it appears to be, that the Druids, in common
with the Persian Magi and the Egyptian priests and pagans
generally, worshipped the serpent, and if it be likewise true that
St. Patrick abolished Druidism and suppressed the worship, he
at the same time banished the reptile objects of this mistaken
adoration. The extinction of the one was the banishment of
the other.

Granted that the popular tradition on this subject in Ireland
is simply a " myth." Now, a myth, as every one knows, is a
spontaneous growth of the popular mind which never has decep-
tion for its object. It asserts, but it also believes. It never
aims at deceiving. It is simply a mode of accounting for phe-
nomena which springs spontaneously from the mind of man, en-
tirely independent of volition. It is never a voluntary inven-
tion. The narrators are wholly unconscious of .the fallacy of
what they narrate, and there is always a germ of truth at the
bottom, which, though small as a mustard-seed, gives birth to a
growth as gigantic and umbrageous as the monarch of the
forests. In the veneration of the serpent which the Irish Druids
entertained we have the minute atom of truth infinitesimally
small which has risen, expanded, and grown up to a magnitude
so great as to canopy an entire nation. In the work attributed
to Eugene O'Curry * evidences may be found of this genesis of
the tradition relative to St. Patrick.

Without the slightest design of accounting for the popular
tradition, O'Curry says : " It is a remarkable fact that the name
of the celebrated idol of the ancient pagan Gaedhil was Crom
Cruach, which would signify literally the bloody maggot ; whilst
another imaginary deity was termed Crom Dubh, or the black
maggot." The first epithet, we may remark, may be translated
" the bloody crookedness " an epithet which is perfectly appli-
cable to the serpent while the second epithet may be translated
"the black crookedness." Now, these terms are surprisingly
appropriate. Every snake is necessarily a series of coils ; crook-
edness is inseparable from the ophidia. Destitute as they are of
fins, wings, or feet, convolution is essential to their organization

* Manuscrift Materials of Irish History.

1 888.] ST. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS. 49

and locomotion. Physical rectitude is impossible to every
species of serpent. The epithet crom dubh " is still connected,"
says Eugene O'Curry, " with the first Sunday in August " in
the vernacular dialects of Munster and Connaught a circum-
stance which shows how deeply Druidism had struck its roots
into the national mind.

" In the field of Magh Slecht, or Plain of Adorations, stood the
Crom Cruach (called Cean Cruackin the Tripartite Life), the great
object of Milesian pagan worship, the Delphos of our Gade-
lian pagan ancestors, from the time of their first coming into
Erin until the destruction of the idol by St. Patrick." Speak-
ing of a third of these objects of superstitious veneration,
O'Curry says : " That the Crom Chonnail was a living animal,
or at least believed to be such, may be seen in the following
couplet :

" ' He kills the Crom Chonnaill

Which was destroying the army.' " *

The manner in which St. Patrick disposed of these ophidian
deities is described as follows: " Patrick after that went over
the water to Magh Slecht, where stood the chief idol of Erin
the Cean Cruaich, ornamented with gold and with silver, and
twelve other idols, ornamented with brass, round him. When
Patrick saw the idol, from the water which is named Guthard
(loud voice), and when he approached the idol he raised his arm
to lay 'the staff of Jesus ' on him, and it did not reach him; for
his face was to the south, and the mark of the staff remains in his
left side still, and the earth swallowed the other twelve idols to
their heads," etc.

That the religion of the serpent should flourish in a country
where the reptile was scarcely known, and certainly not indi-
genous, is by no means so wonderful as that a superstition so
absurd should be even tolerated in countries where its character
was understood and every hamlet contained the victims of its
poisonous fangs. This is the wonder! That the British Isles
were the cradle of Druidism die Heimath des Ordens is confi-
dently affirmed by Leopold Contzen.f Here, he says, the insti-
tution flourished in its purest form, and hither came the Gallic
students who desired to drink deep at the fountains of Druidic
science. As we have already stated, on the authority of classic
writers, they had an alphabet of seventeen letters, which cor-
responds with the number of the Beth, Luis, Nion, or ancient

* Manuscript Materials, pp. 103, 631. + Wanderungen der Kelten, p. 92.

VOL. XLVII. 4

50 ST. PATRICK AND THE SERPENTS. [April,

Irish alphabet, and with no other. Their name has no connec-
tion, as has been alleged, with the Sanscrit term drmvidh, sig-
nifying- " poor, indigent," as if, like the mendicant orders in the
Catholic Church, poverty was rather meritorious than disgrace-
ful. Nor has it any connection with the Greek word 6pv$, an
oak. It is derived, according to Eugene O'Curry, from an Irish
word signifying " learning," an epithet by no means undeserved
if, as Stukeley affirms, Stonehenge was the cathedral of the
arch-druid of Britain, and Avebury, with its avenues, " had
been originally constructed by them in the form of a circle with
a serpent attached to it." We hope that no one will be scan-
dalized if we conclude this article by exhibiting the form which
the tradition has assumed among the Irish peasants, as we find
it in the Legends of the South of Ireland, collected by Crofton
Croker :

" Sure every one has heard tell of the blessed Saint Patrick and how
he druv the sarpints and all manner of venomous things out of Ireland ;
how he bothered the varmint entirely. But, for all that, there was one
ould sarpint left who was too cunning to be talked out of the country and
made to drown himself. St. Patrick did not well know how to manage
this fellow, who was doing great havoc, till at long last he bethought
himself, and got a strong iron chest made with nine boults upon it. So
one fine morning he takes a walk to where the sarpint used to keep ; and
the sarpint, who did not like the saint in the least and small blame to him
for that began to hiss and show his teeth at him like anything. ' Oh !'
says St. Patrick, says he, ' where's the use of making such a piece of work
about a gentleman like myself coming to see you? Tis a nice house I
have got made for you agin the winter ; for I'm going to civilize the whole
country, man and beast,' says he, ' and you can come and look at it when-
ever you please, and 'tis myself will be glad to see you.' The sarpint, hear-
ing such smooth words, thought that though St. Patrick had druv all the
rest of the sarpints into the sea, he meant no harm to himself ; so the sar-
pint walks fair and easy up to see him and the house he was speaking
about, but when the sarpint saw the nine boults upon the chest he thought
he was sould (betrayed), and was for making off with himself as fast as ever
he could. ' Tis a nice, warm house, you see,' says St. Patrick, 'and 'tis a
good friend I am to you.' 'Thank you kindly for your civility,' says the
sarpint, ' but I think it is too small it is for me ' meaning it for an excuse
-and away he was going. Too small? ' says St. Patrick. ' Stop, if you
please,' says he; ' you're out in that, my boy, anyhow. I am sure it will fit
you completely ; and I'll tell you what,' says he, ' I'll bet you a gallon of por-
ter,' says he, ' that if you will only try and get in there'll be plenty of room
for you.' The sarpint was as thirsty as could be with his walk, and 'twas
great joy to him the thoughts of doing St. Patrick out of the gallon of
porter ; so, swelling himself up as big as he could, in he got into the chest,
all but a little bit of his tail. ' There, now,' says he, ' I've won the gallon,
for you see the house is too small for me, for I can't get in my tail.' When

i888.] ' THE LAND AND LABOR QUESTION. 51

what does St. Patrick do but he comes behind the great, heavy lid of the
chest, and, putting his two hands to it, down he slaps it with a bang like
thunder. When the rogue of a sarpint saw the lid coming down, in went
his tail like a shot, for fear of being whipped off him, and St. Patrick be-
gan at once to boult the nine iron boults. 'O murder! won't you let me
out, St. Patrick ?' says the sarpint. I've lost the bet fairly, an' I'll pay you
the gallon like a man.' ' Let you out, my darling ! ' says St. Patrick. To
be sure I will, by all manner of means ; but you see I have not time now, so
you must wait till to-morrow.' And so he took the iron chest and the sar-
pint in it, and pitches it into the lake here, where it is to this hour for
certain ; and it is the sarpint struggling down at the bottom that makes
the waves upon it. Many is the living man has heard the sarpint crying
out from within the chest under the water : ' Is to-morrow come yet? Is
to-morrow come yet ? ' which, to be sure, it never can be. And that's the
way St. Patrick settled the last of the sarpints."

C. M. O'KEEFFE.

LET US STUDY THE LAND AND LABOR QUESTION.

THE elections of last November proved unfavorable to the
hopes of the newly-formed labor parties. The workmen did not
seem to feel that their condition was in any way to be improved
by their success at the polls. The old party lines held them well
within the limits of routine. Considering- the time, money, and
eloquence expended in scraping together seventy-two thousand
votes in New York State, the result was feeble, and the leaders
of the labor parties have learned that the workmen are not yet
enough interested in labor politicians to take a strong, effective
interest in new political parties. The number of new parties in
the field at the late elections discovers our native unfortunate
tendency to drag every social idea into politics immaturely.
Politics contains a remedy in many cases ; but we fritter away
our strength on impossibilities. We begin in the middle, and
hence must take to our primers when graduation is close at
hand.

However, the cause of the workman is not bound up with the
fate of a political movement, and no one imagines that the ill-suc-
cess of flimsy and self-seeking theorists can injure it. It has often
been said that the cause of the poor is the nation's cause a true
saying, to which the nation pays very little attention. The poor,
like the rich, must look after their own interests. If they are sav-
age in so doing, their savagery is less unholy than the unscru-

52 L THE LAND AND LABOR QUESTION. [April,

pulousness of moneyed men. They strive, not for riches, but
for decency, for fair wages, for reasonable hours of labor, and
against the seemingly irresistible approach of poverty. They
have not always striven with understanding. Their some-time
violent methods were an insult to their intelligence, but these
methods are soon to be entirely discarded. Their cause is in-
deed the care of the nation, and the care of the world besides.
It is becoming plain to all that the root of labor and kindred
troubles is fixed deep in the nature of things. These troubles
are the indicators and forerunners of changes in the social or-
der. Changes of that kind are commonly called revolutions.
We are not on the eve but in the midst of a revolution. It has
come upon us not unawares, but found us indifferent. We
thought a few laws and the freedom of our prairies would end
any difficulty that might disturb our security, but our difficulty
has been a revolution almost in its maturity. No doubt our
. prairies and the flexibility of our institutions have saved us
from catastrophes, but they have also blinded us to the real na-
ture of the crisis through which the world is passing. As far
as one may judge from the periodical literature of the time the
popular leaders have only the dimmest conception of the na-
ture and extent of the struggle.

We have a land question and a labor question. These terms
merely disguise the real issues. Discussion as to the first turns
chiefly on the right of private ownership ; the second seems to
embrace no more than wages and hours of labor. Whoever
imagines that simply deciding one way or the other in the mat-
ter of land-ownership, and giving large wages and short hours,
will dispose of these questions, must be very sanguine indeed.
Hitherto there has generally been but one side in all the ques-
tions affecting social order. It was the side of the wealthy land-
holders, of the cast-iron governments, of the money-barons
against the laborer, the helpless subject, and the multitudinous
poor. Quite naturally the latter so increased in numbers and* in
difficulties that the former were ever busy devising schemes to
keep them in check. Hence our poor-houses, our emigration
schemes, our innumerable theories of government. They have
all proved vain. Here in America, where land can be had for
the asking, where poor-houses and public charities spring up
like mushrooms, where national legislators and even money-
kings bow to the ground before a man with a formidable griev-
ance, where every theory of government under the sun has an
advocate and a following here the poor, the laborer, and the

i888.] THE LAND AND LABOR QUESTION. 53

citizen clamor for a change of condition and refuse to be quiet-
ed by lands or laws. They can hardly define their needs, but
are seized with a great restlessness such as impels nations in the
path marked out for them by Providence. The land is open to
them, and every day labor is encroaching on the tyrannous
monopolies. It is more than holding its own. Yet we call our
troubles land and labor troubles, for want of a better name, and
for want of a better understanding of the position we tinker now
with wages and now with ownership.

Under cover of the land question comes up another of real
and more lasting importance. It is the status of land-cultiva-
tors and the manipulation of the entire food supply of the na-
tion, whether the government, the people, or an individual be
the landlord. Under cover of the labor question hides a similar
problem. It is the relative status of employers and employed,
without respect to ancient (because obscure) notions of the two
classes. If one is desirous of knowing the importance of these
two points and how much they overtop the so-called land and
labor questions which mask them, let him try to discover how
much the experts know about them. Certainly there can hardly
be three things nearer to the ordinary man than how or where
his food shall be bought, who shall produce it for him, and how
he and his employer stand before the law. These three things,
however, have not been studied, and neither law nor lawyers,
nor the interested millions, know much about them. The status
of a land-cultivator, is peculiar. His occupation, from its neces-
sity and antiquity, is justly esteemed the most honorable of em-
ployments. It brings him, however, no honor and very small
profit in proportion to its demands upon his time and strength.
The importance of the land and of large landed possessions is
very well understood ; but the cultivator is ignored except in
poetry and poetical politics. The law knows very little about
him and shields him from nothing save outrage of the baser
kind. His kingdom the land is stolen from him by railroads,
foreign and native syndicates, cattle-kings, noblemen ; his pro-
ductions enrich railroads, steamship companies, city specula-
tors, but not himself; he grows poorer and his customers grow
poorer with the advance of civilization, but the intermediate
syndicates, land-speculators, the railroads, the noblemen, the
agricultural-implement makers, and the government treasuries
grow fabulously rich. It is much the same with the common
laborer and mechanic. He digs the coal and iron ; he makes
the brick and erects the factory ; he spins and weaves ; he ham-

54 THE LAND AND LABOR QUESTION. [April,

mers and fashions ; he brings to his work not only muscle but
skill, and what is the result? His employers grow amazingly
and assuredly rich, while he grows amazingly and assuredly
poor. As the land-cultivator is the prey of one set of knaves,
so is he of another. The main fact in the whole modern scheme
is that patient, honest, and capable industry does not get its just
reward. And the reason why is, it seems to me, not because
of any system of land-ownership, but because men know too
little the real position of the farmer and the laborer in the com-
munity and how their rights should be studied, enunciated,
and protected ; and because men know too little of the proper
management of the nation's food supplies. Fortune-hunters use
both the workman and the food as the means of gathering im-
mense and unlawful treasures. In reckoning the sources of
possible revenue the entire community of employers have learn-
ed to count upon a percentage of workmen's wages. In schem-
ing for immense gains, business gamfilers do not hesitate to rob
the farmer and his customers.

When we have given to the land-cultivator his proper posi-
tion of importance in the community, and at the same time
taken the distribution of the food supply from the hands of
gamblers and money-kings, there will no longer be a land ques-
tion. When we have determined by law and justice what part
above the mere machine a workman has in the accumulation of
his employer's fortune, then we shall have no longer a labor
question. This is easily said, but what an immense work it sug-
gests and demands ! The land laws must be so strengthened
and administered as to kill off the land-grabbers. The business
methods of the country must be put under a censorship that will
scorch the Goulds as heat scorches the apple-tree pests. The
railroads and all carrying corporations must pass into the hands
of the state, or be so controlled as'to be left as innocuous as the
mummies of Egypt. The great corporations must be brought
to treat with their work-people as men with men, not as men
with machines ; must, in fact, prepare themselves to accept their
help as co-operators, whose fortunes must rise as the value of
the product of their labor rises, in proportion to each man's skill
and industry. When these changes have become a fact, a revo-
lution such as has not been seen since Christianity began will
have come to pass. A revolution is a grave thing. We are now
in the midst of it, and a single false step might mean -bloody dis-
asters. There is nothing to be gained by haste. Men may dash
each other's brains out against the wall of time, but time goes

i888.] THE LAND AND LABOR QUESTION. 55

no faster, and bloodshed never solves a social problem. Point
after point must be taken up and settled in whatever order they
present themselves, until isolated principles and facts and in-
stincts harmonize, discover their common agreement, and grow
into one perfect organization. For a state of change, for a cri-
sis, nature has only one help, and that is perfect quiet. Mr.
Henry George offers another and different one for our present
condition, but it has the disadvantage of being a cure-all, and a
cure-all is rarely even a cure-anything. The ramifications of the
land and labor problem are such as defy a simple solution.
Many minds, many ideas, frequent failures, and at least a few
generations must give their best and do their best towards the
settling of our great questions.

Perhaps it is a sort of consciousness of the intricacy of the
problem -that has made men slow to listen to new teachers with
their brilliantly simple methods of turning earth into heaven.
As was said in the beginning of this article, few of the popular
leaders have any conception of the extent and character of the so-
cial problem. There is a strong belief that George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson settled the most troublesome points years
ago. They but made clear the way for the introduction of the
problem. Our generation will do a little towards its solution,
but not enough to make it proud of itself. What all men can do
best is to labor and to wait. What the workman can do best is
to put aside his present expectation of a complete immediate
settlement of his difficulties, and turn his mind to securing all
such points of vantage as will assist naturally the development
of the revolution. Let me enumerate and explain the most
prominent of these in order.

First there is the point of organization and self-instruction.
It is an easy thing to organize in America, but that very ease
is almost fatal to thorough and successful organization. Jo-
nah's gourd was not a greater wonder in the order of nature
than the growth of the Knights of Labor. Such growth is ab-
normal, and must of its very nature be defective somewhere.
Quick maturity means quick dissolution. To organize with the
hope of obtaining the society's aim next year means that next
year the aim must be obtained or the society dies. Most of our
labor societies are organized in that way, and most of them are
organized on a basis so thoroughly un-American that of neces-
sity they or their usefulness dies out after a brief, unhappy exis-
tence. The law of force is not recognized among us, but it
enters very largely into the spirit of the labor societies. The

56 THE LAND AND LABOR QUESTION. [April,

liberty and protection of the citizen is the high result sought by
our Constitution, and too often forgotten by the labor society.
Haste in formation and haste in seeking immediate results, with
no regard for the true American spirit of liberty, have resulted
*in ephemeral bodies whose careers run through foolishness and
violence to a sudden ending. This haste can be avoided by a
proper understanding of the crisis through which we are pass-
ing. Here self-instruction comes into play. Let the workmen
inform themselves thoroughly of the work to be done, its vast
extent and true nature. Let them organize, not for a single
generation, but for an epoch. Let them make haste within the
bounds of conscience and reason and law. Let each generation
be content if in this world of slow progress it can make the
road clearer for its successor. Above all things, let them bury
the vain hope of arranging all difficulties at one coup
d'ttat. That has never been done since history began, and,
it may be safely argued, never will be done even by divine
power.

The primary work to be done by labor societies is immense
and congenial. It embraces the overthrow of the gigantic cor-
porations and their influence in legislatures, the better regula-
tion of the hours of labor, the maintenance of a fair standard of
wages, the utter destruction of the tenement-house, and the
abolition of child-labor. It must not be forgotten by the work-
man that in the present struggle the employer is quite often as
blameless as any man concerned. Our complex business sys-
tem has him often at its mercy, and he cannot give decent
wages and proper hours when he would. Therefore not so
much against persons must the work be directed as against the
encroachments of those creatures of the state called corpora-
tions. The great railroads, the great mining companies, lumber
companies, and carrying companies must be shorn of all privi-
leges and made to pay their way like other business persons.
The nation is now too wealthy to pay these creatures for get-
ting rich on its privileges. Grants of land must cease. Rights
of way must be a source of everlasting tribute. Without actu-
ally taking in charge these carrying offices, the state must make
them as docile as its children ought to be. It is a stupendous
job, but it must be done before any citizen can advance one step
in the path of real progress. The workman must aid by secur-
ing the downfall of the corporation's tyranny.

In fact, very little can be done until these immense tumors
are removed from the social body. To them may be directly

i888.] THE LAND AND LABOR QUESTION. 57

traced four prominent evils of the time viz., the corruption of
the legislature and the judiciary, the long hours of labor, the
low wages, and the employment of children. It is not necessary
to point out how responsible they are for these crimes against
humanity and the state. The whole world knows the tale. But
it is necessary for good men to see the connection between each
of these ills and another. The corporations must corrupt the
people's representatives, or special legislation would seriously
cripple them. They keep down the wages and lengthen the
hours as only irresponsible bodies can do, snapping their fingers
at a public opinion which they can often manufacture for their
own ends. As a result we have that greatest shame of modern
nations the employment of little children in every department
of labor. It is the most brutal, most selfish, and most useless of
all the crimes committed by the corporations and permitted by
a Christian people. Nothing too strong can be said of the sys-
tem and the indifference which tolerates it. The system must
go and our indifference be cast aside.

Stripping the corporations of usurped power and stolen
gains, closing the legislatures to corrupting influences and the
workshops to children, regulating hours of work according
to the kind of employment, securing fair wages at all times, and
pulling down the dens called tenement-houses, is, after all, only a
preparation for that better work which shall settle for ever in
law and practice, as well as in ethics and theory, the status of the
wealth-producer in society. But that preparation is the work
for the present moment. Everything in its time. No mere sum
of human efforts in this day can attain the grand result, howso-
ever large the sum may be. If every citizen of the country were
a member of a labor society, and eager to settle the question
once for all, it could not be done. Only time and experience can
produce the data which will fipally dispose of our labor troubles.
But patience is always in order, and careful organization and
profitable self-instruction are eternal in their effects. The child-
ren can be saved in this generation, and the homes of the poor
made beautiful, and wages kept above starvation figures ; and
the indecent landlord, or fraudulent operator, or land-grabber,
or child-slayer can be easily turned into a jail-bird and made rare
in the land. There is no question that it can be done. Work-
men have only to turn their efforts steadily in one direction and
avoid political quixotism to accomplish wonders. Now they
often neglect the children, they neglect the tenement question,
they dream of forming political parties; and while they are

58 MOTHERHOOD. [April,

planning and dreaming of impossibilities wages are falling and
the corporations waxing more powerful.

To sum up what has been said in this article let me put it in
this way :

The land question is in truth the question of the land-culti-
vator's legal standing in society and the better management of
the nation's food supply. The principle of ownership at present
has no bearing on the question ; the method of ownership may
have such a bearing.

The labor question is really how to determine the ethical and
legal standing of a workman in relation to his employer, his
work, and its profits.

Neither question can be settled on the spot, nor is there one
solution possible, such as Henry George would have us accept.

Therefore the wisest thing all parties can do is to study and
to wait for particular opportunities.

The next wisest thing is to attack the corporations unani-
mously, put an end to child-labor and to rotten tenements, and
to have labor societies and to rightly manage them for the pur-
pose of looking after wages and hours of labor, with the advice
and assistance of all good men in the community.

JOHN TALBOT SMITH.

MOTHERHOOD.

BEHOLD thy mother, son, He said whose word
His mystic presence to our altars gave,
Whose holy feet trod Galilee's dark wave.

The gentle voice whose whispers He had heard

Where Egypt's breezes the palm branches stirred,
John, the beloved, from grief's despond to save,
The hand that oft His infant brow did lave, .

Henceforth to minister to him preferred.

Oh ! be it motherhood, like Bethlehem's, sweet,

Or of Golgotha's sorrow-freighted hour,
God hath ordained it, to His mind most meet,

Made woman's heart the agent of His power.
Though other loves man's trust through life may cheat,
These will remain through all unchanged, of strength a
tower.

GEORGE ROTHSAY.

1 888.] THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 59

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM.

WHAT the star of Bethlehem was has always been a question
of interest. More especially has it become so of late, on account
of the prevailing impression that its reappearance is expected by
astronomers at about this time. So strong is this impression
that the planet Venus can hardly show herself in her customary
character of morning or evening star without a paragraph ap-
pearing in the papers that the star of Bethlehem is now visible.
Let it, then, be understood most distinctly at the outset that as-
tronomers do not now expect the star of Bethlehem, or any
star answering to its description. It may, however, be worth
while to state the reason why they are imagined to be expecting
such a phenomenon.

A very brilliant star, equal to Venus at its brightest, and
visible, like Venus, to good eyes even in the daytime, did appear
in the year 1572. It was not a planet or comet, but was in the
region of the fixed stars, as was quite evident from its not shift-
ing its position among the other stars during the whole sixteen
months that it remained in sight. That it did not so shift is
pretty certain from the observations of the distinguished astro-
nomer Tycho Brahe, to whom our information regarding it is
principally due, and whose measurements of its position enable
astronomers of the present day to point their telescopes to the
precise spot in the constellation Cassiopeia where it once shone
so brilliantly, and to assure themselves, as the writer has done
years ago, that no star, even telescopic, is to be found there now.
It seems to have appeared suddenly, thougji it faded away
gradually ; still, it may have shone for some time with moderate
lustre before it forced attention by its extraordinary splendor.
That it did appear very suddenly is, however, probable for a
reason which will be given later.

Now, this is the star which has given rise to this whole
speculation about the reappearance of the star of Bethlehem in
our day. For a similar phenomenon was witnessed in the year
1264, also in 945 ; and though the position of these objects in
the heavens was not so accurately determined as that of the star
of 1572 was by Tycho, still they seem to have been in or near
Cassiopeia. Assuming all three to be identical, we should have
a periodical appearance of the same object once in about 314
years, which would bring it back to visibility in 1886, with an

60 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. [April,

allowable margin, of course, of several years. The same period
would give an appearance of the star in the year 3 of our era;
and here also sufficient margin might be given to bring it to the
time at which the star of Bethlehem appeared, on any system of
chronology.

But now two questions arise. First: Is it astronomically
probable that there has been such a periodic appearance of the
same object? Second: Even if such has been the case, could
this object have been the star of Bethlehem?

The first question must be answered in the negative. The
reason for this answer is that from modern observations we
know something of the nature of these " temporary " stars, as
they are called. Several, of lesser magnitude than that of Tycho,
but seemingly of the same character, have been observed in
recent times since the application of the spectroscope to astro-
nomy ; and this instrument has shown us that the sudden out-
burst of light in these stars was due to incandescent gas,
produced apparently by something like an explosion ; the ex-
plosion being caused either by forces internal to the body itself
or by collision with some external object. These later pheno-
mena have been sudden, like that of 1572; the stars in question
have not been seen to grow gradually from a lesser magnitude,
as many so-called variable stars, well known to astronomers, do,
repeatedly waxing and waning in more or less definite periods.
Of course it is hard to prove a negative ; it is just possible that
they may have come up slowly ; but the heavens are very care-
fully watched now, and it is hard for any stranger to escape
detection.

If we grant, then, that the appearance of temporary stars,
like that of Tycho, is due to what may be called a catastrophe,
such an occurrence is not likely to be repeated, at least periodi-
cally, in the same star. As has been said, there are such things
as variable stars following a tolerably regular period ; but these,
in which a tremendous maximum is so suddenly reached, can
hardly be classed among them.

It is not, therefore, considered probable by astronomers in
general that the stars of 945 and 1264 were identical with that
of 1572 or with each other. Hence astronomers do not, as is
popularly supposed, expect the sudden appearance of a bright star
in Cassiopeia, or anywhere else, specially at the present time ;
though recent experience has shown that such phenomena are,
on a small scale, not infrequent, and may occur at any moment.

To proceed now to the second question. If the star of 1572 is

i888.] THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 61

really periodic and appeared at the time of the birth of our Lord,
could it have been the star of Bethlehem ? One simple considera-
tion is enough to settle this also in the negative. This consideration
is that Cassiopeia is a northern constellation, always appearing
somewhere between the northeast and the northwest; but the
Gospel tells us that the star "went before" the wise men on
their way from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and must therefore
have appeared in the south, as Bethlehem is due south from
Jerusalem.

Let us. then, dismiss at once and entirely from our minds the
entirely groundless notion that the star of 1572 was the star of
Bethlehem, or that there is any reason for expecting either one
at present, and, if we see a bright star in the morning or evening
sky, understand that it is simply Venus or Jupiter.

The question now naturally arises, Is there any other astrono-
mical way of accounting for the star of Bethlehem, now that
this one has been disposed of? Let us see. The " conjunction"
theory comes properly first, from its having been maintained by
learned men at the expense of a good deal of time and research ;
even the illustrious Kepler inclined favorably to it, at least as a
partial explanation of the matter. This theory is that some
remarkable conjunction of two or more planets might produce
the effect of a single very bright star, or might at least be called
a star, even though the various planets were separately visible ;
that such a conjunction occurred about the time of the birth of
our Lord is of course a matter for which we have recourse to
astronomical tables, by which, in the present perfected state of
mechanical astronomy, we are able to tell precisely how the
planets stood in the heavens at any moment during the whole
history of man.

By a conjunction of two planets is understood their near
approach to each other as seen from the earth ; or, in other
words, that the two planets and the earth actually lie nearly in
the same straight line, the earth being at one end of the line.
If the earth occupies the central place the two planets are said
to be in opposition. Conjunctions of the planets, more or less
close, are of frequent occurrence. On the 2d of January of this
year a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter occurred, the two
planets being less than two degrees from each other in the sky.
But closer approaches than this are very common. For instance,
on June 28, 1886, Mars and Jupiter were less than one degree
apart ; on October 22 of the same year, Venus and Jupiter about
one-third of a degree; on February 9, 1887, Mars and Venus

62 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. [April,

were distant about half a degree from each other. On July 21,
1859, a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter occurred so closely
that the two planets could only be separated from each other by
good telescopes, appearing to the naked eye as one star. The
nearest approach was only observable on the Eastern Continent,
the planets having separated considerably at the time of their
appearing above our horizon. These conjunctions are always
pretty and interesting sights ; but unfortunately when Venus is
seen in the neighborhood of any of what are called the superior,
planets, viz., Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn, the superior planet is at a
great distance from us, and is by no means a conspicuous star.
The superior planets can, however, meet each other at their
times of greatest apparent brilliancy.

In the year 747 from the building of Rome, which can be
admitted with much probability as that of the birth of our
Saviour (the year 753, which was arbitrarily assumed when the
Christian era took definite shape, being generally acknowledged
to be several years too late), a somewhat remarkable set of con-
junctions is shown by astronomical calculation to have occurred
in May, August, and December respectively. At the second of
these the planets were not much below their greatest brilliancy ;
but at the first and third they were much less conspicuous,
owing to their greater distance from the earth. Jupiter would
be more affected by this circumstance than Saturn, the propor-
tional change in its distance being greater. This set of conjunc-
tions is supposed by some to have been what attracted the
attention of the Magi, and we may suppose that they did not set
out for Jerusalem till after the second indeed, the first by itself
would not be very remarkable as that would give them time to
reach that city before the end of the year. When they arrived
there the third conjunction might have been visible in the
southern heavens in the evening sky ; and it might therefore
have " gone before them," as the Gospel tells us, in a certain
sense, on their way to Bethlehem, and actually have been exactly
in the direction of the place where the Divine Child lay, as they
approached that spot.

This theory has some plausibility ; but it has also its objec-
tions. In the first place, it is hardly probable that the Magi,
who were undoubtedly in the habit of watching the stars, could
have been ignorant that what they had seen was simply the
juxtaposition of two planets with whose movements they were
tolerably familiar; they would have noticed their changes of
relative position, which were not very great, between the times

i888.] THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 63

of the conjunctions, unless the weather had been persistently
cloudy a thing almost impossible in that climate ; and on arriv-
ing at Jerusalem they would not have said, " We have seen his
star in the east," when the star was shining there before every-
body's eyes on any clear night for, by the theory, the time of
the third conjunction was already close at hand ; moreover, with
two such slow-moving planets as Jupiter and Saturn, at conjunc-
tion near their stationary points, as would be the case with this
third one of the series, the change in their relative positions
would be very slight for a considerable time.

In the second place, there seems to be a radical objection to
the hypothesis, for it is hardly credible that a conjunction of two
planets, unless it were a very close one, like that spoken of
above as occurring in 1859, could have been called a "star." A
degree is not such a small space in the sky ; it is about twice the
apparent diameter of the sun or moon, and no eye, however
poor, could fail to see such a separation very plainly.

It is also evident that the facts, as recorded, do not convey
the idea of such a persistent phenomenon as a conjunction of two
planets. The wise men do not seem to have seen the star at all
for a considerable time before their arrival at Jerusalem, nor do
they seem to hav.e seen it even there ; but Jupiter and Saturn
would have been seen pretty near each other in the evening sky
during the whole fall and early winter of A. u. C. 747. Kepler,
indeed, is obliged to bring an additional temporary star to the
rescue to help out the conjunction theory. Such a star, almost
or quite equal to that of Tycho, he had himself seen in the con-
stellation Ophinchus; it appeared on the ifth of October, 1604,
and remained visible as late as the end of 1605. He was not
aware, as we are to-day, that such objects belong to the immense-
ly distant region of the fixed stars, and seems to have supposed
that it might be in some way produced by forces, acting within
our own planetary system, and possibly that conjunctions of the
planets might themselves evolve such a phenomenon. Such a
view would, of course, now be quite untenable; if on no other
consideration, obviously on this, that the real event which an
apparition of a temporary star records must have occurred in all
probability two. or three years at least before the light which an-
nounces it to us can traverse the vast interval by which its place
of occurrence is removed from our globe. The whole conjunc-
tion theory bears pretty plainly the marks of having been excogi-
tated in the interest, if we may say so, of chronology. Of course
we should like to be able to fix the precise year of the birth of

64 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. [April,

Christ ; and if we could only find by calculation an astronomical
phenomenon which would adequately represent the mysterious
star, it would go a great way toward solving the problem.

Another astronomical hypothesis, and perhaps as defensible
as any, is that the star of Bethlehem was a comet. Two are on
record in the years 4 and 3 B.C. respectively ; and in the year 10
A.D. it is said that a comet appeared in Aries for about a month,
and by Dion Cassius that several were visible at the same
time. The comet of Aries is stated by Dr. Sepp, in his learned dis-
cussion of the "star of the Messias," to have appeared in the very
year of our Lord's birth ; but how he arrives at this conclusion
he does not tell us. He also mentions the date given above for
it. Aries would be about the right position in the heavens,
being in the south just after sunset at the beginning of the
year; but there seems to be no record of the time of year at
which this comet was seen. Those of 4 and 3 B. c. appeared in
the spring, and may be left out of the question.

We return now to the idea of a temporary star, similar to that
of Tycho, but, as is plain if there was only one star, not identical
with it. There is no assignable astronomical reason why such a
star may not have appeared in any part of the heavens at any
time; and there may have been two such, one,-in any part what-
ever, which first attracted the attention of the Magi, and another
in the southern sky which would lead them from Jerusalem to
Bethlehem. For it must be remembered that the star was evi-
dently lost to view when they arrived at Jerusalem ; and there
is no certain evidence that they saw it on the way to that city.
There is a general impression that it led them there from their
home in the East ; but the Gospel does not tell us that it did, and
certainly it was not necessary that it should do so. They were
probably in possession of the prophecy of Balaam (Numbers
xxiv. 17), and were expecting the star at about that time ; for the
time at which the Messias was to come was quite definitely pre-
dicted. And when they arrived at Jerusalem they did not say,
11 We have seen a star," but " We have seen his star" the star of
the King of the Jews ; they had known it for that as soon as they
saw it. It did not need then to appear, even at the beginning,
in the direction of Jerusalem ; no, they went to Jerusalem when
they saw it, because that was the place to get information about
it, and about the King whom it heralded. So any temporary
star, even that of Tycho, would have served for the first ap-
pearance.

But, if we are to take the Gospel literally, this theory of two

1 8 88.] THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 65

stars is inadmissible. For it tells us that "the star which they
had seen in the east "led them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.
We can, however, meet all the requirements of the case with
one star. If a temporary star, like that of Tycho, had appeared
in the summer, standing in the west just after sunset, as Venus
does when it is evening star, such a star would have been soon
lost to view in the sunlight as the sun advanced in its yearly
path round the ecliptic ; two or three months after its first ap-
pearance it would have been visible in the morning sky, and
some four months later it would have served to guide the Magi
to Bethlehem in the early morning, before sunrise. Of course
it would have been visible in the morning or last hours of the
night during all those four months, but it is easier to suppose it
to have escaped their notice at such a time than if it had been in
the evening sky. Or we may suppose it to have faded away
during the two months when the sun was hiding it from view
and then to have burst out again when they arrived at Jerusa-
lem. Such a supposition is by no means astronomically impossi-
ble, though it is contrary to our experience of other temporary
stars, the catastrophe which produces the great outburst of light
in them never having been observed twice in the same one, and
being apparently incapable of repetition, at least for a long time.
Their regular course is to appear suddenly with their greatest
brilliancy, and then gradually to wane.

In all this discussion it is obvious that we are speaking simply
on the basis of natural science as it is now known ; to assume
unknown and unprecedented phenomena, even though coming
within possible natural laws, is not, properly speaking, to give a
scientific explanation at all. We can, of course, assume, if we
wish, that our atmosphere might generate a brilliantly luminous
body, which would appear in the proper places to answer the
description of the star of Bethlehem ; or, if we please, we can
say that such an object might be produced in the solar system
which would be neither a planet nor a comet, and would move
without regard to the law of gravitation. But to make such an
assumption would not be to account for the matter by our pres-
ent scientific knowledge, and it is hard to see what purpose it
would serve.

One great and general difficulty against any astronomi-
cal explanation whatever is that all properly so-called astro-
nomical phenomena are observable over very large portions
of the globe ; and an object so remarkable as the star of Bethle-
hem was to the wise men would probably have been generally

VOL. XLVII. 5

66 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. [April,

recorded in some unmistakable way in the history of the sci-
ence, for there were even at that time many learned men inter-
ested in such matters. Latitude is the only element which makes
a difference in the visibility of anything astronomical which
remains in the heavens for as much as a day ; longitude is im-
material. The star of Bethlehem, then, if properly a star,
should be distinctly in the records of both Europe and Asia,
of China especially.

Lastly, a grave objection to its being an astronomical object
is the impossibility of such an object standing over any particu-
lar spot, or leading any one to a definite and small place, such as
a stable or cave would be. Stars may furnish general sailing
directions, but cannot point out the way to a particular point,
especially in or near a town, where one would have to proceed
more or less by roads. They give us the points of the compass,
but only by accident could lead to any special location, unless
observed with extraordinary accuracy, even if nothing blocked
the way, though it is, of course, possible that a person by follow-
ing a star may reach his goal ; and assuming the star to be a
natural one, we are not bound to shut out the providence and
guidance of God.

No theory founded on any natural science, except astron-
omy, presents itself for discussion, unless we are willing to
bring this great guiding-star to the level of a mere will-o'-
the-wisp ; so it would seem that our scientific discussion of the
matter must here end.

The result of it, or, it is not too much to say, of any impartial
investigation, is not, on the whole, favorable to any explanation
of this wonderful prodigy on scientific grounds. The probability
must be, it would seem, very strong in the mind of any one who
is willing to admit the miraculous at all, or at least of any
Christian, that the star was a supernatural phenomenon, a sign
furnished directly by Almighty God for the accomplishment of
his own object, and altogether similar to the pillar of cloud
and fire which guided his chosen people through the desert of
Arabia. Further than that, on this assumption, it were vain to
inquire into its nature or cause. And it would seem that the
principal obstacle to this view of it among Christians has been
the desire, as has been remarked above, that it should serve a
chronological purpose.

GEORGE M. SEARLE.

J888.] THE ITALIANS IN NEW YORK. 67

THE ITALIANS IN NEW YORK.

THE first question one is apt to ask about the Italians who
are now arriving among us in such large numbers is, Where do
all these dark-eyed, olive-tinted men and women come from ?
From the old Neapolitan States and southern Italy for the most
part, though there are many from the neighborhood of Genoa
and some from Lombardy. Do they come to stay ? The answer
must now be emphatically, Yes. When the immigration first
began the intention was almost invariably to go back home and
enjoy the savings of the American sojourn. But that day is
past. Our visitors have brought their knitting, and we are
going to have them as an element in the make-up of the Ame-
rican commonwealth. Many who went home in former years
have returned again. They bring their families with them,
their young folks marry here, their little ones grow up speaking
English mostly and a little very bad Italian ; and they are put-
ting their savings into real estate this last a most significant
evidence of stability.

What are their traits of character?

There is first the difference in race-traits between the north-
ern and southern Italians. The northerns, from Venice, Pied-
mont, and Lombardy, have much of the energy and vivacity of
the French, springing in great part from the same original.stock,
though possessing much of the steadiness of the German. The
Neapolitans and Sicilians, being of a more southern type, are
voluble and expansive. As to general characteristics, the Italians
have one American trait in conspicuous fulness money-getting,
a trait stimulated by the change from the old to the new order
of existence. Thirty, forty, and fifty cents a day for the hard,
long-houred labor of a grown man in Italy is changed by a cheap
steerage passage into from a dollar to two dollars and a half
in America. No wonder they think that you can " pick up
gold in the streets " of America. And this is literally the case
witfe many of them, for they are the most skilful rag-pickers
among us. They are becoming the only rag-pickers in New
York. And, too, they are picking up gold in the streets as boot-
blacks, and their children as newsboys. The traditional Irish
apple-woman is in every direction giving place to the Italian
corner fruit-vender. Many are grocers, druggists, money-
changers, beer-sellers, sign-makers, barbers, candy-makers, and

68 THE ITALIANS IN NEW YORK. [April,

a vast army of sinewy and dark-browed men are taking the place
of the Irish laborers. In the lower part of the city there are
several labor-bureaus which send Italian laborers by the thou-
sand to all parts of the country. The result of all this eager
struggle for the " bounties of Providence " is, of course, the ac-
cumulation of money. The savings-banks know them, and they
are beginning to have some such institutions of their own.
They are beginning to be fruit-merchants and regular confec-
tioners, and no doubt soon will be boss-contractors, etc. They
are not, as a class, intemperate, nor over-expensive in dress, nor
careless of the main chance in any way. One of the parishes
which has been most largely invaded by the Italians, and where
a systematic effort is being made to give them religious care, is
the Transfiguration, whose church edifice is at the corner of
Mott and Park Streets. Here their activity in real-estate opera-
tions is most apparent. This parish is being depopulated of
the Irish by the sub-letting of tenements by Italians, and their
finally getting the fee of the property. An Italian can secure
from Italians a rental fifty per cent, in advance of what any
mortal can get from the Irish, or perhaps from any other race.
Does the reader ask why ? Because more Italian humanity can
be packed into the cubic yard than any other kind of humanity,
the Chinese, perhaps, excepted. They can sleep anywhere; if
there are no chairs they will sit contentedly on the floor and lean
against the wall ; they will pack into rooms as thick as sardines ;
they are a living demonstration that the "cold figures " of the
Board of Health area delusion, for they flourish in robust health
where hygienic science proves that they should drop into their
graves. Where no man can live, according to scientific theory,
the Italian waxes fat, according to actual reality. This trait
enables the thrifty among them to acquire, by sub-letting, first
the leasehold and then the ownership of tenements. The whole
people seems thrifty, shrewd, prodigiously saving, immensely
industrious. Nor should it be forgotten that their children are
bright, talented, fond of study.

But they lack, as yet, some other traits of American char-
acter, especially what we call spirit. They are not high-spirited.
They for the most part seem totally devoid of what may be
termed the sense of respectability not on all scores, by any
means, but certainly on the score of personal independence and
manliness. An American or an Irishman will almost starve be-
fore asking charity, and often really does starve. Not so the
lower-class Italian. He is always ready to beg. Men with

1 888.] THE ITALIANS IN NEW YORK. 69

money in the bank will commit their children to an institution
of public charity, and wait until they are very easily situated
before taking them out. The shame of being thought a pauper
is almost unknown among the Italian people of this quarter. It
is this lack of what are known as the manly qualities that makes
a profound difference between them and all the races who have
hitherto contributed to the making of the American population.
Still, they are very amenable to our civilization. The boys and
girls, as they grow up, take on all the American externals of
dress and manner of life, and will doubtless develop the other
characteristics. The primacy of Italy in art, in music, in litera-
ture, and, during previous centuries, in war, gives a solid hope
of better things among our Italians. The two or three hundred
years that the race has spent under petty tyrannies, especially
that meanest of them all, the Neapolitan Bourbons, cannot have
quite extinguished its native nobility of character. Some con-
spicuous social virtues they have, such as obedience to the laws,
absence of public prostitution, the custom of early marrying,
and the like. As to politics, the Italians of New York are now a
factor, and the political boss is represented among this nation-
ality.

And now as to the delicate question of religion. The Italians
in the jurisdiction of Transfiguration parish and in all this
question mention is made only of ascertained facts come to
America the worst off in religious equipment of, perhaps, any
foreign Catholics whatever. There are thousands of Italians in
this city who do not know the Apostles' Creed. Multitudes of
men and women of this people do not know the elementary
truths of religion, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the
Redemption. This ignorance of the most necessary doctrines
is, it must be borne in mind, not exactly common to emigrants
from all localities in Italy. From observation, and from the best
information, it would seem probable that the North Italians are
a fairly instructed people, the Genoese and Lombards in America
having a good name for intelligent knowledge of the truths of
religion. There are many, let us hope the greatest number,
from the south with at least the rudiments. But the old Nea-
politan States are daily sending to all quarters of this hemi-
sphere grown men and women who are not well -enough in-
structed to receive the sacraments; if the priest should admin-
ister them they would be invalidly administered for want of
knowledge on the part of the recipients. The evidence of this
state of things is so complete, comes from so many different

70 THE ITALIANS IN NEW YORK. [April,

sources not less from all grades of Italian priests than from
other quarters is seen to be so palpably true upon actual con-
tact with this people, that the fact is established beyond question.
What, then, has been their religious life at home ? Some
peculiar kind of spiritual condition fed on the luxuries of
religion without its substantiate. " Devotions," pilgrimages,
shrines, miraculous pictures and images, indulgences, they have
been accustomed to, together with, in all too many cases, an al-
most total ignorance of the great truths which can alone make
such aids of religion profitable.

Now, what is the matter in southern Italy? How shall we
explain this lamentable state of things? Excellent judges say
that the fault is in the civil status of the people ; the old tyranny
of the Bourbons and the new tyranny of the atheists the aim
of the latter being, as an excellent Italian priest described it,
destructio entis moralis have prevented the proper action of the
clergy. Any one who has read the life of St. Alphonsus, or who
knows the methods of the present Italian government, may
readily believe that there is much truth in this explanation.
One may really exclaim, What Catholics these people would
become if they only had the qualities fitting them to be good
Americans! For the lack of these qualities the political and
civil difficulties in Italy are much to blame.

Another reason assigned is the confusion of parochial and
conventual ministrations: the friction occasionally felt from this
cause in America, and the consequent injury to religion, lead to
the belief that indiscriminate and unregulated care of souls by
bodies of clergymen, working under different and practically in-
dependent canonical jurisdiction, -in the same locality, has had
something to do with the low state of religious instruction we
are considering. What is anybody's business and everybody's
is apt to be nobody's. The poverty of the people in out-of-the-
way places and in barren rural districts, and under the Italian
system of landlordism, which is only not worse than that in
Ireland, is another cause assigned. Some say that the climate
is so enervating as to provoke a shiftless, ignorant state of
things ; but the Italians here are the most busy people in Ameri-
ica : there isn't a drone in their hive.

But, when all other causes have had due weight, the miser-
able truth is that the people have been neglected by their
priests. There are many good priests in southern Italy, and
the parish clergy of the city of Naples are well spoken of, and
that by severe critics. But somehow the duty of even rudi-

1 888.] THE ITALIANS IN NEW YORK. 71

mentary instruction and training in the principles and practices
of the Christian religion has been grossly neglected by large
numbers of parish priests; the state of ignorance among this
people cannot otherwise be accounted for.

The apathy of the clergy in instructing the people is some-
times explained by the fact that they have fixed revenues,
independent of the people, and fixity of tenure for life. They
would be more energetic in imparting religious knowledge if
they drew their income from the people, and their positions or
promotions depended on their exertions.

And now, you may ask, what can be done for them ? First
procure good Italian priests for them, and gather them in as
annex congregations to the already established English-speaking
parishes. The difficulty of forming annex congregations is not
so great, once good Italian priests are secured. The Trans-
figuration parish has had what is considered a successful experi-
ence of it. The basement of the church is the place of worship
of over two thousand Italians regularly organized, with four
Masses, and Vespers, every Sunday and holyday of obligation,
with a good and hopeful start of a Sunday-school. They are
served by two priests of their own nation, have their own
ushers, and indeed a complete outfit for a parochial establish-
ment except a school.

This is called an annex congregation because it is so; and it
must be so. This is proved, first, by the total break-down of
every autonomous Italian church in this section of the country.
It begins Italian and it ends Irish except in the personnel of the
clergy who, like the Normans in Ireland, sometimes become
Hiberniores Hiberniis. It is further proved by experience. For
with careful prudence, with every known appliance of raising
funds applicable to them, this Italian congregation, two thou-
sand strong, being a fair average of the whole population, give
a revenue every week of but about forty-five dollars. It began
with their giving pretty much nothing for revenue. Then a
few seats were set apart next the statue of the Madonna, five
cents being charged ; after a while the pay area was increased,
and now it embraces the centre rows of pews, no seat costing
more than five cents, and all the side-rows of pews being about
half the sittings entirely free: and with the above result.

The truth is that this people will not give up sufficient
money for church purposes, though doubtless their children
will. To support, let alone to build, a church, more than Italian
generosity is needed. Here, with two excellent Italian priests

72 THE ITALIANS IN NEW YORK. [April,

as good as any in America, no matter of what nationality-
popular with their people, using every expedient that experi-
ence and prudence suggest, only enough is got to pay their
salaries of five hundred a year each and their board not a cent
for repairs, cleaning, furnishing sacristy and sanctuary, starting a
school, buying a site for a church, or any thing else. Of stipends
for Masses there are very few, and the revenue from baptismal
and matrimonial fees is not much. This is the top notch of a
long and labored movement, reached under the highest pressure.
There is a good set of Italian ushers who serve every Sunday
for nothing and are excellent men.

The objection has been made that if they had the whole
church, or a church of their own, six thousand instead of two
would come, etc. Besides the answer given by the notorious
failure of separate parishes noted above, it may be said that the
persons among them who object to the basement are not numer-
ous. The Italians as a body are not humiliated by humiliation.
As a body : there are numbers, chiefly Genoese and Lombards,
who object to the basement, and join the Irish-Americans up-
stairs, and do as well for religion financially and otherwise as
the best. But the bulk are not like that.

The fact is that the Catholic Church in America is to the
mass of the Italians almost like a new religion. There are no
endowed churches, no pilgrimages, and no free food at the con-
vent gates. They have got to readjust themselves to a religion
lacking many things of a kind that to half-instructed people
makes up pretty much the whole religious apparatus. It is not
likely that the old folks will ever be readjusted. They must tag
after the Irish, and little by little their children will do great
things for God in America: their forefathers have been fore-
most in the history of God's heroes.

.Our hope is in the children. The Irish and the Italians do
not easily mix at school, but they can be brought together.
One reason why the Irish move away from a tenement-house is
the moving in of a family or two of Italians. They are almost
of a different civilization. And so the Irish will not send their
children readily to a school which Italian children are begin-
ning to frequent. For example, there has always been a large
class of some ninety little children in the Transfiguration
school, ranging no higher than eight years of age. Originally
all were of Irish parentage. Some Italians were admitted a
few years ago, and things were let work their own way, with the
result that the class is now almost completely Italian.

1 888.] THE ITALIANS IN NEW YORK. 73

An effort must first be made to secure good Italian priests to
work with the American clergy in duplex parishes. This has,
up to the present, been a matter of no small difficulty, but mea-
sures are now being taken which promise to furnish a supply of
the right kind' of material for this work. The good Italian
parish priest stays in Italy, and the Italian missionary goes to
the heathen. The bishops of the eastern part of the United
States would be glad to get a supply of competent Italian cler-
gymen, but hitherto have not known where to look. Within a
few months a practical move has been made by Bishop Scala-
brini, of the diocese of Piacenza, for the supplying of Italian
priests for Italian emigrants to the New World. He has al-
ready established a house for these missionaries, and five priests
in the institution are now awaiting a call to America. They are
from his own and neighboring dioceses of northern Italy.
Bishop Scalabrini has had this project in mind for years, and has
collected facts concerning the condition of Italian emigrants to
South America, and published a book on the subject. With the
aid of the Bishop of Cremona and the blessing of Leo XIII.,
contained in a brief approving his new project, he has now
formed a national association for the support of the new mis-
sionary house. A considerable sum of money has already been
contributed by the Italians in Italy to the project, and a perma-
nent fountain has been opened for the supply of zealous and
well-equipped Italian priests for missions in America. Bishop
Scalabrini expects these priests to act as auxiliary or assistant
priests in parishes where Italians are to be found in numbers.
The Bishop of Cremona, in addition, intends sending a certain
number of students to complete their last year of theology in
American seminaries, and then to serve as assistants in duplex
parishes.

Finally, and above all, an effort must be made to get the chil-
dren into Catholic schools. It is a work of instant necessity.
It is the children of the Neapolitans who go to the Five Points
House of Industry and the City Mission on the opposite side of
" Paradise Park." These institutions, up to recent times, were
mainly occupied in making Protestants of the children of in-
temperate Irish parents. At present they are doing the same
work by wholesale with the children of Catholic Italians.

BERNARD J. LYNCH.

74 THE Music OF IRELAND. [April,

THE MUSIC OF IRELAND.

OF music in general it is only necessary to premise, what
all writers on the subject seem so happy in admitting, that God
himself is its author. It was implanted in man's nature by the
great Creator himself. It is as old as the human race.

All that Sacred Scripture has left us of the first two thousand
years of this world's history is conveyed in less than three
hundred sentences. Yet, brief as this epitome is, it contains a
distinct notice of music. For music is spoken of as practised
one thousand years before the Deluge ; that is, two thousand
years before any of the other arts or sciences were, even rudely,
developed. It is recorded of Jubal, the seventh descendant
yet the contemporary of Adam, that "he was the father of them
that play on the harp and the organs "* (the Hebrew words
Kinnor and Hugab, which are translated harp and organ, are only
generic names for musical instruments stringed, or pulsatile, or
wind instruments). Now, vocal music is admittedly older than
instrumental music ; but instrumental music was in use during a
great portion of Adam's life, and therefore it is plain that vocal
music is as old as our first father himself.

Music, one would judge, is as old as language. Language is
merely conventional. It has no meaning except for those who
are party to the compact as to the significance of its sounds ;
whereas music is felt and understood by the whole human race.
It is the language of nature. It is felt by the infant and the
savage. It speaks in the breeze, in the stream, in the storm. It
whispers through the leaflets, sings through the trees, mourns
through the ivied ruin. It thrills the human heart, producing
aftections of joy or of sorrow. Man may not appreciate other
arts, while music has an abiding fascination for him. The un-
cultivated rustic, who would see no beauty in the rarest Ra-
phaels, and who would turn away with indifference from the
Apollo of Belvidere, is instantly alive to the tones of music, and
loves them and is affected by them. The influence of music
begins with the cradle and ends only with the grave, and so
much do we prize it that we make it part of the enjoyment of
heaven.

With regard to the music of Ireland I would begin by stating
that, when Ireland's great apostle first entered the halls of Tara,

*Gen. iv. 21.

i888.] THE Music OF IRELAND. ^

he saw around him not kings only and princes, but bards, harpers,
and minstrels. Venerable men they were, with long beards and
wearing flowing robes. They sat in the councils of the nation ;
and, when debate was over, their duty was to sound forth the
national melodies and fill the halls with the strains of national
song. The music of the Hibernian branch of the Celtic race is
coeval with their history; and from the earliest times Ireland
has been called " The Land of Song." Of the antiquity of the
harp there is no doubt. It was the favorite instrument of David,
the royal prophet; and that the Irish harp was a fac-simile of
the Egyptian one goes very far to prove the antiquity of Irish
music. Indeed, centuries before the Christian era " the people
deemed each other's voices sweeter than the warblings of a me-
lodious harp ; such peace and concord reigned amongst them that
nothing could delight them more than the sound of their own
voices."* " Tara," continues the famous book from which we
quote, " was so called for the celebrity of its melodies." Alas!
no music is there to-day, for

" The harp that once through Tara's halls the soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls as if that soul were fled.''

That music was highly esteemed in " the Island of Destiny "
we conclude from the honors showered upon its votaries. They
were exempted from paying public taxes. The tax levied for the
killing of a bard was next to that levied for the killing of a king.
They were educated in seminaries, where all class business was
put to music and chanted in the halls. A title " The," similar
to the knighthood of our day was conferred upon them, just
as the same title was conferred in later times, because of their
nobility and valor, on The O'Brien of Desmond, The O'Conor
Don, and The O'Donoughue of the Glens.

Such was Irish music before Patrick came, and then what an
inspiration it received ! If, as we are told, Patrick had but to
convert the druid-stones into altars, and the wells, sacred in
paganism, into baptismal fonts, so he had but to change the
harper into a chorister, and to wed the nation's old melodies to
the words of the nation's new liturgy. Thus Duvach, a con-
verted bard, is recorded as displaying a higher genius in glori-
fying the true God than that which pagan muses imparted to his
strains in adulation of Baal : " Carmina qua quondam peregit in
laudem falsorum deorum, jam in usum meliorem mutans ct lingnam,
poemata clariora composuit in laudem Omnipotent is" (Jocelin, Vita
Patricii)] and Fiach, a bishop, was the composer of some

*Book of Ballymote.

76 THE Music OF IRELAND. [April,

charming chants, which still survive, and which he sang in
honor of his new master, St. Patrick.

Ambrosian chant was introduced into Ireland very soon after
its institution at Milan ; and two canons of a synod held by
Patrick himself relate specially to church music, and show that
chanters were, even at that early period, reckoned among the
inferior clergy. St. Bernard, in his admirable Life of St. Malachy,
relates that that Irish bishop had diligently learnt ecclesiastical
chant when a mere boy, and afterwards established its practice
in his primatial church at Armagh. And when the Gregorian
chant came into use it was cultivated by the Irish priesthood
and taught by them, not only at home, but in every country on
the Continent. To the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists we owe
the information that two Irishmen were the first to teach
psalmody to the nuns of St. Gertrude's convent, A.D. 650. An
Irishman, Helias, or Hely, was the first to teach the Roman
chant in the old city of Cologne. England and Scotland re-
ceived their first harpers from Ireland, as their own musicians
admit; and in an old preface to Dante's Inferno the poet states
that the only harp he had ever seen came from Ireland : " Unicam
quam vidi cytharam, ex Hibernia venit" Every bishop in the
country, according to Cambrensis, a hostile witness, was a
harper, and took his harp with him wherever he went, to soothe
him in his hours of care and to sweeten his hours of rest.
" Episcopi, abbates,et sancti in Hibernia viri, cyt haras circumferre et
in eis modulando pie delectari consueverint" (Cambr. Topog. Hib.}
This accounts for the fact that so many Irish ecclesiastics are
represented in old entablatures with a harp resting on their
knees.

The same may be stated with regard to the profane music of
the land. National music was highly cultivated. The bard and
the harper were met on every road. Ancient authorities tell us
that they numbered, at one time, twelve hundred, at another
that they amounted to nearly a third of the whole population.
Hereditary estates were settled on the most skilled in the art;
and the extensive barony of Carbery, in the county of Cork, was
the pension settled by a Munster king on the bard Cairbre. And
who will say that the Irish are not a musical race in face of the
fact that they alone of all peoples have interwoven the emblem
of their nation's music with the green and gold of their nation's
flag?

Thus was Ireland not only the sanctuary of religion but the
home of minstrelsy and song. Inside, over the door of each

1 888.] THE Music OF IRELAND. 77

dwelling-, hung the harp, inviting the bard's cunning touch.
How beautifully Moore sings:

" When the light of my song is o'er,

Then take my harp to your ancient hall ;
Hang it up at that friendly door,
Where weary travellers love to call."

But it may, not unnaturally, be asked : Had the Irish people
a regular system of musical notation? They had, indeed. And
though, from the time of St. Malachy, the musical schools occa-
sionally used the common system of notation by staves and
points, yet they seem to have preferred their own old system.
This latter consisted of a peculiar description of musical charac-
ters, something similar to the musical points and accents of the
ancient Greeks. These directed both stringed instruments and
the human voice, and gave birth to a large repertory of national
song and harmony, which has come down almost unhurt to our
own times. The superiority of Irish music about the time of
the Norman invasion is reluctantly confessed by the most un-
friendly contemporaries. After a scientific analysis of Irish
popular airs one critic wrote: "We have in the dominion of
Great Britain no original music except the Irish." Gerald
Cambrensis, the reviler of everything Hibernian, wrote : " This
people, however, deserves to be praised for their successful
cultivation of instrumental music, in which their skill is, beyond
comparison, superior to that of every nation we have seen. For
their modulation is not drawling and morose (tarda et morosd]
like our instrumental music in Britain ; but the strains, while
they are lively and rapid, are sweet and delightful. It is aston-
ishing how the proportionate time of the music is preserved,
notwithstanding such impetuous rapidity of the fingers; and
how, without violating a single rule of the art, in running
through trills and slurs, and variously intertwined organizing,
with so sweet a rapidity, so unequal an equality (tarn dispan
paritate) of time, so apparently dissonant a concord (discordi con-
cordid) of sounds, the melody is harmonized and perfected."
Stanihurst confirms this testimony; while Clynn's Manuscript
Annals speak of one O'Carroll as "a famous tympanist and
harper a phoenix in his art/' In the same vein of praise write
such pens as Spenser, Selken, and Good. An acknowledged
authority on this matter asserts that it was from Ireland that the
harp was introduced into Wales, and that Welsh musicians were
instructed in Ireland. The Venerable Bede relates that St. Aidan,
St. Colman, St. Finan, all natives of Ireland and bishops in

78 THE Music OF IRELAND. [April,

England, with a multitude of other Irishmen, opened colleges
for higher studies, among which music was numbered. Add to
this that Scotch annalists have told us that Highland poetry
and music received their chief development in Irish schools.

And what of the organ in Irish musical history ? Well, al-
though "/the king of instruments " was not brought to anything
like perfection before the tenth century, and was not generally
used before the twelfth, there are records showing how very
soon afterward the organ became known in Ireland. About
the end of the fourteenth century mention is made of this in-
strument as of something well known and familiar in the coun-
try ; and an archbishop of Dublin, by his will dated Decem-
ber 10, 1471, bequeathed his pair of organs to a city church to
be used in the celebration of the divine offices. On a certain
joyful occasion, A.D. 1488, "the Archbishop of Dublin began the
Te Deum, and the choir with the organs sung it up solemnly." In
Moore's history of Ireland it is recorded that a pair of organs
were carried off from the Abbey of Killeigh, 1539. The Fran-
ciscan fathers in the convent of Multifernam enjoyed the pos-
session of the oldest organ in Ireland ; although the Book of
Limerick declares that that city had two organs which had
grown old before the wars of Elizabeth.

With the English invasion came the persecution of Irish
music and musicians. Wishing to subjugate the country, the
usurpers first sought to destroy its music. They knew full well
what a power for strengthening national feeling lay in national
minstrelsy and song. They recognized the force of the saying,
yet unformulated : " Give me the making of a people's ballads
and I care not who make their laws." The Normans Catholics,
of course, and some of them intensely Irish were not very hos-
tile in this regard. It was only with the Protestant Reforma-
tion that the effort was made to totally extinguish Irish music
and banish Irish harpers. One favorite of the harp-hating
queen accepted a commission not only to destroy Irish harps
but to hang the harpers. Severe legislation was framed at
once, and the harp and the minstrel were sorely tried indeed.
In the contest

"The minstrel fell ; but the foeman's chain
Could not bring his proud soul under."

Nevertheless the harpers continued and transmitted the
craft to their sons, and went through the land making every
house their home, loved and honored by the people. And

1 888.] THE Music OF IRELAND. 79

happy was it for the house where the piper or harper came to
spend the night. The reader is familiar with the touching
story, told in song, of the old blind piper who, after twenty
years, called at a house where only one inmate was left of all
the dear old family.

Yes, they lived and kept alive among the poor people the
traditions of the land, the glories and the sorrows of centuries.
In Carolan, the last of the great harpers, the glories of Irish min-
strelsy found a noble exponent. Nor was the art quite lost at
the end of the last century. At a musical contest in 1781 one
Charles Fanning took first prize for his charming performance
of' The Coolin," while a lady took third prize for her beauti-
ful rendition of another famous air. James Dungan, a native of
Granard, residing at Copenhagen, paid the expenses of several
of these contests, which gave such an impetus to Irish music in
the last century. Three others, Niel of Dublin, BurkThumoth,
and the son of the bard Tolloch O'Carolan, did much for the
cause by collecting and publishing Irish melodies about the
middle of the last century. But to Edward Bunting the coun-
try is indebted for the most complete collection of all. He
went through the land gathering old airs from the peasantry,
and gave the result to the world of music in a volume (Dublin,
1840) which is near perfection. In later times Mr. Hardiman,
Mr. Walker, " The Citizen," and the 'Celtic and Ossianic socie-
ties have rescued from ruin some of the most exquisite ballads
and Jacobite romances. To these may be added the names of
Sir John Stephenson, McDonnell, Lee, Phelps, De Lacy, Car-
ter, and, last and greatest of all, Kelly Michael Kelly who
played and sung in nearly every court in Europe as well as in
St. Peter's, Rome.

A passing mention will suffice here of such names as John
Mooreland, Thomas Carter, Rorke, Balfe, Cooke, Ashe, Mad-
den, directors of music in the first theatres and best social co-
teries of Europe. Wallace is a man of our own day ; Patrick
Sarsfield Gilmore has linked his fortunes with "the sea-divided
Gael " of this great land ; and within this year a Celtic tenor
of great fame is heard in our operas, as if to remind his com-
patriots of the musical glories of other days.

Carolan had scarcely died when Heaven sent to Ireland a
minstrel who revived all the grandeur of her ancient national
music. In the immortal Thomas Moore we have at once a poet
and a musician. Taking hold of the grand old melodies of his
native land, he wed them to the most beautiful words, wove

8o THE Music OF IRELAND. [April,

them into exquisite poetry ; and the grand old airs which had so
long kept warm the national life-blood of the people assumed
form, popularity, and vigor. Ah ! well might he have addressed
the national instrument :

" Dear harp of my country, in darkness I found thee,
The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long ;
When, proudly, my own island harp, I unbound thee,
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song."

These " Melodies " are sung wherever music has a charm for
mortals. Yea, many of them have been stolen and wedded to
the songs of other lands ; and even Haydn and Rossini have not
blushed to accept a share of the spoils. That the thefts were
committed at a time when Irish music, owing to English cruelty,
was neglected, carries only a little palliation with it. And
Flotow, too ! ah ! what would be his Marta without that
exquisite aria, " 'Tis the last rose of summer "?

That Ireland is still a " land of song " we would conclude
from the assuring fact that some of the greatest musical
geniuses of the last century lived, and composed, and died in
the Irish metropolis. Let a few be named. Dubourg, the
world-famed violin-leader, began his residence in Dublin in 1728.
Castrucci died there in 1752; Geminiani, in 1762; Giordani,
some time later. There Handel wrote his Messiah and other
immortal compositions ; and since his day the greatest artists
have considered Dublin audiences as second, in critical acumen,
to none in the world.

And here in this Western land we must not permit ourselves
to suppose that " the sea-divided Gael" has lost his instinctive
love for sweet music. No; considering his opportunities, he is
very fairly represented in the musical life of our great common-
wealths. His voice participates very largely in the service of
our church choirs. But why do not our Celtic people here join
their voices in congregational singing as successfullv as do our
neighbors of Teuton descent? Has the day of congregational
song all but passed away ? Has the so-called Renaissance ac-
complished its dire mission in this regard? Let us hope not.
The divine offices of the Catholic Church are still as eminently
fitted for harmonious expression as they were in the best days of
monastic song, when Jerome called the Psalms the "love-songs
of the people," when Ambrose and Augustine publicly recom-
mended congregational chant, and when the divine praises arose
in song on every hill-top in Europe from Monte Casino to
Banchor, whose very name implies choral grandeur.

1 888.] ECCE HOMO ! 81

It is through our children, in class-room or Sunday-school,
that success in this matter can be best attained. The old Gre-
gorian airs to which the O Salutaris, the Tantum Ergo, and the
Laudate are set are easily picked up by youthful ears. Then,
with the children scattered through the congregation who
might be furnished with slips of paper containing the words
Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament could be sung and a
happy beginning effected.

Let us hope, for the sake of everything that humanity holds
dear, that the day will yet come when the poor little " Island
of Destiny " shall be again, as of old, the bright and happy land
of song. JOHN M. KIELY.

Transfiguration Church, Brooklyn.

ECCE HOMO!

FOR long the world has strained its eager eyes
In search of Truth, and yet with little gain ;

For wrapping self in cloudy mysteries,

And peering inward, makes the searching vain.

So, long ago, when Truth with patient trudge

Walked o'er the ungrateful earth until It stood
A guiltless culprit 'fore a sinful judge-
While heaven wept o'er man's wild cry for blood-
Pilate, the judge, looked in Truth's shining eyes,

And, troubled, bowed his head to earth, and said :
" What is truth ? " Impatient, worldly-wise,

Dared not to wait for answer turned and fled.

O World! Behold the Man the Truth! not understood
By pride of mind or heart, but by the meek and good.

HENRY C. WALSH.

VOL. XLVII. 6

82 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [April,

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY.

XVII.
"IN THE MORNING, BY THE BRIGHT LIGHT."

A LONG step toward the maturity of any passion has been
taken when once the fact of its existence in the soul has been
squarely recognized. There it is, for good or for evil, to be cut
down and destroyed if its root be noxious ; to be lopped and
pruned if the seed of eternity be in it, and made ready to yield
its ripe fruit in Paradise; to be counted with in either case and
not evaded.

The gray light which outruns the sunrise, peering through
his open window, had waked Paul Murray that morning into a
world in which all things seemed new, even those most familiar
and long accustomed. Brought face to face and without warn-
ing the night before with a host of reinforcing, welcome
potentialities, which promised to triple his own expansive
powers, he had as suddenly found them crowded almost out of
sight by the unaided strength of a feeling, to which they bore
no appreciable relation. For, whether friend or enemy, this
sprang, at all events, from within himself, and they were mere
exterior accidents. Yet it was they that seemed to be a source
of strength, while reason, when it took the upper hand, warned
him against the other as a perilous weakness.

Paul Murray was a man as unaccustomed to palter with his
reason as to trifle with his conscience. They had been very
practical and trustworthy guides so far, but then he had always
been walking contentedly along the King's highway. At this
first fork in the road the voice of one of his counsellors had, at
least to his apprehension, an uncertain sound. While yet under
'the tension of his new attitude toward the future, he had, never-
theless, made an honest effort to conciliate them both, and to
study out the more interesting of his problems by their assist-
ance. In a measure he had succeeded. True, he had begun his
puzzling over that mysterious psychological problem which has
baffled many more experienced heads than his, and asked him-
self how such a feeling as had risen in him spontaneously to
such a height could have done so unweighted by its counter-
part ; but he had ended by admitting that while he was certain

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 83

of himself and his own emotions, with regard to Miss Colton he
was all at sea. Girls, he had been told, were less susceptible
than men, and as a general rule he was entirely ready to believe
it. The order of nature in their regard seemed to require that
they should be laid siege to, and should yield only after long
capitulations. He had no quarrel with the order of nature.
He could only too easily fancy himself sitting down with per-
sistent patience before that citadel, providing he were free to let
its garrison name all the stipulations of surrender. But since he
was not free ? What an unmanly outrage it would be even to
try to get her to lower her flag, knowing that even if she did so
he meant to raise the siege unless she would accept conditions
so unlocked for that, could she have guessed them, she would
have died rather than show a symptom of giving in ! How
could he even set about trying to convert her, as an essential
preliminary to his wooing? His instinctive knowledge of the
girl made him certain that her pride would be up and off at the
first suspicion that he proposed to grant a reward to docility
instead of paying an involuntary tribute to sovereignty. "For
women hate a gift as men a debt," says Browning, and Paul
Murray's new-born perceptions had reached the same conclu-
sion. Even the thought shamed him, and when at last he fell
asleep he pillowed his conscience on the virtuous resolution to
keep out of a danger into which he could not go with honor.

But in the morning his memory and his desires awoke be-
fore his factitious resolution had time to pull itself together.
He had turned his back on danger the night before, and elected
for discretion. But here it was again before him, inviting him
out of the depths of what soft, serious eyes, daring him on the
curves of what archly smiling lips! Was it really danger?
Perhaps he had merely come to a parting in the ways. The
same bourn might lie at the end of each for all he knew at pre-
sent ; and why need he choose so precipitately the ugly stretch
beside which not a flower was springing, not a tree spreading
its branches? There was no denying the quaggy ground that
lay between him and the green fields and pleasant waters that
he saw and longed for; but what a disgraceful coward he would
be to funk at that!

He turned out as he came to this point, and began prepara-
tions for a more than ordinarily careful toilet, noting with plea-
sure as he did so the many fair-weather signs that showed
through the high mill-window. It was so late before the tu-
mult in his thoughts permitted him to go indoors that, instead

84 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [April,

of entering- the house, he had occupied a room adjoining his
office which had been fitted up when he first assumed his pre-
sent position, and used by him until the arrival of his family.
He slept there occasionally still, and his absence from the house
at night seldom caused uneasiness. A rough business suit was
hanging from a hook on the wall, and at the last moment some
renewed hesitation or some passing whim made him choose it
instead of that he had worn the night before. It was still too
early for the mill-hands to assemble, but there was work to be
done at his desk if he finally determined to give himself a holi-
day. At the time when he had laid it out to be accomplished
at this hour, a real reason existed for absenting himself, but that
had since been obviated by one of the items in Mr. Van Al-
styne's communication. Still, he might as well set about it.
Before train-time he might not improbably decide against his
needless trip to town, but it was safe to get his work out of the
way in any case.

He was up to his eyes in it still when Fanny summoned him
to breakfast, and he had been concentrating himself so thor-
oughly that he was more his own man then than it had lately
been given him to be. Mary Anne, who knew his face by
heart and had seen some new expressions in it lately, noted that
he seemed less preoccupied and absent, and felt her own spirits
lighten. The truth was that as he was on his way to the house
the new sense of mastery, the secret knowledge that for him the
material problems of life were settled altogether in his favor,
had come up again in great force and produced their natural
effect. He was as gay as a lark. at table, and when he left it
concluded that he had cleared his desk so nearly that he could
volunteer to read the just-arrived county newspaper to his fa-
ther and still have plenty of time on his hands. He might, per-
haps, run himself so close and be so driven at the last that,
through pure absorption in his work, luck 'might take the set-
tling of the question out of his hands ! There was not much in
his mind, in fact, but that slight avoidance of a decision to show
that a decision was still pending, and that, at a given point on
the face of the office-clock, it would infallibly come up for set-
tlement. He couldn't well take less than twelve minutes to get
to the cars behind that bay mare, unless he thrashed her more
than a merciful man would care to.

He was reading aloud while going through this under-
ground mental process; reading, too, with great deliberation
and a punctilious attention to his stops. Davie had torn the

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYN& s FACTORY. 85

wrapper off the paper before his brother came in, and, after
studying with care the column of " Wit and Alleged Wit" on
its fourth page, had turned it to find the report of a murder case
just ended at the county seat. Mr. Murray may also have
wished to hear the evidence, as both the accused and the victim
hailed from no further off than Milton Corners; but, if so, he
was doomed to wait for it. Paul took up the paper just as it
lay and began at the first column, and for five minutes or more
his deep voice went steadily on, charged with items such as these :

' Miss Luella Teets, of Greenbanks, is paying a visit to Miss
Mamie Rings in North Milton."

" G. I. Gillett, a pedlar for John Pulver, came home sick with
pneumonia on Tuesday."

" John P. Roraback is satisfied that rabbits are as scarce in
the woods as hen's teeth this season."

" A. Travers and Pulaski S. Hover, of East Milton, have each
a cat that has learned to open a door by looking on and saying
nothing. The cat jumps up and holds on to the door-handle
with one paw, and with the other will keep the thumb-latch
clicking like a telegraph instrument until the latch rises and the
door opens, when the cat lets herself down and walks in."

Mr. Murray was a patient man, but as Paul, after this last
weighty piece of local news, stopped to look at his watch and
then went on again with " Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Connor are on
the sick-list at Westport," he mildly interposed a question:

" Isn't there something about the Hoysradt trial ? It was to
come on last Monday."

" That's a fact," said Paul, glancing down the sheet. " I had
forgotten it. Oh ! columns on columns of it ! I'm afraid, father,
you'll have to get through with that by yourself this time. I've
my hands full in the office and must get back."

Back he went forthwith, settled down at his desk again, and
wrote an important letter to a cotton-broking firm in New
York with flawless attention. Then he leaned back in his chair
and looked at the clock, and considered what it would be best to
do next ; and while thus considering it happened to occur to him
that the pleasure he had been taking in the thought of letting
Miss Colton choose Fanny's piano was a miserable piece of
weakness. What did he know about her competence in matters
of that sort? She had a lovely voice, certainly, but she hardly
knew how to use it ; and as to her playing! Paul threw back his
head, with the jolly, upward-inflecting laugh he had when any-
thing pleased him, and started without a minute's delay for the

86 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [April,

next room and his other coat. He hadn't a doubt about his pru-
dence left ; his errand, in fact, had just developed into one of
necessary duty. Paul's acquaintance with Wordsworth was
practically nil, but had he been the poet's most ardent admirer,
and at this moment some one had quoted to him the line which
addresses Duty as the "stern daughter of the voice of God," he
would have been ready to find it very much at fault. His own
immediate duty was as easy as an old shoe.

XVIII.
CONCERNING PETTICOAT CONVERTS.

THE up-train was twenty minutes late, and when Paul Mur-
ray, having left his trap at the hotel stable, came through the
waiting-room to the long platform next the track, he found two
of his clerical acquaintances passing and repassing each other as
they walked up and down. He bowed politely to the Reverend
Adoniram Meeker, who at that moment was still clad in rather
rusty black, being, in fact, on his way to replace it by his wed-
ding suit at a Riverside tailoring establishment. Father Seetin
he stood still and waited for, and, when he came up again, be-
gan pacing at his side.

Father Seetin was an old priest now, well on in his sixties,
white-haired, slender in figure, and with a delicate, nervous
face. For many years he had been rector of a large city parish,
but, falling into poor health, he had gone abroad, hoping to re-
cover sufficiently for heavy duty, and had been disappointed.
He seemed well enough when he got back, but somehow the
sea-breezes that swept through his parish kept his throat in a
state of aggressive rawness which no lozenges would conciliate
and no beard remedy. He gave up the struggle at last, and,
at his own request, was transferred to the poor parish of Milton
Corners, where he breathed his native, inland air and picked up
vigor enough to transform all that part of the little town which
fell under his jurisdiction. He had just inherited some private
means, and at once applied them to remedying certain deficien-
cies which had escaped the notice of his predecessor, though
Father Seetin was privately appalled by their extent when he
first came. But then his predecessor, poor man, as Father See-
tin occasionally reminded himself, had had several stations to
attend to, and if, toward the close of his life, he had developed
a sort of land-hunger which made him the possessor of more

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 87

farms and houses than were ultimately good for him, he had
also developed a queer, insane streak which was said to be he-
reditary. At any rate, though there was plenty to be done and
undone, Father Seetin had found ways and means to do it all,
and Milton Corners was now a model parish. He had his
hands pretty full, but his people were healthy on the whole,
and he still found leisure to read his St. Augustine and his Mo-
ther Juliana, to write verses in which the beauty of the senti-
ment surpassed sometimes the melody of the rhythm, and to
dream away a good deal of time at his organ and his violin. It
was their common love for music which had cemented a rather
familiar friendship between him and Paul Murray, almost more
than the fact that in his country seclusion he was not often in the
way of meeting men who approached his own high level of
general intelligence. The relation between them was one
which, given the other circumstances, might have existed en-
tirely apart from their professional relation as priest and par-
ishioner. Possibly it only supplied another instance of the kind
of attraction which elder men felt for Paul Murray a sort of
living over their youth in him, perhaps, with a feeling that he
had a fair chance to steer clear of rocks on which they might
once have foundered.

Father Seetin explained to Paul that he was on his way to
Roraback's, the next station beyond Milton Corners, on a sick-
call. The invalid was known to both of them, having once been
employed in John Van Alstyne's factory. She had married an
engineer on the Hudson River Road within a year or so, and
gone away to the county town to live, as she phrased it, with her
"people-in-law." She had been none too welcome in her new
home, and had now returned to her old one in a hopeless decline.

" Poor little Molly !" said the priest, "it gave me a real shock
to see her. All that fine Irish bloom she had has been washed
clean out of her cheeks, and she is going to cough herself into
her grave before Christmas. The old woman declares she has
been murdered outright, and she's not so far out of the way,
cither."

" When did she get back home ?" asked Paul Murray.

" Some day last week. Her mother tells me she took advan-
tage of her husband's absence on the road, and made a descent
upon the Millers and brought Molly back by force of arms and
of tongue, I reckon. She has a powerful vocabulary on occa-
sion, has Mrs. Dempsey."

" Why, what was up?"

88 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [April,

" Oh ! Molly was sick and had been wanting a priest and
couldn't get one. So she wrote home to her mother that she
couldn't stand it any longer."

" Couldn't get one? Why, you baptized Jake Miller before
you married them ! "

" So I did and with misgivings. I never thought he would
hold out long it was too clear a case of female bulldozing.
That iron under-jaw and thick neck of his, to be of use on the
right side, would have had to be covered either with a hatful of
brains or a triple layer of old custom and inherited tradition.
He had plenty of the latter, but it was all of the wrong sort. I
did my best to warn Molly ; but what can be done with a girl in
love or a boy, for that matter?"

"I don't know the case," said Paul; "she left the mill some
time before she married. I heard that Jake Miller had become
a Catholic, and I supposed it was all right. Where was the dif-
ficulty ? "

" Just here," said Father Seetin. " Molly Dempsey stood to
her guns like a hero, and said she'd see him further before she'd
marry a Protestant. She had the whip-hand at the time the
girl always has at the point where they stood then and as the
fellow wanted her, and had sense to see she meant it, he asked
for instruction, and apparently took it with a sufficiently good
grace. I had no option that I could see, but I didn't like it I
never like it in such cases. He went to church with her two or
three times, and then he cut the whole thing, partly through
pure indifference, I suppose, and partly, as near as I can make
out from Molly, out of deference and affection, perhaps for
his mother. She has had a bad time of it between the pair of
them, I'm afraid. She lost her baby without having a. chance
to get it baptized, and that was the last straw that broke the
camel's back."

" How can a man be such an unnecessary brute as that to a
woman he has once cared enough about to marry?" said Paul
Murray, with more wonder in his voice than heat, although the
story moved him to indignation.

" It wasn't the man, as it happens. He was away at the time
of the birth, and old Mrs. Miller is a Baptist, and something of
a termagant into the bargain. She seems to have told Molly
that she would offset the offence of Jake's baptism by keeping
her grandson out of the reach of such superstition. Perhaps
her conscience was clear about it I can't say. But Molly is
really grieving herself to death over just that one thing, I do be-

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 89

lieve. She has got the mother's heart in her, and there's no con-
soling- her, thus far, for the empty place she thinks she will feel
even in Paradise."

"It is a heavy penalty to pay," said Paul Murray after they
had made a turn or two in silence. " And when she had been
stanch, too, and got all the guarantee she seemed to need be-
fore setting out on that road. You never like such marriages,
you say. Why not, when conversion precedes marriage?"

" Ho ! conversion ? Conversion is one thing, and a petticoat
convert of either sex is another. There are some facts of
human nature, or of man nature, of which you can't very well
convince a woman ; and the better she is, the harder it is to con-
vince her in advance of experience. They take pinchbeck for
gold nine times in ten. And then, if there is any backbone in
them, and any genuine gold of their own, they will keep on try-
ing to pass the trash over the counter for the rest of their natu-
ral lives. Well, it will do to buy heaven with, and that's
about the best one can say about it. And yet I have no call to
be so hard on the poor petticoat converts. I was one myself."

" How was it if you don't mind the question?"

" Not a bit. I was in Montevideo, partly for health and
partly on business, and there I fell in love with my wife. She
was half-Irish, half-Spanish, and whole Catholic. For my part,
although my parents ended as Methodists, they were not so in
my infancy, and I had never been baptized at all. I had no preju-
dices one way or the other, -and as the custom of the country
demanded a certificate of baptism as a preliminary to one of
marriage, I complied with it. There is no laying down hard-
and-fast rules where the grace of God is concerned. I had, I
suppose, the native wit which let me understand, in part any
way, the value of the treasure I was getting in my wife, and
when she slipped away from me within the year, I had learned
enough to follow her. I don't know that I should have done so
but for her death. It was the real thing with both of us the
kind that, whether it come late or come early, comes once only ;
perhaps because it is going to last through eternity. But while
I had her she came too near bounding the horizon for me.
Many a time I have thanked God as heartily for taking her as
for giving her."

"You say that sort of feeling never comes but once," said
Paul Murray in his most unconcerned tone. " Suppose it comes
alone when it comes what about the eternity of it then?"

" Ho ! " returned the priest with a little laugh. " Suppose it

90 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE*S FACTORY. [April,

never comes at all? which is what most often happens, I take it.
What of it? This is a very short bit of eternity that we are
going through at present, and the infinite God, who is charity,
has, doubtless, better things in store for us than mere human
love. At the same time, it is well to remember that we shall
keep our humanity and our identity for ever, and so will not be
likely to lose our memory of whatever was worth saving in our-
selves or in those by our love for whom now our love for God
is made evident. And there comes the train. "

XIX.

AT THE "MUSIC EMPORIUM."

COMPARED with Pekin or say old Rome when its bounda-
ries extended furthest Riverside is not to be called a large
city. Still, there is room enough in it for several music-stores,
as well as for a manufactory of pianos, the latter at the extreme
northern limit and not very far from the general railway sta-
tion. Paul Murray, who had forgotten to inquire at which of
these establishments the instrument had been bought which
supplied the pretext for his presence in town, found sufficient
occupation and an excellent means of settling his early dinner
in visiting one after another of them and trying their wares.
He experienced a certain unforeseen difficulty in these explora-
tions. To make direct inquiries -at the wrong places did not
seem specially embarrassing, at least before trying it, but one
experiment convinced him that he would have a singular disin-
clination to repeat them at the right one. Even the expedient
which he presently hit upon, of selecting the two or three best
instruments in each of the warerooms and asking their prices
a process which he thought likely to elicit information as to
whether they were still for sale, and to open the way for a fur-
ther and purely incidental question if one were needed seemed
to be lacking in point of definiteness. If the truth must be told,
he began to find something a trifle absurd in both himself and
his ostensible business. The latter was too vague, for one thing,
to set well on a young man with so pronounced a tendency to
positive views about things which concerned him. But he had
been in several places, and disposed of a very fair share of the
afternoon in looking over and trying new music, before he
abruptly admitted to himself that he did not now and never
had cared one copper about selecting the piano ; that he was, in

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYN&S FACTORY. 91

fact, rather too willing to leave the choice entirely to Miss Col-
ton ; and that the sole and only reason that had brought him to
town was the wish to go back with her in the train and drive
her over to Milton Centre afterwards. And then he remem-
bered that it was Saturday, and reflected that she would proba-
bly refuse the drive and stay at Squire Cadwallader's according
to her custom.

He was turning the corner on which stood Shirley's Music
Emporium, the largest and best equipped of the Riverside shops,
and the most likely of them all in which to meet Miss Colton,
providing any final errand took her thither to re-inspect a pur-
chase before train-time, as the extreme probability of this last
unpleasant contingency struck him. And as it did so he looked
up and beheld, himself unnoticed, Miss Colton entering the
upper one of the two doors leading into the shop, accompanied
by two young ladies and an extremely well-dressed and good-
looking young man, to the latter of whom she was talking with
much animation.

For a minute or two Paul felt rather disgusted with things
in general, and also rather puzzled concerning what it would be
well to do next. Had Miss Colton been alone, or in company
with young ladies only, he would have presented himself before
her without much further delay ; but, under existing circum-
stances, he was in no hurry. He finally concluded to go into
Shirley's, but by the lower door. He knew the place well.
The shop was large and divided nearly into halves by a thin
.partition, low, yet too high for a tall man to see over, which ran
through nearly its whole length, though at the back was a plat-
form of two or three steps' elevation which extended across the
entire width of the interior. On this there was a grand piano
open, various wind instruments, and racks with music on them,
standing about in a way suggestive of a recent rehearsal. The
side on which Paul Murray had entered was the salesroom for
sheet-music and matters of that sort, while the other was oc-
cupied by musical instruments of the usual descriptions. To a
young woman who advanced to receive his orders Paul sig-
nified that he wanted to look over the music in a great portfolio
standing on an easel, and would not trouble her until he had
made his selections. There were other customers in the place,
and he sat down on a stool in front of it, and thought he would
take his bearings before making his appearance on the other side.

Across the partition came the pleasant twitter of girlish talk
and laughter, with now and then a male voice joining in, but

92 JOHN VAN ALSTYN&S FACTORY. [April,

quite indistinguishable as to any substance of conversation,
partly because everybody seemed to be chattering at once, and
partly because some one was running scales, now on one piano,
now on another. Paul had counted on the usual racket in the
place before sitting down, as music-lessons were pretty con-
stantly given there by one of its proprietors. But presently
Zip's clear voice sounded all alone and with entire distinctness.

"See here, Nat," she began, " this is the piano I finally set-
tled on, but I was half-inclined to take this other. What do
you think ? "

" There's not much to choose between them as to quality of
tone, it seems to me. I would prefer the grand, for looks.
Why didn't you take it? "

" The price, for one thing," said Zip, in a tone that irresis-
tibly suggested a shrug of the shoulders.

" The price ? I thought you had a Croesus to draw on ! "

" But I've a conscience to draw with," said Zip. " Besides-
well, I guess the square one would fit the place it is intended
for better."

" Well, I should have thought you would have gone up to
Sandiman's instead of to any of these places," said the other
voice. " You would probably have got the same thing, or as
good, cheaper by taking it at first hand. Why didn't you ? "

" Goodness ! " said Zip, " I never once thought of that.
What a goose I am ! "

Some one began striking octaves just at this point, and the
talk grew confused again. Then three or four bars of the " Last.
Waltz" slid out on the air with its serpentine curves of sound,
and one of the girls at once cried against it as too sentimental
for broad daylight ; and then came the prelude to " 1 Would that
my Love," which Zip took up, accompanied by the male voice in
a basso as powerful and as sweet as Paul remembered hearing.
They sang it through, and then the same voice which had pro-
tested against Von Weber except by starlight said :

" It is a pity you cannot have that duet for the performance
down at your place, Zip. Of course there is no one there who
could take the second."

" She will Irave to import me, for that occasion only," said the
young man. " Or is there somebody ? "

" There's Dr. Sawyer," said Zip.

" Is that Bella's young man?" asked another of the girls.

" It's her present substitute for one," returned Zip.

" And can he sing ? "

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE*S FACTORY. 93

Zip laughed. " I wish you could hear him in the choir on
Sundays! His voice is like a saw ! The squire says it is a sort
of desecration to work so hard with it on the Sabbath day."

There was a general laugh.

" I see," said the young man ; "you can't get along without
me, can you ? Well, send for me, and I'll run down when the
show is ready to come off. I must go down-town now, though.
Well, good-by, little girl, and take precious good care of your-
self. You are an absurd figure of a schoolmarm, Zip ! You
must strike terror to the hearts of all the bad big boys!"

" There aren't any bad big boys," laughed Zip. "They are
all good little ones."

Paul, looking up from his portfolio at this moment, saw the
group on the other side of the partition reflected in a broad
mirror which tipped forward from the wall at the back of the
shop and reached the floor of the platform. There was no one
in the upper store except Miss Colton and her party. The
other girls were still at one of the pianos, but Zip, with her eyes
shining and her countenance all smiles, stood half-facing the
mirror and looking up at the young man. He was holding her
off at arm's length, with a hand on each of her shoulders. If he
had been objectionable on the sidewalk, he was so doubly ob-
jectionable now that Paul Murray, in his haste to get away from
the sight of him, upset the easel behind which he was sitting, and
in so doing scattered all the loose sheets from the portfolio.
He gathered them up as speedily as he was able, and shot out
on to the steps leading to the street. He came face to face
with Zip as he did so. She colored to her eyelids with the sur-
prise of meeting him, but she said with sufficient carelessness :

" Good-afternoon, Mr. Murray. Who would have thought
of your being here ? I am so sorry I did not have a chance to
make you acquainted with my brother. That is he just getting
into the horse-car."

Paul Murray turned his head squarely toward the car, con-
scious that the sudden revulsion in his sentiments toward the
departing young man might culminate in a too beatific smile.

"I didn't know you had a brother," he said when he looked
down at her again.

" Didn't you?" echoed Zip with a sort of wondering drawl.
" Why, no, of course you didn't. I had no occasion to speak of
him. Oh ! I have got brothers in assorted sizes, but that one is
the biggest. If you are coming into the shop again I will in-
troduce you to his wife and to my own sister. Wait a minute,

94- JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [April,

though," she added hastily, as he laid his hand on the door-knob
in ready acquiescence. 4< I've just a word I must say to them
first. You know it won't be polite to whisper afterwards, and
there's some some business," hesitating, "that I forgot."

" Who is that, Zip?" asked Mrs. Colton as the girl came up,
having left Paul Murray near the door. She spoke in the pecu-
liarly sibilant whisper which she had sometimes been advised
by irritated acquaintances to use when she wanted her voice to
carry to its farthest limit. It was a natural defect that she now
and then forgot and suffered from, but oftener remembered and
put to annoying uses.

" Sh ! " cautioned Zip. " It is a gentleman from Milton
Centre. Don't mention the piano before him, will you ? "

" Why, what has he got to do with it?" returned Mrs. Col-
ton, looking steadily in Paul's direction. " Is the new piano for
him ? Oh ! you are a case, Zip. Pretending it was for a little
girl ! He's a nice little girl, isn't he, Mat ? "

" I wish you had some sense, Fan ! " retorted Zip, with an
angry blush. " It is for a little girl, but there's no occasion for
him to know it. Now, mind, Fanny Colton ! "

What special motive she had for silence Zip was never quite
able to tell herself, though she inclined to attribute it chiefly to
her aversion to talking on any personal matter before Nat's
wife, for whom her feelings were not exactly sisterly. Yet it
would have been so easy and so natural for her, if not to take
Paul Murray at once into confidence, at least to get his opinion
on her purchase before it was sent down, that she continued to
wonder at herself all the rest of the day for having acted on the
contrary impulse. Such a confidence, too, was what he had
expected from her. He had caught Fanny's long-range whisper
and been amused by it. But he was making some rapid dis-
coveries about himself under the new lights thrown on him
within the last twenty-four hours, and when he found that Miss
Colton really proposed keeping her own counsel he also found
in himself a well-grown purpose to tease her into a frank avowal
later on. For that reason he declined the invitation to go home
with the girls and see their mother, on the plea of some remain-
ing business, which would occupy him until he should meet her
at the cars. As for Zip, her cool exterior hid a nervousness
which permitted her to remember only when it was just too
late that his errand in town had probably been the same as her
own, and that at any cost she ought to have made sure.

LEWIS R. DORSAY.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

1 888.] AN OPEN LETTER TO A NUN.

AN OPEN LETTER TO A NUN.

I HAVE thought that my reply to the following letter of in-
quiry from a devoted religious might be perused with interest
by others than the one to whom it is specially addressed :

DEAR REVEREND FATHER:

We are anxious to introduce a better order of music in our
little convent choir than we now use, and, knowing of your deep
interest in this subject of appropriate music in our churches, I
venture to trespass on your valuable time to ask your advice as
to what books and music it would be of most service to us to
purchase. Our choir consists of five well-trained female voices.
Any hints that you will be kind enough to give us in this direc-
tion will be most gratefully appreciated by

Yours most respectfully,

SISTER MARY .

DEAR SISTER MARY :

I am not a little puzzled over your request for my advice as
to what books and music may be of service to you with a view
of introducing another and better order of music in your choir,
consisting of only five voices. I was under the impression that
your community was quite a large one, and that your choir-
nuns numbered probably thirty or forty ; and I also presumed
that your order had, as I know those with whom I am more
intimately acquainted have, a traditional chant definitely order-
ed by their holy rule, which may not be changed without per-
mission of the Holy See, as the common ritual song or chant of
the church is authorized by and subject to the same authority
for the common divine services of the people. But I see you
smiling at my misapprehension of your letter.

You must pardon the foregoing little piece of feigned stu-
pidity on my part in supposing that by "choir "you meant
your choir of cloistered nuns. I have played the ignoramus
not without purpose, as you will see. The common use of that
little word " choir," as applied to what, in our ordinary parochi-
al churches, is not a choir at all, but an organ-gallery with some
singers in it, whose singing the organ music generally makes
wholly unintelligible, has done a deal of damage in confirming a
false tradition which has not only banished the real, true Ca-

96 AN OPEN LETTER TO A NUN. [April,

tholic choir or " chorus," but has also obliterated one of the
most essential and beautiful architectural features from our
churches, lacking which such buildings would not have been
recognized by Catholic people in ages preceding our own, nor,
indeed, happily yet in some parts of the world, as Catholic
churches at all.

In female convent chapels the only choir, of course, is the
place where the nuns assemble for the divine office, the recita-
tion of which, by God's mercy, has never been left to a few
" well-trained " voices. In the body of the chapel, where the
children under their care are assembled for holy Mass, there is
properly no "choir," though there may be a special selected
chorus of leading singers conveniently near to some musical
instrument. We often read, in the reports of concerts given
upon the stage or from a church organ-gallery, that the soloists
were Signor This, Madame That, and Miss T'other, assisted by
a chorus of one hundred or more voices. That is the world's
way of putting it. But God's way is just the reverse : it should
be the chorus of one hundred or five hundred or more voices,
according to the size of the congregation assembled, assisted in
their singing by the well- trained leading singers. The leading
singers in a convent chapel should lead the singing by the
whole assembly of children, the nuns in their choir joining too
in the common song of Praise. The practice of imitating the
modern debased parochial choir in having one or another well-
trained singer, be she scholar or what to my mind is vastly
worse a nun, trolling forth an artistic solo or singing with an-
other a sympathetic duet for the children to listen to, is as per-
nicious as it is ridiculous. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ! And
self-love, wounded by an accidentally false note or failure to
hear afterward some flattering words of praise, will surely put
a sour face at the dinner-table. I am told that it takes not less
than two entire days and nights to get over the mortification
from an adverse criticism. All this happens because the whole
system is practically based upon the principle, though unac-
knowledged, that they are singing to their own honor and glory
and not to God's.

In the matter of church music for the liturgical services of
the church I am an out-and-out radical, which, being interpreted,
means one who believes that it is in vain to look for fruit of any
kind upon a tree if it has lost its root; that when the fruit is
seen one knows of what sort the root is ; and, conversely, that
the character of the root being ascertained, the kind of fruit to

1 888.] AN OPEN LETTER TO A NUN. 97

be gathered is not doubtful. Neither men nor women expect to
gather grapes from a thorn-root nor figs from a thistle-root. I
have that, as you know, on good authority. When I am offered
church music as a delectable and nourishing fruit which is evi-
dently the song of sensual delight, and which feeds my animal
passions and the vanity of the singers, I know I have got hold
of one of Eve's apples, and the root whence it came, though
never so hidden, is incontestably the root of pride, self-love, and
luxury. I know you agree with me that church music, as a
worthy fruit, should be of quite another sort: the humble, lov-
ing, ardent praise of God, first, last, and always. In some
respects it is not quite so pretty a fruit as the other, but its taste,
in more senses than one, is divine. The root of the tree of
Melody which bears that fruit will be found to be very clean,
chaste in form, going very far down into the ground of our
souls as roots which humility plants always do and wholly
free, as is also its fruit, from the nasty, slimy, destructive canker-
worm of sensuality. It is the root of divine love and obe-
dience.

When we wish to get at a better order of church music (and
why not the best?) we must first of all decide what fruit we are
seeking for. So, my dear sister, if you decide that the fruit of
your convent-chapel singing is to be what the limited and choice
singing of only your five well-trained voices can produce, and
will inevitably produce, I would stop right here ; for I am try-
ing hard to get rid of the piece of apple Eve gave to Adam
which yet sticks in my own vocal chords; and I won't bean
Adam to offer any of the same fruit to another Eve.

But if you want the fruit of the singing to be God's praise,
a better, ay, the best, order is very easy to find and plain to
understand. The replies to three simple questions will tell us
all we want to knowviz., first: By whom? second: When?
and third: What?

First question: By whom? I am going to ask the Royal
Psalmist, from whom the whole world for so many centuries has
learned man's noblest themes of divine praise, to reply for me.
Just read over his I48th Psalm. That contains a list that he made
up of the singers of the praise of God, beginning with the angels,
and then from below up, through dragons and all depths, fire,
hail, snow, ice, the spirits of the storms, mountains, hills, trees,
beasts, and birds, to kings and all people, princes and judges,
young men and virgins, old men and youths. He was evidently
bent on getting the whole creation into his list.

VOL. XLVII. 7

98 AN OPEN LETTER TO A NUN. [April,

Among them, you see, David includes virgins, and it goes
without saying that under this head all nuns and all their
scholars are included.

It is very delightful to hear a large number of persons sing-
ing together, and there is nothing in the world better calculated
to awaken in the breast profound emotion and enthusiasm,
except being one of the singers yourself. To one who stands in
the midst of a chorus of singers, especially if it be, not simply
a chorus of a select few " well-trained " voices, but a general
chorus of all assembled, the wave of emotion and enthusiasm
created is so powerful that one capnot help being drawn into it,
as floating chips are drawn into a strong eddy of waters ; or, to
use a more human simile, one feels a similar irresistible excite-
ment and impulse such as is given to dancers, which every one
knows is much more hearty and joyous and, I will just add in a
whisper, more innocent and self-forgetting \v\\Qn it comes to the
" hands all 'round" ! While, on the contrary, dancers who dance
solo, or even in quartetto, and especially in that seductive dance,
the waltz, in duetto, it is beautiful to look at ; the beholders enjoy
the sight, and the dancers also enjoy it at their own expense ;
often, alas ! at a cost far too dear. Therefore, I say, let us have
" voices all 'round," pouring forth an innocent and self-forget-
ting song of praise when we are singing before and to the Lord,
and leave the vain solo and the seductive duetto where they
belong. I think I must amend the sentence of the holy Psalmist
by the change of one word, and say : " Who shall ascend into
the mountain of the Lord, and who shall stand in his 'holy
place? The innocent and clean of heart, who have not received
their voices in vain !"

I mention no names, but once upon a time I was present in a
convent on the feast of the Sacred Heart, when there was to be
a grand procession from the chapel through the corridors and
out upon the green lawn, where stood a beautiful statue of the
Sacred Heart, before which hymns were to be sung and prayers
to be said. All the nuns and all the children were assembled,
and were to take part in the celebration. I was the clerical
celebrant on the occasion. After some preparatory services in
the chapel, at which six " well-trained " voices sang something,
the words of which I could not distinguish, the procession
started, led by the six before-mentioned " voices," followed by
all the children, a hundred or more, and all the nuns, about forty,
two by two. To my utter surprise, and I will not add what else,
no one sang in that procession but the six well-trained singers.

i888.] AN OPEN LETTER TO A NUN. 99

All the rest of us preserved a grim silence. You can imagine
what a dismal time our end of the procession had by the time
the sextet had reached the outside corridor and was pretty well
out of hearing, and had left us all standing, waiting for our turn
to move, in dull, uneasy silence, our hearts beating at about the
rate they would in sleep, and with not a gleam of joy to be seen
or even suspected as present upon a single countenance. So we
marched out with the gayety of a funeral procession, and disposed
ourselves in a circle about the beautiful statue, led by our trusty
little band, who sang for us, by proxy, all that every heart there
should have been, if they were not, burning to sing with joy-
beaming faces and thrilling hearts, and at the top of their voices,
until the surrounding hills gave back their answering echoes to
the glad refrain. I found also, as we all fell upon our knees, that
I was to be proxy for all the praying. So we sang, and so we
prayed, in the popular style, and altogether in the fashion of our
modern worship, by proxy ; and I thought to myself that, to be
consistent, the procession ought to have been made by proxy
too !

So, my dear sister, I think we may consider that the best
order of church music is one which encourages, and takes it for
granted that the singing is to be done by all. Nuns whose
occupation of life is to teach, profess to impart to their scholars
all the accomplishments which befit a well-educated, refined, and
pious Catholic girl. Take my word for it that the accomplish-
ment of singing devoutly, intelligently, sweetly, joyously, and
lovingly to the Lord is not one of the least desirable or the least
important for them to acquire. Many of them will be mothers
one of these days, and then you can well imagine what a power
they would have at command to charm the hearts of their little
ones, and their older ones too, and thus, through the powerful
influences of song, instil loving and pious thoughts of God and
devout imitation of the saints into their minds and hearts.

All speech of the mother is as a sweet melody to the child;
and ever when she longs to woo their love or comfort their
sorrowing hearts she instinctively sings. Who will not agree
that if mothers possessed more skill in this loving and divine
art than they generally do, and used it day by day to sing of
God at the cradle-side or in the home circle, they would not
have to lament, alas! so commonly as they do, the early loss
of their children's love, and their hankerings to escape from
the pure atmosphere and simple joys of the home fireside?
Neither would they shed so many bitter tears as they do, seeing

ioo AN OPEN LETTER TO A NUN. [April,

with alarm the cold wave of infidelity chilling their young
hearts, and all exercises of religious duty so soon becoming
wearisome and distasteful to them.

I solemnly call upon you, my dear sister, as I would call upon
all nuns, to reflect upon the grave responsibility which must lie
at your doors in this matter, since to you is committed, in God's
providence, the training of such a vast and influential number
of the future mothers in our land. And I wish I were able to
send this little adjuration to every nun in the world !

Second question: When should all sing together? I reply:
Whenever the occasion calls for singing the praises of God or of
his saints. In other words, whenever there is an assembly of
nuns or scholars, or of both together, for religious worship of
any kind. In order that they may become accustomed to sing-
ing, I would have them sing not only at Mass and Vespers and at
special devotional meetings of pious sodalities, but I strongly
recommend their singing both at morning and night prayers.
There are some beautiful, heart-uplifting hymns suitable for the
morning, and some equally charming, heart-composing hymns
which, if sung before retiring to rest, would aid greatly in calm-
ing the tired and often fretted spirit after the troubles and cares
of the day. School-girls are not without hearts to ache, and
spirits to be sorely tried and tempted (though we might smile at
the petty causes thereof), and nothing will act with such a
magical power to bring thoughts of loving-kindness, of chastity,
of good resolve and hope for the morrow, as the singing to-
gether some devout evening hymn at the night prayers. The
tones of the sweet refrain will linger in their memories and
soothe them peacefully to sleep.

Third question: What shall they sing all together? Two
subjects for a reply present themselves to my mind, and I shall
here content myself with giving some advice on the first one
only, deferring my reply upon the second until a future occasion,
both for lack of space, and recalling to mind the example of a
celebrated court preacher who was importuned by the queen to
tell her some of her faults. " Your majesty sleeps during my
sermons,'' promptly replied his reverence. " Tell me some
more," asked the queen. " It is said," answered the preacher,
" that sovereigns have short memories, and therefore I will not
burden your majesty's mind with more than one fault to correct
at a time."

Your chapel services are, I suppose, about the same as in
most convents rarely a High Mass, and Vespers only chanted by

i888.] AN OPEN LETTER TO A NUN. 101

the nuns in their private choir, the ordinary Mass being a Low
one; and besides these the devotional services at which the chil-
dren are expected to be present, consisting of morning and
evening prayers, special exercises of piety by sodalities in their
meetings, the devotions of the month of Mary, and during the
octave of Corpus Christi and in honor of the Sacred Heart.

There are many devout and instructive hymns in English
which are at your choice for all these occasions, and I am sorry
to say that there are not a few, in pretty general use too, which
in my opinion are anything but instructive, and sadly lacking in
that robust, serious expression of devotion towards the Divine
Being, our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the saints, which ren-
ders piety either respectable or healthy. The words being what
they are, the tunes which sing them are of an equally low grade.
They hop and skip, they snicker and scream, or languish with
silly sentimentality ; but there isn't a movement or a breath of
prayer in them. School-girls are proverbially quick-witted, as
you probably know. Avoid giving them hymns to sing which
lack decent literary merit, and which in melody and harmony
are musically despicable. Religion, through all its expressions
in language and tone, should bear the stamp of what is simple
without being mean ; solemn, dignified, and lofty, without being
formal and severe ; pleasing and warm in sentiment, without de-
scending to triviality and sensational passion. I have heard
hymns to the Blessed Virgin, and even to the Most Holy Sacra-
ment, which in words and music only befitted the mind, heart,
and voice of some moon-struck, love-sick swain serenading his
mistress with a guitar. Such prayer and music, addressed to
God and the court of heaven, are not only sillily incongruous,
but are downright pernicious, and nothing saves this service
from being a blasphemous insult but the ignorant good-will of
the performers.

There are hymnals containing a goodly number of hymns
instructive and devout in language, and respectable and healthy
in pious expression, adapted to tunes which neither hop, skip,
snicker, nor scream. In these you can find a good hymn for al-
most any occasion you can name; and the best way to find out
their value is to have them sung by everybody together, with
full voice and in hearty unison. Singing in harmony is pretty ;
but singing in unison is soul-stirring and devout. Moreover, you
thereby gain an end most desirable to secure in all singing to
God: you keep self in the background, and shut the doors in the
face of the hundred-and-one little demons of pride and vanity

102 THE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR UNITY. [April,

who are always sneaking around to steal away the merit of
every small offering, however pitiful, that we venture to make
to God.

I hope I have said enough, my dear sister, to induce you to
begin at once with courageous determination and holy zeal to
inaugurate this " better order" of music in your chapel services,
looking only to the honor and praise of God as the chief end in
view. That this common, united singing of all the nuns also
joining their voices when present will prove to be most pleasing
to everybody I have no doubt. That it will bring a special
benediction upon your convent I hold to be equally sure ; for it
will not only make your school more popular, but I can well
imagine that the news of it will go up to heaven as most wel-
come ; and that your little chapel will be a charming spot among
thousands where, if I may so speak, our Lord and his holy
Mother and all your patron saints and angels will come down to
visit with great delight, to listen to and receive this worthy and
grateful homage of your united hearts and voices.

Wishing you and envying you such a singular blessing, I am,
my dear sister,

Faithfully yours in Christ,

ALFRED YOUNG. '

THE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR UNITY.

THE following is from a recent issue of the Christian Union :

11 We are glad to record the fact that the Congregational church of
Washington, D. C., has refused the use of its edifice to Dr. Justin D. Ful-
ton for his lecture against the Roman Catholic Church. Wide and even
fundamental as are the differences between the Protestant and the Roman
Catholic faiths, their agreement is more important. Protestants have
other and more important business on hand than carrying on or encour-
aging a crusade against a church which, whatever its errors, maintains the
law of God and proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and does more to
give sanction to conscience and morality in large classes of our population
than all other churches put together. If the Roman Catholic Church
could be overthrown by any other process than the substitution of a more
liberal and intelligent faith, the country would find itself on the verge of
revolution, if not of absolute anarchy."

This is plain to be understood : as between Catholics and
Protestants it is more necessary to emphasize the terms of agree-

;.] THE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR UNITY. 103

ment than those of disagreement. In that we are in accord
with the Christian Union. Would that this had been the temper
of men's minds at the start! We should not now have the
enormous scandal of a divided Christendom nor the confusion
from which non-Catholics suffer. This very confusion has made
many souls turn to Catholic unity : they have given up every-
thing worldly for the possession of peace.

Why are such sentiments now uttered? Because the ten-
dency of religious minds is now to unity, as it was to disunion
centuries ago ; and this is a great blessing of Providence. The
necessity for unity is now felt on all sides ; the evils of disunion
are seen in a thousand different ways. We should be untrue to
Providence if we did not take our cue from this. Such men as
Fulton, and such movements as his, are no longer representative
of our Protestant fellow-citizens. This age will not bear from
Dr. Fulton what the formative age of Protestantism bore from
Dr. Luther. Luther's Table-Talk is worse than Fulton's Why
Priests Should Wed.

Taking Protestants all around, they prefer to look for terms
of agreement with us rather than to attack our peculiar doc-
trines or to insist upon their own. We must not undervalue
the advantage of having to deal with men who believe as we do
in the law of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and who have
no animosity against the Catholic Church. It is our special privi-
lege nowadays to have for our opponents many men without
guile men who, lacking various truths and having many doubts,
believe in no positive error. That they fall short of the full
truth is their misfortune ; but it is not to be compared to the
misfortune of believing in positive error. Fair men whose truth
is fragmentary, honest minds in partial obscurity, they are rather
non-Catholics than anti-Catholics.

Now, this longing for Christian unity is squarely anti-Protest-
ant. For the fault of Protestantism from the beginning was the
exaggeration of personal independence. It was self-sufficiency
consecrated. It exaggerated the rights of individual authority
at the expense of the authority of unity. Protestants have until
recently been trained up in a condemnatory frame of mind;
they could feel comfortable all alone in their dogmatic separation.
This is what they can do no longer. Heretofore the tendency
was strongest towards division, and they were powerless to resist
breaking up into sects. Their eras of religious fervor were in-
variably eras of fresh dissensions and new sects, Now they are
powerless to resist the tendency to unity.

104 THE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR UNITY. [April,

Are we to understand that dogmatic individualism is no
longer the sole basis of Christianity as Protestants under-
stand it that unity and agreement are main factors? We hope
so. There are signs of it. Surely this is a move upward. The
man who secures for the truth another test besides his own per-
sonal and inner conviction is moving upward ; and the agree-
ment of one's fellow-men is a test of truth. One need not feel
called upon to weaken the force of inner consciousness because
he has obtained the consent of his fellow-men. It is a very en-
couraging sign that Protestants were never so universally ready
to seek agreement as an additional test of being in the right
way, and to satisfy their minds, as they are to-day. Any man
who is conspicuous in accentuating disagreements is bid be
silent. Don't make confusion worse confounded ! he hears from
every side. The trend is now for unity. This is the work of
Providence. It is the divine will that men should now begin to
face the question : How can we maintain a position breeding
confusion and confusion ever increasing; how can we longer
blind ourselves to the absolute necessity of unity? Men are be-
ginning to say everywhere: Would that there were an end to
this confusion !

Let us examine the charge implied in the words " a more
liberal and intelligent faith." And we will admit at once that
there is one kind of liberty that Catholics never will favor: the
universal liberty to doubt. The fundamental doctrines of the
law of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ are not many, but
their truth is settled; and so it is with the first principles of
reason. Liberty to doubt them is not true liberty, because it is
not intelligent. And there is another kind of liberty that the
Catholic Church never will admit is good: the liberty to do
wrong. Freedom to injure one's self, one's neighbor, or the di-
vine honor is not in the gift of the Catholic Church. It may not be
able always to prevent wrong-doing, but it will never admit that
the proper state of things is where men have universal liberty to
sin. No man should desire to be free to do wrong. Every good
man would pray that God, or some godlike power, would stand
between him and his passions, his appetites, his ignorance, and
prevent them from leading him astray.

Now let us look at liberty and intelligence in religion. The
foundation of intelligent religion I affirm to be a clear know-
ledge of the means necessary for securing the soul's immortal
destiny, a knowledge possessed with unshaken certainty. For
example, to have a certain knowledge of the character and mis-

1 888.] THE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR UNITY. 105

sion of Christ, and the means he has provided for attaining to
eternal life, is the basis of intelligent Christianity. Does the
Christian Union mean to say that the divinity of Christ and his
atonement are more doubtfully held among Catholics than
among Protestants? Does that journal affirm that there is the
least doubt among Catholics as to the need of Christ's merits
for getting into the divine friendship? Can it say the same for
Protestantism ? Is it not notorious that all Protestantism is in a
state of confusion as toyktf what a man can do, and what he ought
to do in order to be sure of eternal life? Can any man deny
that the first quality of intelligent knowledge is freedom from
doubt?

The conditions of salvation are more clearly known and are
more freely used by Catholics than by any others. None are so
free, none are so intelligent, as Catholics. To be sure, there
may be Catholics who are neither very free nor very intelligent ;
but a knowledge, and a certain knowledge, of the essential truths
of Christianity, and a spontaneous acceptance of Christ's merits,
are absolutely required for both the public and private profession
of Catholicity in its most elementary forms. Over and above
this, whatever man brings a free and fresh spirit to Catholicity,
whatever man brings a bright and active mind to that religion,
finds for his native freedom and intelligence a fresh life. He
finds in Catholicity a response to all freedom and all intelli-
gence. And the tendency of the Catholic Church is to make
men free and impart fresh life to their minds.

How true that is, and how little known ! So much so that
one cannot help exclaiming as if the words had not become
trite " O beauty, ever ancient and ever new ! "

Has it never occurred to those honest Protestants in Wash-
ington who refused their church-building to the obscene po-
lemics of Dr. Fulton that the lack of freedom and intelligence
they complain of is not a trait of Catholicity, but may be so
of one or other Catholic people, or of a certain era of history?
Are they perfectly sure that if they actually examined the dog-
mas and ordinances of the Catholic religion that want of intelli-
gence and liberty would be the main objection actually found?
Has it never occurred to them that what seems extravagant au-
thority in the church is due to the measures of resistance made
necessary by that extravagant individualism which is now so
much deprecated among Protestants? However these ques-
tions may be answered, the actual fact is that the Catholic
Church is ready to enlighten and to educate and to set free

106 THE THINGS THA T MAKE FOR UNITY. [April,

every soul of man in the world. Furthermore, we say that in
demanding- liberty and intelligence in religion non-Catholics
are perfectly right and could go much further.

Let us for the moment ignore the " fundamental differences "
and advert to the fundamental agreements the elements which
make for unity and peace. Dare our non-Catholic friends
venture with us? Will they do as much for unity as we will?
Let us see. God, the Holy Trinity, the Divinity, Atonement, and
Grace of Jesus Christ, the necessity of repentance and pardon,
the inspiration of Scripture so far we are one. Now, we em-
phatically affirm that out of these fundamental unities the objec-
tionable features of Catholicity, the " fundamental " differences,
necessarily flow. These objectionable features are the symbolism
of the church, z>., the external ordinances of religion embraced
in her sacraments and public worship, and her authority.

The symbolical offices of religion, we admit, may sometimes
hinder the just perception of the doctrines. There is a way of
using the offices of religion so as to overlay the doctrines and to
conceal them : the child is smothered by his wrappings. Never-
theless religion must have a symbolical clothing. There is a
way of making- religion so intellectually bare as to unfit it for
any but bodiless spirits.

Revealed religion is supernatural and is full of mysteries;
men can commonly best keep such a religion and realize its
mysteries by the symbolism of worship. Mysteries cannot ex-
press themselves otherwise than by symbols. Intelligence which
avows itself to be less than angelic is forced to have a symbolical
religion if it has a supernatural one. Hence the institution of
the sacraments by Christ outward signs of inward grace, sacred
symbols ordained by the Divine Founder of Christianity, by
which his grace is conveyed to souls worthy to receive it.

So of Christian unity. Men are not one in organism, in
society, as they are one in nature. Men are by nature organized
into separate families and nations. To unite these families into
one organism demands a more than natural bond, a supernatural
authority. Unity is only maintained by the divine discipline of
the church. Fallen human nature is too eccentric to maintain
unity without submission to a divine discipline. Divine author-
ity among men is confined in the natural order to the family
and the state. When, therefore, Jesus Christ became man and
would embrace all men in one family, it followed that he must
give us an organic life in addition to family and state. He did
that in the church. The church is the inner and outer fellowship

i888.] THE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR UNITY. 107

of all Christians under the perpetual authority of the apostolic
office in the Papacy and the episcopate.

What we affirm, therefore, is that our symbolism is in its
essence not man-made but is of divine origin, given in response
to the utter necessity of an intelligence face to face with dogmas
beyond natural comprehension. Our church discipline is not
human but divine. It is a system of authority and polity insti-
tuted by Christ, necessary to maintain through the ages and in
the universal world the integrity of the Christian religion and
its influence on society. There are multitudes of men whose
intelligent knowledge of the truths of faith can never be more
than feeble, to say nothing of children, and who, even with every
symbol and under every possible pressure of authority, can
barely attain to the knowledge and love of the unseen and
distant and mysterious Deity. The discipline of the church and
her symbolical offices are of absolute necessity to them, to whole
races of men, if the very minimum of Christian character is
going to be imparted. There have been whole ages of the
world in which religion would have utterly perished but for
external authority plainly established by divine appointment.
There are vast masses of men to-day to whom the discipline of
Christian unity, as embodied in the Catholic Church, can alone
give a steadfast religious character, whether of belief or conduct.
There are whole races who can never know religion except by
symbolism.

Meantime the amount of symbolism exacted by the church
from the individual Christian is much less than non-Catholics
imagine; and the pressure of discipline is not felt except by
delinquents, such persons as the writer in the Christian Union
would himself be the first to condemn. This is well shown by
the conversion to Catholicity of such men as the late Frederick
Lucas, M.P. Originally a fervent member of the Society of
Friends, he became a Catholic by following the lines of Quaker-
ism to their logical conclusion. We recommend his life, written
by his brother, Edward Lucas (Catholic Publication Society,
New York), as illustrative of the topics we have beej
cussing.

That symbolism and authority as known in the
Church darken the mind and fetter free thought is
Did they fetter the martyrs or darken the Christian
Are Catholic missionaries feeble-minded? Are Catholic*
losophers and theologians witless drivellers ? Do you find their
reasoning cramped ? Can you perceive that the aspirations of

io8 THE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR UNITY. [April,

intellectual curiosity are smothered in a Catholic atmosphere?
The very writer in the Christian Union are there no Catholic
men and women of his acquaintance who are as free and as intel-
ligent as he is himself, and yet typical Catholics? Has he not
read of many such in history ?

Whoever has got the elementary doctrines which by their
innate tendency make for agreement has the solution of the re-
ligious problem of the day. The question is : Can we empha-
size the points of agreement, ignoring for the moment the dis-
agreements? Yes, and safely. But it must be wisely done.
As a matter of fact the very seeking for points of agreement
tends to subdue the spirit of confusion, and to eliminate points
of disagreement and strengthen truth. If, for example, the
doctrine of the church on eternal punishment were fully
brought out, we believe that it would tend to union ; it would
conciliate multitudes of non-Catholics, even Universalists and
infidels. And so with other doctrines. The work of the new
University, planted in the political centre of this free and
intelligent people, will tend to shape the expression of doctrines
in such wise as to assimilate them to American intelligence
not to minimize but to assimilate. To develop the mind there
is never need to minimize the truth ; but there is great need of
knowing how to assimilate the truth to different minds. The work
of the Catholic University is to precede the conversion of the
country. For if we wish to attract Americans we must present
Catholicity to them as affirming in superabundance those quali-
ties of character which are distinctively American affirming
them in an aspect which reveals their universality.

What, then, can we claim of our belief in the " law of God
and the Gospel of Jesus Christ"? Just this: that we hold the
truths and live the life those words denote with intelligence
and liberty. Intensity of conviction is a trait of Catholicity
and of intelligence at the same time. And this profound realiza-
tion of divine things is due to that very symbolism to which
non-Catholics object, and to that discipline which they think so
oppressive.

This, then, is the relation between honest non-Catholics and
urselves : they are looking for points of agreement, and we
are developing liberty and intelligence. The twofold question
is : Are Protestants willing to make sacrifices for agreement's
sake ? Are Catholics willing to make sacrifices for liberty and
intelligence in religion? These questions fittingly answered
will move us all onward towards a united Christendom. Fools

i388.] Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH f 109

may misinterpret this. But the reconciliation of obedient faith
and intelligent liberty is the problem of the age. It is a prob-
lem for both parties to help solve.

Let us cultivate the things that make for unity.

There is no reason why a movement towards unity should
not set in, under the providence of God, in our day, just as
in the sixteenth century the perversity of men brought about
disunion and sects.

I. T. HECKER.

IS RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH THAN IT USED

TO BE?

RUSSIA is an anomaly in the world's peoples. While admit-
tedly one of the greatest Christian powers, it still remains half-
barbarous, half-civilized, in government, in social aspects, in
religion. It may be true that as to religion it would be most
unfair to deny to the Russians as much sincerity, as much piety, as
to other nations ; yet in the fact that the Autocrat of all the Rus-
sias is pontiff both in doctrine and jurisdiction there is certainly
a barbarousness which, besides being profane, is hideously ty-
rannical and persecuting. It would be a difficult study for
even a Russian to trace the relative interworkings of politics
and religion in Russia; yet we have a good deal to help us in
the whole history of the great schism, as well as in the records
of modern travellers. In attempting to answer the question-
so interesting to Catholics " Is Russia nearer the church than
it used to be?" what we shall really have to answer is a com-
plex question of this kind : Are the Russians less bullied than
they used to be ; have religious, political, and literary liberties
more sway or less sway than they used to have ; are the official
classes more refined ; is the bureaucracy less corrupt ; is religion
less of a state weapon, less coercive? Such questions can only
be answered correlatively ; they do not admit of yes or no cate-
gorically.

Where the government, ecclesiastical and civil, is centred in
an irresponsible monarch, there will be necessarily more cor-
ruption in the bureaucracy than in governments where respon-

no Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH? [April,

sibility is divided. Russia is governed by its bureaucracy more
than it is governed by the czar. The czar wills ; but his will
has to be carried out by officials who have a score of ways of
eluding his purpose. No man can rule over one hundred and
eight millions of subjects. There must be powers between him
and his obedient ones. And these powers must be always in a
state of jealousy ; always inciting yet trying to crush combina-
tions ; always in conflict with one class or another, while setting,
some of the classes against each other. At the present time
there is a power called Nihilism, which burrows, and which
shakes the social edifice. This power is equally national and
sectional, in the sense that its influence on every section of the
empire is profoundly and most hatedly felt. It is impossible to
answer our question as to Catholic prospects without con-
sidering what is the national influence of this power. Let us
very briefly analyze its programme, so as to measure its direct
action on religion.

The Nihilists apologize for their existence with a plea which
has certainly some force. Their argument against the czar and
against his government may be cast, perhaps, in the following
form : " Unless there were the vilest system of oppression there
could be no need of, no excuse for, secret societies. We, the
secret societies, are called into existence by your determination
to concede to us no liberties. You refuse us all 'liberty of the
press ' ; you keep the telegraph for your state business, state
chicanery; you permit the police to steal our private corre-
spondence, so that the post-offices are mere preserves for state
scrutiny ; you publish nothing in the newspapers from any
country in the world, nor anything from any part of the Rus-
sian Empire, until it has been toned down or rewritten, so as
to tally with your preconcerted politics ; you cut off all commu-
nication between the different parts of Russia, so that what is
done in one part may not be known in another part, and thus
the people are kept in (national) blindness; you permit to your
officials undefined powers of examining, of accusing, of impris-
oning, of even torturing, with scarcely the judicial decency of
even formality, and thus bring us all within the compass of a
su'b-autocracy irresponsible because secret in administration.
By such a policy you make us a huge nation of slaves, theoreti-
cally governed by a Christian czar, but really governed by a
network of bureaucracy, in which each separate official is a
tyrant. Hence' the secret societies, which are our only possible
remedy for your secret and malignant administration, you being

i888.] fs RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH? in

responsible for the creation of our darkness by the darkness of
your own administrative machinery."

What sympathy does this pleading find " in society," that is,
among the classes and among the masses ? The answer is most
important to Catholic interests. Remember that, every official
of the czar being " Orthodox " and mightily hating Roman Ca-
tholicism as anti-czarodox, it follows necessarily that the Catho-
lic religion is (by presumption) antagonistic to all theories of all
sections of Russian society. Let us first say a word about the
Panslavists. The Panslavists, a huge section in Russia, regard
autocracy as the mainstay of the empire, and look upon the pon-
tiff-czar as a sort of centre of a circle, within which there must
be unity through czarodoxy. It may be -perfectly true that
even the Panslavists want more liberty, just as the aristocracy,
the lower nobility, the wealthy merchants, intensely desire a
constitutional government ; but the question is : How does Ni-
hilism affect the attitude political, social, and therefore reli-
gious of all these social sections and of the masses? The
answer is that Nihilism is the deadliest foe of all; and the rea-
son is very simple to be explained. Nihilism makes all reform
to be impossible, because no one dares profess himself a reform-
er. To profess reform is to incur the odium of being a Nihilist.
A nervous prudence therefore keeps all classes reticent. To
demand reform, in the army or in the civil service ; to ask the
czar to grant some kind of house of peers ; to beg for a lower
chamber of representatives ; or to entreat for the complete
liberty of the press, would be to expose the nobility and the
army, the middle classes, the academical and the literary classes,
to the imputation of-seeking to further Nihilist projects by the
mild, cunning suggestion of reforms. This is why the Nihilists
are so detested. For figure what is the risk run in Russia by
even alluding to the desirableness of " liberties." In every time
of revolution it is impossible to differentiate the many types or
degrees of the revolutionists, the merest accident of inadver-
tence or of surroundings converting one type of " suspect " into
another. Remember, too, that every man is always watched
by the police. To gain safety a man leagues himself with a
clique ; and within that clique there is probably one or more
villains on the watch to entrap every imprudent member.
Thus the gentlest expression of disapproval of a regime may
compel a man to make choice of two extremes: he must either
become a secret-society man in self-defence, or acquaint the
police with the exceptional difficulties of his position. If he

j 12 Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH? [April,

does the first he is " told off" to commit a crime ; if he does the
second he is " told off " to be shot. Thus the very existence of
secret societies is fatal to real liberty ; for instead of every man
being" free to speak his opinions, every man is watched by police
and plotter alike, and between the two is perfectly certain to
come to grief. Now add to this state of society the fact that
the czar's Orthodoxy is the one grand political dogma of the
Russian Empire, to deny which is to incur the czar's fiercest
wrath, and we see that the Nihilist regime is as fatal to Catho-
lic prospects as it is fatal to all reform and to all liberty.

But there are still social points to be considered which bear
intimately on this question of Catholic prospects. Let us glance
for a moment at the social aspects of the great towns, as auxil-
iary to the general answer to our question. In St. Petersburg and
in Moscow we see only two classes there are only two classes
rich and poor. In the United States, as in England, there are
many sections of the middle class; but in Russia there are aristo-
crats and there are plebeians, with no attempt at, no desire for,
intermixture. In the streets we see gorgeous equipages, and we
see also dingy, dirty drosckeys ; but we do not see what we see
in London and New York every variety of class vehicle, class
" turn-out." The reason is, there are only rich and poor.
Then, again, take the military element: in St. Petersburg,
where there are only about one million inhabitants, there are
three hundred thousand soldiers in uniform ; the officers always
stamping about in military dress, and the privates looking half-
paid and half-fed. Here again we have the contrast of rich and
poor. And so, too, of the clergy : there seem to be two classes,
who are as far removed as are the English Protestant bishops
and curates. The upper and the lower clergy are different
classes. Indeed, the whole of society is two-classed in Russia,
with such invincible barriers that you might suppose that the
two classes were forbidden by the state to intermingle. This
twoness of the Russian people is a supremely important factor
in the calculation of any possible Catholic development. Great
wealth and extreme poverty ; official insolence and dull servility ;
grand churches and hungry worshippers such contrasts augur
badly for national harmony, and therefore for any "spread" of
religious movements. The grand obstruction to every kind of
social progress, to the general harmonizing of all plans for im-
proving the masses, is the iron boundary between the rich and
the poor, and the utter absence of any links between the two.
The poorer tradesmen are too poor to get out of the poor class,

i838.] Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH? 113

and the richer tradesmen get among the merchant princes ; so
that, by a popular acquiescence, there are only two classes in
Russia, and this is the crux for ail reformers.

Now couple such facts with the general disturbance of the
empire, and with the fact that the czar is before all things in-
tent on his own personal supremacy or autocracy, and we shall
get forward in our inquiry as to the possible future of Catho-
licism in the huge, wide-spread dominions of Alexander III.
As to the first fact, the general Russian disturbance, it arises in
the main from the czar's being out of tune with the prevailing
animus in all classes of his subjects. He believes in autocracy ;
he believes that he holds the empire together ; he is persuaded
that the empire would be shivered into fragments were he to
let go the tight rein of his own oneness. On the other hand, at
least three-fourths of his subjects desire to have constitutional
liberties ; but they cannot have them, both because the czar
will not grant them and because the Nihilists have made con-
cession to look like fear. Thus, politically and socially, there is
a deadlock in movement : the Nihilists making the czar to be
more resolute, and '* the country " being placed between them
in fear of both. That " the country " has a veneration for the
czar, a traditional an-d possibly sincere filial affection, we may
take for granted, notwithstanding the desire to see reforms in-
troduced into all departments. The czar, both as ruler and as
pontiff, is neither personally nor officially disliked. Tradition
crowns him as " the divine emperor." As to the attempts on
the czar's life, they prove nothing. In 108,000,000 of subjects
there must be black sheep. Crowned heads are accustomed to
be shot at. President Lincoln was actually killed in a theatre ;
Napoleon III. had to brave nine attacks ; the constitutional
Louis Philippe escaped eighteen attempts to deprive him of his
(certainly not tyrannical) life, and Queen Victoria (who has never
affected any despotism) has had some half-dozen experiences of
mortal attacks. We cannot infer national hatred from sectional
venom. The czar of Russia is no more unpopular with the
masses than is the king of Italy, who also opposes himself to
the Pope.

Here we reach a point where we may half-answer the ques-
tion : Is Russia nearer the church than it used to be? We have
noticed that (i) the government, ecclesiastical as well as civil, is
centred in an irresponsible autocrat ; (2) that the bureaucracy
plays the part of tyrannical spy ; (3) that Nihilism is the dead-
liest foe of liberty, because it exposes all , reformers to false

VOL. XLVII. 8

ii4 Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH? [April,

charges ; (4) that the Panslavists, in theory, prefer czarodoxy to
Catholicism, because it unites, or seems to unite, Russian sub-
jects ; (5) that the gulf between the rich class and the poor class
is practically impassable and irremediable, so that there can be
no social permeation of religious ideas, as there can be in the
United States and in England ; no " movements " spreading up-
ward or spreading downward ; no gradual national conversion
of classes, as there was when the " Oxford Movement" began to
spread ; (6) that the army, the aristocracy, the rich merchants,
are too czarodox to have sympathy with Catholicism, or in-
deed with anything which threatens to disturb their social
safety ; (7) that the general disturbance of the empire is too
preoccupying to admit of earnestness in the direction of any
anti-czarodox religious movement; (8) and that the czar him-
self is too firm a believer in his own oneness to allow religion or
anything else to cross his path. Let us now proceed to the ques-
tions which are directly religious, but which will be immensely
helped by the considerations which have gone before. Let us
ask : What is the attitude of the czar's priests and of the czar's
people towards the Head of the Catholic Church and towards
Catholics ; what is the state of the Russian law in regard to
Catholics ; what are the civil and religious liberties of Catho-
lics ; what is the animus of the official conduct towards born
Catholics, and towards Catholics who become converted from
Orthodoxy; and, correlatively, what hope is there of a growth
of Catholicism in a country which has been for eight centuries
schismatical ?

Alas ! nothing can be more sad than the truthful answer. It
is just ten years since the English House of Commons was posi-
tively startled out of its serenity by the revelation of the czar's
crimes in forcing Catholics to become Orthodox in other words,
to apostatize or to perish. Lord Augustus Loftus, the British
Ambassador at St. Petersburg, sent an official despatch to the
British government, in which he described the Catholics of
Siedlce and Lublin as being " flogged almost to death by brutal
Cossacks, and then driven, through a half-frozen river up to their
waists, into the parish church through files of soldiers, and
there their names were entered into a petition " [forged by Rus-
sian officials as a genuine Catholic petition, entreating the czar
to " permit them to become Orthodox "] ; " after which they were
passed out at an opposite door, the peasants all the time crying
out, ' You may call us Orthodox, but we remain in the faith of
our fathers.' ' Two hundred and fifty thousand Catholics were

1 888.] Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH? 115

reported as being " converted " in the same way ! That un-
speakable wretch, M. Makoff, the Minister of the Interior (whose
only redeeming vice was his suicide), employed for years every
detestable means he could think of now wheedling and coax-
ing, now confiscating and imprisoning, now promising and
bribing, now flogging and transporting with a view to swelling
the lists of the czar's converts. All in vain. Perhaps the
grandest page in the history of Catholic martyrdom is the en-
durance by Catholics of Russian cruelty, because that endu-
rance is so prolonged, it is so without hope, it is so uncomfort-
ed by sympathy from the civilized world. Russia is so far off
that the Catholics of other countries forget to think of their
brothers who live in agony. Yes, agony is not too strong a
word. The law is gentle with Lutherans, Presbyterians, or
Anglicans, but inexorable with the obedient to the Holy See.
Even the Jews, against whom there is a terrible hostility, are
ordinarily exiled or " told to go," but are not mutilated. The
hottest wrath of the czar and his officials is kept for the con-
fessors of the old religion. Every trick that cunning malignity
can suggest, every cruelty that brutal hatred can invent, are
practised daily upon all classes of Russian subjects who have
the audacity to say that the czar is not pontiff. " That heredi-
tary lie, czarodoxy," as Gregory XVI. called it, is true to its first
principle, falsehood. To begin with, the Holy See is trifled
with in diplomacy, promises and overtures being periodically
renewed only to be negatived by the next post. Leo XIII., like
Pius IX., like Gregory XVI. (in the present century), have each
tried their hardest to conciliate the " Divine Figure " which
perpetuates the horrid schism of the North. Yet the same tale
of perfidy, of cold-blooded cruelty, fills all the chapters of Rus-
sian story.

To name a few only of the tricks of this enormity : (i) The
Russian laws are expressly framed for the purpose of preventing
the public profession, the public performance, of their religion
by Catholics all religious societies or confraternities being
forbidden by an act of 1864 so that it is at the risk of their free-
dom that the Catholics in Russia can attach themselves, even
nominally, to any order. (2) Catholic dioceses are left without
a bishop for many years, the government refusing to allow a
bishop to be appointed ; and thus the Sacrament of Confirmation
(to name one sacrament only) is impossible for any Catholic in
such dioceses, the result being that the majority of Russian
Catholics live and die without receiving Confirmation. (3) A

ii6 Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH? [April,

clever trick, not uncommon with Orthodox priests, is to get
Catholic priests to hear their confession. The Orthodox priests
then inform the civil authorities that the Catholic priests have
been trying to convert them, and Siberia is the next stage for
those Catholic priests. (4) In the same way, if a Catholic priest
can be got to administer any sacrament to any member of the
Orthodox communion though believing the person in ques-
tion to be a Catholic the law makes such a mistake to be penal,
and no excuse, no apology, is listened to. (5) As illustrations
of the inimical spirit of Russian officials let two examples only
be given. A Catholic priest introduced into his church the
pictures known as Stations of the Cross. An Orthodox priest
denounced him on the ground that many Catholics were attract-
ed by the Stations, and that, therefore, the Orthodox Russians
were scandalized. The priest was suspended on the instant, and
a little later was banished from the empire. Secondly, fifteen
priests have been sent into exile for offering prayers at the end
of the Mass in the Polish language ; such language being re-
garded as revolutionary, although it is the language of many
Catholics. (6) The Russian law makes it impossible for a man
once declared Orthodox either by a fictional conversion or by
official trick to profess himself a member of the Catholic
Church, such profession being rewarded with transportation,
without even the proffered choice of apostasy. (7) To " pro-
test " against Orthodox cruelty is " criminal," so that thousands
of peasants who have so protested under their torments have
been sent to expiate their offence in Siberia. (8) Any dodge for
the " conversion " of Catholics is justifiable. Let one example
be given of the almost incredible trickery of the late Minister of
the Interior, M. Makoff. He bribed a weak priest into becom-
ing Orthodox, or at least into professing that he had become so.
This was done secretly ; and it was kept a secret, the priest
continuing to minister in the Catholic church. Three months
afterwards the whole of the parishioners of that Catholic priest
were told solemnly that they had become Orthodox, and that they
had been officially registered as being so ; their having permitted
an Orthodox priest to officiate for them for three months being
proof sufficient that they accepted his Orthodoxy ! (9) There
are millions of Russian Catholics of the Greek rite. To satisfy
the spiritual needs of this class Latin priests defy the law and
do their duty. For this offence they are suspended for ever
from priestly functions, and their churches are sometimes per-
manently closed. " Measures have been taken to render it im-

i888.] Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH f 117

possible" said a government decree of 1876, " for former Greek
Catholics who are still obstinate to have the sacraments ad-
ministered to them in the Roman Catholic church of," etc., etc. ;
"and the governor-general has requested the chief of the district
to keep vigilant watch on the Roman Catholic clergy, lest they
should administer to them the sacraments." (10) No foreign
clergyman can now enter Russia without the authorization of
the government, (u) On great feast-days it is imperative on
the Catholic clergy to wait upon the Orthodox bishop or arch-
bishop, offering him their warmest sympathies and congratula-
tions ; which courtesy is so far obligatory that if by accident it
be omitted the offending priest would be persecuted evermore.
(12) Lastly, let it be noted that in every Russian district dwells
a redoubtable police officer called the Ispravnik an irresponsible
kinglet, whose vulgarity and whose insolence are in proportion
to the supreme majesty of his authority. This official treats
Catholics like swirie ; but he reserves his nastiest treatment for
Catholic priests. Let a priest omit to salute this vulgar func-
tionary with all becoming humility and obsequiousness, and
straightway wondrous crimes are imputed to him, and Siberia
looms in painfully close horizon.

Enough has now been said to suggest the answer which must
be given to the question with which we began this brief analysis:
" Is Russia nearer the church than it used to be?" It will be
observed that we have sought an answer as much from the civil
condition of Russia as from the prevailing animus of the power-
ful classes in regard to religion. Indeed, that civil condition is
everything. Be it remembered that Russia is the only country
in the world where an autocrat makes his assumption of the
Christian pontificate to be the foundation of the (desired) imperial
unity. The claim is both made and is accepted. But the ques-
tion is, With what heart is it accepted ? Take the two classes of
Russian society, the rich and the poor, and see where the heart
of loyalty lies. The rich class is czarodox for the reason that
temporal benefits are best promoted by subserviency to czaro-
doxy. The poor class is czarodox for the reason (i) that it can-
not help it, and (2) that it is taught that the czar is a divine
ruler. The Russian catechisms, in all the schools, insist on the
divine appointment of the Russian emperor to the double head-
ship of what they affirm to be " Holy Russia." Tradition,
therefore, consecrates the poor man's creed ; interest is the
primary pontiff of the rich man's creed. But the various points
we have referred to points civil, points political all come

ii8 Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH? [April,

into the very difficult calculation of the values of different in-
fluences as to religion. As to the poor, they can have no
general information ; the press is astutely manipulated for their
instruction ; they are cut off from even the neighboring ideas
of other provinces ; they have no personal communication with
the more educated classes ; they live in fear of that Ispravnik,
or police officer, who would make their lives intolerable if they
were to exhibit any sympathies with Catholicism, with Western
sentiments, with liberal movements; they know that the Catholic
Church is anti czarodox, and that it is, therefore, as illegal as it is
inconvenient; their Orthodox priests are always telling them that
this is so ; their religious instructions are always balanced by
the imperial lie that the Eastern Church owes no obedience to
the Holy See, and that the Holy See is a usurper, not a mother ;
they are misled, like the English Protestants, by fictitious read-
ings of history, but, unlike the English Protestants, they are
not free, are not permitted to read everything, to examine any-
thing ; so that, while all travellers are agreed that the Russian
poor are devout, they are agreed that they are forced to live
always in one groove. That isolation of class which prevents
" movements " leavening downwards, just as it prevents com-
plaints from rising upwards, is fatal to " the education of na-
tional tone," in the sense in which we may speak of it, say, in
England. The espionage of the bureaucracy, the nervous horror
of the secret societies, the habitual awe of the imperial soldiers
and of the aristocracy, together with a sort of superstitious
veneration for the White Figure who enthrones himself as su-
preme pontiff all such accidents of the social life render con-
version to Catholicism the most unlikely of (natural) changes for
the Russian heart. We can speak only of what is natural or
apparent ; we cannot touch the hidden purposes of Divine
Providence. In England or in the United States there might
arise wonderful men who would play the part of apostles to
half the nation. Such a thing is impossible in Russia. The
universities are under awe of all "movements." Nihilism, or
free-thinking, or constitutionalism may have their votaries aca-
demically as they have socially, but a religious movement to-
wards Catholicism would appear to be equally out of temper
with the religious and the political Russian mind. Czarodoxy
is the iron grip of Russian schism. The sword and the knout
and the prison are the eloquent apostles of the czar's schism.
They are so equally for the rich and for the poor. They were
so in England under Queen Elizabeth. Englishmen have been

i888.] Is RUSSIA NEARER THE CHURCH? u 9

emancipated from religious tyranny. Russians are still in the
stage of the Elizabethans.

One hope had seemed to spring from the pontifical action
of Leo XIII. in imploring the czar to act humanely towards
Catholics. We know how that hope has been dispelled. One
year before the assassination of Alexander II. the Pope sent him
a conciliatory letter, but no fruits came to Catholics from that
letter. On the festival, however, of St. Cyril and St. Methodius
two saints dear to the church and to the Eastern schismatics
the Pope sent an encyclical to all Slavs, exhorting them to
piety and to unity ; and in the same year he established a hier-
archy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which many popes had
desired to do but had not ventured to do. All that earnest-
ness and patient solicitude could effect during the past ten years
has been wrought to its fullest completion by Leo XIII. ; but
the old spirit of malignity and of cunning which has swayed
the counsels of all Russian officials professing czarodoxy has
frustrated the wisdom of papal counsels and resented the af-
fectionate appeals of papal sympathies. The " hereditary lie "
lives on. " Elizabethanism," in England, has died of its own
inanity, so far as material persecution is concerned ; but czaro-
doxy in Russia can never die while absolute monarchy makes
that " doxy " its first rule. Even if there should be a Catho-
lic revival throughout Russia a spontaneity of which there is
not the faintest symptom the different impediments we have
alluded to, political, social, or traditional, would crush the
first germs to extinction with an iron heel. No ; God alone can
convert the Russian Empire. From without, not from within,
the move must come ; unless, indeed, through some internal
revolution the whole rnind of the Russian peoples should be-
come freed. England was first made Protestant by Henry
VIII., and of course Russia might be now made Catholic by a
Catholic czar ; but short of the unexpected in wondrous changes
there is no hope, none whatever, for czarodox Russia. Father
Tondini has recently exhorted all Catholics to pray for the
Catholic unity of all Christians. That seems to be the only
weapon worthy of sharpening. As Mr. William Palmer once
said to the present writer, " The sun only can melt the Russian
snows, and God only can melt the Russian schism."

ARTHUR F. MARSHALL.

120 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April,

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

The Deemster : A Romance of the Isle of Man, by Hall Caine
(New York : D. Appleton & Co.), is reprinted from an English
story which has received high and deserved praise on the other
side of the water. It comes near being a great book; but in
matters of art, as in the matter of noses, an inch is a good deal.
The scene is laid in an isolated community, where an anomalous
jurisdiction in affairs both secular and religious has produced
the effect of making naturally insular ways of considering things
more intensely insular ; the time chosen is the beginning of the
last century. Now, to mention these two deliberately- elected
preliminaries on the part of Mr. Caine is also to say, by implica-
tion, that his book is one of those in which a great part of the
strength of their writers has been expended on those minute
local studies which the " realists " in modern fiction rely upon
as aids to illusion. To our notion, it is a serious mistake on
the part of any novelist to handicap himself in this way, chief-
ly because the effort he must make to quit his native atmos-
phere of time and place is to himself a source of weakness, and
to his readers, both critical and uncritical, a more or less con-
scious bore. The strain is too visible, and the result, however
satisfactory in an archaeological point of view, either remains a
hopeless anachronism of sentiment and feeling, or sinks quickly
into the oblivion of dead failures. That sentiment and feeling
are modern is nothing against them, for true sentiment and feel-
ing are always modern. It is the old clothes, or the foreign
ones which sit badly on them, to which one objects. What
makes an artist is his power to co-ordinate his work, to fit all
his pieces into their own places, to plant his new creation firmly
on its feet and so set it going that it shall be its own only and
sufficient excuse for being. And that is a congenital power, not
to be acquired by any known methods, least of all by the
mechanical, " realistic " one of catalogue and inventory and
laborious particularization of non-essentials. For peculiarities
are what set apart and differentiate, and which irritate and
weary in so doing. It is the common and the universal that
unites and creates sympathy, as anybody may convince himself
in literature by remembering the books that have survived ; in
his private life by reflecting on what has drawn him to those
whom he most affects, and, if he have the experience of travel,

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 121

on what has most attracted and what has most repelled him in
the peoples among whom he has lived as an observer.

As a general dictum in literature this may seem doubtful to
those who remember Ivan/we, or who have laughed and cried
and thrilled, and read once more and so renewed all those expe-
riences, over what is, take it all in all and for the widest circle
of readers, the most wholesomely entertaining, and the most
certain to remain perennially so, of English novels for at least
two generations Blackmore's Lorna Doom. But is it really
doubtful? Who ever failed to find the preliminary chapters of
Ivanhoe otherwise than tedious ? Does the charm of the Two
Gentlemen of Verona owe anything to attempted reproductions
of Veronese fashions, customs, modes of speech? Do Julius
Cassar and Coriolanus owe their kinship to you and me to any
verbal trick or any cut of toga likening them to the Roman of
two thousand years ago ? A transcendental Volapiik is the
tongue of the literature that lives, and the natural man, and not
a tailor's lay figure, is what it deals with.

Mr. Caine, to return to him, is an admirable writer, and in
The Deemster he has produced an interesting story, with power-
ful episodes of passion, most poetically described bits of sea and
sky and water-scape, and admirably-contrived situations. But,
despite the heat and high pressure of some of these scenes, one
gets an impression of perfunctoriness on the part of the author
which is fatal to illusion. He has made some telling strokes in
The Deemster himself, but they too have an air of being plas-
tered on to a construction instead of growing out of a living
thing. The bishop inevitably recalls Mgr. Le Bienvenu in Les
Miserable* ; Dan Mylrea is a Samson who somehow fails to carry
off the gates of Gaza ; and one closes the book without finding
in it one character or one scene that will take its preordained
place in that enchanted world where Othello lives with Colonel
Newcome and William Dobbin ; where great Jan Ridd and
Carver Doone struggle for ever on the verge of the fatal quick-
sand ; where Harriet Byron perpetually lifts her hoop upon her
shoulder to make room for Sir Charles to flirt solemnly with her
in the window-ledge ; where William Wallace parts with Helen
in his dungeon ; where Lorna smiles and sad Rebekah weeps.
But those are high latitudes? Yes ; but it was for high latitudes
that Mr. Hall Caine trimmed his sails. Perhaps he might
have reached them had he equipped himself more simply ?
Alas! in matters of creative art the question of equipment alone
is fundamental, and, like those vital processes art seeks to imi-
tate, it is not settled by volition.

122 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April,

The Marquis Biddie-Cope, being, as we suppose, a Catholic,
is to be condoled with on the success of his second novel, Mad
(London : Ward & Downey). The copy which we have just
consigned to the fire belongs to its third edition. Though it
lies for sale on Catholic counters, has Catholics for its chief
characters, and has an " edifying" end, we cannot fail to warn
the pure-minded to avoid it. There is a good deal of very fair
work in it. The marquis evidently knows his Philadelphia ; he
can draw a very life-like quadroon, and various kinds of male
and female Americans, none of them being of a specially desira-
ble kind to make acquaintance with. But he understands him-
self and his materials quite well enough to make one wonder
why a Christian gentleman should indulge an imagination so
needlessly satyr-like as he has shown himself to possess in the
drawing of Lelia Charlton. Not many French caterers to im-
morality can have been guilty of more vile suggestion than he ;
nor, professedly materialist, could they have so intensified the
offence as this " Christian " has done by asking " kind judgment "
for a woman shamelessly vicious, at the very moment of her
self-invited sin, and quoting as his authority for so doing that " un-
impeachable philosopher and lawgiver who . . . long centuries
ago, in the Levant, . . . was called once to judge one of these
same crimes of rebel love." Love! The word is an insult to
decency applied as the Marquis Biddle-Cope here applies it.
His book is one of those which leave a bad taste in the mouth,
and which owe their run chiefly to that fact. That he plunges
his heroine into hell at the last, and " converts " his hero by show-
ing, in a page or two of very pretty rhetoric, how he never could
overcome the temptation that had mastered him until, throwing
away all his proud reliance on principle and intellect and so on,
he cast himself on the mercy of the Virgin Mother of Purity,
is but meagre atonement for the four-hundred-odd pages of evil
suggestion, defective taste, and, for the most part, very bad
manners which precede them. The pity is the greater because
the man who degraded his talent in this way is plainly capable
of better things.

An Unlaid Ghost : A Study in Metempsychosis (New York : D.
Appleton & Co.) has the distinction of a dedication to the shade
of one to whose "cultured advice and sympathetic encourage-
ment " it " owes its being "; the dignity of a prologue bristling
with classical and unclassical names; an epilogue which has no
salient points ; an object, which is to group its " puppets with suf-
ficient effect to induce the inference that the transmigration of

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 123

the soul may be, if not an irrefutable fact, at least a possibility ";
and, in spite of all these drawbacks, the merit of brevity, as it
covers less than one hundred and eighty small pages of large
print. We grieve to say that it has no other merit. It is stu-
pidly bombastic in its earlier portion, the " Story of Poppasa,"
the wife of Nero, and extremely absurd in the later one, the
" Story of Hortense," in which the transmigrating soul of
Poppaea re-fleshes itself in a French governess, an orphan prole-
gte of the Sceurs de Notre Dame de Compassion in Paris. Poppasa,
as our readers if their memories are good, or if they are pro-
perly provided with classical dictionaries may know, was a very
naughty person. The author of An Unlaid Ghost, who seems to
have evolved her personality from such a dictionary and a pri-
vate theory as to the fitting appearance of naughty persons of her
peculiar kind, describes her as " beautiful enough to have sum-
moned admiring Phidias from the nether world to worship." A
contemporary medal which it might have been good for her. to
see we suppose the nameless author to be a woman shows
Poppasa to have had a face large and masculine in character,
firm-mouthed, and extremely Roman-nosed lineaments which
doubtless lend themselves not ill to sculpture, yet not precisely
fitted to make sculptors, whether in or out of "the nether
world," go mad about them. Poppasa, having obtained the mur-
der of Octavia, receives the present of a casket which she sup-
poses to contain that lady's jewels, but which does, as a matter
of fact, contain " not jewels, nor gory tribute of ensanguined
cloth, nor precious ashes, but the severed head of Nero's lawful
spouse ! " Neither italics nor punctuation are ours. Poppaea
naturally recoils " with a stifled shriek, knotting her hands in
the masses of her bronze-brown hair ; but ere she had shrunk
beyond the pale of those rebuking eyes, a voice, low yet distinct
as the clarion's call, pierced the sepulchral silence of the cham-
ber."

The voice, as may be guessed, is Octavia's, and what she has
to say is this :

" Wrap thee in thy pilfered purples as thou wilt, the hour is at hand
when thy naked soul, stripped of its meretricious mask, shall wander forth
into the grayness of the nether world, there to await its summons back to
earth. . . . The oblivion of ages thou shalt know."

Oblivion, even for a ghost, might, one would suppose, proper-
ly belong to things in a strict sense unknowable; but Octavia,
being already a ghost, may have had a wrinkle on that point in-

124 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April,

appreciable to mere mundane intelligence. At all events, after
threatening- Poppaea with that, humanly speaking, most intan-
gible of apprehensions, she goes on as follows :

" Thou shalt hang suspended 'twixt heaven and earth until, in the
divine economy that rules the universe, a place is found suited to the inci-
pience of thy penance. . . . Then thou shalt be born again. In the flesh
thou shalt taste the temptations to which thou hast succumbed, but with
this difference : thine eyes shall be opened, thou wilt be no stranger to
the dangers which encompass thee, and yet thou wilt be mortal ! Such
will be the penalty of thy crimes. Thou wilt yet live to learn that not only
mayst thou do evil voluntarily but unwittingly, simply by reason of the
fact that thou hast existence. It may not be thy will to injure, thy object
in life, nor even thy fault; the possible harm will reside in the fatality of
thy nature. Know that no spirit returns whence it sprang unpurified.
Should it be smirched in its original existence, it will be tried and tried
again in the fiery furnace of successive experience until it assumes the
immaculate purity of its archetype. . . . Farewell, farewell! Octavia's
spirit, too long detained, hastens to its account relieved of its last be-
hes*t. . . . Poppasa ! Poppa5a ! Poppaea! a long farewell !''

Now, why should these lofty and beautiful sentiments so irre-
sistibly push one to the incongruous remark that hereupon
Octavia's loquacious ghost incontinently skips ?

The practised novel-reader sees at once what a wide field this
opens to a writer anxious to create sensations. To her credit
be it spoken, she has been pretty modest in the range she has
actually taken. Mademoiselle Hortense de Barthe, the re-incar-
nated Poppaea, when introduced anew, is a French girl of nine-
teen or so, who returns from her first situation as a governess to
the " House of Our Lady of Compassion," because she has been
dismissed by her employer. Her crime is that of having been
fallen in love with by her employer's son, who has been sent to
Algiers in consequence and been killed there. With the fact of
her dismissal she acquaints Madame la SupJrieure, but conceals
the cause, which has in it nothing dishonorable to herself, al-
though she has returned with ardor the love given. Madame re-
fuses to believe that Hortense has not been guilty of some grave
misdemeanor. " Madame Rochlembert," she says, " is not an
unreasonable woman. We were intimate friends until I took holy
orders, and I know her as well as I know myself." However, she
gradually cools down, and secures Hortense a new position in
the English family of Lady Constance Lockroy, where she is to
supervise the education of a " radiant boy of six years," who,
when asked by the nun whether he speaks French fluently, re-
plies: "Oh, non, Madame la Supe'rieure ; mais je parle assez de

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 125

faire mon chernin." Hortense departs with her precocious pupil,
and " it was a very complacent lady-superior who returned to
her oratory to find the morning's mail awaiting her perusal."

And now Hortense's troubles begin. First Master Floris
gets a sunstroke and dies, and the governess wants to go back
to the " House of Compassion." because she feels that she is
" ill-starred," that she " brings calamity on those she loves best."
" O my lady," she cries, all-unconscious that she is Poppsea,
and serving out her term for murder and other deeds of dark-
ness, " I know not what fatality it is that possesses me, but, as
Heaven is my judge, I know that I am born to work involuntary
ill !" Lady Constance persists in detaining her as a friend, but
sees reason to deplore doing so when her husband presently suc-
cumbs to the charms of her companion and falls, though vainly
yet irrecoverably, in love with her. This time Hortense really
does go back to the " House of Compassion," where, as she writes
later on to Lady Constance, the superior receives her

" with almost ecstatic fervor, assuring me that for weeks she had striven to
learn my address. And when I asked in wonder whether she would have
recalled me to her fold, she answered: 'To-morrow at sunrise go into the
chapel, pray fervently to thy all-merciful Creator, and be answered !' Did my
prophetic soul speak to me in the still watches of that endless night ? Was
some hint vouchsafed me of the reparation in store for all my sufferings ?
Ah ! I know not ; but when I saw him in the gray light of the dawn, stand-
ing in the shadow of the high altar \\], saw the man whom I had mourned as
dead, to whose memory I had vowed eternal fealty and love, I cried, ' Paul ! '
and fell upon his bosom, assured that no spectre-bridegroom had come to
claim me in the eleventh hour of my desolation."

Now, there's a consummation "just too sweet for anything/'
and a reader who is not convinced by it that " the transmigra-
tion of the soul may be, if not an irrefutable fact, at least a pos-
sibility," must almost be a hardened sceptic.

The Man Behind, by T. S. Denison (Chicago : T. S. Denison),
like An Unlaid Ghost, is a novel with a preface, and also with
some concluding "Remarks on the Dialect" employed in it,
which is that of the " Paw-paw State." A note to the " Lite-
rary Editor," pasted on its fly-leaf, assures that nameless and
widely-disseminated impassibility that " this book deals with a
most important question," to which its author " respectfully in-
vites . . . careful attention." The preface gives a further hint by
saying that " The Man Behind deals with three master-passion?,
love, avarice, and vaulting ambition." Even with the help of
these clues, and our most " careful attention," we have failed to

126 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April,

discover that the novel, as distinguished from other novels, deals
with any matters of supreme importance. It has a good plot,
which we will not undertake to condense ; it has some clever
dialogue in " dialect," which does not owe all its cleverness to
its dialect, wherein it differs from that of a good many other
novels of the period ; it has also a number of reflections couched
in its author's best " English undefiled " to which we owe some
pleasant minutes. Here is one of them, which occurs in the
final Remarks on Dialect:

"In the use of words this speech can make but little better showing. In
some localities the poverty of diction is remarkable, especially among the
mountaineers and the timber-men of the early days. Such words as
chaotic, indigent, incompatible, subsequently, graphic, are Greek to all but
the better-informed, and would seldom be employed even by them. In-
stead of saying a family was in indigent circumstances, a person inhabiting
the locus of The Man Behind would be apt to say, ' They are as poor as a
church-mouse.' "

Alas! the schoolmaster, the newspaper, and the " drummer"
are on their road to that now happy " locus," and their indi-
gence of adjectives and plenitude of simile and metaphor will
presently yield to influences which may even lift them to the
verbal level of their historian. Meantime, here is one sample of
the better things they still retain, for which we can vouch as
faithful to more neighborhoods than are included in the " Paw-
paw State." " Josh Croup," with his wife and sister, are about
to attend a revival meeting :

" Josh remarked, in a confidential mood, one day to his sister : ' I don't
s'pose Gabrel himself could convert Sol ; but, as fur me, if that preacher
hits me square between the eyes agin, as he did last night, Pm a goner.
I'll go forrid, if Mattie and Sol do sneer.'

'"That's right, Josh. It's our jooty to do what we think is right, an'
pay no attention to the sneers of others.'

" ' You know the preacher said unbelievin' pardners was a snare and a
stumblin'-block.'

' ' Yes, an' I guess Sol is about the biggest stumblin'-block ever set up
in this settlement.'

" ' 'Nless it's Mattie. Nobody knows the aggravatinness of that
woman when she tries. But I've a mind o' my own, I guess, on religious
matters, an' if the preacher hits me plum between the eyes agin I'm goin',
sure, in spite o' the Ole Boy.'

"Josh was taken square between the eyes about once in two or three
years. Then he ' went forward,' joined the church again, attended meeting
regularly for two or three months, irregularly for a while, and finally be-
came a backslider. Mattie, it must be confessed with regret, was a per-
sistent sinner. Her experiences with Christianity, as exemplified in her

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 127

husband and brothers, had not been favorable. She looked with contempt
on the confessions of Josh thus irregularly made and regularly forgotten.
She had been known to remark more than once that if the devil ever did
get her he wouldn't get a hypocrite.

"On the present evening Sol, Mahala, Josh, and Mattie were present,
and the timber set were in full force. The house was packed till there was
scarcely room to open and close hymn-books. When the invitation was
extended, Mahala Pickrell was the first to rise and confess her sins. Josh
squirmed uneasily in his seat and whispered : ' It's a-comin', Mattie; I feel it.'
" ' Keep still, can't ye ?'

" After a pause he tried to rise, but his next neighbor was sitting on his
long coat-tails, and Josh, not calculating on resistance, lost his balance,
and to his great surprise dropped back into his seat. In his excitement he
failed to discover the cause and sho'uted out :

" ' The Ole Boy is pullin' my coat-tails, but I'm goin* in spite of him.'
" Mattie said in a stage-whisper : ' Josh, I wouldn't be a tormented fool.'
" ' Come forward, brother, where the devil can't reach your coat-tails,'
shouted a good brother from the amen corner, and Josh accepted the invi-
tation with alacrity. Bill Timberlin and his wife followed the example of
their brother-in-law, and soon the mourners' bench was crowded. Dick
Steele came forward, but there was no place for him at the mourners' seat,
and he kneeled beside the stove along with two or three other penitents.
Dick was a backslider. He joined church every fall, and relapsed into his
old ways before spring. When under the influence he was a shouter. The
hymns were sung with lusty voices and a ring that was most inspiring, till
the whole congregation was at white heat, and many were swaying to and
fro in unison with the rhythm. Dick Steele howled incessantly like a mad-
man. At the lines,

' If you get there before I do,
Look out for me, I'm coming too,'

he bounded to his feet, and exclaiming, ' I'm going, I'm going !' began with-
out more ado to climb the stove-pipe. The feat, as may be imagined, was
impracticable, and demonstrated the futility of short cuts to heaven. Down
came the joints of stove-pipe and tin pans over the heads of the preacher
and the mourners. Women who knew what was the matter screamed,
and those who did not, owing to the intense state of excitement into
which they had worked themselves, shouted amen. Soot flew in clouds,
and all was confusion, while two or three brethren had sustained slight
cuts and bruises by the falling pipe. When the real nature of the accident
was realized some of the ungodly in the rear of the room began to laugh."

Miss Eliza Allen Starr has gathered into one well-bound and
well-printed volume of some four hundred pages, of which she is
herself the publisher (Chicago : St. Joseph's Cottage, 229 Huron ,
Street), her Songs of a Lifetime. They should be welcome to all
who love poetry. We went through the book, pencil in hand,
intending to make a selection here and there which should be
specially characteristic of her muse at what we thought its best.
But our pencil stopped too often. Miss Starr's excellence, con-

128 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [April,

sidering its high level, is astonishingly even. It is like an ex-
panse of waving, daisy-sown grass on a lofty table-land. Her in-
spiration is almost always fresh, her melody true, and her choice
of words felicitous. Witness the opening lines of the " Occulta-
tion of Venus " as an instance not merely of the latter merit, but
of her sense of what makes a picture to the mind :

" The virgin moon with one clear star
Poised lightly on its shining horn."

Miss Starr's poetry is laden like a honeybee with that most fra-
grant of motives, if one know how to bear it wisely, religious
sentiment and emotion. But she .has other themes the house-
hold affections with their joys and sorrows, patriotism and
friendship ; she has, too, the deft touch that knows what to take
and what to leave in description, so as to reproduce in the reader
what has been felt and seen by the beholder. Poetry is the pecu-
liar gift of youth of young nations as well as of young singers.
So we shall not wrong Miss Starr if we prefer her earlier to her
later poems. We are not even sure that of them all our choice
would not permanently abide by that one of them which bears
thje earliest date : " A Girl's Hymn to St. Agnes." Yet there is
" Orion " to try conclusions with it, and " Cold," which touches
a chord which George Herbert also touches. But the book is a
full one in many senses, and can hardly fail to be a household
favorite.

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

STORY OF A CONVERSION.

I was brought up in a strict Methodist household, both parents being sincere
in their faith and devout in their practice of it. My father, however, had tastes
and inclinations wider than his creed, and, in particular, a love for literature and
a determination to give his children all the education they were capable of.
Nothing differenced him so widely from his churchly associates as this determi-
nation. He reared six of us, not one of whom has yet entered his particular
" narrow path," nor one failed to be grateful to him for letting down the bars be-
tween it and open pastures.

In my own case there were two causes which conspired to forbid any such
issue for my religious aspirations as joining the Methodist Church. I was taken
once, when a very little girl, into the presence of, our Lord upon the altar. If I

1 338.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 129

say it was an instinct which kept that memory vivid, when most of what must
have clustered about it faded an instinct which from the first gave the word
" Catholic," heard or seen or spoken, a sacramental value, by virtue of which it
touched a chord in my soul that vibrated and made me homesick for I knew not
what I shall tell the truth, though the name I give the fact is likely enough to
be incorrect. An instinct all creatures of the same species ought to share. Per-
haps it may have been a special grace. And side by side with this experience
lay another namely, an aversion, growing with my years, for the emotional vul-
garity which forced itself on my notice in churches and prayer-meetings, and
for the gross ignorance about things, the knowledge of which should be the com-
mon property of all who essay to teach, which now and again irritated me in ser-
mons and Sunday-school lessons.

The mental process I went through before deliberately rejecting what I had
been taught on the subject of Christianity was short and simple. I had known
all my life, almost, that the members of different Protestant churches differed
widely among themselves on various points of doctrine. Baptists I knew, and
Presbyterians, and had heard the special tenets of the one sect ridiculed, and
those of the other rejected with horror. Episcopalians, too, came within my
circle of touch, and their exclusiveness and their claim to be " the church " were
not unseldom made merry over in my hearing. But I was past eighteen when
a school acquaintance, wishing to express strong incredulity about some alleged
fact, said to me, " Why, I believe that as little as I believe the Immaculate Con-
ception." "What Immaculate Conception?" I asked; "that of the Virgin
Mary ? " " No, that of Jesus Christ." A shocked surprise ran through me, and
neither of us pursued the subject farther. But thereupon the door opened in
my mind, which I went through at once to seek what reason I had for belief in
the Christian doctrine. I found none but the fact that I had been taught it by
parents and teachers, who themselves believed because they thought the Bible
divinely inspired. Why did they think so ? Why must I hold the stories I found
in that book as true in any different sense from those in the old Rollings Ancient
History ? which, being bound in red leather like one of the family Bibles, had
often got confused with it in my mind when I pored over both of them as a little
girl. I came, that is to say, face to face with the question of authority. At the
first step I made toward " giving myself a reason for the faith that " had been
taught me, I found none sufficient to establish facts so extraordinary, and I drop-
ped the facts. To do so cost me neither emotional pain nor mental struggle.
Rather, it was a relief to get rid of the hateful notion that, because these things
were true, it would some day be necessary to " get religion " and become one
more unit in a community which I recoiled from. My belief had been no real
part of me a mere heavy cloak instead, which I endured because I had taken
the clasp at the neck for a rivet. Since it was only a hook and eye, I undid it
and left the encumbrance lying where it fell.

I do not mean that I at once abandoned belief in God. I had for a while a
mild enthusiasm for Dr. Channing and a more pronounced one for Theodore
Parker. But the road which leads away from Christianity to the marsh in which
the personality of God is lost is not a long one, and I am a swift walker. I was
floundering in it up to my neck, and in despair of finding firm ground again, even
before I married. But my children were born before I made any serious effort
to replace by a more intelligent faith that which I had thrown aside. When
I did so it never once occurred to me to consider any form of Protestantism.

VOL. XLVII. 9

130 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [April,

turned without hesitation toward the Catholic Church. Early in 1866 I went
with a friend to visit Father Hecker. I have but one vivid recollection of the
interview, and that is the definite impression I got that if I could ever be as sure
as he that Go,d became incarnate and taught men what to believe and what to
do, there would be no room left in me for anything but absolute obedience to
him. I foresaw that to accept that teaching would be to change the whole
current of my life. Had I felt myself perfectly free to act I would have faced
about without a day's delay ; but the domestic obstacles, if not many, were strong,
and at that time I did nothing further.

In the summer of that year my father died. My grief for him was profound
and long continued, and thenceforward the attraction I felt toward the church
began perceptibly the weakening of the counter- forces which held me back.
We went to the Adirondacks that season, and were joined by a friend of my
husband, a Columbia College man, who, after studying for Protestant Episcopal
orders, had become a Catholic. Notwithstanding the change, he was by no
means of exemplary life ; but at this time I did not know it. One Sunday evening,
sitting with my husband and me, he administered a mild rebuke because I be-
gan work on a little sock I was knitting. " Tell me, Mr. ," I said, when the

talk had run for a while on religious topics, " are you a better man because
you are a Catholic ? " He hesitated, gave me no direct answer, and the con-
versation turned. But when we were alone, my husband, whose aversion to
Catholicity was then extreme, said to me that he was never better pleased in his
life than when he heard that question put. " I don't know what he would have
told you had I not been present/' he added, " but, considering the confessions he
volunteered to me this afternoon, that must have been a staggerer." I relate
the incident here only because it illustrates a certain tendency in my mind. The
religion whose attraction for me lay in the hope that it possessed a regenerating
power had failed to amend this zealous adherent, but to know that fact did not
even suggest a cessation from my search. So far as I know, the only question
that ever arose in my mind about Catholicity was, Is it true ? Could it be
shown to be so, I would have only my own acceptance of its doctrines and my
own practice of its laws to answer for.

In the winter of 1867 I made another Catholic acquaintance, one of my hus-
band's intimates, and a man of great subtlety of mind and wide cultivation. He
belonged to a Catholic family, but had married a Protestant who changed her
religion soon after their marriage. Our first greetings were hardly over when a
question bearing on what was then permanently uppermost in my thoughts came

to my lips : " Did you make a Catholic of your wife, Mr. ? " " No," he said,

with a smile, " it was just the other way. She made a Catholic of me." " What
do you mean ? " " Well, I had the religion always, but only in my head. She
got it there and in her life also, and then she transferred it to mine." He used
to bring me books occasionally, and came often with his wife. Like ourselves,
they were parents, and I remember saying once, when the children were talked
of, that I found it increasingly hard to take any real interest in the future of my
own boys. " Life is so short," I said, " and unless there is something after it, of
which I have no certainty, what better are they or we than the beasts ? If we
are cut off to-day or to-morrow, what does it matter what we do or suffer
now ? " I recall his answer also : " I'll tell you what ails you. You should be a
Catholic. For ten years I was in just such a condition of mind as that speech
indicates." " And what did you do ? You were a Catholic already." " I began
to practise what I believed."

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 131

If any one asks me to describe the logical processes by which I came to know
Catholic truth, I answer that it is hard to do so ; let the reader gather it from
what I here write of the circumstances and the mental struggles attending my
conversion. The Catholic religion got the allegiance of my intelligence by influ-
ences of mingled logical and emotional power. As the French say : " Le cceur
a scs raisons que la raison ne comprend point." There are avenues between ob-
jective truth and the human mind not amenable to the descriptive methods of the
guide-books of logic. I was in doubt in the very despair of doubt. I am in the
quiet possession of the truth of God, and I can prove it.

In the summer of 1868 I applied for instruction to the present Bishop of Og-
densburg. I mentioned to him no doubts that I wanted to have cleared up,
but simply asked to be prepared for baptism. As is usual in such cases, he gave
me a little catechism, bade me learn the prayers, the Apostles' Creed, and as
much more as I was able before returning at a day and hour which he named.
I did as he told me, and began also to teach my little boys their first prayers.
But when I went back to Father Wadhams I found that he had been unexpect-
edly called out of town. My husband was both grieved and angry when I told
him of what I had done, and that combination was once more too much for me.
Moreover, although I had taken so decided a step, it was, after all, a step in the
dark. My one doubt, Is there a God who has revealed himself as Man to men ?
often seemed as far from being solved as ever. If that is true, as my Catholic
friends affirm, I said to myself, how can it be possible that all this bitter travail
of the soul should be necessary in order to find him ? He would write the reve-
lation of Jesus Christ in the skies if it were needful for us to believe in him.
None could help seeing it.

Once, when thoughts like these were in my mind, I was walking in the woods
and all alone. Presently I came upon a rustic oratory which some Ritualistic
campers who preceded us had fitted up. A rough cross, made of boughs, hung
on the trunk of a huge tree in a little clearing. I sat down before it and looked
at it with a great longing. I did not want a God a long way off in the heavens ;
I wanted him close at hand. Why not a God incarnate and of my nature, since
all my nature desired him ?

I think I ought to have persevered at this time, and said to myself what I did
say later that I also was an independent human being, alone, like all the rest of
us, in what concerns our deepest needs. I came into the world alone; no one
eats or drinks for me ; I think my own thoughts, perform my own actions, and I
shall die alone. No doubt I did say it even then, but to act upon it required more
courage than I possessed. Not acting, I fell back, as I have said, into my doubts.
I wrote a good deal for the press the following winter, and, in doing so, some-
times expressed them even more forcibly than I felt them. I acted as though I
held a brief for what I took to be my mind against what I knew to be my heart.
" My eyes were holden," is all the account I can give of my state.

About this time I called on Father Hewit. In one of our talks he said to me
that my doubts were fundamental, and that until they were removed he would
advise me to take no further step toward the church. The trouble, I think, lay
in my inability to express myself clearly, or to clearly comprehend, what he was
saying. For me the door of the church was obstructed to the last with obsta-
cles of all sorts, both from those within and those without, and nothing kept me
knocking there but the strong interior drawing which oppressed me. I was
floundering, but the hook was in my gills.

By the spring of 1870 my trouble of mind began to react so strongly on

132 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [April,

my health that three physicians, specialists all, each settled on a different
mortal disease to account for my symptoms. I had made several efforts that
winter to see a priest again, but had been thwarted once by being locked up in
my room. We went to live in New Jersey in May, my husband's office remaining
in New York. I was glad of the change, thinking that some day I could manage
to find a church and ask for baptism. I was like a starving beggar who knows
where bread is to be had and means to spend his last breath in imploring it. On
Ascension Thursday in that year I met in the .street a friend, who said : " I am
going over to New York to Trinity Church. Will you come along? " Before the
service began we walked among the graves, and, listening to the chimes, I said to
myself, still hesitating to take the step which was going to cost so much to others,
if not to me : " After all, why need I be a Roman Catholic ? Why not an Epis-
copalian ? No one would object to that, and how do I know that it would not
answer every purpose ?" My friend, who, like most of those who knew me, was
not in ignorance of the struggle I was passing through, presently put the same
suggestion into words, assuring me that her church had sll that was essential in
Catholicism and had thrown off only its most objectionable features. " All
right," I said ; "some religion I must have if I am to keep on living, and I will
take this." We entered the church, and directly afterwards a procession of
clerics issued from a side-door and went chanting down the aisles. As they did
so one old impression, familiar to me whenever I had attended service in a
church belonging to this sect, and born of my knowledge of its history and actual
inspection of it an impression of its humbug and unreality came over me with
greater, force than ever. Dr. Dix preached the sermon, and a very good sermon
it was. In the midst of it I knelt down and vowed to God that if I lived to get
out of the church I would go straightway to Fifty- ninth Street and ask to be
received. So I did. I remember asking Father Hewit if he would admit me to
baptism, knowing that the opposition to it was as strong as ever on the part of
my family, and that I meant to take no further means to overcome it but that
of secrecy. He had lent me so many books and talked to me so frequently that
he probably thought me a fully prepared catechumen which I was not, having
still only the blind desire I have endeavored to describe. He objected at first,
but finally said that I was myself the best judge of how much I had endured and
could still endure. He would recommend openness, but not urge it. For me, I
was pushed to the wall. I knew I could hold out no longer unless strength
greater than my own existed somewhere for me. " Come back to-morrow, then,"
Father Hewit said at last, " and you shall be received.'' To-morrow was long in
coming, and when it came my husband proposed to remain at home all day on
account of some slight illness. But it occurred to him to ask me to go over to
the city to transact some little business for him, and I availed myself of the
chance to fulfil my engagement. That was the 27th of May, 1870. It is the 26th
of December, 1887, when I finish this story for which you have asked me. I
have had troubles enough, of one kind and another, between those two dates. But
they have differed by the width of the heavens from those which went before
them. Those tossed me hither and thither like a shuttlecock ; these have beaten
me, but as waves beat against a rock. The others were worth enduring. I
should never, I think, have known the full value of the pearl of great price if it
had not cost me all I had to buy it yes, and to keep it.

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 133

ART NOTES THE LITTLE SALON.

The art season proper .may be supposed to open with the opening of the
" Little Salon/' the exhibition of pictures at the Cercle Artistique et Litttraire in
the Rue Volney.

This pleasant club, familiarly called by its votaries the " Crtmerie" has been
somewhat overshadowed of late by its rival, the Mirlitons, but this year the
members have pulled themselves together, and their efforts are worthy of con-
gratulation. There is, as usual, a great deal of rubbish a large proportion of
those extraordinary fantasies in green and effects in red that creep into an exhibi-
tion of this kind but, taken on the whole, the work is quite up to the usual
standard.

Henner has two pictures, the first a mere study, called " An Evening after
a Storm," a scrap of bituminous-brown landscape, with a strip of green in the
middle distance, a watery blue sky, and a misty pool, all of which we have seen
over and over again, and which yet the Alsatian master knows how to invest with
such charm that we never tire of looking at them ; his second picture is a portrait,
painted with a degree more care and with the same lavish use of brown brown
are the coat, the beard, and the cap of this singularly unattractive-looking per-
son, whose social position is a complete puzzle. To the last we are uncertain
whether Monsieur Henner's model was a tramp or an artist with a weakness for
the picturesque in his apparel.

"On the Banks of a Stream," by Bouguereau, shows an insipid little girl dab-
bling her feet in a brook. The flesh has the usual porcelain quality, and the
rushes and iris in the background are rather irritating in their pretty details.

Monsieur Brispot's " Abbe Constantin " is among the most attractive pictures
in the exhibition, and has value as an illustration of one of the most charming
stories of the last few years. The episode chosen is the first scene in Bettina's
romance. She and her sister are at the gate of the presbytery, while the good
old priest steps forward to welcome his new parishioners. Behind him are his
servant and his nephew, Jean; the young lieutenant, in his smart uniform, holds
a bowl of peas in his hand and has a somewhat sheepish look on his face.

Monsieur Maignan's " St. Mark's," a corner of the incomparable church at
Venice, and his " Baptistery at Ravenna,'' are both interesting and true. The
latter is a particularly charming reminiscence of the quaint old building, with its
Roman arches, its stone altar, and its mosaics.

1 Benjamin Constant's " Evening Effect" is meant to be dreamy, and sue
ceeds in being dreary. There is no interest attached to the (supposed) hermit
who is watching the sunlight fade behind the rocky hills.

Francois Flameng's " Halt of a Regiment of the Line, 1789," is in his best and
happiest manner. The white-clad soldiers rest in a meadow with a soft distance
of hill and sea. The atmosphere is perfect, as is the rendering of the gray even-
ing twilight.

The landscapes are few and unnoticeable. The best among them is perhaps
Monsieur Damoye's " Heath at St. Marguerite's." The foreground, of purple
heather and scrub, merges into a surfy sea. Monsieur Roll's " Normandy Gar-
den " is a fresh and delightful composition, though there is something distinctly
fly-away about the trunk of one of his apple-trees.

America is represented by the two Oriental painters, Bridgman and Weeks.
The former sends a " Portrait of Madame B.," daintily and effectively rendered.
The lady wears a blue cotton dress and garden hat, and holds a pale pink sun-

134 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [April,

shade in her hand. The latter shows yet one more of his brilliant Indian sou-
venirs, " In a Perfumer's Shop at Bombay." A pretty Indian girl is trifling with
a scent-bottle ; behind her is a somewhat overwhelming row of blue jars a little
too thick in their glazed solidity.

Another Eastern artist, Monsieur Arcos, treads closely on the heels of the
Americans with his two Algerian studies, " Kiffe et Kousse Kousse,'' in which a
white-robed Arab, with an air of imperturbable solemnity, squats smoking on
the ground ; and " Distrust and Persuasion," wherein a wily old Jew bazaar-
keeper urges a pair of yellow babouches on a half-eager, half-reluctant pur-
chaser.

Mr. Stephen Hills Parker gives us a portrait of a child, " Mademoiselle N."
One wonders why such portraits should be shown beyond the model's own home
circle. They are doubtless possessed of interest in the eyes of fond parents and
friends, but their namby-pamby prettiness only calls forth unkind remarks from
the general public.

"The Portrait of Mademoiselle G.," by Jules Lefebvre, is almost as insipid;
it is white, graceful, and generally suggestive of ice-cream.

Very different is Bonnat's " Portrait of M. D." The features of this elderly
gentleman are rugged, perhaps almost vulgar, but are painted with a force and
strength that cannot fail to make the picture, to painters at least, an interesting
one ; but even its strong merits sink into insignificance beside Carolus Duran's
magnificent "Portrait of Miss A. B.," one of the finest things this painter has
given us for years. The face is most fascinating in its petulant, girlish beauty,
round-cheeked, dark-eyed, with full red lips and waving hair; the white and pur-
ple of the dress are painted as Carolus Duran alone knows how to paint white
and purple, and the whole makes one of the finest portraits the master has ever
given us. J.

Parts.

ANTHONY COMSTOCK AND DR. FULTON.

The following letter has been handed us for publication :

THE NEW YORK SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE,

150 Nassau Street, Room 9, New York, Feb. 14, 1888.
DEAR ^IR : I regret that I was absent at the time you called at this office.
Permit me to say that I have not " recommended " or " endorsed " Dr. Ful-
ton's book, Why Priests should Wed. I never saw the book (with the excep-
tion of a few pages of MSS.) until a long while after it was published. Indeed,
it was the day of his meeting in the Academy of Music in Brooklyn that I first
saw the book.

About the middle of December I saw a few pages of the MSS. That was
after the publishers had refused to publish it. Under my advice portions of the
MSS. which I saw (which included about two chapters) were stricken out. I
wrote a letter at that time expressing my confidence in Dr. Fulton and the
honesty of his convictions; but the "endorsement" of this book is an entirely
different matter.

I cannot allow my name to be dragged into this controversy. I have a cause
which, in my judgment, is of vastly more importance to defend and stand for.
You are at liberty to use this statement in any manner you desire.
Very respectfully yours,

ANTHONY COMSTOCK, Secretary.

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 135

We never have met Mr. Comstock, but we surmise from some of his connec-
tions that he is an honest Protestant of the perfervid type and perhaps deeply
deceived about the Catholic Church. It is also plain that he has known Fulton
and trusted him ; and these two circumstances are enough to account for his
being inveigled into writing a letter which the friends of obscene art and some
over-eager defenders of the church have called an " endorsement" a letter amply
explained by the one above printed. Mr. Comstock is, we think, now aware that
his confidence in Fulton was misplaced. We are firmly persuaded that if the
whole book and not only a small portion had passed under Mr. Comstock's cen-
sorship the cleansing process would have left something altogether unsuitable
for Fulton's purposes : when the poisonous sizing had all been washed out the
texture would have fallen to pieces. Meantime we accept Mr. Comstock's dis-
avowal of endorsement as unquestionably honest and entirely satisfactory. Great
as may be his dislike for our religion (if he does dislike it), his hatred of the foul
reading and filthy art that poisons the air the souls of the people breathe is
infinitely greater.

Fine points about " high art " and " the works of the best artists " are of no
avail in this matter. The friends of decency ought to be on Anthony Com-
stock's side in this quarrel. In the last number of the North American Review
Ingersoll argues with his wonted florid rhetoric against duty, morality, or any other
ethical idea having anything to do with true art. " Art," he says, " has nothing to
do directly with morality or immorality." " In the presence of the pure, unconscious
nude, nothing can be more contemptible than those forms in which are the hints
and suggestions of drapery, the pretence of exposure, and the failure to conceal.
The undressed is vulgar, the nude is pure. Old Greek statues, frankly, proudly
nude, whose free and perfect limbs have never known the sacrilege of clothes,
were and are as free from taint, as pure, as stainless as the image of the morning
star trembling in a drop of perfumed dew." " The nude in art has rendered
holy the beauty of woman. Every Greek statue pleads for mothers and sisters."
" The Venus de Milo, that even mutilation cannot mar, tends only to the elevation
of our race. It is a miracle of majesty and beauty, the supreme idea of the su-
preme woman. It is a melody in marble. All the lines meet in a kind of volup-
tuous and glad content. The pose is rest itself. The eyes are filled with thoughts
of love. The breast seems dreaming of a child.'' " Genius is the spirit of
abandon ; it is joyous and irresponsible. It moves in the swell and curves of
billows ; it is careless of conduct and consequence," etc.

There is your genuine pagan defence of art for the sake of art alone. We
have only to say that no Christian can approve a view of art which is careless of
conduct and consequences, boasts of its un-morality, thinks the least hint and
suggestion of drapery contemptible, and says the frankly, proudly nude is pure.
The mothers and sisters of such pagan art are not Christian maidens and ma-
trons. The miracle of female majesty and beauty we Christians venerate, the
supreme ideal of womanhood we uphold, is not the mythological harlot Venus,
but the Immaculate Virgin and Mother, Mary of Nazareth.

To oppose Mr. Comstock is, in our opinion, to oppose the most effective pub-
lic corrective we have against the obscene in art and literature. . There is nobody
that the makers and venders of the obscene so much dread as Mr. Comstock.
The police and the courts have shown praiseworthy co-operation with him,
and have really rejoiced that a specialist like him, embodying, too, the best and
most decent public opinion, has taken charge of ferreting out this species of secret
crime.

136 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [April,

To oppose Mr. Comstock may not be to side with Bob Ingersoll as to the
office of art ; but it is to show one's self unaware of the harm that is wrought by
bad books, pictures, and statues. Not every one is in a position to know how
many thousands of souls are lost by their means. Not every citizen has the duty
of filtering the moral sewers of our great city.

Will the avowed enemies of the Society for the Suppression of Vice deny Mr.
Comstock's service in procuring the judicial condemnation and the hangman's
destruction of bad printed matter ? Will they say that the police who assisted
him are fanatics, the judges cranks, the juries enemies of high art the judges,
juries, and police who locked up their martyrs of high art ?

As to any peculiar personal traits of Mr. Comstock, as to his over-trustfulness
of a mountebank lecturing friend, as to occasional blunders, if any, all we have
to say is they are not to the point. Anyhow, as we can tolerate the sharp odor of
a disinfectant because it destroys the germ-cells of contagion, so we can bear
with a spice of fanaticism from Mr. Comstock. He has shown himself one of
the most powerful disinfectants of subterranean New York that at present exist.
Blessed be the " crank " whose life-work is to hunt down panders of the brothel
and the insane asylum !

THE SUPPRESSION OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS.

The Independent recently placed the following fair-seeming statement among
its editorial notes ; the italics are our own :

" The public schools of this city are open to all children, whether of Catholic or Protestant
parents, or of parents who do not believe in any religion, and they are supported, as they should
be, at the public expense. If any religious sect, not satisfied with these schools, chooses to es-
tablish private schools and teach its own peculiar religious tenets in the same, then it has a per-
fect right to do so. Nobody denies this right or objects to its exercise. But when any sect asks
the general public to help it in this work of religious propagandism, then a very different ques-
tion is raised. The people as citizens and property-holders have no objection to being taxed for
the support of non-sectarian public schools, in which they all have a common interest; but
they do decidedly object to such taxation for the support, either in whole or in part, of sectarian
private schools. Let those who want such schools have them to their hearts' 1 content, provided
always that they are content to pay the bills.' 1 ' 1

Now, was the Independent unaware that about a month previous to printing
the above words, " Let those who want such schools have them to their hearts'
content," a bill had been introduced into the Massachusetts Legislature by the
Joint Special Committee on the Employment and Schooling of Children only a
single member of the committee dissenting which provides for placing all pri-
vate schools in that State practically in charge of the Common-School Boards,
and that without offering a penny to support them ? If it becomes a law it will
require private schools having children between the ages of eight and fourteen to
make a monthly return to the town school-committee of the names, age, and ad-
dresses of their pupils in the form prescribed by the State Board of Education ;
that at the opening of each school year the school committee of every town
shall visit and examine every private school, and pass a vote approving or refusing
to approve it ; that thereafter once in each month every such private school shall
be visited and examined in like manner, and the school committee may at any time
rescind a former vote of approval of such school ; that for the foregoing purposes
any member of the school committee, the Superintendent of Schools, and, in cities,

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 137

any authorized agent of the school committee, shall have authority to enter any
building or room where any such private school is in session ; that the school com-
mittee shall approve a private school only when it is satisfied that its teaching in-
cludes all studies required by law to be taught in the public schools, and equals in
thoroughness and efficiency the teaching in the public schools, and that equal
progress is made by its pupils, only that approval shall not be refused on account
of religious teaching ; that the teachers in private schools must hold certificates
of the school committee ; and that violation of these provisions shall be punished
by fine against the teachers of private schools, to be used for the benefit of the
public schools, and public-school committees violating shall forfeit their share of
the school taxes.

Such are the terms of House Bill No. 19 of the present session of the General
Court of Massachusetts. Well, the Independent may not have known of this bill,
but the building in which it is sought to make it law is the cradle of the com-
mon-school system. On one side of the long flight of steps leading up to the
Boston State-House is the statue of Daniel Webster, and on the other that of
Horace Mann, the founder of the present system of unreligious schools. Massa-
chusetts made that system what it is ; did more than any other State, perhaps, to
engraft on it the offensive features of high school and normal college, which,
having driven out of existence the old-time private academy, once the boast of
every New England village, have reared up a pedagogic caste of stateling school-
teachers whose wooden adhesion to artificial traditions has bred a race of New
England men and women as little to be compared in real intelligence with their
fathers and mothers as they are in sincere religion. The dominant party in that
State has now started to destroy all private education whatever, except that of
richly-endowed high-grade colleges ; for the law proposed to be passed means
nothing else but the suppression of all the private and religious primary and
grammar schools in Massachusetts. The following words from a distinguished
evangelical minister indicate that the co-religionists of the Independent may be
relied on to spread this movement into other States, since it is the logical supple-
ment of the unsectartan common-school movement of a generation ago.

Rev. C. H. Parkhurst writes in the Forum for March, p. 56 :

"Not only would I fight to the last against granting one dollar of school funds to Catholic
schools, but I wish it were feasible to require every boy and girl, Catholic and Protestant, to at-
tend only such common schools as are under purely government administration."

How soon may we expect the Independent to be advocating the suppression
of all private schools as necessary to the great American system of educating the
people ?

PROFESSOR E. J. V. HUIGINN, ALIAS O'HIGGINS.

In a single paragraph of this person's article in the Forum for March,
" From Rome to Protestantism," and a short paragraph too, are huddled to-
gether objections to canonization of saints, stipends for Masses, general greed of
the clergy, perversions and corruptions of doctrine, and room enough left at the
end for a doleful wail over the weary and sad and disappointed heart he carried
in his bosom before he became a Protestant. Another paragraph, which assails

138 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [April,

the doctrine that a single child of Eve, Mary the Mother of Jesus, was conceived
and born free from original sin, is like a clipping from the appendix of some anti-
Catholic work. Take it altogether, the " Professor " might just as well have
arranged his adieu to us (or perhaps his au revotr} alphabetically by "first
lines '' of his sentences, so little does the sequence of logical reasoning have to
do with it.

But any man who could not find " a word in favor of papal claims " in Scrip-
ture or in history, may well fall back on something else besides his attainments
in historical and biblical criticism to account for his change of religion. Yet he
assigned no reason for his change when he suddenly vanished away from his
place in Watertown, in the diocese of Ogdensburg ; nor had he exhibited there
the least trace of those doubts and misgivings he professes to have been haunted
with. Surely no fair mind can discover sufficient reasons for either leaving Rome
or taking up with Canterbury rather than with Methodism, or Presbyterianism,
or Mormonism in his article in the Forum. He need not expect to escape the
fate of an ordinary ex-priest by styling himself a professor, or by changing his
name from honest O'Higgins to outlandish Huiginn. The ex-priest is generally
subject to many changes, and usually ends in changing his single-blessedness and
taking a partner.

It is a little curious that among all his reasons for hesitating before joining
Anglicanism he does not mention that of love of country. Mind you, gentle
reader, this ex-priest is a Celt named O'Higgins, with a thick Irish brogue ; and
of all forms of religion on the face of the earth he joined that one which put a
drop of poisonous religious bigotry into every stroke of the scourge which has
lashed his unhappy country for over three centuries. But Anglicanism and that
name rather than Protestant Episcopal is the name he prefers for his new obe-
dience will do as well as any other to break his fall. For, as a rule, men who
fall from the Catholic priesthood fall very deep. What started him may be, as
his article seems to show, a naturally sceptical frame of mind, which he will find
can be cured only by truth plain, living, and Catholic ; or it may have been
money or a wife, or if you wish to make him out a very stupid professor
the claims of Episcopalianism. But when he was confronted by his former asso-
ciate on the stairway of Bishop Huntington's Seminary, he could give none of
these reasons or any reasons whatever ; he paled and reddened, and promised to
coine back.

1 8 5 8 . ] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. \ 3 9

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE BAD CHRISTIAN; or, Sermons on the Seven Deadly Sins and the Dif-
ferent Sins against God and our Neighbor which flow therefrom. In
Seventy-six Sermons. Adapted to all the Sundays and Holydays of
the year. By Rev. Francis Hunolt, S.J. Translated from the original
German by Rev. J. Allen, D.D. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago:
Benziger Bros.

Messrs. Benziger Bros, are deserving of all praise for the efforts they
are making to put in the hands of priests, and indeed of others whose tastes
incline them that way, a choice series of good practical sermons. Already
have they published two volumes of Hunolt's sermons on the Christian
life. Then not very long ago they put on the market eight volumes of
sermons from the Flemish. These latter have all the characteristics of
the Flemish people, to whom they were originally addressed plain and
straightforward, full of common sense. Now come these two other vol-
umes of Hunolt on The Bad Christian.

These volumes take up the seven deadly sins and other kindred sub-
jects, and include as many as seventy-six sermons. They are rendered of
much more service to one preparing sermons on particular topics by
copious marginal notes and a very complete alphabetical index, by help of
which one can see at a glance the subject-matter treated in the text.
Hunolt handles his topics in a masterly way that can only come from long
experience in dealing with souls. It is one thing to take a text and write
an essay on it, and quite a different thing to prepare what really is worthy
to be called a sermon on that same text. To do the latter requires con-
summate tact, an intimate knowledge of the human heart, and a practical
understanding of the best ways of reaching the heart.

If there is any one characteristic of Hunolt that might be specially
mentioned, it is his profuseness of illustration. His sermons sparkle
with bright gems. His quaint comparisons, his vivid figures of speech, and
illustrations drawn from every imaginable source, show that his mind is
not only full of his subject, but that it has not been dried up by too much
concentration on the bare principles of theology. He is an orator who
makes everything serve him. Yet in his sermons there is none of that
bombastic pulpit oratory that, as Cardinal Manning has been quoted as
saying, was one of the causes of the decline of the faith in the last cen-
tury. We are glad to see these sermons in their English dress, for they
have long since established Hunolt's reputation as a master of sacred ora-
tory, and are deserving of a very high place in the literature of the pulpit.

THOMAS A KEMPIS : Notes of a Visit to the Scenes in which his Life was
spent, with some account of the Examination of his Relics. By Fran-
cis Richard Cruise, M.D., late President of the King's and Queen's Col-
lege of Physicians in Ireland, etc. Illustrated, with maps and plates.
London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. (For sale : New York, Cincinnati,
and Chicago, Benziger Brothers.)

This very beautiful book is a labor of love by an enthusiastic admi-
rer of Thomas Haemerlein of Kempen and of the Imitation of Christ.
Among the illustrations taken from photographs by the author are two of
special interest, viz., portraits of the venerable Father Thomas.

1 40 NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [April ,

The Imitation of Christ is a work which is unique among spiritual
books. Six thousand editions of it have been published, and the universal,
unanimous verdict of its millions of readers has given it a place next to
the Bible.

There has been much controversy in regard to its authorship, and
hundreds of treatises on the subject have been published.

It has been ascribed to St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, Thomas Callus of
Vercelli, Henry de Kalear, Landolph of Saxony, Ubertus de Cassalis, Inno-
cent III., Pietro Rahaluzzi, John Tambaco, John a Kempis the elder bro-
ther of Thomas, Walter Hilton, Chancellor Gerson, the Abbot Gersen,
and to some unknown author, besides Thomas a Kempis himself. All the
claimants for the honor of authorship have been set aside during the con-
troversy, except Chancellor Gerson, Abbot Gersen, the unknown man,
and the venerable Father Thomas a Kempis. Indeed, the evidence in
favor of the illustrious chancellor has been so fully refuted, the very exist-
ence of any such person as Abbot Gersen is so extremely doubtful, and
the cumulative proofs that show the origin of the wonderful book to have
been in some Flemish monastery of the fifteenth century are so conclusive,
that the question is really narrowed down to this : Was Thomas a Kempis
the author, or is the author unknown? The writer of this notice examin-
ed the question several years ago, and was convinced that there is morally
certain evidence of the fact that Thomas a Kempis was the author of the
Imitation. This conclusion has been confirmed by the arguments of Dr.
Cruise. The proofs are positive, and if they had been from the first dis-
tinctly known and stated, a doubt could not have arisen. The uncertainty
which gave rise to the controversy was purely accidental. An autograph
MS. of the Imitation in the handwriting of Thomas a Kempis is extant,
and three credible witnesses who knew him personally declared that he
was the author, before any controversy had arisen ; all the collateral evi-
dence and all the internal, critical evidence goes the same way, and there
is really no evidence of any weight in favor of any one else or against
the positive evidence in his favor.

Such a book could only have been produced by a saint. He has not,
however, received the meed of honor due to him, because of the disputes
which have been waged with such pertinacity respecting his title to be re-
garded as the author of the precious volume into which he exhaled all the
perfume of his own hidden spiritual life. It is to be hoped that henceforth
he will be more honored, and that Dr. Cruise's pious labors will contribute
largely to this result. He has here furnished us with a biography of the
holy Father Thomas a Kempis, a full account of the religious institute of
which he was a member, and a description of all the localities connected
with the history, which he personally visited and examined in the spirit of
a pious pilgrim, taking photographs which are represented in the illustra-
tions that adorn and add interest to the volume.

We are very glad to have a thorough and satisfactory work in English
to supersede the one prepared and published by Mr. Kettlewell, a Protes-
tant writer, whose outrecuidance in comparing Thomas a Kempis to the
heretic Wiclef, and representing him as a sort of crypto-Protestant precur-
sor of Luther, is insupportable.

i888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. i 4l

REQUIESCANT. A little book of anniversaries, arranged for the daily use
ol those who love to remember the faithful departed. By Mary E S
Leathley. With an introduction by the Very Rev. Canon Murnane,
V.G. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London ;
Burns & Gates.

An exceedingly ingenious method of remembering the faithful departed.
This book, which, by the way, is simply a perfect specimen of the art of book-
making, is a Kalendarof the entire year. Each day has a page, at the top of
which is printed the date and the feast, as well as the two chief saints com-
memorated by the church ; and then a blank space ruled with six lines. In
this space are to be written the names of the family, society, parish, or dio-
cese for whose convenience this remembrance of the dead is kept, and who
died on this date. After this are several devout ejaculations for a happy
death and for the repose of the souls of the departed. At the foot of each
page is a brief extract from some of the Fathers of the church or other
spiritual writers a feature particularly commendable.

It seems to us that every parish should have this book. It would serve
the purpose of the register of funerals and in time become a record of
much value to friends and relatives of the deceased. For devout societies
it seems to us to be of especial use for each of the members, as it would in
the course of a few years be a most valuable aid to the devotion of the
survivors to the faithful souls who are gone before.

GABRIELLE : A Story of the Rhineland (selected). Hearth and Home Li-
brary. Boston.: Thomas B. Noonan & Co. 1887.

Here are two pretty little stories, full of interest, especially to young
folks. But who wrote them ? The publishers deserve great credit for the
printing and binding of this book. A few illustrations would add very
much to the volume in the estimation of the young people to whom it will
be given as a premium. When shall we have an original story about
Catholic life on the Rhine of America?

MIRROR OF THE VIRTUES OF MOTHER MARY OF ST. EUPHRASIA PELLE-
TIER, FOUNDRESS OF THE CONGREGATION OF OUR LADY OF CHARITY
OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD OF ANGERS. With a Short Account of Her
Work in the United Kingdom. New York : The Catholic Publication
Society Co.; London : Burns & Gates.

In this pamphlet of one hundred and twenty well-printed pages is
contained a most interesting record of the supernatural virtues of an ex-
ceptionally holy and courageous soul. It is in no sense a life of the
foundress of the Good Shepherd nuns, but it appears to have been drawn
up in anticipation of, and a partial preparation for, the introduction of the
Cause of her beatification. Its chief peculiarity is, perhaps, that the evi-
dence for her faith, hope, charity, and other virtues is supplied from her
own words, addressed to her religious in general instructions. They
are very solid, betraying an intimate knowledge of Holy Scripture, a well-
balanced mind, and a heart full of charitable zeal for souls. The work
to which this holy religious was devoted was the conversion of fallen
women, as most of our readers doubtless know houses of the Good
Shepherd having multiplied throughout the United States. A brief ac-
count of the foundations made by h-er religious in England, Ireland, and
Scotland is appended. She herself established one hundred and ten con-

142 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April,

vents during her lifetime, the sphere of her labors including not alone
Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, but Asia, Africa, South
America, and Australia. Unfortunately, the need of such labors is con-
terminous, not with civilization, but with humanity. The work is one
dear to God, and visibly blessed by him.

THE BLESSED WILL KNOW EACH OTHER IN HEAVEN. By M. 1'Abbe Elie
Meric, D.D. Translated from the French by Mrs. J. Ringer. New
York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.; London: Burns &
Gates.

The Abbe Meric is a professor of moral theology at the Sorbonne, in
Paris, and the present translation of his brief but solid and learned dis-
cussion of a most interesting theme bears the imprimatur of Cardinal Man-
ning. We hope it may have a wide circulation, for there still exists, even
among otherwise well-instructed Catholics, traces of what the Abb6 Meric
calls the " unjust and gloomy rigorism of the Jansenists,'' which causes
too many Christians to regard Paradise as a place where human affections
will be, if not wholly sublimated out of existence, yet so nearly so as to
form no appreciable part of its rewards. But such is not the teaching of
the church, through her Fathers, her Doctors, and her Saints. The cry
of the heart is recognized by them, and its legitimate satisfaction prom-
ised. On this point the Abbe Meric is very explicit in his direct teaching
and full in the testimony by which he supports it. There is another con-
sideration in his little book, however, very briefly touched on, but capa-
ble in its infinite suggestiveness of completely meeting another difficulty
which sometimes arises in the minds of those imperfectly instructed
Christians for whose use, we take it, his work was written and has been
translated. If our souls are to see God face to face, and know him as he
is. how shall we, remaining essentially what we are now, escape weariness
even in heaven ? "We shall never see God in all his immensity," an-
swers the abbe, resting on St. Thomas ; " never shall we have an adequate
vision of God." The minds of the blessed " are still active, for immobility
is death, but it is activity without effort and without pain. God, whose
nature is infinite, continually manifests to the blessed new aspects of
his essence. . . . There is then real progress, continual movement, in
the intellectual and moral life of the elect.'' Put these two considerations
together, and then it becomes easy not merely to believe but to under-
stand what makes Paradise worth all it costs.

A STUDY OF RELIGION : Its Sources and Contents. By James Martineau,
D.D. 2 vols. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press; New York : Macmil-
lan & Co. 1888.

Dr. Martineau has already contributed to the defence of natural re-
ligion, its foundations and conditions, services of such immense value that
any work of his demands as of right the serious attention of all religious
thinkers.

There are two ways in which we might approach the works of those
who do not hold the full and complete cycle of Catholic truth. We might
either point out and dwell upon their inevitable defects and perchance
their dangerous outcome ; or we might contrast them with those who are
still further removed from the truth, and consider in what respect the work

i888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143

in question is likely to bring these latter nearer to the truth. We think
it better by far to follow the latter course in these our times at all events.
Writers of pleasing style and vaunted scientific knowledge have gained
the ear of the public to such an extent that we are glad to welcome the
services of all in the great work of rescuing souls from the darkness of in-
fidelity, agnosticism, and materialism. There is no one to whom we would
extend a heartier welcome than to Dr. Martineau. His profound insight
into all the bearings and relations of the questions which he discusses; the
beauty of his style, which impresses his abstruse reasonings upon the im-
agination and the memory, make him a powerful ally, and, in our judgment,
render a knowledge of his writings imperative upon any one who aspires
to help and guide those whose minds are tormented by the questionings
of the day.

We have not had time to form a judgment on these two volumes,
which are the sequel of the work published in 1885: Types of Ethical
Theory. We hope to be able to give a fuller. analysis and a better-weighed
opinion hereafter. Meanwhile, as a specimen of the spirit in which he ap-
proaches his subject, we give the following comparison between the re-
ligious effect of the Catholic and of the Positivist calendar. Criticising
the definition of religion as "habitual and permanent admiration," he pro-
ceeds :

<f It would bs necessary to stipulate that the object of religion should be
something other than ourselves. This condition is, no doubt, fulfilled by
the Positivists' calendar, which gathers into one view the nobles and mar-
tyrs of history, and leaves no day in the year without its tribute of celebra-
tion ; and I shall not challenge the right of this commemorative discipline
to call itself a ' religion of humanity.' It does rest essentially upon reve-
rent affection, not, on the whole, unwisely and unworthily directed ; and
if it were possible for human souls to illuminate and uphold each other,
without any centre orb to give them their reflected light and determine
their dependent paths, this ritual might be something more than a melan-
choly mimicry of a higher conception. But place it beside the Catholic
constellation of the saints, and, though its component stars are often of
greater magnitude, you see at once that, as a whole, it is a minor worship
made grotesque by being thrust into the place of the Supreme. Its atti-
tude is retrospective, gazing into the night of ages gone ; the other has its
face to the east and anticipates the dawn : it is a requiem for the dead ; the
other is a communion with the ever-living, an anthem in tune with a choir
invisible: it anxiously seeks and puts together the doubtful traits and
broken features of figures irrecoverably lost; the other only waits a little
while for the venerated teacher or the dear saint to be the companion that
shall die no more. The secret dependence of all satellite forms of piety
upon the grander, and at last upon the solar attraction, cannot be slighted
without the fatal collapse of every problem we attempt. Guard your can-
onizations as you may, take only the fairest specimens of character where
it seems to blossom into all the virtues, cull and combine them with blame-
less skill, yet they are memorials of what was and is not, and make but a
funeral wreath borrowed from one grave to be cast upon another." The
work abounds in passages equally beautiful.

144 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 1888.

BOOKS RECEIVED.
The mention of books in this place does not preclude extended notice in subsequent numbers.

IRISH Music AND SONG: A collection of Songs in the Irish Language, set to music. Edited

for the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language. By P. W. Joyce, LL.D., etc.

Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son.
THE NATIONAL SIN OF LITERARY PIRACY. By Henry Van Dyke, D.D. New York : Charles

Scribner's Sons.
THE SPIRITUAL RETREAT OF FATHER BOURDALOUE, S.J., adapted to the use of Pastors of

Souls. New York: Benziger Bros.
FACTS OF FAITH ; or, First Lessons in Christianity. Compiled by Rev. A. Bromley Crane, of

St. Wilfrid's College, Cotton, Cheadle. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : Catholic

Publication Society Co.
ALLOCUTIONS; or, Short Addresses on Liturgical Observances and Ritual Functions. With

Appendices on Christian Doctrine Confraternities, Lending Libraries, etc. By the

Author of Programmes of Sermons, etc. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger

Bros.
PAX VOBIS : Being a Popular Exposition of the Seven Sacraments, furnishing ready matter for

public instruction and for family reading. By the author of Programmes of Sermons, etc.

Dublin: Browne & Nolan ; New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago: Benziger Bros.
THE CHARITY OF THE CHURCH A PROOF OF HER DIVINITY. From the Italian of His

Eminence Cardinal Baluffi. With an introduction by Denis Gargan, D.D. New York,

Cincinnati, and Chicago: Benziger Bros.
REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION FOR THE YEAR 1885-86. Washington :

Government Printing-Office.

THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY REGISTER, 1887-88. Ithaca, N. Y. : Published by the University.
REMINISCENCES AND DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE CIVIL WAR DURING THE YEAR 1865.

By John A. Campbell. Baltimore : Murphy & Co.
THE CHAIR OF PETER ; or, The Papacy considered in its institution, development, and

organization, and in the benefits which for over eighteen centuries it has conferred on

mankind. By John Nicholas Murphy, Roman Count. Third edition, with events and

statistics brought down to the present time. London: Burns & Gates; New York:

Catholic Publication Society Co.
A VISIT TO EUROPE AND THE HOLY LAND. By Rev. H. F. Fairbanks. New York: Catholic

Publication Society Co.; London: Burns & Gates.
VICTORIES OF THE MARTYRS : The Lives of the most celebrated Martyrs of the Church. By

St. Alphonsus de Liguori, Doctor of the Church. Edited by Rev. Eugene Grimm, C.SS.R.

New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.
SYSTEM OF ECONOMICAL CONTRADICTIONS ; or, The Philosophy of Misery. By P. J. Proud-

hon. Vol.1. Translated from the French by Benj. R. Tucker. Boston : Benj. R. Tucker.

FOR FAITH AND FATHERLAND : Father Dominic of the Rosary ; Sir John Bourke of Brittas,
Martyr. By Mrs. Morgan John O'Connell and James G. Barry. Dublin: M. H. Gill &
Son.

QUARTERLY SELECTIONS : Readings, Recitations, Declamations, and Dialogues, for Catholic
Schools and Literary Societies. Compiled and Edited by Katherine A. O'Keeffe. Sep-
tember, 1887. Subscription, $i per year ; single copies 30 cents. New York : Catholic
Publication Society Co.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION : Lectures on the Reasonableness of Christianity and the Shallowness
of Unbelief. Delivered by the Most Rev. Roger Bede Vaughan, Archbishop of Sydney.
Baltimore : The Baltimore Publishing Co.

THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. By Sir J. William Dawson, C.M.G., etc. With
illustrations. New York : D. Appleton & Co.

THE CANONS AND DECREES OF THE SACRED AND OECUMENICAL COUNCIL OF TRENT.
Translated by the Rev. J. Waterworth. To which are prefixed Essays on the External and
Internal History of the Council. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : Catholic Publica-
tion Society Co.

LKTTERS OF FREDERIC OZANAM, PROFESSOR OF FOREIGN LITERATURE IN THE SORBONNE,
Translated from the French, with a connecting sketch of his life, by Ainslie Coates. New
York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLV1I. JUNE, 1888. No. 279.

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITIES OF FRANCE.

FROM the German universities our literary pilgrimage now
turns towards France. It is with a feeling of sadness in our
hearts that we approach her. Tis not as in the days of yore,
when from every corner of the earth the tens of thousands of
eager students flocked to her, as the undisputed queen of the
intellectual world. Other powers have since arisen in a night
which they then knew not of ; and she herself is not what she
used to be. German accuracy has beaten her in the schools as
well as on the battle-fields, and voices now speak of her with
something of contempt that once were eloquent in admiration
and homage.

And yet she is still a queen. The blush of shame is indeed
upon her cheek, not only for the triumphs of the stranger, but
still more for the want of loyalty to the truth by which so many of
her unworthy sons have dishonored her intellectual fame. But it
is a blush of fair and noble majesty that must yet vindicate itself.
Method and accuracy are unquestionably essential to success
either in research or in instruction, and France has been suffering
sadly fcr her comparative deficiency in them ; but they are far
from being the noblest elements in intellectual greatness. Enthu-
siasm cannot take the place of plodding exactness ; but there is
in it far more of inspiration, of elevation, of soul power, of the
human.

The most exact machine is no substitute for man.

There is much in the German system that is machine-like, hard
and dry and unamiable, more calculated to astonish than to move
to genuine admiration and to a desire to imitate it. For the
truest expression of the human, yes, and of the Divine, we still
must look to France. She has only to learn accuracy from her
neighbor beyond the Rhine and she is fast learning it and the

2QO THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITIES OF FRANCE. [June,

present ascendency of Germany's educational renown will surely
not last. So it is with hope in our hearts, as well as sadness, that
we turn to the once proud Mistress of the Schools.

Arriving in Paris, we lose no time in finding the Institut
Catholique, now the only representative of the Christian glories
of the far-famed University of Paris. The rector, Mgr. d'Hulst,
we had previously met in Rome, under circumstances which en-
abled us soon to discover how well founded is the esteem in
which he is universally held for deep and varied learning, for ad-
ministrative ability, and for grandeur of character. Under his
courteous guidance we examine the whole institution, and then
spend a charming evening with him and his professors. It is well
that he and they are the men they are, men filled with the spirit
of faith and of martyrdom, or their noble effort would have ere
this been given up in despair. It is a spirit that well becomes the
hallowed ground on which they stand ; for the old College of the
Carmelites, which they now occupy, beheld the martyrdom of a
legion of the soldiers of the cross in the bitter days which in-
augurated France's temporary unfaithfulness to her Lord. They
are standing their ground, holding up the banner of higher
Christian education, in the face of the bitterest hostility from the
enemies of religion, and of too scanty encouragement from its
friends, strong in the sense of duty to God and to France, and in
the hope of better days to come. Mgr. d'Hulst is a splendid
pilot through the darkness and the storm. His unanimous selec-
tion to be president of the International Catholic Congress of
Scientists, which is in session while I write, sufficiently shows
how high is his position and how wide his influence among the
Catholic scholars of Europe.

A doleful story is that oft-told tale which he recounts to us of
the vicissitudes of higher education in France. Up to the great
Revolution, France professed Christianity, and her universities,
more than twenty in number, grouped around the unrivalled
University of Paris, led the van of the world's intellectual pro-
gress. In a day they were swept down and cast into the red
flood. When Napoleon snatched the country from the vortex of
threatened barbarism, he reconstructed the educational system in
accordance with his own notions of centralized and absolute
Csesarism. The University of France took the place of all the
educational institutions that had preceded it, comprising the
whole course of instruction throughout the country from the
elementary schools upward, and shaped and moved in all its de-
tails by the central authority at Paris that is, by the all-absorbing
will of Napoleon himself. In education as in all else the domi-

1 888.] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITIES OF FRANCE. 291

nant idea was, not truth, nor morality, nor the popular welfare
but the casting of the whole mind and life of the nation in the
mould of his own lofty ambition, so that he might say even more
truly than did Louis XIV., "La France, cest mot." Under all
succeeding governmental changes the form and the spirit of
the educational system have remained the same. It has seen the
empire yield to the monarchy, and the monarchy to the republic,
and the republic to the empire, and the empire to the republic
once more; but the same absolutism has been the dominating spirit
of them all. It has been the rule of one set of ideas or of another;
but each set has ruled with the same intolerant absolutism.

Higher education has had most to suffer from this system.
When the dominant spirit of the state system was contrary to the
convictions and the conscience of the people, they were free to
have volunteer schools where their children could be educated as
they wished. But higher education is at the mercy of those who
conduct examinations and, confer degrees, and these prerogatives
the state refused to all but its own officials. Only in 1875 was the
National Assembly shamed by the burning eloquence of Bishop
Dupanloup and his Catholic colleagues into granting liberty of
higher education. Instantly, with an enthusiasm worthy of the
sacred cause, the Catholics of France sprang to the noble work be-
fore them, and five Catholic universities were at once established,
at Paris, Lyons, Toulouse, Angers, and Lille. At Paris, the Ecole
des Hautes Etudes, which for thirty years had struggled to keep
alive some lingering embers of higher Christian education, blos-
somed forth almost immediately with all the faculties of a univer-
sity. With marvellous rapidity the same was done at the other
points above-named. The old Christian glories were about to
gleam out again. Irreligion sounded the alarm and set all its
machinery to work. The law was abolished, the right of con-
ferring degrees cancelled, and the very name of university for-
bidden to them. Shorn of the rights and prestige which they
had scarcely begun to enjoy, and permitted to exist only as train-
ing-schools for the government examinations, the Catholic Insti-
tutes, as they are now called, have thus far stood their ground,
waiting for better days, but not knowing when nor whence to
expect them. Bravely these devoted men uphold the banner of
the cross, which was the labarum of their country in the days
when history recorded the "gesta Dei per Francos" To-day they
are sneered at for it, and are regarded almost as aliens in their
own country, whose administration is so shamefully and disas-
trously swayed by hostility to religion. But Frenchmen know
how to be heroes, and, impetuous as they are, they know how to

292 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITIES OF FRANCE. [June,

be patient and to wait. According to the signs of the times, they
can hardly have to wait long. Popular weariness of the present
condition of things is being plainly manifested on all sides. Just
what to put in its place the people seem at present not to know ;
but the events with which our century opened show that an ex-
treme of impiety and violence, such as we have of late been wit-
nessing, is sure to bring a salutary reaction in some shape. And
so the truest friends of France wait and hope.

Closely akin to the difficulty arising from government oppo-
sition is another arising from popular inertness. A so-called
paternal government is naturally apt to produce a nation of
children. The French have so long been used to having the
initiative in all things taken by the government, that it is no
wonder that, as the dean of the Faculty of Sciences in the Catho-
lic Institute of Lyons lately wrote to me, " it has become a habit
with the people to do nothing without the concurrence of the
state." Sad illustration of the truth that inordinate govern-
mental interference and control not only leads to state tyranny
but also to popular paralysis. Cesare Cantu was right in saying
that the aim of wise governments must be not to supersede or
fetter but to encourage and aid individual enterprise. The re-
sults of the contrary policy are now sorely felt by the Catholic
universities of France for we must give them their true name, in
spite of the petty tyranny which forbids it. The people do not
rally to their support as they ought. The pitiful spectacle of a
great nation wringing its hands and leaving itself to be misgov-
erned by an aggressive faction which it could easily strangle, is
reproduced in the condition of its Catholic universities, which
represent but too well not the apathy but the discouragement
and lack of energy in which the people sit brooding.

A magnificent exception to this is found in the Catholic Univer-
sity of Lille. There the people have still a large measure of the
bold, free spirit and energy of their Flemish ancestors, united
with the generosity of the French character, and the result is seen
in their splendidly equipped university. Not only are its faculties
thoroughly organized, but its stately university structures, its
spacious grounds, its lovely gardens, its admirably arranged and
well-stocked library and laboratories, its beautiful and comfortable
residences for professors and students, are a joy to behold. They
reflect endless honor not only on the admirable management of
the rector, Mgr. Hautcceur, but also on the noble zeal and gene-
rosity of the people of Lille. The university has published its
monthly Bulletin ever since its establishment in 1875, and it is de-
lightful to see how, month after month, it tells of the munificence

1 888.] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITIES OF FRANCE. 293

with which one professorial chair after another was endowed,
and one structure after another erected or furnished, to complete
the symmetry of the great plan. Some considerable portions of
the general design remain still unfinished, but there is every indi-
cation that they will not be so long. There was nothing on
which the late lamented Cardinal Czacki for whose friendly inte-
rest in our Catholic University we will be for ever grateful used
to dwell with more delight in his conversations with us than the
active part which he had in aiding and fostering the establishment
of the University of Lille. May his prayers assist us now in our
great undertaking, and may the splendid generosity of the people
of Lille be emulated by the Catholics of America !

Still another difficulty weighs down the Catholic universities
of France from which, above all, it behooves us to take warning.
As stated above, immediately on the passage of the law granting
freedom of higher education, five universities were established
by the Catholics of France, in the centre and in the four corners
of the country. That so many were required by the necessities
of the immense Catholic population was beyond question. But
that so many could be established and supported and brought to
perfection all at the same time was quite a different matter,
which ordinary prudence might well pause to consider. But the
enthusiasm of the hour brooked no delay. Moreover, speedy
action seemed necessary, that the needed number of universities
might be established while the fickle sun of governmental favor
was shining. The dread which urged their action was speedily
realized ; but its realization left on the hands of the disheartened
people a burden that seems beyond their strength. One or two
universities could have been safely carried through and per-
fected by united endeavor; but to build up five simultaneously
is proving impracticable. One of them is languishing to death,
and those of Paris and Lyons are kept up only by heroic efforts.

Again and again the moral of this lesson was urged upon us,
both in France and in Rome. The observant eyes of Cardinal
Czacki, of the Propaganda, and especially of the Holy Father,
took in the situation fully, and repeatedly they impressed upon us
that, while the immense extent of our country will assuredly call
for several Catholic universities eventually, we must so advance
as to make certain the success of one before starting another.
Unite, they said, all the energies of your country in perfectly or-
ganizing first your central and national university, and then you
can safely follow the expansion of the church by the establishment
of others. And they were glad to learn that such is precisely
the determination of the Hierarchy of our country.

294 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITIES OF FRANCE. [June,

Being requested by Mgr. d'Hulst to address the Divinity
students of his university, I spoke to them for an hour on the
condition and progress of the church in the United States, on the
character of our Catholic people, on the relations between
church and state which have thus far proved so advantageous
to religion in our country, as contrasted with the religious con-
dition in other lands, and then on the Catholic University whose
establishment is to crown the church's first century in this grand
new field. Their eyes sparkled as they listened, and one could
easily see in their faces not only how intense is the interest with
which they watch our great enterprise, but also how they almost
envy us our atmosphere of genuine freedom, so well calculated
to develop all that is noblest in human energies. " One thing,"
said Mgr. d'Hulst to me, "is very evident in your discourse, and
that is your love for your country." " And how could it be
otherwise ? " 1 answered ; " even were one so dull as not to ap-
preciate our national blessings as he ought, he has only to visit
poor France, and see how she languishes under the despotism of
what has not yet learned to be a republic, and his heart is filled
with gratitude for our free atmosphere, in which all that is good
may expand to its utmost, and he becomes, if he were not such
before, an enthusiastic American." One needs the spectacle of
the contrast in order to appreciate rightly the happiness of our
condition. It would, indeed, be silly to play the optimist, and to
see nothing but excellence in our country's organization. Un-
mixed perfection is not to be found in any earthly association of
human beings. But a glance back at history, or a glance around
at the world, is quite sufficient to convince a fair mind that the
true and the good have here a freer field than they have ever had
before, or now have elsewhere, and that should they fall short of
the glorious and salutary results that may reasonably be expected
of them, it could be owing only to a lack of appreciation and of
zeal on the part of their own adherents.

The number of Divinity students in the Catholic University
of Paris is not large, has probably never exceeded fifty. The
reason of this is obvious : it gives only a superior course of
Divinity, to which no student is admitted who has not already
gone through the ordinary course in some approved seminary.
In this it imitates the example of Louvain, but it differs from the
other French universities, which, with perhaps one other excep-
tion, imitate the ecclesiastical schools of Rome, and give a course
of Divinity which, while of a superior order, does not presup-
pose any theological course previously made. It might at first
sight seem that this latter system would be detrimental to the

i888.] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITIES OF FRANCE. 295

already existing seminaries; but they assured us at Lille that
such is not the case. Only students of very remarkable talents,
they say, are sent to the university ; and therefore, though the
number is naturally .larger than if an exclusively second course
were given, still the great body of students are sent, as a matter
of course, to pursue their studies in the ordinary seminaries ; and
thus, while students of exceptional ability are given the opportu-
nity to which their talents entitle them of making as perfect
studies as possible, no appreciable disadvantage has been inflicted
on the previously existing institutions. These considerations,
however, though strongly urged, could not avail to change the
resolution of the founders of the University of Paris that it should
give only a second course of Divinity. Nor are they shaken in
their purpose by the comparative fewness of their ecclesiastical
students which is the natural consequence. Non numerandi, sed
ponderandi is their motto. Not to do much work, but to do the
very best sort of work, is their aim a noble one surely.

Inquiring into the object had in view by the several students,
we learned that the greater number of them are preparing to be
professors in the seminaries and colleges which abound in the
various dioceses. Others are destined by their bishops for some
diocesan office calling for more than ordinary proficiencv in
liturgy, canon-law, or some other special branch of ecclesiastical
knowledge. Others, in fine, have been sent by their bishops, or
have themselves asked and obtained the permission to continue
their studies, because of their special desire and fitness for pro-
found scholarship in sacred science.

Glancing now to our own country, we see how all these pos-
sibilities of honorable usefulness exist to an almost equal degree,
appealing to the laudable ambition of our young ecclesiastics,
while our peculiar circumstances present other inducements be-
sides, which in France have but limited existence. Our semi-
naries and colleges, already numerous and excellent, must be still
more multiplied and perfected in order to meet the demands of
our rapidly increasing and steadily progressing Catholic popula-
tion. The religious orders and congregations established for
that special work stand already in sore need of helpers in so wide
a field, and these must be prepared for their important task, not
only by specially wide and profound studies but 'also by the
normal training that will fit them to impart knowledge success-
fully. In proportion, too, as the ecclesiastical organization of our
country comes more into accord with the norma of canon-law,
our bishops will need men specially trained in this important
branch of practical learning.

296 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITIES OF FRANCE. [June,

But the chief incentive will be found in the unparalleled field
which our country presents for the direct action of solid learning
on the people through the pen and the spoken word. This is not
found in an equal degree in France, nor, we might say, in any
other country, because nowhere else are the relations between
clergy and people so close, so intimate, so cordial, so trustful, as
they are among us. In the old countries the political and social
events of centuries have conspired to make the clergy and the
people classes apart, to lessen mutual sympathy and confidence.
The utterances of the priest too often sound like a voice from
another sphere, and therefore have not the practical weight which
they ought to have with the denizens of this sublunary world.
With us, the priest has only to show himself the learned and holy
and high-minded and broad-hearted man that he ought to be, and
he finds that his sacred character only adds power to his influ-
ence. Without those qualities his usefulness is apt to be con-
fined within the limits of his sacramental ministrations ; but with
such attributes of character and scholarship, he has a field be-
fore him here such as the world has never elsewhere beheld.
To form such men and such scholars is to be the aim of the
Catholic University of America. Who can doubt that the spirit
of our people and the Providence of God will assure its realiza-
tion? Who can doubt that, among the young ecclesiastics of the
United States, many will be found in whose hearts love of God
and love of country will awaken and foster the desire to fit them-
selves for such noble usefulness ?

With them will shortly, please God, be associated in our Uni-
versity, as in Paris, numbers of young laymen who feel in their
souls the ambition to be something more than mere money-mak-
ing machines. Such souls there must be, and such there will be
in constantly greater numbers. It would be an injustice to human
nature to doubt it. They need but the right touch upon them to
rouse them to self-consciousness and make them leap forward to
proffered opportunities. To supply those opportunities, and to
rouse the latent manhood in the breasts of the rising generation,
is the work now before us. It is a work which God and church
and country must unite in blessing.

While I write, news reaches us that on Wednesday, the 2ist
of March, our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII., granted Jubilee
audience to the representatives of all the colleges and seminaries
in Rome. As is usual with him on all such occasions, the Cath-
olic University of America was the subject uppermost in his
thoughts. Never before did he manifest such earnestness in re-
gard to it. Addressing his remarks to the Right Rev. Rector

i888.] fs PROTESTANT UNITY POSSIBLE f 297

of the American College, he said with evident emotion: "About
the University at Washington, it is my desire that all the bishops
should work together with unity and with energy. I have con-
fided the care of the University to them, and it would greatly
grieve me did I suppose that there could possibly be among them
any want of agreement and of earnestness in regard to it. Let
them at once push this work to completion, and they will win for
the University the support of public opinion in the United States.
The honor of the American episcopate demands it, yea, the honor
of the church in the United States, and the dignity of the Holy
See, which has so solemnly given this University its approval."

These are rousing words from the Vicar of Christ. They
must thrill through every Catholic heart, scattering any lurking
remnants of hesitation or doubt, and spurring all to determined
resolution and to noblest endeavor. Leo XIII. shall not be
disappointed. JOHN J. KEANE.

IS PROTESTANT UNITY POSSIBLE?

WE are not surprised to find this question asked and dis-
cussed in the official organ of our good friends the champions
of " Progressive Orthodoxy" at Andover. It comes in as a
very appropriate and very serious topic for examination, as fol-
lowing the leading article of the March number of their Review,
which, we are informed in a foot-note, is the first of a series in
which they propose to discuss the principle of the" Universality
of Christianity" in the light of recent criticism. The hoped-for
"coming event" of an universal Christianity certainly might
be expected by all reasonable minds to "cast some shadow" of
its advent before ; and it is instinctively felt by these earnest-
minded, would-be heralds of such a desirable boon that, if it
does not foreshadow unity, or what can be interpreted as such,
every sensible man will conclude that their proposed universal
Cnristianity has no real body, but will be regarded in the same
light as the legend tells us of the " man without a shadow" a
weird, uncanny creature whom every one will avoid or treat
as the baseless fabric of a disordered vision. Hence the appear-
ance of the article we are considering, the matter of which cer-
tainly furnishes food for friendly criticism.

It may be that they think they have yet in reserve a more
powerful battery to bring into line than this present piece of
rather small calibre and of feeble though genial report, and that
they intend this to be taken only as a signal-gun, whose dis-

298 Is PROTESTANT UNITY POSSIBLE? [June,

charge is not meant to do any serious damage to the enemies of
unity, but only to arouse them from their state of sleepy indif-
ference, and politely warn them to prepare for an attack to be
made with heavier and more destructive artillery.

Yet we think not. Indeed, we are sure that this one little
gun constitutes their whole armament in the division which is
to be deployed against that particular adversary. They may
point it higher or point it lower; they may have it loaded,
primed, and fired under different supervision (and care must
be taken not to load it with too heavy shot lest it prove self-
destructive), but it will be still the same gun. The army of
Disunion may slumber in peace ; it is for the most part too far
out of their range and too scattered for any one to be hit, to
say nothing of the random aim with which it is directed.

Yet with all our heart we commend the sincerity which un-
questionably underlies this manifestation of extraordinary and
hopeful courage in so promptly and frankly acknowledging that
Disunion is an enemy, and, as they should all along have known,
an uncompromising and logical enemy, to any universality what-
soever. If their aim is in fact taken at random, it is in spirit
and intention most sincere. A few words from their own lips
will prove that : " Evidently the time has come when we
should seriously consider the possibility of reuniting Protestant-
ism. Christianity is to-day menaced by hostile forces, which
can only be overcome, if at all, by its united strength. The
materialism of the age, with its long train of influences opposed
to any kind of spirituality, the attention paid to the arts and
sciences which minister to the comfort and luxury of life, the
ominous weakening of the idea of duty, the growing strength
of the lawless and anti-religious elements of society, and gene-
rally the existence of so many tendencies in modern life which
are inimical to the healthy existence and orderly growth of
religious faith all these are to-day standing in united array
against Christianity in any form. In view of these opposing
forces, are the Protestant churches still determined to go on
with their family feuds and guerrilla warfare, or are they con-
vinced of the folly and wickedness of this course, and are they
ready for the future to dwell together in that unity (?) which
should characterize the church of God?"

Here is good proof of the courage we have accredited to
them. They frankly own to both the folly and the wickedness
of disunion. But we are tempted to ask just here: Was dis-
union not always foolish and wicked? Is it only so now because
a united array of hostile forces are threatening what they are

i888.] fs PROTESTANT UNITY POSSIBLE? 299

pleased to call the church of God? It would almost seem to be
their thought when we read on a preceding page: There was
much that was picturesque, much even that was commendable,
in the old heroic age of denominationalism," the heroism dis-
played in " those days of internecine strife almost making one
forget that civil war is always deplorable, though the com-
batants on each side are heroes." Deplorable ! Gentlemen, it
was foolish and wicked, as you have yourselves said, and' no
glamour of picturesqueness can ever cover over its wretched
folly and its unpardonable wickedness.

It will not fail to be observed that, in the beginning of the
quotation we have made, the writer instantly makes a dis-
tinction between Protestantism and Christianity, and, in the lat-
ter part, between the "Protestant churches" and "the church
of God." This distinction is no lapsus calami. He knows too
much to make "Christianity" and "Protestantism," and the
"Protestant churches " and " the church of God," interchange-
able terms. Christianity, he tells us further on, is a something
which i; is in the very air we breathe, which would still exist, nay,
more, would grow, and would soon take on to itself a new out-
ward form and organization suitable to the circumstances which
surrounded it, though some great cataclysm of thought swept
every ecclesiastical organization on the earth to-day out of ex-
istence." And he immediately adds: " The Church of 'the future
will not be the exact pattern of any one church of to-day." This
new, outward form and organization of a Christianity which is
thus coolly taken for granted as without any legitimate form
and organization now, but which will be embodied in a church
of God, which again is supposed not to be in existence (although
he speaks of it as if it did exist somehow or somewhere), is, we
presume, the "Universal Christianity" which our Andover es-
sayists are seeking for, and have so sincerely and courageously
set themselves to the work of finding, or, at least, of defining its
most probable nature and characteristics. We have heard of
this " Church of the Future " before the church our Lord al-
ways will found but never does and we are very sorry to meet
the same old acquaintance again in this place.

But why is this writer, speaking, we presume, for the unit-
ed corps of our valiant champions of " Progressive Orthodoxy,"
so much concerned about the possible reunion of Protestant
churches? Will Protestant unity be the shadow cast by the
hoped-for universal Christianity? Will the then united Pro-
testant Church be "the church of God"? Will this united
church enjoying Protestant unity be, or will it even dare to claim

3OO IS PROTESTANT UNITY POSSIBLE? [June,

to be, Christ's " One Fold tinder one Shepherd " ? Undoubtedly
not. Then the unity of Christianity and the oneness of the church
will not yet be realized. The Christianity which they could
then affirm would be at best a something, and the church of God
a something 1 , which still lacks unity, a house still divided against
itself, a disordered system to the direction of whose disunited
elements no one central, organic, personal power can be applied.

" Oh ! " but says our worthy essayist, " Christianity cannot
be monopolized by any one division of the Christian church.
It has been and is yet the dream of certain Christian bodies that
some day or other all the Christian world will be reunited by
acknowledging their claims to be the true and only representa-
tive of Christianity. Such a dream will never be realized!"
We have never heard ourselves of but one body that ever
dreamed such a dream, or ever pretended to have had such a
vision. But let that pass.

The writer evidently has no conception of a Christianity or
of a Christian church without divisions. Reunion of Protest-
antism, or rather hoped-for union for it never had any unity to
be re established cannot therefore give unity to Christianity
nor make one Christian church. There must still remain divi-
sions, more or less, neither of which must dream of monopolizing
Christianity.

So, for the life of us, we cannot see of what particular use the
union of all the Protestant " churches" proposed by them will
prove. " But have you not heard me say," asks our essayist,
" that Christianity is to-day menaced by hostile forces which
can only be overcome, if at all, by its united strength?" Yes,
we heard you say as much, and we are sorry to see you fearful
of the result of the conflict between Christianity and these hos-
tile forces. We think you ought to have more confidence in
the strength of Truth, and more faith in our Lord's promise
that the gates of hell shall never prevail against his church.
But will the strength of Christianity be united when Protestant-
ism shall be able to declare itself in unity? According to your
own clearly-expressed views, there never was, is not, nor will
be one monopoly of Christianity. Cannot you even allow that
there might be one board of directors, chosen from all the
divisions of Christianity, or what might be rather, as you inti-
mate, a number of "divided unities," of which Protestantism
is to be one when it gets united? These might vote, accord-
ing as they would be directed by their constituents, on what
is or is not divine truth, and what is or is not necessary to be
done in order to be saved !

i888.] fs PROTESTANT UNITY POSSIBLE? 301

There must be, you say in effect, no one monopoly of the
way and the law of salvation. Every one ought to see, should
he not, that neither our Lord nor his apostles ever dreamed of
bringing the world to the unity of any such a monopoly of truth
as that? The Christian motto, "One Lord, one faith, one bap-
tism," must not be supposed to indicate the existence of any
system or organization in religion that smacks of monopoly.
The apostle's language, " There is one God and one Mediator,"
" There is no other name [but one] given under heaven whereby
we must be saved," cannot mean that our Lord intended to
monopolize the work of salvation. Is there not a banner of sal-
vation on which one may inscribe the name of " Legion " ?

But a truce to the further discussion of this part of the sub-
ject, which, by the way, the writer very properly enters upon,
viz., Whether Protestant unity is desirable ; although the title
of his article offers to us only the question whether it be possible.

We confess to having looked with no little eagerness and
curiosity for his reply, feeling so little satisfied as we were,
and as we think most people would be, from his arguments for
its desirability. We have been told to always preach and write
as if we were addressing people with vigorous understandings,
no matter of what class of persons our audience may be com-
posed. We do not think we are unfairly underrating the real
value of our essayist's plea for Protestant unity if we say that
one need possess but little vigor of understanding to perceive
that Christian unity would not be much the gainer by the reali-
zation of Protestant unity if there be no better reasons assigned
than are presented in the article before us. Certainly, disun-
ion among professed followers and believers in the one Lord is,
as he told us, both foolish and wicked, despite its picturesque-
ness ; but he did not tell us the reason why it was foolish and
wicked. We Catholics are not disunited among ourselves, and,
in so far as that fact stands unchallenged before the world for so
many centuries, we may Lave failed to exhibit the beauties of
picturesque disunion; but we have at least none of its folly or
sin to answer for. But then he may consider us, as doubtless he
honestly does, as disunited from Protestants, and therefore in-
cluded under the same judgment. If so, we think he ought to
have brought us to book, and enlightened us as to the reason of
the blame for by far the greater share of that which, on account
of our superior numbers, we should be justly held accountable.
Has he ever heard it said that we have sought or enjoyed divi-
sion and disunion, or that we have ever been suspected ot need-
ing to be convinced not only of the desirability but no less of

302 Is PROTESTANT UNITY POSSIBLE? [June,

the necessity of unity at the price of our immortal salvation? If
the charge of disunion can be laid at our door, in the name of
God and of his Christ, who prayed that all his might be one,
even as he and the Father were one, let us hear the truth !

But to return to the question, Is Protestant unity possible?
Our essayist " thinks " it is. Alas ! here the piece of artillery be-
fore alluded to shows how small is its calibre and feeble its
report. We looked for no unhesitating reply. We expected to
read, not "I think so," but, u I am certain," or, "Unquestionabl} 7 ."
But having, at least, thought it possible, one immediately looks
for a statement of reasons upon which he founds his favorable
opinion. This, of course, would mean the proposal or discussion
of some method whereby union may be realized. Two ways
only present themselves to his mind : the one already mentioned,
and scouted as an unpractical dream viz., that ot one division
monopolizing all of Christianity, the others coming under its rule
of faith and virtually allowing themselves to be "swallowed
up" by that one organization. The other way is by "a gradual
assimilation of each church to all the others, finding the least
common multiple of their dogmatic creeds"; and the writer
thinks that " almost unconsciously to themselves the divided
churches of Protestantism are finding and exhibiting this com-
mon multiple as the highest outlook of modern Christianity."
He adds: "There is a movement downwards on the part of
those denominations which shot above the normal line of essen-
tial Christianity, and a movement upwards on the part of those
denominations that fell below that normal line. And when they
all meet, as meet they will, on a common line, the question of
the reunion [sic] of Protestantism will solve itself without the
help of any formal schemes of unity."

The perusal of that method for uniting Protestants brought
forth from us a long, deep breath. A friend at hand wondered
what might be the cause of so profound a sigh. As well he
might. For if, by means of a least common multiple among
all the Protestant churches, one is to find the normal line of
essential Christianity, our essayist must think we possess no
more vigor of understanding than a cow if he imagines we are
going to believe there will be any Christianity in this curious
arithmetico-geometrico-moral result of which essential qualities
can be predicated at all. Does he not hear the clamor of his
justly impatient readers: What is the common multiple?
Where is the normal line? What is essential to Christianity?
Which is up and which is down? Upward would seem to
imply a movement towards what is higher and more perfect ;

i888.] Is PROTESTANT UNITY POSSIBLE? 303

and who shall say that those who are higher are not also the
more perfect, and why should they come down? Is the church
of God to be built upon a compromise? In medio stat virtus!
he may say. But we reply that that is damnable doctrine where
truth and spiritual life are concerned the only two things with
which Christianity has to do. And when we are asked to im-
agine this church as higher and that other one as lower as com-
pared with one another among Protestants, we venture to say
that if Catholics were allowed to enter the arena and requested
to assign them their due rank in view of a divine criterion,
some might find themselves placed very far below many others
above whom they have long plumed themselves as holding a
higher position. This faith which is proposed as the result of
an application of the principle of the least common multiple
appears to us to be very like what is described in Scripture
as the faith that is neither cold nor hot, nauseating to God,
and known by experience to be no less so to man.

Will our sincere seeker after unity venture to assure us that
the problem for solution of the question of such vital import-
ance, equally, as he holds it is, to ourselves and to Protestants,
may be thus stated? To find the normal lines which define true
universal Christianity i.e., the Christian religion Christ gave to
and intended all men to receive find the least common multiple
of all the creeds of Protestantism, et voilk ! Does he really mean
what he says when he tells us that such a result is ''the highest
outlook of modern Christianity "? Is he so blind that he cannot
see that such a lame and impotent conclusion is one that the in-
fidel will laugh to scorn ? And when such an outlook shall have
been attained, and Protestants shall dwell together in unity in
their new City of God built by them and " set on the hill " to be
seen of all, can they hope that it will prove to be one which by its
eminence will command the admiration of the nations, and by the
impregnability of its walls of truth and the elevation of its
towers of heavenly doctrine will unite an erring, defenceless, and
shelterless humanity to seek within its enclosure protection and
safety against the dire assaults of the hostile powers of the
"gates of hell"? Well may we deeply sigh, seeing wise men
and good deliberately proposing to those who might justly be
supposed to be hanging with painful, and to us pitiable, expect-
ancy upon the words of wisdom that fall from their lips, such
weak and utterly hopeless expedients as these.

Men and brethren, the charity of Christ constraineth us to
say that ye are acting the part of blind leaders to the blind ;
and shall ye not both fall into the ditch ? ALFRED YOUNG.

304 THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. [June,

THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS.

To pass from the myths of modern science to those of an-
cient poetry is like coming into the tropics after rounding the
Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. The weather is calmer, the
sea smoother, the air more pleasant; and if we lose something of
the intense earnestness which characterized the rougher portion
of the passage, it is agreeably replaced by a serene atmosphere
and an unclouded prospect. Nevertheless even in these sunny
seas a pretty brisk breeze is sometimes found to be blowing; and
the classical hurly-burly aroused by that ^Eolus, Mr. Gladstone,
is not one whit less animated than the scientific cyclone which
accompanied it. At first, however, there is an appearance as if
this particular contest were about to hang fire. Dr. Reville, it
seems, has founded his criticisms upon Mr. Gladstone's earliest
publications in regard to Homeric subjects ; while the latter, im-
porting into literary matters the amazing versatility distinctive
of his political genius, has so completely altered his original con-
clusions as virtually to repudiate them altogether. He does
not, he tells us, maintain that there was any systematic or wilful
corruption of a primitive religion, or that all the mythologies
are due to such a corruption, wilful or otherwise, or that the
ideas conveyed in Genesis were developed in the form of dog-
ma; but merely that there is a historic connection between
certain of the Greek and Hebrew traditions.

But this polite explanation or retractation whichever it may
be is merely a preliminary flourish, a sort of handshaking with
the gloves on before the actual encounter ; and the two are very
soon engaged in a regular hand-to-hand combat. With deep ex-
pression of respect for the erudition of his adversary in those
literatures with which he himself is not acquainted, he gives very
plainly his opinion as to the value of M. Reville's scholarship in
such subjects as he is personally competent to test, and draws
first blood by expressing a hope that his opponent does not ex-
hibit "in his treatment of other systems the slightness of texture
and facility and rapidity of conclusion which mark his perfor-
mances in the Olympian field."

As an example of this tenuity of treatment an example un-
expectedly confirmed by Dr. Reville's reception of the criticism
Mr. Gladstone takes the author's statement that the Greek
Heracles and the Tyrian and Carthaginian Melkart " is in fact
the same god." He shows the extreme improbability of a foreign
origin for Heracles, and the numerous points which render such

1 888.] THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. 305

an identity inconceivable, though he oddly omits to call atten-
tion either to the fact that Heracles was not a god at all, but
only a demi-god a very material point in considering the 'ori-
gin of his worship and, secondly, to the full-length portrait of
the hero drawn by Euripides in the Alcestis, a study of character
remarkable in more ways than one, but chiefly as impersonating
in a possible individual all those conflicting traits which Mr.
Gladstone finds so hard to reconcile in Homer's description.
And what says M. R6ville to Mr. Gladstone's refutation of his
perfectly unfounded and indefensible statement? He replies,
with really enviable coolness, not to say audacity, that his dis-
tinguished opponent will be glad to hear that he does " not
consider Heracles and Melkart to be the same god " ; he con-
siders them both to be " solar myths." But if he does not con-
sider them to be the same god, why did he say that they were
the same god ?

But meanwhile a greater presence than that of M. Re"ville
had risen upon the horizon. Professor Max Muller had seen
the gauntlet flung down by Mr. Gladstone in The Dawn of Crea-
tion and Worship, and felt that such a challenge ought not to go
unnoticed. And here, too, it would seem as if the contest were
declined, for the professor declares that he has only attempted
to prove that "certain portions of the ancient mythologies have
a directly solar origin" a most unimpeachable statement,
which would call for no comment whatever were it not that on
the very same page he maintains that " we may now boldly say
that behind the clouds of ancient mythology the sun is seldom
entirely absent." In fact, his whole article on "Solar Myths"
is an exposition of that solar theory which Mr. Gladstone in
great measure derides ; and the professor renders the weight
of his name still more weighty by confessing that he has been
converted to solarism with much reluctance.

What, then, are we to say of this wide-spread theory, wherein
not Heracles alone, nor Here (or Hera, as, for some inscrutable
reason, German-worshipping scholars insist on calling her), nor
Zeus, nor Hermes, but Achilles and Barbarossa and William
Tell are in all seriousness resolved into personifications of the
action of the sun, a kind of human embodiment of an idealized
radiometer? We reply that to our simple mind the' proof of the
pudding lies in the eating; and no theory can be considered as
satisfactorily tested until it has been shown to solve some diffi-
culty which it was not especially devised to meet. If the ex-
planation suggested for any myth in its shorter form, such as

VOL. XLVII. 20

3c6 THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. [June,

is given by Lempriere or Smith, throws a light upon the other
details when reference is made to original sources, then no
doubt a strong probability arises in its favor ; and the solar
origin of the legend of Circe, we may remark, or at least its
close connection with solar worship, is strongly favored by the
remarks of Tertullian upon the Circus, introduced, he says, by
that enchantress and called after her name. But the strange
thing is and very strange it is in the case of so distinguished a
scholar as Professor Max Miiller that in the cases he quotes, or
at least in a considerable number of them, the result is the very
op'posite ; and so far are the original accounts from affording
any confirmation of the learned professor's conjectures that, for
the most part, the more intimately we become acquainted with
the classic writers the greater does the difficulty become of
applying to their traditions the solution of a solar origin. Take
the case of the Zodiac with its twelve houses or stations. Here,
if anywhere, solar influence is surely to be expected ; and there
is no great stretch of imagination required in order to suppose
that the Ram, the Goat, and other signs betokened the sun's
influence at various periods of fecundity. Yet what says Man-
etho in the Apotelesmatica attributed to him? He tells us that
the Zodiac is the fairest circle in heaven, and that it is adorned
with twelve " eidola," or signs, but says not a word as to any
connection with the solar light.

Hephestion's description is still further removed from such
a conception, for he connects the different parts of the Zodiac
closely with the earth. Babylon, he says, is beneath Aries,
Media and Egypt under Taurus, Gemini rules Cappadocia,
Leo Greece, Virgo Rhodes and the Levant, Scorpio Carthage
a description absolutely unintelligible, unless we suppose
the Zodiac to have been conceived not as a celestial but as a
terrestrial circle or wheel, situated doubtless in the sky, but
indissolubly fixed in its relation to the earth, both in its general
outline and its particular portions. Or consider another legend
one of Professor Max Miiller's particular favorites the myth
of Daphne. u If it were not for the method of comparative
mythology," he observes, " we should never have known that
Daphne was the same as Ahana, the Dawn " ; and, again, that
" nothing is more certain than the equation, Daphne = Ahana."
That such a discovery would never have been made except in
the way of comparative mythology may be easily admitted,
considering that the statement itself is a comparison of myth-
ologies ; and he would be a rash man indeed who would ques-

i888.] THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. 307

tion the professor's knowledge of the Sanksrit language, though
otherwise we should like to inquire, under our breath, whether
he is prepared to maintain that the Sanskrit ha is always equi-
valent to the Greek phi, and from whence he contrives to import
that big, big D. But the real puzzle begins when we turn to
classic sources and see what the author of the Metamorphoses
has to say about Daphne. Who was this famous girl ? She
was, says Ovid, the daughter of Peneus, a river-god of Thes-
saly. The daughter of a river-god ! And what has a river-
god to do with the dawn ? unless perhaps we are to under-
stand that Apollo was in the habit of taking a cold bath in the
river every morning. But let that pass. What happened?
Apollo, one day seeing Cupid amusing himself with his bow,
cried out : " What are you doing, you naughty boy ? " (las-
cive puer). Whereunto the celestial urchin replied : " Apollo,
mind your own business ; you hit everything with your darts,
and I'll hit you with mine, and then my glory will be as much
greater than yours as you are greater than other things."
Then the young rascal fitted two darts: one light, to excite love,
the other heavy, to destroy all passionate thought. The former
he aimed at Apollo, who straightway fell headlong in love with
Daphne. With the latter he transfixed Daphne herself, who
received Apollo's addresses with aversion. In vain Apollo
pleaded ; Daphne fairly took to her heels and scudded over the
plain. Her celestial lover toiled breathlessly after her, entreat-
ing her to stop, and gasping out that he was a god, the son of
Jupiter, and would do all kinds of fine things for her. Daphne
paid no more attention than a Democratic President to a Repub-
lican office-seeker the image is our own, not Ovid's and at
last coming within view of the river and catching sight of her
father, Peneus, she begged his aid to deliver her. Her father
heard her prayer and changed her into a laurel, while Apollo
arrived just in time to put his hand upon the bark and feel her
heart beating beneath it. A very curious and edifying story, no
doubt; but what it can have to do with the dawn is quite be-
yond our limited imagination. The dawn does precede the ris-
ing sun, it is true, and may, without any very violent effort, be
supposed to be flying from him, although the phenomena would
hardly seem to suggest it. But what about Cupid, and the two
darts, and the chase, and the invocation, and the transformation,
and the interference of Peneus, and what has the laurel particu-
larly to do with the early morning? Once beyond the bounds
of Lempriere, there really is not a single feature which accords,

308 THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. [June,

except by the most painstaking perversion, with the theory of
solar action. At this rate it is clear that not Daphne only,
nor Achilles, nor Barbarossa, nor William Tell, as the solarists
maintain, nor Napoleon I., as Dr. Whately set forth, but that
President Lincoln as well, who is fabled to have been a back-
woodsman and the emancipator of the negroes, was in reality a
" solar personage," personifying the brilliance of the atmosphere
of the prairies and the deliverance of day from the black night ;
that Dr. Franklin, of whom the legend runs that he discovered
the principle of electricity, is, when properly understood, a
revival of the solar myth of Prometheus ; and that the renowned
Professor Wiggins is nothing else than an embodiment of the
uncertainty attending the condition of American weather. Nay,
we cannot, upon reflection, doubt that the very controversy we
have been considering is a mere collection of solar phenomena.
There is Mr. Gladstone (the resemblance of whose name to
Ahana, or the Dawn, is as striking as that of Daphne) scatter-
ing his blows like light upon every side ; there is Professor Max
Miiller, the illuminator of the entire East; there is Professor
Huxley serenely looking down from the heights above and giv-
ing nothing but bewilderment to those who look at him too
closely ; and there is M. Reville himself struggling earnestly,
though with singularly ill success, to shine in the midst of a
fog. In the language of the Prolegomena, " Here are all the
elements of a dramatic myth!"

In truth, if allegory must be impressed into service,
there is another and very different direction where we may go
a-prospectingwith much better hope of reasonable return. Bril-
liant as the external universe appeared to the Greek, he was far
more occupied with the internal conflict of the mind in its ini-
tial struggle with its physical environment. To the Greeks
each infant art was a device at once divine and impious, a gift
from Heaven and a revolt against the heavenly will. To plough
the earth was to tear the breast of the universal mother ; to sail
the sea was to set at defiance the restraining ocean ; and
Horace's complaints are but the echoes, perhaps only the copies,
of those of Aratus. Beyond all other nations there were ever
present to that remarkable people the thoughts and aspirations,
the habitual failures and empty successes, the mocking hope
and the ultimate despair, the triumphs issuing from the victor's
agony and the failures leading on to some fresh effort all the
thousand paradoxes, in fact, moral, physical, and intellectual, at-
tendant upon the outbreak of original genius.

i888.] THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. 309

They saw how the fate of a reformer was ever to incur some
fresh struggle for the sake of others, and to be regarded in re-
turn as a " very doubtful character " by those who imposed the
tasks upon him, and they embodied it in the myth of Heracles
and Eurystheus. They perceived what would be ever the
course of struggling genius, and they invented the fable of Tan-
talus with the fruits and the waters just escaping his parched
lips. They foresaw the relations which would one day exist
between author and publisher, and they placed the divine Apollo
as servant to the table of wealthy Admetus. The career of
those who should endeavor to raise the condition of their fellow-
mortals lay open to them, and they expressed it in the myth of
Prometheus with the vulture tearing at his entrails. They caught
a glimpse of the idea of national education, and they foreshad-
owed it in the daughters of Danaus pouring water into the bot-
tomless tubs. They knew the attempts which would be made
from time to time at purifying the administration of public
affairs, and they prefigured them by Sisyphus pushing with
infinite labor his stone to the top of the hill, and then watching
it with leaps and bounds rolling down once more to the bottom.
They foresaw that one day philosophers would heap absurdity
upon absurdity in striving to explain for themselves the myste-
ries of religion, and they prefigured the attempt by the imposi-
tion of Pelion upon Ossa in the Titanic struggle to scale the
heights of heaven. Fantastic as such a system of interpretation
may be, it is at least more nearly akin to the spirit of Greek
thought than the eternal reference to the state of the weather.

A much more probable method of explanation is that pro-
posed by Mr. Lang in another article arising out of this poly-
gonal discussion. The real difficulty of understanding the
classical myths, as this writer points out truly and acutely,
arises from the total meaninglessness of the freaks attributed
to the various divinities where gods devour and disgorge
their own offspring, change men and women into birds and
beasts and plants and stones, and conduct themselves generally
"more like extravagant and unprincipled clowns in a pantomime
than pure natural forces or sublime abstractions." Now, all
this, he observes, is quite foreign to any condition of the Greek
intellect with which we are historically acquainted ; but it is
quite in keeping with the ideas of races on a lower level, espe-
cially where totemism* is practised and there is no transforma-

* Prof. Max Muller makes the surprising confession that he does not know what " totemism "
may be. Possibly this statement is "rote sarkasticul," and we are much more inclined to be-
lieve ourselves too stupid to see the point of the remark than that the learned professor can

310 THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. [June,

tion of Zeus or Indra beyond the pretensions of " medicine-men "
to perform. It is, therefore, to this stage of religious belief,
whether experienced by the Greeks themselves or imported from
less cultured neighbors, that he attributes the origin of mytho-
logical legends.

In testing the value of this theory by applying it to classical
ideas of the cosmogony, or rather to the notions which prevail-
ed amongst the Greek and Latin nations in regard to all that
concerned the creation of the world and of mankind, it is neces-
sary to say a few words as to the kind of authority to be brought
in evidence. For the notions directly relating to these matters
belong naturally to the domain of philosophy, and it is amongst
the philosophers, therefore, and more particularly the early
philosophers of Greece, that one would primarily seek for such
information. Unfortunately, however, there are two objections
to this course quite insuperable at the present moment. In the
first place, the works of the early philosophers are so extremely
fragmentary that their opinion upon any given point must itself
be very largely a matter of opinion ; and, secondly, the rendering
of their ideas in the commonly received accounts are so highly
unsatisfactory that a translation rather than a summary would
be almost a necessity. Thus in the article on " Evolution " in the
Encyclopedia Britannica, written by Professor Sully, to which re-
ference has already been made, and which Professor Huxley was
so good as to recommend to Mr. Gladstone for his edification,
Parmenides is stated to have held that all his own conjec-
tures were merely opinions, having to do with the impressions
of the senses only ; whereas the words of the philosopher him-
self are directly to a contrary effect. " I would have you
know," he writes, " both the unshakable heart of reasonable
truth and the opinions of men in which there is no firm faith."
And again: " I will lay down a true law from which you may
judge of the opinions of men." And the principle laid emphati-
cally down by him is this, that "it must not be said or con-
ceived that existence can come from the non-existent." So
when Empedocles speaks of whirling strife pervading the lowest
depth, while in the eddy's centre love stands calm, it is hardly
justifiable to interpret the philosopher as having arrived at the
notions of molecular attraction and repulsion, and still less to
credit him with "taking the first step in evolution by conceiv-

really be ignorant of that not very unfamiliar term. Still, for his information, or that of who-
soever may desire it, we may state that totemism is a belief in the descent of a given tribe from
some particular animal or plant, held consequently in reverence by that tribe. It is, in fact, a
kind of Darwinism raised to the th power, and is commonly received among the American
Indians, though the Fellows of the Royal Society have not yet advanced so far.

1 888.] THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. 311

ing the varying action of those forces to be the origin of parti-
cular species." There is a certain class of writers who must
perforce see " a step " towards their favorite theory, whatever
may be uttered and whoever may have uttered it; but the only
conclusion we can fairly draw from these fragments is that the
one philosopher had firmly grasped the notion of eternal and
uncreated life, and the other of the supremacy of immutable
love two ideas familiar enough to Christian tradition, but to all
appearance apprehended rather dimly by some professors of
modern science.

When from the philosophers we turn to the poets the field
becomes a little clearer. Aratus affords a striking example of
that mingled absurdity and beauty for which the theory of Mr.
Lang would partially account; and the proem of his work is so
sublime in tone that our effort to reproduce it here will be eas-
ily pardoned, since, though the grace of diction may be absent,
all that is necessary to preserve is the nobility of the thought:

"From God let us commence, whose name unsung
We mortals never pass: full all the streets,
Full are the ways of God, full is the sea,
And full the harbors ; yea, and everywhere
Of God we live, his offspring are we all.
Tis he who in the heavens hath firmly set
For signs the constellations, mapping out
The year by stars, that they should be the bounds
Of seasons unto man, and all harmonious move.
Hail Father, hail O Wonderful, hail Joy of man ! ; '

And then, having completed this almost inspired prelude,
quoted by St. Paul in his address to the Athenians, he plunges
straightway into such a confusion of astronomy and myth as to
defy all hope of analysis, except upon Mr. Lang's principle that
it is the single result of two distinct and conflicting periods of
intellectual growth.

With Hesiod, as with Empedocles, Love holds a prominent
place, and here forms with Space and Earth (Chaos and Gaia) a
primeval trinity. Both the genealogical form which the tradi-
tions of this poet assume, and the nature of the legends them-
selves, quite accord with the theory of Mr. Lang, while, on the
other hand, we have another specimen of M. Reville's "slight-
ness of texture." When Hesiod, he observes without the
smallest grounds of justification, " tells us that Uranus begot
Kronos, and Kronos begot Zeus, he means that Uranus, Kronos,
and Zeus are all one heaven." If Hesiod did mean that, he
took a very strange way of expressing his meaning ; but, what

312 THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. [June,

is more to the purpose, he must have meant that earth and
heaven are identical also, since he makes Uranus the offspring
of Gaia. Perhaps the finest portion of Hesiod's works is the
well-known (though frequently misquoted) Ages of Man ; and
it is interesting to observe how closely the various periods agree
in their principal characteristics with the great epochs men-
tioned in Holy Scripture. The golden age, wherein men lived
on fruit spontaneously produced, is exactly parallel with the
life in Eden ; the silver age, by no means equal to the golden,
but yet where worship still prevailed, with the period after the
fall ; the brazen age, with the time preceding the Flood, when
the whole earth was perverse and desperately wicked ; the age
of heroes, with the times of the Jewish patriarchs and judges ;
and the fifth or iron age, wherein the poet wishes that he had
not been born, with the historic times of battle, murder, and
every form of misery. Virgil, who alludes to the golden age
alone, comes still closer to the Scriptural account by assigning
the education of man through the necessity of labor as the
object for which the ground was cursed with sterility ; and
this is the more noticeable as Virgil is the very last writer whom
one would expect to originate any wide or general thought.
Ovid, to whom we are indebted for the modern notion of chaos
as a " rudis indigestaque moles" instead of simple extension or
space, follows closely upon the lines of Hesiod ; but he omits
all mention of the heroes, and he introduces cave-men into the
age of silver.

So far, therefore, as this brief examination carries us and a
more general investigation would only reproduce the same re-
sult there is nothing to controvert and much to confirm the
theory of Mr. Lang that the familiar legends of classic poetry
were either survivals of a less intellectual stage of thought or
importations from neighboring races. But even then the prin-
cipal question seems to remain unanswered. Granted that we
can understand more or less how such stories came to be re-
ceived among a cultivated nation like the Greeks; that does not
tell us how they came to exist at all. Let it be admitted that
the natural repulsion may be thereby overcome to such myths as
that of Zeus devouring and disgorging his own children ; still,
at the best it was a very odd thing for any one, god or no god,
to do. Why should Kronos have devoured his children, and,
again, why should he disgorge them? Some motive there
evidently must have been to give rise to such extraordinary
performances, or rather, since no motive can render such actions
other than monstrosities, some features there must have been of

i888.] THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. 313

the original tradition of which these mythological expressions
are the perversion and caricature. Now, the hypothesis of a
primitive revelation, subsequently obscured and materialized by
local and tribal traditions during the wandering and unlettered
period of the Aryan migration, brings us face to face with the
principal issue raised by Dr. Reville, as to whether an examina-
tion of religions historically considered would or would not lead
to a belief in such a delivery. M. Reville characteristically
commences his examination by assuming the conclusion and an-
swering this question in the negative ; but we shall content our-
selves with pointing out that, in regard at least to the classic and
more particularly to the Greek mythology, the more strongly
the full light of the Catholic faith is turned upon its recesses,
the more brilliantly do the most intricate portions of that com-
plex mythology shine out with luminous and consistent signifi-
cance. A few illustrations must suffice.

Consider how easily such a doctrine as that of the eternal
generation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity may be
transformed when orally handed down by a nomadic and il-
literate people, or when guessed at from a neighboring people
whose language is but half-understood. Can we not perceive
how naturally the Eternal Son would become identified with
Kronos, or Khronos, abstract Time; and then how the mutual
relations between the divine Persons would be materialized into
the notions of absorption and reproduction, or devouring and
disgorging? So, as it is the Blessed Trinity who creates, directs,
and determines mortal life, materialize this triple exertion of
the divine Unity in Trinity, and we have Clotho, Lachesis, and
Atropos. By the same process in regard to judgment might be
easily conceived the origin of Minos, JEacus, and Rhadamanthus
Rhadamanthus, whom, as Pindar sings, " the Father has as a
great assessor." The myth of Bacchus, whether narrated by
Euripides or by Homer in his hymns, is replete with Christian
symbols, and even sayings to a degree positively startling; while
the myth of Prometheus, as recorded by ^Eschylus, more espe-
cially if identified with the Pramanthaof the Vedas, reads like an
almost undisguised prediction of the Crucifixion and the Resur-
rection.

It is time, however, to bring this somewhat lengthy discus-
sion to a close ; but it would not be proper to conclude our ob-
servations upon this important controversy for important it is,
if only by eliciting in their most sharply defined form the opin-
ions of so many illustrious writers without a word or two in
reference to the remarkable work out of which the whole dispu-

314 THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. [June,

tation arose. Nobody can properly object to the collection and
comparison of duly authenticated facts, and the facts relating to
the worship and belief of the various races of the world form a
class invested with a very high interest. But if such a collec-
tion is to possess any value whatsoever, whether in the eye of
the scientist, or the theologian, or the historian, or the student,
nay, if it is not to be a mere accumulated congeries of misleading
confusions, it is evident that the doctrines and facts put forward
as representing any particular religion must, in the first place,
be such as are propounded by the acknowledged authorities of
that religion, more particularly by those of the same time and
country ; and not be such as some foreigner of a different creed,
living many centuries later, has chosen to imagine that they
must have been. There could have been no more proper func-
tion for a Prolegomena to the History of Religion than to afford a
specification of the authorities from which in each case our
knowledge is derived, and a careful analysis of the amount of
weight attaching to the various works, and at the same time to
enunciate and discuss the critical principles whereby the state-
ments of these authors are sometimes to be interpreted, modi-
fied, or possibly rejected. Then at least we should know what
we are about, and should not be perpetually mistaking windmills
for knights in armor. M. Reville, however, far from either re-
cording authority or enunciating principle, does not seem even
to trouble his head about either the one or the other, but calmly
assumes that to be most correct which is most alien to the par-
ticular country and most foreign to the ancient tradition.
Where, for instance, does he obtain his notion of the double
authorship of Genesis, or that of absence of synagogues and con-
sequently of public worship among the rural Jews until the time
of the Captivity from ancient Judasaor from modern Germany?
Suppose that any one should deal with literature as M. Reville
has dealt with holy Scripture, and, without condescending to a
word of comment or explanation, should treat the vagaries of
the New Shakspere Society as admitted facts, speaking of one
scene in some familiar play, such as Macbeth or Timon, as
the work of Beaumont, and another as the production of that
poetaster, Cyril Tourneur what kind of value should we attach
to the result ? If we are to have the gospel according to Strauss,
and sacred history secundum Ewald, and Homer a la Wolf, and
Shakspere according to Mr. Furnival, well and good. The result
will not be without its own interest; but let us fairly put aside,
once and for all, any weak-minded hankering after facts as they
are. Then M. Reville observes that until modern times the

1 888.] THE CREATION AND THE CLASSICS. 315

Christian Church taught that all mythological traditions
amongst which he specifies in another place the Sibylline utter-
anceswere the work of the devil. Now, we will not demand
any abstruse knowledge upon this difficult point, but it is not
too much to ask of any one who pretends to interpret the mind
of the Christian Church that he should be acquainted with one
of her most familiar and most widely celebrated hymns. If,
then, we turn to the " Dies Iras," that solemn strain which has
re-echoed so often in the ears of the mourners of France, we find
the well-known line, " Teste David cum Sibylla." Now, the
Catholic Church, we beg respectfully to inform M. Reville, does
not consider the devil as an authority on a par with King David.
So far is the church from an indiscriminate condemnation of
every external belief that her missionaries study carefully the
religions of those whom they hope to convert, and that one of
the familiar charges made against her by Protestant ignorance
was her supposed leniency towards heathen superstition.

All this is unsatisfactory enough ; but not only has M. Re-
ville left undone those things which he ought to have done, but
he also has emphatically done those things which he ought not
to have done. If there is one thing from which the author of
such a work should preserve himself with unbending rigor, it is
the indulgence in theories. " Our young science," observes
Professor Max Miiller with much truth, " has suffered much
from the embraces of that philosophy which tries to know how
everything ought to have been without first trying to know
something of what really has been." Now, theorizing, albeit in
a mild and platitudinizing fashion, is the element wherein the
soul of M. Reville takes inexhaustible delight. He has a little
theory about everything and everybody. He has a little theory
about the authorship of the Pentateuch, and another little the-
ory about " the royal plural." He has a little theory that " re-
ligion is civilizing only when it is in accordance with the con-
ditions of civilization," and another little theory that among the
arts architecture, music, and poetry are more adapted to re-
ligious purposes than dancing. He has a little theory that
" science has certainly a right to the most complete autonomy,"
but, on the other hand, that "it is well to recognize that defi-
nitively, and when thoroughly understood, religion in itself and
independent science never ought to be hostile." Innocent
little theories they are, some of them, innocent almost to puer-
ility, but they are none the less theories, in a position and at a
moment when there should -be room for nothing whatever but
facts.

316 EARLY DAYS OF NOTRE DAME. [June,

In a word, " to sum up," if we may borrow a favorite ex-
pression of our author. From beginning to end of the Prole-
gomena, whether we regard its design or its execution, its
history or its philosophy, its particular details or its general
argument, there is but one epithet whereby it can be properly
described, and that epithet, we regret to say. is flimsy. That
word, indeed, may be applied to it in more senses than one. For
the whole production reads like a series of newspaper articles
dashed off by some experienced press-writer knowing thorough-
ly where to lay his hand upon encyclopaedias and dictionaries
and summaries of information, and possessing a neat and ready
turn for indiscriminate generalization. The remarkable point
about it is that it should have attracted the attention and com-
manded the interest of such a man as Professor Huxley, who
can write excellent sense when he pleases to do so, and of Pro-
fessor Max Miiller, who has really done much to increase and
diffuse a knowledge of ancient literatures and religions.

W. MARSHAM ADAMS.

EARLY DAYS OF NOTRE DAME.

As originally admitted into the Union, the north line of In-
diana was continuous with that of Ohio. Shortly after the ad-
mission of the State, however, it was suggested that if the line
were placed ten miles further north, Indiana would have the ad-
vantage of a port on Lake Michigan, to gain which advantage
what was called the ten-mile purchase was effected. Whether
the present value of the lake port, Michigan City, would justify
the price paid for it we will not now inquire. But Indiana
gained unlooked-for advantages besides. Besides the site of the
widely known and very successful college whose early history
this paper chronicles, a noble river, the St. Joseph (sometimes
called " Big St. Joseph " to distinguish it from a branch of the
Maumee named after the same saint), which would otherwise be-
long wholly to Michigan, now has its most important " Bend "
in the Hoosier State a bend which has given its name to a
municipality mentioned by Parkman in his carefully written
work, The Discovery of the Great West, as "the present village of
South Bend," although at the date of the edition before us that
village was already a city of 20,000 inhabitants, and has since
probably doubled its figure. A peculiarity of the location is
that it is on the water-shed of the continent. A shower of rain
falling here may send some of its waters to one extremity of the

1 888.] EARLY DAYS OF NOTRE DAME. 317

United States and some to the other. Drained into the St.
Joseph, it would pass into Lake Michigan and through the ro-
mantic Mackinaw Strait into Lake Huron ; by St. Clair River
and lake, and the Detroit River, into storm-lashed Erie and over
roaring Niagara ; and then by Ontario and the Thousand Isles,
by historic Montreal and Quebec, into the mist-covered North
Atlantic. But, falling on the opposite side of a roof-ridge, the
drops might be carried into the Kankakee, which rises just west
of the city limits, and thus pass into the adjacent Prairie State,
into the Illinois River, and so to swell the surging flood that
carries fertility and commerce through the great valley of the
South and West, by St. Louis and New Orleans, so into the
tropical billows of the Gulf.

Here, then, as we might have inferred, is one of the principal
" portages " over which the aboriginal canoes were carried
when it was desired to transfer them from the waters of the
Great Lake basin to those of the Mississippi valley. The coun-
try to the north of South Bend still bears the name of Portage
Prairie a well-known rendezvous to the hardy and adventurous
coureurs des bois at a time when France claimed all the territory
necessary to connect Canada with Louisiana, and had even
established lines of trading-posts, forts, and Indian mission
churches in various directions throughout its forests and prai-
ries. The river St. Joseph well deserves its Catholic name.
More than two hundred years ago, in the autumn of 1686, a tract
of land on this river was granted to the Jesuit missions on con-
dition of their erecting a chapel and residence there within three
years. This is the earliest grant of land on record within the
limits of the present State of Indiana. The portage and the
sources of the Kankakee were deemed of sufficient interest to
afford material for a graphic description written by Charlevoix
in 1721. Within the present century it was an important cen-
tre for the fur-traders, before the settlement of the country
drove the beaver from his dam and the buffalo from his range.
The buffalo, indeed, is still to be found in Indiana on the State
seal.

About three miles north of the extreme southern point of this
elbow of St. Joseph River, and on the concave side of the curve,
lies the site of Notre Dame, the subject of the present sketch.
Here two little lakes, fed by never-failing springs, discharge
their crystal waters into the river by a westerly-flowing rivulet.
These lakes were originally surveyed and mapped as one, but
the land between them, now dry, was never covered by any

318 EARLY DAYS OF NOTRE DAME. [June,

great depth of water, and in after-years, its marshy exhalations
causing ill-health, it was deemed advisable to introduce a sys-
tem of drainage which converted the original single lake into
two, of which the larger covers about twenty-five acres, the
smaller seventeen. A rising ground between the lakes is still
known as the " Island." The once submerged flat lands are
planted with shade-trees or form stretches of open meadow.
The original oak groves are preserved on the north and east of
the lakes, and the scene retains much of its native wildness,
forming a delightful contrast in the immediate vicinage of the
culture and classic taste of a large institution of learning.

In 1830 the tract adjoining these lakes was conveyed by pur-
chase to Rev. Stephen Theodore Badin, the proto.-priest of the
United States, being the first ordained within the limits of our
country. Ste. Marie des Lacs, as the locality was then called, was
the centre of an extensive range of missions. The resident
priest here attended to the spiritual wants of all settlers and so-
journers, white and red, between Coldwater, Michigan, and the
Illinois line, east and west, and from Kalamazoo to Rochester,
north and south a parish as large as an average diocese. A
little log church of the period is still preserved here as a vene-
rable relic of more unworldly days.

And now let us take a retrospective glance and dwell for a
moment on our wild predecessors occupying this place. The
Indian tribes that claimed the neighboring hunting-grounds
were Pottawatomies and Miamis, and in evangelizing them the
missionaries had to contend with the usual obstacle the incon-
gruity of observed Christian practice, as manifested in the lives
of the white settlers, with Christian principle. The Jesuits, most
successful of all who have introduced Christianity among the
Indian tribes, achieved their success mainly by banishing the
white settler from their " reductions " and treating his influence
as veritable contamination. It has often been said that the In-
dian learns nothing from the white man but his vices. May it
not also be true that the very virtues of the white man are a stum-
bling-block to the Indian? The most conspicuous virtue of the
American farmer is his industry. Rising before sunrise to begin
his labor labor only intermitted by the " bolting " of three
hasty, unwholesome, and ill-cooked meals, with perhaps a u noon-
spell " if the welfare of his horses requires it he continues these
labors until after sunset of the long summer's day ; he plies them
often in solitude and silence, uncheered even by the sight of a
fellow-laborer. How can the Indian, seeing this illustration of

i888.] EARLY DAYS OF NOTRE DAME. 319

the Gospel maxims which he has lately learned the maxims that
tell him to consider the lilies of the field, which toil not, neither
do they spin how can he fail to reflect that his own previous
life, depending on Providence for what game might be brought
down by his arrows, was more in accordance with the Gospel
spirit than this slavery is? It has been customary of late years
to sneer at the sketches of Indian character found in the novels
of Fenimore Cooper as mere freaks of a poetic imagination,
having no substratum of fact as a basis. The testimony of those
missionaries .who have devoted their life-work to the evangeli-
zation of the red races will, however, go a long way to prove
the existence of estimable qualities beneath the unattractive ex-
terior. Simplicity of purpose, fidelity to promise, and even, in
spite of the harrowing tales of ferocity and cruelty related of
them, true kindness of heart, have been manifested to the Black-
Robe whose faith and charity have been sufficiently powerful
to enable him to bid farewell to the niceties of civilized life.
Beloved and venerated by his spiritual children, he has return-
ed their affection with unfeigned warmth.

The list of missionaries among the Pottawatomies and Mi-
amis in the region to which we now refer begins with the cele-
brated Marquette, who, on his return from the village of the
Kaskaskias, descended the St. Joseph on the trail by which it
is reached from the Kankakee by " portage." Whether he re-
sided here for any length of time is uncertain, but his successor,
Father Allouez, is known to have been a resident. Under the
grant of land already spoken of as made to the Jesuits in 1686,
at such point as they might select on the river, he chose a lo-
cality twenty. five leagues from its mouth, and there built a chapel
and mission-house, which was the scene of his labors until his
death in August, 1689, after a missionary career of thirty years.
He may be considered the founder of the church in Indiana,
concerning which he writes : " It is said that the first who found
churches are generally saints. This thought so touches my
heart that, although I am good for nothing, I desire to expend
myself more and more for the salvation of souls." A saint, in-
deed St. John Francis Regis had been his own preceptor.

After him Father Claude Aveneau had charge of the mission,
and for a long time perpetuated the salutary influence exercised
by his predecessor. An unwise policy on the part of those who
wielded the executive, however, drove the Miamis upon the
war-path, and the mission was suspended. It was restored
under Father James Gravier in 1706. In 1711 Father Peter F.
X. Chardon was in charge here. In 1721 Charlevoix found it

320 EARLY DAYS OF NOTRE DAME. [June,

deserted, but a new pastor, Father John de St. Pe, was sent
here and remained until 1734. In 1738 the pastor was Father
Peter Luke Du Jaunay. Missions were now opened at Vin-
cennes and where Fort Wayne now stands, and these soon be-
came the centres of activity, so that the mission on the " Big St.
Joseph . " was thenceforth obscured by their fame.

The abandonment of French claims upon Indiana, and the
Declaration of Independence on the part of the United States,
put a new face upon public affairs, and Indiana was admitted as
a State before we hear of another resident missionary on the
banks of the St. Joseph. Father Badin, whose purchase in 1830
we have already noticed, fixed his abode in Michigan, so that
Father Louis De Seille is usually regarded as the first pastor of
Ste. Marie des Lacs. His sojourn here probably began in 1832.
His house was a log cabin, divided into two apartments, one for
a chapel, the other for his dwelling. A rude bed, a table, some
books, and a few chairs were his only furniture. A little wooden
altar in his chapel had for its sole ornament a beautiful picture
of the Mater Dolorosa. Here he lived, died, and was buried. A
simple cross now marks the site. The body of the sainted dead
has been laid in a vault beneath the altar of the new church at
Notre Dame.

His death was marked by interesting and affecting incidents.
He had visited Pokagon, an Indian village, now a railway sta-
tion on the Michigan Central about seven miles from Niles, and
hence seventeen from his home. When he took leave of his
Indian congregation there he told them they would probably
never see him again. He seemed to have an intimation of ap-
proaching death, although in the prime of life and to all appear-
ance full of vigor. " I have a great journey to perform," he
said ; " pray for me, and do not forget to say your beads for
me." His hearers were afflicted at the prospect of losing their
beloved Black-Robe, and the warmth of their protestations of
attachment touched his heart. The farewell taken, he left them
on foot, making his return journey by the woodland trail. He
had a horse for distant sick-calls sixty or eighty miles some-
times but the foot-paths were more direct than such bridle-
roads as they had then.

He reached Ste. Marie des Lacs that same day, apparently in
good health, but the next morning was taken sick. Priests were
sent for, the nearest points being Logansport and Chicago.
Sickness, however, in one case, and absence from home in the
other, prevented aid from coming. Finally Bishgp Brute sent
Rev. Louis Neyron from the southern extremity of Indiana, but

i888.] EARLY DAYS OF NOTRE DAME. 321

he came too late to afford him those consolations with which he
had so often fortified the last hours of others. When it became
evident that death was at hand he dragged himself to the altar
of his little chapel, assisted by two of his good friends, Coquil-
lard and Bertrand early French settlers, whose names will
never disappear from this neighborhood. Arrived there, he
opened the door of the tabernacle, exerting his remaining
strength in a final effort to receive his Saviour as the guide of his
departing soul; and thus he passed away, exactly half a century
ago. His books and chalice are still treasured at Notre Dame.

His successor, Father Petit, seems to have completed the
conversion of the tribe. During the short time of his residence
at Ste. Marie des Lacs he baptized three hundred Indians, and
presented at one time two hundred for confirmation in the log
church by the side of the lake. The deportation of the Indians
under Governor Cass began in 1840. Father Petit accompanied
his beloved spiritual children to their new home if the name of
home could be given to the uncongenial climate and soil of the
new reservation. Fraudulent representations were'made to in-
duce the red man to leave his native land to the encroaching
Caucasian. Many of the Indians had accepted civilization, such
as it was, were living in settled homes, and had even become at-
tached to their white neighbors. One white lady of wealth and
influence was looked upon with the reverence due to a mother
by the Indian women. She treacherously lent herself to the
deportation scheme, telling her red friends that she would ac-
company them to the new reservation, which was represented
as a land flowing with milk and honey. She did indeed accom-
pany them thither, but, having acted as a decoy, returned.

Father Petit died beyond the Mississippi, but his remains
were brought back to the scene of his missionary triumphs, and
they repose with those of Father De Seille beneath the altar at
Notre Dame.

Active as these men had been in spiritual architecture in
the building of those edifices, "not made by hands," which re-
dound beyond all others to the divine glory little, if anything,
had yet been done for material splendor or even comfort. A
ten-acre clearing supplied the bare necessaries of life. Log
walls screened the sanctuary from the wintry blast and summer
blaze. The natural beauty of the crystal lakes was the only and
sufficient charm that the landscape afforded. Dense woods lay
between the mission and the nearest white settlement. Where
the whistle of the locomotive now wakes the echoes, the occa-

VOL. XLVII. 21

322 EARLY DAYS OP NOTRE DAME. [June,

sional creaking of an emigrant wagon making its uncertain way
through the forest was the only sound indicative of land-travel.
The river was the chief highway of such commerce as existed.
By this the early settlers received their supplies in exchange for
peltries and other products of the chase and farm. Such was
the condition of affairs when Father Edward Sorin arrived here
in 1842.

The Indians, even, were here still in large numbers, for the
deportation, begun in 1840, was not completed in less than three
years. A remnant, in fact, is still among us, and Indian blood
has rarely been altogether absent from the veins of the youthful
throng that assemble to receive Catholic instruction at Notre
Dame.

Father Sorin, at that time in the prime of youth and energy,
had united himself to a community, the Congregation of Holy
Cross, whose aim was the education of boys, and, in obedience
to his superiors, had left his native France to extend the blessed
influence of religion in a new world. Making his first resting-
place in the neighborhood of Vincennes, Bishop de la Hailan-
diere, who then filled the episcopal chair at that mission, spoke
to him of the lovely spot in the northern part of the State a
spot already sanctified by the lives of so many holy men, whose
benedictions, lavished upon it, were doubtless destined to bear
noble fruit and encouraged him to go thither, giving him pos-
session of the land on condition that a college building should
be put up and maintained there.

Accordingly, in November, 1842, Father Sorin, accompanied
by seven brothers of his congregation, started for Ste. Marie des
Lacs, to encounter for the first time the rigors of a Northern
winter. Of his companions but one, Brother Francis Xavier,
now survives. A writer in the " Silver Jubilee" book, published
in 1869, describes this brother as one " who has made the coffins
of all who have died at Notre Dame, and most likely will do the
same kind office for many more yet before he drives the last nail
into his own."

The words were prophetic. The writer was laid in his grave
by the good brother in November, 1874, while Brother Francis
is still hale, vigorous, and kind as when those lines were written.

The college was begun on the 28th of August, 1843, an d
made habitable the following spring. Pupils had already been
received, however, and accommodated in a brick building now
known as the Farm House, and which is~-consequently honored
as the original seat of learning at Notre Dame. Three churches
and three college buildings have occupied the first sites. The

i888.] EARLY DAYS OF NOTRE DAME. 323

first church and second college were destroyed by fire. The
first college and second church were ruthlessly pulled down to
make way for nobler structures.

The Know-Nothing excitement against Catholics was felt to
some extent here in early times, but Father Sorin's address and
exquisite tact soon made the most influential Protestants of the
neighborhood his friends. Children of all denominations were
entrusted to his care to be educated, and soon it was suggested
to him that a college charter enabling him to confer the usual
degrees and hold the buildings tax-free could be procured from
the State of Indiana. This was done in 1844, and thenceforward
the University of Notre Dame became a power in the land. A
post-office was also obtained through the instrumentality of
Henry Clay.

Every building connected with the university has its history
and vicissitudes, to present all of which would transcend the
limits of the present article. In 1860, when the writer of these
pages first arrived here, much of the original quaintness and
poetry still appeared in the surroundings features gradually
swept away in the march of " modern improvements." Few
men have witnessed such vast developments from small begin-
nings as the venerable Father Sorin, still energetic and enthusi-
astic as when he first planted the seed from which the towering
tree arose. To his spirit of prayer and constant devotion to the
Blessed Virgin, even more than to his active exertion, these
gratifying results are undoubtedly due. In the old records
many interesting notes afford glimpses of life in those pioneer
days a healthy as well as a holy life, the life of the mens sana
in corpore sano. In the Metropolitan Catholic Almanac for 1843 we
find that a " School for Young Men " has been lately opened at
Southbend (sic), near Washington, Ind., directed by Rev. E.
Sorin. "The location is on an eminence, and is one of the most
healthy in the State, situated six miles from the town of Wash-
ington, Indiana."

The oldest inhabitants cannot remember any " town " bear-
ing the name of " Washington " within six miles of South Bend.
Could it have been one of the numerous names which the village
Mishawaka took unto itself before it finally settled upon the old
Indian appellation signifying " swift-runnjng water," which so
well describes its location? Mishawaka, however, is named in
the same almanac, with the spelling " Mishiwakie," as one of the
places attended by Rev. E. Sorin. The terms per quarter for
board and tuition, including washing and mending, at that time
were eighteen dollars ! How could it be done? We find, also,

324 EARLY DAYS OF NOTRE DAME. [June,

that no extra charge is made, except for books and stationery,
which are furnished at store prices, and for the services of
an eminent physician who attends the institution. Before the
Crimean war opened a market for American produce the neces-
saries of life were far in excess of the demand.

Five years later we have a miniature catalogue of the uni-
versity, giving an account of a solemn distribution of premiums
on the Fourth of July, 1848, the commencement exercises being
made to coincide with the celebration of the national festival.
Here we notice premiums awarded in the English course to
Thomas Lafontaine, of Huntington, Indiana, the son of the
chief of the Miami Nation. Other names found here have since
attained local celebrity. The States furnishing most students
are Indiana and Michigan. A few scattering names appear
from Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, but none
from Illinois, the State now affording the largest contingent.
No list of teachers is given, no details of the collegiate course.
This catalogue was printed in Detroit.

In 1850 we find a catalogue printed in South Bend by " S.
Colfax," the gentleman who afterwards sat as Vice-President of
these United States during the second term of Grant. Mr. Col-
fax was always a stanch friend to the university, and invariably
met Father Sorin with the most genial of his well-known smiles.
This catalogue contains a prospectus dated January i, 1850.
Here we find mention of the Philharmonic and Debating Socie-
ties. The commencement exercises have receded to the 3d
of July, and there are the names of nine teachers for the various
branches taught. The students' names number fifty-six, and
there is mention of thirteen students in theology not included
in the list. Of the fifty-six, Indiana sends thirty-three, Michigan
fifteen, Illinois and Ohio two each, New York and Massachusetts
one each, and of the remaining two we find no address. Vari-
ous events conspired to spread the fame of the university in
subsequent years. As Chicago grew in wealth and extent, her
merchants sought a safe rural retreat in which their children
might be secured against the dangers and temptations of city
life. After the civil war broke out the Catholic colleges of
the Southern States were used as military hospitals, and the
students from those regions flocked to Notre Dame. The cir-
cle of friends continually widened. Spaniards from New and
Old Mexico found it a convenient place to learn English, Eu-
ropeans to learn " American," as our language is now called on
the Eastern continent ; and with each revolving year the dis-
tances from which students arrive continually increase.

i888.] AT THE CROSS-KEYS. 325

The number attending is now tenfold what it was in 1850.
But as we walk beneath the gilded dome, through spacious halls
adorned with costly historical paintings, or kneel beneath the
loftily vaulted aisles of the church, where the light streams in
floods of purple, amber, crimson, and azure through the translu-
cent imagery of the panes, soothed by the melting strains of the
organ, amid the perfumes "of Ormuz and of Ind " rising in
clouds from swinging censers, the memory of the old days of
privation and struggle returns as a pleasing reverie. The sim-
ple faith of upturned Indian faces from which the savage war-
paint has been lately washed by the baptismal wave, the sun-
browned features of hardy pioneers and brave coureurs des bois,
surrounding the phantom shapes of devoted Black-Robes, still
haunt us, and imbue us with a sense that this, in view of its past
even more than of its present, is indeed hallowed ground.

ARTHUR J. STAGE.

AT THE CROSS-KEYS.

PART II.

GRADUALLY we ceased to be astonished at the odd ways
of Mr. Drane ; his wild appearance no longer moved in us the
most languid interest; it was a matter of course to see him ride
by on his raw-boned sorrel a horse to which the luxuries of
grooming and bedding down were unknown. When it was
wanted it was taken straight from grass, with bits of straw and
stick and clods of dirt clinging to its shaggy coat; a sheepskin
took the place of a saddle, and a rope with a loop in each end
answered for stirrups.* Dick made a sketch of horse and
rider, and underneath wrote: "Portrait of a Bloated Pluralist"
for besides Chittingdean Mr. Drane was incumbent of two
outlying parishes. By and by, however, we put the caricature
aside and left off laughing, for the comic was lost to us in the
distressing.

It was sad to see the villagers, without spiritual head or
guidance, appallingly ignorant, and allowed to . drift as they
would into carelessness and sin; boys and girls growing up
with little more knowledge of right and wrong than the beasts

* In case I should be accused of exaggeration, I may here remark that this was actually the
equestrian equipment of a well-known rector in a South-of-England parish.

326 AT THE CXOSS-KEYS. [June,

in the fields around them. It was sad to see the fine old church
nearly empty Sunday after Sunday, the service hurried through
and a sermon mumbled out by a man at whom half his audience
was laughing in its sleeves, half trembling at the prospect of ap-
proaching rent-day ; and sad to see how every one passed by on
the other side. There was no one to put out a hand to stop
these crying evils, though the rural dean lived within an hour's
drive, and twenty miles off was the cathedral town, with its
" bishop," its " Father in God," whose charge it was to adminis- .
ter His laws in that diocese. But, to me at least, saddest of all
was the old man, so terrible in his loneliness, half-starving him-
self, leading the life of a miser, and grinding the faces of the poor,
to supply the prodigal wants of a spendthrift son.

There was a cricket club at Chittingdean, and Dick, who
was an old public-school boy, had, of course, insisted on joining
it. Evening after evening did he spend tearing about between
two sets of wickets, or " fielding" for some other wielder of the
willow, in an attitude suggestive of the late Colossus of Rhodes.
He had gallantly done his best to coach the rustics into better
form, and had succeeded so well that they had triumphantly
won a series of matches over neighboring clubs, and were be-
ginning to hold their heads very high indeed.

The cricket-field, a flat meadow joining the Cross-Keys gar-
den (a great convenience for thirsty souls), was a favorite rendez-
vous in leisure moments. Non-players were fond of lounging in
its corners, and silently smoking on the railings that surrounded
it, on which railings it was also fashionable for maids and ma-
trons to lean and gossip, looking with admiration at the exertions
of their perspiring sweethearts, or anxiously alert to prevent
too venturesome Tommy or Bill from toppling over the paling
and breaking his tender neck.

One beautiful September evening, towards the close of our
stay at Chittingdean, we were all in the meadow ; the club had
been practising for a match which was to be THE event of the
season, and Dick, with his coat off, was descanting on the merits
of round-arm bowling to a knot of youths, who listened eagerly to
the words of wisdom that came from his lips, when suddenly the
talk and laughter stopped, an embarrassed silence fell, the men
dropped apart with uncomfortable looks. Unseen till then, the
rector had appeared, and, for the first time in my recollection,
was standing amongst his flock.

The English rustic is a difficult creature to deal with ; he has

i888.] AT THE CXOSS-KEYS. 327

a shy pride which makes him hate to be seen while amusing
himself ; he never loses his self-consciousness, and is constantly
suspecting people of laughing at him. It requires a special
knack to win one's way into his good graces, and there are peo-
ple who, with the best of intentions, spend all their lives visiting
the poor in country places, and who yet never succeed in being
more to them than mere relievers of temporary wants. With
how much more distrust, then, will they look upon a man of Mr.
Drane's description, whom even their dulled intellects can detect
as the product of a gigantically wrong system?

The old man stood a moment ; his glittering, restless eyes,
wandering from face to face, were sharp enough to see distrust
and dislike on each.

" I appear to have interrupted you," he said at last, and, rais-
ing his hat to me with an exaggerated old-world courtesy, he
turned away.

A great lump rose in my throat, such as I remember to have
felt when I saw Henry Irving's Shylock in the trial scene.
What sudden freak had moved Mr. Drane to come among us?
Had he passed through one of those bitter moments when the
need for human companionship and sympathy forces itself on
even the hardest and most self-contained among us?

I watched him as he moved across the ground, his long
shadow slanting up the grass before him, pointing the way to
his lonely home. The sun was sinking behind the tall old elms,
and the rooks were cawing their good-nights. Evening had
come upon us very suddenly.

It was past eleven the same night. The good folks of Chit-
tingdean kept early hours and had been asleep long ago. Dick
had already gone to bed, and I, who had been finishing an inte-
resting book, was thinking of retiring, when Mrs. Hawkins came
into the parlor, candlestick in hand. She wished to know if I
wanted anything more, and then went fidgeting round the room,
setting it to rights, putting this and that in its place, as she had
a way of doing.

" I don't believe Sam [the hostler] has fastened they shutters,"

she said.

"Why, Mrs. Hawkins, are you afraid of burglars?"

" One never knows ; and this time of year there's many bad

characters about 'oppers and such-like." And she flung open

the window.

As she leant out to fasten the shutter some moving object

328 AT THE CROSS-KEYS. [June,

caught her eye; a man was skulking in the shadow of the house,
and at the same moment Boxer, the watch-dog, set up a short,
angry bark.

" Who's there ? " cried Jane.

The man drew near the window.

"Hush!" he said; "for God's sake stop that dog. Mrs.
Hawkins ! don't you know me ? "

" Mr. Drane ! Why, sakes alive I whatever are you doin' at
this time o' night?"

"I I am only taking a stroll."

" Oh ! come now, Mr. Drane, strolls and such-like don't do
for me ; and let me tell you, sir, rector or no rector, I don't al-
low folks to hang around the Keys at all hours without a pretty
good idea of what they're up to."

He did not know that I was there behind the curtain,
and

" Mrs. Hawkins," he said, in a kind of desperate way, " Pen-
stone is here "

" Here ! at the Keys ? That he an't ! "

" No, no. Down there in Cheeseman's barge. He is ill, he
is hiding, and O my God ! " His voice broke down and he
began to sob in a piteous manner.

" Mr. Drane," said she, " you and me have known each other
forty year. I don't say as our terms has always been pleasant,
but you married me, as you will remember, in a shot-silk and a
Leghorn bonnet, and if you wants a friend now Jane 'Awkins is
the woman."

He caught sight of me then.

"Who's that? "he asked.

" That's Mrs. Wardour, and as safe as the Bank of England,
I'll go bail."

" Yes, yes ! " I cried eagerly, "you may trust me, Mr. Drane.
But you had better come inside. Pollard passes here about this
time."

Pollard was the solitary constable Chittingdean possessed.

" See there, now ! She's got more sense than you and me,
standing here talking like two great babbies. Come you in at
oncst."

He scrambled in at the low window, and we had only just
pulled to the shutters when we heard the slow tramp of the po-
liceman. Not until his heavy tread had died away did we dare
to speak, and then hurriedly, in a few words, he told us.

1 888-] AT THE CROSS-KEYS.

329

I have often wondered since at his unrestraint, but I suppose
in times of great trouble one knows instinctively whom one may
trust. A terrible blow had fallen on him. He 'had been struck
through his son, his idol, the only being in the world whom he
loved. For years this son had been draining him, calling in-
cessantly for money to gratify his extravagant tastes. What
Mrs. Hawkins had once said was true in Penstone Mr. Drane
lived over again his old fast life. His great joy was to read the
chronicles of the young man's doings in the so-called society
papers the accounts of his horses, of his drag, of the diamonds
given by him to Miss So-and-So of the Temple Theatre, or of
the grace with which he led the cotillion at the Duchess of Not-
tingham's ball.

In spite of his own strangely negligent habits, the rector had
a vast pride of race, and his dream was to see the family re-
established, taking, as he expressed it, its proper place in the
county ; and his idea was that Penstone would dazzle the eyes
of some heiress, and by a brilliant match rekindle the almost
extinct lamp of the Dranes.

But the years went by, and the heiress as yet existed in
imagination only, while money to carry on the campaign be-
came more and more scarce, and at last came a time when, in
reply to the son's demands, the father had to intimate that his
resources were at an end ; the property was mortgaged to the
hilt : there was no more to be raised on it.

Then the name of Penstone Drane began to appear on the
lists of city companies, on the board of directors of this scheme
and of that. More than once the bubbles burst and Mr. Drane
was called on to cover up deficits. Then came the explosion of
a gigantic fraud. All England rang with the nefarious impos-
ture. Its promoters had placed themselves within peril of the
law, and first among them was Penstone Drane.

When he was wanted to render an account of his misdoings
he was not to be found. The principal partner in his guilt
stood his ground, but Drane fled, it was thought to Spain, but
in reality to his native village. So cleverly had he arranged
matters that the keenest detectives in Scotland Yard were track-
ing him to Madrid, while he was lying perdu not three hours'
journey from London.

The news of the discovery of the fraud, and his connection
with it and disappearance, was four days old, but in Chitting-
dean it was not yet known. The rector was the only man who

330 AT THE CROSS-KEYS. TJ une

read a daily paper ; we others took our information from the
weekly columns of the West Sussex Gazette.

Imagine the strain and the anxiety the old man must have
suffered during those days of uncertainty, till one night his son,
gaunt, haggard, and dirty, tapped at his study window. He had
slept out two nights, and was shivering with the chills and
fever. His father dared not take him in because of the long-
tongued bailiff and his wife, and he had hidden him in the cabin
of an old water-logged barge that lay a little below the weir,
hoping for an opportunity to get him out of the country ; but in
the forty-eight hours that he had been there his fever had
increased, and he was now too ill to remain in his place anv
longer.

We woke up Dick, and "after a brief consultation it was
agreed that he and I should go and fetch the wretched man to
the Cross- Keys. If Pollard saw us he would suspect nothing,
for Dick had a whole array of eel-pots and night-lines set, be-
sides which we sometimes went on the water quite late.

Our wits were singularly sharp .that night. In those few
minutes' flurried whispering in the dark little parlor (we had put
out the lamp, fearing it might betray us) everything was ar-
ranged and no necessary detail forgotten. Mrs. Hawkins was to
prepare a room, and, if we could succeed in getting Penstone to
it, he was to pass as a French artist friend of Dick's, arrived
suddenly, and equally suddenly taken ill. Of course it was very
wrong, we were deliberately doing our best to defeat the ends
of justice ; but at the time we saw only the father's agony, and
tried to help him in his efforts to save his son.

I shall never forget that walk to the river. The harvest moon
was sailing along in all her splendor, flooding the roofs and
walls of the houses, touching their points and gables with
silver. We went down through the yard, where the big dog
bounced upon his chain, and the horses in the stable moved un-
easily. One old mare with a chronic cold scared me stiff, she
coughed so like a human being, and every noise sounded so
startlingly loud in the hushed stillness.

I did not go on board the barge, and it seemed an age to me
before Dick reappeared up the cabin steps supporting a tall,
thin man. His violent trembling made it no easy task to
get him to the house. We took him into the parlor while his
room was being prepared. We had decided it would be less
suspicious to arouse the chambermaid, and that sleepy damsel

1 888.] AT THE CROSS-KEYS. 33 i

was helping her mistress, when, to our horror, Penstone broke
out into hysterical weeping, his cries rising louder and louder in
spite of our efforts to hush them, till at last they reached the
ears of the landlady of the Cross-Keys, and in another moment
that terribl-e personage stood before him.

"Now, Master Penstone, you stop that noise! You stop it
this minute now, or I'll call in the p'leeceman I will for sure.
Do you think I want the whole house disturbed ? What ! You
wont, won't you ? "

And taking him by the shoulders, she shook him as one
shakes a naughty child, and, like a naughty child, he gave one or
two frightened gasps and was quiet.

The doctor had to be sent for, and of course it was useless to
try and keep the truth from him ; but he was almost as old an in-
habitant of Chittingdean as the rector, and his memory, leaping
back a quarter of a century, showed him Penstone Drane, a lit-
tle, fair-haired boy, playing with his own lads, and, with that
recollection, how could he betray him ? I doubt, however, if
the secret could have been kept anywhere but at the Cross-
Keys, but there the ruling spirit's word was law. If she said the.
" poor French gentleman " was to be waited on by her alone, no
one dared dispute her authority or question its wisdom ; and so
it was that through his terrible illness Penstone was nursed de-
votedly night and day by rough-tongued, sound-hearted Jane
Hawkins, and to her skill and care alone he owed his recovery.

When he could be moved he left with us, an emaciated bun-
dle of wraps, carried by Dick to the fly and driven slowly over
the breezy Downs to Newhaven, and put aboard the packet for
Dieppe. From thence after a time he made his way to Spanish
South America.

I have often wondered why we all took so much trouble to
save so worthless a creature, and if it would not have been bet-
ter to have let him die in the stifling four-foot cabin of Cheese-
man's barge, where the air came only through the cracks and
the water slipped softly past the window.

I would fain tell you that from that time a change for the
better came over Mr. Drane, but a regard for truth obliges me
to say that the old man came back from Dieppe unaltered, and
dropped once more into his old ways. He still rides the raw-
boned sorrel, he still rack-rents his tenants, and still inflicts the
same old sermons on his congregation year out and in.

Dick pretends that he is thoroughly ashamed of his part in

33 2 AT THE CROSS KEYS. [June,

the matter; he says he would never have assisted in the least, if
I had not roused him out of a sound sleep and talked him into par-
ticipation in our " connivance at forgery " before he was fully
awake. And when I say that if Penstone Drane had been caught
it would have availed his creditors nothing, and he would
probably only have died in prison, my husband answers that on
these points women are invariably immoral, in support of which
theory he quotes statistics to prove that it is always ladies who
cheat the revenue by smuggling gloves and eau de cologne (on
the matter of cigars he is strangely silent), and the railway com-
panies by going first-class with second-class tickets to which
crushing facts I reply that only a man could be cruel enough to
suggest giving up a hunted thing which had fled to him for
refuge and protection.

Especially it makes Dick angry when he hears of Penstone's
prosperity, for he has thriven in Mexico as he never could have
thriven over here ; besides growing rich himself he has married
a fabulously wealthy Mexican belle, and his life is laid down on
most lordly lines.

" I could forgive him," says Dick, " if he were only poor and
miserable! But to think of that wretched scamp and coward
rolling in wealth over there, while a hard-working painter
etc., etc.

Jane Hawkins is more generous. From the moment she be-
friended them she took the Dranes, father and son, into her
large heart. Old grievances were forgotten, old wounds healed,
and she and the rector have become the greatest friends. He
brings her Penstone's letters to read, and they chuckle together
over the way they ''did the law." Penstone never forgets her.
Twice a year he sends her a great box, so that many strange
pickles and sauces find their way into the Cross-Keys larder.

AGNES POWER.

1 888.] SIENA AND HER SAINTS. 333

SIENA AND HER SAINTS.

OF all the towns of lower Tuscany none is more celebrated
than " the city of the winds," as Siena is poetically called. As
the tourist emerges from the tunnel of San Dalmasio he catches
sight of the city, throned upon the brown crest of her hill-
promontories, and commanding an extensive view of champaign
country, stern and gray and uninteresting-looking in winter as
an English midland county ; but in summer the masses of green
foliage and vine slopes pervaded with pale golden light seem
everywhere filled with hidden and beautiful life. Geologists
tell us that all this part of Tuscany consists of loam and sandy
deposits, forming the basin between two mountain ranges, the
Apennines and the chalk-hills of the western coast of Central
Italy.

Its site is Etruscan, its name Roman, and its essential in-
terest and beauty belong to the artists, statesmen, and soldiers
of the middle ages. The character of the town is truly me-
diaeval: a city wall follows the outline of the hill from which
the towers spring, while the cypress-groves and olive-gardens
slope downward to the plain.

The three places to which every one goes immediately in
Siena are the cathedral, the house of St. Catherine, and the
Palazzo Publico ; and they all breathe the ascendency of mediae-
val ideas, the individual life of the city, its art and its religious
tendencies, in all their fulness.

From any part of the city can be seen the straight brick
tower of the Palazzo Publico, the House of the Republic, high
above every other building. In the irregular Gothic edifice,
now changed into prisons, law-offices, and show-rooms, the old
government of Siena used to assemble. Here are the great
frescoes of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, considered the greatest of the
Sienese painters. They were executed in the early part of the
fourteenth century, and express his theory of government the
benefits of peace and order, and the evils of tyranny and lawless-
nessin magnificent allegories. The first fresco represents
Peace, and the artist has painted the twenty-four councillors
who formed the government, standing beneath the thrones of
Justice, Concord, and Wisdom. They stretch in a double line
to a gigantic figure representing the Staie and Majesty of
Siena, surrounded by Peace, Fortitude, Prudence, Magnanimity,

334 SIENA AND HER SAINTS. [June,

and Justice, while Faith, Hope, and Chanty float like angelic
visions in the sky above.

Another is a fresco of Siena herself, girt with battlement and
moat to insure her peace, her streets crowded with busy life,
the gates open, with streams of farmers bringing in their pro-
duce, hawking and hunting parties in full view ; a schoolmaster
watching his class, and figures of Geometry and Philosophy
personified, indicate that education and science also flourish.
The third fresco is Tyranny holding full sway, with Justice
under his feet, Avarice, Fraud, and Cruelty sitting around him,
and above figures of Nero, Caracalla, and other monsters in
human form. Near by is also represented Siena, the reverse of
the other picture, the streets filled with scenes of bloodshed,
quarrel, and theft. And to those living then these were no mere
fanciful allegories, but realities too often acted out at bitter
cost within a few short years.

Over all the gates and public buildings is to be seen the
monogram I. H. S., always surrounded by a halo. And the
object of this is to perpetually recall the famous story of the
illustrious St. Bernardino, who was born near Siena in 1380.
The story of his life is too well known to need more than pass-
ing mention. He lost both his parents at an early age, and was
tenderly brought up by an aunt. The singular purity of his
character is well illustrated by the fact that if he came up to a
group of his school-fellows who were engaged in boyish talk
that partook of any irreverence, they would say : " Hush, there
comes little Bernardino!" But it was the purity of strength
that savors nothing of weakness; and when the plague scourged
Siena, Bernardino devoted himself to the sick with dauntless
heroism, while terror dried the springs of compassion in almost
every heart. He even inspired twelve other young men with
his passionate ardor, so that they shared his labors in a mea-
sure, and for four months nursed the dying and carried those
stricken in the streets to hospitals or places of shelter. At last
the overstrained body asserted itself, and for months Bernardino
lay between life and death. On his recovery he devoted him-
self to the care of an aged, blind, and palsied aunt, and, left free,
he went to live with a friend just outside the city. But once
when praying before his crucifix the nakedness of his Lord upon
the cross, without even a grave in which to rest, so reproached
him that he sought the absolute consecration of heart and life in
the Order of St. Francis. He was just twenty-nine when he
took the habit, and the power and eloquence of his sermons were

1 888.] SIENA AND HER SAINTS. 335

so remarkable that he was called "The Gospel Trumpet."
When he joined the order there were but twenty convents of
the Minor Friars of his branch of the order in Italy, and at his
death there were two hundred. He was appointed vicar-gene
ral of his order by Pope Eugenius IV., and refused many bishop
rics. He died on the vigil of the Ascension, and, by a most
touching coincidence, to use no stronger word, at the hour of
Vespers, just when the friars were chanting: "I have mani-
fested Thy name unto men, which Thou gavest me," etc. We
are told that a man once went to St. Bernardino and told him
that his preaching was the cause of the artisan's utter ruin ; that
his trade was the manufacture of cards and dice, and that he
had supported his family in comfort until now, when St. Ber-
nardino had converted the whole city to such reformation in
ways of living that no one gambled, so he was reduced to beg-
gary. The saint told him to try to carve little tablets like the
one he always held in his hand when preaching, and perhaps a
sale might be found for them. They at once became the rage,
every one desiring to possess a tablet, and the man ended by
realizing a fortune.

In the very heart of Siena is the picturesque Piazza, del
Campo, where the great races were held every I5th of August,
and on the upper side of it is the celebrated fountain, construct-
ed in the middle of the fourteenth century, which gave such
delight to the people of Siena and was so much admired that its
architect was ever after called Jacopo of the Fountain. And,
although suffering from the ravages of time, its novelty of de-
sign and beauty of general effect make it still one of the model
fountains of the world. The sides of the Piazza are filled by
the Palazzo Publico and other Gothic palaces containing many
art treasures. Leaving these and threading the narrow, brick-
ed streets, one catches a sudden view of the western fagade of
the cathedral on the very highest of the three hills on which
Siena is built. The fagade is of black and white marble, with an
intermixture of red and other colors; but time has toned them
down, so that black, white, and red do not contrast so strongly
as they may have done five hundred years ago. The architec-
ture has a variety which does not produce the effect of ec-
centricity, but of an exuberant imagination flowering out in
stone. On high, in the great peak of the front, and throw-
ing a subdued glory on the nave within, is a round window
of immense size, whose painted figures can be dimly seen
from the outside. Around the summit stand the venerable

336 SIENA AND HER SAINTS. [June,

statues in clear relief against the Italian sky, the highest being
one of our Lord.

One of our most brilliant word-painters says of this cathe-
dral :

" But what I wish to express, and never can, is, the multitudinous rich-
ness of the ornamentation ; the arches within arches, sculptured inch by
inch, of the rich doorways ; the statues of saints, some making a hermit-
age of a niche, others standing forth ; the scores of busts, that look like
the faces of ancient people, gazing down out of the cathedral ; the project-
ing shapes of stone lions the thousand forms of Gothic fancy which
seemed to soften the marble and express whatever it liked, and allow it to
harden again to last for ever."

And it is a graphic illustration of the character of the times
and the popular devotion to the church that people literally did
give not only their money but themselves to this very cathedral.
There is a document in existence, dated 1333, which preserves
the actual names of one couple who had given themselves, as
" oblates," with all their property, to the church, devoting
themselves and their means to the advance of the work. The
trustee in whose hands the property was placed pledged him-
self to give them support during their lives and burial after
death.

The cathedral rises on its height of one hundred and fifty
feet above the ravine-like valley below, and its rectangular bell-
tower is only matched by the more aspiring tower of the Palace
of the Republic standing on the Campo beneath. Around the
feet of these towers the restless life of Siena whirled and eddied;
and now that her life has run low and her glory become a
memory, they seem only monuments of a former proud spirit
now extinct. But when they were building these towers there
was more than enough hot blood in the veins of the Sienese,
and their pride and vanity, as well as their religion, were
goaded to the work by the splendid cathedral of Pisa, not far
off. Other less noted towns were also rebuilding their old
churches, and Siena did not mean to fall behind, and the proud
and prosperous city counted no cost toft heavy for this under-
taking. Large sums were voted by the Council of the Bell, the
chief legislative assembly of the city, which was composed of
three hundred citizens and met at irregular intervals, generally
as often as once or twice a week, and was always called together
by the ringing of the bell, from which it took its name.

But the fund was also increased by the offerings made each
year at the feast of the Assumption (the i$th of August) by all

iS88.] SIENA AND HER SAINTS.

337

the citizens of Siena and by the towns and cities subject to her
rule. On the vigil of the feast a procession of the citizens, ar-
ranged under the ensigns of their trades and banners of their
parishes, and in their distinctive costumes, headed by the nobles
in their most splendid apparel, and accompanied by the magis-
trates in full official garb, was conducted in solemn pomp to the
cathedral to take part in the services and lay their offerings on
the altar. That evening or the next the deputies of the castles
and villages under the dominion of Siena, all in gorgeous cere-
monial robes, presented themselves with their tribute, their
pride soothed by the fact that their token of submission took
the form of an offering to the Lord.

The year 1260 is the most famous in all the history of Siena.
While she was busy with her cathedral she was making prepara-
tions for a war in which her very existence as an independent
city was at stake. The long contentions between Frederick II.
and successive popes had embittered the great party strife be-
tween the Guelphs and Ghibellines throughout all Italy. And
though the ideas represented by the names were often lost sight
of in the confusion of the times, in the main the Guelphs, led by
the popes, were constant in opposition to a foreign ruler, and
sought independence and unity for Italy ; and the Crhibellines
sought in supporting the emperor, who maintained, to the imagi-
nation at least, the ancient imperial tradition, to provide a strong
feudal head for the state, under whose rule existing liberties
would be safe and civil discords repressed. The death of Fred-
erick, in 1250, greatly depressed the spirit of the Ghibellines.
Free from the dread of his strong hand and his genius and good
fortune, Florence, always Guelph at heart, called back her exiles,
expelled some of the leading Ghibellines, and put herself at the
head of the Guelph interest in Tuscany.

Siena adhering to the Ghibelline cause, preparations for
war were begun with vigor on both sides, and by the summer
of 1260 the army of Guelphs was encamped five miles from
Siena, at its head the carroccio, or great car, from whose tall mast
floated the red and white banner of Florence, the signal of the
whole host. This car was a symbol of independence widely
in use among the free cities of Italy. At each corner of the car
stood a man steadying, by a rope attached to its top, the mast
from which floated the banner of the army. On the platform
from which the mast rose was hung a bell that sounded on the
march and was rung while the car was stationary in time of
battle. Upon this platform was also erected an altar, upon

VOL. XLVII. 22

SIENA AND HER SAINTS. [June,

which Mass was said previous to an engagement, and on any
distant expedition a priest attended the army for this special
service.

When a halt was made the tent of the captain of the forces
was set up by the carroccio, the signal of battle was given from
it, and in case of defeat it was the rallying-point. Never before
had so large a force set forth from the gates of Florence ; for
the contingent from other cities swelled the ranks to nearly
30,000 men.

There was no dismay in Siena, but everywhere the hurry of
preparation ; the council chose a syndic, giving him full power
to govern the city ; he was Bonaguida Lucari, a man of rank
and of great goodness and purity of life. In the meantime the
bishop had summoned all the clergy and gone to the cathedral
to pray to God to defend them from the impious Florentines,
and then they made a solemn procession barefoot through the
cathedral. When the council was ended Bonaguida cried to
the people before the church : " Though we be entrusted to
King Manfred, yet now, meseems, we should give ourselves,
the city and territory, to the Virgin Mary ; and do ye all follow
me."

Then he bared his head and his feet, stripped to his shirt, put
his girdle around his neck, and, having caused the keys of all the
gates of Siena to be brought to him, he took them and led the
way for the people, who, all barefoot, followed him devoutly
with tears and lamentations up to the Duomo, and, entering it,
all the people cried aloud : " Misericordia / Misericordia ! "

The bishop and priests came to meet them, and Bonaguida
and the people all fell on their knees. Then all embraced and
kissed each other, forgiving all wrongs, and Bonaguida uttered
a prayer of dedication to the Virgin Mary. This gift was re-
corded by the public notary, like all acts of state, and there was
a mosaic over the main door of the Duomo representing this
whole scene. This is said to have been destroyed in the re-
modelling of the fagade in the fourteenth century, and was a
great loss to all lovers of the earl} 7 art of Siena.

The next morning the people met in the Duomo o'nce more
to join in solemn procession. The crucifix, carved in relief, was
taken down from over the altar and carried at the head of the
procession. After it came the image of the Blessed Virgin under
a canopy, then the bishop barefoot, and Bonaguida, with head and
feet still bare, and girdle round his neck; then clergy and peo-
ple, also barefoot, reciting psalms and prayers. And thus they
went through Siena.

iS88.] SIENA AND HER SAINTS. 339

What the Sienese lacked in numbers they made up in fury ;
and they were aided at least the Florentines say so by a
traitor who cut off the hand of the Florentine standard-bearer.
But in spite of treachery and panic at seeing- the standard down,
the Florentines fought bravely ; and, as their fortune grew des-
perate, they rallied around the carroccio and defended it with
passionate valor. They kissed it with tears, thus taking a last
farewell of all they loved, and then turned to die, till a heap of
dead surrounded it like a wall. But all their efforts were in
vain the Ghibellines got possession of it and dragged the ban-
ner of Florence in the bloody dust. Before nightfall the greater
part of the Florentine host was dead or captive, the rest flying
in dismay.

That night there was great joy in Siena ; but neither she nor
Florence has ever forgotten what they called the vendetta of
Montaperte.

In the course of the next century Siena reached her highest
point of glory. She was beautifying herself within and extend-
ing her dominion without, and she had never been so strong, so
flourishing, so self-confident before. She had reached the cri-
sis of her story, for the sources of civic virtue and public spirit
were beginning to run low. Men were less honest, women
less modest, and the new generation was less hardy and more
passionate than the old. Law no longer restrained those who
had ceased to honor justice, and ferocity knew no bounds.
Homicides were common, and men taken by their enemies were
tortured to the point of death, and then revived to be killed with
every refinement of cruelty. At last the council, in despair of
amendment, ordered a truce to all feuds during the feast of the
Assumption, Christmas, and Holy Week; the rest of the time
men carried their lives in their hands.

Siena was not alone in this; she shared the corruption of
Italy. But the day of reckoning was close at hand. In the
height of her glory the proud city was struck down by a blow
from which she never recovered. The plague broke out,
brought by some infected vessel from the East, and it was the
most fearful on record. The sultry wind, laden with fetid ex-
halations from the earth, carried the contagion with fearful
rapidity, and a restless fear and depression of spirits prepared
the body for the seeds of disease. The plague struck down its
victims at once in city and country, and spared no rank or con-
dition of life. Then all bonds of ifellowship and of society were
loosened, and strange crimes and suspicions influenced the lives

340 SIENA AND HER SAINTS. [June,

and thoughts of men. Innocent persons were hunted to death
as spreaders of infection ; the terrors of the grave broke through
all forms of artificial life, and human precaution became cruel
and merciless. Many accounts are given by eye-witnesses.
One says : "At this time the great mortality began in Siena;
greater, gloomier, more terrible than can be imagined. Men
died while they were talking. The father hardly stayed to
watch his child ; one brother fled from another ; the wife fled
from her husband, because it was said this disease could be
caught by looking. No one could be found to bury them, but
he to whom the dead belonged, as soon as the breath was gone,
took the body by day or by night to the church and buried it as
best he might, covering it with a little earth that dogs might not
devour it. In many places enormous trenches were dug and
bodies thrown in in layers. I myself buried five of my children
in one of these. No bells were rung, for each one expected
death ; and neither physician nor physic availed anything, but
rather it seemed that the more care one took the sooner he died.
And at this time there died in Siena more than eighty thou-
sand persons." And the curious effect of all this horror was
that those who were left fell to feasting and rejoicing, for each
one felt as if he had regained the world and could not settle
down to anything.

Siena did not recover from this blow, though, in time, men
did become familiar with the new aspect of things and life be-
gan to run in the old channels. But the spirit of the city was
broken, and this was no period for carrying on public works.
The Duomo, as it now stands, forms only part of the vast origi-
nal design, and the church, which looks so large from the beauty
of its proportions and the interlacing of its columns, is but the
transept of the old building, lengthened a little and surmount-
ed by a cupola and bell-tower.

One most remarkable decoration is the line of heads of the
popes carved all around the church above the lower arches.
And not less peculiar to Siena is the pavement of the cathedral,
inlaid with marble. Some of the designs are as old as the
cathedral, and others are the work of later artists. They repre-
sent the history of the church before the Incarnation, and a
special interest is felt in this pavement from its seeming con-
nection with the twelfth canto of the Pitrgatorio.

In this cathedral are the ten celebrated frescoes illustrating
the life of ^Eneas Sylvius, afterward Pius II., and a wonderful
painting of the Passion by Sodoma.

1 888.] SIENA AND HER SAINTS. 341

By going down the hill on which the Duomo stands, a valley
is reached which lies between the old part of Siena and a hill to
the west on which stands the church of San Domenico. Here
has existed from the oldest times a kind of suburb inhabited by
peasants, and here is the centre of deepest interest to all Sienese,
for here is the birthplace of St. Catherine, the very house in
which she lived, her father's workshop, and the chapel erected in
memory of her saintly life.

Over the doorway is written in letters of gold, "The House
of Catherine, the Bride of Christ." And inside they show the
room she used and the stone on which she rested her head.
They have her veil and staff and lantern, the bag in which her
alms were placed, the sackcloth she wore under her dress, and
the crucifix from which she took the Stigmata.

It is impossible, even after the lapse of centuries, that these
relics could be fictitious, for every particular of her life was re-
membered and recorded with scrupulous exactness. She was
famous throughout all Italy before her death, and her house was
beloved by all the citizens who saw her daily leave it to help
and comfort sick and plague-stricken wretches deserted by
those who should have cared for them. Even those who take
no interest merely in a canonized saint regard Catherine of
Siena as the most noteworthy woman of her time, and her
public life and its actual facts cannot be ignored by any one
attempting to study the history of her native city. There are
an indefinite number of her biographies, one a sketch by Bar-
ing-Gould in his Lives of the Saints, and one by her friend and
confessor, Father Raymond of Capua, which gives a full ac-
count in detail of the private life of Catherine, and it has all the
freshness of style and vividness of color of a Fra Angelico por-
trait. But \\\Q public life and influence of St. Catherine were so
fresh in the minds of those for whom he wrote that he simply
alludes to or wholly passes them over.

From the moment of her death St. Catherine's house became
the object of veneration to thousands. On one side of it rises
the huge brick church of St. Dominic, where the saint spent the
long hours in solitude that won her the title of the Bride of
Christ. And in the chapel attached to it she watched, fasted
and prayed, and wrestled with her spiritual temptations. There
she assumed the robe of poverty, and gave up he'r silver cross,
and received the crown of thorns. And now that five centuries
have passed away, her enthusiastic votaries still kiss the floor
and steps on which she trod, and say: " This was the wall on
which she leant when Christ appeared to her. This was the

34 2 SIENA AND HER SAINTS. [June,

corner where she clothed him, naked and shivering, like a beg-
gar-boy ; here he sustained her with angels' food."

Catherine was one of twenty-five children born to Jacopo and
Lapa Benincase, citizens of Siena. Her father was a dyer, and
in the year of her birth, 1347, Siena was in the fulness of its
pride and splendor, and then the plague began its ravages.
With so large a family, and so much trouble abroad, it may be
supposed her parents paid little attention to their children's cha-
racteristics, and for some time Catherine seems to have been
quite unnoticed. But as early as six years old she began seeing
visions, and longing for convent life, and collecting her little
playmates and preaching to them. As she grew her desires
strengthened, and she so vexed her parents by refusing to think
of offers of marriage that they gave her all the meanest and
hardest household duties, which she accepted uncomplainingly,
at the same time living her desired life so far as she could. She
scarcely slept, ate nothing but vegetables, and wore sackcloth
under her clothes. At length her firmness of character won its
way, and her parents consented to her assuming the Dominican
robe between thirteen and fourteen. From this moment we see
in her the remarkable combination of the nun, the philanthropist,
and the politician.

For three years she never left her cell except to go to
church, and kept almost unbroken silence. And when she was
again drawn out into the world, it was to preach to infuriated
mobs, to nurse men dying of the plague, to execute diplomatic
negotiations, to harangue the republic of Florence, to corre-
spond with queens, " and to interpose," as Milman says, between
princes, popes, and republics. In the midst of this extraordi-
nary career she continued all her ascetic practices, and at length
died, worn out by inward conflicts and the fatigues and excite-
ment of her political life.

Even those who do not reverence her as a canonized saint
admit that when they look at the private life of St. Catherine it
excites the profoundest amazement to think that the intricate
politics of Central Italy, the councils of licentious and ambitious
princes and nobles, could in any way be guided by such a
woman. Alone, with no prestige except a reputation for sanc-
tity, she dared to tell the greatest men in Europe of their faults ;
she wrote in words of absolute command, and they, demoralized,
worldly, sceptical, or indifferent, yet never treated with scorn
the voice of this gentle girl. Absolute disinterestedness, natural
genius, and faith in her divine mission were her only power.
All the circumstances of her life were against her. The daugh-

1 8 88.] SIENA AND HER SAINTS. 343

ter of a tradesman overwhelmed with an almost fabulous num-
ber of children, Catherine never had even the pretence of an
education. In the maturity of her genius she had never learned
to read or write, yet the fact remains that writing became
almost immediately a powerful and comprehensive means of ex-
pression to her, for she has left volumes of letters, besides a
treatise on mystical theology, and she had also the capacity for
dictating to three or four secretaries at once. To conquer self-
love and live wholly for others was the one thing she urged
upon all and practised rigorously herself, never resting day or
night from some sort of service, and winning the almost adoring
love of all who saw her by her loving unselfishness.

When she began her career as peacemaker in Siena her
biographer says, in his artless way: " If all the limbs of my body
were turned into tongues, they would not be enough to relate the
fruit of souls won by this virgin to their Heavenly Father. I
have seen a thousand persons or more come at the same time,
both men and women, as if drawn by the sound of some unseen
trumpet, from the mountains and villages in the territory of
Siena. These persons, I don't say at her words, but even at the
mere sight of her, were suddenly struck with compunction for
their misdeeds and bewailed their sins with so great contrition
that no one could doubt an abundance of grace had descended
from heaven."

Whole families devoted to the vendetta were reconciled, and
civil strifes were quelled by her addresses and personal influence,
as well as her letters. St. Catherine was never beautiful, and
her features were thin and worn, but her face so shone with
transcendent love, and her eloquence was so pathetic in its ten-
derness that none could hear her or even look at her and remain
unmoved. Her translated writings may sometimes be out of
accord with our modern taste as to modes of expression, but
simple and clear thoughts, profound convictions, and sternest
moral teachings underlie her most ecstatic exclamations.
Her reiterations of the word " love " are most significant ; for
it was the keynote of her theology, as well as the mainspring,
the sustaining power, of her own life. One incident exhibits the
peculiar character of her influence in a striking light. A young
man living in Perugia, one Nicola Tuldo, had been unjustly
condemned for treason, and in the agony of rebellion against his
sentence he cursed God and the day he was born, and utterly
refused to think of or listen to words of submission to his hard
fate. Priests and friends pleaded with him in vain ; he only re-
peated his bitter, despairing words at having his lite torn from

344 SIENA AND HER SAINTS. [June,

him in the vigor of his manhood. At last Catherine was sent
for, and by a few tender words she touched the aching heart no
priest could soften, no threats of death or judgment terrify into
submission. She says: " He now received such comfort that he
willingly confessed, and made me promise to stand at the block
beside him on the day of execution,," After further interviews
Catherine went with Tuldo to the altar when he made his tirst
communion, and, wholly at peace, he had but one remaining
dread that he might not meet death bravely. Then he begged
Catherine : " Stay with me, my sister ; do not leave me ; so it
shall be well with me." She replied: u Comfort thee, my bro-
ther ; the block shall soon become thy marriage altar, the Blood
ot Christ shall bathe thy sins away, and I will stand beside
thee."

When the day came she went to the scaffold and waited
there for him in earnest meditation. She even laid her own
head on the block and tried to picture the pains and joys of
martyrdom. She became so absorbed in thought that time and
place were lost to her, and she no longer saw the gathering
crowd of spectators to witness the ghastly spectacle, white she
prayed on silently for Tuldo's soul. At length he came, walk-
ing, she says, '* like a gentle lamb." She called him brother,
and herself laid his head on the block, and held his hands, and
told him of the Lamb of God. His last words were her name
and that of his Lord, and then the axe fell, and Catherine saw
him borne by angels into Paradise.

In these days of courted notoriety and passionate ambition
we may well draw a breath of inspiration from the humility of
this wonderful life. While Catherine undoubtedly possessed
certain qualities in common with all leaders of mankind enthu-
siasm, eloquence, the charm of a gracious nature, and the will
to do what she designed yet she founded no religious order.
Her work was essentially a woman's work to make peace, to
help the ill and troubled, to feed the poor, to strengthen the
church, and to be a source of purity and light wherever she
moved.

When she died, in 1380, in her thirty-second year, she left a
memory more of love than of power, the fragrance of a pure,
unselfish life, and her place was in the hearts of the poor, who
still crowd her shrine on festival days. It was not until 1461
that Catherine was canonized by her countryman, Pope Pius II.,
^Eneas Sylvias Piccolomini.

The workshop of Catherine's father is now a church, con-
taining an interesting statue of her and four pictures illustrat-

1 888.] SIENA AND HER SAINTS. 345

ing her life: one of her saving two Dominican monks who had
been attacked by brigands ; one of her visit to St. Agnes of
Montepulciano ; one of a visit to a hospital ; and one of her re-
proving a youth about to commit suicide.

The site of her garden is also a church, and a little higher up
the hill is the great church of St. Dominic, where she took the
vows of the Third Order, and where are many celebrated pic-
tures of her. Indeed, many of the most celebrated painters of
Italy have chosen subjects from her life, especially Sodoma, who
has represented her receiving the Stigmata. Her most inte-
resting portrait is by Andrea Vanni, and is at the left of the en-
trance to the church, with Sodoma's " Charities of St. Catherine "
to the right. This Andrea Vanni was among the devout admir-
ers of St. Catherine during her life, and he belonged to a family
of artists, the first of whom, his grandfather, flourished in the
beginning of the fourteenth century ; and the last of the line,
Raffaello Vanni, died towards the end of the seventeenth. The
family was noble, and it appears that, besides being the best
painter of his time, Andrea was Capitano del Popolo, and was
sent as ambassador from the republic of Siena to the pope and
afterwards to Naples, where, during his embassy, he painted
several pictures, and he has been styled by Lanzi " the Rubens
of his age." St. Catherine seems to have regarded him with
maternal tenderness, and among her letters are three addressed
to him during his political life, containing admirable advice
with respect to the affairs committed to him, as well as his own
moral and religious conduct. She begins, "Dear Son in
Christ," and points out to him the means of obtaining an influ-
ence over the minds of those around him, and then adds : " I do
not see how we are to govern others, unless we first learn to
govern ourselves." Vanni's portrait shows us a spare, worn,
but elegant face, with small, regular features. Her black mantle
is drawn around her; she holds her spotless lily in one hand, and
the other is presented to a kneeling nun, who seems about to put
it reverentially to her lips ; this figure has been called a votary,
but some think it may represent the pardon and repentance of
her enemy, Palestrina. " The Swoon of St. Catherine in the
Arms of her Sisterhood," by Sodoma, is considered one of the
marvels of art. The traditionary type of countenance which
may be traced in all her pictures has a real foundation, besides
that of her contemporary portraits, for her head, which was em-
balmed after death, is still preserved in the church,
is fair and white, and the features look mere tike sleep than
death. They have the breadth and squareness of outline and

346 OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS. [June,

the long, even eyebrows which gave its peculiar calm to her ex-
pression. This relic is publicly shown once a year on the 6th
of May, the Festa of St. Catherine, and a procession of priests
and people holding tapers, and children dressed in white, carry
a silver image of their patroness about the city. And then, in
all the blaze of waxlights and sunlight, far away beyond the
shrine and dim through the incense, is held up the pale, white,
worn face that spoke so much and suffered so deeply long ago.

It must be in strange contrast with all the fulness of luxuri-
ant landscape and hum of life outside, and to the faithful kneel-
ing all about, full of wonder, gazing- with reverent awe at the
relics, or softly repeating to each other the stories of the mira-
cles of the saint.

OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS.

" DRINK it down ! Drink it down! " So runs the cheering,
classic refrain of the American hymn to Bacchus. Drink down
what? Oh! the " good old brandy punch"; the "good old
whiskey punch " ; the " good old claret punch " ; the " good old
Bourbon whiskey"; the "good old Burgundy wine'' ; the u good
old Rhine wine" in " deep, deep draughts." Sancta simpli-
citas !

Within the last fifty years there has been an extraordinary
increase in the consumption of alcoholic drinks. A really seri-
ous man could seriously say that " modern progress " has been
lifted to its present dizzy height on a mounting wave of rum.
Among the nations we have not been specially favored. Here
the wave has risen no higher than in Germany, Holland, Bel-
gium, Norway, or England. Probably the French do not top
the wave-crest. But how noble their striving! In 1850 the
feeble Frenchmen of the incubating Empire sipped a miserable
thirteen million gallons; in 1885 the vigorous sons of the Repub-
lic engulfed thirty-three million gallons. Everywhere thinking
men were long since moved to action. Moral means have been
used to arrest the growth of the evil, and certainly with some
success. The law has been invoked, with even greater success.
In 1881 the Hollanders passed a law against public drunkenness.
A limit was set to the number of bar-rooms. In 1882 there were
but 1,640 bars, against the 2,003 tnat flourished before the traffic
was regulated by law. Better still, there was a decline of

1 888.] OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS. 347

nine hundred thousand gallons in the quantity consumed. Nor-
way likewise took to the law as a remedy. Not every Nor-
wegian hotel and restaurant is permitted to sell liquors. Certain
places are allowed to be open only on certain days or at certain
hours. At other places the dram-drinker must take a quart or
go dry. In the list of the reformed, Norway shows the highest
average. The Swiss did not escape the fatal epidemic. Other
means of cure failing, they too have had recourse to law, and
with advantage. Belgium has had a like experience.

Self-protection compelled these states to interfere will com-
pel other states to interfere. Look at England, where alcohol
kills its 50,000 a year ! Look at France again, where the per-
centage of suicides doubled within thirty years, and where
twenty-five per cent, of the men and five per cent, of the women
who are placed in asylums are drunkards! Look at great Prus-
sia, where forty-six per cent, of those who go to jail are drunk-
ards! It is no longer a question of sentiment, of theory. It is
above all a practical question : How can we protect society
against the ravages of a terrible plague?

Men will fight for their habits. Pleasure deafens a man. The
argument of reason he meets by unreasoning argument. The
argument of fact is not heard. Practical men who know man-
kind and recognize the force of existing conditions will waste
no time contending for the best means of cure. They will ac-
cept any, every right means, however slightly remedial. Time
and organization are two powerful factors in correcting evil.

Will "high license," the limiting of the number of bars ac-
cording to population, the encouragement of " light-wine "
drinking, the severe punishment of the drunkard or of the un-
licensed dealer will any or all of these measures correct the
evil of modern alcoholism? Does not the real evil lie too deep
down to be reached by any of these palliatives? Let us see.

Words are more fixed than things. We keep and use the
word when the thing itself has changed or gone. Think you
that to-day the word " liquor" means what it meant fifty years
ago? or the word "alcohol," or " wine," or " drunkard," or
"sot"? Probably you have not thought much about the mat-
ter. Well, then, a few minutes given to the consideration of facts
may help to a thoughtful answer.

The alcohol of alcohols is the "spirit of wine "-grape alco-
hol, to speak unscientifically. This is the alcohol of good brandy,
ethylic alcohol, the least hurtful of all alcohols. Nature has dis-
tributed alcohol generally, but sparingly. It is present in

348 OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS. [June,

spring-water, in the river, in the soil. Fortunately, alcohol can-
not be profitably distilled from springs and rivers. If it could,
what a luxury water would be ! However, alcohol can be manu
factured profitably from any substance that contains a given
quantity of starch. The starch is transformed into sugar, and
from sugar into alcohol. From corn, rye, and wheat we get the
alcohols which, in the form we drink them, are known as whis-
keys. These alcohols are not the same as the alcohol of brandy.
They are amylic alcohols. Amylic alcohols are hurtful. They
may be made less hurtful by means of successive distillations,
but even distillation will not give them the quality of the alcohol
of wine. Hurtful alcohols are also extracted from rice and
oats. Vinegar is now made from wooden logs. There is no
reason why a kind of alcohol should not be made from sawdust.
Possibly it is so made, though we have seen no report of the
fact. To modern chemistry we owe the impetus given to the
manufacture of the bad and cheap alcohols, which are chemi-
cally formed from the beet-root and the potato. Besides the
ethylic alcohol and the amylic alcohol we have in commerce the
propylic and butylic alcohol.

The alcohols made from rice, oats, indeed from grain gen-
erally, are poisonous ; those from beet-root and potato are deadly.
In France, where the chemists have studied the subject closely,
M. Henninger found that a dose of sixteen grains of amylic
alcohol sufficed to kill any ordinary dog. M. Dujardin-Beau-
metz and M. Audige, in 1879, presented the results of a series of
careful experiments to the Academy of Medicine. These ex-
periments were made on swine, who were not educated drunk-
ards. MM. Beaumetz and Audige tried to determine the " kill-
ing point " of the various alcohols. And in order that their
experiments might have a more than ordinarily exact value,
they based them on the weight of the alcohol administered and
the weight of the animal on which they experimented. Accord-
ing to their figures, fifteen ounces of ethylic alcohol will kill an
ordinary man. Propylic alcohol is twice as effective; eight
ounces will do the work. Butylic alcohol is more expeditious
still, four ounces sufficing. As if this were not deadly enough,
here is amylic alcohol with a " killing point" of three ounces
or, to put it another way, five times deadlier than the "-spirit of
wine " !

France is the home of good brandy and of the "spirit of
wine." In 1840 her output of grape alcohol and brandy
amounted to 15,730,000 gallons. The total production of the

i888.] OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS. 349

year 1883 was 322,916 gallons. Still there has been no lack
of good brandy! Curious fact, is it not? Let us have some
more figures. In 1875 the French manufactured 8,1 18,000 gal-
lons of alcohol from the beet-root and 2,200,000 gallons from
various kinds of grain. But in 1883 the production of alcohol
from beet-root amounted to 13,860,000 gallons, and from grain
the product was 12,364,000 gallons. That matter about \\\s good
brandy is somewhat more intelligible, perhaps. It is evident
that the word " alcohol " has a broader meaning than it had fifty
years ago. And possibly some especially keen-witted reader
has already begun to question whether the word " brandy "
means what it meant fifty years ago.

Potato alcohol, beet-root alcohol, and the other vicious alco-
hols are to-day freely manufactured in answer to the demand
of a large and growing market. We may safely say that the
brandies, whiskeys, rums, or gins which three-fourths of the peo-
ple drink are made from these poisonous alcohols. The word is
well chosen poisonous so proven, positively, virulently poi-
sonous. A year ago, in 1887, Dr. Laborde and Dr. Magnan
presented to the Paris Society of Medicine the results of a thor-
ough analysis of these alcohols. Among the chemical constitu-
ents of the still unbaptized brandy, or whiskey, or gin these pa-
tient analysts found "pyromuric aldehyde," better known as
" furfurol." This is a violent poison, a known provocative of
epilepsy. Sudden deaths among drinking-men are not uncom-
mon. In this city, within the last five years, there have been
several cases of the kind. You know the " item." " Last night a
man was arrested in the street for drunkenness. He was taken
to- the station-house. The police-surgeon pronounced the man
drunk. The sergeant ordered him to be put in a cell. In the
morning, when the cell was opened, there lay the man, dead."
His relatives suspect that the police clubbed him. The news-
papers charge the surgeon and the police with criminal neglect.
The coroner declares it another case of the ever-convenient
" heart disease," and there's an end of it. These sudden and
inexplicable deaths of drinking-men have been frequent in Eu-
rope as well as in this country. Dr. Laborde and Dr. Magnan
are the first to offer a satisfactory solution of the mystery. The
action of "furfurol" is known. This terrible drug constricts
the breathing apparatus, arrests respiration suddenly, chokes
the victim. The unfortunate man who lies lifeless in the cell
was garroted from within. If the drinker of the bad alcohols
escapes the fatal -furfurol," he is, if more slowly, no less surely
poisoned. The post-mortem tells the story. The intestines and

35o OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS. [June,

the liver, become more and more congested, inflamed, and the
large vessels, especially the aorta, gradually degenerate. There
is a steady consumption of the elements of muscular force.
These statements are not based on the passionate assumptions
of the theoretic total-abstainer or political prohibitionist. They
are based on scientific observation on a cold, dispassionate, un-
prejudiced study of a bald, plain record of facts.

In their original state the vicious alcohols are so nauseous
that the ordinary toper will not drink them. And yet they are
less harmful than the stuffs he willingly swallows. The alco-
hols of grain, of beet-root, of potatoes are colorless, and each of
them has its own characteristic flavor and odor. The chemists
saw the problem and were equal to it. To turn these poisons
into any one of the popular liquors or " cordials " is "as easy as
winking." Here is our poisonous alcohol ; shall we give it a rum
flavor and odor, or would you prefer brandy or whiskey ? The
French chemist has provided us with various " bouquets " " bou-
quet de Cognac" de gentivre, 'etc. These bouquets are poisonous.
Add poison to poison what chance has the drinker? Of what
are these " bouquets " made? Butyric ether, acetic ether, sul-
phuric acid, cyanhydric acid, cyanure of phenol ; and of various
extracts essence of violets, castor-oil, pulverized cashew or
sassafras, Canada maiden-hair, broom-flower, iris- Color with
a preparation of oak-bark or vanilla. Or, if you prefer, you
may flavor with the German "essential oil of wine-lees."
Through the oxidation of castor-oil, butter, cocoa, etc., the
chemist obtains certain acids: caprilic acid, caproic acid, etc.
Under pressure these are etherized with ethylic, amylic, and
propylic alcohols. With these various ethers, and a good sup-
ply of villanous alcohol, you can crowd a bar or stock a cellar
with brandies and whiskeys or whatever else you please. A
few drops of the ether will flavor a large volume of the alcohol.
There are qualities in "bouquets." For common folks there
are ordinary stuffs ; but if you are particular you can get a
superior article. The fine "bouquets" are compounded out of
nitro-benzine, prussic acid, essence of bitter almonds, benzoni-
tril, lactate of methyl.

Nor has the modern trader or chemist neglected the favorite
cordials or the popular "bitters." A sugared mixture and a
few drops of the proper cordial "essence," and you have ver-
mouth, or absinthe, or noyau. Dr. Magnan and Dr. Laborde
analyzed these " essences." Their flavoring qualities depend on
the presence of salicylate of methyl, salicylic aldehyde, benzoic
aldehyde, or benzonitril. These are all frightful poisons. Sali-

1 888.] OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS. 351

cylate of methyl causes epilepsy, convulsions, hysteria. Salicy-
lic aldehyde, which is the ordinary flavoring used in vermouth
and in " bitters," induces epilepsy ; while benzoic aldehyde, the
bouquet of the noyau of the day, provokes tetanic convulsions.
Ah ! you epicure of the Neapolitan or Parisian American table
d'hote; you connoisseur, gourmet, of the "wine-included" Bor-
deaux, the mocking smile forsakes your dainty lips! You
are engaged suddenly with an interesting problem. Let me
divine its scope. On your contracted mental blackboard you
are figuring the probable potency of the customary pousse-caf/
at Monsieur Bonvin's or at Signor Falsificatorelli's? Of course
I was right ! And you are pleased with the result ! Egad ! it
is my turn to laugh. After this why not buy your own drugs
and glucose? You doubt if the druggist would sell you the
things without a physician's prescription? And why not?
Have I forgotten the law against selling poisons? No, sir, I
have not. And now let me ask you a question: Why should
this law cover the apothecary's counter and not extend to the
restaurant bar? They have a famous astronomer in Virginia,
Brother Jasper, who maintains that "the sun do move." Do
you not think that if our gifted brother were to turn his power-
ful optics on the earth's crust he would find large sections of it
that do not move, and, more important still, that we are located
on one of them ?

The man of means, who knows good liquor from bad, and
who is willing to pay for the good, can have good brandies or
whiskeys or gins. But what of the mass of our population?
All they can have are poisonous solutions, ruinous to health
when drunk in moderation, and speedily fatal when drunk im-
moderatelypoisons that craze before they kill. The evil is
positive, patent, and of wide and lasting effect. It is an evil af-
fecting the welfare not only of the living citizen and the existing
state, but the welfare of the family, the growing children, the
progeny still unborn. A remedy, immediate and adequate, is
imperative in the interest of the common weal. If the law can-
not protect us from the disease, the madness, and the crime that
are necessary concomitants of the poisoned liquors of the day,
shall we not protect ourselves by means of private association?
Shall we protect the horse and the dog, and be cruel only to
ourselves? Why empty the can of watered milk in the gutter,
and pass by the cask of poisoned, poisoning liquor in the bar-
room cellar? Society should be awakened to the fact that our
alcohols are not the alcohols of the past, that liquor is not the
same liquor, and that the word " drunkard " has a terribly

352 OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS. [June,

changed meaning-. Systems of sewage, of ventilation, of plumb-
ing, of rapid transit, of land tenure or taxation, are of small im-
port compared with the question of chemist's alcohol.

We cling fondly to old traditions and to old " saws." Wit-
ness the " light-wine " tradition, and the old "saw," "If you
would correct the evil of intemperance, encourage the use of
light wines." In the past there was wisdom in the saying. To-
day there is none. Where are you to get your wine, light or
heavy? Cheap, or dear, "somethings" called wines you may
have but let us try to learn more about the wine of the period.

You know what a fatal enemy of the grape the phylloxera
proved to be. The French vines suffered severely. Among
great and small, in the Cote d'Or as well as in the Gironde, the
phylloxera blighted the grape. The crops grew less and less,
and the vintner poorer and poorer. Something had to be done.
M. Petiet did it in 1881. After the grapes had been pressed, and
all the old-fashioned wine had been extracted from them, he
gathered together the skins and treated them to a bath of sugar-
ed water. Eureka! a second vintage. The new vintage was
thin, of course, but the chemists found nothing hurtful in it. In
color, as compared with the wine of ante-phylloxera times, it
lost about a half; in alcohol it was but slightly deficient ; and as
a food it was declared to be two-thirds as good as the real thing.
This is light wine No. 2. Well, if grape-skins and a sugar-bath
will give a pretty good light wine, why not keep bathing the
skins? How bright you are ! That is exactly the notion which
presented itself to some of the vintners. Forthwith they pro-
ceeded to give the same mess of skins three, four, five baths.
On the homoeopathic principle of "high potencies," it is just
possible that, intrinsically, bath No. 5 was more potent than our
No. 2. But, certainly, you would not suspect this when drink-
ing it. However, here was the raw material of a considerable
quantity of "light wine." Constructively it was the juice of
the grape. It was deficient in color, but this could be remedied
chemically. It was deficient in alcohol, but this could be
easily remedied. There was the beet-root alcohol and the potato
alcohol. Nothing could be simpler! Have a glass of " light red
wine " ? Oh ! do. It will warm you up !

Then there was the "good" wine. The supply was so
scanty, it seemed a pity not to put it all to good use. Happy
thought ! Let us draw off some of the good wine from the
cask, and replace it by good water. You find it a little weak !
Had we not better " vinify" it? How do you suppose wine is
"vinified"? Have you forgotten the bad alcohols? Good wine,

1 888.] OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS. 353

and good water, and a dose of potato alcohol you see the vin-
tage goes on bravely. Who will care for phylloxera now? So
much for the French wines, red or white. The " light red wine "
of our fathers has gone for ever, it is to be feared. And we must
reconsider our cherished theory of " light wines " remedying
intemperance. Analyzing the Bordeaux wines some years ago,
M. Henninger found four grains of amylic alcohol to the quart
of wine. Sixteen grains, if you remember, kill a dog. In a white
Alsatian wine the same chemist found eight grains of the same
poisonous alcohol to the quart.

Oh! you meant "light German wines"! They used to be
very good indeed, even in our time. The phylloxera has not
done much harm to the Rhine vineyards, that is true. But the
demand for the Rhine wines has largely increased. Our Ameri-
can Germany would have the "good Rhine wine." The Conti-
nental demand grew apace. The crops were not always large
enough to supply everybody. There was nothing to do but to
call on the chemist. Of course everything that honest men
could do had already been done. The "good Rhine wine " had
been watered and vinified ; the California wines had been im-
ported, mixed, and vinified. But still it was impossible to make
enough of " light wine." A doctor with the pleasing name of
Gall came to the rescue. Now, when the grape has been
harvested, the must of the meanest, poorest grapes along the
river is gathered into great vats. A soapy-looking substance,
manufactured from potatoes, is mixed with the must, and the
pump is turned on. Water is not added absolutely ad lib,, but it
is added in amount sufficient to assure much more than the
normal quantity of wine. When this " broth " has sufficiently
fermented it is strained off. The potato-sugar is again added,
the pump works, and so on until the lees are exhausted. Natural
fermentation being no longer possible, chemical ferments and
artificial heat are used successfully. Compared with the ordi-
nary brandy or whiskey of commerce, the first "brew" of Dr.
Gall's Rhine wine may be commended, on account of its "light-
ness." But when we get down to wash No. 4 or No. 5, would
they not be a little too " light," unless vinified and odorized ?
And, whether or no, would you recommend their use as a cure
for intemperance? True, they could send us more pure wine
from Germany. The grape is there. This new process of wine-
making has diminished the demand for the grape. Oh ! the per-
versity of man ! Our fathers were right in their day. They
knew good wine and recognized the comparative sobriety of

VOL. XLVII. 23

354 OUR DRINKS AND OUR DRUNKARDS. [June,

wine-drinking as compared with whiskey-drinking peoples. But
our fathers would not father the trash that is offered to us.
Could they speak they would warn us against the wine that is
not wine. Can we not recognize the change in the " thing " and
protect ourselves against the chemist ?

Let us hand down a proverb to our children : " Set a chemist
to catch a chemist!" If science has bargained to undo us for
pay, we must buy science to save us. There is really no other
way.

How about the " light wines " of Spain and Italy ? None are
brought here. Those that are imported are " fortified," " vini-
fied," and compounded out of all semblance to wine. In the
march of civilization the chemist keeps a little ahead of the
school-teacher.

The utilitarian scientific school has been busy eliminating
God from the list of reasonable conceptions. The practical
benefits derived, or to be derived, from the efforts of the school
in this direction are not immediately apparent. If all the shoe-
makers stuck to their lasts, possibly we would be more indebted
to the shoemakers. Will not the "Knights of Chemistry" aid
us by an " international " combination, organized to eliminate
bad alcohols, bad liquors, bad cordials, and bad wines from
commerce? The good to be effected is immeasurably greater
than all that can be hoped for from "museums of art" or of
"natural history," "manual training," or the American flag on
the school-house roof.

To come back to our opening dithyramb, does the toper of
the period still desire to " drink it down "? Shall we, quite out
of time, recklessly sing the now senseless song of our fathers?
If we can compose no sweeter air or construct no more grateful
rhythm, may we not at least accommodate ourselves to the facts?
This is essentially the time for facts, solid facts liquid facts as
we know. A real scientific version of our song should run thus :

" Here's to the bad new brandy punch ! " " Here's to the
vile new whiskey punch ! " " Here's to the doctored claret
punch ! " " Here's to the epileptic Bourbon whiskey ! "
"Here's to Gall's 'light' potato-wine!" "Drink it down!"
No, no, that won't do now ! " Throw it out! Throw it out."
Certainly, that is more sensible. In time you will find this
version less strange. Truth grows on us. And the new song
will be quite as exhilarating and vastly more hygienic than the
old one. JOHN A. MOONEY.

1 888.] THE ANNALS OF A VEND&AN. 355

THE ANNALS OF A VENDfiAN.
v.

(Concluded.)

YOUNG Monsieur Henri (for so his Vendean liegemen chose to
name La Rochejaquelein), finding- himself sworn into the ranks
at Aubier, gained a good victory there, captured large supplies
of ammunition, and fired two hundred shots, being an expert
from boyhood, as earnest of his future activity. Thence he
rode by night to Bonchamp and D'Elb6e, and the weary, army
of Anjou, bringing aid and arms, and, as a gift not least, the
contagious cheer that was in him. Victories, due in the main
to his restless energy, followed in swift succession. Though his
growth, in all things, went steadily towards reasonableness and
the golden mean, his chief early characteristic was hare-brained
intrepidity. He was constantly exposing himself, pursuing too
far, " combating with giants," as Burton says, " running first
upon a breach, and, as another Philippus, riding into the thick-
est of his enemies." He was wholly without fear as wholly, at
first, without foresight ; and it took many bitter denials and re-
verses to teach him the pardonableness of deliberation and sec-
ond thought in others. But, while he lived, wherever he went
he was a force. He was of the stuff of Homer's joyous men.
His decisive habit of mind mastered elder and better soldiers.
His troops were his, proudly and fondly, for risks such as no
other general besought them to run. He was for ever win-
ning over new admiration by some spurt of daring, some aston-
ishing fooling with death or failure. Many a dragoon was cut
down with his sabre ; horses were slain under him again and
again. Were a brave prisoner suffering suspense, Henri must
' needs take down two swords and offer to clinch matters by
fighting him singly. This laughing audacity of his had no brag
nor cant in it. It was the metal of which he was made, that
which he lived by, the blameless outcome of himself. His com-
panions respected it, and shook their heads, without speech.
But they knew that such sowing did not promise the aftermath
of gray hairs,

'* Home-keeping days and household reverences.''
It is interesting to know that Henri had one of those singular

356 THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. [June,

natural antipathies no effort of will can correct. At Pontorson,
while Madame de Lescure was sitting in a room, with her tame
black-and-gray squirrel in her lap, Henri came in and backed
against the door, pale and trembling. He said, with a laugh, that
the sight of a squirrel gave him a feeling of invincible terror. His
friend asked him to stroke the little" creature ; he did so, shaking
in every limb, and avowing his weakness with great simplicity
and humor. He was never much of a talker. Discussions
vexed him. If called upon in council, he would, overcoming
his extreme diffidence, speak his mind briefly, and, having done,
withdraw or fall asleep. No one of the officers was more hu-
mane at battle's end ; but nevertheless Henri's element was bat-
tle. His Paradise was like Valhalla, where he could have the
combat and the chase, and the " red right hand of Odin," and he
looked forward to a life where he should play soldier for ever.
" When the king " (Louis XVII.) "is on the throne," he said to
his cousin Lescure, whom he loved, " I shall ask a regiment of
hussars." It was his whole desire of guerdon, and it was in ac-
cord with the ungrasping temper of the south.

Lescure had also the Roman spirit of " devotement " ; any
day he was ready to outdo Curtius and Horatius. In the rout
o{ Moulin-aux-Chevres he drew the hostile squadrons from the
pursuit of the frantic Vend6ans by calling their attention to
himself and to La Rochejaquelein by name. At Thouars he
forced the bridge of Vrines alone amid a shower of balls. He
returned to his dispirited comrades with exhortations ; one em-
boldened peasant followed him to the second charge. But at
the instant Henri arrived, with Forest, to join Lescure and fire
the lagging troops, as the celestial armies were fabled to have
fought, at need, for the old commonwealths. Here, this same
day, mounted on the shoulder of a peasant named Texier, one of
the most valuable men in the ranks, Henri broke the coping or
the fortress wall, and through the breach hurled stones at the fly-
ing Blues. His course henceforward is to be tracked in these
flashing incidents deeds, as it were, compacted of sense and wit.
At the siege of Saumur, at a wavering moment of the assault, he
flung his hat into the entrenchments. " Who will fetch that for
me?" he cried, certain of his response, and, with his usual verve,
leaping towards it himself. The crowd rushed after him as one.
In the same engagement he saved the life of M. de Bauge,
struck from his saddle while loading Henri's pieces for him ; as
at Antrain, with a call for greater adroitness, he saved that of
M. de La Roche St. Andre. The garrison at Saumur was left to

i888.] fHE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. 357

his charge, much to his disrelish. He chafed and fretted a time
for the inaction, and presently his discerning men, despite the
fifteen sous a day which, as the first Vend6an bribe, were offered
them to remain, discovered that there was nothing more to fear,
and slipped away to their firesjdes. Soon but nine were left, and
with them Henri departed gloomily, carrying his cannon, and at
Thouars burying them in the river. At La Fleche he had to
fight, half-disheartened, all but alone. At Martign6, and again
at Vihiers, his name was urged constantly to encourage the sol-
diers when he had not yet arrived on the field.

He stood in a hollow path, giving orders, during an obstinate
engagement at Erigne". A ball struck his hand, shattering his
thumb and glancing to the elbow. He did not stir nor drop
his pistol. " See if my elbow bleeds much/' he said to his com-
panion officer. " No, Monsieur Henri." "Then it is only a
broken thumb," he said, and, with his eyes straight to the front,
went on directing his troops. It proved to be an ugly and dan-
gerous wound. Not long after, before Laval, his right arm
limp and swollen in a sling, he was attacked on a lonely road by
a powerful foot-soldier. He seized the fellow by the collar with
his left hand, and so managed his horse with his legs that his
struggling assailant was unable to draw upon him. A dozen
Vend6ans came up, eager to kill the man who menaced their
general. Henri forbade it. " Go back to the Republicans," he
said ; " say that you, Goliath ! were alone with the chief of the
brigands, who had but one arm to use and no weapons, and that
you could not harm him ! "

In addition to his blue greatcoat and his wide, soft hat, he
wore anything which he found available, and adopted for his
distinctive mark a red handkerchief of Chollet make about his
neck, and another about his waist to hold his pistols. Among the
Blues at Fontenay it quickly became a universal order, " Fire
at the red handkerchief ! " The other leaders, unable to dissuade
Henri to doff it, adorned themselves with the same insignia and
saved him from the sharpshooters. Later he wore his famous
white sash with its little black knot.

VI.

In the autumn of 1793 occurred the memorable passage of
the Loire. It was undertaken against the urgent appeals of La
Rochejaquelein and a few others, in the hope of obtaining succor
and new strength from the Bretons, and of opening a northern
French seaport to their expected allies from England. Four

358 THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN+ [June,

thousand men were detached from the army, under Falmont, and
sent to St. Fiorent. This was the first of a series of fatal mis-
takes, at a time when the Vend6an forces should have held jeal-
ously together. More than eighty thousand people, their homes
burning behind them, peril hanging over their heads, the com-
ing winter bearing heavily on the very old and the very young,
the Republican hosts advancing to exterminate them ; Bon-
champ, on whose advice the move was undertaken, on whose sa-
gacity the others relied, dying ; Lescure, wounded at Chollet in
the midst of his frenzied squadrons, dying ; the bewildered,
groaning multitude dropping, like the pallid passengers of the
Styx, into the river-boats what a spectacle ! The great tears
of anger and sorrow stood thick in Henri's eyes.

Cathelineau, the first and, next to Charette, the ablest com-
mander-in-chief of the Vendeans, having been mortally wounded
before the gates of Nantes, D'Elbee, by skilful manoeuvring, had
himself appointed his successor. But after the passage of the
Loire, D'Elbee, in the confusion, was not to be found. Lescure,
besought to take matters into his own hands, immediately
moved that the officer best beloved by all divisions of the army,
and best known to them, Henri de La Rochejaquelein, should be
nominated to the vacant generalship. "As for me, should I re-
cover," added Lescure, "you know I cannot quarrel with Hen-
ri. I shall be his aide-de-camp." A council of war was held at
Laval. Henri, never known to push himself forward, was bit-
terly averse to the measure. As advocate against his own
claims he made his longest speech. He represented that he had
neither age nor experience, that he was merely a fighter, that he
had too little practical wisdom, that he was too untenacious of
his own opinions, and that he should never know how to silence
those who opposed him. In vain. After the ensuing vote he
was found hidden in a corner, and cried like a child on Lescure's
breast for the unsought honor thrust upon him. He was to have
no further guardianship and support from that dearest of his
friends. At Fougeres, after great suffering, Lescure died. In
the room where his body lay Henri said to his widow : " Could
my life but restore him to you, oh ! I would bid you take
it."

More griefs befell. Bonchamp, too, died (" The news of
these two," said Barere in the Convention, "is worth more than
any victory ! ") ; his body, like Lescure's, carried for a brief time
under the colors, was buried at St. Fiorent. His orphan son,
Hermen6e, became Henri's special care, his darling and bed-
fellow. The child rode for months in the rear-guard of the

1 888:] THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. 359

army, beating his little drum, haranguing the soldiers with pret-
ty ardor, and remembering each lovingly by name.

Pursued always by an immense force, obliged to leave at
every stopping. place the wounded and the sick, the women and
babes, to mark their trail and to perish by massacre, the wretch-
ed ^Vendeans hurried on feverishly, defeating the garrison at
Chateau-Gontier and winning the day at Laval. Opportuni-
ties arose to retreat and to re-establish themselves in La Bo-
cage ; but Henri exhorted in vain. At Avranches the army
became mutinous. Yet with every responsibility there came to
him a growing prudence and calm. He learned to cover a rout,
to reap the full fruit of a victory. Many of the elder sub-officers
who watched him were touched and comforted, as at Chateau-
Gontier, where he forbore his old impetuous charges, but rode
close to his column, clearing up the confusion, hindering the
bravest from advancing alone, and holding the disciplined mus-
keteers together. But his light heart at last had failed him,
for too truly the tide of disaster had set in.

When the insurgents started to return they found the coun-
try which they had just conquered reoccupied by their ene-
mies; they had to contest the way back to the Loire inch by
inch. At Pontorson they routed the Blues. Foret fell there :
no quarter was given nor taken. A bloody battle followed at
Dol, where few of the Vendeans, dying, as they were, of home-
sickness, exhaustion, and hunger, had the physical strength to
handle their muskets. While there was a single man to stand
by him Henri fought like a lion ; and then, alone and seemingly
numb with despair, he turned about and faced a battery with
folded arms. It was owing to the exhortations of the cure of
Ste.-Marie-de-Rhe, and in part to the superb energy of the
women, that the men rallied and wrested yet another victory
from their foes. At Angers, again, Henri would fain have
lashed up the flagging spirits of his old comrades; the batteries
having made a small breach in the town walls, he, Forestier,
Boispreau, and one other flung themselves into it: not a soul
rallied to their defence. A miserable huddled mass, the army
fell back on Bauge, and, unable to seize an advantage, ran hither
and thither, ever away from the Loire. Desertions set in ; fam-
ine and pestilence came upon them. At the bridge of La Fleche,
Henri, with a small picked body of horsemen,' overcame the
garrison with an adroit move, and there was a flicker of great
hope. But at Foultourte, with the utmost bravery, in his old
fashion he charged once more, alone.

In the city of Mans were food, warmth, and rest. The exiles

360 THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. [June,

ate, drank, and slept ; slept, drank, and ate again. Nothing
surely would ever rouse them now. Marceaux and Wester-
mann were hemming them in. Prostrate and drunken, the
twenty-five thousand Vendeans remaining lay inert as stones.
But M. Henri's frantic energy (" he was like a madman," says
Mme. de Lescure) yet once more assembled a desperate handful
of martyrs, under himself, Marigny, Forestier, and the Breton,
Georges Cadoudal. An obstinate and awful fight it was ; a
scene of din and smoke, and of horrible confusion, by moonlight.
Nearly two-thirds of the forlorn little remnant of the army laid
down their lives. In the deserted town twenty thousand old men,
women, and children were slaughtered amid jeers and fury and
the patter of grape-shot. Exhausted, and with a heart like lead
within him, the commander-in-chief spurred to the side of Mme.
de Lescure, who, seated on horseback, hung at the outskirts of
the forces. She took his hand solemnly. " I thought you were
dead, Henri !" she said and her sequence of speech was
worthy both of him and of her " for we are beaten." "I
wish I were dead," he answered quietly. He knew that La
Vendee had had its death-blow before him.

So ended the hopes of the march into Brittany. No Bour-
bon prince appeared to lead or comfort his believers ; England's
idle overtures brought^ no reinforcements and no cheer. The
royalists were forty leagues from home, diseased, famished,
betrayed, burdened with a host of women and children and
dying comrades ; and let it be written that in this plight they
took twelve cities, won seven battles, destroyed twenty thou-
sand Republicans, and captured one hundred cannon. It is a
wonderful record a failure such as bemeans many a conquest.

The Loire was to be recrossed at Ancenis. The Republican
troops were on the farther side and all about ; not so much as
a raft was to be bought or hired for pawns. Two pleasure-
boats were seized from adjacent ponds and carried to the river.
Henri, Stofflet, and De Bauge in one, young De Langerie and
eighteen men in the other, succeeded in pushing off, with the
intention of capturing and towing back four hay-laden skiffs on
the opposite shore. The current was rapid and strong ; the
patrols opened fire ; a gunboat descended the river and sunk the
skiffs ; the mournful peasants, separated from their generals, lost
the chance of following, and disbanded in universal disorder
and terror. The army, Catholic and Royal, driven back on
Nort, and relying on Fleuriot as its commander, saw Henri de
La Rochejaquelein no more.

i883.] THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. 361

VII.

The fugitives landed in safety, and wandered all day through
the fields. The Republic, angered at the strategies that so long
held its strength at bay from footpaths, hedges, and queer, in-
accessible bush-places of La Vendee, which had afforded shelter
to the rebels and pitfalls to its own baffled soldiery, had literally
cleaned the place out and burned east and west down to the
very grass. The houses were in ashes ; the inhabitants had
taken to the woods. Desolation yet more complete was to
fall upon them. After twenty-four hours Henri and his com-
panions found an uninhabited barn and threw themselves on the
straw. The farmer stole in from the thicket to tell them that
the Blues were coming. But they were too weary for resist-
ance. " We may perish, but we must sleep," one of them an-
swered. The Blues came promptly. They were also a small
party, apparently greatly fatigued, and they lay down, with
their guns, not two yards away, on the same heap of straw, to
depart, unsuspecting, ere dawn. The Vendeans, deeply thank
ful for their release, awoke and roamed on for leagues. They
would have perished had they not, with the strength of despair,
attacked a relay of Blues and seized their bread and meat.
News came of the last magnificent Hash of Vendean courage at
Savenay, under Fleuriot and Marigny. Out of nearly one hun-
dred thousand souls who crossed the Loire the year before,
scarce one hundred remained.

The little party disbanded. Those who remained with
Henri reached St. Aubin and passed three days of mingled
grief and solace with Mile, de La Rochejaquelein, still concealed
in her solitude. Here Henri, chafing to be separated from his
army, and resolving to return to Poitevin and rally the men
within call, heard that while Stofflet was already bravely com-
bating in the recesses of the Bocage, Charette was advancing
towards Maulevrier. He and his comrades set out on the
28th of December, travelling on foot all night, to reach the camp.
Charette was breakfasting in his tent. He received Henri
coldly ; nor did he ask him to the table. They had some con-
versation and separated, Henri going to the house of a neigh-
bor for refreshment. Not long after the drums began to beat.
Charette crossed over to the spot where Henri was standing.
"You will follow me?" he asked. Henri made a foolish and
haughty answer, " I am accustomed to be followed !" and turned
away. ^This is an instance of the jealousy and disunion which
had begun among the chiefs of the insurrection.

362 THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. [June,

But the peasants, flocking from the environs to join Charette,
crowded about with shouts of " Monsieur Henri!" before he
had so much as spoken. He was pleased, as they were ; his old
eager spirit revived ; he left Charette to his own devices. As-
sembling the little battalion at Nevy, he marched all night and
carried a Republican post eight leagues distant. Steadily, for
a week longer, he pursued his guerrilla campaign, attacking re-
mote points to prevent surmise; dropping down on widely
scattered garrisons ; harassing pickets, capturing provisions,
convoys, and small detachments, and intercepting rear-guards
on perilous roads. He was wise in not collecting his forces as
yet and hazarding a contest. Headquarters were made in the
forest of Ve"sins. About them Henri went and came, a familiar
figure, with long, blonde clustering hair ; still in his great hat
and peasant's blouse, the little heart decking it as of old ; his
neglected arm, causing him much suffering, still in a sling. His
forces increasing daily, he became master of the surrounding
country, and prepared, in fresh ardor and confidence, to attack
the garrisons of Mortagne and Chatillon. The men were con-
tinually under exercise. Tidings came, too, to cheer them, that
in the north the Chouans were aroused.

On Ash-Wednesday, the 4th of March, 1794, he attacked
Trementine-sur-Noaille, and gained an advantage. After the
enemy had been routed he saw two grenadiers stooping behind
a bush. His soldiers aimed at them. Monsieur Henri, with a
light gesture, bade them desist, as he wished to question them.
He walked forward alone, with the Vendean formula, "Rendez-
vous: grace /" But one of the Blues, recognizing him, wilh in-
conceivable celerity aimed and fired. Henri had put out his
hand, with sudden recognition of danger, to seize his assailant;
but at the instant he fell dead.

VIII.

The Vendeans, transported with fury, rushed forward and
cut the grenadiers down. There was in the air the noise of an
approaching hostile column. In utmost pain and distress the
detachment, to whose command Stofflet now succeeded (seizing
the late chief's horse with something like untimely exultation),
buried Henri de La Rochejaquelein in a hasty grave with the
miscreant who had slain him. Had the Republicans but known
what this loss meant to the men who loved him they could have
crushed Upper Vendee in a day.

Something of the glory and beauty of the cause vanished

1 888.] THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. 363

with him. The war did not end for more than a year. Fresh
recruits carried it on with wonderful persistence and pluck.
But towards the close, itself the disciple of a terrible experience,
it became merely "a war of ruffians, carried on by treachery,"
by carnage and wrath.

" So quick bright things come to confusion."

Of the other Vendean leaders "the patriots," as Professor
Hill says in his admirable history, "whose patria was not of
this world " Cathelineau with his many kinsmen, Bonchamp,
and Lescure gloriously perished ; D'Elbee in his sick-chair, laden
with insults, was shot in his own garden at Noirmoutiers ;
Mondyon and other gallant youths " died into life" at Angers,
bound in couples like dogs ; Marigny was cut off in his prime
by the orders of Stofflet and Charette, to the bitter sorrow,
after, of the former ; Charette himself, having made peace to
his advantage in March of 1795, at Nantes, and renewing hos-
tilities for what he thought to be sufficient cause, though offered
a million livres and free passage to England for his good will,
kept up to the last the unequal struggle, and, closing a career
of singular splendor, was taken and put to death, lion-stanch,
with " Vive le roi!" upon his lips. The wages of the others
were exile and disinheritance. This is no mean martyrology.

It is the word of homage to be spoken of the Vend6an rebels
and their rebellion that they fought long with honor and with
pity in the face of unnamable brutality and treachery. Ma-
rigny, indeed, mild and tender towards his own men, was as a
demon towards his foes; Charette, who had put a stop to the
cruelties of Souchu at Machecould in the war's beginning, was
the first to make reprisals the order of the day. But Bonchamp,
D'Elbee, La Rochejaquelein, and Vendean pastors innumerable
stand for ever ranged on the side of Christ-like clemency and
charity. Their followers, maddened at last, mocked the very
splendid sufficing policy of their opponents, and drew down the
holy and ridiculous anathema set forth in the memoirs of Tur-
reau.

To a student of the French Revolution not much need be
said of the liberal exchange of these grim civilities. The Blues
outdid themselves. The burials alive at Clisson, the atrocities
in the wood of Blanche Couronne, Carrier's thousands drowned
at Nantes, Westermann's shot at Angers these were the things
which crazed La Vendee, until, in certain moods, it laid its
Christian forgiveness by as a thing hollow and vile. In May of
1794 Vimeux, succeeding to the command, went to lay the south

364 THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. [June,

country waste. The imagination of no Hugo could fitly por-
tray the results. The Convention desired report of a country
without a man, without a house, without a tree ; in due season
they had it, true to the letter. It was Westermann's boast to the
Committee of Public Safety : " I have crushed the children under
the horses' hoofs; I have massacred the women, who shall bring
forth no more brigands ; not a prisoner can be laid to my charge
I have exterminated them. The roads are heaped like pyramids
with bodies." At Rennes the little, unskilful children were
made to fire upon their fathers ; it was a novel, awkward, and
prolonged proceeding, entirely to the minds of its originators.

At Savenay, Westermann lured hundreds of Vend6ans under
cover with a promise of amnesty, and, as they entered, shot them
down. An adjutant was brought to La Rochejaquelein at
Vesins in whose pocket was an order to repeat this brilliant
joke. In January, 1794, at Barbastre, fifteen hundred insurgents
capitulated and were cheated in the same way. They had been
promised their lives in Haxo's name, and they knew Haxo's
honor; but Turreau was actually in command, and the tune
changed. What wonder if, outside Laval, a whole battalion of
Mayence men, laying down their arms, were shot pitilessly by
theVendeans? But after, marching on Angers from Antrain,
they sent to Rennes one hundred and fifty wounded Republi-
cans, with the proud message that this was the sort of vengeance
taken by choice for old injuries. It was due to the kindly cur6
of Ste.-Marie-de-Rh6. For the bitter deeds at Machecould the
Vend6an army did voluntary penance. In Thouars, and in many
a town like it inhabited by Republicans and revolutionists who
trembled for their fate, no violence whatever was wreaked.

A truly humorous reprisal was made, at the suggestion of the
Marquis de Donnissan, at Fontenay. There were four thousand
prisoners, and no forts nor cells to hold them. Should they be
set free they could not be trusted on parole. To solve the dif-
ficulty their heads were shaved, so that, if during the following
weeks they again attempted to fight their liberators, they might
be caught and punished ! The Vendeans had infinite amusement
out of this circumstance. The loyal Republican general Ma-
rigny, who bore, to his imminent misfortune, the name of an ac-
tive rebel, was once so charmed with the spirited behavior of a
peasant made captive at the seige of Angers that he sent him
back under escort to his own lines. La Rochejaquelein, never
to be outdone in a gallant service, instantly released two dra-
goons with their arms, thanking him, and offering him in the
future an exchange of any ten prisoners for his one. " This was

l888 -] THE ANNALS OF A VEND&AN. 365

the only Republican general," Mme. de Lescure adds, " who
had been wont to show us any humanity; he was killed that
very day."

To Lescure no less than twenty thousand of the enemy owed
their lives. At the crossing of the Loire, at a moment of unex-
ampled perplexity and excitement, five thousand Blues were
captive in the hands of the journeying army. There could be
no question of transporting them ; the proper move, said
some, was to exterminate them. Not an officer could be found
to give the ignoble order. The poor, frenzied Vendeans were
about to begin the massacre when Bpnchamp, with his last
breath, commanded that they should be spared. From the
house where he lay dying the echo flew along the lines : " Grdce
aux prisonniers : Bonchamp fordonne!" They were set free.
With the genuine French sense of the fitness of things, Bon-
champ's beautiful valedictory is graven on his tomb. As to the
amnesty, the Convention growled over it. " Freemen accept
their lives from slaves ! 'Tis against the spirit of the Revolution.
. . . Consign the unfortunate affair to oblivion."

Such are the things which often the Vend6ans left undone,
lovelier than the deeds they did, and such the supersensual vic-
tories of which human nature may well be proud.

IX.

The romance surrounding Henri de La Rochejaquelein did

not end with his life. Says the Count of C , an emigrant

(author of the graphic and semi-erratic little pamphlet entitled
Un Stjour de Dix Mois en France] : " It was in a/ prosperous
hour, and shortly after the fortunate expedition of which I have
been speaking, that I had the pleasure of joining the royalist
army. Nevertheless, on all sides I saw but tears, I heard but
sighs: Henri had lately perished on the field of honor." From
this anonymous gentleman comes fragmentary testimony on
a subject of some mystery and conjecture There had been a
rumor that a woman headed the young chief's troops the in-
stant that he fell. Le Comte de C confirms it, though, in all

probability, from general hearsay. M. Henri's sweetheart, he
said, unwilling to survive him, yet burning to avenge him, flung
herself upon the advancing Blues and so perishe'd. This is a
tantalizing half-glimpse ; but we know nothing further, unless
to gather a parting impression of tenderness and peace from a
translated passage in that cloying, impassioned eloquence which
has never the Saxon shame of speaking all it feels: " And thou

366 THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. [June,

O La Rochejaquelein ! thou, the Rinaldo of the new crusade;
thou, the terror of infidels and the hope of Christians ; thou, to
whom nature had given so much worth and dowered with so
much charm, look down upon the tears of thy brethren-in-
arms ; listen to the sorrowings of the whole army; see the
glorious tomb raised to thy memory ; let thy spirit hover in the
cypresses about, to count the trophies which thy victorious
comrades hang there day by day, the garlands which thy coun-
trywomen, fair and sad, wreathe there forever ; hear the hymns
sung for thy sake; watch the young and buoyant legion sworn
to the perpetuation of thy name and the certainty of thy ven-
geance ; read the inscriptions which passers-by grave on the
trees in memory of thee ; rejoice to know that thy sweet friend
sleeps at thy side, wept, cherished, reverenced, less because she
was lovely, good, and bright than because she was once thy heart's
happiness and of thy triumphs pulse and centre ah ! behold
and consider all these things at once, and let the palm which
thou hast won in heaven be set about, and made fairer, if that
might be, with all the bays won well of old from earth ! "

The body of Henri de La Rochejaquelein was brought to
the parish cemetery of St. Aubin,

" Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,"

and within calling distance of the house where he was born. At
his left hand is buried his brother Louis, who, with another
Charette, died at his post in June of 1815, just before Waterloo,
at the head of the new Vend6an army raised to oppose Napo-
leon. " Accident," says Genonde very beautifully, " takes upon
herself the writing of their epitaphs, and sows in abundance
over their dust what is known as the Achilles-flower." " That is
more touching to me," adds the noble gentlewoman, Mme. de
Bonchamp, "than the legendary laurel which sprung from
VirgiFs grave."

It is a brief and moving story, and it is over. What com-
ment is to be made, at any time, of promise cut short, of the
burning of Apollo's laurel bough ? La Rochejaquelein of Bau-
bigne, with his heroism, genius, health, breeding, and beauty
who, in the days of his living, would have measured for him the
glory which seemed so imminent and wide? And the thing
won first by that fine heart and brain was a wild grave in the
grassy trenches, breast to breast with the slayer of his body ; no
right, no reward, no appeal beyond that piteous ending. He

1 888.] THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. 367

was a boy, rash and romantic, a boy so pyrotechnically French
that we smile over him. His chivalry went to the upholding of
kings ; all he did has a sole value of loyalty, and we may dis-
pute the application of it. But his spirit, disentangled from old
circumstances of action, is such as helps humanity towards free-
dom and sets oppression aside like a dream ; infinitely sugges-
tive and generative ; now, as then, a holy and durable sign of
hope. .

It is difficult to account for the halo which gathers about
such heads, and stays, and makes of a sometime aimless young
man an ideal of extreme force and charm to the youth of his
own land. Surely and it is, as Steele says, "one of the finest
compliments ever paid to human nature" the type is not extinct
and not too rare. In our American civil war, fought, like this of
La Vendee, wholly on a moral principle, a thoughtful observer
finds it repeated again and again. In the fragments of each
heroic record are cheer and benediction, which " light the
world with their admonishing smile," and perish not ever. It
is as much to know, after all, that Henri de La Rochejaquelein
once lived, as to be aware that such as he shall be born to-mor-
row ; the ultimate result is the self-same. A star pales and is
cancelled from all reckoning ; but the race of astronomers below
keep the long vigil, for there is a night set when it shall arise
and shine again.

Among his peers there were those who would have been men
of weight and of mark in any career whatever. It seems as if
they should have been spared to the world's needs. But per-
haps Henri, sensitive and whimsical, had no such adaptabilities
to bear him out. We are all but sure that living and dying in
the hurly-burly, as he did, he best fulfilled himself. He shows
so in a light endlessly kind to him, endlessly soft and clear to
the looker-on. He had a danger-loving temperament, like Phae-
thon's ; yet his story runs as if he, at least, had held the reins of
the ungovernable planet-horses, and driven home, glowing and
safe, to his father's bosom.

Virtually what did he amount to ? What loud testimony of
him is left? To the man of facts, who asks the questions, the
best answers are, Nothing and None. Says George Eliot laconi-
cally in the Spanish Gypsy :

" The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
Is to have been a hero ! "

Such a one makes a jest of values; he has the freedom of
every city ; he need pay no taxes; he can do without a charac-

368 THE ANNALS OF A VENDEAN. [June,

ter. Posterity will not exact faith and good works of him.
This Henri was himself with his whole soul. His worth to us
now, our thankfulness to him now, is that he blazed with genuine
fire and played no tricks with his individuality. He stands
among the serious, war-worn leaders of the insurrection like a
fairy prince, with a bright, absurd glamour. He was all that
children look for in a tal-e, and he had no moral. He was the
embodiment of " T inexplicable Vende'e" Careless for the making
of a name, for the gain of experience, for the duty of prolonging
his usefulness to men, he chose hurriedly the firsf work which
he believed honorable and to which he could give his heart, and
so stumbled on death. He reminds one of a magnificent quibble,
to which all the philosophy of the cold schools gives no availing
answer. Because of his shortcomings, rather than in spite of
them, his arm seems laden with everlasting sheaves. May there
not be, in the economy of nature, a waste which is thrift, a
daring which is prudence, a folly which is wisdom ineffable ?

At twenty-one, new to love and to fame, he had the dark,
abrupt curtain rung down upon him. Yet, for reasons beyond
his youth, it seems as if he failed to live so far as life. About
his best there is scarcely enough of flesh-and-blood solidity. He
had undergone no sharp discipline, no survival, such as make a
man. A too sharp conscience guided him, and a sort of fine
unreason. He was anxious to do the best with his strength, and
to apprentice it to the first work, taking the risk that that should
also be the finest. He had idled awhile; he had been already
shaken in the old mental strongholds by the breath of the great
Revolution ; he had begun to be over-argumentative with him-
self ; but he kept a naked honesty of habit which found its doing
easy when once its seeing was made clear. The war broke out,
under his feet, about his head. It was the nearest outlet for
those sacred forces of his, which, being pent, had vexed him and
made him grave. The cause had, besides, a thousand sanctions
in his eyes. His enlisting was a matter instant but humble. If
he flashed into the most unexampled comet-like activity before
he had been long a leader, it was merely that he warmed with
the game, that he felt sure at last of himself, and so blazoned
abroad his content and comprehension of life.

Despite his white heat of energy, he was at all times modest
and sensible, with his frolicsome laugh and his unapprehensive
outlook into the ugliest possibilities of the venture to which he
was given. He was not precisely of the stuff of Cathelineau or
Lescure. He was far from being a saint or a regulation hero.

1 888.] ALONE WITH GOD. 369

None the less is he a type of young French manhood ere it had
grown wholly modern and complex; the last of a single-minded
race, soldiers by accident, helpers and servers of men by choice.
In short, he was a Vendean, behind his century in shrewdness,
ahead of it in joy ; or a straggler from the rear of the ancestral
Crusaders, having all the thirst for justice, the simple gayety,
the remote, detached, spectatorial attitude, the boyish bel air,
of the sworded squires of the middle ages. " God hath Dis-
deigned the Worlde of this moste noble Spirit." Let him ride
ever now in memory, a beardless knight, his white scarf around
him, the nodding cockade of his foes behind ; women watching
his face for comfort and assurance, the gallant little orphan Her-
menee prattling between his knees ; beautiful indeed, even in
the smoke of war, with his oval face, his wholesome and winning
aspect, his terse speech and candid ways ** Monsieur Henri,
guerrier et bon enfant? as his compatriots knew him, and as
Froissart, of all chroniclers, would have loved him.

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY.

ALONE WITH GOD.

ONCE, ere the night fell, Thou didst say to me,
" Henceforth the path is strait: I go before,

And follow thou in darkness till we be
Abreast in Paradise, the journey o'er.'*

Then I was glad, and confident, and proud,
And said, " At last the summons I have sighed

To hear ! This night is brighter for its cloud ;
Safe is the steep path up the mountain side."

But Thou art Truth. The dark is very dark !

Close-set with thorns the path where, side by side,
Two may not walk unbruised, nor any hark

To voice less near than Thine, Thou only Guide !

Me, I am weakness ; where I touch, I cling.

And Thou art kind to make thy rocks too hard,
Thy thorns too sharp, for stay in anything

Except Thyself, sole Leader, sole Reward.

VOL. XLVIL 24

370 WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. [June,

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.

MR. WILFRID BLUNT, the politician, is at present so much in
men's minds that some of us might be tempted to forget Mr.
Wilfrid Blunt, the poet, if it were not that word comes to us
how Mr. Balfour's prisoner, in despite of the cruelty which de-
nied him writing materials, has not only composed a series of
sonnets in prison, but has even found the wherewithal to com-
mit them to the safe keeping of written words. Yet the one
personality need in no sense banish the other, for in no man of
our time, except, perhaps, the late Lord Beaconsfield, are the
literary and political natures so inextricably bound up in each
other. " Proteus " Mr. Blunt chose to call himself in his early
controversy with the Rev. Charles Meynell, the distinguished
divine and philosopher, who had been one of his professors at
Oscott, and he kept his nom de plume in the love-sonnets on
which his poetic fame chiefly rests, but protean he is not in the
sense of being many-sided. Not a complex nature by any means,
whether read in the light of his books, his actions, or his per-
sonality. Always a man of action first, direct, daring, uncon-
ventional, the natural man, strong in sympathy with all nature,
human and animal, as untrammelled as his own, the keynote of
his character he gives finely in one of those sonnets which, not
being love-sonnets at all, are among the finest in his volume:

" I would not, if I could, be called a poet ;

I have no natural love of the chaste muse.
If aught be worth the doing I could do it ;

And others, if they will, may tell the news.
I care not for their laurels, but would choose

On the world's field to fight, or fall, or run ;
My soul's ambition will not take excuse

To play the dial rather than the sun.
The faith I held I hold, as when a boy

I left my books for cricket, bat, and gun ;
The tales of poets are but scholar's themes.

In my hot youth I held it that a man,
With heart to dare and stomach to enjoy,

Had better work to his hand in any plan
Or any folly, so the thing were done,
Than in the noblest dreaming of mere dreams."

For many years of his life this impetuous need of action
found vent in travelling through wild and unexplored places.

1 888.] WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. 371

Those valuable years were the school-time of his heart and in-
tellect for a day to come when, during the infamous bombard-
ment of Alexandria and the events that followed, this English
country-gentleman stood almost alone as a conscience amid his
conscienceless fellow-countrymen ; at least he stood alone to voice
that conscience, so proving that he too was touched with the
heroic quality which now and then, as in the case of Gordon,
comes to defend the English nation from the imputation of being
a race of shopkeepers.

Mr. Wilfrid Blunt was born in 1840.* At least one most
important factor in his life was decided for him before the pain
and difficulty of decision for himself could come: when he was
ten years old his mother followed her friend, Cardinal Manning,
into the Catholic Church, and so her boy received its tenets and
was reared up within its safety. His father, who was dead
before this, had been an officer in the Grenadier Guards, and
had served with distinction under Sir John Moore in his Spanish
campaign. After his education at Stonyhurst and Oscott Mr.
Blunt entered the diplomatic service at the age of eighteen ;
a curious choice of profession, surely, for one whose after-life
was to have a passion for truth as perhaps its strongest ancf
most determining characteristic. Stationed first at Athens, his
next post was at Frankfort, where he served with such dissimilar
personages as Sir Edward Malet and Mr. Labouchere. Madrid
was his next station, and here he signalized himself by attaining
a good deal of proficiency as an amateur bull-fighter. At Lis-
bon began his friendship with Lord Lytton, which has not
grown colder, though the divergence of their paths in politics
becomes as wide asunder as the poles. This friend it was who
encouraged him by his wise and generous judgment to his first
appearance in public as a poet. At Frankfort, in 1866, during
the campaign of Sadowa, he lay very ill with inflammation of
the lungs, which narrowly missed carrying him off, and from
the results of which he was more or less an invalid for some
years ; he only escaped the consumption which had killed his
brother and sister by the wild, free life of travel which began
after this his first expedition being as secretary of legation to
South America, crossing the Pampas in that pre-railroad era,
and getting a taste of the difficulties and dangers which were to
prove so fascinating to him afterwards. On his return to Eng-
land in 1869 his marriage took place, the lady being Lady Anne

* I am indebted to Mr. John Oldcastle's article in Merry England for many of the facts oi
Mr. Blunt's life.

372 WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. [June,

Isabella Noel, Lord Byron's granddaughter, and with that in-
herited love of freedom and passion for adventure which makes
her so fitting a wife for her husband.

Shortly after his marriage Mr. Blunt retired from the diplo-
matic service, without much regret one cannot but think ; life
must have moved too smoothly in those oiled grooves for that
eager spirit, and even in its higher walks the game of diplomacy,
exciting as it may be, would perhaps require a more wily and
wary player than he was likely ever to become. Soon after-
wards his time of travel began, the first considerable journey
being when he and Lady Anne rode on horseback through
Spain, then in even a more disturbed condition than usual ; once
they were arrested as Carlists and came near being shot. Next
they visited Turkey and explored the mountainous districts of
northwestern Asia Minor; a memorable journey. Since then
began the deep interest of husband and wife in the Orient races.
This journey was followed by one to Algeria, where they cross-
ed on camels the great Haifa plateaux, south of the Atlas, and
so on through unexplored desert country. Undeterred by dan-
ger or deprivation, they next, in the winter of 1876, after a
sojourn in Egypt, visited Mount Sinai, and followed without
guides a route beset by dangers. Twice they came near perish-
ing: once by thirst and once by an onslaught of robber Be-
douins ; arriving, however, safely at Jerusalem. Two years later
they descended the Euphrates, and crossed Mesopotamia and
the great Syrian desert, visiting the horse-breeding tribes of
the Anazeh and Shammah, from whom Mr. Blunt purchased the
twenty Arab mares which made the nucleus of the celebrated
Arab stud which now exists at his beautiful ancestral home,
Crabbet Park, in Sussex. The story of this journey Lady Anne
Blunt has told, with a graceful and accomplished pen, in her
Bedouins of the Euphrates. She is always the chronicler of these
journeyings, being an accomplished literary woman as well as
the foremost of lady travellers. Only now and then will her
husband produce a word-picture, stamped with all his own fiery
intensity, like this on the oasis of Sidkhaled :

" How the earth burns ! Each pebble under foot

Is as a living thing with power to wound.
The white sand quivers, and the footfall mute

Of the slow camels strikes but gives no sound,

As though they walked on flame, not solid ground.
Tis noon, and the beasts' shadows even have fled

Back to their feet, and there is fire around,
And fire beneath, and the sun overhead.

i888.] WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. 373

Pitiful heaven ! what is this we view?
Tall trees, a river, pools where swallows fly,

Thickets of oleanders where doves coo, *
Shades deep as midnight, greenness for tired eye :
Hark how the light winds in the palm-tops sigh.

Oh ! this is rest. Oh ! this is Paradise."

The Bedouins of the Euphrates is a book of extraordinary, even
fascinating, interest, written about a fascinating race. We learn
many things from it: how they do not believe in the immor-
tality of the soul because they never think of death, their lives
being so full ; how they believe in God, and do not pray to him ;
how they are extraordinarily courageous, yet will not despise
the coward " God has not made me courageous," one will say ;
how they need no laws, being a virtuous race ; and how, in old
age, they have a look of fierceness from a long habit of con-
tracting the eyes and the brows because of the white glare of
the sun on the desert. Wilfrid Blunt grew to love this people,
having, indeed, by nature a brotherhood with them in many
things. In the first journey he did not come to know the Arabs ;
only their country. " I knew them," he says, " as tourists know
them, and because I knew nothing of what they were saying I
distrusted them ; I thought they lied." This insular feeling,
so frankly confessed, could not last long in one little enough
insular. In his second journey he learned some of the language,
and began to get an insight into the people. " A Bedouin
youth," he says, " of the tribe of Teaha, made me the confidant
of a love-affair. He dictated to me a love-letter, in which he
declared that he would die if the father of the girl refused to
give her for the three camels he had offered. Then I began to
feel that these wild people were men with passions like our-
selves." Afterwards he entrusted to his servants the task of
taking his camels to Cairo for sale. Six months later he re-
ceived the full price; so he began to learn that some Arabs
were quite honorable and honest. His trust and sympathy
'earned return ; he was no longer deceived when the Arabs be-
gan to realize that he gave truth and expected truth. On the
title-page of his wife's Bedouins of the Euphrates he records his
impressions in this sonnet:

" Children of Shem, first-born of Noah's race,
And still for ever children ; at the door

Of Eden found, unconscious of disgrace,
And loitering on while all are gone before.

Too proud to dig, too careless to be poor ;
Taking the gifts of God in thanklessness,

374 WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. [June,

Not rendering aught or supplicating more,

Nor arguing with him when he hides his face.
Yours is the rain and sunshine, and the way

Of an old wisdom by the world forgot,
The courage of a day which knew not death.

Well may we, sons of Japhet, in dismay
Pause in our vain, mad fight for life and breath.

Beholding you, I bow and reason not."

Before the era of "the pilgrimage to Nejd," the most adven-
turous of their journeys, Mr. Blunt had published a small
volume of poems, Sonnets and Songs, of which we do not
find much record, and which is now scarcely to be had. The
Nejd journey took place in 1878-9, and had a singularly roman-
tic motive. Mohammed, son to the chief of Palmyra Solo,
mon's " Tadmor in the Wilderness "had been their guide in the
Euphrates expedition. On their return he chose as recompense
only to be made Mr. Blunt's brother, according to Bedouin
custom, refusing any other reward of money or precious gifts.
This young Bedouin was the descendant of one of three
brothers who fled during war-time, a hundred years before, from
Nejd. The story is still told in a popular Arab ballad, for the
three brothers were great men in their day. Mohammed's fore
father settled in Palmyra, and became ultimately its chief. He
then, like another Cophetua, married a woman of the towns-
people, not of noble or Bedouin blood like himself. So his
children and children's children lost caste. Bedouin fathers
would not give them their daughters in marriage ; they had
ceased to be nobles. Ail this was a great though hidden trouble
to the young Mohammed, and Mr. Blunt discovering it, offered
as his brother to accompany him to Nejd and find a wife for
him among his own relations, if any remained after the century,
and so redeem the race. After a long journey through places
the very name of them strange in European ears, they reached
Nejd, with its shepherd kings as in Bible days; but a rebellion
breaking out in Palmyra, the young chief hastened home only*
to be thrown into prison by the Turkish authorities. Mr.
Blunt, however, procured his Arab brother's release.

It was a long and arduous journey. Starting from Damas-
cus, in almost Eastern guise, the travellers went southward
six hundred miles over the great sand-deserts to the central
plateaux of Arabia, and were received as guests at Hail by the
Wahhabite emir, Mohammed Ibn Raschid. Afterwards they
travelled for upwards of a month with the Persian pilgrimage
from Mecca, reaching so Bagdad, and passing through Suristan

1 888.] WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. 375

to the Persian Gulf and India. On this journey they were near
being- accompanied by Sir Edward Malet, who met them at
Damascus. Mr. Blunt says, speaking of this meeting with an
old friend, whose friendship was not to prove as faithful as Lord
Lytton's: " I have often thought with what a different eye he
would have viewed the subsequent struggle for liberty at Cairo
had circumstances allowed him to see Arabian liberty with us.
The sight of a free native population in the heart of the desert
might have inspired him with the thought, which has ever since
been mine, of aiding the Mussulman nations to learn self-govern-
ment and shake off the yoke of strangers, and to regenerate
their social life. Sir Edward would have been listened to, as I
have not been, and England, instead of crushing, might have
nursed this infant freedom." But this was not to be. The one
man took the safe road to the highest honors of his profession,
and to marriage with the daughter of one of England's wealthi-
est dukes ; the other set out on yet another stage of the arduous
education which was to fit him to be the one voice in the wilder-
ness crying out a protest and a prophecy.

The next notable event in this eventful life is the publication
of The Love-Sonnets of Proteus, in 1880. The book was a great
and immediate success, and at once made the literary reputation
of the writer. Its popularity received a great impetus by Lord
Lytton's article, " A New Love-Poet," on his friend's work,
which was published in the Nineteenth Century ; but the critics
and the public were as generous and as quick in their recogni-
tion of the most original and sincere poetry which had appeared
for long. It will be seen from the specimens I have quoted that
Mr. Blunt's sonnets are little enough correct in form : it is char-
acteristic of the man that he should choose a form insisting on
restraint, and then violate its laws at his will ; the feeling is
nearly always too vehement for restraint and overflows its nar-
row, fourteen-line limit, but the music and the fervor carry
one beyond criticism. Here is a fine specimen in which the
Shaksperean affinity is most noticeable:

" If I could live without the thought of death,

Forgetful of Time's waste, the soul's decay,
I would not ask for other joy than breath,

With light and sound of birds and the sun's ray.

I could sit on untroubled day by day,
Watching the grass grow and the wild flowers range

From blue to yellow and from red to grey,
In natural sequence as the seasons change.

376 WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. [June,

I could afford to wait but for the hurt
Of this dull tick of Time which chides my ear ;

But now I dare not sit with loins ungirt
And staff unlifted, for Death stands too near.
I must be up and doing ay, each minute :
The grave gives time for rest when we are in it."

The book is one that gives the world assurance of a man. It is
the most masculine poetry possible, and one thinks the great
and abiding value of it must be its entire unreserve. All other
poets have reserve of one kind or another, if it be but artistic,
but here is a whole inner nature laid bare, striking down the
barriers which divide man from man. The book was anony-
mous for three editions, but to the fourth the author added this
outspoken preface:

" No life is perfect that has not been lived youth in feeling, manhood
in battle, old age in meditation Again, no life is perfect that is not sin-
cere. For these reasons I have decided to add my name to the title-
page.' 7

Happily for oppressed nations everywhere, Mr. Wilfrid
Blunt's life is still, and will be, please God, for many years to
come, a battle-field. After the Nejd journey began the famous
series of articles in the Nineteenth Century and the Fortnightly,
with their passionate outcry against the Turk and their strenu-
ous faith in the future of the Arabs. Then came the national
crime and disgrace of the Egyptian war, when Mr. Gladstone's
government made the fatal mistake, repeated again and again
in Ireland, of taking for a mere emeute of a few military adven-
turers a great national movement. It is all fresh in men's minds
how the English fleet and army stood with the khedive on one
side and the whole united people on the other all a wonderful
triumph of commercial dishonesty and intriguing over a blind
government, and alas ! a nation fighting for its rights. The
bondholders triumphed, and Arabi's life was only saved by the
lavish expenditure from Mr. Blunt's private purse of five thou-
sand pounds or more. Was it then, or later when the Mahdi's
dark star rose over the horizon, that Mr. Blunt offered to take
his life in his hands and alone go to make peace with the Arabs?
I forget, for events are so many. But England had no use just
then for a Don Quixote, though later, when things had come
to a desperate pass, she let Gordon go to his martyrdom. In-
cessant through it all Wilfrid Blunt's protest and prophecy beat
painfully at the ears of them in high places. He with the sav-
ing of Arabi, and Gordon dying with his Master's name upon

l888 -] WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. 377

his lips, are the two golden spots in all that blackness. Now
Englishmen are glad to forget the shame and disaster of it, as
those cannot forget, even here, to whom a grave at Tel-el-Kebir
or Assouan is the dearest part of the world, or that larger num-
ber whose national independence was destroyed, and with the
blood of whose kindred the desert was made to blossom like the
rose. There were some in those days not ashamed to raise
against Wilfrid Blunt the parrot-cry of want of patriotism be-
cause he could not acquiesce blindly in the acts of those who
were bringing disgrace on the name of England. One sonnet,
the last of the Proteus sonnets, might almost answer for him.
There is no insincerity in this emotion :

" Seven weeks of sea and twice seven days of storm

Upon the huge Atlantic, and once more
We ride into still water, and the calm

Of a sweet evening screened by either shore

Of Spain and Barbary. Our toils are o'er,
Our labors are accomplished. Once again

We look on Europe, mistress, as of yore,
Of the fair earth and of the hearts of men.

Ay, this is the famed rock which Hercules
And Goth and Moor bequeathed us. At this door

England stands sentry. God ! to hear the shrill,
Sweet treble of her fifes upon the breeze,

And at the summons of the rock-gun's roar
To see her red-coats marching from the hill ! M

When it was all over he wrote his righteous anger and his
vision of the future in a vehement poem, " The Wind and the
Whirlwind," unpleasant reading for such of the ministers of
that day as may happen to come upon this terribly serious
poetry.

In 18^4 Mr. Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt visited Arabi
and his fellow-exiles at Ceylon, where the distinguished exile
has such peace as can come to a leader of men when his cause is
in ruins and his people scattered, and he himself chained to a life
of inglorious ease. But he has his Mohammedan fatalism to
still his hot impulses. Mr. Blunt is his faithful friend ; we have
in our minds the simple and touching letter, full of Oriental
dignity and greatness of soul, which came from Arabi when his
friend was sentenced last autumn.

In 1884 appeared also in the Fortnightly his articles, " Ideas
about India," wherein he made his attempt towards righting the
crying wrongs of the British ascendency and its officialdom in
India. The peasant of the Deccan pays forty per cent, of his

378 WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. TJ une >

produce in taxes, and he estimates that at least forty per cent, of
the population go through life insufficiently fed. All this while
every English official is living in a style of almost unparalleled
luxury. Lord Ripon was here in Dublin with us a little while
ago, winning all our hearts by his gentleness and urbanity. Let
us see what Mr. Blunt has to say of the viceroyalty of the
" Statesman of Faith," as some one has called him. He writes:

" No viceroy, Lord Canning possibly excepted, ever enjoyed such
popularity as Lord Ripon. . . . Whenever I went to India I heard the
same story from the poor peasants of the south, who for the first time,
perhaps, had learned the individual name of the ruler; from the high-
cast Brahmins of Madras and Bombay ; from the Calcutta students ; from
the Mohammedan divines of Lucknow; from the noblemen of Delhi and
Hyderabad; everywhere his praise was in all men's mouths, and the peo-
ple were moved to surprise and gratitude, ' He is an honest man,' one
said, 'and he fears God.' M

When Mr. Gladstone went Home Rule, Mr. Blunt, who had
been consistently Tory despite the utter unconservatism of his
beliefs, said good-by to old traditions and old friends and followed
him. From the time of his return from his last expedition his
work on the Home Rule platforms of Great Britain went on
steadily, unless for a passing visit or two to Ireland. The story
of his intervention last autumn between the octopus Clanricarde
and his victims the arrest, the trial, the imprisonment need
not be repeated here ; nor how his wife was as leally his comrade
in facing infuriated policemen as in enduring the dangers and
hardships of the burning desert, or the jungle haunted by wild
beasts. The generous blood of her grandfather has spoken rich-
ly in her.

Mr. Blunt is still, unhappily, outside Parliament, which must
in the future be the arena where he will fight the battles of
wronged peoples. But he will not long be denied his battle-
ground. There is no sign of the evening of meditation in that
superb figure that bronzed countenance, those luminous eyes.
Mr. Blunt is shaken by the rigors of his imprisonment, but a
little retirement and rest will strengthen him. And the victory
is all to him, and the cause for which he has, in some degree,
spent himself. KATHARINE TYNAN.

Clondalkin, County Dublin, Ireland.

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. 379

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY.

XXII.
THE NEW-COMER.

MR. VAN ALSTYNE had been standing just inside his front
gate when Paul Murray drove up that evening. The long twi-
light was nearly over, but though it lacked a couple of hours
to moonrise the sky was clear and silvery.

" You are late," said the old man ; " was the train delayed ? "

" No ; it was a little in advance of time. But the evening
was so fine that I came around by the falls."

44 There is no one about to take the mare," went on Mr. Van
Alstyne ; " Sam drove Mrs. Van Alstyne out for an airing just
after tea. I thought they would have been back by this time.
Take Nell into the barn, and let her stand there in the traces and
wait for him. And then come into the house for your supper ;
I've some news to tell you."

Mr. Van Alstyne seemed not quite like his usual self; there
was a sort of suppressed excitement in his face which communi-
cated itself in some manner to Paul, as they walked to the house
together, and made him wonder what out-of-the-way thing could
have happened in his absence. But Mr. Van Alstyne did not
seem ready to broach the subject at once, and questions were
not in his companion's line.

" Life gets to be an oddly interesting affair when one comes
to my age," the old man said at last. " I begin to feel as though
I were a mere spectator at a play ; not much more directly con-
cerned in the developments of every day than I should be in any
other slowly unfolding panorama. Still, T do get a sudden
shake up now and then. I had one this afternoon."

" A pleasant one, I hope."

" I hardly know yet. Perhaps I might say yes, on the whole.
Blood is thicker than water, even when it has been considerably
diluted."

Mr. Van Alstyne stopped to laugh quietly.

" Diluted is a good word," he added, "and I will use it to
you, since it expresses my sentiments exactly. But I don't
know what Mrs. Van Alstyne would say if she heard it, or the
owner of this bit of pasteboard, either."

The two men had entered the house, and in passing through

380 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [June,

the wide hall to the dining room at the back Mr. Van Alstyne
took up a visiting-- card from a basket standing on the table. He
handed it to Paul, who read out the legend inscribed upon it :

Mr. F. Van Alstyne-Hadleigh.

"A relative?" he asked, putting it down again upon the
others in the basket.

" Yes ; a cousin the youngest son of an uncle whom I have
not seen since I was a boy, nor heard from in fifty years and
more. I did not know whether he were dead or alive he might
have been either, for he had not much the start of me in age
nor whether he had had a family, until the advent of Mr. F. Van
Alstyne-Hadleigh by the two o'clock northern train to-day."
The old man chuckled again, as if the name he uttered amused
him. He rang the bell and ordered Paul Murray's supper, and
while awaiting it kept on walking up and down the room.

" Well." said Paul, sitting down at table and beginning to
crunch a water-cracker with the appetite of a hungry man,
"that ought to be pleasant. The son of one's mother's brother
should be a cheerful sight on any day of the week."

Mr. Van Alstyne laughed again. " Oh ! the shoe is on the
other foot," he said. " My mother had no brothers. Mr. Fred-
erick Van Alstyne-Hadleigh is my uncle Diedrich Van Alstyne's
son. Looks a little like him, too, but he has been diluted, as I say
sublimated and refined, as he thinks, doubtless and in the pro-
cess changed into a Hadleigh. That's promotion, if you know
it, Murray. There's a peerage in the Hadleigh family an Eng-
lish peerage ; think of that! And this fellow's brother stands
within one of it, with only an unmarried and sickly cousin in
the way. So he says," ended Mr. Van Alstyne, with a shrug.

" I don't understand."

"Naturally. Consider, Murray," he went on, sifting down
opposite Paul, whose beefsteak had just been served ; " I know
I shouldn't make light of such very serious matters, but 1 have
been bottling up my laugh for two or three hours less, I will
say for him, for my cousin's sake than for Mrs. Van Alstyne's.
She has a lion precisely to her taste for once in her life. From
the time they have been absent I fancy she must have gone over
to the squire's or elsewhere to put him on exhibition without de-
lay. Perhaps I shall have time to condense his account of him-
self before they arrive. You see, he didn't spring the important
item I have just communicated on me all at once; perhaps it
mightn't have leaked out yet but for my curiosity to get at the

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 381

reason of the transformation which puts the cart before the
horse so completely in his name. He is no man's fool, Mr. F.
Van Alstyne-Hadleigh unless, perhaps, his own," the old man
added in an undertone. " He has been everywhere and seen
everything, by his own account. He says he was one of a party
of four London barristers who, as a result of a late supper and a
sudden freak, set off from Southampton a couple of years back in
an eighteen-ton yawl, and crossed the Atlantic with no better sail,
or on board than himself and a cabin-boy. He says he has been
used to handling small craft all his life, on the Thames and in the
Channel."

U A yawl?" said Paul Murray, with suddenly uplifted eye-
brows.

"That is what I said. Of course I had a vision on the in-
stant of the boat hitched up on the davits of Bill Peak's sloop,
Sally Ann, and was ready to take all the rest of his yarn with a
large pinch of salt. But it appears that is the name the Eng-
lish give to a peculiarly rigged yacht. They went up one of
the rivers, the Plata, I think, as far as it was navigable, and then
broke up the party, he and one of his friends remaining in Para-
guay, and the others returning to the coast and from there by
steamer to London."

" That is a curious story," commented Paul Murray, smiling.
" What did two London barristers find to do in Paraguay ? Has
he been there ever since?"

Mr. Van Alstyne shrugged his shoulders. " He says his
friend was writing an account of their travels, while he was
chiefly occupied in studying the fauna and flora of the country.
They doubtless present peculiar points of interest. At all events
he remained there until some family news that reached him this
summer decided him to return. '

" Via Milton Centre? Still, that is no't much of a detour after
all for a man who crosses the Atlantic in a yawl, and buries him-
self in Paraguay to study botany and natural history. He must
be interesting."

" Yes; he is. I see you can't get the idea of a row-boat out
of your mind yet Neither can I. He says he had a curiosity
to find out what there might be left of the 'American branch,'
as he calls it, of his family, and what sort of a place his father
originally came from. Well, that is the gist of his adventures
as he communicated them this afternoon. His credentials were
all right. He brought me a letter, among others, from Whipple &
Sons, from whom he appears to have found out how to get here."

382 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [June,

" And about the name? " said Paul. "How did he account
for that?"

" Oh ! yes ; I was forgetting. Of course I took it for granted,
at first, that he must be my uncle Diedrich's grandson. He
tells me that his father went from here to Holland, which, by
the way, 1 knew already. There he found some of our rela-
tives, got into the South Australian trade, and made a fortune.
Afterwards he represented the Dutch house in London, where
he increased his means still further to a fabulous extent, I sup-
pose," said the old man with a smile more cynical than was
usual; "'sufficiently, at all events, to let him marry late in life
into a family for the sake of whose prestige and connections he
was willing to sink his own. I told Mr. Van Alstyne-Hadleigh
that it had been a habit on our side of the house to give to
women instead of taking from them, especially in the way of
names."

" What did he say to that ? "

"Only that it was a mere matter of convention, any way;
that there was no more special reason on the face of things for a
woman's taking her husband's name than for his taking hers,
and that in the case on hand, as his mother was the only child
of a nearly extinct family which had connections and traditions
which made it desirable to keep it up, the two names had been
combined in the way which on the whole seemed most desirable
to the parties chiefly interested. He is a cool hand, my young
cousin,'' went on Mr. Van Alstyne in the musing tone into
which he sometimes fell of late, "plainly 'lord of himself, that
heritage of woe.' ' Presently he got up and went towards a
bay-window at the end of the dining-room, which gave a
glimpse of the road across some shrubbery.

"I thought I heard the carriage," he said. " Yes, here it
comes, and with it the first creature of my own blood I have
seen since I buried my son. So far as any actual knowledge of
mine went, there was not a drop of it flowing in any other
veins." He sighed as he ended, and went out into the porch
to meet the new-comers, asking Paul Murray, whose meal was
now finished and who had likewise risen, to await them in the
parlor.

Mr. Hadleigh. as he was known during the period of his
residence in a small American village, whose inhabitants re-
mained for the most part hopelessly dull concerning the true
significance of his double-jointed appellation, presently followed
his hostess into the room, and the two young men were made

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE^ s FACTORY. 383

acquainted. Mr. Hadleigh, who had some five or six years the
advantage in age, was a man to look at twice: something indi-
vidual and unconventional was as evident in his whole appear-
ance as in the account he had given of himself. As they clasped
hands he and Paul Murray, both above the usual height, looked
into each other's eyes from the same level. Mr. Wdleigh's
were long and of a reddish brown, with a concentrated expres-
sion which seemed partly due to the contraction of myopy, and
partly to an habitual knitting of the too narrow brows above
them. His facial lines, with the exception of this slight lack of
breadth in the forehead, most noticeable in its upper half, were
in the main extremely fine, the aquiline nose and firmly-rounded
chin, especially, being very like those of John Van Alstyne.
But his jaw was more solid, and longer before it reached the
curve of the thin cheek, and the lips that closed tight under his
pale moustache, when he was not speaking, were wide and over-
full. When he had changed his travelling suit in the afternoon
to accompany Mrs. Van Alstyne on her drive, he had explained
to her that he was deferring attention to his wardrobe until he
should reach his London tailor an explanation which she had
not failed to pass on to Mrs. Cadwallader and the girls, for Mr.
Van Alstyne had justly divined that her anxiety to exploit the
new arrival without delay would overpower every other con-
sideration in her mind. No doubt she was glad to have so ex-
cellent an apology to offer for the appearance of his frock-coat,
a long Prince Albert, a good deal creased and inclined to shini-
ness about the seams, as well as too loose for a figure plainly
built to support strong muscular development, but at present
thin to even painful lankness. Mr. Hadleigh said that he had
been suffering from rheumatism and neuralgia for some months,
which accounted for the unhealthy pallor of a skin so brown,
either by nature or from long exposure, as to look incongruous
beneath his dry, straight hair, which, like his moustache, was of
the color the French call cendrte. Something incongruous and
odd, for that matter, was in his whole appearance. Paul Mur-
ray, who suddenly found himself more critical than usual, noted
that he was perfectly at his ease in his ill-fitting and much-too-
shabby coat and carelessly knotted necktie, but felt himself un-
able to determine whether the explanation of that fact should be
sought in his indifference to his present company or in the abso-
lute indifference belonging to a natural love and long practice of
roughing-it in yet more unconventional apparel. Mr. Hadleigh's
manner struck him as a singular combination of watchfulness and

384. . JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [June,

candor, of preoccupation and observant attention. He talked
extremely well during the hour that elapsed before Paul Mur-
ray took his leave, chiefly on the subject of his voyage in the
Goshawk, concerning which his host's curiosity was unappeasable,
and with a quaint drollery, and even na'ivett, which somehow
added one more to the contrarieties which his personality sug-
gested to both of his male listeners. Each of them placed an
entire and justifiable confidence in all that he was saying, and
yet each, in some remote recess of his interior, felt the need
of supplementing and piecing out the story, and wondering
whether it rounded so smoothly on the other side.

Perhaps it was natural that Mrs. Van Alstyne's acceptance
of the stranger whose antecedents, so far as made known, were
so entirely to her taste, should be more entire than that of the
remainder of his audience that evening. Yet even she was feel-
ing conscious of a grievance. The Goshawk was all very well,
and so was Paraguay, delightfully romantic, adventurous, and
all that, but what she was dying to hear more about was
the social and family life in his own country, into which Mr.
Hadleigh's straightforward yet not too-ready answers to John
Van Alstyne's questions had given her such a tempting glimpse.
She had carried her point about the drive with that end in view,
and had extracted various additional items of family history,
given too simply and with too great paucity of details to do
much but inflame her imagination, and when she had attempted,
at Squire Cadwallader's, to induce him to repeat them, or, failing
that, to let her do so, she had been repressed in a quietly well-
bred way which was most tantalizingly effectual. Though they
had seldom found just the right conditions, Mrs. Van Alstyne's
soul was full of germs capable of causing an acute form of Anglo-
mania, and suffering just now under the tension of their last in-
teguments. Think, then, of the agony implied in having a guest,
and more than that, a family connection, under one's roof whose
elder brother, besides having been already knighted in consid-
eration of his political services, had the most excellent chance
of one day being Lord Leigh of Hadleigh ; who had been Press
Commissioner in India under Lord Lytton, and who had sat six
weeks in the House of Commons only last spring, under an
ultra-Tory government which, at the end of that too-brief period,
had been thrown out by a new accession of Mr. Gladstone to
power, and yet being unable to dilate upon all that to the ex-
clusion of meaner topics ! Mrs. Van Alstyne knew little and
cared less about the politics of any country, including her own,

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. 385

but she became an^anti-Gladstonian at that precise spot on the
turnpike road where her guest imparted the last item of news,
with considerable warmth of expression, but, to her, an almost
complete unintelligibiiity of details. Mr. Hadleigh was cer-
tainly more ready to talk on purely impersonal matters like poli-
tics, or on his out-of-the-way experiences by land and sea, than
on any others. He was entirely willing to air his aversion to
Liberalism in the abstract, and to the Grand Old Man in par-
ticular, for whom he professed a disgust only excelled by that
he entertained for "Jo" Chamberlain, whose first political coat
had not then begun to burst at the seams, and whose name Mrs.
Van Alstyne heard that afternoon for the first time. Not for
the last ; her guest, who had a sense of the humorous, due to
his mixed blood perhaps, presently took to interposing some
very nonsensical political gabble as a sort of screen between
her and himself whenever her questions began, but doing so in
a way that at once charmed and bewildered her, so full was it
of delightful names with handles to them, and yet so empty,
when she came to reflect upon it, of any solid nourishment for
healthy curiosity. As for Mr. Van Alstyne-Hadleigh, he had
very soon taken the measure of his hostess, and though there
was nothing he had any desire to conceal in his family relations,
and a good deal that it would have gratified her immensely to
be told, her questions bored him. " Les Amdricains" he quoted
to himself out of the half-forgotten French reader of his nursery
days, " sont si curieux et si questionneurs" and then proceeded to
inflate her mind in ways too speedily followed by dire collapse
and craving emptiness.

During the course of the next week, however, Mr. Hadleigh
developed some qualities and capabilities which made a number
of people in Milton Centre and its vicinity regard his advent
as one of the happiest of accidents. Zipporah Colton and
the squire's daughters drove over to the village on Sunday
afternoon, and after an interview with Mrs. Van Alstyne in her
own room, where the birthday scheme was first unfolded to that
lady, the possibility of enlisting his co-operation was brought
up by the girls and eagerly discussed. Mrs. Van Alstyne took
instant opportunity to sound him, and Mr. Hadleigh, whose
readiness to amuse himself in almost any available way had
something even boyish about it, caught at the idea with effu-
sion. It suited him to remain where he was for the present, and
yet he had been quick to foresee that time was likely to be a
great drag on his hands. The girls were all sufficiently pleasant

VOL. XLV1L 25

386 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [June,

to look at, as well as gay in a frank, American fashion, of which
he had no experience, and to assist them would be far from dis-
agreeable. Moreover, he had had plenty of practice in amateur
theatricals, and turned out to be so full of practical ideas and so
fertile in expedients for making something out of almost nothing
in the way of properties, that, after a consultation participated
in by Paul Murray, whom Mr. Hadleigh volunteered to go in
search of, he was voted master of the revels. For the rest of the
week he devoted himself to the undertaking with such unflag-
ging zeal that one would have said that, if anything more impor-
tant had ever fallen to his lot to do, at least it could not have
been done with greater seriousness and absorbed attention.
Paul Murray, watching with amused interest such of the pre-
parations as were necessarily made in the vicinity of the mill,
noted, too, the skilful evasions, the unsurprised capability to
avert or disarm suspicion, by which he guarded these innocent
secrets from John Van Alstyne. True, the old man lent himself
to being hoodwinked after the first day or two with a readiness
which suspiciously facilitated the process. He went up to town
one morning early in the week and was gone until nightfall.
Then he began to superintend the excavations for the new build-
ings to be commenced before cold weather set in, and in other
ways contrived to be absent from localities where his presence
was not desirable. He found time enough in the long forenoons
to prosecute his acquaintance with his new relative, to whom his
heart, or, perhaps, his strong instinctive feeling with regard to
family ties, was inclining him more rapidly than his judgment.

Paul Murray, too, was finding himself at once attracted and
repelled by Mr. Hadleigh, and as yet uncertain which sentiment
was the stronger. On the whole, they were thrown so much
together, and Mr. Hadleigh was companionable in so many ways,
and so free from any manner of assumption, that they fell pre-
sently into a sort of superficial comradeship new to Paul, and
far enough from being unpleasant.

On Mary Anne Murray only was the effect produced by the
new arrival unmixed and certain, and so adverse and uncompro-
mising was it that it afflicted her conscience to an extent which
made her do more than ordinary battle with her shyness in
order to overcome it. In the usual course of things she would
not have been thrown in his way at all, but as it was he had ob-
vious occasions to call on her for trifling services, and came in
with Paul once or twice before the week was over to get his tea,
of which he professed to be as fond as an old woman. The law

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 387

of contrarieties must have lain at the bottom of the fact that she
awakened in him an entirely special admiration. He liked to
look at her, much as he had liked to look at certain pictures in
Italian churches, and had, moreover, a sense not unlike that
which had sometimes pervaded him in those sanctuaries, that it
would not be a bad thing to yield to the influence which seemed
to him to ray out from her. But in Mary Anne he created an
aversion that was even physical in its strong repulsion. She ac-
cused herself of a natural shrinking from his presence, which re-
sembled in its effects that which had once involuntarily over-
come her in the room with a pestilent cadaver, and so, the cir-
cumstance being altogether unprecedented in her experience,
she tried as conscientiously to overcome it. Not as success-
fully, indeed, but in a measure that, her ordinary timidity and
silence being taken into account, produced no such marked al-
teration in her demeanor as to be specially noticeable to others.

XXIII.

WHICH IS EPISTOLARY.

Zipporah Colton to her Sister Martha.

WEDNESDAY NOON, Sept. 26, 18 .

DEAR MATTIE : Lucy's note inviting you for Friday was writ-
ten late on Sunday evening, but since then our plans have taken
such an unexpected turn that I think you'd better come down as
soon as ever you can. Bring my blue velvet peasant waist with
you when you do. Saturday is the day, you know. We have
concluded not to try to do much of anything with the children.
One or two tableaux, perhaps ; but most of them are too stupid
to learn properly in the short time we have ; besides, we have
hit upon something a good deal better in every way. A cousin
of Mr. Van Alstyne's, of whom nobody ever heard before, has
arrived from South America on his way to England. He is the
most amusing person I ever met, and knows ten times more than
any of us about getting up charades and all that sort of thing.
He says he was brought up with a houseful of sisters and cou-
sins, and learned how when he was a boy. That must have been
some time ago, I should say, for though he don't act old, he
don't look very young.

He came last Saturday while I was at home. When I reachec
Lucy's he was calling there with Mrs. Van Alstyne, but I didn't
meet him that night because I felt too tired to go into the par-

388 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [June,

lor. He is a wonderful person in Mrs. Van's eyes ; if she has
told me once that he is " own first cousin" to a lord she has told
me so a dozen times. He is rather wonderful, I think, myself,
but only because he is so full of inventions and ideas for our per-
formance. We are making- them all up the charades, I mean
ourselves ; that is, Mr. Hadleigh generally hits on the word and
the scenes for it, and then we all help plan out the details. Lucy
is the best about that. We have got a lovely one about Mr. Van
Alstyne's horse, Nelly. We are going to do the death of Cock
Robin, to bring in the syllables. That is what we need you for;
you are to be the fish with your little dish. And that reminds me.
You must go to Stevenson's and buy a lot of stamped gold and
silver paper to make your skin of; a dozen large sheets wouldn't
be too many, I should think. Mr. Hadleigh proposed to have
Bella take that part at first, but she is so dumpy that when she
put on the case that he cut out of brown wrapping-paper as a
pattern, she looked like no fish in the sea, unless it might be a
whale. I suspect he did it on purpose, for I happened to be
standing near a table where he and Mr. Murray were painting a
bull's head for Dr. Sawyer he is to ring the knell when Bella
came into the parlor with it on, and I overheard him say that she
would do capitally, and then we might have a tableau of Jonah
afterwards. Then they both smiled, and I imagine Bella saw
them in the pier-glass, as well as herself, for she wouldn't take
the part. You are so nice and slim that you will do it first rate.
I didn't think it very excellent taste in either of the gentlemen,
I must say. Bella is as good as gold, and as nice to them as
ever she can be, and it isn't her fault that she weighs pounds and
pounds more than any girl ever ought to. In her place, though,
I do believe I'd bant.

I'm going to be the fly a dragon-fly, if you please, with
splendid gauze wings that's what I want the blue velvet waist
for. I've taken that gold-colored farmer's satin for the skirt.
We are constructing it over a set of hoops that the girls in-
vented the biggest up near the waist, you know, and then
tapering down so as just to give room enough for me to walk
in. Then it has two little black tails at the end that we bor-
rowed from an old fur boa of Mrs. Cadwallader's. One pair of
wings is to be held out with whalebones, and the others I man-
age with my arms. I'm sure I don't know whether the gold
color is what it should be. I never can remember how " bugs,"
as Mrs. Cadwallader calls all sorts of insects, look, and we
hunted it up in Webster for the shape. But my mind was made

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 389

up what to use for the skirt in any case, so I don't care much
whether they are blue or yellow or brown or black the flies, I
mean. Somebody remarked that I couldn't look the character
in any case, because it would be absurd for me to talk about
" my little eye." So I said I would make an effort to draw them
close together and look as if there were too much light in the
room, as Mr. Hadleigh does whenever his eyeglasses drop off
his nose. And then somebody else said I'd better not spoil the
effect by trying to be too realistic.

Little Davie Murray is to be the sparrow and Mr. Hadleigh
Cock Robin. I wish you could see him in Mrs. Cadwallader's
long sable circular, with a bib of Turkey red stuffed out in the
absurdest way but you will, of course. When he is shot he
jumps a yard in the air, more or less, and draws his long legs all
up under the fur cape in the funniest way. Then he comes flop
down on the floor and dies. I suppose things must be done
better in real theatres and by professional actors, but I don't see
how. The second scene is going to be awfully good, too lie is
the word, you know, and you and I are to be brought up as con-
flicting witnesses against the sparrow. Mr. Murray, in an owl's
head, will be judge, and Dr. Sawyer and Mr. Hadleigh, in white
wool wigs, the counsel. Bella and Lucy are the jurors. I suppose
it all sounds very much mixed as I write it down, but you'll see;
it is going to be perfectly splendid, and too funny for anything.

I walk over to the squire's as soon as school is out every
afternoon and stay until next morning, when I go back with
Miss Murray. The gentlemen, and sometimes Mrs. Van Al-
styne, drive over every evening for consultation and rehearsal,
and we have great fun. Mrs. Cadwallader and the squire are as
interested as anybody, and make things very pleasant. It would
be lovely if Nat could come, for the sake of the singing no-
body has such a voice as his. But that would entail Fanny, and
as I don't want her I shall not say another word about it to him.
Come by the earliest train you can to-morrow, and don't forget
the paper and my blue waist. Yours, ZIP.

p.S. Love to mother. She won't have any reason to com-
plain that I haven't mentioned every one I know down here this
time even to the very last stranger within the gates.

Van Alstyne-Hadleigh to his Brother, Sir Rodney.

MILTON CENTRE, New York, Sept. 28, 18 .
DEAR BROTHER: Your cablegram, announcing my father's
death in July, found me tied hand and foot with articular rheu-

39 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [June,

matism, as I got Jardine to inform you at the time by letter.
My experiences on the Goshawk, with those three land-lubbers,
who either could not or would not learn to do a stroke their lazi-
ness could crawl out of, has laid up a stock of pains and aches
for me that bids fair to last for the rest of my natural life. No
speed I could have made would have got me home in time for
the dear old governor's funeral in any case, so I lay still, tied up
in flannels, and with a dozen leeches sucking the blood out of
me, and thought about what I supposed to be the situation. I
reached New York a week ago yesterday, intending, then, to take
the steamer for Liverpool on the following Saturday ; but your
letter, enclosing a copy of the will, which I found awaiting me at
Whipple & Sons, combined with certain information the bankers
volunteered when they found out who I was, changed my plans.
Of course, you do not expect me to consider the situation, as
it actually is, in just the same light that you do. That father
should have changed all his dispositions about his property in
consequence of Leigh's sudden taking-off, and the temporary
succession of little Dick, must be extremely pleasant for you ;
had it been done even five years ago, when he was quite himself,
I should find it natural enough. Probably I would have done
the same thing in his place. But when I saw him last I know
he had no intention of making an eldest son of you in any such
thorough-going fashion. Son for son, I have always had reason
to believe that I had the softest spot in his affections, and what
you say of his feeling about my " mad voyage," as well as your
unnecessary hints about some of its circumstances, would carry
more weight if I felt more certain that such a feeling was wholly
spontaneous on his part. I let him know my whereabouts with
the greatest regularity. Naturallv, you will say, since it was
chiefly to acknowledge the receipt of drafts. Well, not alto-
gether. Agnes has been his scribe for the last half-year, and on
her writing me that his mind and memory were failing, I would
have made for home without delay but for ill-health and one or
two other hindrances not now necessary to specify. That he
would make a new will never entered my calculations, and
the purport of the first, which equalized things more nearly as
between you and me, I had from his own lips. Of course, none
of us could have anticipated Leigh's death, and, as I say, I could
have understood his motive had he planned things that way
earlier. But the date of the document you send me I observe
to be considerably nearer the end than the letter of Agnes to
which I refer.

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 391

However, there is no use crying over spilled milk, and I
have no more tears to shed over my own collapsed condition
than over the tale you unfold concerning your election expenses
and the pitiful result they brought about. I wouldn't try it
again if I were you. By what you say of Dick he can't well
hold out much longer, and then you go into the Lords without
more ado. As for me, the only people likely to bemoan the situa-
tion very deeply are my creditors. As for them, I propose for
the present to " let Mr. Smith do the walking," as they say over
here. If they have been deluded, so have I. Your suggestion
about returning and taking up the practice of my profession is
well-meant but not enticing. That would simply add one more
to the pedestrians.

Now as to my present whereabouts. I had promised the
governor to look up his old homestead and see what might be
left of his family, but on getting news of his death concluded it
was not worth while. But for your letter I should be half-seas
over by this time. That put a new face on things and showed
me that there was no great hurry. I made inquiries through the
bankers, and the news they were able to give me concerning the
only remaining American representative of the family was emi-
nently reassuring to a man in my circumstances. Our cousin,
with whom I have been staying for nearly a week now, and
who is not far off the governor's age, could cap him, dollar for
dollar, and come out far ahead. I don't flatter myself that I
have got at what these Yankees call his " true inwardness "
as yet, but I can see that his family feelings are strong and that
the mere fact of my existence stirs him up after a fashion. He
is not simply a wealthy manufacturer, but a capitalist in United
States bonds and stocks to an extent that would make your
mouth water. He has been sounding me already as to whether
I would not like a partnership in his mill his mills, perhaps I
should say, for he has planned to increase his works to a much
greater extent than at present. But such a partnership, as he
has been careful to make me understand, would be very different
to ownership. He has a philanthropic bee in his bonnet.
He lives in Spartan simplicity, and would like his successor to
do the same ; the reason being that he has dreams about lifting
up " the masses " meaning his operatives so as to make them
in point of fact, as represented by emolument, perpetuity, and all
that, the real owners. Do I want such a partnership? No, I
do not. Sparta is all very well for a season, and, as you know, I
have an erratic taste for its black broth as a tonic. But I don't

392 JOHN VAN ALSTYN&S FACTORY. [June,

choose to turn my back on Capri altogether ; not to say that I
was never cut out for a benefactor of my species. Still, I
think it worth my while to stay here until I find out how the
land really lies. The old gentleman may follow the gover-
nor's example and drop out at a moment's warning, and then,
supposing no will to have been made yet, which seems likely
from some things I have heard, you and I, and the girls, would
be the heirs-at-law. What I would prefer to that would be a
will in my favor. Who knows ? I have told him in what a box
my father's, which puts you in a position to keep up the title
when it falls in, has left me, and I observe that he has his con-
sidering-cap on, and wants to do me as good a turn as he can
without upsetting his own plans. So there you have the pre-
sent situation.

Best regards to your wife, and Agnes and the rest of the
girls. Sorry to hear that Edith is likely to marry such a howl-
ing Rad. as Symonds. She might as well have gone in for a
Home-Ruler while she was about it. They are at once more
respectable and more consistent. Odd that she should have
drained out all the democratic blood there was in the governor,
and got it so double-distilled.

Yours and theirs fraternally,

F. V. H.

Mrs. Van Alstyne to Mrs. Gardner Willetts.

MILTON CENTRE, Sept. 28, 18-.

DEAR ELSIE : Of course, I can only be glad about your
change of plans so far as I am concerned. I expect to go down
to New York about the holidays, and it will be pleasanter stay-
ing with you than going to a hotel. But it would be so selfish
to think first and chiefly about my own comfort, that I can't
help telling you that I consider that you are beginning in just
the wrong way. If you encourage your husband already in
whiffling about, and upsetting all the arrangements he made,
merely to gratify his own whims, you may just settle it in your
own mind that you are going to be a slave for life for your
married life, at all events, and well for you if it ends there. Mr.
Willetts promised you a year abroad, and here, after six weeks
at Trouville, you are to have a month in Paris only, and then
back to New York for the winter, merely because he thinks
there is going to be a tightness in the money market and says
he wants to look after things himself! I tell you, my dear, that
is only a pretext. What is to hinder his cabling to his agents

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 393

whenever he pleases? But men are men, I guess, even the best
of them, though probably some are more so than others. Those
I have had to deal with all my life are, I am sure ; and that is
why I did not limit myself to your married life when I spoke of
your being a slave. You are too much like me. I have always
envied the selfish, grasping kind of women. They are not so
pleasant, of course, to live with, but I notice they have a good
deal better time than soft creatures like you and me. So I am
not going to scold you for what you said to your husband.
You only showed a proper spirit. If you had held out longer
I expect you would have gained your point in the end.

What you say about his unwillingness to let you bring me
the lace unless you declare it, is simple folly. Everybody does
it. Don't you remember, when we came back last year, that
Connecticut lawyer, Mr. Cox, who used to bore us at table by
talking about the tariff, and the necessity of protecting our
manufactures, and then had to pay duty on fifty or sixty pairs
of ladies' gloves when we got in? If anybody was going to be
strict about it you would have supposed he was, but you see he
wasn't. I wouldn't pay any attention to Mr. Willetts on that
point, if I were you. It isn't he that will have to pay the duty
if you declare ; it is I, and I don't want to do it. You can fetch
it just exactly as we did a year ago this fall, and there is not the
least occasion of letting Mr. Willetts know anything about it.

When you are in London see what you can learn about
some newly-discovered relatives of Path er Van Alstyne's. One
of them has been here for several days now, and I hope will re-
main for some time longer. I don't see why he should not stay
for good and take the property. There is no one else, for, do
what /can to please the old gentleman, I begin to feel sure you
were right, and that he thinks he has discharged all his obliga-
tions to me already. What I am most afraid of is that he will
fritter it all away on his work-people, or else leave it to charities.
I thought once that I might contest the will in that case, but I
have consulted a lawyer and find it would be out of the ques-
tion. He says I have no rights, being only poor William's
widow, which is most unreasonable.

Besides, it would be just like Father Van Alstyne not to
make any will, but dispose of it all before his death. So I was
quite glad to see any relative appear on the carpet, and much
more so such a perfect gentleman as Mr. Frederick Van Alstyne-
Hadleigh. His brother is Sir Rodney Van Alstyne-Hadleigh.
They have a place called Hadleigh Towers, in Arundel, near

394 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [June,

the Duke of Norfolk's. Sir Rodney was in the House of Com-
mons for six weeks this spring-. His brother says that but for
that dreadful person, Mr. Gladstone, he would be there still.
He is a very peculiar man (this Mr. Van Alstyne-Hadleigh, I
mean). I never quite know whether he is in earnest when he talks
to me. But he is a better listener, I will say for him, than most
other gentlemen I have met. I have told him all I know about
the property and my fears about it, and how glad I should be
to have him get it. Of course he would sell out at once, and
probably return to England, but it would be some satisfaction
to see it go where it would do some real good. I told him this
very morning what I have said to you time and again, that
Father Van Alstyne is so very eccentric and opinionated as he
grows older, and so disposed to fling his money into the mud,
as you might say, that there would be ample ground for any one
who had a natural claim to apply for a writ against him, as the
sons did, you remember, when old Masters married the widow
Lord a couple of years ago. I didn't tell him I had thought of
doing it myself, for since I find it would be of no manner of
use, I suppose it is just as well to say nothing.

As usual, I have written you a long letter, but it was import-
ant about the lace, especiallv ; and besides, I had nothing else
to do. To-morrow Father Van Alstyne will be seventv-one,
and we are going to have a great time about it. Mr. Van Al-
styne-Hadleigh has been very kind in showing the Cadwallader
girls and the school-teacher who is here this summer, and who
has been staying at our house through some whim of the old
gentleman's, how to arrange what will be, I think, a really pretty
entertainment. It is to take place in the picnic ground below
the factory though, come to think of it, I don't suppose you
ever saw the place.

If the weather should turn out rainy, it will either be post-
poned or else the charades will be given in the hall where the
hands have their dances in the winter-time. There is to be a
feast, besides, for the hands, and everybody in the village is
coming to see the tableaux and hear the music. I really must
stop now, for there goes the dinner-bell.

Always your affectionate aunt,

SARAH PORTER VAN ALSTYNE.

P.S. I forgot to sav that it is rather lucky for you, after all,
that you are to be in New York this winter. If Mr. Van Al-
styne-Hadleigh stays over here, as I am pretty sure he means
to, he will, of course, want to get away from this village for

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 395

some part of the winter at any rate, and he will be an acquisi-
tion. Of course, you would naturally see a great deal of him,
being my niece, and so a sort of connection. His brother will be
a peer so soon as a sickly little cousin dies. Those sickly peo-
ple, though, generally last a good while I have always noticed,
especially if they have money.

Mat tie Colt on to her Mother.

MILTON CENTRE, Sept. 30, 18 .

DEAR MOTHER : I promised you to write at the first quiet
minute I had and tell you how the affair went off, and what I
think about the people down here. But so much has happened
that I hardly know where to begin.

I am quiet enough just at present, a great deal quieter than I
wish I was, for I am sitting alone in the room with Mr. Van Al-
styne, and I suppose every one else in the house is like enough
to be asleep. They must all be pretty tired. It is three o'clock
in the afternoon, and Zip came and called me to take her place
here about half an hour ago. Mr. Van Alstyne had a stroke yes-
terday afternoon, while he was making a speech, after the last
charade was over. I had no part to take in that one, and I was
sitting close beside him when he fell. He had been telling me,
just before he got up, how pleased he was with the attention
shown him, and how sure he felt that Zip had had a great deal
to do in originating the idea. He seems to have liked her very
much, considering the little time she has been down here, and
as for her, I had no idea she could go on so about anybody's
trouble. It appears to me that she could hardly feel worse if it
were father who was lying here. But I suppose he has been
very kind to her. Even I, who know him so little, find the
tears coming up to my eyes whenever I look over at the bed.

I don't know whether he is conscious or not. His face is
rather red, and he lies very quiet, with his head on one side; and
his eyes are somehow queer they are both looking straight at
me whenever I turn round, so that I see a good deal of the white
of one of them. They do not follow me when I move, but keep
in one position, and yet it seems to me as if he knows me. He
cannot speak, though, nor move at all, except one leg and his
eyelids, and I can see that almost everybody thinks- that he^ is
going to die. But Zip says that Dr. Cadwallader told her this
afternoon that he began to have hopes of him. He stayed with
him nearly all night, and when he came in again this afternoon he
said a rather curious thing to Zip, I think. He was just telling

39$ JOHN VAN ALSTYNE" s FACTORY. [June,

her that he began to have hopes when Mrs. Van Alstyne came in
and inquired what he thought. She spoke right out, Zip says,
in an unfeeling sort of way, as if she took it for granted Mr. Van
Alstyne must be unconscious, and the squire answered her that
the case was very grave indeed, and might probably take an un-
favorable turn at any moment. But when she left the room
again. Zip says he called her over to the bedside and repeated to
her, very slowly and distinctly, as if he thought likely Mr. Van
Alstyne might hear, just what he had told her before that he
had a good chance to recover, and that Zip would better keep
her own counsel as to what he might say to her. " You are his
friend, I know," he said, ** and I am much mistaken if John Van
Alstyne ever stood in greater need of one." I don't know what
he meant, but I know it seemed to me yesterday that almost
everybody seemed broken-hearted they all thought he was
dead, at first, for it took a long while to bring him around
except the very two you would think would care the most.

Of course you won't expect me to tell you much about the
doings yesterday under present circumstances. That will keep
until I go home. I don't quite know when that will be. The
doctor seems an'xious to have just such nurses and watchers in
the room ; he says all depends upon perfect quiet and paying
strict attention to his directions. I believe Mr. Murray stays
to-night, and the doctor, who knows Zip has to keep on at
school, told her that he would be glad if I remained until he
could get a perfectly trustworthy person whom he knows. Miss
Murray is to help also until then. She is very nice. I believe
you would like her.

As to yesterday, I will only say that it was splendid. Even
Fanny's coming down with Nat, which Zip wanted to prevent,
turned out very well, for Bella was attacked with a dreadful
headache, and couldn't take one of her parts. So Fan dressed
up as the " fair Imogen," don't you know, in Alonzo the Brave,
and carried it off even better than Bella, who had been prac-
tising for a week. She made great eyes at the Englishman,
though. Still, that was in the part, I suppose, for he was " Al-
onzo." But I don't believe Nat liked it, nor him either Mr.
Hadleigh, I mean. So now good-by, mother dear, and write to
say what you think about my staying for a few days longer.
The nurse Squire Cadwallader wants won't be disengaged until
near the end of this week. Yours affectionately, MATTIE.

LEWIS R. DORSAY.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

1 8*8.] JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 397

JOHN R. G. HASSARD.

THIS name has too often appeared in THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, and its owner was too much esteemed by us, to permit
us to pass by the news of his death without a tribute in our
pages. At less than fifty-two years of age, Mr. Hassard has been
called into eternity, to be rewarded, we trust, with that beatific
vision which, through the merits of Christ, his true faith and
ardent charity deserve.

The career of a journalist is consistent with religious prin-
ciples and conduct, but it is beset with difficulties. Mr. Has-
sard knew how to meet these difficulties and to overcome them.
The intellectual labors of that perplexing profession, that of a
literary man of the nineteenth century, he was able to perform
with fidelity to conscience, and at the same time with the ap-
plause of the public.

He was engaged in the editorial department of this maga-
zine early in its career, and at a time when not many Catholics
were connected with the press ; and although he soon passed
into the field of the daily newspaper, he was one of our con-
tributors up to a very recent date, his last article being a bril-
liant musical critique upon the works of Liszt, sent to us shortly
after that composer's death.

He published some volumes of critical notices, both literary
and musical, and of foreign travel, very rich in all the excel-
lences of style appropriate to these departments of literature,
and his pen was ever at work upon the daily press as long as
his fading bodily strength would obey the vigorous energy of
his spirit. But we think that politics was by no means his
dominant attrait. We knew him well, and that in the meridian
of his power, and so little did he develop his leanings in politics
in our intercourse together that he never aroused our interest
in them. We always considered that literature, pursued as a
profession and for Catholic ends, was the aim of his life.

And his greatest work was his Life of Archbishop Hughes.
This book will transmit the writer's name to coming genera-
tions in company with that of the prelate whom Qod raised up
among us to give tone to the Catholic American community.
In this biography Mr. Hassard did his work honestly,
no small amount of courage to plainly state the faults of the
archbishop, the hero of the whole church in America, within

398 JOHN R. G. HASSARD. [June,

two years of his decease. But he could affirm that he possess-
ed and that he expressed an adequate appreciation of his noble
qualities. Yet we think that he left incomplete his estimate oi
the archbishop's character. He did not sufficiently develop to
the public what was the peculiar tendency in his career, namely
his standpoint of American citizenship in the management of
ecclesiastical affairs. At first sight one would think that such a
study of the effect of the archbishop's career on the church had
never occurred to Mr. Hassard. But there are parts of the
life in which the author indicates his appreciation of this view,
especially his quoting at the very end of the book a striking
passage from the funeral sermon of Archbishop McCloskey.
Perhaps the biographer did not consider the time opportune ;
for as a matter of fact, this drift of Archbishop Hughes has not,
in the providence of God, been explicitly followed by the Catho-
lic community to any great degree, even by its prelates, until in
recent times Cardinal Gibbons has distinctly announced the
principles of Catholic public life in the American Republic.

Mr. Hassard tells, us in the Life that Archbishop Hughes'
career " was essentially a public one, and his polemical discus-
sions were for long periods almost the whole sum of his daily
occupation." Now, it is evident enough to those who knew
him well, that whenever the archbishop appeared before the
public he wished to be an exponent not simply of an ecclesiasti-
cal organization, to uphold its rights and advance its interests;
but he furthermore wished to do so upon grounds of American
justice and political freedom ; he wished to be an exponent of
American thought. He never was so happy as when looked
upon in that light. Whether Mr. Hassard understood this or
not, his Life is not calculated to make it understood by others.
Had he written the biography the last year of his life, or re-
written it then, it might have contained another chapter, per-
haps the most important one in the book.

All the notices of Mr. Hassard which have appeared in the
press are in accord in affirming that he was a man of dignity
and culture, a good critic and a vigorous editorial writer.
When Charles A. Dana, of the Sun, uses the following words,
you may be sure that they are deserved :

"John Hassard, so long known in this town as a distinguished writer
in the Tribune upon literature, music, and a wide range of social and prac-
tical subjects, is to be buried to-morrow morning from St. Ann's Church,
in Twelfth street, and we cannot allow the occasion to pass without a
tribute of esteem and affection for his memory. Intimately and officially

1 888.] JOHN R. G. HASSARD.

399

associated with him during a considerable portion of the civil war, as we
had previously been in the preparation of the American Cyclopcedia, and
as we were afterward in journalism, we knew him as a man of uncommon
ability, extensive accomplishments, manly and faithful, high-minded and
true. He has departed from this world at far too early an age, and we bid
him farewell with sincere sorrow. May his soul have peace, and may the
Divine Providence send more such laborers into the harvest field of life ! "

With regard to his private religious life, what can we say
more than Father Campbell said of him in his funeral sermon?
Our personal acquaintance with him was long enough and inti-
mate enough. We know that he was a Christian and a Catholic,
and never did anything inconsistent with that character. A man
of culture, he was ever writing what many thousands of every
creed would read. Yet he knew how to keep his delicate posi-
tion as a journalist with honor, and never be so much as charged
with violating any article of his always openly-professed religion.

Although a sincere adherent of a political party, to which
until very recent years nearly all of his co-religionists were op-
posed ; although a prominent member of the editorial staff of its
foremost political journal, yet in all religious matters he was
perfectly at one with the Catholic people, and no less at one with
his party in politics. And this is no small praise. This teaches
us a great deal. Happy is the Catholic in public life who will
learn a lesson from this. To very many of us it should be the
great significance of our departed friend's life. He found it
quite possible to be a political and critical journalist, and at the
same time be true to his Catholic conscience. He could and did
stand firmly upon the principles of Catholic morality, and win for
himself as a newspaper writer the applause of men of all shades
of religious and political opinion. The following words of the
Tribune editorial are full of deep feeling, and honestly express
the sentiment referred to:

" Mr.Hassard, whose beautiful life and untimely death are elsewhere re-
corded in touching words by one of his closest associates on the staff of the
Tribune, fully deserved all the praise Mr. Winter bestows. In the variety and
uniform excellence of his work, as a general editorial writer, and as a musi-
cal and literary critic, he has scarcely left a superior on the American press.
Trained first under the fastidious eye of Dr. Ripley, he brought to literary
criticism all that master's soundness of judgment and elegance of taste,
with a wider and more youthful range of sympathies. In musical criticism
he came to have much the same sort of authority with the late John S.
Dwight, but his work had better literary form, and was far more attractive
to the general public. He wrote editorially on a great variety of topics
with admirable readiness, precision, and force. Though not specially
drawn to politics, he often threw himself into political discussion with zest

4OO CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES. [June,

and power. The mystery of the cipher despatches haunted him till he had
unriddled it an achievement as remarkable as any in American journalism.
His personal character won him the regard of everybody that knew him,
and more affection than falls to the lot of most men ; and throughout a
nine years' illness, borne with splendid courage and without a murmur, he
ripened steadily, so that intellectually and in all ways his last years were
his best."

In conclusion, we have but to ask the prayers of all our breth-
ren for his happy repose. I. T. HECKER.

CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES.

A MAN from Maine went West some years ago and, after
prospecting for a while, purchased and settled upon a tract of
land. He felt sure, from indications, that it contained gold, but
his hopes were doomed to disappointment. He worked with
the greatest energy ; he used every known appliance for min-
ing ; but no paying quantity of the precious metal appeared.
Disgusted, he was about to abandon the place, when some one
suggested that the land might be very good for corn. He took
the suggestion; he planted the corn. In a few years he was
the owner of as much gold as though he had really found a
mine.

This story illustrates very completely the history and the
character of Catholic Young Men's Societies. Almost forty
years have elapsed since the idea was broached, in this country,
of establishing for our Catholic youth associations which would
combine social and literary with religious advantages. To
many, at the time, it seemed the discovery of a spiritual gold-
mine, of a new power for the evangelization of the world. The
bishops and the priests were still to be the leaders, but the work
was to be done by those who had hitherto aided religion but
little. An army of devoted, sturdy, educated Catholic lay-
men was to be organized by means of these associations. Then,
bravely and effectively as the Crusaders, they were to tight the
battle of the Lord. The weapons of the enemy were to be
turned against himself. The pleasures of youth, which lead
very often to corruption of heart; and learning, which so many
wrest, as they wrest even the Scriptures, to their own destruc-
tion, were to be made incentives and means for accomplishing

i888.] CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES. 401

the best results. The young men were to be offered every
legitimate form of enjoyment, and thus saved from even the
desire of what might do them harm. Once thoroughly banded
together, they could easily be educated so as to tower intellec-
tually above their fellows. They could be thorough!/ ground-
ed in the principles and the proofs of their faith, and imbued
with an enthusiastic Catholic spirit. Thus would a solid pha-
lanx form, far-reaching and widespread. There would be a
sentinel at every post, a sharp-shooter at every redoubt, a soldier
ready to face and down the enemy at every point.

The societies were organized in various localities. With
what result? They did not, in many cases, realize the roseate
expectations that had been formed of them. Sometimes they
did not succeed at all. Again, they flourished for a while, and
then, through causes that will be alluded to later, they wilted
like flowers lacking moisture and sunshine, and died. These
failures caused a revulsion of feeling in many quarters. More
than a few of those who had carried the banner in the move-
ment lost heart. They concluded that the project was a mere
dream a beautiful dream, indeed, bitf, like all visions, intan-
gible and incapable of realization.

Is it a dream ? In the sense of being an easy panacea, it is a
wild, an impossible dream. But if we understand by it a means
which can accomplish very much for the glory of God, the
honor of the church, and the welfare, temporal as well as spiri-
tual, of the people, provided considerable labor and judgment
be expended upon it, then is it a great and a beautiful reality.
In a word, it is a garden, not a gold-mine. The measure of
success depends partly upon the greater or less fertility of the
soil, and partly upon the ability, the energy, and the patience of
the cultivators.

If any proof of this be required we need only look around
us. While some societies have failed, others many others-
have succeeded and flourish still, justifying all reasonable ex-
pectations. We find them in every one of our large cities, in-
creasing in number and in efficiency every year. Were it not
for the danger of making invidious distinctions, and of omitting
some, perhaps, most worthy of mention, one could name by the
score associations of this kind that deserve all possible honor.
Through the good work they have done they are among the
strongest supports of the church, not only in the parish, but
also in the diocese to which they belong. And they aid mate-
rially in making Catholicity and Catholics respected throughout

VOL. XLVII. 26

402 CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES. [June,

the land. So patent, indeed, are the advantages that can accrue
from this movement, and so satisfactory, on the whole, have
been the results thus far, that the bishops of the country are
pronounced in encouraging it, and the last Plenary Council of
Baltimore has not hesitated to sanction it with most emphatic
and official approval. These are the words of the Council, ex-
pressed in its Pastoral Letter :

" We consider as worthy of particular encouragement associations for
the promotion of healthful social union among Catholics, and especially
those whose aim is to guard our Catholic young men against dangerous
influences, and to supply them with the means of innocent amusement
and mental culture. It is obvious that our young men are exposed to the
greatest dangers, and therefore need the most abundant helps. Hence, in
the spirit of our Holy Father, Leo XIII., we desire to see the number
of thoroughly Catholic and well-organized associations for their benefit
greatly increased, especially in our large cities ; we exhort pastors to con-
sider the formation and the careful direction of such societies as one of
their most important duties ; and we appeal to our young men to put to
profit the best years of their lives, by banding together, under the direc-
tion of their pastors, for mutual improvement and encouragement in the
paths of faith and virtue.

" And in order to acknowledge the great amount of good that ' The
Catholic Young Men's National Union ' has already accomplished, to pro-
mote the growth of the Union, and to stimulate its members to greater
efforts in the future, we cordially bless their aims and endeavors, and we
recommend the Union to all our Catholic young men."

Approbation so emphatic from this august Council, embody-
ing, as it does, the approval of the Holy Father himself, is
enough to settle in every Catholic mind all question as to the
utility of these societies. It is sufficient, also, to make every
pastor anxious for their establishment and care ; to make parents
desirous that their sons seek membership in them ; to render
our young men ready to reap their advantages; to impress upon
our prominent laymen the value of helping them by verbal en-
couragement, and, sometimes, even with financial aid.

Nevertheless, it is proposed to recount here some of their
advantages, to mention certain difficulties, and to suggest some
preventives and remedies.

ADVANTAGES.

ist. These young men's associations are capable of com-
pleting, and in some cases of supplying, the Catholic education
of our youth. There is no need to dilate here on the impor-
tance of Catholic education. Every one knows that the sun-

i888.] CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES. 403

shine and the rain are not more necessary in the spring-time for
covering the earth with verdure, than are the Christian schools
for preserving and disseminating the faith of Christ in this coun-
try. Sometimes, however, our young people are unable to en-
joy these advantages. Very often, too, our boys are obliged to
leave school at a tender age. Even those who complete the
course of studies have still much to learn. We need some
means to continue the good work. The society steps in. Its
library, stocked with only what is pure and true; its lectures,
which can so easily and so frequently be turned on the great
points of controversy and the most important facts in church
history ; its Catholic newspapers, its Catholic spirit all these
combine to supply the need and to thoroughly irnbue the minds
of the members with the principles, the beauties, and the proofs
of their holy religion.

2d. These organizations can strengthen the attachment of
our young men to the church, to their pastors, and to one
another at the period of their lives when these ties are in great
danger of being severed. One cause of this danger is the false
notion, very prevalent and hard to eradicate, that a good life
means a dull life. The consequence is that when our. young
men begin to indulge even the legitimate, not to speak at all of
the unlawful tendencies of their youth, they drift away gradu-
ally from both church and priest as from those who would curb
all their natural inclinations. Besides, those outside the church
are always ready to proffer them the means for recreation. We
have the Young Men's Christian Association in every large
city, with its gymnasiums, its lectures, and its popular entertain-
ments. Now, how can we better correct false impressions, and
stop the inroads of the enemy upon our ranks, [than by placing
before our young men the means for innocent, but at the same
time real, amusement? Thus we will teach them practically
that a virtuous life precludes nothing conducive to real happi-
ness here, while it secures eternal glory hereafter.

This point is of more importance than would at first appear.
Too long has the " good boy " been a synonym for a simpleton,
and the " Sunday-school teacher " for a sentimental, milk-and-
water goody-goody, while the fact is, that when either is what
the name implies, he is the very type of true boyhood or man-
hood, as the case may be. The means proposed here will be a
great help towards making the world recognize the fact.

Social temptations also cause this danger of estrangement.
There is in this country so much of what people call " respecta-

404 CATHOLIC YOUNG ME A' 's SOCIETIES. [June,

bility " and " refinement" outside the church, and so much that
is termed " lack of culture " within it, that young folks often
learn to despise those of their own race and faith, and some-
times grow to be ashamed of the faith itself. This is a fruitful
source of mixed marriage, a frequent cause for neglect of reli-
gious duties, and now and then an incentive to apostasy.
Again these organizations come to the rescue. They bind the
young men together, teaching them to respect, to love, and to
aid one another. If many of our people have not yet reached
the highest scale of education or of wealth in the United States,
the reason therefor is plain. The ancestors of most of us were
ground down in poverty by iniquitous laws as a punishment for
their adherence to the truth of Christ. Education and refine-
ment they could have had, were they willing to sell their birth-
right. Moore tells the story of the persecution of the Irish
Catholic Church in words that are as true as they are beauti-
ful :

" Thy rival was honored, whilst thou wert wronged and scorned ;
Thy crown was of briars, whilst gold her brows adorned.
She wooed me to temples, whilst thou laidst hid in caves;
Her friends were all masters, whilst thine, alas ! were slaves."

But this condition of things exists not here in our glorious
country. And all we need to make us equal to any body of
people in this temporal point of view, is that the Catholic youth
of the country, without the least ill-will to any one, stand shoulder
to shoulder in well-organized bodies, imbued with mutual good-
feeling and with a firm determination to use every legitimate
means tor aiding and elevating one another.

3d. These associations cannot but be a great preserva-
tive against the temptations of large cities. We know well
what those dangers are the street-corner, the saloon, the dive.
There are formed the thieves, the roughs, the tramps, the drun-
kards. Every young man who leaves his house at night for re-
creation is exposed to their allurements. What a work it is,
then, to provide a haven where safety is assured for all, at least,
who wish it ; where those on whom depends so much of our
hope for the future can meet and converse, play their games,
read their papers and books, improve their minds, and return to
their homes without having contracted any contamination !

Such are the principal advantages of our unions. It is with-
in the range of their possibility to produce in time a body
of men thoroughly grounded in the knowledge and the love
of their faith, to multiply O'Connells, Windthorsts, Ozanams,

i888.] CATHOLIC YOUNG ME^S SOCIETIES. 405

Brpwnsons, and Hassards. They are capable of making the

sing generation fond and proud of the church, as well as use-

ful to their pastors and to one another. They can lessen the

number of blighted lives, and broken hearts, and souls lost for

Experience has seen these capabilities realized in many

stances. Surely nothing more can be required to make us

sheve m these organizations, and aid them by word and work.

DIFFICULTIES. ''

As was said in the beginning, these unions of young men are
not a gold-mine. They are a garden in which the soil must be
fertilized, the seed planted, and the trees and flowers and shrubs
guarded with exquisite care. Sometimes, it must be confessed,
despite all the care of the gardener, the soil has proven unpro-
ductive ; or else weeds have sprung up, choking the flowers
as they bloomed, and foul insects have crawled over the trees
and the shrubs, destroying all their fruit. Many a zealous la-
borer, both priest and layman, has become disheartened at diffi-
culties, and has abandoned the work in despair. But lack of
success in some instances is no reason why any one should lose
heart. Where so much good is to be accomplished, it is well
worth while to learn, by patient industry, the means which will
bring it about. If failure comes on the first attempt, we can
well afford to study the causes thereof and to prevent their re-
currence when we try again. Experience is of the greatest im-
portance in society work, not only our own but also that which
has been gleaned by others. In its light the difficulties can be
enumerated thus :

In the first place, the young men have often been found very
apathetic. Perfectly willing to take all the enjoyment that can
be offered them, they show a distaste for either intellectual im-
provement or religious exercises. It has happened, also, that
after a society had flourished for some time the older members
became engrossed with business and family cares. They gradu-
ally retired. The younger members had been unused to man-
agement. They lacked both enthusiasm and self-confidence,
and so the organization dwindled away to nothing. Again, poli-
tics and dissipation, in some instances, have obtruded themselves,
and played havoc with the good work. In other cases the spi-
rit of rebellion has asserted itself. The young men undertook
to transgress regulations which the pastor deemed it his duty to
enforce for the good of the society, or for the edification of the

406 CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES. [June,

parish. The result was rupture with the ecclesiastical authori-
ty ; and then, either the dissolution of the organization or its
diversion from the main object for which it was established.

These difficulties, no doubt, may sometimes be so grave as to
be practically-insurmountable. But the same experience which
shows us where the danger lies points out to us also a number of

PREVENTIVES AND REMEDIES,

which have caused success in the past and seem to guarantee it
for the future. These can be enumerated as follows:

1st. Reception of the Sacraments. It is hard to see what
right any organization has to be called Catholic unless it possess
a fundamental rule on this subject. There should be at least
two public Communions in each year, one on the day appointed
by the National Union and another about Easter time.

2d. The authority of the Pastor. His veto of any measure
or of any individual should be final, and as such should always
be accepted with hearty good-will. Without this the society is
exposed to great danger from the impetuosity and the inexperi-
ence of youth, as well as from the machinations of schemers who
may manage to obtain an entrance.

3d. The personal influence of the Spiritual Director, whether
he be the Pastor himself or an Assistant Priest deputed for the
work. He can be among the young men at their gatherings;
study their strong and their weak points ; aid them by his learn-
ing and experience ; gain their confidence ; assist them in their
difficulties ; prevent disputes; be to them a friend in the truest
sense of the word, and, at the same time, a constant example of
Catholic virtue and Christian manhood.

4th. Great care in the Admission of Members. These Unions
are of no use as reformatories. No person should ever be re-
ceived who cannot prove his claim to respectability and to practi-
cal Catholicity. The story of Vert- Vert repeats itself every day.
" Evil communications corrupt good morals." Many a flourish-
ing society has been ruined by the admission of one or two disso-
lute members, received either with a view to their reform or be-
cause they were known to be " good fellows." Nor need any one
fear that a reasonably high standard of character for membership
will simply gather together a number of naturally virtuous peo-
ple who would be just as good without any society. On the
contrary, such a standard will serve to make vice and dissipation
disreputable. And members going astray will amend their lives

1 888,] CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES. 407

when they find it necessary to do so, in order to have the com-
panionship and the respect of their fellows.

5th. Literary Exercises. These are an almost indispensable
adjunct. Certain evenings, reasonably frequent, devoted to ori-
ginal addresses, essays, debates, and declamations, serve to de-
velop the minds of the young men, refine their taste, improve
their education, and entirely prevent the great danger of the
rooms of the association becoming a place for mere idle loung-
ing. But all the members should partake by turns in these ex-
ercises. Otherwise a few will be benefited, and the great ma-
jority will remain unimproved. It might be mentioned here, in
passing, that it is wise also for the older members to insist on the
younger men taking office sometimes. This gives the latter
more of an interest, and it prevents decay when the former are
obliged to retire.

6th. Membership in the National and the Diocesan Union.
These Unions, of which the latter is the local assembly of the for-
mer, were established some fourteen years ago. They have done
very much to aid the cause. Their object is not to legislate for
the individual societies, but to form a sort of clearing-house,
where experiences can be interchanged, dangers made known,
remedies suggested. They develop enthusiasm, report the pro-
gress made throughout the country, spur on flagging energies,
and make the young men a unit for concerted action should it
ever be required.

The last National Convention was held in New York on May
25 and 26, 1887, in the hall of the new De La Salle Institute.
It was a sight to make any Catholic proud. Seventy-seven socie-
ties were represented by the flower of our youth. The proceed-
ings were both enthusiastic and orderly. The utmost harmony
and good feeling prevailed. And when the^ Most Reverend
Archbishop Corrigan came to bestow his encouragement and his
benediction on the assembly, the cheer of welcome which rent
the air and made the echoes ring was ample proof that every
man there, and all he represented, were devoted, loyal Catholics in
heart and soul. The next general assembly will be held in Cin-
cinnati on the sixth and seventh of June. The West has been
chosen this year with a view to encouraging and propagating
the cause in that section. Why cannot every Catholic Young
Men's Association in the country be there represented? Some
have always held aloof, it is hard to see why. If your society is
young, and struggling with difficulties, you can there learn the
road to success. If it is well established and prosperous, others

408 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [J une

want the benefit of your experience. In either case you will
help to swell the enthusiasm of the occasion, and to give the
cause the prominence it deserves before the public.

There seems to be a bright future before these associations.
As our schools increase in number and perfect their system, the
material for membership will grow every year better and more
plentiful. Enlarged experience will the better teach both mem-
bers and directors how to prevent weeds from growing in the
garden, and how to save the fruits of their labors from blight
and decay. Augmented resources will increase their efficiency
for charitable and educational purposes. They will not bring
about the millennium, but they will be a potent factor for good.
They deserve the encouragement and the good-will of every zeal-
ous Catholic heart. M. J. LAVELLE.

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

Place aux dames ! They take up by far the larger share of
space on our book-table this month. And first Mrs. Oliphant,
if for no better reason, then surely because of her age and long
experience, and the pleasant debt of gratitude which two gene-
rations of novel-readers owe her. How far back they seem, the
days when one was sowing a crop of bad marks and just rebukes
in order to spend one's study hours with the too-delightful Katie
Stewart! How many novels has Mrs. Oliphant written since
then? Fifty at the least computation, one would guess, and
hazard, too, the prediction that, like Tennyson's Brook, she
might "go on for ever " in just such a gurgling, unexciting,
pleasant, sunny flow to the very brink of the ocean of eternity.
People say, who pretend to know, that novel-writing has been,
not the amusement but the serious, necessary work of her long
lifetime; that she has been not merely the " helpmeet" of an in-
capable and indolent companion, but the wise and provident
mother of sons who owe to her charming gift for story-telling
and her unflagging industry their education and their start in
life. Both they and she, supposing the gossip well founded, must
have pleasure in remembering at how little expense to con-
science labor so incessant, so full of snares and temptations to
stray into by and forbidden paths, has been accomplished.

Perhaps it would be saying too much to affirm that Joyce

l888 -] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 409

(Harper & Brothers, New York) is as good as any of its pre-
decessors. Valentine and his Brother is better, and so is Katie
Stewart, and so, on the whole, is Miss Marjoribanks. Neverthe-
less, full as it is of padding how could one turn out nearly or
quite two hundred pages of fine type so often without padding?
it is quite good enough to recommend to confirmed novel-read-
ers of the sort its author must certainly prefer: people, that is,
who do not want to gallop through a book at a sitting; who like
to lay their novel in the basket with their knitting or mending,
or who find the right sort of one act as a cheerful and innocuous
opiate after over-exciting and laborious days.

If we should say that the next story on our list is less harm-
less and more exciting than Joyce, it would be necessary but in-
vidious to designate the only class of readers to whom it is likely
to be more than stupid. It has become Mrs. A. L. Wister's
recognized metier to translate novels of the cheaply sentimental
and flashy type from a variety of German sources. Perhaps the
German flashiness is not over-brilliant, and its sentiment is peril-
ously near the point of sentimentality at its best. Still, one
wonders why a gentlewoman should select H.Schobert's Picked
Up in the Streets (J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia) for
translation. Of course, there is one obvious reason it will be
likely to have a sale. There is a plenty of readers who will find
it entertaining in default of something new from Ouida or
Rhoda Broughton, and the Mercantile Libraries will probably
keep copies of it standing on their counters for months before
they are finally relegated to seldom-disturbed shelves. It is not
technically immoral. The little golden-haired, green-eyed Ferra,
who is picked up in the streets of Paris by a Russian roue at the
age of eight, and sent by him to a Convent of the Sacred Heart
to be educated and then returned to him, never goes to the bad.
She is saved from that abyss in the first place by marriage with
her protector's father, who, coming on from Russia to prevent
his son from contracting such a mesalliance, finds that the
surest and most agreeable way of accomplishing his purpose
will be to marry her himself. Presently he leaves her a widow.
Then her troubles begin anew in a little German court, where
she is persecuted by the prince and hated by the jealous princess.
But though she is again rescued from sin and slander by an honest
marriage, yet the reader is kept from the first page to the last
in a vicious atmosphere. The precipices are always close at
hand, the bogs are always slimy and shaky, and the escapes
always by the skin of the teeth. And that is why we find the

4 J o TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June,

translation of such tales unfit occupation for gentlewomen, and
the reading of them worse than unprofitable for anybody.

Sara Crewe ; or, What Happened at Miss Minchiris, by Mrs.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, is a very pretty, interesting, and well-
written story. It is well illustrated, also, by Reginald B Birch.
Sara is an imaginative child of twelve ; " there was almost more
imagination than there was Sara " in her, says her creator. She
lives in a London boarding-school, where she is petted and made
much of until the death of her only parent leaves her in poverty.
Then she is kept on as a drudge, permitted to study when she
can, because her talent is obvious, and the day will probably
come when she can work out her debt for food and shelter by
teaching languages for nothing. Meantime she becomes an ill-
used, neglected little one, with no friend but her wax doll Emily,
and no solace but a love of reading and a wonderful capacity
for " supposing things."

"Her whole forlorn, uncared-for child-life was made up of imaginings.
She imagined and pretended things until she almost believed them, and
she would scarcely have been surprised at any remarkable thing that
could have happened. So she insisted to herself that Emily understood
all about her troubles and was really her friend.

"'As to answering,' she used to say, 'I don't answer very often. I
never answer when I can help it. When people are insulting you, there
is nothing so good for them as not to say a word just to look at them
and think. Miss Minchin turns pale with rage when I do it; Miss Amelia
looks frightened, so do the girls. They know you are stronger than the)'
are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are
not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterwards.
There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in that's
stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies. I scarcely ever
do. Perhaps Emily is more like me than I am like myself. Perhaps she
would rather not answer her friends, even. She keeps it all in her heart.' "

But " supposing " comes very hard even for Sara now and
then. When she is wet and cold and hungry after doing long
errands through London fog and slush, for instance, and yet
must go supperless to bed. At such times even her most com-
forting resort, that of imagining herself a princess in disguise,
sure some day to arrive at sovereignty and the ability to put
her enemies to shame, gets to wear a desperately shabby and
beggarly air. Her childish mind she feeds, in default of better
food, on weekly penny papers and such other trash as she can
borrow from a sentimental housemaid who subscribes to a cir-
culating librar}', and whom she helps about her work in order
to get a sight of the "greasy volumes containing stories of mar-

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 411

quises and dukes who invariably fell in love with orange-girls
and gypsies and servant-maids, and made them the proud brides of
coronets," but her poor little body grows thin on drier sustenance.
Of course it all comes right in the end. Sara lives for a while
in what seems a fairy tale made real, finding her cold, ugly attic
transformed in some magical way into a nest of elegant comfort,
new clothes supplied by unknown hands, dainty suppers lying
ready for her when she climbs the garret stairs tired-out at
night. Then her real, flesh-and-blood benefactor comes to
light, and Sara leaves Miss Minchin's for kindness and luxury
in a home of her own.

As we have said, Mrs. Burnett's story is charmingly written.
Her little heroine, too, is a suggestive figure in many ways. To
us she is so chiefly because she emphasizes so sharply the empti-
ness of souls to which the Christian ideal seems to be wholly
lacking. In one way or another, all who succeed in making
this life more than merely endurable when its external condi-
tions are painful, must do so by conforming it to some ideal. If
we are materialists, and conclude to live in the sty with Epicurus,
at least we do our best, as Bishop Blougram puts it, to make
our sty " rustle with sufficient straw." If even straw is lacking,
or is foul and musty, life becomes impossible unless we can find
some interior refuge. Poor little Sara Crewe, finding hers in
dime novels, in "supposing" good suppers and warm clothes,
and playing at being a princess in order to harden herself
against insults, finally rewarded with hot meals, velvet gowns,
and some romantic equivalent for Mrs. Burnett's own stories,
which probably do not circulate in fairy-land, what a pitiful
little figure she is when one puts her beside the twelve-year-old
Agnes, despising comfort, wealth, and honor, and bending glad-
ly her beautiful head beneath the executioner's axe, that so she
may go the more quickly to the Master " whom, not having
seen, she loved"! How mean her desires are, how tawdry
and vulgar her imagination, how empty her final attainment,
when measured by those of the little Catherine of Siena, made
like herself into a drudge, forbidden even her one solace of long
hours of prayer, yet building within her own heart a temple
wherein the living God abode; where she offered him as incense
every meanest duty performed to others in love for him ; where
she dwelt with him in a fulness and repose which made her,
like the Apostle, "count all things but as dung" that she might
please him by the loving acceptance of all tint was in the order
of his Providence !

412 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June,

When Mrs. Burnett wrote Through One Administration we
heard it remarked, by an acute and clever woman, that whenever
her heroines turned out well and " behaved themselves," she
was sure to reward them with the most becoming- and well fit-
ting- gowns she could imagine. She is busy still in the manu-
facture of millinery for dainty souls, impatient alike of vulgar
immorality and commonplace surroundings. And such souls
are many, sunk deep in well-washed, well-fed, carefully adorned
and perfumed flesh. What better can one honestly say for them
than that cleanliness, good food, and inoffensive adornment are,
in themselves, better than nastiness, open poison, and noisome
odors?

Love and Theology (Ticknor & Co., Boston) is a clever but
not particularly interesting novel, by Celia Parker Woolley.
We hear that it has been the subject of a good deal of more or
less admiring comment, and can readily believe it to have been
an event in those upper, brahminical circles of " cultured " peo-
ple who like to fancy themselves not utterly given up to fri-
volity, but capable of serious thought and talk on serious sub-
jects. Love, at all events, is a subject serious enough in any of
its phases. " Many waters cannot quench it, neither can the
floods drown it," else the floods of wishy-washy rhetoric poured
over it by the male and female novelists of many generations
would long since have melted it out of sight and mind. But as
it is the staple of human existence, and as human existence has
many forms, and exceeding many degrees of force and intensity,
there is " ample room and verge enough " for all manner of dis-
course about it. Speaking for ourselves, we find nothing spe-
cially elemental or suggestive in Miss or Mrs.? Woolley's
handling of this part of her theme. That there should be still
less in her presentation of theology was, of course, to be expect-
ed. Theology too, among the priesthood of culture, is con-
ceived of as having many forms, each of them native to its sub-
stance, each adapting it in varying degrees to different grades
of intelligence. People " catch it," like whooping-cough or
measles, and have it hard or easy according to their tempera-
ments ; and may even, when particularly healthy or happy in
their " environment," escape it altogether. What is of real impor-
tance about it in any case, is the effect it is likely to have upon
them in their more natural and less-easily evaded relations with
their fellows. How, to put at once the finest point upon it, is it
going to act and react when confronted with love as it exists
between the sexes ?

1888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 413

Now, that is a problem which has given occasion to many
novels, and to many tragedies, as well, in actual life, and will
doubtless continue to do so. In the novel it is comparatively
easy to handle, more especially by novelists to whom theology
is not the science of God, but any and every class of opinions
which may be held concerning him and his relations to his
creatures, including the opinion that he does not exist, and that,
therefore, there are no relations of the sort. But it is a still less
serious problem in real life for people burdened, to whatever
extent one pleases, with opinions, yet unsteadied by any posi-
tive conviction. Love in its mildest variety, so long as it is
real, is pretty sure to drive opinion, when it asserts itself in
opposition, off the field with lowered colors. So Celia Parker
Woolley evidently thinks, arid we agree with her. There are
two pairs of lovers in her story, one of which is composed of an
orthodox, evangelical and rather prim young woman and a
professor and preacher of "Liberal Theology," of the type once
held and taught by Theodore Parker. The other pair is made
up of an Episcopalian clergyman and a girl whose " views" are
not very decided, though they lean strongly to liberalism, and
are tinctured with a propensity to assert the rights of women.
They are all " in love " after their various fashions, and after
going through struggles enough to fill a novel, the solution
comes to each couple in the most natural and commendable of
fashions. The girls give in. Virginia gets herself confirmed by
her husband's bishop, though "the service would have pleased
her better if it had been her husband's hands that thus rested in
momentary blessing on her head." Rachel, after holding out a
good deal longer, succumbs when her lover falls ill and she
thinks she is likely to lose him altogether. But she never quite
succeeds in throwing off her old shackles. *' To the end of her
life her morbid and exacting conscience stood ready to impose
some new check on every new process of mental and spiritual
growth." She never, that is, was able to rid herself altogether
of a desire for a real, close and personal relation with a divine
Person, or to comfort herself entirely with the assurance that
unvarying Law, which always manages to get itself obeyed, is
just as good a thing.

" As she stood in the dim aisles of some cathedral and watched the
poor, toiling worshippers come and go, kneeling at the altar to catch a
moment's benediction and refreshment from the burden of the day, she
always felt the impulse to place herself beside them, that she might not
seem to shame their credulous faith by standing apart, and in the hope, too,
that some ray of real blessing might come down to her."

414 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June,

There are some bright remarks and happy characterizations
scattered throughout the 'pages of this novel. This, for in-
stance, which indicates Judge Hunt's type of free thought :

"He was a great admirer of Confucius and similar writers, and be-
longed to that class of liberals who hold the story of the flood, as related
in Genesis, in open contempt until, finding record of the same in the
Chinese or other Scriptures, they incline to modify this opinion and think
there may be something in it."

There are many Judge Hunts in the circle of almost any
one's acquaintance. Ordinarily, though, one hardly credits
them with a first-hand knowledge of either " Chinese or other
Scriptures," including King James's version of that of the He-
brews. Their daily paper, or " the science man " as he appears
in the Fortnightly, the Forum, or even in the club-house, is gen-
erally authority enough for accepting or rejecting any theologi-
cal opinion whatever except, perhaps, the opinion that there
can be any real authority capable of formulating one which is
universally true.

Loyalty George, by Mrs. Parr (Henry Holt & Co., New York),
is much more interesting reading. Mrs. Parr has made an ad-
vance in her art since the days when she wrote Hero Carthew.
Loyalty is a very real, very intense figure, and so is her lover,
Roger. The book is full of vivid strokes and quick with a liv-
ing passion which takes strong hold on the imagination. If it
has a moral, it is, perhaps, that our sins are sure to find us out,
and are apt to strike us vicariously when they do so poisoning
other lives more surely than our own, and inflicting on the inno-
cent bitterer pangs than those we yet have suffered from them.

Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll stands sponsor for a story called
For Her Daily Bread, by Litere (Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago).
It has not too much merit to make one wish, for the author's
sake, that he should have declined to do so. It is a feebly writ-
ten, rather colorless story of a young woman's pitiful struggles
to earn honest bread by honest labor. The reason why " Bob "
should have endorsed it in a preface failed to become plain to us
until we had nearly reached its close. We divulge it to our
readers willingly, assuring them that the game of finding it was
not worth the candle. Norma Southstone, the heroine, is en-
gaged in trying to comfort a poor, heart-broken German Catho-
lic woman for the death of her daughter after a brief period of
shameful sin. She assures her that " whatever happiness be-
yond the grave is accorded to any one had been accorded to
Amy."

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 415

There is no such place as hell ?' she whispered in a trembling voice.

"'There is no such place. . .

"'You speak so kind and cheerful, it is so different from the priest's
words. I was afraid to go to church any longer. I had Masses said for
Amy, but it cost so much to get peace for her soul, and I had nothing to
eat for my living children, so I had to let it go. I wish you would tell me
something else that would help me to think of Amy as a bright, beautiful
angel, and not a lost, helpless soul !' "

Thus appealed to, Norma quotes the words of " a great and
good man "Colonel Ingersoll is his other name on the sub-
ject. He says :

" I am satisfied there is no world of eternal pain. If there is a world
of joy, so much the better."

And then the poor, misguided Catholic finds a crumb of com
fort.

" How kind and good he must be !'' she exclaims. " Do you know
anything else he says ? It seems better than the prayer-books, for I can-
not open one but the word hell seems to be in a dozen places on every
page."

It is dignifying it too much to call such trash as this wicked
or profane. It is both, to be sure, but the natural man rises up
in his own place and finds it absurdly funny first of all. Our
Lord Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light by his
incarnation, death, and resurrection. He taught eternal retribu-
tion. Apostles preached it ; martyrs died and are still dying for
it ; the universal church testifies to it in every land beneath the
skies. And then comes along a fourth-rate, half-educated law-
yer, and gets up on a stump and says he "is satisfied there is no
world of eternal pain," and, as the slang of the day has it, " That
settles it!" It settles something, we are very sure, but it might
not be too polite to say just what it is.

Queen Money, by the author of The Story of Margaret Kent
(Ticknor & Co., Boston), must also, we suppose, be numbered
among the women's novels. Her previous stories we] know
nothing about, save that they have been greatly praised, and,
contrary to the usual fate of American novels, have not stopped
short with a first edition. The one before us is in its fifth. The
assumption we make as to the sex of its author is based upon a
remark made by Mr. Howells, who perhaps speaks of what he
knows, concerning the male characters in Margaret Kent. They
are, he says, "figures such as women draw." Of our own mo-
tion we doubt whether we should have attributed Queen Money
to a woman. Not that we are unaware that women dabble in

416 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June,

stocks, and have learned the language of Wall Street, and can
moralize on the dangers of buying and selling on a margin. It
is not that kind of knowledge, of which this book is full enough
and to spare, which seemed to us of doubtful femininity, but the
speeches put now and then into the mouths of men, as, for exam-
ple, some of those uttered by the host at Kendal's dinner party.
However, the women writers learn to skate over thin ice by
long practice without shrieking or hysterics. The book is very
cleverly written, the conversations bright and natural, though
not specially edifying, and Lucy Florian is extremely well done.
There is a detestable girl-child in the book, who, now that we
consider it, is most probably of feminine origin. We doubt lit-
tle Ethel White's attractiveness to any creature but a " clever "
female writer.

Mrs. Amelia E. Barr is, we are very glad to say, most dis-
tinctly not " clever.'' She is something we like much better
earnest, that is ; sincere in her religious convictions, Protestant
though they be ; a careful student of human nature in the range
she knows best, and a successful delineator of it. The interior
life, its motives and its rewards, is not such a terra incognita to
her as it seems to be to most of her female co-laborers in the
field of fiction. Her latest story, Master of His Fate (Dodd,
Mead & Co., New York), is doubtless not her best, but it leaves
a pleasant memory behind it in the reader's mind. The scene is
laid in Yorkshire, and the characters often talk the broad dia-
lect of that district. It has very little plot and no incident to
speak of, its interest lying chiefly in the development of charac-
ter under the influence of purely interior motives. But it is
very well done very unpretentiously and simply done, more-
over.

The Case of Mohammed Benani ; A Story of To-day (D. Apple-
ton & Co., New York), bears no author's name. It is one of the
books which make one wonder what strings may have been
pulled to secure a publisher's favorable verdict on them. It is
not well written, although the writer evidently knows and ap-
preciates good work, has listened to and doubtless shared in bril-
liant talk, and has seen a good deal of the world. He remarks,
in a preface, that " the attempt to utilize mesmeric phenomena
in the interest of the hero, Benani, will doubtless appear espe-
cially adventurous; but the novelty is at least justified by facts
which have come under the writer's personal observation " ;
which causes one to believe that Mr. Rider Haggard's novels,
and Mr. Walter Besant's, and the " Proceedings of the London

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 417

Psychical Society " cannot be among those facts. He would
hardly think his own mild attempt a "novelty" if they had
been. His book has, however, a serious object, which is " to
attract public attention to the evil adjustment of a mechanism
which grinds, not grain, but human creatures between the
upper and nether stone of Jewish and Moorish oppression aw-
ful mills to which the placid breeze of Consular support imparts
continuous motion." With so admirable an object in view, it is
sad that the execution of the story should be so hopelessly dull.
It would have been better had its author not weighted himself
with fiction, but given his facts the straightforward setting of
names, dates, and figures. Then they might have been impres-
sive.

An Original Belle, and Found, Yet Lost (Dodd, Mead & Co., New
York), are from the untiring pen of Mr. Edward P. Roe. Mr.
Roe has such excellent intentions, his industry should be such a
tonic to the idly disposed among his brethren of the pen, his
aims are so innocent, and his gentle satisfaction with himself so
unfeigned, that it goes to one's heart not to be able to admire
him as much as such a very good man ought to be admired.
But we observe that he gives his own new novel, now running
in the Cosmopolitan, the following send-off in a letter to the edi-
tor of that magazine :

" I can truly say that I think I never wrote a story with more life, spi-
rit, originality, and dramatic interest than the one you have secured."

And when a good man can conscientiously, and without too
much confusion of face, sound his own trumpet in such a key,
he comforts the rest of us, to whom the instrument seems to
require a greater volume of breath than our weak lungs, tired
out with praise, perhaps, or else too long unused to giving it un-
stinted, can command. We sincerely hope that what Mr. Roe
says of Miss Lou may be far within the limits of allowable self-
laudation. We hope too, may we say, that as far as originality
goes, it may outstrip Found, Yet Lost, in which the note struck
by Hugh Conway in his first notable success, Called Back, and
repeated since by Miss McLelland in Oblivion, is but faintly re-
echoed ?

VOL. XLVII. 27

4i8 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. ;

STORY OF A CONVERSION

I had just left school when a great event, to me, happened in our family.
My second brother, an officer in the United States navy, was about to marry.
His affiancte was a young lady of Baltimore and a Roman Catholic. Great was
the distress of my mother, who had brought us up in the Protestant Episcopal
Church, and with the strictest regard to truth, honor, and morality, but with a
strong prejudice against the Catholic Church. The less she understood of its
doctrines the more she was opposed to them, and I thoroughly sympathized with
her, and with the Protestant teachings of the young ladies' school from which
I had just been graduated at fifteen. I had never come in contact with Catholics
except as servants. Believing sincerely that this poor sister-in-law could not be
saved if not converted from what I considered a cruel, superstitious, bigoted
faith, unworthy of the enlightened Christian of the nineteenth century, I thought
that a plain duty lay before me that of redeeming and saving this otherwise lost
soul who had entered our holier and better-instructed circle.

In the furtherance, however, of this duty, which at first, in the fervor of the
moment, seemed so easy, I found a great obstacle at the very outset. How com-
bat theories of which I was uninformed ? How contest the dogmas of a religion
of which I was totally ignorant ? Evidently the first step was to inform [myself
thoroughly in regard to the beliefs and practices of this religion before I could
hope successfully to confute them.

Not having any works at hand on the subject, it occurred tome that, notwith-
standing this, I might betray at once the ignorance and blind superstition incul-
cated by the Catholic Church by questioning the Catholic servants in our house.
Filled with the importance of my mission, and with great confidence in my supe-
rior education acquired in an aristocratic Protestant school, and fresh from my
Protestant histories, I confess I felt rather as Goliath may have felt when he
attacked little David, and I feel bound to record that the result was not very dif-
ferent from the termination of that memorable battle. Seeking one of these
handmaids, therefore, I determined to attack what I considered one of the most
outrageous of Catholic practices and beliefs, so far as I understood it upon Pro-
testant authority, and diving into the midst of things, I asked her, " What is an
indulgence ?"

" An indulgence ? " said she, looking up from her work. "Why, miss, an in-
dulgence is a remission of punishment due for our sins in this world.''

" How much do you have to pay for one ? ''

" Pay for one ? '' she queried, looking at me in astonishment. " Why, miss,
you cannot pay for an indulgence."

" Do you mean to say," I asked, " that you cannot go to a priest and pay him
to let you commit sin, and that, if you pay him enough, he will not give you per-
mission to do so?''

I shall never forget the expression on that poor girl's face as she turned to
look at me ; it was a mingling of pity, astonishment, and disgust. But she only
answered : " Certainly not, miss. To gain an indulgence you must first go to con-
fession and confess all the sins you have been guilty of, and then, if the priest
thinks you sincerely repentant, he absolves you ; then you have to perform the

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 419

conditions of the indulgence, which are the repeating of certain prayers or litanies
required to obtain it, and to receive holy Communion. 7 '

I was astonished at this clear and concise answer. Where was the terrible
sin in all this ? I felt considerably abashed, but nevertheless went on question-
ing.

" Why do you worship the Virgin Mary and her pictures and statues ? "

" We never do."

" Don't worship the Virgin Mary ? Why you make her equal to the Saviour,
do you not ? "

" No ; we only ask her to join her prayers to ours because, having been His
mother in this world and the holiest of all women, we believe her prayers to have
great influence.''

''And the saints ? "

" And the saints also, as they are in the presence of God and see him al-
ways."

This was all so intelligent, and so different from the confused answers I had
expected, that I turned away with far greater respect for this poor servant than
an hour before I had thought ever possible, and with a feeling of shame that she
had answered these and many other questions that I put to her far more clearly
than I could have done had she asked me some questions concerning my own
belief ; for in our single congregation I knew there were different opinions upon
some vital points, and I had even heard young men who attended the same church
declare that they had no religious belief whatever. I knew, also, that what were
called " High-Church " and " Low-Church " persuasions were widely different on
essential points, though entertained by persons sitting under the same preacher
and worshipping together in the same edifice. This was very disturbing, yet did
not convince me that Protestantism was wrong or Catholicism right. I still con-
sidered it my duty to attack the Roman Catholic faith, and for this purpose set
to work at once to read up the most celebrated works on both sides of the ques-
tion. And I read with such intensity of purpose, and remembered the arguments
on both sides so well, that I frequently amused myself by taking opposite sides of
the question according to whatever might be the views of my opponent, for later
on I became acquainted with some very learned Catholics, and on the other hand"
I argued with my Protestant friends for mere argument's sake.

Notwithstanding all this, the replies I had received from the poor Catholic
servant of whom I have spoken made me chary, at first, of attacking my sister-in-
law when she arrived at our home, together with a sense of want of breeding in
such a course.

One afternoon, as I was sitting in the drawing-room playing on the piano, the
door opened and a visitor was announced. I had not heard the ring at the door,
and was a little startled at seeing an entire stranger enter the room, in the dress
of a Roman Catholic priest. His presence was explained, however, when he
asked for my sister-in-law. He was one of the most majestic and elegant of men,
certainly the handsomest man I ever saw either before or since. The expression
of his face was that of great dignity and sweetness, with a tinge of sadness that
awakened at once a sympathetic feeling, and drew one towards him with an un-
questioning confidence and assurance that they were in the presence of a noble
nature. A terrific thunder-storm coming up almost immediately after his
entrance, and no one else being at home, I enjoyed a tetc-k-tete with my distin-
guished-looking guest for nearly an hour. I asked him many questions about
his religion, and above all, why priests did not marry, which amused him very

420 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [June,

much, this being another mystery of the Catholic faith to me which I thought
highly unchristian. After his explanation, however, I regarded priests more as
martyrs than as the mysterious propagators of a mysterious religion.

The storm being ended and a brilliant sun illumining the horizon, my visitor
rose to take leave, promising to renew his visit at an early opportunity. Thus
commenced an acquaintance which soon became a strong friendship, ending only
with death.

Probably most persons would think that here was the cause of my conver-
sion, but so far is that from the truth that my very admiration of this noblest of
men prevented me from becoming a Catholic for years, lest I should be influenced
in so important a decision by the exalted friendship I could not help entertaining
for one of the purest and loveliest natures it has ever been my privilege through
a long life to meet. And again, he never endeavored to convert me to his faith,
saying that, although he would answer any question I put to him, yet that my
parents, having received him in all good faith, he would consider it a breach of
that faith should he do so without their knowledge and permission. His death
occurred while I was abroad, and so much was he beloved by our late Cardinal
that he desired that he alone should preach his funeral sermon, and a glowing
tribute it was to that most holy and admirable life. A kind hand sent the
panegyric to me in my then island home, more than six thousand miles away.

To return, however, to my sister-in-law. On her learning of the visit she
had missed, she said she should return it very shortly, and offered to take me
with her an offer which I readily accepted.

It was at the house of this admirable man that I met for the first time Mother
Jerome, very soon afterwards Superior of Mount St. Vincent. She, more than
any one, attracted me towards the Catholic faith, because a plain, simple woman
in appearance, humble in station, and doubtless of humble origin, I saw that the
gentleness of manner, the sweetness of character, the overflowing charity which
characterized and shone in her face, and lent to it at times a halo that elevated
its expression beyond all mundane beauty, could come only from the deep and
beautiful faith that animated the soul within ; and while I looked with wonder on
this marvellous effect I acknowledged that in the devotees of no other religion had
I seen the same transformation. I became sincerely attached to Sister Jerome,
and thought I should like to become a sister with her. She laughed at the idea
of my leading such a life, and told me I could never endure its privations and ex-
actions, but that persons in the world and in society could do as much good in
other ways by acts of charity, leading exemplary lives, and repressing evil ten-
dencies in the thoughtless around them as they could in devoting themselves to
the life of a religieuse. I begged, however, to go with her sometimes on her er-
rands of mercy, and this she did not object to, and I accompanied her on several
occasions, to my great delight. But coming one afternoon to visit her I found
the sisters all in tears and much moved. I was astonished, and entreated to
know the cause of their commotion. Alas ! their beloved Mother Jerome had
been appointed to a new field of action. She was to be the Superior of Mount St.
Vincent, and there, after the successful labor of years, having brought the insti-
tution to a standard far beyond its original scope, she died shortly before the Car-
dinal, who had for her the sincerest friendship.

After her removal to Mount St. Vincent I never saw her again. My entrance
into society drew me for a time away from all such thoughts, though at certain
moments an unsatisfied longing after the infinite would take possession of me,
which even the blandishments of society could not stifle. Questioning my

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 421

revered friend very earnestly one day in regard to the Catholic belief of transub-
stantiation, he referred me to the sixth chapter of St. John and to the eleventh
chapter of First Corinthians, verses 27, 28, and 29. It was strange, as often as
I had read and heard read these words before, their real meaning had never oc-
curred to me. I felt that seeing, I had not seen, and hearing, I had not heard.
A new light dawned upon my soul, and I said, only the church which recognizes
these words as St. John evidently understood them (and who better than the be-
loved disciple, who leaned on Jesus' breast at the last supper, could understand
them?) can be the true church, that church of which Christ said, <: I will be with
you always."

Oh ! all other beliefs seemed trivial in comparison with this, and the hitherto
perplexed feeling with which I had asked myself, why the Son of God was called
upon to undergo such cruel sufferings merely to be as one of the prophets, teach-
ing and predicting only as they did, vanished. Now I understood the great and
glorious benefits of that ineffable sacrifice. Only the eternal God could institute
such a sacrifice to unite our mortality to his immortality. And should I throw
away this great boon which had at last been placed before me so clearly, with tes-
timony so indubitable ? Should I also say, " This is a hard saying, who can
hear it ? " No, never. I, too, will taste of this bread of eternal life and live !

I was determined to let doubt and the distraction of contending polemics in-
fluence me no longer.

The Rev. Dr. Forbes, who was then a convert to Catholicity, having been of
my own church, I was recommended to him as most apt to understand the diffi-
culties I might find in my way. Accordingly, I called upon him and discussed
with him many different points of belief, such as confession, penance, etc. After
a long debate he said he thought the best thing I could do would be to make a
general confession to him. This proposition surprised me very much, but I told
him I did not object, and at once knelt down and made a confession of all the
sins of my life that I could remember. His exclamation when I finished, to my
great surprise, was : " Would to God every life were so blameless !" He requested
me to call again, but I was not favorably impressed, and did not do so. I after-
wards learned that his proceeding was very irregular. I decided now to go at
once to Archbishop Hughes, then Archbishop of New York. He received me
with the utmost courtesy, and undertook the task of my instruction himself. He
made appointments to receive. me, and went with me through the whole cate-
chism, stopping with gentle patience at whatever was a stumbling-block to me,
and reasoning and explaining away with his clear brain all doubts and misunder-
standing.

Those were very happy hours spent with this illustrious man, who did not
disdain a witticism on either side, or a little gaiety when the lesson was over. I
remember on one occasion he asked me if I had ever seen his pictures, and, upon
my answering in the negative, led the way into his large drawing-room. We
passed picture after picture, none, I am constrained to say (though of pretentious
size), having particularly attracted my admiration ; he at last stopped before
" The Flight into Egypt," which he informed me was said to be a Murillo. After
looking a little at the picture I turned to him with an incredulous smile. "What,"
he said, " you do not think it a Murillo ? "

" I do not think," I replied, " Murillo ever saw it."

He laughed and said : " Likely. It was given me by an officer in the navy,
however, who believed it to be by that distinguished Spaniard.''

422 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [June,

I inquired who the marble busts in the hall represented, and learned they
were those of St. Peter and the Holy Father.

He then asked me if I would like to see a bust taken lately of himself, and
took me into the rear drawing-room, where the bay-window had been draped en-
tirely in red in order better to display what the sculptor doubtless considered his
chef d'ceuvre. I did not like to say it was not a good likeness, so only remarked,
" I see your grace has left St. Peter and His Holiness in the hall, while you oc-
cupy a canopied space in the drawing-room." " Oh ! " said the quick-witted pre-
late, " I keep them there to keep out evil spirits."

" I see, however," I replied, " they have been ineffectual in my case."

" That," said he, " is because all evil spirits left you when you entered."

These studies were twice interrupted, however once by the death of my
noble father, and a few months afterwards by my marriage. All doubts in my
mind having been removed, the Archbishop sent me to Father Deluynes, of St.
Francis Xavier's, for my confessor, and here I found a true comforter and adviser,
with whom I held intimate correspondence during many travels in foreign lands,
and at last, after eleven years' absence, returned in time to receive his blessing
once more before he left us for ever.

Returning from a walk one morning, I was accosted by a gentleman, shortly
after my conversion, who said : " I wish to speak to you ; here is my house close
by. You see I have moved." I looked up and beheld the Rev. Dr. Forbes. In
great amazement I went with him. Entering the house, which was a handsome
one, more comfortably furnished than the one he had left, he said : " Do you re-
member the afternoon you called upon me and our conversation ? "

" Perfectly."

" Well, do you know your arguments had a great effect upon me ? "

I felt horrified. That a man of his age, supposed solid education, and su-
perior mind could become a convert to any religion upon convictions so unstable
as afterwards to doubt them, and that I should be in any way mixed up with such
vacillation, even in the remotest degree, shocked me beyond expression. I re-
garded him with sorrow and astonishment.

" I have left the church," said he.

" And /," I replied, " have joined it. I wish you good-morning." And I im-
mediately left the house.

STATES OF PERFECTION.*

There are many minds to whom the question, How shall I serve God in
greater perfection ? is the most important in life. We do not say that Father
Rossetti in the little book here mentioned answers in detail that question for
others besides the members of his own Society ; but the knowledge of the spirit
of any order or state of Christians is of much use in studying the question of
Christian perfection in general. We are free to confess that his broadness of
view is so much in contrast with some other writers, that we are glad to give his
book a conspicuous note of commendation.

The spirit of an order is dependent on the end of that order, and on the
means by which that end is to be attained. Every order has therefore its own
spirit. To seize upon this spirit is a matter of great difficulty and involves some-
thing more than a knowledge of the letter of the rules. It can only be done by
one who is familiar and in sympathy with the institution and with its practical

* De Sptritu Societatis Jesu. Auctore Julio Costa Rossetti, SJ. Friburgi Brisgoviae :
Herder. 1888.

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 423

workings. Outsiders can only hope to attain an imperfect idea of the spirit of
the Society of Jesus. For one who has the time, the Institute of the society
(comprising the constitutions, decrees of general congregations, and letters of
generals) affords the best means. This, however, would be an arduous study.
Father Rossettfs little work of some 300 pages (i6mo), based upon the Institute
and written for the scholastics and for those making their tertianship in the
society, and for all, indeed, who wish to learn about the constitution of the
society, affords the best means with which we are acquainted. It is at once a
pious arid a scholarly work, giving references to the constitutions in verification
of its statements. A very valuable part of the work is the appendix, which
shows how the Exercises of St. Ignatius and the constitutions of the society
agree, and how the one springs from the other. We have always thought that
the great success of the society was in a large degree due not only to the
wisdom of its constitutions, but also to the fact that by means of the Exercises
every member of the society has implanted in him the germs from which will
spring, so far as he makes those Exercises his own, a life of which the constitu-
tions will be the natural expression. As a consequence, the keeping of his rule
is not a bondage to an external yoke, but the natural expression _of his own inte-
rior spirit.

We notice with pleasure that Father Rossetti does not look upon the taking
of vows as essential to a man's being in a stated religious perfection (status per-
fectionis alt ion's acquirenda), and that consequently the fathers of the Oratory
and other congregations which, like them, do not take vows, are in this state.
We translate the author's sentences on this topic, because they embody a doc-
trine of wide application in the spiritual life. It may be well to state that Father
Rossetti is the author of a work on natural morality and ethical philosophy.

" A state of perfection is a fixed condition of life in which a person is devoted
to perfection. The state of perfection is twofold : ist. That of Christians in
general who, by virtue of the condition of their life, endeavor to keep the precepts
of the Christian religion. 2d. The state of those who, in addition to the precepts,
make profession of their resolution to practise the counsels of Christ that is to
say, the counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience in which a greater perfec-
tion is in part contained, and by which it is in part promoted. This state of per-
fection is likewise twofold : ist. That state of greater perfection in which perfec-
tion has already been acquired and which is to be imparted to others ; this is the
state of the pastors of the church, especially of the bishops, since their office of
guiding the sheep of Christ in the perfection which they are to acquire, can only
be performed satisfactorily by those who have already attained a certain higher
degree of perfection themselves.

" 2'd. The state of greater perfection which has not yet been, but which is to
be acquired ; this is that fixed condition of life which in itself does not exact that
the greater perfection should have been already acquired, but only demands a
constant and serious pursuit of greater perfection.

" The state of that greater perfection which is to be acquired is compatible
with both the solitary or eremetical life and the social life. ist. That society the
members of which devote themselves to the constant pursuit of this greater per-
fection (with either the positive or the negative approbation of the church) is
called a congregation, or a religious society, or even a religion, and this is the
case even if religious vows are not taken at all, as, e.g., in the Oratory of St.
Philip Neri, and if they are taken only for a few years, and, also, if the vows are
perpetual but not solemn. 2d A religious order in the strict sense is a fixed re-

424 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [June,

ligious society, positively approved by the church, the end of which is this greater
perfection, which perfection is to be acquired by means of the vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience ; these vows, too, are so to be taken that for all, or
at all events for a part, of the members of the order they must be solemn ''
(PP. i, 2).

"TROS TYRIUSQUE MIHI NULLO DISCRIMINE AGETUR."

Apropos of the article, " Why Am I a Moslem ?" by Ibn Abbas, recently pub-
lished in the North American Review, we would like to know if some intelligent
Fijian cannot tell us through its pages, " Why Am I a Cannibal ? " The latter
is a foreign religion, it is true, but hardly less so than Mohammedanism. " Why
Am I a Heathen ? " by Wong Chin Foo, gives the favorable side of the religion
of our American Chinese ; and perhaps " Why Am I a Voodoo? '' by some able
writer, might incline us to favor a peculiar form of religion among negro Ameri-
cans. Not to be too exclusive, Mormonism might have its claims set forth, per-
haps by some talented mind among the numerous progeny of its original light.
It occurred to me, furthermore, that some one in Sing Sing might furnish an in-
teresting answer to the question, "Why Am I a Burglar? " but, on after-thought,
I conclude that Burglary cannot be classed under the head of religion.

We admire the North American as one of the organs of the greatest writers in
America, but it should, we think, even when discussing religion, draw the line
somewhere.

THE SPRING ACADEMY.

The art critics of the daily press seem to be nearly unanimous in the verdict
that the sixty-third annual exhibition of the Academy of Design surpasses its
predecessors in point of general excellence. Perhaps it does ; and perhaps, also,
"general excellence " is not in itself so exhilarating a thing in pictures, or in art of
any sort, as the rare and special excellences which stand head and shoulders
above the crowd. There are not many works in the galleries on Twenty-third
Street this spring which do that. Two of those which have been most highly
praised, George Inness's " September Afternoon " and Winslow Homer's " Eight
Bells," are singularly unfortunate in having been placed under glass, a precaution
necessary in the case of water-colors, but incomprehensible in that of oil-paint-
ings. Mr. Inness's landscape is well composed and strongly painted, but the
blue of the sky near the horizon and the greens throughout are too deep to be
either true or wholly pleasing. A reflection from the heater opposite which the
picture hangs is caught by the glass in front of it, and kept dancing in a tanta-
lizing way through the middle of the flowers in the foreground.

Mr. Homer's picture, whenever we have tried to look at it, suffers in much
the same way from reflections. One recognizes, nevertheless, its characteristic
strength. But this painter's " Undertow," of last season, had both strength and
beauty to recommend it. And Mr. Homer's work, when it can lay claim to
beauty, owes it almost wholly to its subject, his handling being as rude as it is
strong. The two tars taking a mid-day sounding do not supply that always wel-
come element.

Edward Gay has a large and interesting landscape in the West Gallery, which
he calls "Waving Grain." The grayness of the stalks, bent by the wind, is well
rendered, and so is the silvery expanse of sky. In the same gallery hangs a very
pleasing picture by Burr H. Nicholls, " Pigeons from St. Mark's, Venice," which

.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 425

represents a young girl, with a child in her arms, leaning against a wall which
would be white if it were not transfused with a light which brings out the thou-
sand subtle touches of color which make it luminous. She is looking at some
doves.

A small landscape called " Grays and Yellows," by Ed. Stratton Holloway, is
in this gallery also, and worth looking at. Charles C. Curran's " Alcove at the
Student's League " hangs not far distant good, but not nearly so good as his
" Breezy Day " in the South Gallery, in which two girls are shown in the act of
spreading refractory sheets to bleach in a grassy field. Homer D. Martin also
has a gray but luminous " Study of a Breezy Day " on the same wall, but his
breeze is ruffling the sea which washes the Normandy coast, and blowing back
the smoke from the pipe of a steamer near the jetty of Honfleur. Here also is
his large picture, " Westchester Hills," which is held to divide the honors of the
exhibition with George Inness's " September Afternoon." It has a tranquil,
daylight beauty which continually grows upon the beholder.

R. D. Sawyer has a fine, large landscape, which he calls " A Souvenir of Nor-
mandy," in the South Gallery. The cattle are rather spotty and frequent, but
the picture is full of light and of good drawing, and the pool with its reflections
in the foreground is pleasant to look at. His " Still Life," which represents a
Normandy earthen jug standing on a kitchen table, with a roll and a blue china
bowl for companions, seems to us the best thing of the still-life kind on the walls.

J. Francis Murphy has, as usual, some very taking small landscapes. His
" Yellow Hour," though, is a trifle too metallic in the glow of its sky and the re-
flection thereof in the foreground water. His " Rain," in the East Gallery, is
more agreeable. In this gallery hangs Miss Brewster's portrait of Mrs. Wheeler,
which secured one of the prizes. It is full of character and vigor. John S. Sar-
gent, whose reputation as a portrait painter is wide, also shows here the likeness
of a woman which is not pleasing. But the flesh-tints of the arms, especially
the right one, are most luminous and beautiful. We like better his two Vene-
tian sketches in the North Gallery ; colorless as they are, all blacks and creamy
whites, and ill drawn as they seem in parts the hands, for example the faces are
full of character and expression. In the North room also hangs a small land-
scape, a wood interior, by Miss a Becket, well drawn, sunny, and solid.

Wyatt Eaton has a fine portrait, " Miss Martha " ; Mr. Eakins a strong full-
length of Prof. Barker, of the University of Pennsylvania ; Mr. Dewing a " Lady
in Yellow," with a delicate face and the arms of a butcher, and Alden Weir a
speaking portrait of Mr. John Gilbert. But in portraiture we prefer Emil Re-
nouf 's. three-quarter length of W. H. Phillips, in the North Gallery, to anything
else. It is extremely lifelike, and seems to have met difficulties instead of evading
them. J. B. Flagg's portrait of W. J. Flagg is excellent also.

Frank M. Boggs shows two characteristic views one of the pier at Whitby,
with men leaning over the railing under a gray sky ; the other, " A January
Tow," in New York Harbor, with that ugly thing, the Bartholdi Statue of Liber-
ty, pointing inanely upward in the middle background.

One of the pleasantest landscapes in the exhibition is M. De Forest Bolmer's
" Low Tide on the Marshes." Charles A. Platt shows two or tnree which seem
to promise him as good a repute as a painter as he has already won as an etcher.
Mr. Twachtmann's work is, as usual, graceful, poetic, and full of light and air ;
but, like that of some other excellent painters, it is hardly 'loud " enough to ap-
peal to the crowd. His " View near Dieppe," in the West Gallery, is very beau-
tiful.

426 NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [June,

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

BIOGRAPHY OF LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JULIUS P. GARESCHE, A. ADJ. -GEN.,
U.S.A. By his Son. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott.

Colonel Garesche graduated in the class, of 1841 with high rank at
West Point, and was assigned to the Fourth Artillery. Professor Ken-
drick says of him :

" His class, that of 1841, was a distinguished one, numbering among its members Generals
Tower, Wright, Whipple, Lyon, Love, Hamilton, Reynolds, Buell, the two Joneses, and
the two Garnetts, names which, with his, are now well known in military annals. With these
I have often met since those West Point days, and with one accord they give him a central
place in their warmest remembrances, and as one whose after-life fully justified their early and
kind predictions. He was a hard student, and by the display of the highest military virtues
won an enviable military reputation."

From 1841 to 1855 Mr. Garesche served with his company at various
military posts, and at the latter date was appointed Assistant Adjutant-
General, filling this office until 1862, when he was made chief of staff to
General Rosecrans. At the battle of Murfreesboro, the only engagement
in which he ever took part, he was killed by a cannon-shot, riding by the
side of General Rosecrans, after very gallant behavior during the most
critical part of the battle.

As a warrior Colonel Garesche had the briefest possible career. He
had but one opportunity of proving himself a hero in battle. That virtue
and valor which was always ready for heroic acts, was always a permanent
quality and habit in his character, was in him and always growing as he
advanced in age from his boyhood. As an officer he always manifested it
by the perfect fulfilment of his duty, even when it involved the most
imminent risk of his life. When yellow fever or cholera broke out at
the military posts where he was stationed, the most devoted priests and
physicians could not surpass him in unremitting service of the sick and
dying, by which he was himself brought to death's door. His virtue was
founded on Christian faith and piety. Colonel Garesche was a thorough
and devout Catholic from his childhood to his death. Not only while a
boy at Georgetown College, but as a cadet at West Point, where he en-
tered when only sixteen and graduated at twenty, the only Catholic in the
whole corps, he was bold and consistent in the profession and practice of
his religion. During his subsequent life he was always advancing in the
fervor of piety and in Christian perfection.

Although very few Americans can claim a pedigree and connections
equal in worldly, rank and distinction to his own, while he was, personally,
a most accomplished gentleman, he had none of that pride and exclusive-
ness, which are really vulgar and ignoble, that one often sees, and most
conspicuously in some whose pretensions are of the most recent origin.
His sympathies were given to the poor and humble, and especially to the
private soldiers under his command. He associated himself heartily with
the humble labors of priests among the soldiers and the more lowly classes
in civil life. On one occasion the majority of the men in his company
died of an epidemic, every one personally attended and assisted to receive

1 888.] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 427

the last sacraments by himself. ' No wonder that he was idolized by the
soldiers, and that he won the admiration and love of all his superiors and
comrades in the army.

The private and domestic character and life of Colonel Garesche are
full of charms. The biographer, Mr. Louis Garesche, has fulfilled his filial
task in the most affectionate manner and with scrupulous care and truth-
fulness. A large part of the book is made up of family letters, so that it
is in a considerable measure an autobiography of Colonel Garesche and
his lovely wife, the worthy companion with whom he was so well and
happily mated. The title-page announces that the life is printed for pri-
vate circulation, and we are informed that the edition is limited to five
hundred copies. We trust that a larger edition will be called for. We
especially recommend to all who are connected with the army above all,
to those who are Catholics this life of a man who was an ornament to his
profession and his religion. He has left a bright example of the noble vir-
tues of a soldier and a Christian.

A LITERARY AND BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY ; or, Bibliographical Dictionary
of the English Catholics from the breach with Rome in 1534 to the
present time. Vol. III. By Joseph Gillow. London: Burns & Gates;
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

The long time which has elapsed since the publication of the second
volume of this valuable work makes us welcome the more heartily the
appearance of this volume, and this the more because the delay has been
due to the efforts which Mr. Gillow has been making to still further im-
prove his work. The excellence of his former volumes has led to more
material being placed at his disposal, and more time has been required for
analyzing and indexing this new matter. We do not wonder that Mr.
Gillow's labors should have elicited the spontaneous assistance of English
Catholics, for it is a work of which they have every reason to be proud,
both x for its subject-matter and for the way in which that subject-matter
has been treated. It will foster the reverence and veneration due to those
into whose heritage they have entered, and who, during the dark period of
the last three hundred years, have with so much sacrifice maintained the
faith.

It may be well to mention the principal features of this work. That
which entitles a person to a record in it is, that he should have been an
author, however obscure his book, or he himself, may otherwise have been.
An exact transcript is given of the title-page of each work and a list of the
different editions. When it is of interest an account is given of the occa-
sion which called forth the work, and what it itself called forth. Conse-
quently we have here a Bibliographical Dictionary (complete so far as the
diligence and research of one man can make it) of all the books which
have been written by English Catholics during the last three hundred and
fifty years of those, that is, whose authors are dead. But although au-
thorship is sufficient to entitle a person to a place in this work, it is not a
necessary condition. All who have died as Catholics, and have done any-
thing worthy of remembrance, find their record here; not merely those
who have directly served the cause of the church or suffered for the faith,
but all who have been distinguished in any sphere politics, literature or
art, the bar or the stage. In this volume (which extends from Graham to

428 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June,

Kemble) the lives which will be of most general interest are those of
Inigo Jones, Mrs. Inchbald, Habington the poet, Anne Hyde, Duchess of
York, and in our own days of Dr. Husenbeth, Mr. Hope-Scott, and Mother
Margaret Mary Hallahan. The most important article in the volume is
that on the character and policy of James II. Mr. Gillow's researches
place the last Catholic sovereign of England in a different light from that
in which he has been viewed by the current Protestant historian, and by
some excessively complacent Catholic publicists.

We may say, in conclusion, that this work will be absolutely indis-
pensable for every one who is interested in the history of the Catholic
Church in England, in the record of its long struggles with persecution,
and in the gradual appearance of its "second spring." The student of the
religious controversies of this period will find in the bibliographical notes
vast stores of information ; while the general reader will meet with much
to interest him, for the lives, far from being dry compilations, are well and
brightly written, and abound in striking incident. We must mention, too,
the great pains which have been taken with the genealogy of the subjects
of the lives. The record of the fortunes of the colleges and schools of the
past and of the present is of great interest. This work has been for Mr.
Gillow a labor of love, and as their result we hope that his labors will meet
with the grateful recognition they deserve.

PALESTINE IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. By Edmond Stapfer. D.D. Translat-
ed by Annie Harwood Holmden. Third edition. New York : A. C.
Armstrong & Son.

Although Dr. Stapfer is a Protestant and a professor in the Protestant
Theological Faculty of Paris, he is singularly free from prejudice and
manifests (so far as we have discovered) no anti-Catholic spirit. On the
question of the Holy Sites, for example, he says : " M. Bovet, in his Voyage
en Terre Satnte, affirms and demonstrates that the traditional sites of the
Holy Sepulchre and of Calvary are authentic, We have already said that
this opinion is being more and more widely received '' (p. 115). In this he
affords a favorable contrast to the flippant dogmatism of Mr. Lawrence
Oliphant in his recent work on the Holy Land. The main tendency of the
work is in every way commendable, and it will form a valuable addition to
a literature in which all Catholics should take great interest, especially
those who practice meditation on our Lord's life and words. The object
of the author is to describe accurately and in detail the social and religious
state of Palestine in the time of our Lord, the dress, the home life, the
dwellings, clothing, and habits of the people; the religious schools, the
feasts, the Sabbath observances, and in general all that made up the social
and religious life of the time. Our author has not aimed at being bril-
liant, and has not presented his reader with a series of word-paintings.
His work is the result of diligent research and is full of information,
vouched for by the best authorities. These authorities are, in the main,
the New Testament, the writings of Josephus, and the Talmud, as well as
the classical authors, so far as they could afford assistance. The style is in
keeping with the character of the work, simple and clear, and Mrs. Holm-
den has done the work of translation exceedingly well. We think that
this work will gain a permanent place among works on this subject. We

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 429

feel obliged, however, to point out that while, as we have said, the general
tendency of the work is commendable, clear indications occur from time
to time that the author is very far from holding the true Catholic doctrine
on several important points. For example, on page 490, and still more
clearly on page 494, he writes as if he did not believe in the divinity of
our Lord, or, at all events, as if he had a most inadequate apprehension of
what that belief involves. With these perhaps inevitable drawbacks (in-
evitable, because we cannot reasonably expect that any Protestant should
maintain -the whole truth) the work is one which will delight every student
of Scripture, and be of great service to religion and to its defenders.

A VISIT TO EUROPE AND THE HOLY LAND. By Rev. H. F. Fairbanks.
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.; London : Burns &
Gates.

This is the itinerary of a trip to the old country made by three priests
of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee Rev. Thos. Fagan, of Bay View, Rev.
Jos. Keenan, of Fond-du-Lac, and the author, Rev. H. F. Fairbanks.
Father Fairbanks gives an interesting account of what his party saw, as
he says, from the standpoint of " a Catholic American."

Father Fairbanks tells the story of his travels in a pleasing and inter-
esting way, and, what is of special moment, the book is free from the
taint of that prejudice and dishonesty which too often mars similar works
written by non-Catholics.

Many a man has made a fortune without learning how to spend it. He
pays perhaps a couple of thousand for a fast and dangerous horse a sum
of money that would carry him to the tomb of Christ, and enable him to
refresh his faith with the spiritual pilgrimage and prolong his life with
needed rest and rational recreation, about the cradle of the human race
and the seats of the ancient peoples of the world. A book like Father
Fairbanks' serves as an admirable stimulus to such an undertaking, and
in the hands of the pilgrim could well take the place of a guide-book.

TYPES OF ETHICAL THEORY. By James Martineau, D.D., LL.D. Second
Edition revised. Two vols. Oxford : at the Clarendon Press ; New
York : Macrnillan & Co.

Although it is somewhat late to notice here a work which appeared
three years ago, and of which the second edition was published in 1886,
yet the influence which we believe Dr. Martineau's work is destined to
exert upon the course of thought, and the assistance which it is adapted to
give to many whose minds are perplexed by current speculations, make it
a duty for us to call attention to it. Two months ago we noticed the pub-
lication of the Study of Religion by the same author. These two works
mutually supplement each other. The "averments of the moral con-
sciousness "to use the words of Dr. Martineau which were accepted as
postulates in the former work, were in the Study of Religion subjected to
rigorous examination. In the Types of Ethical Theory the. author devoted
himself to the investigation of what are the springs of moral conduct, and
what are its effects. .His standpoint is indicated in the preface to the
Types of Ethical Theory. When he entered upon the study of moral and
metaphysical questions he carried into it, from previous training for the
profession of civil engineer, a store of exclusively scientific conceptions

43O NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June,

which, as he says, necessarily dictated the only'rules of judgment which
he could apply. The maxims and postulates of physical knowledge shut
him up in the habit of interpreting the human phenomena by the analogy
of external nature. He belonged, in fact, to the same school as James and
John Stuart Mill, and had for some time the absolute confidence that he
was right, which is said to be a distinctive characteristic of the Experiential
School of Philosophy. But the duties of his profession in life forced him
to a more profound examination of the problems, and made him see that
the solutions previously accepted by him were not satisfactory.

" I seemed," he says, "to discover a hitherto unnoticed factor in all the products which I
had taken as explained ; to recognize, after resolving all knowledge into relations, the presence
of an invisible condition of relation itself ; and the more I scrutinized the physical science as-
sumptions which I had carried as axioms into philosophy, the less could I look upon them as
ultimate and valid for all thought. . . . Visiting me first as mere suspicions, these ideas in-
sensibly loosened the set attitude of my convictions. ... It was the irresistible pleading of the
moral consciousness which first drove me to rebel against the limits of the merely scientific
conception. . . . The naturalistic uniformity could no longer escape some breach in its closed
barrier to make room for the ethical alternative. The secret misgivings which I had always
felt at either discarding or perverting the terms which constitute the vocabulary of character
' responsibility,' ' guilt,' ' merit,' ' duty ' came to a head and insisted upon speaking out and
being heard ; and to their reiterated question, ' Is there, then, no ought to be other than what is ? '
I found the negative answer of Diderot intolerable, and all other answer impossible. This in-
volved a surrender of determinism and a revision of the doctrine of causation ; or rather, I
should say, a recall of the outlawed causes from their banishment and degradation to the rank
of antecedents ; and constituted, therefore, a retrograde movement on the line of Comte's law,
back from physics to metaphysics. . . . During a fifteen months' furlough, . . passed through
a kind of second education in Germany, mainly under the admirable guidance of the late Pro-
fessor Trendelenberg. ... I gave myself chiefly to Greek studies, and only read more largely
authors of whom I had supposed myself to know something before. The effect I cannot de-
scribe but as a new intellectual birth ; after a temporary struggle out of the English into the
Greek moulds of conception, I seemed to pierce through what had been words before, into
contact with living thought, and the black grammatical text was aglow with living philosophy.
. . . [This] experience was the gift of fresh conceptions, the unsealing of hidden openings of
self-consciousness, with unmeasured corridors and sacred halls behind. It was impossible to
resist or distrust this gradual widening of apprehension ; it was as much a fact as the sight of
the Alps I had never visited before. I thus came into the same plight, in respect of the cogni-
tive and aesthetic side of life, that had already befallen me in regard to the moral. The meta-
physic of the world had come home tome, and never again could I say that phenomena in their
clusters and chains were all, or find myself in a universe with no categories but the like and
unlike, the synchronous and successive."

This long extract from the preface shows that Dr. Martineau is not
the advocate of views which he has inherited, but that his work is the re-
sult of mental struggle and of personal conviction. It illustrates also th&
beauty of a style which lends a charm to the dryest of discussions. This
work, together with the recently published Study of Religion, is the outcome
of more than fifty years' study of the most important of questions, and al-
though the statement that the Types of Ethical Theory is the most impor-
tant work on the subject which has appeared in the English language for
one hundred and fifty years may be somewhat premature, this, at all events,
is certain : that all students of Moral Philosophy will have to take this
work into account ; the friends of religion and morals in order to derive
the most valuable assistance from it, their enemies in order, if possible, to
refute it.

1 8 88.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 43 1

TH ?- M E r L( r G T IC n L P IST S RY F PLANTS. By Sir J. William Dawson,
C.M.G., LL.D., etc. New York : D. Appleton & Co.

Any scientific treatise from the pen of Sir Wm. Dawson commands
the respectful attention of all who take an interest in physical science, for
he occupies an advanced position among the leading scientists of the Eng-
lish-speaking world, and in his own special department Geology he has
no superior. His geological works are the most popular in our language
to-day, for his knowledge of the subject is not only vast and accurate, but
he has also a most agreeable method of imparting it. Hi-s Story of the
Earth and Man reads like a romance while it is most rigidly scientific, and
his History of Plants, though of course not so interesting, is a most read-
able book, and conveys the most thorough information on the plant life in
the different geological periods of the earth's history.

ROBERT EMMET: A Tragedy of Irish History. By Joseph I. C. Clarke.
New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Irish history is nothing if not dramatic, and Robert Emmet is one of
the most dramatic characters that has appeared on its tragic stage. We
have often wondered that the stirring episode of his young life, and love,
and patriotism was not fittingly dramatized. It surely supplies all the
elements for dramatic composition. There is youth and beauty, eloquence
and heroism, love and war, in their most striking aspects. The materials
were all ready to the hand that had skill to throw them into shape.

Mr. Clarke has made excellent use of them, and has produced a classic
work. The conception is lofty ; the narrative natural; the language very
pure, and the taste faultless.

We cannot help thinking that the composition lacks power, however;
it is too smooth and flowing to be really powerful. A little more of the
abruptness of passion and the rugged eloquence of nature are needed to
make a powerful drama, and while we have nothing but praise to bestow
upon it as a piece of pure English composition, we doubt of its success as
a popular presentation of a most popular subject.

PERCY'S REVENGE : A Story for Boys. By Clara Mulholland. Boston :
Thomas B. Noonan & Co. 1887. Hearth and Home Library.

The various moods of a bright, impulsive boy are well delineated in
this story. He forms plans of his own to frighten his Aunt Lydia
and endeavors to throw the blame on others. Under wise parental direc-
tion he is prudently admonished, and compelled to acknowledge his fault
by a humble apology.

Excellent printing and attractive binding give the book a fine appear-
ance.

ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON : A Story of Boy Life ; and KENSINGTON,
JUNIOR. By Margaret Sidney. Boston : D. Lothrop & Co.

Not the Catholic St. George but a boy by that name conquers the
dragon in this book. Finding his progress in life obstructed by idleness,
selfishness, and impatience, he makes war on them. He was led to this de-
termination by discovering among the articles left by his deceased mother
the well-known engraving of St. George slaying the dragon, on which was
written these words of advice: "Thus, my boy, ought you to slay your
dragons."

432 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June, 1888.

The story is well written, and shows careful observation of boy life.
Of Kensington, Junior, the second story of the volume, the same may be
said. Illustrations adorn many of the pages.

We recommend the get-up of this book to Catholic publishers of juve-
nile literature.

Six SERMONS ON DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART. By Rev. Ewald
Bierbaum, D.D. Translated by Miss Ella McMahon. New York, Cin-
cinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

These sermons, excellently adapted to arousing devotion to our Lord's
humanity as the divine exponent of God's mercy, have come to hand too
late to give them the notice they deserve. This word we say that the
public may know that there is a new and good book to be had, not too
large nor too expensive, for the devotions of the month of June.

BOOKS RECEIVED.
Mention of books in this place does not preclude extended notice in subseqtient numbers,

THE ROMAN HYMNAL : A Complete Manual of English Hymns and Latin Chants, for the use
of Congregations, Schools, Colleges, and Choirs. Compiled and arranged by Rev. J. B.
Young, S.J., Choir-master of St. Francis Xavier's Church, New York. Fourth Edition.
$i. New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co.

INSTRUCTIONS ON THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD AND THE SACRAMENTS OF THE CHURCH.
Translated from the Italian of St. Alphonsus Liguori. Edited by Rev. Eugene Grimm,
C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

A DAUGHTER OF ST. DOMINIC : Amelie Lautard. By Kathleen O'Meara. American edition,
edited by Margaret E. Jordan. Introduction by Rev. J. L. O'Neill, O.P. Boston :
Thos. B. Noonan & Co.

THE ANOINTED SERAPH : " The Last made First." By G. H. Pollock. Vol. I. Washing-
ton : John F. Shiery. 1888.

THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION : Faith or Agnosticism ? A Series of Articles from the
North American Review. New York : The North American Review.

THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE INSPECTORS OF THE STATE PENITENTIARY for the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia : Allen, Lane & Scott.

THE BOOK OF GENESIS. By Marcus Dods, D.D. New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son.

THE ANCIENT WORLD AND CHRISTIANITY. By E. de Pressense, D.D. Translated by Annie
Harwood Holmden. New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son.

THREE KINGDOMS : A Handbook of the Agassiz Association. By Harlan P. Ballard. New
York : The Writers' Publishing Co.

SYNOPSIS CANONICO-LITURGICA EX CORPORE JURIS, Concilio Tridentino, Romanorum
Pontificum, Congregationibus, S.R.E. Congregationum Decretis, Ecclesiae Mediolanen-
sis actibus. Ab Aloysio Adone rationali methodo concinnata. Neapoli : apud Auctorem.
[For sale by Benziger Brothers, New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago.]

THE SYSTEM OF THEOLOGY CONTAINED IN THE WESTMINSTER SHORTER CATECHISM. Part
I. Belief concerning God. By Rev. A. A. Hodge, D.D. Part II. Duty required of Man.
By Rev. I. Aspinwall Hodge, D.D. New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son.

A THOUGHT FROM ST. VINCENT DE PAUL for each day of the Year. Translated from the
French by Frances M. Kemp. New York : Benziger Brothers.

THE BIBLE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION EXPLAINED AND VINDICATED. By Basil Manly, D.D.,
LL.D. New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son. 1888.

NERVE WASTE : Practical Information concerning Nervous Impairment and Nervous Ex-
haustion in Modern Life. By H. C. Sawyer, M. D. San Francisco : The Bancroft Com-
pany. 1888.

ETHICS OF BOXING AND MANLY SPORT. By John Boyle O'Reilly. Boston : Ticknor & Co.
1888.

SACRED HISTORY, from the Creation to the Giving of the Law. By Edward P. Humphrey,
D.D., LL.D., sometime professor in the Danville Theological Seminary. New York:
A. C Armstrong & Son.

MARIA MAGNIFICATA : Short Meditations for a Month on Our Lady's Life. By Richard F.
Clarke, S. J. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Brothers.

MARY'S FIRST SHRINE IN THE WILDERNESS. By Rev. A. A. Lambing. With Memorial Ser-
mon by Rev. M. M. Sheedy. Pittsburgh : McMahon Bros. & Adams.

ANDIATOROCT& ; or, the Eve of Lady Day on Lake George, and other Poems, Hymns, and
Meditations in Verse. By Rev. Clarence A. Walworth, Rector of St. Mary's Church, Al-
bany, N. Y. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. (The review of this book will appear in
the next number.)

CHRISTIANITY IN THE UNITED STATES FROM THE FIRST SETTLEMENT DOWN TO THE PRE-
SENT TIME, By Daniel Dorchester, D.D. New York : Phillips & Hunt. 1888.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL. XLVII. JULY, 1888. No. 280.

A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE.

A CATHOLIC aspect of Home Rule for Ireland is one which
can be obtained only after other views have been proposed, dis-
cussed and mastered. It is by no means a simple and self-con-
tained view. Rather, it is a view which presupposes and is
based upon others, be they historical, or political, or social, fill-
ing up the measure of their completeness, and presenting for
adoption an homogeneous and consistent whole. In a like man-
ner, but not to the same extent, it is comparable to the rela-
tive position of Catholic theology towards Protestant religious
opinion. The theology of the church includes all that may be
true in the various discordant systems of the sects, whether they
be contradictory with others, superfluous in themselves, or im-
perfect in regard to truth. Her faith assimilates their opposi-
tions, corrects their excesses, supplies their defects, and exhibits,
upon divine authority, a true and perfect belief. Not far other-
wise is it with the Catholic aspect of Irish self-government.
From the social view, many important facts may be learnt.
From the political view, a clue may be found to unravel a com-
plex and complicated tangle. From history, unanswerable
arguments may be employed in support of the claims of Ireland
for autonomy. But, the Catholic aspect includes all these views,
and supplements them. It offers to the world a systematic, har-
monious solution of the great problem of Irish nationality. And
it offers this solution under the divine influence of the Catholic
religion.

An initial difficulty awaits the English, and still more the
Catholic, inquirer on the threshold of investigation into the
rights of Irish Home Rule and the wrongs of England's alien

434 A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE. [July,

government. This difficulty is not the one which generally has
to be faced in most inquiries of a similar nature, namely, that a
choice must be made between two main theories, distinctly and
definitely opposed to each other. But, rather, it is this : That,
in the Anglo-Irish controversy there exists many alternatives to
be weighed, with various approximations towards truth and er-
ror respectively, on most of the points which are capable of ex-
citing a hotly contentious difference of opinion. Nor does this
statement, although wide, exhaust the position. On the con-
trary, it expresses but a portion of the confusion. The differ-
ences in asserted fact and view are nearly endless. They are
those of kind, not only of degree ; they arise in principle, not
only in detail ; they involve absolutely incompatible and irrecon-
cilable contradictions ; not all of these views and alleged facts,
(and possibly none of them,) can be accepted as pure unadulterat-
ed truth. And these exaggerations, inaccuracies and impossi-
bilities are usually propounded by their patrons as indisputable
verities, with an assumed air of authority wholly unwarranted by
historical facts, or with a personal assurance of knowledge which
does not stand the test of independent examination. It may be
well, then, to place on record a few of the more extravagant of
these paradoxes, on the unhappy relations which exist between
the two sister kingdoms, and on the still more unhappy results
which have ensued from the rule of the one by the other, before
such paradoxes become traditional. It may be better, to com-
pare them, or to contrast them, with soberer, calmer state-
ments, or even with extreme statements of an opposite character
which, to whatsoever extent they may be questioned, are not
less but more worthy of credit, and to conduct the inquiry
whilst the evidence for judging between both is still not yet
mythical. And this inquiry and balancing of probabilities may
conveniently be made under the threefold division of the subject
already given historical, political, social.

For instance, and to take each division in order : Is it the his-
torical aspect of England's misrule in Ireland which is in dis-
pute? It is affirmed, on the one hand, that Catholic Ireland has
never Jived in peace and tranquillity, whether actual or compara-
tive, saving under the strong arm of an iron despotism, such as
that from which she suffered under the tyrant Cromwell ; and
on the other, that at no period of her tragic story has she pro-
gressed so rapidly and over so wide an area, in material develop-
ment, as when, for a few short years at the close of the last
century, she enjoyed even a very imperfect form of self-govern-

i888.] A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE. 435

ment, at the hands of a Protestant minority. Again : is the
political aspect of the case under review ? It is confidently said,
by those who have the means to ascertain the truth, that Ireland,
at the present day, really and at heart is profoundly indifferent
to the yielding of Home Rule by England ; but, that she is
passionately absorbed by a wild, immoral craving only for the
acquisition of the land. It is more confidently said, on the tes-
timony of the history of our own age, that the desire and the
almost unanimous cry for the repeal of the Act of Union has, in
one form or in another, been raised and repeated in every suc-
cessive year of the present century : O'Connell's first public
speech was made on this topic. But more than this may be
truthfully said. When, for the first time in her sad political life,
the bulk of the people of Ireland have been permitted freely to
return representatives to the British Parliament, then, upwards
of three-quarters of the Irish members were elected, and perhaps
five-sixths of the Irish votes were cast, apart from all relation to
a land bill, solidly in favor of obtaining self-government. Is it,
once more, the social question which is argued ? It is recklessly
asserted, from insufficient or fallacious data, or even from facts
not pertinent to the argument, e.g., from the diminished popula-
tion of the country, or from the large amount of capitalized sav-
ings deposited in local banks, or from the long prices sometimes
paid for tenant-right, that the small Irish tenant-farmer has never,
practically, been so well off as in the near past, though not, of
course, in the immediately past years. And it is replied, from a
wider field of evidence and from more trustworthy sources, that
never has he, as one of a large class of agriculturists, from the
combined effects of the act of God and the greed of man, been so
perilously near to a measurable distance from bankruptcy and
ruin. The climate and seasons, the fall of prices, and the raising
of rents, together with the unsettled condition of the country,
which is kept in a seething chronic state of discontent by the
Dublin Castle rule these causes have resulted in the destruc-
tion of almost every element of national prosperity in relation to
land in Ireland.

The same law of paradox and contradiction runs throughout
the whole length and breadth of the inquiry. For example, to
take but a few more noteworthy cases: Ireland is said to be
honeycombed with crime, agrarian, political and legal, as apart
from moral crime. She is said, also, comparatively with her
condition in former years and in relation to English criminal
statistics, and much more, to the debased and brutal character

436 A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE. [July,

of English crime to be crimeless. The Irish people, again, are
said to desiderate imperial separation from England ; and again,
that such a measure of Home Rule as Ireland now demands, and
England may at any time accord, will never satisfy, and ought
never to satisfy the legitimate desire of the Irish people for self-
government. They are said (and more truly), also, as a nation,
to be much too keenly alive to their own interests to wish for
anything beyond the amount of autonomy which they are on the
point of acquiring ; and that without answering for the will of
posterity, which none can foresee, on the question of separation,
the Irish of the present time are at least able to judge for them-
selves how much or how little of self-government will meet their
national requirements and the popular need. Again, says the
enemy : there is not now and never has been a tangible entity
which can be, or could be, called the Irish nation and this is a
favorite fallacy with some superior people, and even with cer-
tain liberal papers of a philosophic kind in the English press.
But, that the Irish own and always have owned a history, can
trace a descent, have borne marked characteristics, speak in a
tongue, worship in a faith, and possess all the elements of a genu-
ine nationality apart and distinct from the not more and perhaps
less genuine nationality of the Anglo-Saxon race, is a common-
place in ethnology to ordinary persons. And, once more, to
condense many misstatements into one charge : that the natives
of Ireland are a dishonest, idle, irreligious, cruel, cowardly,
savage, or at any rate half-civilized peasantry, is declared by
many who consider themselves competent to form and express
an opinion worthy of publication. By many, also, who are per-
haps not less competent to formulate an opinion, the Irish people
are declared to deserve almost exactly the opposites of all these
epithets, if they be truthfully described. The natives of Ireland
are historically known to have been far earlier and far more
highly civilized than their fiercer English oppressors ; and at
this moment the Irish nation can be proved to be far more moral
than England, as it is obviously a more spiritually-minded na-
tion. Rebellious, no doubt, the Irish have been, and it may be
added, ought to have been, to both the betrayers of their coun-
try and to those who have systematically acted the part of con-
querors towards Ireland, without ever having actually conquer-
ed it. For centuries they have been noted for their love of
justice, as the great Lord Chief-Justice Coke has borne witness ;
and they would certainly be a law-abiding race if only they were
enabled to live under a rule which they believed to be just and

i888.] A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE. 437

which they knew to be deserving of respect. As has lately been
well said : Ireland has ever been loyal to England when England
has been loyal to justice. Again : they are a brave and coura-
geous people, as evidenced on battle-fields the wide world over,
and as testified by the greatest of British and other commanders,
amongst them, by the Duke of Wellington. Those who know
them best, declare that the Irish are as tender-hearted a race as
the women of a less spiritual people. They have been confes-
sors and martyrs for their divine faith under a continuous per-
secution, which may be aptly compared with that of early Chris-
tianity under the Caesars, of upwards of three centuries of cor-
porate life, at the hands of a people who apostatized from and
have not returned to the old religion of their respective ances-
tors in the faith. Perhaps they are the most industrious and
most successful modern cultivators of the soil, if due account be
taken of their poverty, their powers, their opportunities, and
still more their many difficulties, social and legal and political
and climatic. And, as to the last characteristic of the Irishman
which is characteristically distorted by his English censor,
honesty it may be truly said that, for debts which they can
acknowledge as debts and not as legalized extortions, nor yet as
extortions which English law even has condemned as unjustifi-
able, the Irish are almost proverbially honest.

Thus rages the conflict of words, and what is worse, thus
rages the conflict of events, indicated by the contradiction of
language, of might against right. But the fight is not fairly
fought on either side. Attack is always more facile than de-
fence. A line or a sentence may contain a charge or a sophism,
which a chapter or a speech full of argument cannot disprove.
Detraction, innuendo and misrepresentation, which are not less
and perhaps are more indefensible when levelled at a whole na-
tion than at a unit of the nation, usually leave behind them their
sting. Even if inexactitude and exaggeration be exposed, the
adversary is silenced without being convinced ; and the neutral,
or the indifferent, who sees the assertion, fails to see the denial.
Under such conditions, the friends of Ireland can best serve her
sacred, but unpopular, cause by reiterating over and over and
over again to all willing listeners, and indeed to listeners against
their will, what they believe to be the broad facts, the just rea-
sons, the earnest hopes, (may it be said ?) the devout aspirations
of Ireland's claim from England of self-government. This done,
they must, of necessity, leave the arguments for her rights to the
God of nations who, in the future and in his own appointed time,

438 A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE. [July,

will infallibly fulfil the unmistakable destiny of the Catholic
people of Ireland.

Although the statements on behalf of Ireland, and on matters
of fact which have been above made may be literally exact, it is
possible that the arguments advanced on questions touching
Ireland's claim to autonomy, historical, political and social, may
lie somewhere between the extremes assumed by partisans on
either side. It cannot, of course, be maintained, in the face of
present evidence and past records, that Ireland is not a nation,
and that her people are not now, and have not been for cen-
turies, possessed of certain well-defined characteristics, which
in their entirety cannot be predicated of any other people on
God's earth. But short of this position, after all that can be
said, for or against him, this fact is either forgotten or ignored
by English political speakers, or writers in the press, viz., that
an Irishman is a human being, and is neither angel nor devil, nor
still less the gorilla-like being of the satirical papers, nor even
the " Hottentot " of the Conservative leader. He has his good
qualities and his bad ; is a compound mixture of both bad and
good ; and, speaking generally, is very much akin to all the world
beside. If you are stronger than he, an Irishman cannot resist
you successfully, even though the possession of hearth and home
tremble in the balance of physical force. If he cannot obtain
his own way, as in the matter of rents adjudicated upon, for or
against his interests in what to him is a foreign capital, an Irish-
man must take your way. If you tyrannize over him legally
and politically, by party votes in an English parliament and by
packed juries in an Irish court of law, and if you despise and
ill-treat him socially in the press, on the platform, in places of
public resort, in the privacy of friendly intercourse, an Irish-
man will not love you. If he perceives that he gets nothing at
all, or as little as may be possible, from your sense of justice,
and not much more from your generosity, whether in making
his laws, or in administering his laws, or in obstructing all im-
provement in his laws, an Irishman will indisputably work upon
your self-interest, convenience and fears and tjius acting, he
will prove himself a far cleverer man than yourself. If he
knows that he is u ground to powder," as Lord Chancellor Clare
said, by rental exactions upon his own part-inheritance or upon
his own entire creation whether of clearing, draining, fencing,
manuring, building, or what-not exactions which he has no
real moral or physical choice but to accept, though miscalled in
England "a free contract'* on his side, an Irishman will en-

1 888.] A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE. 439

deavor, by all means in his power, to lighten the load from him-
self and to lessen his obligations to you. If he sees that you
are touched with a certain amount of pity, and are not unwill-
ing to restore to him some of his rights, as a human being, a
tenant, a citizen, an Irishman not unnaturally strives to gain, or
to regain, more and other rights which you unreasonably con-
tinue to withhold. If he feels that you understand his position,
enter into his struggle for existence, desire to mitigate his hard
lot, wish to sympathize with him in his sufferings, an Irishman
almost instinctively meets you more than half way, and gene-
rously forgives and forgets (so far as personal wrong is con-
cerned) the past. And, if he realizes that your sympathy extends
from wish to deed, that you are actually thinking, speaking,
writing, working on his behalf, an Irishman develops enthu-
siasm in your favor; he is grateful beyond the power of words
to express himself ; he practically responds to his gratitude, and
becomes friendly, appreciative, more than docile, rationally
obedient. Indeed, in this aspect, there is perhaps no historical
parallel to the striking, extraordinary change which has recently
ensued in the relations between England and Ireland, and is in
course of being enacted before our eyes. No two countries, in
the respective positions of conquered and conqueror, have ever
so quickly and heartily fraternized, as the democracy of England
and the people of Ireland. They have thus fraternized only
since one of the two great political parties in the one country,
headed by its distinguished and venerable leader/though basely
deserted by able supporters and old friends, has accepted the
Irish question as a government measure, has submitted to a
party schism of serious import rather than abandon the ques-
tion, and has pledged itself unreservedly and irreformably to a
policy of right and justice towards the other country.

It may not, however, be wise to press this point, which still
looms in the distance, though, in all human probability, it will
develop in the near future. Neither does it really affect the
main issue of the right of Ireland to Home Rule, and the call of
justice to England to grant it. But, a point which does indi-
rectly affect the question of yielding autonomy to the sister king-
dom is contained in an estimate of the characteristics it may be
affirmed, of the national characteristics of the natives of that
kingdom, and of their natural leaders. The admission may be
made on either side, without prejudice to the argument, that an
average Irishman and an average Englishman may not, at the
present day, widely differ in personal essentials. Indeed, in

440 A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE. [July,

many cases, it would be hard to distinguish, by their qualities
alone, the respective nationalities of different members of socie-
ty. Yet, there are qualities in the Celtic character which stand
much higher in the mental, moral and intellectual scale than
those which create the Anglo-Saxon character. The Irishman
may be less persevering, \es practical ; more emotional, more
changeful; more eager to please at whatsoever cost; less thor-
ough and exact in his business arrangements, manual labor,
or technical knowledge; perhaps, in matters which fall short of
positive duty, less worthy of trust than the Englishman. In
short, an Irishman is gifted with those very personal qualifica-
tions which most harshly grate upon the sensibilities of an or-
dinary, business-like, indefatigable Protestant and may it be
whispered? Philistinish John Bull. And the* consequence is,
that between the two countries, through the social contact of
numberless individuals of each race, the friction is great, almost
insurmountable.

For, on the other side of the balance of character, an Irish-
man is a quicker, brighter, keener, more intelligent, more logical
being, and a being endowed with a larger measure of mother wit,
than a common Englishman. He is far more spiritual, far more
moral, far more generous, far more devout, conscientious and
practically influenced by his religion, and though he may be,
as men of all nationalities are prone to be, inconsistent, and may
fall from his high principles, yet he is never ashamed of his faith,
is never ashamed of fulfilling its duties, and even if he lives a
bad Catholic, he dies a good one. In his ordinary relations of
life, again, he is less sensual, less coarse, less animal, more re-
fined, and, in the true sense of the word, more gentlemanlike.
An Irishman, whether of the highest or lowest orders (of which
it is easy to speak, if one has put foot the other side of St.
George's Channel), is the impersonation of hospitality and kind-
ly friendliness in his own abode, even to representatives of po-
litical enmity domestic virtues which have somewhat faded out
of sight in England. Without wishing to malign the character
of Englishmen of the middle and lower classes, it must be con-
fessed that, in two relations of our many-sided life, Irishmen
have the advantage. One of the worst sides of English commer-
cial life the life which dominates the great central portion of
English existence is, to be frank, dishonesty in trade. It is be-
yond the province of this paper to particularize in what direc-
tions such dishonesty prevails ; but the directions are many.
One of the most pitiable sides, again, of English poverty which

1 888.] A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE. 441

cries aloud for remedy, if not for vengeance, in the wealthiest
country in the world, are the sights and the sounds which meet
both eye and ear of those who frequent the slums of our great
cities the degraded and hardly man-like or woman-like speci-
mens of humanity, the abodes in which they herd, the language
they use, the lives they lead. From both these classes Ireland
is comparatively free. In mercantile transactions, it may be
affirmed that the Irish tradesman, manufacturer and man of
business is fair-dealing. In the cabin of the poorest and most
wretched in Ireland with a mud floor, without a window, with
scarcely bed or chair, with bare feet and limbs, with brother-
beasts (as St. Francis would say) for companions, with these as
adjuncts to the home scene the Catholic Irish peasantry are
virtuous, chaste, generous, kind and honest.

As an emigrant, again and this view of an Irishman must
be taken ; for, under English misrule, every Irishman is a pos-
sible emigrant, and the majority of the entire nation have been
forced to become actual emigrants what are his characteris-
tics? In brief it may be said, that an Irishman's character is
metamorphosed for the better when he adopts the role of emi-
grant from his native shores. He is the same, but improved ;
himself, but an idealized Celt. As a rule, if a fair start be given
him in the country of his adoption, an Irishman is always a suc-
cessful, prosperous, saving, happy man, when once he has turn'ed
his back at the same time upon the hated rule of England and
the idolized land in which he was born. This is a well-known
fact, too much overlooked as an item in the argument between
the two nations, which is, perhaps, one of the most conclusive
against England's misgovernment of Ireland. It mainly affects
the middle and lower classes. Of the higher class of Irish refi
gees, on the continent of Europe, it is historically true
whether in the profession of arms or of diplomacy, the English-
made exile fills, or has filled, places of the highest trust and po
of the highest honor in many foreign camps and courts of <
tendom. Moreover, there is one further characteristic whic
it would be unjust to ignore only because the English charact
falls short of the stature of the national Celt.

An Irishman, whether at home or abroad, is possessed of
quality which almost rises to the dignity of a virtue, a
which an average Englishman hardly understands the meaning as
applied to himself. It is true, that in others he respects and evei
applauds this civic virtue, saving only when it fulfils the breast
of a Celt in relation to a Saxon ; and the more distant is the

44 2 A CATHOLIC ASPECT OF HOME RULE. [July,

scene of its exercise, the more attractive usually does the virtue
appear in his sight. But, for himself, and as a rule, of course
modified by exceptions, an Englishman is not patriotic, as an
Irishman understands the term. Not that an Englishman does
not think haughtily and speak boastfully and actbraggardly by
his native land a common form of selfishness; but he has not,
and does not pretend to have the pure, unselfish love of country
in his heart to live for it, to die for it, and, more difficult still,
patiently and uncomplainingly to suffer for it, from birth
through life to death. No ; this is a gift not bestowed on the
English people. But it is a grace which can scarcely be up-
rooted from the heart of an Irishman. In this aspect, the disin-
terested, noble and courageous conduct of the Nationalist lead-
ers of to-day the so-called " Irish agitators " of a low-toned,
low-souled English press may safely be compared with the pa-
triot heroes of any race or age. It is true, that their modes and
methods are not the same with those of former times and other
countries. But then, the conditions on both sides are different:
and Ireland is neither Poland nor Greece, and England is neither
the Russias nor the Porte. Putting aside, however, compari-
sons which are inexact, it may be fairly said that the public lives
of men upon whom every virulent and abusive and dishonora-
ble epithet is showered by venal writers who carefully conceal
their probably unknown names, stand in marked contrast to the
party-spirited, place-hunting and highly salaried politicians of
England, who pharisaically contemn the more humbly born but
more highly bred representatives of down-trodden Ireland.

These are some national characteristics of a people whom
England has held in bondage, bitterer, more degrading and long-
er, than that of Israel in Egypt, which was but for four hundred
years. These are some characteristics of the leaders, and pro-
phets, and guides of public opinion at the present day in Ireland.
These, in the abstract, are the men whom English statesmen and
English politicians but not, it is believed, the English democ-
racy or one section of them, presume to despise, pretend to
discredit, and actually refuse to entrust with the present rule
and future destinies of their own countrymen. One line of argu-
ment alone is sufficient to brand this decision of the legislative
survivors of past injustice, incompetence and imbecility with
the contempt and ridicule to which it is obviously liable. The
argument can be concentrated into the answers given to two
plain questions, which may be framed in the following terms :
Firstly : What may be the actual and present result in Ireland

1 888.] LITTLE CHILDREN. 443

itself and to the people of Ireland of these long, sad centuries of
English misrule and maladministration? And secondly: If the
result be in any degree commensurate to what we know of our
own personal inquiry and is testified to by intelligent foreigners
and other unprejudiced and independent witnesses, is it an alto-
gether unreasonable or unreasoning demand to make, namely,
that henceforth Ireland should be allowed by England to govern
herself?

An attempt will be made in the next article to estimate some
results of the Saxon's rule of the Celt. ORBY SHIPLEY.

LITTLE CHILDREN.

THESE little children play about my knees,
And, with deep wonder glowing in their eyes,
They ask me questions strange and grave and wise
As were the answers of that other Child
Within the Temple, down the centuries.
Ah! help me, Lord, in what I do with these!
They to my charge were given undefiled :
Though for time's fleeting spaces here exiled,
True heirs are they of all Thine earth and skies,
Secured by Thy Beloved's promises.
If heirs be changed to outlaws 'neath my hand,
Ere Thou requir'st of me my heavy trust,
In what name, Lord, dare I Thy wrath withstand?
Oh ! ere they change may I be cold in dust !

MARGARET H. LAWLESS.

444 ELECTRIC MOTORS. [July,

ELECTRIC MOTORS.

THE electro-motor, or electric motor as it is commonly
called, is a dynamo reversed or worked backward. What is a
dynamo ?

The life of the telegraph depends on the principle that a cur-
rent of electricity passing along a wire coiled about a soft iron
bar produces magnetism in the bar during the passage of the
current. The bar becomes a temporary magnet. This tem-
porary magnet is also called an electro-magnet. When the
current ceases, the bar discharges its magnetism and is no longer
a magnet.

Faraday discovered, in 1831, that a permanent magnet can in-
duce electricity in a coil of wire. When the pole of the magnet
is inserted in the coil an electric current is induced therein at
the instant of insertion. The existence of this current is but
momentary, and as long as the magnet remains stationary in the
coil there is no more evidence of electrical excitement. But
when the magnet is withdrawn another current is induced in the
coil in a direction opposite to the first. If an electro-magnet of
the shape of a horseshoe be rapidly revolved on an axis in front
of the poles of a steel horseshoe magnet, a series of induced cur-
rents will be generated in the coil of the electro-magnet ; for,
when the poles of the electro-magnet come just opposite those
of the steel magnet, the electro-magnet will be magnetized, and
induce a current in its coil or helix. When the poles are sepa-
rated by the whirl of Jhe electro-magnet the magnetism is dis-
charged, and a current, in a direction opposite to the previous
one, is thereby induced in the helix. Thus in every turn of the
electro-magnet there are four induced currents, two in one di-
rection and two in the opposite.

By constructing a machine in such a way that an electro-
magnet may be speedily revolved in the vicinity of the poles of
a fixed steel magnet, with the addition to the axis of the electro-
magnet of a commutator, or a break-piece composed of alternate
ribs of copper and ivory or boxwood, continuous currents of
electricity in a single direction may be obtained. An instru-
ment of this kind is called a magneto-electric, or dynamo-elec-
tric machine, or simply a dynamo. Dynamo is from the Greek
dvvajai?, power, and is applied to electricity in motion to dis-
tinguish it from that in the static or bound condition. Electro-

1 888.] ELECTRIC MOTORS.

445

magnets are usually provided with an armature, a piece of very
soft iron laid across the poles to complete the circuit and receive
the magnetic force. The electro-magnet of a dynamo is some-
times called its armature.

Saxton, Wilde, Siemens, Wheatstone, Ferranti-Thomson, Ball,
Gramme, and other physicists have given their names to dy-
namos. There are many varieties of the dynamo, but all are
governed by the one principle of magneto-electric induction.

If two dynamos are so combined that the current from the
armature of one may pass into the armature of the other, the
current generated by the motion of one will move the other. A
combination of this kind is an electro-motor. The reversed
dynamo is then an electric motor, and as such is widely used as
a motive force.

The electric motor is now employed as the motive-power in
one hundred and twenty industries, and there are ten thousand
of the motors in operation. Electricians have recently been un-
tiring in their efforts to make the motor available for street-car
propulsion. The first experiment in electric railroading was
conducted by Werner Siemens, at the Berlin Exhibition of 1879.
His electric line was nine hundred yards long and of two feet
gauge. A dynamo placed upon the car imparted motion to the
wheels. A stationary dynamo furnished the current, which was
conveyed to the moving car through a central rail supported
upon insulating blocks of wood, the track-rails serving the pur-
pose of returning the current. The success of this experiment
led to the laying of the Lichterfelde line. Here both rails were
laid on insulating sleepers, so that one served to conduct the
current from the power-house to the car, and the other to com-
plete the circuit. This line was twenty-five hundred yards long,
and was run by two dynamos having together a force the equiv-
alent of twelve horse-power.

The electric railroad in the north of Ireland between Port-
rush and Bush Mills is six miles long. The rails are three feet
apart and are not insulated from the ground, but are joined by
copper staples and form the return circuit, the- current being
conveyed to the cars through a T-iron placed upon short insu-
lated standards.

The Richmond, Va., electric line is twelve miles long, and the
current reaches the car through a conductor overheard. At
Woonsocket, R. L, the overhead system of conduction is in use,
and wires connected with the dynamos are extended eighteen
feet above ground, and joined to the cars by wires which slide

446 ELECTRIC MOTORS. [July,

on the upper wires by means of rolling trolleys. TheFulton
Street electric railroad, in New York City, has the conduit sys-
tem, by which the current is conveyed from the power-house
along a wire conductor placed in a conduit underground. The
conduit system is also used in the Detroit electric line. There
are fifty-eights electric railways in operation or under construc-
tion in the United States. Most of these lines are operated by
the system of overhead wires.

There are two methods of furnishing the current to the motor
in the car. One is where the electricity is conveyed to the car
along a conductor from a stationary dynamo. By the other
method the electricity is carried with the car in storage or
secondary batteries. The conductor by the first method may
be hung some distance above the car, or it may be placed in a
conduit underground, or the rails themselves may be used as
conductors in conjunction with an auxiliary parallel rail.

There is one vital objection to the employment of the con-
ductor in any way. It can never be perfectly insulated, and so
there is a constant ebbing away of the current's strength. And
the longer the conductor and stronger the current, the greater
this ebb. It is like a stream of water flowing over a porous bed.
The stream is continually losing its substance until it is finally
exhausted. Moreover, each of the systems of conduction has
its individual faults. The overhead conductor cannot be used
in cities on account of the inconvenience it offers to general
street traffic. The conduit system, besides its enormous ex-
pense, is almost worthless in wintry weather, and the current
leakage is very great. Again, the underground as well as the
overhead system is open to the same objection as that raised
against the cable: the derangement of the generating system
means the stoppage of the entire line. In overhead and under-
ground systems a high-tension current cannot be used on ac-
count of its danger, and a low-tension current must have a con-
ductor of great size. The rails cannot be used as conductors of
the current until horses are shod with rubber. If the electric
motor ever succeeds as the propeller of the street-car, it must
be through the medium of storage, and unaided by any outside
mechanism.

By the storage of electricity is meant the accumulation of a
quantity of electric energy to be used at our convenience. The
storage of electricity is not the actual gathering-up of the fluid
itself after the manner of the prime conductor. The fluid can
never be stored in this way for the benefit of commerce. When

1 888.] ELECTRIC MOTORS. 447

the spring of a clock is wound up, the energy required to wind
it is stored away to be afterward used in moving the hands of
the clock. So when, by the force of the electric current, we
separate substances that have a great chemical affinity, the force
being removed, these substances combine again, regenerating
the same amount of electricity that was required to part them.

In an ordinary galvanic battery zinc is eaten away and cop-
per deposited. By forcing an electric current back through the
cell the copper will be eaten away and zinc deposited. In this
deposition of zinc energy is stored; for, when the pressure is re-
moved, the affinity of the oxygen for the zinc being free to de-
clare itself, will cause their reunion, and so will generate the
same quantity of electricity that was required for the deposi-
tion. The chemical affinity of the zinc for the oxygen is called
its polarization. The force that separates the zinc from combi-
nation is 1 called the electro-motive force; and the tendency of
the zinc to resist this force, or its polarization, is called its
counter-electro-motive force. Electric storage is the overcom-
ing of the polarization, or counter-electro-motive force.

Gaston Plante made the first storage battery in 1859. ^
consisted of two sheets of lead, about three and a quarter feet
square, rolled in a cylinder with felt between the sheets, and
placed in a jar filled with dilute sulphuric acid. He prepared
his battery for use by driving strong currents of electricity
through it several times in opposite directions. He did this to
make the leaden sheets porous and capable of holding a quantity
of peroxide of lead. When the electric current is driven through
this combination it decomposes the water, sending oxygen to
one plate and hydrogen to the other. The oxygen combines
with the lead, forming peroxide of lead ; and the hydrogen,
reaching the other plate, decomposes any salt of lead it may find
there, precipitates pure lead, or escapes in the form of gas.
After the battery has been charged, if the lead plates be joined
by wire, the oxygen that had been forcibly driven from its com-
bination in the liquid, seeks to recombine, just as a stone lifted
from the ground seeks to return, and the result of this tendency
of the oxygen is to generate an electric current in a direction
opposite to the primary one. This is the current that has been
stored.

Faure improved Planters battery by the addition of a new
process that greatly reduced the time required in the charging.
He coated the lead plates with a mixture of red-lead and sul-
phuric acid. The labors of Sellon, Volckmar, Brush, Sutton,

448 ELECTRIC MOTORS. [July,

and others rendered the storage battery still more available for
practical purposes. We have storage batteries of many varie-
ties, but in all electricity is transformed into chemical energy
and chemical energy reconverted into electricity.

The storage system, though improving constantly, has still
many grave imperfections. The chemical charge in the battery
deteriorates quite rapidly. It is hoped, however, that this de-
fect can be remedied. The storage battery, besides, is expensive,
on account of the number of transformations required in con-
veying the energy from the coal to the car-wheels. There are
five of these transformations : the mechanical energy developed
by the steam-engine from burning coal ; the conversion of
mechanical into electrical energy in the dynamo ; the conver-
sion of electrical into chemical energy in the storage battery ;
the reconversion of chemical into electrical energy ; and the
final transformation of electrical into mechanical work by the
electric motor. Omitting the loss of the production of steam
from coal, only thirty-five per cent, of the energy invested in the
steam-engine is available through storage in revolving the
wheels. It must be said, however, that invention in this regard
is making progress daily.

The weight of the batteries or accumulators is another item
that must be placed on the debtor side of storage. Cars of the
size of the usual two-horse cars are provided with 80 storage
cells weighing about forty pounds apiece. These cells are
placed under the seats, one-half on each side of the car. Each
car must also carry an additional 800 pounds for two electric
motors of five horse-power each, and 200 pounds must be allow-
ed for apparatus to regulate the current and control the car
This is a total weight of 4,200 pounds to be borne by each car.
The hardship arising from this burden may, however, in a great
measure be obviated by the use of eight wheels on two swinging
trucks, which will distribute the weight upon the track.

William Wharton, Jr., gives a table showing the relative cost
of operating a street railroad by horse traction and electric pro-
pulsion. He assumes that three electric-cars, because of the
greater speed, will perform the duty of four horse-cars.

He then makes the following comparison:

" Running expenses of four two-horse cars for one year, to wit :

Conductors, 365 days, at $3 each car, per day of 16 hours $4,380 oo

Drivers, 365 days, at $2.50 each car, per day of 16 hours 3,650 oo

Thirty-six horses, 365 days, at 50 cents each per day. . . * 6,570 oo

14,600 oo

1 888.] ELECTRIC MOTORS. 449

One year's deterioration and repair of four cars, at $200 each $800 oo

One year's deterioration of thirty-six horses, at $40 each 1,440 oo

Total 16,840 oo

Running expenses of three storage-battery cars for one year, to wit :

Conductors, 365 days, at $3 each car, per day of 16 hours 3,285 oo

Drivers, 365 days, at $2.50 each car, per day of 16 hours 2,737 50

Electricity, 365 days, at $2 each car, per day of 16 hours 2,190 oo

Total 8,212 50

One year's deterioration and repairs of three cars, including

dynamo, storage batteries, and motors, $1,600 each 4,800 oo

Total 13,012 50

This leaves a balance to the credit of the storage-battery cars

of 3,827 50."

Mr. Wharton states that the percentage of the steam-engine's
mechanical energy recovered in actual work in electric motors
is 40 with the storage battery and 50 by direct conduction. " In
cable traction," he says, " not more than 25 per cent, is recover,
ed of the invested energy."

A popular complaint against storage-battery cars still to be
mentioned is the magnetizing of the timepieces of the passen-
gers. This, doubtless, will be remedied.

With all its present faults electricians strongly hope that the
storage battery will yet furnish the motive force for the propul-
sion of the future street-car. A good system of storage would
indeed be invaluable in street railroading, and electricians every-
where are strenuously endeavoring to make the accumulator
less heavy, less costly, and less wasteful of the primary current.

MARTIN S. BRENNAN.

Church of Si. Thomas of Aquin, St. Louis, Mo.

VOL. XLVII. 29

45 MEXICAN JOURNALISM. [July,

MEXICAN JOURNALISM.*

IN considering the Mexican press it will be sufficient to no-
tice the journals of the City of Mexico ; for though every town
of any importance has its paper or papers, the contents, as a rule,
have none but a local interest, the text of new laws, matters of
local import, and, to fill up their columns, selections from the
periodicals of the capital.

Perhaps the leading daily paper in Mexico is the Monitor Re-
publicano, now in its thirty-eighth year. It always has an edito-
rial, and latterly it has warmly espoused the cause of liberty of
the press. The most interesting of its columns are those given
to its foreign correspondents ; in fact, an American gentleman
long resident in Mexico lately said to me : " The Monitor is the
best of the Mexican papers ; it often has a letter from Castelar."
The whole Mexican press has of late devoted much space to
colonization in Lower California, and an interesting series of
papers on this subject appears in the Monitor. In a copy now
before me the writer combats the position of those who allege
that foreign colonization is to be deprecated as tending to seces-
sion, instancing the case of Texas. The writer of the paper un-
dertakes to show, alleging facts to support his contention, that
bona-fide, industrious emigrants proved useful, law-abiding citi-
zens there, the danger having resulted from filibusters, outlaws,

* The writer of this interesting series of articles on Mexico begs the insertion of the follow-
ing in explanation of a previous article :

" One of the handsomest buildings in Monterey is the bank of Patricio Milmo, who besides
banking has various important interests in this portion of Mexico. The coal employed on the
railway is from his mines. During the last year he successfully raised a large crop of cotton
almost a new industry hereabouts and his handsome property near Lampa/os, ' La Mesa de los
Cartujanos,' or The Tableland of the Carthusians, we alluded to in a former paper ; its name to
the contrary, it seems that this place never was church property. The American author of a
book on Mexico published some years ago speaks of it as formerly a possession of the Carmelites,
but neither Carmelites nor Carthusians ever held it ; so whence it obtained its monastic designa-
tion is a mystery. The connection of the Milmo family with Mexico is highly interesting, and
commenced over a hundred years ago by the arrival in the country of some of their relatives,
who were members of the glorious family of St. Ignatius Loyola. An uncle of the present Mr.
Milmo came to Mexico seventy years ago, and, after thirty years of active commercial life in the
country, died and was buried at Monterey. Mr. Patricio Milmo forty years ago joined his uncle
and elder brother, and after two years spent in the house of Davis & Co. at San Luis Potosi, to
perfect his Spanish, returned to Monterey, where, since the death of his brother in 1853, he has
been sole representative of the house. Eight other members of the family have made their
mark in Mexico as merchants and bankers, and these highly interesting facts, for which we are
indebted to the courtesy of a member of the family, may, of course, be relied on as possessing
higher accuracy than the current gossip of the frontier by which we amongst others have been
somewhat misled."

1 88 8.] MEXICAN Jo URNALISM. 45 1

buccaneers, et omne hoc genus, who by far outnumbered the for-
mer class. Then follow a few telegrams from European capi-
tals, items of news from the United States and the various Cen-
tral American republics, and gleanings from Mexican provincial
towns. The subject of fibrous plants is one just now occupying
much space in Mexican papers. These magueys, lechuguiilas,
and other varieties of the aloe family flourish marvellously in
the driest parts of the land, requiring little or no attention;
no particular skill or capital either is needed in the collection
or preparation of the fibre, which is of remarkable toughness
and of excellent quality. So it would seem to be one of the
chief natural sources of wealth of the Republic.

El Sieglo Diez y Nueve the Nineteenth Century has perhaps
an importance equal to that of El Monitor Republicano ; it is ten
years older, and of the same size, a four-page sheet. We take up
a number at random ; the editorial is on the re-election of gov-
ernors, which has lately been legalized. The writer contends
that to re-elect good governors is a duty, but to refuse the
suffrage to bad ones is also a necessity. Specimens of either
class are instanced, and the country urged to do its duty. All
well enough this, but somewhat elementary teaching. A frivo-
lous story is then told of a certain Sir WilHam Draggs. He
hired a cab, drove down to the Brighton beach, and told the
driver to wait for him there. The baronet then stepped into
his boat, which put him aboard his yacht, and went around the
world in her. The voyage of many months at length concluded,
Sir William stepped on shore, and the first person he met was
the cabman. "All right," said he; "what do I owe you?"
" 600," was the reply ; on which a pocketbook was produced
and the crackling notes duly handed to the driver. "Now
drive me to the hotel," said Draggs, stepping into the fly.
Arrived at the hostelry, he was entering when the driver
stopped him. "How now?" "I want my fare." " Right !
said Sir William, and he hartded the man two shillings. So by
the aid of similar trivialities, telegrams, foreign letters,. and clip-
pings from contemporaries, they manage to fill up a sheet a day.
In the next number we take up the editorial itself is borrowed,
so that day the editor evidently enjoyed a holiday.

To El Correo de las Doceor the Noonday Courier,^ it
self at the head of the column which it gives in English J
remarks apply as those made on the journals already
ed. It is especially vigorous in ventilating clerical \
"A Mormon Badly Defended " and "A Mussulman Cal

45 2 MEXICAN JOURNALISM. [July,

are the headings of two accounts of Puebla clergy which we
will leave unnoticed. But there is a most fabulous sketch of
Ramon Ibarra, cura of the cathedral at Puebla, who died
more than five years ago. He is described as a virtuous and
philanthropic man, a great student of re ligious history, a phre-
nologist, and probably a spiritualist ; an enemy of confession,
" denying to that immoral act the title of sacrament " ; he con-
sidered the Bible " a badly-constructed set of writings " ; " he
believed in the infallibility of nature, and never in the infallibility
of those idiots who oppose reason and battle with common
sense." The fable declares that Father Ibarra was a bosom friend
of his bishop, and was made inspector of the clergy at Puebla,
whom he restrained from exacting excessive dues from their
parishioners. The clergy then accused the bishop and inspector
of being "impious, heretics, Masons, and Protestants," but dis-
cipline was restored after the expulsion from the diocese of
Several canons, curas, and vicars as corrupters of society. " As
cura of the cathedral he always dissuaded silly people from
seeking confessors in the temple or from calling them to the
bedsides of dying persons. He told them to confess to God and
not to men. " He was finally attacked with a sudden illness
which he recognized as mortal ; he secured himself in his room
with locks and bars, and the clergy were unable to get at him,
Then fifteen priests with two smiths broke into his room, to the
scandal of the city ; " but when they got in to devour their vic-
tim they met with a corpse, which could not confess, and which
seemed to smile sarcastically at a life embittered to him by re-
ligious mummers." The vicars and sacristans reported through
the city that Ibarra had died unshriven and impenitent, and
"was already below, dancing with devils over the flames."
Next week the old women gossipped that ' the soul of Ibarra
had appeared at midnight, darting fire from the eyes and seek-
ing confession," the result being to bring several rich old men
to confession, who obtained absolution in consideration of an
eighth of their property given to the Holy Church, which had
to sustain . . ., but here we will pause. Be it known that El
Correo has perhaps as wide a circulation as any journal in the
country.

El Pabellon Nacional the National Flag is another anti-
Catholic paper. El Diario del Hogar, on the Byron centenary
celebration, has the following: " It occurs to us that on the
night of the said 22d one of Lord Byron's plays should be
placed on the stage at one of our largest theatres, and that our

1 888.] MEXICAN Jo URN A LI SM. 45 3

poets and writers should chant the literary glories of the admir-
able author of 'Hamlet: " El Partido Liberal attacks the clergy for
opposing the laws of reform and embarrassing the government.
Several Protestant papers are published in the City of
Mexico by the various American missions there established ;
they are the only illustrated journals to be found in the country,
and, as regards type, paper, and general get-up, far surpass all
the rest. The best of them is El Abogado Christiano, or the Chris-
tian Advocate, a bi-monthly, costing six cents a number or a
dollar a year. It consists of eight pages of large size, and only
one of these is devoted to notices and advertisements. That for
the 1 5th of December last has naturally a Christmas character,
and contains two well-executed engravings, one of the Adoration
of the Shepherds, and another of the Magi on their camels, jour-
neying through a sandy waste star-guided to Bethlehem. Three
Nativity hymns, and short articles on "The Birth of a King"
and " The Adoration of the Magi," accompany and explain the
engravings, and not without cause. We were lately showing
some photographs collected during European travel to a Mexi-
can lady of good family, when we came to one of Rome.
" Ah ! " said she, " that is where Christ was born, is it not?"
Under the head of correspondence we find a letter from a Pro-
testant missionary, called William H. Gulick, written at San Se-
bastian, in Spain ; it relates to the North American Missionary
Society in the Caroline Islands. The correspondence section is
followed by a couple of columns concluding a series of papers
translated from the English and dealing with Hebrew literature ;
brief notices are given of ancient Spanish Hebrew manuscripts
of the Old Testament, and of the earliest printed editions which
appeared in Italy in the fifteenth century. After this comes the
conclusion of a tale of Mexican Protestant missions, notices of
the examination exercises at the Protestant Theological College
at Puebla, and various pious fragments. Then an account is
given of the arrival by train in the City of Mexico of twenty-
five poor, forlorn-looking Indians of Southern Mexico who, some
months ago, put to death certain Protestants at Aguacatitlan ;
the writer urges that an effort should be made to obtain the par-
don of these peons and bring to justice rather the priest who,
he alleges, excited their zeal, and the judge who took no meas-
ures to restrain it. But the magazine must not be permitted to
die of dulness ; a little spice must be introduced ; moreover Pro-
testantism in Mexico must be aggressive or nothing. So the
editor treats us to sundry gibes at Catholics and their practices,

454 MEXICAN Jo URN A LI SM. [ J u ly ,

real or supposed. Thus his indignation waxes hot on hearing
that a million dollars will be presented to the Pope at his Jubi-
lee, and he pities the poverty-stricken flock fleeced to so enor-
mous an extent. Let us see: a million dollars amongst two hun-
dred million Catholics half a cent per head ; and where would
El Abogado Ckristiano, its editor, and the Protestant missionaries
be if their friends in the United States were not " fleeced " ? Not
in Mexico, we imagine. El Faro, or the Beacon, the Mexican
Presbyterian bi-monthly, is similar to El Abogado, of the same
size and price, and beautifully illustrated. In the issue of De-
cember 15 there is a charming scene of country-life in winter,
with a well-written column of descriptive matter ; three pleasing
engravings illustrate a paper on the water-supply of Paris, and a
picture of the Scriptorium of a monastery forms a text for a
dissertation on ancient illuminated manuscripts. The editorial
is suggested by some remarks in October's North American
Review by Cardinal Gibbons in which he deals severely with
those who neglect the due observance of the Lord's Day, stigma-
tizing them as men who seek the complete extirpation of Chris-
tianity ; and the writer asks why the Mexican priesthood do not
express similar sentiments, and why, after three hundred years
of their domination (?), Sunday labor is the rule in the country.
By the way, in a land where Saturday is " Sabado," the Presby-
terians cannot follow their custom of calling Sunday " the Sab-
bath/' so they must needs speak of it as " Domingo," or the Lord's
Day, like other people. Great part of each of these Mexican
Protestant papers is occupied with insistence on the duty of ob-
serving the day of rest, and a good thing it is that some one is
found to call attention to the matter. Bull-fighting is also a
giant that they continually assault, and in this they will find more
sympathizers abroad than in Mexico. We also see a very silly
article on the Keys of Peter. Then comes one of a series of pa-
pers on Juarez, the Mexican President ; for part of the rdle of
the Mexican Protestant papers is to pose as Mexican patriotic
organs, albeit they are purely exotics. There is a summary of
foreign news, a children's section, and notes of Protestant mis-
sions in various countries. The Methodists have a paper similar
to, but less pretentious than, El Faro and El Abogado ; it is con-
ducted on the same lines and does not call for any especial no-
tice ; it is styled El Evangelista Mexicano.

The leading anti-church organ is El Combate, a weekly of one
sheet, and the title is certainly pugnacious enough. The editing
of this journal cannot be a very arduous undertaking ; in the

1 888.] MEXICAN JOURNALISM.. 455

number now before me great part of the very limited space,
seven columns, is devoted to an account of a dinner given to a
certain general, and we are treated to a list of all the guests,
occupying nearly a full column, and a complete catalogue of the
viands and wines on which they regaled themselves; besides his
own account of the feast our editor gives us no less than four
other full and particular notices of the event borrowed from
other journals so part of the furniture of El Combate office must
be a huge pair of scissors and a large pot of paste. The strong
point of the general appears to be that he is a priest " off duty,"
and that liberty is his religion. Let us hope that his example
may produce results ; Mexico would survive an accession of de-
votion to duty, and of liberty also. There is a dolorous wail
over the accession to power of the clerical party in the United
States of Colombia, and a forcible criticism of the action of the
Papacy in the middle ages in respect of crusades, jubilees, and
indulgences. Beyond these we find little to notice in El
Combate.

La Cruz Templaria is the leading Masonic organ. It consists
of a huge sheet, but the simple announcement that Citizen Por-
firio Diaz is this paper's candidate for the Presidency of the
Republic at the next election occupies the whole of the first
page, and the major part of the remaining space is occupied
with politics and political clubs, two whole columns being de-
voted to a list of names ; so there is little room left for anything
of interest. Some verses on charity occupy two columns. There
is a paper on the reconquest of Jerusalem by the soldiers of the
Temple. Saladin and the Moslem power, with its simple alter-
native of the prophet or death, is no longer the foe. Now the
Jerusalem of progress and liberty is defended and held against
the Templars (i.e., Freemasons) other ammunition having been
expended by bulls, encyclicals, pastorals, excommunications,
and other such, which, the editor affirms, for ages have moul-
dered in the pontifical vaults, and which, on contact with the
upper air of the present century, like Egyptian mummies, crum-
ble into dust. This paper is high-flown, unreal, "aims at nothing
and hits it." Another article defends the Templars' counter-
sign or secret pledge by quoting from the Apocalypse : " To him
that overcomes I will give a white stone with a new name on it
which no one but he who receives it can read "; and concludes
by an exhortation to hold fast the symbol of the glorious eman-
cipation which has slain tyrannies over body and soul in the per-
son of Christ.

456 MEXICAN JOURNALISM. [July*

La Defensa Catdlica is a bi-weekly of a religious character
devoted to the interests of the Latin race in America. It con-
sists of the usual single sheet, the last page being filled with
notices, leaving twelve columns for news; of this the editor
supplies one-fourth part and exchanges the rest. What a nice
quiet post that of a Mexican editor would be that is, in a gene-
ral way ; but he must exercise judgment in wielding his scissors.
Of late one of the fraternity published something from the New
Orleans Picayune held to be uncomplimentary to Mexico, and he
was forthwith provided with board and lodging at government
expense. However, La Defensa Catdlica gives us plenty of read-
able extracts from European papers, the latest telegrams, and
letters from foreign correspondents. We have read the editorial
on the old year, 1887, in the number of 2Qth December. Not
one single event of the departing year is referred to; the article
is nothing but a thoroughly spiteful invective against society, its
aspirations and its efforts. There is also a notice of the death
of a bishop and a long account of a bull-fight. When the editor
fills all his twelve disposable columns, instead of only nine, with
extracts from his contemporaries, he will perhaps succeed in
presenting us with a readable journal.

La Voz de Mexico, which appears daily, is of a different charac-
ter from the journal we have just considered. The editorials
are written by a man who, having some argument and erudition
at command, has no need for waspish invective. The leaders
on Catholicism and Authority, which appeared respectively on
the 2/th and 28th of December last, are temperate, able, and well
worthy of perusal. There is a news-letter in one of these is-
sues, from a Roman correspondent, telling of the Papal Jubilee,
pilgrimages and offerings, with other noteworthy matters at
Rome ; and one from London, on the state of religious thought
in England, in the other. A clergyman contributes a series of
papers on the apparition of the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe,
the national patroness, at Tepeyacatl to the poor Indian. The
cablegrams from foreign countries are ample ; there is plenty of
news from various parts of Mexico, also scientific and commer-
cial information and a sufficiency of instructive matter. Alto-
gether it is a creditable paper, with something to say for itself.

El Tiempo is another Catholic daily, inferior to La Voz but
possessed of good store of "zeal." These religious journals
have a grand work before them if they could only rise to the
occasion, but they seem to us Catholics of higher latitudes to
prefer to sempiternally chant the somewhat wearisome paean of

1888.]

MEXICAN JOURNALISM.

457

joy, ''The people of the Lord are we." When an individual, a
nation, or a church folds its hands complacently and sits down
entirely satisfied with its present position and its past achieve-
ments, it is in a bad way. As to their opponents, Protestant,
Liberal, or Masonic, we fear that they would gladly call down fire
from heaven to consume them, as Elias did the captains and their
fifties, or draw the sword to cut off their ears, unmindful of our
Lord's admonition to the apostle. Fortunately their power for
good is much greater than their power for mischief, which is
limited to the usual resources of pugnacious journalism making
grimaces and hurling adjectives ; we have yet to learn that con-
verts are likely to be made by these means. Meantime they
leave the Protestant press to enforce the teaching of the Council
of Baltimore and of Cardinal Gibbons on the Sunday question.
The people after Mass on Sundays and festivals often enough
resort to the bull-ring to see noble animals tortured by darts
and lances, and blindfolded horses disembowelled. There is a
knightly sport called gander-pulling (known also, we believe,
in parts of the United States). A live goose is suspended head
downwards, tied by its feet, and mounted men ride by it at full
gallop, trying as they pass to tear the neck from the body.
Here are some out of many giants for an editor to tilt at, if not
in an apostolic spirit, at least in that of Charles Dickens. He
could readily fill the whole of his columns and do a work in his
generation.

The Mexican Financier and El Economist a Mexicano are
well-conducted weekly commercial publications, type, paper,
and reading matter all first-rate. The former is well supplied
with illustrated advertisements in Spanish, but the rest of the
paper gives all the articles and information in both English and
Spanish, in parallel columns. It runs to about forty pages
weekly, is very complete, and is essential to every one having
business in or with Mexico.

The Economista, though not so ambitious in some respects as
the latter, being content with the language of the country and
having no advertising columns, is an ably-managed publication.
We noticed lately a carefully written series of papers on the
mortality of Mexico, which is far higher than it would be were
sanitary laws properly observed. In the capital nearly half the
total death-rate is of children below five years of age, and the an-
nual mortality in the city is about five per cent, or more than four
times what it should be. However, after being long under dis-
cussion, it seems that the drainage of the place is soon to be com-

458 MEXICAN JOURNALISM. [July,

menced ; it will be a costly operation, but to banish such appall-
ing- figures no price can be judged too great.

La Convention Radical is an extreme journal, as its name ex-
presses ; La Tribuna is a weekly recently established ; Las Noti-
cias, El Municipio Libre, La Patria de Mexico, and some others,
call for no particular remarks. Le Trait d* Union is a French
paper, and naturally is chic and readable. La Voz de Espaiia and
La Nueva Iberia represent Spain. The Two Republics, edited by a
Mr. Clarke, gives daily a list of the chief sights in the City of
Mexico and neighborhood for the benefit of visitors, for whom
it is evidently, in great part, issued. There is also a German
paper, no doubt well conducted, but which I blush to say I
have not the scholarship to peruse.

In the foregoing notice of the Mexican press I have
thought it best to follow the example of that press itself and
avail myself of the wisdom (or otherwise) of journals of every
class, so that my readers (if any one has possessed the persever-
ance to plod through this dreary desert of extract), may draw
their own conclusions. It will be observed that, with the ex-
ception of the Protestant papers, there are no illustrated peri-
odicals and no Pucks or Punches for how could so sedate a
people evolve a perennial flow of humor? that the papers are
of scant dimensions and for the most part of still scantier
interest. There are over thirty in the capital, and, by the
wholesale system of borrowing which prevails, it would be as
easy to produce three hundred, provided they could find sup-
porters ; but a dozen would surely meet every requirement.
As railway extension and the consequent development of trade
and production advance, editors will probably find more mat-
ter to record and to comment upon.

CHARLES E. HODSON.

1 888.] ALANO. 459

ALANO.

TADEO opened the door of his adobe cabin, went to the mid-
dle of the road, shaded his eyes with one hand, and looked down
the valley. At a long distance was to be seen a cluster of adobe
buildings, their whitewashed walls gleaming purely in the sun-
light ; the acequia wound, a liquid yellow line, from the hills, now
hidden by a group of pinons, now like a sheet of glass in the sun
as it followed the road to the cluster of houses called La Junta.
A burro loaded with firewood went slowly down the road, its
master, on another burro, following behind.

Tadeo looked for some moments in the direction of La Junta,
then blinked at the sky, heaved a sigh of resignation, and went
back to his cabin, closing the door tightly after him. It was a
cold day in December, and Tadeo had a heap of pine-wood crack-
ling merrily in the fire-place, as they shot up their forked flames.

The cabin had a clean-swept earthen floor, hard as a rock,
yellow earthen walls, and the unhewn beams above were of a
rich amber brown. In one corner was Tadeo's bed, scrupulously
neat and white; in another a deal table with plates, knives, and
bowls on it, two of each. There were two wooden chairs before
the fire-place, and above the table was an open cupboard. A
tawdry picture of our Lady of Sorrows hung over the bed against
the wall. At the foot of the bed was a door leading to the one
other room of the cabin.

Having filled the coffee-pot from the earthen water-jar on
the floor, Tadeo raked some hot embers to the front of the fire-
place, and set the pot on to boil. Satisfying himself that it
rested steadily on its bottom, he sat down on the floor, leaned
against the wall, and rolled himself a cigarito.

No one ever liked a smoke better than Tadeo, but somehow,
to-day, he did not enjoy his cigarito. With an extravagance he
had never before been guilty of, the cigarito, half-smoked, was
thrown into the fire. Wondering what time it could be, he went
outside to look Tadeo's time-piece being hung in the sky ; its
greatest merit, in his eyes, that it never went wrong like the
padre's clocks, or the gold watch of Don Domingo. Instead of
looking up for the time, Tadeo went, as before, to the middle of
the road to look down the valley, this time to see what he had
been expecting: A wagon, drawn by a pair of mules, emerging
from the piiion-trees just outside La Junta, in that rare atmos-

460 ALANO. [July*

phere, though far off, appeared to be near. Tadeo clapped
together his hands, and uttered a shout of joy.

Now, the road gave a sudden twist by Tadeo's house, and as
he clapped his hands and shouted, a horse turning the angle
shied, and would have thrown its rider had his seat not been
firm, his wits collected a little man with a kind, gentle face,
the setting for a pair of cheery black eyes ; his cassock, to leave
his legs free, tied up about his waist.

The look of joy on Tadeo's face left it for a sullen gloom.
Tadeo muttered a good day and moved aside to let the horse-
man pass ; but instead of going on, the rider called out cheerily,
" Buenos dios, Don''

Tadeo liked to be called Don, and this greeting brought
something like a smile to his face.

Encouraged, the horseman continued, " Hace mucho frio"
it is very cold. Not much of a speech, and not well received by
Tadeo.

" Pardon, padre" he said, pride and triumph in the tone of
his voice, " Alano comes to-day ; see " he pointed down the road
to the approaching mules " he is near ; I go to prepare." And
his old limbs bore him strutting into his cabin.

The padre sighed, shook his horse's bridle, and ambled on
through the flickering shadows of the pinon-boughs.

For five years Tadeo had not been friends with Padre Tomas.
Even Tadeo's wife, the Senora And, said Tadeo was to blame.
The couple had a son on whom they doted. A handsome, intel-
ligent young fellow was Alano. The padre promised to send
him to the college at Las Vegas, and Tadeo was overjoyed. He
was very anxious for Alano to be a learned man. Tadeo himself
had pretensions to be learned. Had he not by heart that aston-
ishing work of Vasquez, The Erudition of the Blue, in which a
complete knowledge of the sciences is given in a course of six
days : poetry and rhetoric poetry twenty pages, rhetoric one
on Tuesday ; ancient and modern philosophy in four pages, for
Wednesday, and so on ! A sort of high- school veneer which the
Spaniards, a behind-handed people, did not take to. Ah ! if
Vasquez had come a hundred years later, not to Spain, but to
Columbia!

" I have my ranch," said Tadeo to the padre, " and my sheep,
that bring something; I can help to pay, and I can save for
Alano, that the people say Don to him in truth, not as to me, in
mockery."

Senora Ana had another wish for Alano, a wish she told to

1 888.] ALA NO. 461

no one but God and our Blessed Mother, not even to Padre
Tomas. She would have people call Alano padre.

About this time there came to La Junta, a-hunting, one Ro-
bert Greyson and a friend of his, who, as Ruskin puts it, had been
taught that his father was an ape and his mother a winkle; what
is more, he said he believed it, and, being a professor in a pro-
gressive college, taught his belief to others. He was a very
learned man.

They were liberal of their money rather with Greyson's
money and would have won the hearts of the hospitable people
could they have kept their tongues clean from insulting God's
Church.

Alano was hired to be their guide. Greyson soon discover-
ing the youth's intelligence, won Tadeo's heart by the praise he
gave his son. Tadeo told with pride how Alano was going to
the great college at Las Vegas. Greyson laughed at the " one-
horse affair in Vegas," and, after consulting with his friend, of-
fered to take Tadeo to the college where the professor taught.

Up to this time Las Vegas College, in Tadeo's eyes, had been
one of the seven wonders. Now, without at first consenting to
Greyson's proposition, he himself spoke contemptuously to Ana
of the place to which the padre would send Alano. Ana lis-
tened, and then went to consult with Madrina Pabla as to
whether or not Tadeo was out of his mind.

Alano, when Greyson spoke to him of the college in the East-
ern city, was eager to see it. His father must let him go, and,
indeed, his father was nothing loath. Ana was dead against it,
almost estranging her son on that account. The padre told Ta-
deo very plainly that he was endangering his son's faith and his
own soul. " Are you mad, Tadeo ? " he exclaimed when Tadeo
persisted that Alano should go. The padre pleaded and Ana
pleaded. " Tadeo mio," she sobbed, " the others are all gone to
Paradise ; leave this our son to go as well."

" The padre's notions ; enough of them," commanded Tadeo,
angrily. Nevertheless he stipulated with the professor that
Aldno's faith was not to be meddled with, and was greatly con-
soled by the professor assuring him, truthfully, that religion was
not taught in his college. Soon after Alano went away with the
two hunters.

From that time Tadeo was the padre's bitter foe for five long
years.

Occasionally letters came from Aldno, always telling of his
success. One letter came, after three years, in which he ridi-

462 ALANO. [July,

culed the padre, and spoke slightingly of holy things. Because
of this letter Tadeo was really angry. But he forgot his anger
when he heard Alano had won a golden medal. Ana did not
forget. Seven months passed by before further news came of
Alano a letter asking for money. It was sent fifty dollars,
about which Tadeo said nothing, though he thought much, and
he was not the happier for the thinking. More than a year after
this Alano wrote that he was coming home. He did not write
that he had been expelled from the college. His expulsion was
unjust; he had but brought his learning to a logical conclu-
sion. If his father was an ape and his mother a winkle, he no
better than an animated molecule, without any past to speak of,
and certainly no future, why should he not be the gambler and
tippler he was? There is this to be said, however: Alano had
no business to be found out.

The days of Alano's coming were counted and timed, and
when word came that he was at Fort Union, Ana went with the
mule-team to bring the boy home in triumph. Why the father
did not go he said not. He feared before strangers his son
would be ashamed of him.

The water was boiling when Tadeo returned to the cabin,
and, having made the coffee, he cleared the table, covering it
with a piece of fine linen, which he took from the cupboard.
Then he quickly set out the dinner of Ana's preparing, chili
verdt, cold mutton, tortillas, and dulces, with a bottle of wine. A
cup bearing the legend, " For a good child," in gilt letters,
circled by impossible roses, was placed where Alano was to
sit.

All this done in great haste, Tadeo viewed the result with
beaming eyes. One thing alone did not please him the ugly
cup. He had bought it over at Tipton to grace Aldno's feast.
The pottery bowls and dishes were graceful and artistic in their
simple lines, the vase that held the salad even exquisite. The
cup was vile, and Tadeo's trained eye saw its ugliness.

Meditating whether he had not better remove it, he heard
the beating of hoofs on the road. He did not rush to the door,
as he had pictured to himself he would. He went haltingly. It
was only when he heard the wagon stop before the house that
he opened the door.

The first to get down from the wagon was a woman, whose
face was almost hidden in the soft folds of the black shawl she
wore Mexican-wise, as a head-covering. This was Senora And.
She brushed by Tadeo, entering the hut without a word, Tadeo

1 888.] ALA NO. 463

too intent on watching the young man, now climbing down from
the wagon, to notice his wife's strange behavior.

No doubt a handsome young fellow, foppishly arrayed. Ta-
deo, standing at the door, eyed him reverently. Is this his son?
If the padre were but here to witness Tadeo's triumph !

All this time Alano had not noticed his father. The neigh-
bor, Pabla's husband, who drove the mules, handed him a little
leather satchel, and he turned about.

" Hijo mio.hijo mio" faltered Tadeo, opening wide his old
arms.

" My son " showed no inclination to be embraced, and, utter-
ing a cold greeting, held out a hand which Tadeo took. Not
knowing what to do with it, he let it fall, and with it two big
tears.

Alano entered the cabin, and, having looked on what was so
familiar to him, shuddered.

Not attributing the shudder to its right cause, Tadeo said,
apologetically, " El fuego esta malo " The fire is bad and piled
on the resinous pine.

Ana had gone to the one other room of the cabin. Perceiv-
ing her absence, Alano turned to his father and said : " The fire
is good. You look as always, father ; you have not changed."

He spoke with a heartiness he did not at all feel, but poor
Tadeo did not perceive this ; he was only too glad of any mor-
sel of comfort this vulgarly elegant young man chose to offer
him.

He laughed, and, rubbing his hands together, said: " You
have changed, my Alano ; you are grand in the highest."

Alano muttered something in English about " hog-wash,"
and asked in Spanish if there was something to eat ; he was
starved.

With much pride in his arrangement, Tadeo pointed to the
table ; then called aloud for And. She came from the inner
room, and now her head was undraped, the shawl fallen about
her shoulders, Tadeo saw what he had never seen before no,
not even when the little ones had been put into their beds in the
Campo Santo a dolorous look of despair gazing out of a pair
of eyes holding that look subject to another of settled, stern re-
solve.

" You are ill, Ana? " stammered Tadeo.

She shrugged her shoulders slightly.

" Our son you will not sit at table what is it, Ana ?
Tadeo, angry that his wife should be so dolorous, and con-

464 ALANO. [July,

firm the misery he felt in his heart, when they should be so
glad.

Alaao was eating and drinking, not minding this conflict for
it was a conflict between his parents.

Ana advanced towards the door, paused before Alano, saying
clearly in English, " Little sir, if to eat there be wanting, tell to
him." She pointed to her husband, drew her shawl about her
head, and left the house, unmindful of Alano, with livid face,
springing to his feet and staring at her in confusion.

" What is it, Alano? what is it?" cried Tadeo, who under-
stood not a word of what he called American.

" Where did she learn English ? " demanded Alano.

" Is that to frighten you, my Alano ? " said Tadeo, with an
uneasy laugh. " For a long time she studied it, the Madrina
Pabla to instruct her, so that when you came to her, if, as might
have been, your sweet tongue were forgotten, the mother might
speak with her son. But your mother, what is it, Alano ? She
is troubled."

Alano said that he did not know perhaps she was not well ;
he would eat now. She would return and they would ask.

Whilst Alano continued with his meal Tadeo plied him with
questions about the great city he had come from; about his
friend Greyson ; often interrupting himself to utter little excla-
mations of delight that his son was once more with him. To all
Tadeo's questions Alano gave short answers ; to the one about
Greyson he muttered an oath.

Now and again Tadeo would run to the door to look for
And, always 'returning with a puzzled face and a muttered ex-
clamation as to what could have become of the woman.

It was late in the afternoon, and the cabin darkening, Tadeo
lit a pine-torch, sticking it in an iron socket under an opening
in the rafters made for the smoke to escape. The torch illumi-
nated the cabin with a spectral light, rising and falling, blanch-
ing and crimsoning, by fits, the faces of the two men now seated
before the fire-place.

Outside was mournful blowing among the pifion-trees, shak-
ing their plumy tops under the faint light of the stars, just ap-
pearing in the cloudless sky.

Tadeo's cabin boasted no windows, only some panes of glass
built into the adobe walls. And was at one of these panes of
glass, careless of the cold, watching the father and the son
within.

Tadeo was ill at ease. He was worried about And. Why

ALANO.

was she acting so strangely on this the day of her son's return?
He was worried because he felt that'he no longer had a son.
Would it ever be possible for him again to be on familiar terms
with Alano ? He saw his castles blown every which way, falling
about him, and oh ! that he could be buried in their ruins! He
had to stifle a groan of despair that rose to his lips.

Strange to say, all the while these gloomy thoughts
were overcoming Tadeo, Alano was freer, even to fondness,
in his behavior than he had been at any time since reaching
home.

They were talking of Alano's future. " You will want to
live in the grand city," suggested Tadeo.

" Not I," returned Alano ; " I would be a great hacendado
(landowner), as some Americans are."

" In truth?" asked Tadeo; he had detected the false ring in
his son's voice.

"You want me to go away from here?" Alano asserted,
rather than asked.

Tadeo did not answer this; he was thinking. "Alno,"he
said at last it was no longer Alano" mio " do you remember
how, when you went away, I showed to you that I had saved,
and the mother too "here he sighed" four hundred silver
dollars?"

Tadeo, gazing at the fire, did not see the greedy desire in
Alano's eyes. " Yes, father," he said ; " you had them in a box
hidden under the corn-crib, and you said they were good corn
for the horse."

Alano laughed, but his father proceeded gravely : " They are
no longer four hundred ; it is nine hundred now." He paused,
and, still dreamily gazing at the fire, thought of the toiling and
self-denial of Ana and himself to put by so much.

Alano kept a discreet silence ; but his father did not speak,
so, after awhile, he interrogated, " Well, my father?"

Tadeo started in his chair. He was nervous. Never before
had he felt his age. To-day it was as though old Time had
come to claim his own.

" Yes, yes," he repeated, " nine hundred for you, Aldno,
when you repose yourself in your father's house and marry."

Poor old man! In his eyes his nine hundred dollars was a
great fortune, and he thought to buy his son with it, never
doubting that it was magnificent enough for the purpose.

" Do you keep all that money in the corn-crib ? " asked Ala-
no, almost angrily. " Are you not afraid of robbers ? "

VOL. XLVII. 30

466 ALA NO. [July,

Tadeo looked about him and smiled sadly. " Who would
come here to rob? "he asked.

" It is a hole of a place," muttered Alano in English.

" What is it you say, Alano" questioned his father.

" That there are no robbers here, my father," returned Alano.

Alano, as well as his father, was thoughtful now Tadeo star-
ing at the fire with moody eyes, his son with eyes sparkling
with excitement he would suppress. Suddenly Tadeo asked,
" Why is it, Alano, the mother is not with us?"

Alano protested that he did not know. It was very strange ;
he did not understand.

To these protestations Tadeo made no answer. He would
not judge his son till he had spoken with Ana if she would but
return. He did not fear for her safety ; he knew she must have
gone to Pabla, she who had given her the lessons in English.
Ah, that English ! How And had toiled at it, and to what end
if she were always to fly her son as if he were the pest.

" My father," Aldno interrupted these musings to say, " the
mother does not return, and I am tired " He stopped ; his
father was paying no attention to him.

By fits the pine-knot was blanching and crimsoning Tadeo's
face, and in the fitful light Alano saw his father weeping.

He touched the old man gently on the arm. " Father," he
said, " I am tired ; where am I to sleep ? v

" Yes, yes ! " returned Tadeo, quickly. Going to the table,
he took from its drawer a candle, lighting it from the torch's
flame. Then he led the way to the inner room, Alano follow-
ing.

An& had expended much time in the adornment of this room
for Aldno, and it was beautiful in Tadeo's eyes. He now wait-
ed for some expression of astonishment or delight, but Alano
said not a word. It is true he looked about him, taking in at a
glance the print of our Lady of Guadalupe ; a vase holding
paper roses hung beneath it ; the basin and ewer on the table
draped with pink calico ; the square of looking-glass framed
with a piece of the same calico. Yes, he looked at these things,
beautiful in Tadeo's eyes, and, though Tadeo's eyes were old
and the candle dim, he saw the sneer on Aldno's face.

" Good-night, my father," said Alano.

Tadeo did not say good-night, but crept away, closing the
door after him. Crouched in his accustomed place on the floor
beside the fire, his face hidden in has hands, he wept bitterly
though silently.

l888 -] ALANO. 467

The cabin-door opened and And entered, her footstep light.
Kneeling beside her husband, she put an arm about his neck and
rested his grey head on her bosom.

He had not looked up, but he knew it was And. "You
were right, my And," he whispered ; " it is as you did say we
have no son/' Then after a little, " Why is it, my Ana, that
you keep yourself from him ?"

She hesitated before telling him, and when she did speak, it
was with an attempt to palliate her son's guilt. She had found
Alano on the piazza of a tavern near Fort Union, engaged with
some men in card-playing. He had received her coldly and,
unaware of his mother's knowledge of English, had spoken of
her to his companions as a servant of the dona his mother.
" He denied me," said Ana.

Tadeo held And's hands tight within his own. He said no-
thing of Alano ; he did not utter one of the self-reproaches tor-
turing his heart. He only spoke of the neighbor Pabla's hus-
band, who had taken And to Fort Union and back. " I did not
as much as ask him in to feel the fire, and it is cold," he said
sadly. " I go to him now, Ana," he continued ; " I will not be
long."

!< You go to speak of Alano ; he will not remain with us ? "
queried And.

" Yes," said Tadeo, and the two embraced ; Tadeo kissing
Ana on either of her wrinkled cheeks wrinkles that were not
ugly to him.

It was a picture of the sorrowful Mother that hung above
their bed. And Ana, kneeling by the bed, did plead for her
son's soul. Her sorrow was great, but she knew our Mother's
sorrow to have been incomparably greater ; how fit to pity hers !
She prayed with emotion all the stronger for its being subdued,
mingling with the haly names the name of Aldno her beloved,
who had so wounded her heart.

The door of the inner room slowly opened, and in the glim-
mer of the expiring torch could be seen Alano, -still dressed,
hatted, his shoes held in his hand, his satchel strapped across
his shoulder hanging at his side. He looked at his mother, then
at the cabin door, his eye measuring the distance, his brain
reckoning his chances of reaching it without attracting the
kneeling woman's attention.

He waited, not patiently, in fear of his father's return. After
what seemed to him a long while his mother became very still.
Perhaps she had fallen asleep ; at any rate he must risk it ; Tadeo

468 ALANO. [July,

might come in at any moment. His stocking feet were noise-
less on the earthen floor, and he would have gotten away un-
perceived by And had he not stumbled against a water-jar un-
accountably out of its place. The jar gave a lurch, the water
flowing over the ground, Alano standing in the puddle.

Ana slowly raised her head and turned about, still kneeling.
In a moment she took in the meaning of Alano's being there.
" My son, you leave thy father thus ? " she cried ; then, swaying
to and fro, fell lengthwise on the ground. She was very old,
had worked hard for him, her son, and under how many shocks
she had borne up bravely that day !

With difficulty, and cursing his mishap, Alano got on his
shoes. He hoped his mother would not recover from her
swoon if swoon it was, not death till he was safely away.
When once outside the hut, he looked down the road, then up
the road around the corner. No one was in sight. It was very
quiet, for the wind was stilled, the bright and frosty starlight
seen tremulous above the dark ramage of the pifions.

Alano unhasped the gate of the corral, making his way hastily
to what served for a stable and barn. The entrance was with-
out a door, only a bar across to shut out intruding cattle, or to
keep Tadeo's mustang within. Creeping under the bar, Alano
whispered softly, " Sook, sook, sook," addressing the mustang
as many a time in the years before he had called the cattle and
the horse. There came an answering whinny, and when his eyes
became accustomed to the gloom of the interior, Alano went to
where the saddle and bridle were wont to be. When found,
and the mustang fitted out, Al&no's next proceeding, according
to his plans, was to help himself from the box in the corn-crib.

The corn-crib was in a dark corner ; so, in order the more
easily to find it, Alano took a fusee from a box he carried and
struck a light. It flashed and flared, and^s it did so the corral
gate, which Alano had closed after him, was thrown open, and
some one came running towards the stable.

Grinding out an oath, Alano threw down the fusee, believing
he crushed out the fire. Keeping perfectly still where he was
hidden in the dark, he saw a man, carrying a knotted walking-
stick, standing at the barred entrance.

It was Tadeo. Coming home he had witnessed the blaze of
light in the stable, and straightway the thought of robbers, put
there by Alano, livened in his brain.

He peered into the darkness, his old eyes failing to distin-
guish anything. Alano scarcely breathed.

i888.] AL*NO. 469

. " Who is there ? " called Tadeo.

Aldno did not speak ; all would have been well had not the
fusee, not entirely out, fired a piece of straw, and Tadeo saw the
outline of a man.

In a trice he was under the bar, swinging aloft his knotted
stick. " Ah ! " he cried, " you would rob my son ! "

" It is I, Alano ! "

Too late he had spoken. Tadeo's arm was strong, he was
striking blindly. Down crashed the stick on Al&no's head,
silencing him for ever.

There was light for Tadeo to see his work, had not the cry
of Aldno informed him. The fired straw had lit another, and
that another, and now the stable was in a blaze, the frightened
mustang plunging and pulling at its halter.

" Ay ! ay ! ay ! " moaned the wretched Tadeo, falling on his
knees beside his son, kissing the pale lips, the face lit up with
the flash of the flames.

Who is this, having let down the bar, is pulling at Tadeo, un-
mindful of the roaring fire, the blinding, suffocating smoke, the
crackling of the timbers ! An old woman, her few white locks
of hair about her face, her body shook with a palsy.

" And," said Tadeo, in a smothered voice, " I killed his soul, I
killed his body. Is this hell? You should not be here ; you
wanted him for Paradise."

Only God and his Mother, to whom she prayed without
ceasing, know how she got them out of the stable. They were
barely out when the stable roof fell in with a crash.

There is a poor old man in La Junta whose wits have wan-
dered far, never to return. The people say gently, "The hand
of God is on him." He is content and happy to pass his days
in counting a collection of brass buttons. " Pesos," he will tell
you, " for Aldno in the grand college in the East." Sometimes
he is troubled, and will ask : " There is no God in the grand col-
lege, and, compadre, without God, can he find the way to his
father's house?"

On fine afternoons he goes to the Campo Santo, but he does
not know that the graves a subtile instinct leads him to are
the graves of And and Aldno.

In every city and town of this great country are Tadeos
and Ands with their Aldno, whose Father's house has been
lost because Tadeo or And, or both, would have Aldno reared
in that place where God is not. HAROLD DIJON.

470 THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES. [July,

THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES.

THE Independent of March i has an article, by Rev. Alex-
ander Jackson, which is very interesting. The writer has taken
the pains to find out the number of persons who belong to the
different denominations or profess no religion at all in the cities
of Pittsburgh and Alleghany, and in the county of Alleghany,
Pennsylvania; and as Pittsburgh is a large manufacturing town
a small New York, in fact, resembling it in many respects
we believe that the different figures given by Mr. Jackson will
apply, proportionately, equally well to the larger place. He
gives the following table of membership :

PITTSBURGH ALLEGHANY

AND COUNTY.

ALLEGHANY.

Evangelical (sic) Protestants. 47,838 25,445 73,283

Non-Evangelical . 199 199

Hebrews 2,863 900 3,763

Confucians 150 23 173

Catholics 65,000 22,000 87,000

Total population 300,000 170,000 470,000

The Rev. Mr. Jackson says that in the above reckoning the
number of Catholics, or, as he nicknames them (no doubt inno-
cently), Romanists, in the two cities is estimated by themselves
at 90,000, including young and old, but this he considers an ex-
aggeration, though he gives no reason for his suspicion except
the fact that they were not actually counted. The number of
Evangelical Protestants who are actual church-members is
about 48,000 ; of these, 40,500 are over 21 years old, and if this
number be multiplied by four it will give, he thinks, the total
Protestant population of Pittsburgh and Alleghany, making it
162,000 more than twice the number of Catholics.

We have our doubts about this reckoning. In the first
place, does Mr. Jackson know that it is customary in Catholic
churches to have two, three, and even five morning services, at
each of which an entirely new congregation attends? whereas
in Protestant churches there is generally only one morning
and one evening service, attended mainly by the same persons.
Moreover, Catholics attend church much more sedulously than
Protestants, and so, whereas full seats mean full churches with
the latter, with us things are not regarded as quite up to the
mark unless there is also " a standing army " of some one-third

i888.]

THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES.

more. The Independent, in editorial comment on Mr. Jackson's
figures, considers that the Catholic estimate of 90,000 probably
includes "a large fringe of semi-attached people sliding off into
irreligion." It may indeed include some such, but is it not
notorious that " the semi-attached fringe " of our non-Catholic
friends is much wider and much less attached? If the regular
members, whose names are on the books and who are easily kept
in memory by their pastor, are so remiss in attending church,
notwithstanding all the inducements of comfortable seats, pro-
per temperature, nice people, and nice minister, what sort of
attachment must there be between the Protestant church and the
three-fourths who are not regular members? The truth pro-
bably is that less than 48,000 can be claimed as Protestants, unless,
indeed, you take Protestant in its true negative meaning of
protesters against the Catholic Church authority.

This leads us to what we are mainly interested in, in Mr.
Jackson's article, which is the relation of the classes to Protestant-
ism and to Catholicity. Mr. Jackson, pursuing his statistical
calculations, tells us that fully sixty per cent, of the Protestant
church-membership is made up of capitalists, professional men,
lawyers, physicians, teachers, salaried men, clerks, etc., while
only forty per cent, are workers at manual labor, as mechanics
and laborers, the last being only seventeen and a half per cent.
Of the many thousands of wage-earners in Pittsburgh, but one in
ten is a Protestant church-member. On the other hand, nearly
all the members of the Catholic Church are of the manual-labor
class. So the Independent remarks : " Either the Protestant
denominations should have the credit of training their members
to be thrifty, intelligent, and influential or they attract this class
to them."

Now, the Catholic Church is broad enough to hold all classes,
and there is nothing in Protestantism of a positive character
which is not in Catholicity. Catholicity, for instance, is just as
much opposed to ignorance, prodigality, idleness, intemperance,
impurity, etc., as Protestantism can be, and much more, if we
are to judge by the fact that in the Catholic churches the ser-
mons are nearly always of a character denunciatory of vice
general or local, and it is handled without gloves, without the
least thought of what offence may be taken by worldly people.
Moreover, the preaching is but a small part of the work of the
priest ; and this will account partially for the fact that his ser-
mons are sometimes wanting in the elegance and polish of those
of the minister. He spends hours and hours weekly in the con-

47 2 THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES. [J ul y>

fessional or, to make it more intelligible to Protestants, let us
call it the inquiry room where he talks, and talks in the frankest
possible manner, to high and low equally, as they also frankly
state their real condition to him. The Catholics have also other
means, divinely instituted, of reaching and correcting vice, and
so have the advantage of the Protestants in this matter. It is as
if each one individually had a physician to visit him, feel his
pulse, question him, and prescribe ; whereas our Protestant
friends only attend the medical professor's public lectures. The
late Cardinal McCloskey used to tell a story of how a Protestant
lawyer became a Catholic, his conversion being caused by a
circumstance which, it would appear, ought to foave had the pre-
cisely opposite effect. He and a friend of his happened to drop
into a Catholic church one Sunday morning, out of curiosity
merely. The pastor of the church was a rough diamond of a
school which is now fast disappearing, and he was holding forth
to a crowded congregation, mainly of working people, in no very
choice language either, on their failings in the matter of undue
familiarity between the sexes, vanity and immodesty in dress, etc.
At one time he became so positively abusive that the lawyer and
his friend, although much amused and interested, expected to
see some signs of resentment on the part of the people; but they
saw not the least. The congregation appeared to take it all as a
matter of course, and some of them seemed to hang their heads
with shame, very much as a child does when scolded for his
faults by his parent. When the Mass was over the lawyers
followed the people in the direction of their homes and over-
heard their comments on the sermon. They were all of a lauda-
tory nature. " Father N gave us a good talking to this

morning. God bless him ! More power to him !" etc., etc. It
was evident that they accepted him for their father in God
they understood that he had a mission. The quiet conviction of
the people, and their readiness to accept correction at the hands
of their pastor, thus, in principle at least, putting their vices
under their feet and condemning them a great advance toward
giving them up was a new revelation to the Protestant gentle-
men, who had been accustomed to a different relation between
people and pastor. The one of whom the cardinal spoke, being of
a thoughtful and unselfish disposition, followed the light he had
seen, and finally became a member of that very congregation.
He wanted real religion. He told afterwards another little
story about himself, acknowledging that the old leaven was not
entirely out of him, even after his baptism and reception by

1888.]

THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES.

473

Father N . When on his way to church the Sunday follow-
ing his baptism, his mind was full of the thought of the honor
which he was about to confer on the congregation by his joining
it ; he half-expected that Father N - would be so elated that
he would come a block or so to meet him. Not so, indeed !
When he reached the church-door, in the midst of a crowd of
laborers and servant-girls, the priest happened to be there, just
then giving orders to the ushers. When he saw the convert he
walked up to him and, giving him a warm shake of the hand, he
said : " Let me congratulate you, sir. Come in, sir ! come in, sir !"
And then he let him shift for himself, like anybody else. This
was eye-opener number two, which advanced the convert im-
mensely in his progress to real religion. The idea of Father
N - congratulating him, not the Church of the Poor ! We
were once told by a priest that a neighboring Protestant clergy-
man said to him one day : " I envy you the freedom that you
enjoy to tell your people the truth." The same thing is seen in
the excitement which was lately caused at Trinity by Dr. Dix's
honest and apostolic denunciation of worldly women. From the
way he has been scolded for his frankness one would suppose
that he was in that pulpit for the purpose of tickling their ears
with well-rounded periods, or delighting their eyes with a
handsome face and imposing presence.

All this helps us to see that if two-thirds of the Protestants
of Pittsburgh and Alleghany are of the wealthier or higher
class, it is not because the Protestant Church has made them
any better than their neighbors. The possession of great
wealth does not mean that, and often means the opposite. We
must choose rather the other part of the dilemma of the Indepen-
dent, and say that Protestantism attracts the worldly and holds
others who are not worldly on account of local circumstances
of a temporary nature. The first find Protestantism decidedly
more convenient than Catholicity. As Luther's wife said:
" Protestantism is a good religion to live in, but Catholicity
is the one to die in." Our Lord said : " It is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
into the kingdom of heaven " (Matt. xix. 24). And the king-
dom of heaven in the Gospel means also the church of Christ
on earth. The commentary which, we believe, is now in most
favor and gives a better chance to the rich, tells them that " the
needle's eye" was a name given in Jerusalem to a small gate
intended for use by pedestrians who should arrive at the city
after the great gates were closed. To get a camel through it

474 THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES. [July,

was extremely difficult, and impossible without removing his
load. The load is the surplus wealth of our Protestant friends.

Whatever way it is translated, it is clear that the respectability
which is named from a plethoric purse did not count for much
with our Lord the gate is too small for the loaded camel.
How many will put off the goods ? In order to be saved one
must have his heart detached from worldly things and must
hold virtue in more honor than these. The road to heaven is
easier for him who has them not. The idle dude, the glutton,
the proud and disdainful, the uncharitable, if not born in the
Catholic Church, will not join it. Why should they ? To be
liars and hypocrites also ? The man who is too lazy to rise on
Sunday to go to church, too proud to confess his sins ; the
woman who is too cultured and refined to be told hers, who has
no feeling of sisterhood with the poorer, but, at most, a conde-
scending pity ; whose good works, if she performs any, get
their reward here in the praise of flatterers there is no reason
why she should try to become a bad Catholic; for a good one
she could not become without a complete change of character.
The camel cannot go through this gate. On the other hand,
what is there to prevent him going- through the broad gate
of Protestantism ? All that people need is to pass muster with
Mrs. Grundy ; if she pronounces them respectable, they may
go to church when they like, and there is no danger of inconve-
nience of any kind ; they will be sure to meet no one there who
is not eminently respectable in the worldly sense. In fact, it
will be a pleasure for them to go there, while for the Catholics
it is a duty often disagreeable. The mere fact of any religion
being altogether agreeable is enough to condemn it, since the
essence of religion is sacrifice.

It is, then, natural that the bulk of the Catholics should be in
the humbler walks of life ; it was so in the Lord's time, who had
nothing at all in common with the proud rich, but denounced
them that is, those whose hearts are in their money and honors.
But the day will come when these will change their religion
without changing their hearts that is, after most of the rest are
gathered in and it will be fashionable to be a Catholic. We
once in conversation with the late learned Bishop of Charleston,
in speaking of a magnificent edifice that had just been finished,
made this remark :

" That church is a sign of the progress of Catholicity, and the comple-
tion of such works means the ending of some of our difficulties, the want
of material buildings, etc. But it means also that we are approaching the

!888.] THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES. 475

time when the world will notice us and worldly people will insist on join-
ing us, and the usual result will follow ; they will want to interfere with the
liberty of the pope, of the bishops, and of the priests ; they will commence
the old-time intriguing for ecclesiastical positions, and history will repeat
itself ; the rot will go on till a new upheaval will throw us back again to
begin over again in poverty." " You never said a truer word in your life,' ;
said Bishop Lynch.

Remember France at the time of St. Vincent de Paul. Let
us pray that the spirit of the world be kept out of the church.

The bark of Peter must be tossed and pitched about; it may
not sail tranquilly for any length of time indeed we may say
that it is really least prosperous when least in trouble, foV then
the true test of its happy state, the number of saints and martyrs,
is less numerous. Now let us consider the case of those who
continue humble and good in Protestantism in spite of pros-
perity. There are in this country many plausible reasons why
they do not join the church. There is prejudice of race, for in-
stance. Many of the Catholics here are of Irish nationality, and
these, being a conquered people, are of course at a great disad-
vantage with the descendants of their conquerors, the Anglo-
Saxon Americans. This trouble began on the other side of the
ocean. The English became Protestant, not to improve their
spiritual condition, but to save their temporal, as everybody
knows ; and the Irish, by sacrificing the temporal, gained and
kept what every Christian must think "the better part." The
man who has a sufficiency of food and clothing, and where to lay
his head, and real religion, has no reason at all to envy his rich
neighbor who needs the last great element of happiness ; and
when, as it often happens in this country, the Irish become rich,
those who understand and love them, sometimes do not rejoice
in it, for they soon miss the frank good nature, the deep relig-
ious feeling, and the sublime philosophy that puts honor and
virtue before pelf. Far be it from us to say that there are not
descendants of English Protestants who are charitable and
brotherly to their poorer 'fellow-beings. These are not Protes-
tants from any choice of theirs. They were carried out of the
church by their once Catholic ancestors, and being born out-
side of her pale do not know her. Others are prevented from
recognizing her by the fact of the church appearing to them
foreign and contemptible on account of most of her members
here being of the less prosperous and newly immigrated class.
No doubt when the church first made her appearance in im-
perial Rome many well-intentioned and naturally good pagans
were hindered from learning her real character, and much more

THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES. [July,

from joining her, by the same causes. Imagine St. Peter and St.
Paul and the other Hebrew converts, how much they must have
resembled poor Paddy on his arrival here from the old land !
Noble spirits among the Romans there were who overcame all
these prejudices, but they were few, as such are here now. If
any one had asked at that time why the wealthy and refined
classes of Rome were pagans and remained so, St. Peter could
have answered easily enough. But who would not have laughed
him to scorn if he had prophesied that in a short time all this
would be changed through the divinity of the church and her
divine aptitude for drawing "men of good will" to herself?

Apropos of this, we heard of an excellent Protestant gentle-
man, a real truth-seeker, who, not satisfied with reading the his-
tory of the church as given by her enemies, read also Catholic
histories and magazines. The result was that many of his opin-
ions were changed and he was often in controversy with his old
friends, so that the rumor was spread that he had become a
Catholic. One of them met him and thus accosted him : " Is it

true, Mr. L , that you have turned Irishman ? " The fact is,

they knew nothing of the church except that some of those who
belonged to her paraded the streets on some occasions with
their national and religious emblems. Indeed it may be said
that as yet the bulk of Protestants know only those Catholics
who bring discredit on their church by crime, or by some noisy
demonstration which is not likely to conciliate their respect or
even good will. The best exhibition of Catholicity that they
have witnessed has probably been from those who are in domes-
tic service, who may naturally sometimes give a false impres-
sion of it through their need of instruction in its tenets. As a
rule we believe that their honesty and morality give edification.
The following is a specimen case which really happened, with
untoward results. A servant in a family told the children many
wonderful tales of miracles worked by priests in her own country,
and finally thought she might as well erect it into a dogma " that a
priest could in virtue of his orders, independent of his personal
sanctity, work a miracle when desirable." She proclaimed this
to the family. One of the older boys, being of a sceptical and
daring character, met the Catholic pastor soon after and chal-
lenged him to transform him into a dog on the spot. When he
found that he retained human form he lost all respect for the
Catholic Church. Another told her mistress that she always
gave the priest money in payment for absolution, etc., etc. We
once heard of a town one-quarter of the inhabitants of which

1 888.] THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES. 477

were Catholics, and yet it may be said that only one of them
was well known to the other three-fourths as such. He was not
a bad man by any means ; he was charitable, honest, industrious,
clever, having even a good deal of book-learning ; especially
was he well versed in old-time controversies; but he had a
weakness of a kind that made him renowned in that place. So-
ber every other day of the year, at New Year's he became up-
roariously drunk. He was of a nature that never could do any-
thing except thoroughly ; so, taking off his coat, he issued into
the streets, and marched along proclaiming in a loud voice : " I
am a Roman Catholic ! " He would vociferate in this style for
half an hour in front of some Protestant clergyman's door, and
challenge him to come out and settle all religious controversy
with him on the sidewalk " by apostolic knocks and thumps."
You may imagine that he was the foremost man in the minds of
every Protestant when anything was said about Catholicity.
The other Catholics being for the most part quiet and practi-
cal Christians, although esteemed for their morality, sobriety,
honesty, and kindness of heart, were not known particularly as
" Catholics." Besides most of them were seldom or never met
socially by Protestants.

Another cause why Protestants otherwise well intentioned
are kept out of the church, and even Catholics driven out of it,
is said by themselves to be the despotic manners and ways of
individual clergymen here and there. We hope and believe
these are not numerous, but we heard of one of them who
scarcely knew what he was bound to believe and what was
optional ; and so taking the safe side on every question, he would
tolerate no difference of opinion in his parish. All must agree
with him. The Roman Pontiff is infallible in matters of faith
and morals when teaching the universal church ; this man was
infallible at all times and in everything, and when teaching any-
body. The great deference shown to priests by the Irish peo-
ple was evidently too much for some natures among them.
They regarded what is meant for their sacred office as a tribute
to their personal worth and lorded it accordingly.

A Protestant professor passing through a certain town of

called on such a priest to say that he proposed delivering a lecture
in the town hall in defence of the first chapter of Genesis against
so-called scientific objections, and he would be happy to have him
attend. The priest took out his watch and replied in an excited
tone: "Who gave you authority to explain the Bible? I give
you five minutes to leave the town, sir ! " Only one- fifth of the

478 THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES. [July,

population of that town was Catholic. The priest was a for-
eigner, while the minister was an American of several genera-
tions. It is only fair to explain that the railway station was not
far and could be gained in five minutes without running very
fast. Behold you ! The intelligent American, and even the son
of a foreign peasant who is educated here, cannot be expected to
believe everything in a wholesale manner upon a single man's
word ; he must know the why and the wherefore of things, and
will insist upon enjoying his liberty, where the church allows
him liberty. No man should identify his own personality with
the Church of God, so that any one who differs with him in any-
thing is set down as a heretic or a rebel against authority.

How often are Protestants set down as bigots when they are
bigoted only against the vices and ignorance of those who mis-
represent the church? Good Catholics, well instructed, are
equally bigoted against such folks. When the church is well
represented, you will find very little bigotry in Americans.
There are localities in which it is no wonder that intelligent
Protestants do not come in ; the wonder is rather that more in-
telligent Catholics do not go out. They do fall away in some
places, no doubt. They say nothing ; but they are missed at the
church and at the confessional. Our present venerated Pontiff
has done much to advance the standard of study everywhere in
the church. Following the lead of the Holy Father, the bishops
everywhere are deeply convinced of the necessity of a learned
clergy, and it will not be long before the results of their efforts
will be seen. Meantime, it is only fair to say that, considering
the fact that the clergy of this country have hitherto been so
much occupied in the preliminary work of the building of the
material edifice, and the raising of money necessary for the ma-
terial side of religion, that they have done as well as could be
reasonably expected in their real calling the building up of the
spiritual church. They would not be human if their character
were entirely unaffected by their chief occupation. Take them
all in all they are an excellent body of men, and for hard work-
ers we believe they would take the prize in a contest of nations.

Another cause of the church not being recognized by some
intelligent, well-meaning people is, that they never see a good
Catholic newspaper. When they do happen to stumble across
one they become in some cases disgusted with the womanish twad-
dle, the gushing flattery, and pious falsehood which sometimes
disfigure its columns. The petty, prejudiced, and narrow-
minded way in which every effort of Protestants to extirpate

i888.] THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES. 479

vice or to reform abuses is often met by Catholic journalists is
certainly amazing. If they endeavor to destroy obscene litera-
ture and punish the authors of it, they are held up to ridicule be-
cause they try to do the work of the church, which they do not
know, without consulting her. If, actuated by motives of good
neighborhood and justice, they make friendly advances to meet
the objections of Catholics on various public questions, they are
denounced as proselytizers. Liberalism is no doubt a bad thing,
but so is unchristian Iliiberalism and calumny, were it even di-
rected against Satan himself. The golden mean is what is want-
ed. These drawbacks and others will, of course, be gradually
remedied, and then it will be seen that the true mother of all,
rich and poor, learned and ignorant, who want real religion is
the original church founded by Christ, " the one fold under one
Shepherd."

It is no discredit to her that she is not in favor with the
proud class, from which her Lord himself found no welcome.
There are many of these, no doubt, in the church, in countries
where obstacles like ours do not exist, having been overcome in
past ages; but they are in great part not of her. She, as a
loving mother, tries to humor them by yielding, where she
can, to their foibles and fancies, always with the hope that, by
keeping them at least nominally and theoretically within her
pale, they may the more easily be reconciled to her spirit, or
their children at least may be saved ; but it is clear to her that
their membership is of no benefit to any one but themselves.
Even these, when ready for repentance, must put on the spirit if
not the garb of poverty and sincerity. Madame de Pompadour
may enjoy the polished conversation of some worldly clergy-
man, whose heart is more in her drawing-room than in his
church ; but when death approaches or some visitation of God
makes her serious, she will seek some humble and pious priest,
whose usual work is among the poor and lowly, and look to him
for comfort and religion, knowing well that Christ is more likely
to be found in the tenements than in the palaces. The poor
must always be the nearest to Christ. By the poor we do not
mean those who are in a state of pauperism, but those who either
possess only what is necessary, or who, possessing more, live
modestly and put not their hearts in worldly goods. It would in-
deed be well for the church if the State could lawfully diminish
pauperism. There is no danger of her entirely abolishing it as
long as men will be weak or sinful. There would still be plenty
of room for charity and patience, too.

480 THE CHURCH AND THE CLASSES. [July,

To be so poor that one has not enough to sustain life and
health is not favorable to the salvation of the soul any more than
immense riches. Of course we speak of involuntary pauperism.
There have been and will be saints who, as an evangelical coun-
sel, or to do penance for sin, chastise their bodies and feed
them on bread and water, and often on nothing at all. Saint
Benedict Joseph Labre* was a mere beggar and Saint Louis was
king of France. A man may be a saint in any walk of life, but
as a general rule, and where a high vocation is not in question,
it is as idle to talk to a hungry man about his soul, and perhaps
more so, as to a glutton just risen from his table. We knew a
priest who had spent forty years on the Chinese mission, and he
gave us this piece of advice as the result of his experience :
" Never speak to a man about his soul till you are sure that his
stomach is not entirely empty." Holy Writ itself has it :

" Give me neither beggary, nor riches : give me only the necessaries of
life: lest perhaps being filled I should be tempted to deny, and say : Who
is the Lord ? or being compelled by poverty, I should steal and forswear
the name of my God '' (Proverbs xxx. 7-9).

As the Venerable Bede says (lib. iv. c. 54) :

" There is no precept forbidding the saints to save a little money for
their own or for their neighbors' needs, since even the Lord himself, to
whom angels ministered, had a little treasury ; it is only forbidden to serve
God [that is, to join a church] for the sake of temporal interest, and to
abandon justice for fear of want.''

With Cardinal Manning and every priest who has worked
among the humbler (the highest and best) class of Catholics,
we are not objecting to poverty but to pauperism, not to pan-
pertatem but to cgestatem. He cannot properly be called poor
who has health to labor with head or hand, and work sufficient
to supply his necessities and those of his family, and lay up a lit-
tle for the future.

The great mass of people in every nation must always belong-
to this class. Our Lord himself and all his apostles belonged to it.
The working class, we may say, is the nation. Even the aris-
tocracy so-called must be recruited from it continually or they
die out of enervation. The church, which these masses of
men find suitable and in which they feel at home, must be the
church of the nation sooner or later. The Catholic Church is
the one broad enough to hold them. She gains or loses ground in
proportion as her clergy keep or lose the affectionate attachment
of the people, and no favor of the rich and great will ever sup-

1 388.] THE SPHINX. 481

ply its place. God has left the progress of his church greatly
dependent on the sanctity, ability, and zeal of the clergy. This,
of course, is a variable quantity, while their authority and their
spiritual power of orders is always the same. The more they
conform to Christ in word and act, the more generally will they
be recognized as his representatives and successors by high and
low, and the sooner will his church contain all the people of this
fair land. PATRICK F. McSwEENY.

THE SPHINX.

UPON the hill of Calvary

Mine eyes beheld a mystery:

Of Life and Death the self-same Tree,

Bearing both Joy and Pain :
Death gave it Root,
Life gave it Fruit ;
And from its sap
For all mishap

ball

Men drew their balm and bane.

Lo ! then I saw a wondrous sight :
Death fought with Life a bitter fight ;

One weapon served the twain.
At last Life found a woful death ;
But, yielding up his latest breath,

Through death found life again.

Love thus the strange enigma wrote :
" Behold, the Smiter is the Smote,

The Slayer is the Slain.
Whoso shall die upon that Tree
Finds life ; when vanquished, liberty ;

His loss transformed to gain.
Who of its Fruit of life doth eat
Shall never die. Death comes to meet

The Conqu'ror of his reign.'*

ALFRED YOUNG.

VOL. XLVII. 31

482 THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST." [July,

THE BEER-DRINKERS' "TRUST."

THE tyrannous " Trust," the crushing " Trust," the monopo-
listic " Trust." Away with the " Trust " ! Are you opposed
to all greedy, rapacious " Trusts " ? Why, then, remain a mem-
ber of the Beer " Trust " ? You are not a brewer ! Dear, simple
soul! well we know it. The brewer's only u trust " is a chattel-
mortgage. But, if you are not a member of that all-powerful
corporation, the " Beer-Drinkers' Trust," you are one of a
mighty small minority. And if you are a member, you show a
larger share of confiding, innocent " trust " in beer than is ordi-
narily placed in a merciful Providence.

Let us instruct ourselves with facts and figures. In the de-
based, intemperate days of 1850 the quantity of malt liquors
consumed throughout the length and breadth of our beloved
country was sadly, distressfully small. Imagine, if you can, a
nation so retrogressive that if every man, woman, and child re-
ceived an equal share of beer from the common vat there would
have been but a miserable gallon and a half to assuage each tem-
perate thirst ! Ten years later, in 1860, we had lifted ourselves
well out of the Slough of Despond our allowance per head was
three gallons and a quarter. The ground was firmer now ; we
started off joyously. By 1870 we had nearly quadrupled our
beer ration ; we sobered ourselves at the rate of five and a half
gallons per head. Excelsior ! more beer ! Now made the welkin
ring. Ten years more of patient, toilsome, gratifying effort ; then
1880, and the gladdening word went round : Eight gallons and a
quarter! The present decade promises to be no laggard in the
cause of beer. Our average allowance grows seemingly pro-
portionate to the nutritious foam that fills the diminishing glass.
In 1886 it was a proud year for the sons of temperance we had
doubled our quantum of 1870. Counting even those who drink
milk, whether they will or no, we took our eleven gallons apiece,
and there was a fractional overplus for the bartender. Can the
Prohibition Party show effective results like unto these ? Shall
we halt here and now ? Rather, let us not rest until every mo-
ther's son of us is filled with the temperate beer! until we have
a land flowing with beer, a beer-pipe line distributing the bless-
ings of stimulated sobriety in every family !

The Egyptians seem to have filed the first claim to the
making of beer. Some wise men think that the great pyramids

1 888.] THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST." 483

were built for star-gazing ; others imagine that they merely serv-
ed the purpose of a combination vault and tombstone. After
the archasologists and astronomers and mathematicians and
Bible students have said all they have to say, why not give
the brewers a chance to solve the problem? Where did the
Egyptians cool their beer? There maybe nothing in this sugges-
tion, but there was something good in Egyptian beer. The
Greeks called it barley wine. To the Greeks we are personally
indebted for our philosophy, our drama and art. Our fathers
owed them still another debt of gratitude. From the Greeks
Europe learned the art of brewing barley beer. The Europeans
took kindly to the beverage, especially where the vine was chary
of its juices ; and, among many of the Northern nations, beer
has long been held in high esteem as a valuable condensed food
an agreeable compound of meat and drink. In our fathers'
time the terms "Ale," " Porter," " Beer," "Stout," or " Lager"
meant neither more nor less than " Beer " fermented at varying
temperatures, and clarified naturally by a shorter or longer
after-fermentation. The terms our fathers used we still use
possibly without reason ! M. Pasteur should know what a beer
ought to be. Here is his definition, taken from that very inter-
esting book, Studies on Fermentation : " Beer is an infusion of
germinated barley and hops, which has been caused to ferment
after having been cooled, and which, by means of * settling' and
racking, has ultimately been brought to a high state of clarifica-
tion. It is an alcoholic beverage, vegetable in its origin a bar-
ley wine, as it is sometimes rightly termed." The first requisite
of a good beer is good barley. The next requisite is that the
good barley be properly malted. The process of malting con-
sists in steeping the barley in water, and then in heating the
steeped barley to such a temperature that it will germinate.
When the barley has sufficiently germinated, it is dried at a tem-
perature determined by the color of the liquid the brewer wants.
The higher the temperature the darker the beer. Poor malt
means poor beer. Whatever good there may be in beer is due
above all to the barleyi'malt. The process of malting has effect-
ed a chemical change in the barley. Now a second change is
effected by means of hot water mashing. We have the " infu-
sion " of M. Pasteur's definition. The character of this " infu-
sion "the wort depends largely on the water. Bad water
means bad beer. At the right moment the wort is drawn oft
and hops are added. Boiled with the wort, hops give the beer
its aroma and its bitter flavor, and they help to clarify and to

484 THE BEER-DRINKER* " TRUST" [July,

preserve the beer. Good malt without good hops makes a
poor beer. The wort must now be cooled rapidly. At the
proper temperature yeast is added. Surface fermentation fol-
lows; alcohol and carbonic acid are formed. The beer is now
laid away to cool still further, and to undergo an after-fermenta-
tion, a sedimentary fermentation, which is especially important.
Good barley malt, good water, good hops, a good wort, a proper
surface-fermentation, will not give a good beer, unless the after-
fermentation be thorough. According to the methods employed
in the previous processes, the period of after-fermentation is
necessarily of longer or shorter duration. Lager-beer, as its
name implies, requires a long period of after-fermentation. Is it
clear to the reader that it is possibly quite as difficult to get a
glass of good beer as it is to get a glass of good brandy, or wine,
or whiskey? Supposing the brewer to have average honesty,
do you not see how much depends on his intelligence and
care ? He must have good barley properly malted, good water,
good hops, good yeast, and at every step of every process tem-
perature is the great agent. Certainly it is easier to make bad
than good beer!

Did you catch the full import of the closing sentence of M.
Pasteur's definition ? Beer " is an alcoholic beverage, vegetable
ir^its origin a barley wine, as it is sometimes called." Remem*
ber that we are still speaking of good beer, the beer our fathers
loved. " An alcoholic beverage " means an intoxicating drink.
That is plain enough. Still there are many people who assume
that beer is not intoxicating. There is a martyr band of men
and women who swell their heads and their paunches to a drop-
sical size in the vain, if honest, attempt to prove that beer will
not intoxicate. Have you, perchance, been in the neighborhood
of a city factory ? You saw the procession of men and boys and
tin cans coming, going, hour after hour? The simple working-
man devotes a great deal of time and money testing the intoxi-
cating point of beer. If you will spend a day in any middle-
class neighborhood you will have reason to be proud of the
comfortable mothers who keep the can in motion, fortifying
themselves against care and disease with the hourly quart of
" unintoxicating " beer. In the poorer quarters, the honest
laborer and the luxurious loafer strive in vigorous contention
to master their legs and hold up their heads for pure shame at
being vanquished by a " temperance" drink.

Our fathers knew that beer was intoxicating, and they owned
up to it like men. Everybody is acquainted with Pliny, and

i888.] THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST." 485

thinks well of him, and quotes from him out of the Cyclo-
paedia. He was a first-century man. In his natural history,
having told about the beers of Western Europe, he tags on this
knowing remark : " So exquisite is the cunning of mankind in
gratifying their vicious appetites, that they have thus invented a
method to make water itself produce intoxication." There was
no cant about Mr. Pliny, no palaver about beer-food, or tempe-
rance beverage, or the therapeutic qualities of barley malt. He
had lived long enough to know that the ordinary man drinks
alcoholic beverages because they are alcoholic, stimulating;
some because they are intoxicating. Read over again Pliny's
comment. Ts it not capital? "Exquisitely cunning mankind,"
" cunning in gratifying vicious appetites "P. had us down fine,
didn't he ? " They invented a method to make water itself in-
toxicating." " Cunning mankind," sure enough ! We have had
some hard-headed men in this century, and the name of at least
one of them began with P. This one, Dr. Pereira, was born and
died in London (1804-58). He was Professor of Chemistry and
Materia Medica at the College of Physicians, and Medical Di-
rector of the London Hospital. In his day he was an acknowl-
edged authority on hygiene. Pasteur gave us a scientific defini-
tion of beer, Pliny a philosophical definition, Pereira will give
us a practical definition. Here it is : " Beer is a thirst-quench-
ing, refreshing, intoxicating, slightly nutritious beverage."
Pereira does not say " a nutritious, slightly intoxicating bever-
age," but an " intoxicating," positively " intoxicating" beverage,
11 slightly nutritious." Pereira, like Pasteur, speaks of " good "
beer. The latest published analyses of English beers show that
their percentage of alcohol varies between 4 and 10. On Feb-
ruary 26, 1886, Francis E. Engelhardt, Ph.D., of Syracuse, the
well-known analytical chemist, who had been appointed by the
State Board of Health to examine the beers manufactured in the
State of New York, made a detailed "Report," which was
transmitted to the Legislature on March 19, 1886. Attached to
this " Report " is a table giving the results of an analysis of 476
samples of ale, porter, and lager. About 25 per .cent, of these
samples contained five per cent, and over of alcohol. A number
contained as high as six per cent, and some seven, eight, nine
per cent. An unfortified, ordinary claret will average only from
seven to ten per cent, of alcohol. Would the twenty-glasses-of-
beer-a-day man, the five-bottle man, expect immunity from an
equal consumption of claret wine ? Why not? Chemistry shows
that it is a beverage no more intoxicating than barley wine.

486 THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST:' [July,

Do we drink good beer barley wine ? Mr. Frederick Car-
man, Assistant Secretary of the State Board of Health, sum-
marizing Dr. Engelhardt's " Report " in 1886, says that " a gen-
tleman, who evidently takes a somewhat liberal view, defines
normal lager to be * a fermented beverage, not less than six
months old, made from any starchy grain, and rendered bitter
to suit the consumer's palate.' " How does the beer-drinker like
the new definition ? Does it suit him as well as Pasteur's? The
United States Department of Agriculture has been making a
study of the manufacture and adulteration of beer. In Bulletin
No. 13, Part 3, recently issued, Mr. C. A. Crampton, Assistant
Chemist of the Department, states that "it is a well-known fact
that very few beers are made in this country without more
or less malt substitution." Our people have been growing
so beer-ishly temperate that they have taxed the brewer beyond
reason. We drank 643 millions of gallons of domestic and im-
ported malt liquors in 1886. Our brewers have been enthusi-
astic workers in the cause of beer-temperance. But we have
taken them too much at their word ; we have insisted upon
having some stuff, any stuff, called beer. You remember what
the chemists have done for the vintners and the distillers. Well,
the chemists came to the rescue of the brewer, also. Nowa-
days beers are made from rice, corn, bran, oats, potatoes, tur-
nips, beet-root, parsnips, pea-shells, carrots. These take the
place of barley. The barley-malt is not wholly omitted, but only
a small percentage of it is used. But the brewer's chemist has
the advantage of the people's chemist. At this late day, Mr.
Crampton says: "Nothing can settle this point and enable the
analyst to decide positively whether malt substitutes have been
used until a standard is established by the analysis of a large
number of samples known to be brewed from pure malt alone.''
Mr. Beer-Drinker, there is only one thing you can be sure of
when you are drinking beer, and that one thing is that you
don't know what you are drinking. Would you know "glu-
cose " beer from any other? It is well known that glucose and
cane-sugar are used as substitutes for malt. The State Board
of Health, discussing Dr. Engelhardt's Report, gives some facts
about glucose. This substance is made from the starch of corn
by boiling it with dilute sulphuric acid. The Massachusetts
Board of Health considers it a dangerous article to be taken
into the system when carelessly prepared. If the Board of
Health had not warned us, we should not have been likely to
risk much on glucose. We may not know what sulphuric acid

i8S8.] THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST" 487

is, but there are very few of us who would care to make of it a
steady drink. Here is what the Massachusetts Board of Health
has to say : " Should all of the acid not be removed, or should
the calcic sulphate be in any amount retained, it is evident that
the product would not be entirely harmless, since disturbances
of the digestion might follow its use." Possibly you have a
friend who is drinking " glucose beer "to cure his dyspepsia !
How would it do to turn him off on " potato beer " ? Mr.
Crampton says : " There is no way of determining directly or
absolutely that a beer has been brewed partially from glucose."
You see what an advantage the brewer's chemist has ! Labou-
laye makes the whole matter clear: Glucose is economical but
not beneficial.

Do you remember Pereira's definition of beer : " A thirst-
quenching, refreshing, intoxicating, slightly nutritious bever-
age "? Our beer does not seem to be much of a thirst-quencher,
does it ? One glass just about makes the drinker thirsty enough
for another. Dr. Engelhardt may help us to explain this little
problem. It has long been a custom to add some salt to the
beer. The brewers found many reasons for the addition. " The
salt gave taste to the beer ; it clarified the beer ; it gave the beer
a head." But Dr. Engelhardt found a good many of our State
beers oversalted ; and the learned doctor happily suggests a
reason not suggested by the brewers. To quote him textually :
" That salt creates thirst is well known, and hence we may con-
clude that it is often added for this purpose." Poor Dr. Pe-
reira ! He died only in 1858, you recall. And here in 1888, a
short thirty years, we must remodel his practical definition of
beer. The revised version will read: Beer is a thirst-producing,
unrefreshing, intoxicating, very slightly nutritious, and at times
very harmful beverage. Poor Dr. Pereira ! Poor beer-drinker !

Speaking of the processes of beer-brewing, we said that after
the first fermentation the beer was laid away to cool and to
undergo an after-fermentation ; and that lager-beer, as its name
implies, requires a long period of after-fermentation. The libe-
ral gentleman quoted by the State Board of Health.defined lager
as " a fermented beverage, not less than six months old." Now
comes Mr. Crampton to declare that lager is a thing of the past
there is no more lager ; in other words, no fermented bever-
age not less than six months old. Dr. Engelhardt states in his
" Report " : "A considerable number of beer samples were young
beers perhaps, in most instances, not over fourteen days old."
Is it any wonder that of the 476 samples tested by the learned

488 THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST" [July,

doctor he found 219, or about 46 per cent., inferior, 81 slightly
sour, and 58 decidedly sour. Here, again, we see the fine hand
of the modern brewer's chemist. Dr. Bartley, Chief Chemist of
the Brooklyn Board of Health, speaking of the custom brewers
have of sending out to the market beers only fourteen days old,
called attention to the fact that these beers were artificially clari-
fied, and that large doses of bicarbonate of soda were added to
them. Besides giving the beer a good head, the bicarbonate ar-
rests the souring process. He found that the habitual beer-
drinker, who drinks say thirty glasses a day think of that liv-
ing, breathing hogshead ! may take into the system from 180 to
200 grains a day of the bicarbonate, with necessarily deleterious
effect. These facts are confirmed by Otto Grothe, Ph.D., in a
paper read before the American Society of Analyists in 1885,
giving the following facts : In a keg of beer there are one hun-
dred glasses. A glass of the sophisticated beer contains as much
as three-fourths of a gramme of bicarbonate of soda; twenty
glasses give 15 grammes, equal to 252 grains. But let us come
back to Dr. Engelhardt, who devotes considerable space to this
subject : " The brewer, when the first fermentation (the main
one) is finished in the fermenting tubs, clarifies, though often in
an insufficient manner, the beer by artificial means, and fills it in
the casks intended for the retail trade. To give to the beer a
certain amount of carbonic acid, above that which is remaining
naturally in the beer, he adds a piece of compressed bicarbonate
of soda (from one to two ounces, or more, according to the ca-
pacity of the cask); and if the beer contains an insufficient
amount of lactic acid, etc., some tartaric acid, cream tartar, etc.,
is added. Thus this brewer is enabled to turn his capital over
at least twelve times a year, while the honest brewer, who allows
his beer to attain an age of from eight to twelve weeks, can do
it only four times or five times. But, apart from the money con-
sideration, beer made in the manner just described, and sent to
the consumer when only two weeks old, injures the latter s con-
stitution, not only by the presence of soda in the beer, but also
by the presence of the yeast, since, according to investigations
made under the supervision of Professor von Pettenkofer, beer
roily from yeast-cells, though respective small quantities of
such beer are taken, acts on the digestive organs in such a man-
ner as to produce catarrh of the stomach and intestines." O
health-giving beer! Good, old-fashioned, barley-malt beer,
properly handled, would stand exposure for hours without be-
coming flat or insipid. The modern mixed-malt beers have not

1 888.] THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST" 4 g 9

the same property, evidently. Beers made from corn are diffi-
cult to control, because the germination of the grain during the
ourse of malting is so rapid. Hence the greater risk of bad
>rs, sour beers, even if the later processes were intelligently
managed. As to new beers, physicians and chemists agree that
they are injurious to health.

Good beer is a term easily misunderstood. A beer made
according to the right standard is good as a beer, but it may be
bad as^a beverage. As "one man's meat is another man's
poison," so everybody's drink may be most men's poison. Not-
withstanding all the temperance lectures, few of us have any
true conception of the active part that drink plays in disease.
Sir Andrew Clark, the famous English physician, stated in 1884
that seven out of ten of his hospital patients' diseases were caus-
ed by drink, and it is worthy of special note that he had~quite as
many cases of drink disease among women as among men. The
death-rate among keepers of grog-shops, or saloons, if you
please, in England is higher than that of men engaged in any
other trade. Dr. B. W. Richardson reports in the Lancet of
February 24, 1883, that from his experience the most common
form of disease among the intemperate is that terrible, terrifying
heart-disease. This statement of Dr. Richardson becomes the
more striking when considered side by side with the address of
Dr. Bollinger, at a meeting of the Medical Society of Munich,
during the year 1884. Bavaria is the natal place of lager, and
the Bavarian would rather suffer a bread famine than a beer
famine. No Bavarian ministry that suffered the beer to deter-
iorate could last a week. The law watches the brewer closely,
and defines what materials he shall use, and in what proportions
he shall use them, and what he shall not use. Munich, the capi-
tal, is as proud of its breweries as of the Pinakothek or the
Hof-Theater, and is famed for its beer. This is a question of
" good beer," you see. Dr. Bollinger,* then, addressing the
Munich physicians, called their attention to the part played by
beer-drinking in the causation of certain forms of heart-disease.
He stated that simple enlargement of the heart was more com-
mon in Munich than elsewhere, and that a careful personal ex-
amination proved that the greater number of cases of this dis-
ease (particularly among suicides) were explicable by habitual
excesses in beer-drinking. The enlargement of the heart is due
to the direct action of alcohol upon that organ, and to the enormous
amount of fluid introduced into the body. The average weight

* See Braithwaite, vol. xc., p. 179.

490 THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST" [July,

of the normal heart is greater in Munich than elsewhere. Dr.
Bollinger stated that the disease was insidious, and that the
greater number of those who die from it are carried away sud-
denly. There's good beer ! A big head, a big paunch, and a big
diseased heart, and sudden death ! You couldn't do worse
than that on water! And how about beer being a temperance
drink ? Evidently there is alcohol enough in " good beer " to
kill a man, at the heart. Are there men so unreasonable as to
want more ?

Do you see clearly what a delicate, exacting series ot pro-
cesses both malt and hops pass through in the making of good
beer ? You do. Very well ; and do you feel, from what you
know of human heads and hands, how likely it is that there is
many a brew of bad beer every day in the week? In old times
a bad brew went to waste ; and sometimes ruined the brewer.
But this happens no longer. The bad brew is barreled or bot-
tled, and the brewer allows us to ruin ourselves with it. How
does he manage the business ? You have forgotten the modern
alchemist, who turns all things into gold the brewer's chemist.
Remember the chemist, whatever liquor you drink ! Mr.
Crampton will help to enlighten us. I quote from his " Report " *
to the United States Department of Agriculture : " We come
now to what I consider to be the most important sophistication
of beer at the present day, and the most reprehensible and most
deserving of repressive legislation. The use of artificial pre-
serving agents not only introduces foreign matters into the beer
which are more or less injurious, according to the nature of the
material used, but also serve to cover up and hide the results of
unskilled brewing or unfit materials ; giving to the public for con-
sumption a liquor that, if left to itself under natural conditions,
would have become offensive to the senses and putrid with corruption
long before it is offered for sale." Mr. Crampton then goes on
to say that among the " preservative agents extensively employ-
ed at the present day are salicylic acid, bisulphite of lime, and
boracic acid." These "preservatives" are used to arrest natu-
ral fermentation in new beers, or "to cover up and hide the re-
sults of unskilled brewing or unfit materials " in beers of any age.
Salicylic acid has been used for some years not only in beers,
but in wines and foods as a " preservative." It is prepared from
carbolic acid, a virulent poison. Foreign governments have
prohibited the use of salicylic acid as being dangerous to health.

* This part of the " Report " was published by Dr. H. Lassing, in the American Analyst,
March 15, 1888, p. 113.

i888.] THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST." 491

The French government considered the question of the noxious-
ness of this "preservative" in i8Si, 1883, and 1886. In 1881
and again in 1883 its use was forbidden. A new inquiry having
been demanded, the matter was referred to a special committee
of the French Academy of Medicine, which recommended that
the addition of salicylic acid or its compounds, even in small quan-
tities, to articles of food or drink should be absolutely forbidden
by law. Carbolic acid, from which salicylic is chemically ob-
tained, is so powerful in its effects that when used medically the
dose is limited to one or two drops. Taken internally it acts as
an irritant narcotic poison. Even when applied externally its
absorption may lead to fatal results. Death has occurred from
it in two or three minutes. Dr. Hartley, chief chemist of the
Brooklyn Board of Health, in a report to the Health Commis-
sioner, in 1887, said: " The salicylic acid of the market is pre-
pared from carbolic acid, and is frequently contaminated with a
small proportion of this very poisonous agent." What are the
effects of salicylic acid on the human body ? Let us quote, with
Mr. Crampton, from the United States Dispensatory (i5th ed.,
p. 101) : " When salicylic aid is given to man in doses just suf-
ficient to manifest its presence, symptoms closely resembling
those of cinchonism result. These are fulness of the head, with
roaring and buzzing in the ears. After larger doses, to these
symptoms are added distress in the head or positive headache,
disturbances of hearing or vision (deafness, amblyopia, partial
blindness), and excessive sweating. . . . The action upon the
system of the acid and of its sodium salts* appears to be identical,
and, as several cases of poisoning with one or other of these
agents have occurred, we are able to trace the toxic manifesta-
tions. Along with an intensification of the symptoms already
mentioned there are ptosis, deafness, strabismus, mydriasis, disturb-
ance of respiration, excessive restlessness passing into delirium,
slow, laboring pulse, etc. . . . It is stated that upon drunkards the
acid acts very unfavorably, violent delirium being an early symptom
of its influence" The English physicians, who have given con-
siderable attention to the action of this drug, accuse it of causing
heart complications, prostration of the vital powers, syncope, and
even death. The French Academy of Medicine pronounced its
use especially injurious to those suffering from renal disease, in

* Salicylate of sodium is used for the same purposes as salicylic acid. It is said that there
are those who, using one of these " preservatives," readily deny that they use the other. Sali-
cylate of sodium has caused delirium, maniacal fury, disorders of vision, strabismus. (See
National Dispensatory, 1879.)

492 THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST" [July,

whom the drug quickly produces toxic symptoms. Its effect is
equally bad on the digestive organs, the liver and the kidneys.
Its elimination from the system is slow, and even when it has
gone the tissues bathed by it are injured. They say that the
tramp and the low sot regale themselves on stale beer. It sounds
disgusting, doesn't it? Are you convinced that it is any more
disgusting or noxious than salicylated beer?

Are we fighting a windmill ? How can you ask the question
after reading Professor Crampton's statement ? However, here
are more facts: Dr. Cyrus W. Edson, of the New York Health
Board, read a paper before the New York Society of Medical
Jurisprudence on November 12, 1886, in which he stated that
" salicylic acid is added to beer in from a grain to three grains
to the pint." Reporting to the Health Commissioner of Brook-
lyn, 1887, Dr. Bartley, chief chemist, says that "the brewers
add salicylic acid to preserve bottled beer." Mr. Crampton
analyzed only thirty-two samples, of which nearly one-fourth
(all bottled beers, and one an imported Kaiser beer) were
salicylated. " These included the product of some of the largest
breweries in the country, beers that are used to a very large
extent all over the United States." Mr. Crampton cannot tell
whether the acid is added in the breweries or at the bottlers'.
Whoever adds this destructive drug, there it is. According to
the United States Dispensatory, " the dose of salicylic acid to be
employed in cases of acute rheumatism is given as one dram
(3.9 grains) in twenty-four hours." Put this prescription along-
side of the statement of Dr. Cyrus W. Edson, that " salicylic
acid is added to beer in from a grain to three grains to the
pint " ! So that in a pint you may get almost the whole quantity
prescribed in a case of violent illness. Imagine the condition
of the twenty-glass-a-day drinker, of the four or five-bottle man !
An irritant, cumulative poison, constantly supplied to the body,
with the certainty that the stomach, heart, kidneys, and liver
are being daily forced into a condition of disease. If a physi-
cian were to tell you of the effects of this drug, and to ask you
to favor him by taking it in quantities, even with beer, every day
of the week, you would either laugh in his face or discharge
him. Were we not right in glorifying the rash simplicity of the
" Beer- Drinkers' Trust " ? Let me give one more quotation from
Dr. Bartley's "Report": "In its elimination the kidneys not
rarely become acutely congested, or even inflamed, giving rise
to acute Bright's disease." Possibly you are thin, you drink
beer to gain flesh ; or you are a nursing-mother, you drink beer

1 888.] THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST:' 493

for your own and the baby's sake ; or you are ansemic, and you
drink beer to strengthen you ; or you drink beer for the sake of
sociability, or because you want to drink beer ; how would it
do to engage Dr. Engelhardt, or Dr. Crampton, or Dr. Hartley,
or Dr. Edson to analyze your beer before you drink it? You
think your beer allowance would be much lessened, do you ?
Well, that looks certain, doesn't it? And your allowance of
years would probably be increased, butof course you don't
care about that !

Some folks are so careful about their beer that they will use
none but imported brands. Now/they say that in order to carry
imported beers across the water it is necessary to " fortify "
them, that is, to add to them an extra amount of alcohol. Po-
tato alcohol gives a fine body to wine. Could it be possible
that any of the same villanous stuff gets into the beer? Still,
we must not be too suspicious. However, one is inclined to
doubt a little, after reading the following statement of facts :
Watchful of the health and comfort of its citizens, Germany
prohibits the use of salicylic acid in beer except when the beer is
intended for export to other countries ! There's comity for you ;
they refuse to take our mighty surplus of honest hogs, and in-
sist on refreshing us with " preserved " beer !

,Mr. Crampton says that none of his samples showed the pres^
ence of boracic acid. But the foreign chemists say that it h
used as a " preservative " of beer as well as of wines. Boracic
acid is a product of borax and sulphuric acid. As a drug the
physicians have not as yet experimented with it to any great
extent. Inasmuch as they have, the verdict is not favorable.
The Lancet of August 13, 1887, says: " What evidence there
is is decidedly against the drug." It has an injurious effect on
the digestive organs, and a tendency to cause* diarrhoea. In
this connection it may not be useless to note that in his paper
read before the American Society of Analysts, in 1885, Dr. Otto
Grothe stated that the Brooklyn beers had a peculiar cathartic
effect. It was an old fashion here to relieve the system of its
" humors " occasionally by taking a compound 'cathartic pill.
But the man who swallows a box a day in his beer pays more
than his five cents a glass for it. When the brewers' chemists
really get to work at beer, we can close up the drug-stores at
any rate.

You know all the other bad things that have, from time to
time, been put into beer. Dr. Engelhardt gives a long list of
them in a " Report " which he made to the State Board of

494 THE BEER-DRINKERS' " TRUST" [July,

Health in 1882. Here are some of them : Cocculus indicus, a
strong narcotic poison, very bitter, causing giddiness, intoxica-
tion, convulsions, even death ; Picric acid, a relative of our old
friend, carbolic acid ; sulphuric acid, another convulsative ;
quassia, guinea-pepper, opium, and even tobacco. We don't
name a tenth of them. In England and on the Continent it has
been charged again and again that all these poisons are, from
time to time, added to beer, and laws have been passed forbid-
ding their use. The authorities on adulterations of foods and
drinks uniformly charge the use of these drugs, either as hop
substitutes or as intoxicants. The poor man runs the greater
risk of imbibing them, if we judge from English testimony.
There, it is said, that if the beer is free from any of them when
it comes to the publican's hands, he sees that it is made fuddle-
proof, especially on Saturday nights.

You have met the man who is always gathering curious facts
out of the newspapers, and asking such questions as, How much
hay do you suppose we raise here in a year? or, Can you guess
how many pounds of cheese we export in a year ? or, Have you
got any fair idea of the amount of capital there is invested in
the tomato-canning business ? You do know him. Let me
play his part for a moment, and ask you if you can guess how
much we spend yearly on beer? Now guess! No, sir! you
are not anywhere near it. We spent three hundred and five
millions of dollars on beer in 1886. The President is very
much exercised about the surplus ; indeed, we are all very much
worried about it. Yet it is only about a hundred millions a
year. We spend three surpluses probably four now on a
year's beer, and no one seems to feel worried over the matter.
Curious, isn't it ? Spend three hundred millions a year on a
confounded lot of slops, that has hardly got a single constituent
of the " beer of our fathers " ! And there, every day in the week,
thousands of cute men lift the glass of beer in the sunlight, to
admire the fine bicarbonate of soda " bead," and the beautiful
color of the "glucose be-er," or the" rice beer." Three hundred
millions to slake our thirst with salted beer; to "preserve"
our health with salicylated beer ; to regale ourselves, possibly,
with " a liquor that, if left to itself under natural conditions,
would have become offensive to the senses and putrid with
corruption long before it is offered for sale."

What shall we do to be saved ? Stop your beer !

JOHN A. MOONEY.

l888 -] THE SHRINE OF ST. MARTIN. 495

THE SHRINE OF ST. MARTIN.

IT once happened in our experience as instructor of Young
America that w>e put the question on an examination paper in
French history, Who was Saint Martin ?

Very few of the answers were both direct and comprehen-
sive ; but one, at least, was notable for its extreme conciseness :
" Bishop of Tours ; gave half his cloak to a beggar."

Unfortunately there are many people nowadays who know
not even the first and the more important of these two facts re-
corded of the valiant Pannonian apostle; and still worse, not
over-many people care at all to learn about the lives of early
Christian pioneers.

Yet what would France be to-day to consider the fortunes
of that country in particular what would all her great cities
have contributed to the progress of even secular civilization, had
not Hilary and Martin, the two Germains, Remigius or Saint
Remi of Reims, and Gregory of Tours, made straight the paths
for the march of justice and order in the barbarous days of old ?
We specify these individual names, but the same truth holds of
ail the Christian saints and martyrs in every land ; had not the
Christian leaven spread, society had surely perished in the fall
of imperial jRome. That society lived, however, and moved
upward and onward, was a very part of those divine decrees
whereby the grandeur of imperial Rome should culminate in the
fulness of time to subserve the still grander domination of the
church of Christ.

Such thoughts most pertinently suggest themselves in con
nection with even the briefest review of the career of Saint Mar-
tin of Tours.

Born in Pannonia of pagan parents, his father being military
tribune, Martin was forcibly enrolled in the Roman cavalry;
and not till he had fought in twenty campaign* did he secure his
release and retire to devote himself wholly to spiritual duties.
Like Jeremias the rebellious among prophets, Martin first
served the Lord in a manner against his personal choice ; for,
without rashly constructing historical evidence, we may rest
perfectly assured, from analogous laws which universally govern
the development of human character, that the chastening and
the discipline effected by training in that score of campaigns in
the Roman army would lay the foundation for the subsequent

496 THE SHRINE OF ST. MARTIN.

strength of soul which distinguished the barbarian cavalryman
in his ecclesiastical office in Gaul. As a soldier, too, he tra-
versed the broad highways of the empire, those magnificent
military roads designed for facilitating the rapid movement of
Roman troops, but also and providentially instrumental in has-
tening the missionary triumphs of the struggling new faith.

So Martin, again, during one of his military expeditions, en-
countered the renowned eastern confessor Athanasius, exiled
from the Nile to Treves on the Moselle. How unconsciously
potent were these political measures of exiling Christian leaders,
from end to end of the imperial domain, to accomplish that
identical result which they were intended to defeat! As if
Christianity could be arrested by transporting Hilary from
Poitiers to the depths of Asia Minor ; Athanasius from Egypt
to Treves.

But Martin's professional or official activity in the church
begins with a visit to Hilary of Poitiers, of whom he received
admission to minor orders. By Hilary's counsel he returned
to Pannonia to convert his mother ; and on thence coming back
to Gaul, he founded, near Poitiers, the monastery of Liguge.
But a u pious ruse " promptly drew him forth from the cloister,
and raised him to the dignity of metropolitan bishop of Tours,
There he vigorously suppressed surviving relics of paganism*,
the Druid monuments, the statues and temples of Roman gods,
etc.; but it appears that his preference was ever for the cloister,
rather than for episcopal charges a predilection quite natural
and intelligible when we remember his turbulent early life.
Accordingly he gave expression to his desires by founding the
monastery of Marmoutier, near Tours (moutier in old French,
monasterium being the popular synonym of the later learned
derivation monasttre) ; and of this long-famous abbey, with
which only the great monasteries like Fulda, St. Gall, Cluny,
and Monte Cassino were comparable for wealth and wide in-
fluence, the site is marked to this present day by the modern
convent of the same name, a portal only of the ancient pile
being still preserved.

Martin's contemporary biographer, to whom later historians
down to Milman and Montalembert are indebted for these few
central facts which are positively known of his life, was his en-
thusiastic disciple, the rich Aquitanian advocate, Sulpicius
Severus.

But Saint Martin's real life has lasted centuries longer than
his mortal and earthly existence comprised between the years

I888 THE SHRINE OF ST. MARTIN. 497

316-397 of our era. Not only was all medieval Europe fired by
the glory of his shrine at Tours, insomuch that the ungodly
Saracens were tempted by the fame of the riches thereof to
press northward to the plains of Touraine, but happily to be
for ever crushed in Gaul by the redoubtable Charles Martel ;
not only was Tours in mediaeval times called a second Jerusalem
on account of the pilgrimages of which remnants even yet re-
turn to honor the saint about the date of his calendar festival ;
but in the everyday worldly life of this busy modern age, living
and speaking testimonials abound of Saint Martin's vast and
widespread renown. There is much significance in the endur-
ance of names; and when in commemoration of one and the
same man we find the French kings entitling themselves canons
of Saint Martin ; when in the heart of the city of London we
run across the street Saint Martin's-le-Grand, where the huge
post-office building now replaces a Norman church once founded
by the Conqueror himself; or when in almost heathen Paris
we may still read among surviving ecclesiastical names, Rue, Fau-
bourg, Porte, Marche, Canal St. Martin, we may reasonably con-
clude that the man whose name was thus variously perpetuated
must assuredly have been a force in his day and generation.

We may even dubiously wonder whether certain irreligious-
ly minded French statesmen, who bestir themselves to efface the
names of saints from public buildings and thoroughfares, will
exert even the baseless influence of mere " traditional " memor-
ies on the world of fifteen centuries hence.

We have already implied, however, that Saint Martin's living
influence, as well as his name, endures to-day. Tours, the city
of his adoption, the comely capital of la grasse Touraine, still
fondly and warmly cherishes the souvenirs of the greatest of all
her honored prelates. True, the arch-episcopal cathedral is
dedicated to another saint, Gatien or Gatianus, first apostle and
bishop of the Oppidum Turonum ; but Saint Martin's basilica,
destroyed and again restored eight times, in all, shall yet again
be rebuilt, when the offerings thereto devoted shall have reached
the required amount of means necessitated for so -considerable
and so difficult a work; difficult, because France, alas! among
the nations of to-day, seems wofully apathetic towards the liv-
ing God, whose temples lie waste in her borders. Of the
ancient basilica two lonely towers remain, separated, besides,
by an intervening street. They are plain and sober of adorn-
ment, in striking divergence, in this respect, from the brilliant
florid Gothic and the rich Renaissance of the cathedral struc-

VOL. XLVII. 32

498 THE SH&INE OF S.T. MARTINA [July,

ture ; for the tonr de r Horloge and the tour Charlemagne date back
to the graver style of the French Romanesque.

The tour Charlemagne f& open to visitors ; and by chance- we
sojourned in Tours during the French " Indian summer," there
called the 4te de la Saint Martin, because Martinmas falls the
eleventh of November, when, just as in our North American
climate, a balmy season is popularly supposed to occur.

But in seeking entrance to the tower one must look sharply
about him, since its dingy r*&-d*-ckau&$4i much resembles. any-
other ground-floor in that ancient quarter of the city. The con-
cierge exacts an admission fee, the moderate sum of twenty cen-
times, and then we climb laboriously and almost perpendicularly
upward, en route pour k del. The stone stairway would squeeze
a corpulent figure ; and it is exceeding musty withal and some*
times completely dark. An intermediate rest may be enjoyed in
a large old belfry chamber, where amid the dust of ages we
discern the worm-eaten framework of a ponderous contrivance
once used for swinging the bells. One instinctively listens for
the owl and the bittern as appropriate tenants of such haunts ;
but as for our own experience, we found only a crowd of noisy
urchins, wrestling and rolling in the dust. Another arduous
climb brought us high to the top, where it was a welcome relief
to stand free on the leaden roof and breathe a generous quaff of
daylight and pure air. The transition from choking darkness to
broad sunshine was delectably refreshing, and moreover the
city of Tours lay beaming placidly below. The streets were
unwontedly crowded, and indeed since All Saints' and All Souls'
many strangers had come to town, from Brittany, Berri, Poitou,
and other neighboring provinces, to do homage at Saint Mar-
tin's shrine, then stationed in the crypt of a temporary chapel
erected on part of the site of his former basilica,

To the north rose the line of bluffs which back the shifting
Loire ; at the south were spread the Dutch-looking meadows of
the Cher. St. Gatien's towers, those beaux bijoux which excited
the impulsive admiration of Henry IV.; the donjon tour de
Guise; the solid mass of the abbey church of St. Julian ; and
immediately beneath a maze of antique gabled houses, both
roofed and mailed with narrow pointed slates all combined to
form a most original and beautiful panorama; though the
picture would have been more inspiring and more graciously
noble had Saint Martin's restored basilica been actually a part
of the scene.

We speak unadvisedly, no doubt, for we are not within the

i-8 : 88.] TEMPERED WITH MERCY. 499

P>ale of the Church of Rome ; but in all faith and sincerity we
coold wish to see so great a figure as Martin the soldier, monk,
and prelate honored at least in his adopted city by the pres-
entee of a monument equally worthy of his greatness and of the
glory not only of a lovely province, but of that whole great
nation which once upon a time was thankful and proud to call
Martin of Tours its patron saint. WILLIAM PRICE.

TEMPERED WITH MERCY,

WHEN I was travelling with my guardian and his daughter
I became much interested in one of our fellow-passengers on a
slow, noisy, railway train in Italy. He was an elderly gentle-
man of very attractive appearance and noble bearing. His
head and face were the finest I have ever seen, and reminded me
at once and strongly of pictures of the American poet, Longfel-
low. At length, to my delight, an opportune incident caused
him to become known to us. At a point in our journey some dif-
ficulty arose in regard to our baggage ; from my guardian's not
understanding the language of the gesticulating official, and
from his not having, at the best of times, a. large amount of
patience, affairs were getting into a state of absurd confusion,
when the elderly gentleman came forward and straightened
them out most quickly and courteously. This led to an ex-
change of cards, to a presentation to Clara and myself, and,
finally, as his route lay in line with ours, to my interesting elder-
ly gentleman's joining our party.

Our acquaintance developed very pleasantly. Without
seeming to be intentionally reticent, he yet told us very little
regarding his personal history very little, considering the ex-
haustive accounts of himself and his family furnished by my
guardian, and to which our new friend listened with unfeigned
interest. Indeed, the two appeared to take a great liking to
each other, easily accounted for by the similarity .of their tastes
and the dissimilarity of their dispositions; socially, politically,
intellectually, they agreed in a marvellous manner, while the
bluff heartiness of the one and the quiet dignity of the other
showed how unlike they were in nature.

Following the knowledge of his name came the two facts that
Lennox Sayward Whiting was an American, and that he had
held the rank of colonel in the great civil war. Although it was

5oo TEMPERED WITH MERCY.

evident that he cared little for his military title, my guardian
persisted in addressing him as <c Colonel " with great punctili-
ousness, and Clara and I fell into the habit of adding it as a
natural indication, I suppose, of our respect. We also learned
that Colonel Whiting was a widower, with one son, and that he
had spent the last twenty years with occasional short visits to
America abroad, travelling here and there as the mood seized
him, sometimes staying a year or two in one place if it chanced
to suit his fancy, but never settling in a home, always a wanderer.

His son, Philip, had been educated in America, having lately
been graduated from Harvard University. He was now seeing
Europe for the first time, and his father expected to meet him at
Milan, toward which point we were all tending.

I think no one could have been long in Colonel Whiting's
presence, even the least sensitive, without receiving from him a
singular impression. To me it. was one of deep, restrained, re-
conciled melancholy, if I may so express it. After a day or two
Clara pronounced him "mysterious"; even my guardian con-
fessed that he could not " fully understand " him. At the same
time it was impossible to connect any idea of evil with the man
with his gentle, high-bred face, his deep, serious, gray eyes,
his sincere, courteous manner.

He was so lovely to Clara and myself, so fatherly, chivalrous,
almost deferential, that I fancied his relations with his son must
be unusually charming ideal in confidence, perfect in expres-
sion and I looked forward with pleasure to seeing them to-
gether. I also looked forward, with perfect confidence, to seeing
the younger Mr. Whiting yield himself captive to the charms of
my guardian's daughter. I had great admiration for Clara ; her
independence, vivacity, good humor, her exquisite taste in dress,
and her rich beauty, all delighted me.

For myself, I was very quiet, given to observation and intro-
spection, natural tendencies which my mode of life had fostered.
I was American, too, on my father's side, but my mother was
French ; and in her native country, very dear to me, I had lived
nearly all my life. I was an orphan, and had been brought up,
with the greatest tenderness, by the dear sisters of a convent,
until, according to my father's will, I had been transferred, at
the age of eighteen, to the care of my guardian. I was now, for
the first time, "out in the world."

" If he would only give us some idea of what we may expect
his son to be!" grumbled Clara, as we brushed our hair, one
night, at a little Italian inn, to whose shelter a slight disaster on

1 888.] TEMPERED WITH MERCY. 501

the railway had driven us. " I never saw such a singular father ;
I have been unable to get from him a single detail regarding his
son, although I have tried my best of course in the most cau-
tious and delicate manner."

" I should like to see a reproduction of your 'cautious man-
ner'" said I, laughing; "I fear it would rest upon you with a
foreign air. But remain tranquil, my dear; you will know in a
day or two whether Mr. Philip Whiting is a hunchback or an
Apollo, a fop or a savant. We are all going to the same hotel
where the meeting is to take place."

When I spoke I had no premonition that I was the one of
our party selected by fate to receive the first impression of this
much-wondered-about young man.

Two days later we reached Milan. As I was passing that
afternoon, on my way to our own apartments, the open door of
his sitting-room, Colonel Whiting advanced and requested me
to enter, saying that he would like to show me a fine engraving
which he had just unpacked.

"My son has not arrived," he remarked ; and his tone had
such an odd sound of cheerfulness and relief that I thought it
must be a trick of fancy.

I stepped within, and at the same time I heard footsteps
coming along the corridor. In another moment a servant ap-
peared in the doorway, who announced, apparently in one ex-
plosive syllable, a young man, tall, dark, and handsome. One
glance was sufficient to prove that this was the expected son ; in
form and carriage, as well as in feature, he was strikingly like
the colonel, with the exception of his darker skin, and his large,
rather almond-shaped brown eyes.

Was it the shock of the surprise that turned Colonel Whit-
ing's face so pale ? for I saw him white, hesitating, tremulous, as
he stepped forward to greet his son. And the latter ? He also
was deeply and strangely moved : over his face passed a curious
expression, an expression of mingled aversion and fear, so
strong that it seemed as if, had he followed his impulse, he
would have turned and fled.

It was over in an instant. It was a mere glimpse behind
well-borne masks. The colonel immediately regained his habit-
ual self-possession, and presented Philip Whiting to me, with a few
pleasant words explaining our acquaintance. When I moved to
withdraw, as I did at once, he begged that we would all meet
and dine with him that evening in his own apartments.

Clara was full of curiosity when I told her whom I had seen,

502 TEMPERED WITH MERCY.

but in the prolonged cross-questioning which followed I reserved
my strange impressions to be dwelt upon, wonderingly, in the
solitude of my own thoughts.

We dined that night with Colonel Whiting and his son, and
during the following days we saw a great deal of them. My
guardian desired to stay a week in Milan, for my benefit, before
going on to Florence and Rome. This coincided with Philip
Whiting's plan, so that his arrival, instead of threatening to
break up our little party, bade fair to keep us longer together.
We all liked him: he was frank, companionable, intelligent ; he
talked in a very amusing way about his college experiences ;
showed excellent taste in literature, and was altogether very
pleasant and interesting. His manners were elegant, having the
perfect finish which comes alone from goodness of heart.

The painful suggestions of a mystery between father and son,
which their first meeting had chanced to disclose to me, were
strengthened as I continued to see them together ; that is, they
assumed, by being always present to me, the force of facts,
though neither again lost a guarded self-control. The spectre of
some strange, unnatural feeling, of some sad, dark secret, per-
haps, was never absent : on the father's part were embarrass-
ment, constraint, heavy oppression, deep sorrow ; on the son's,
coldness, repugnance, dislike, which it was evident he regretted,
and with which I saw him daily struggle. I was anxious to see
if this state of affairs, that had become so plain to me, was ap-
parent also to my guardian and his daughter. The former,
the most unsuspicious of mortals, I believe saw nothing ; the
latter, after a few days, said to me abruptly :

" Have you noticed anything a little a little peculiar be-
tween Colonel Whiting and his son? "-

"What do you mean?" I asked, thinking rapidly what it
would be best for me to say.

" I hardly know how to express it ; they are not so familiar
and affectionate as I expected them to be."

" Perhaps the son is not all we have painted him," I said,
"and the father knows it."

" Perhaps the father is not all we have painted him, and the
son knows it," retorted Clara. Then she added, coloring :

" But that is all nonsense, Adrienne. We must not talk so. I
believe they are both honorable men, and far above suspicion."

" Oh ! I hope so ; I hope so ! " I cried, with a fervor that made
Clara laugh. And yet I could not divest myself of a gruesome
feeling.

i888.] TEMPERED WITH MERCY. 503

We went to Florence; then to Rome; and we young people
were thrown much together. Philip avoided his father, and I
perceived that the stronger feeling, by far, was on his side.
Clara said nothing more. It was with a singular mixture of
pleasure and consternation that I saw the acquaintance between
them growing rapidly into an intimacy to which there could be
but one natural ending. What ought I to do ? Should I speak
plainly to Clara ? or should I go with my foolish suspicions and
fears (as he would regard them) to my guardian? While I was
debating which course to follow the announcement of the en-
gagement completed my dismay. Instead of adding my con-
gratulations, properly, to those of my guardian and Colonel
Whiting (who. appeared much gratified), I disgraced myself be-
fore them all by bursting into tears and hurrying away. They
were naturally amazed. Clara followed, beseeching an explana-
tion ; but I could not give it. Indeed, what business was it of
mine ? What right had I to be watching and prying, and sus-
pecting people of mysteries? I was disgusted with my own
miserable self. Espionne !

If a father and son chose to be indifferent to each other,
averse to each other's companionship, what was there in that?
Sotte ! And yet that strange, white look of fear on Philip's face !
his father's gloomy manner, his stern self-control !

By the morrow I think that my emotion was forgotten by all
in the high-tide of present happiness. No, I am wrong ; not by
all: Colonel Whiting remembered, and from that day held me
under his watchful guard. He marked my look, manner, and
words; nothing escaped him. In my presence he spoke more
frequently to Philip, and seemed to be noting the efiect upon me.
All this was done not with angry suspicion, but deliberately,
seriously, very earnestly. I wondered what it could mean.
Could he suspect me of being myself in love with Philip ? No ;
there were no grounds for such a conjecture. There must, then,
be a deeper meaning; perhaps he had divined something of what
had so long been wearying my mind. The surveillance became
intolerable. An excursion was planned to a half-ruined castle
where a famous artist lived ; at the last moment I resolved not
to go. A headache not feigned was a sufficient excuse.

My friends had not been gone more than half an hour when
a servant-maid brought me a note. It was from Colonel Whit-
ing, urgently begging an interview. Trembling with excite-
ment and dread, I considered. Clara\welfare was very dear to
me, and for her sake I longed to have my doubts either con-

504

TEMPERED WITH MERCY.

[July,

firmed or for ever laid at rest. Here was an opportunity which
perhaps Providence had placed in my way; here was a step for
my shrinking feet to take.

I arose from the bed, bathed my eyes, arranged my dress,
and, with flaming cheeks and hands ice-cold, went down to the
parlor where Colonel Whiting awaited me. His manner, so
gravely dignified, so gracefully courteous, calmed me at once.
He took my hand and led me to a seat, and apologized for his
intrusion, when he knew that I was indisposed, by the statement
that he was about to leave Rome, and felt that he could not do
so without saying to me what he had long designed to say.

"You are sincerely attached to your guardian's daughter?
You have her happiness close at heart? " he asked.

" Yes/' I said.

" I have seen it, and I have seen, also, since she became en-
gaged to my son, much doubt and anxiety in your mind. Par-
don me for asking you directly (and entreating a sincere reply)
if you fear that her future will be clouded by this union. Do
you contemplate it, for any reason, with foreboding?"

The tears gathered in my eyes, and it was with a little strug-
gle that the answer came:

" Yes, yes."

" I am sorry to see you weep, my dear young lady, for you
need not fear for the happiness of your friend, as far as it lies in
the hands of my son. She may rest upon his love and fidelity,
and trust him with entire confidence. He is a noble man, a son
of whom any father might be proud generous, loyal, sincere,
devoted to the highest purposes. You look surprised. You
thought I did not value him, was not fond of him, or had some
dark reason to distrust and dislike him. God knows how I love
him, how gladly at this moment I would take my boy in my
arms and cherish him with a tenderness that his mother in
heaven could not transcend. Do you believe me? "

I did, and I said so.

"Then are all your doubts now removed? Is your mind
entirely clear ? "

I hesitated, desiring to again say yes, yet confronted still by
mystery ; if the father loved his son so dearly, why were they
estranged ? I hesitated.

"Ah, no ! I see, and I do not wonder. If you have strength
to listen to me, the hour has come when, for the first time, I
must tell to another human being the tragedy of my life. I do
this because I am going away for a long time, and, in the mean-

l888 -] TEMPERED WITH MERCY. 505

while, it may become necessary, for her perfect peace of mind,
that your friend and my son's wife should know it. When to
give her the full explanation if you give it at all I leave to
your judgment; only let it be given under a promise of faithful
secrecy.

" If the feat of putting all the alcohol in the world in a cave
and rolling a planet to the door, which one of Boston's earnest,
eccentric men desired to do, could have been performed years
ago, I should not have this painful, humiliating story to tell you.

" My father was one of the merchant princes of New York.
He was what is called 'a self-made man/ rising to his enormous
wealth from the humblest beginnings, although of good lineage,
as our name indicates. I was his only child, whom he was anx-
ious to spare all knowledge of struggle and hardship, whom he
was anxious to see enjoying every advantage and luxury which he
himself had been denied, whom he wished to behold among the
first and best of the land. He supplied me with unlimited means,
and educated me in the most expensive manner. All went well
until I was sent to college ; there I acquired, among a circle of
idle and wealthy young men, the habit which wrought my ruin:
I became a slave to the greatest power for evil the world has
ever known, the relentless demon of strong drink. My father,
in spite of his desire to keep abreast with the times, was an old-
fashioned 'teetotaler.' If he had dreamed where a large part
of the money went which he gave me so generouslv, he would
have cut it off without a moment's hesitation.

" My nervous organization is delicate and sensitive. Wine
had upon me the worst effect possible : it made me morose,
irritable, and awakened the latent forces of a passionate -temper ;
a very little wine put me into a condition to be easily enraged.
My passion knew no bounds. It became understood among my
fellow-students that, beyond a certain point, it was better to
keep out of my way. However, I succeeded in getting through
college without open disgrace,, As my tastes were really intel-
lectual, I was graduated with some honor.

" My father was desirous that I should marry early, and I did
so at the age of twenty-two. My wife belonged to one of the
most aristocratic of New York families. There were advantages
in the union on each side, but they had no influence over us. It
was a love-match in the truest sense, and we would have mar-
ried if the conditions had been exactly the reverse. She was a
beautiful woman. There was a subtle quality of attraction in
her sweet nature which impressed one even more powerfully

506 TEMPERED WITH MERCY. [July*

than her unusual beauty. She was petite and delicately formed,
like yourself, and your voice and smile remind me of her.

" After our marriage we were very happy, although I did not
succeed in keeping the evil habit I had formed from my wife's
knowledge. She saw that a little wine excited me, that it was
dangerous for me to take much. Occasionally she saw me when
my temper was enraged, when I was blind with passion and
scarcely knew what I did ; but she was young and loving and
forgiving, and, thank God ! I was never violent to her.

" In the course of time four years, I think I took into my
employment a new butler, an elderly man, well-meaning and
competent, but conceited and officious. One day my appetite,
which had been gradually gaining a more dominant hold upon
me, became uncontrollable. After my wife had left me, unsus-
pectingly, at dinner, I drank glass after glass of the wine which
was maddening me. Decanters and bottles were emptied, and
I sent my butler for more. The foolish man's evil genius im-
pelled him : he dared to remonstrate. The first word was like
challenging a wild beast to spring upon its prey. I struck him,
felled him to the floor, and while he lay at my feet, begging for
mercy, I bent over him and struck him again and again until
his gray head and writhing form were covered with blood. I
don't wonder that you shrink and tremble. Bear with me a few
moments longer. My wife, alarmed by the noise, came, running
down the stairs, upon this terrible scene. The sight of her
brought me partly to my senses. I made a movement toward
her, casting from me the heavy decanter I had used as a weapon.
I had no evil intent, as God is my witness, but it seemed different
to her. .Throwing out her arms to keep me off, she fell, with a
frightful shriek, to the floor in a deathlike swoon. For hours she
lay unconscious, awaking only to encounter the suffering and
danger of a premature childbirth.

" She lived, and, wonderful blessedness ! she took me back to
her faithful heart, and loved and cherished me as before. The
life of the man I had almost murdered was spared, also, though
he was disabled for any active occupation. He is still living in
the comfortable independence which it was my privilege, my
small reparation, to assure him. I can feel that I did not wholly
ruin his life and that I .have his full forgiveness.

"A few months passed in such love and confidence and union
as I had never before dreamed of, while my blessed wife, with
infinite tenderness, encouraged and upheld me and strengthened
me in my daily struggle upward toward better things. Then

1 888.] TEMPERED WITH MERCY.

507

she was suddenly, almost without warning, snatched from me.
I cannot dwell upon that dark time. But, child, remember:
' no one is lost to thee who dies loving thee.'

" I must hasten on. God saw that I needed a lesson of deeper
meaning than I had yet received. With her dying breath my
wife whispered: 'Our child will comfort you.' She might
have said: * Our child will be your retribution.' As soon as
impressions of the outer world began to penetrate the night of
my sorrow, and memory began to quicken, I recalled my wife's
words, and sought my little son for comfort. Heretofore, not
attracted by very young children and being absorbed in the
companionship of my wife, I had paid him but little attention.
I knew simply that he was a large, healthy, handsome boy, and
I was glad to be his father. Now I went to him and opened my
arms, with unutterable yearning, to take him to my aching
heart, but he screamed ^id hid his face on his nurse's shoulder.
All attempts to pacify him were useless until I had left the
room. I was annoyed and disappointed. They told me
it was natural, that I was like a stranger to the little fellow,
that I must be patient. I was patient, yet day after day
witnessed the same result. My child seemed possessed with
an agony of fear if I approached him. If I persisted, and
touched his pink fist, or stroked his chubby cheek, or took him
in my arms, his shrieks and struggles were so violent that I was
obliged to desist in prudence. At last, wearied and mortified,
I gave up, and for some months scarcely noticed him. But
time and growth made no difference : if he saw me coming, he
would turn and run away as fast as his toddling footsteps could
carry him. I began again, and tried to entice him with all the
little pleasures and toys dear to childhood, but without avail.
The older he grew, the more pronounced, because the more
reasoning and controlled, became his aversion. It was useless
to fight longer against the dreaded truth of the conviction that
my only child, my bright and beautiful boy, was the victim of a
pre-natal impression of terror so strong that I could never hope
to see it overcome, could never hope to win his confidence and
love. You now know the tragedy of my life. When Philip
was seven years old I could bear it no longer. I placed him in
the care of a relative who had no children, a wise, good woman
whom I had always loved. I went abroad. Seven years later I
returned, on news of her death, to put Philip in school. There
was no change. His dread was still as strong, though it was
apparent that he struggled against it, conscious that it was in-

5o8 TEMPERED WITH MERCY. [July*

consistent, unnatural, wrong-, from every standpoint of duty. I
perceived that our intercourse, if prolonged, would have an in-
jurious effect upon him ; he was growing pale and thin and los-
ing self-command. (This has invariably been the result of our
being together, and it is this which forces me to go away now.)
The embarrassment, constraint, vain regret, dread of curious
comment were painful enough on my own part, and I cut it
short ; went again my lonely way.

" At intervals I returned to America to see after Philip's wel-
fare, to change his school, perhaps, to direct his course in what-
ever way was needful. The best reports were given me of his
conduct, character, and ability. My observation convinced me
that it was all true. How proud his mother would have been
of such a son. And yet it was my consolation that she could
not, secure, I trust, from earthly knowledge, share our wretch-
edness. This is all. Philip is now tweftty-eight. I have lived
more than half a century ; I am getting to be an old man ; yet
an inexorable fate, whose justice I acknowledge, separates me
from my only child."

"But Philip himself?" I cried eagerly. "May he not
change? He must change! Have you talked with him? ex-
plained ? Does he understand ? ''

" He knows nothing. You must remember that his nature
bears a birth-mark that no power of will can overcome, a preju-
dice which is stamped upon his being by the retributive hand
of God. His knowing would only complicate the matter. My
way, believe me, is the safest : to keep out of his sight and to
keep' my secret."

After a few more words Colonel Whiting left me, and I
never saw him again.

Philip spoke of his father's sudden departure with surprise
and regret, but at heart he was relieved; the perplexed, care-
worn look that had been slowly creeping over his face vanished ;
his spirits became buoyant. He returned with us to America,
and in a few months the marriage took place.

After a time my guardian having purchased property in
England conjointly with Philip they settled in Dorsetshire,
while I continued to live with my guardian in America. True
to my promise to Colonel Whiting, I told Clara, when I thought
it had become necessary, his sad story. She, as well as I, had
been much attached to him, and she heard me with sincere sor-
row, grateful, at the same time, for the explanation which threw
light upon many things that had puzzled her.

1 888.] TEMPERED WITH MERCY. 509

A few months ago I received a letter from Clara, announcing
the death of Colonel Whiting. Information had been sent to
his son that he was lying very ill at a small village in Provence.
Philip hastened to him, and, after an absence of several weeks,
had just returned with his lifeless body.

" And now, dear Adrienne," wrote Clara, " I have something
very wonderful to tell you. The moment my eyes rested upon
Philip's face I saw that some great change had come to him.
As soon as he could see me alone he said :

"'O Clara! I could hardly wait to tell you. I know you
have noticed that between my father and myself an inexplicable
barrier existed. I admired my father ; I desired to be like him ;
I longed to love him, but and why I cannot tell you I could
never be happy in his presence. Without reason I feared him ;
an unaccountable feeling of repulsion seized me when he came
near. I suffered terribly from dread of him as a child, and when I
grew older and could reason with and strive against a feeling so
unnatural and horrible, I found that it was impossible to conquer
it. A month ago it was as strong with me as ever. I never dread-
ed to meet my father more than when I was called to his sick-bed.

"'At the inn where he was lying I was shown to his room
by the good cur6 of the village, who had been untiring in his
kindness. The instant my eyes met my father's as he lay in his
bed by the open lattice met those eyes filled with eager, solemn
questioning the burden of my life rolled from my soul. I ran
to the side of the bed, and, kneeling down, took him in my arms
and kissed him. I caressed his beautiful forehead, and smoothed
his long, soft, gray locks of hair. I cried :

" ' " Father, now I love you ! At last, at last I love you. Do
you love me, father?"

" ' The look, almost of adoration, in his eyes answered me.
His lips moved, and he murmured :

" ' " O my beloved ! now I can meet thee in peace. The
mercy of God is limitless."

" ' I knew he meant my mother, and I thought he was dying,
but he lived some days longer wonderful, beautiful days! a
precious heritage for me for ever.

" ' And now, with all my sorrow, I am happy ; I remember
that "Life is lord of Death," and I can love my father still. But
what a strange awakening! What can it mean? I am over-
whelmed by its solemn mystery ? '

11 And then, dear Adrienne, I told him all."

FLORENCE E. WELD.

5io THE WAGE-EARNER AND His RECREATION. [July,,

THE WAGE-EARNER AND HIS RECREATION.

WE must provide for the poor, whether their inability to
maintain themselves decently arise from moral, mental, or physi-
cal, defect, whether they be not clever enough, or vicious, or
lazy, or crippled, or in ill health. If we do not they will spoil us
by the very corruption resulting from their disproportionate
numbers; and order will be overturned or the public health
a-ffected unless we take care to prevent the increase of immoral
and, vicious members by proper education and due restraint,
unless we see to it that those left behind in the race for bread
be not entirely deprived of it, unless we support and encourage
every necessary measure and useful institution that has for its
object the help of needy humanity.

At the present day we seem to understand all this pretty
well. Hence our police, prisons, and reformatories ; hence our
almShouses, hospitals, foundling asylums and numberless similar
foundations ; hence our church societies and mission Sunday-
schools, and the acknowledgment paid by the state to religion
in its refusing to tax churches, and its contribution toward
institutions gotten up by ecclesiastical bodies for the- care of
those poor waifs of society who are worn away to too delicate
a texture to be managed by the business-like hands of civil
officials.

Yet despite all our endeavors, and these increase with the
public need ; despite the immense religiousness of our people, and
the incredible number of our churches; although there are
schools at convenient distance from every child in the land ;
although our national treasury is bursting with wealth, still the
poverty of the weaker portion of humanity is not kept down ;
our brothers and sisters still suffer from injustice and lack of
brotherly love.

Now, " we are all members of one body," not only in the mys-
tic sense intended by Saint Paul, but in a literal, real sense.
Suppose our physique as a people runs down, doesn't anybody
see that we cannot keep our place among the nations, that we
will be likely jto suffer defeat in war and lose our liberties,
after losing our health and our riches ? Have we a right to
preserve the national health and vigor ? Who will deny this ?
Then we have a right to so legislate that our citizens shall be
enabled to decently feed and clothe themselves ; that our women

1 888.] THE WAGE-EARNER AND His RECREATION. 511

s-hall not be ill-used or our boys and girls overworked or ill-paid^
Capitalists owe the order and peace which enables them ED
Garry on business to the protection thrown around them by
s<&ciety; hence society has a right not only to tax them, but to
command that they conduct their affairs in such manner as to dao
her oo injury, but rather to benefit her. She can refuse them
license, therefore, to trade or manufacture, unless they pay their
employees such wages as she thinks necessary for their decent
support; forbid their running over-hours, insist on proper ven-
tilation, cleanliness, and even morality, about their premises ; in
short, she can have the business run to suit her own best inter-
ests, which must hold precedence over those of any individual.
Society has the duty of self-preservation, and the right to rea-
sonable progress.

It follows from all this that the first charge on all property,
real or personal, is to provide for the decent support of ike prv-
d&zers. This is whence the money must come, and not only
landed estates but business properly so called, railways, s-hips.,
any department that uses labor, must bear the support of tlie
laborer. Hence, as a writer in the Dublin Review (Oct., 1886)
puts it: "Rent nor interest, profit, dividend, nor any kind of
income is fair, unless it leaves enough to the dependants from
whom it is drawn to lead a decent life according to their station " ;
a dcent life, according to the grade of civilization and standard
of comfort in the community to which they belong, and accord-
ing to their station in that community. "Therefore," as the same
writer says, " the state can assess just rents and declare fair
wages ; or can make the capitalist legally responsible for the
care of his employees, and tax him for their support when broken
down, etc. And in order that the capitalist should take this in-
terest in his dependants (on whose labor he also depends), he
should live amongst them, or at least visit them often."

Now, although this seems logical and just, and was the ideal,
frequently or even commonly realized, too, in times past, yet it
implies certain conditions on the part of the laborer. In Italy,
for instance, there was a custom, we know not if it were a
law, that any employee or servant, after thirty years' faithful
duty in any capacity, whether as a professor of sciences or a
cook, should be pensioned for the rest of his life on full or half
wages. But, then, see the necessary accompaniments of such an
understanding. The wages were much lower, for one, as the
necessity on the part of the employee of providing for old^ age
was to a certain extent cut off. In our country everything is so

512 THE WAGE-EARNER AND His RECREATION. [July,

recent, and the spirit of change so rampant, that employees and
employers can hardly be expected to be thus related to each
other.

But is there no other way of arranging matters so that the
laborer shall not be helpless in sickness or old age? Yes. There
is the one of giving him such wages as may enable him to lay by
in banks, or lands, or life insurance, or benefit societies as much
as will tide him over hard times and keep him when he is
finally disabled. Is this way as good as the other? We will
not discuss this question. The other way is not practicable in
this country, nor, indeed, perhaps anywhere in this age.

But a man has a right to a decent support according to his sta-
tion. It is absurd to say that he has a right to the same degree
or kind of support that any other man may possess. T'here is
no such thing as social equality except (" I speak as one foolish ")
in a few limited, straight-laced, tight bound, systematically regu-
lated companies of celibates; and these sacrifice home, liberty,
and wealth for that social equality and feeling of being free from
care and want. The son of the rich man has a right to support
such as is found in his father's mansion ; the hod-carrier's son
has a right to his father's table. Neither can claim the other's
place, because each is a second edition, a reproduction, continua-
tion, and representative of his own progenitor.

c. The decent support means a becoming support, such as is en-
joyed by other citizens of the republic in their various occupa-
tions. For instance, what is decent (becoming) for a hod-carrier
may not be so for a mechanic ; what suits a tradesman won't do
for a professional man, and so on. This support he must get
from his labor. Therefore he has a right to such profit from his
labor, in the shape of wages, as will provide it. The state, them
has a right to see that he receives such wages, and may legislate
to this effect. But is it expedient that the state should do so?
This is a question that is generally answered in the negative.
Why ? A sufficient reason is, perhaps, because we haven't
enough respect for the state to entrust it with the determining
what wages should be considered just. "The state," after all,
at least as a governing body, is composed almost exclusively of
self-interested politicians. Money rules where love or hate does
not. The rich can control legislation. The poor man must ap-
peal to honor, to Christian sentiment, to charity that is, to
brotherly love ; and failing in these, he must fight if he would
gain his rights; that is, he must attack the interests of his em-
ployer and alas, the necessity ! strike when and where the latter

1 888.] THE WAGE-EARNER AND His RECREATION. 513

is exposed to his blows. We deplore this manner of regulating
labor troubles, just as we deplore war between nations ; but we
cannot call it morally wrong, however much we may be con-
vinced of its uselessness, and of its disastrous reaction on those
who resort to it. Can you condemn strikes because, according to
the conspiracy laws, they are combinations? You might but
for the fact that you allow combinations of capitalists. Listen
to Cardinal Gibbons's statement in his Report on the Knights of
Labor :

"Without entering into the painful details of these wrongs, it will suf-
fice to mention the fact that monopolies, not only by individuals, but by
corporations also, have already excited complaints from the workingmen,
and opposition from public men and national legislatures as well ; that the
efforts of those monopolies, not always unsuccessful, to control legislation
for their own profit, cause a great deal of anxiety to the disinterested
friends of liberty; that their heartless avarice, which, to increase their
revenues, ruthlessly crushes not only the workingmen, representing the va-
rious trades, but even the homes and the young children in their employ
makes it plain to all who love humanity and justice that npt only the
workingman has a right to organize for his own protection, but that it is
the duty of the public at large to aid in finding a remedy against the dan-
gers with which civilization and social order are menaced by avarice, op-
pression, and corruption."

The policy of our government has been to " let them fight it
out," and we are afraid of paternalism. We are not the chil-
dren of the state, but the state is our functionary ; and if there
is perfect freedom of association we think that things will settle
themselves. Will they? Is it possible for brawn to overcome
brain? Can muscle conquer money? Many are beginning to
doubt it, and to come to the conclusion that we must, more than
we have hitherto done, make over to the state a closer over-
sight of the relations between the classes.

The object of this paper being to insist that all men have a
right to a decent living, we will say a word of the use of the
state's public domain. It is our conviction, that although pri-
vate property in land be expedient, lawful, and therefore just,
yet those features and elements which of their nature are in-
tended for common use should be kept common. Take for ex-
ample the banks of streams, large ones at least, and of rivers.
These are intended by God for highways, for refreshment, for
cleanliness. All men need them, but especially the "have-
nots." The " haves" can bring rivers, if necessary, to play as
fountains in their private parks. Now is it not absurd and in-
jurious, as well as tyrannical, that one cannot bathe in the Hud-

VOL. XLVII. 33

THE WAGE-EARNER AND His RECREATION. [July,

son River nor on the sea-shore without leave of the riparians?
Is it not unjust that a man should have to travel three, four, or
six miles along the Albany coach-road before he can get a pub-
lic way leading to the river, the music of whose waters he can
almost hear as he goes? Is it just to shut that foot-sore, hot,
and tired man from God's appointed refreshment? We think it
is not just, and that the state should take back the privileges she
granted or allowed to be taken, and restore the bank of the
Hudson and the shore of the sea to the public. Of course com-
pensation must be made, because society ratified these acquisi-
tions of property which were made in good faith under the law.
The people of New Rochelle, N. Y., furnished a striking ex-
ample in this connection about a year ago. Some wealthy par-
ties, well-deserving of their neighbors too, wished to buy a
beautiful grove and headland facing Echo. Bay and the Sound,
intending to extend their already long and magnificent but pri-
vate sea-front, thus practically shutting out the villagers from a
view, or at least a visit, to the sea. They offered a splendid
equivalent as a free gift to the public for their lost pleasure-
ground, but an election was held and after a hot contest the
people decided to add to their corporate debt enough to buy
the contested park, and rejected the one that was offered them
for nothing ; for this reason also, because it had not such com-
mand of the sea that sea which every one desires to behold,
which Xenophon and his Greeks, returning from their weary
campaign, saluted with that cry that resounds through the ages,
" Thalassee ! thalassee ! "

The same proportionately is to be said of our city river-
fronts. These are open promenades in almost all the cities of
Europe, and are of course the most valued and interesting place
of public recreation. The present monarch of England takes
more credit from the opening of Thames Embankment to the
people than from almost any other improvement of her long
reign ; and she does well, for it is such works that attach loyalty
and perpetuate dynasties. Yet there are miles of certain river-
front we know of inaccessible to the citizens except at the fer-
ries. How long will we stand such injustice? We notice simi-
lar grasping practices connived at, nay, positively allowed by
special legislation, in various parts of the country, where rail-
road corporations are permitted not only to seize the fair banks
of the rivers, but to exclude the public under penalty of misde-
meanor, and even to build up their erections on the strand
down to low-water mark, which should be left for the people's

1 888.] THE WAGE-EARNER AND His RECREATION. 515

evening- stroll or morning walk. It is astonishing at first
thought how we permit what the Europeans generally would
not stand for a day. It is doubtless because we have or have
had so much room and so many political liberties that we have
neglected our social rights. But with pressure of population
we are beginning to find out our mistake. The Riverside and
Morningside parks in New York are indications of this, and the
passage of a bill appropriating one million dollars a year for
parks in the crowded tenement districts of the city, a measure
which is doubtless owing to the labor agitations, is a sign of
awakening wisdom. We call attention to the manner in which
the French settlers of this continent originally laid out their
holdings ; on the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence it was the
same, no matter how far back a man's farm ran, a piece of the wa-
ter-front was always given to him, and it was the attempt of the
English to change this custom in Manitoba that chiefly caused
the rebellion already twice broken out in that remote country.
For our part our sympathies lie with the habitants.

The people want the river-bank. Its form is the artist's line
of beauty endlessly repeated ; its atmosphere gives new life to
the dust-choked, oil-sodden lungs of the mason's helper, the stage-
driver or the factory-hand ; its limpid waters are replete with
refreshment, cleanliness, and enjoyment. But you will say :
" Why can't they go to Coney Island or Rockaway Beach ? "
This is more innocent than if you asked : " Why don't they go to
Central Park instead of sitting or playing on the sidewalks ?"
Don't you know that multitudes of them can't afford the car-
fare ? That if they had the means to take their families to such
resorts, they can't spare the time used in going and coming?
And here we are talking of the hundreds of thousands, just as in
London it is the u million " that is thus straitened.

Did you ever wander along the docks of New York of a
summer evening and see the men and boys taking their vesper
bath " after sun-down " ? (the legal limit). If you didn't you
needn't talk. If you did then you have come very near to the
ways of the common people, and gotten some idea'of their luxu-
ries, and if your heart is natural and beats healthily in your
bosom, I am sure you will have enjoyed the experience as much
or even more than ever you did the artificial pleasure-taking of
Newport or Nahant. Let the people to the water, then, that
their thirsty souls may imbibe refreshment. But the needs of
trade ! All right. Provide for the needs of trade, but don't give
it all it craves or will try to seize. It is a Moloch or a Jugger-

516 THE WAGE-EARNER AND His RECREATION. [July,

naut that pitilessly tramples and devours the people, the sons of
God, the brethren of Christ. Men are worth more than trade !

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay."

Still I hear some one sneeringly cry " theory," " impractica-
ble"; " let things remain as they are"; "we don't want any
reformers," etc. Dear friends, St. Vincent de Paul was a re-
former, so was Howard, so was Father Mathew but why
should I go on with a litany of the greatest men the earth has
ever seen, leading the list, if I wanted it complete, by the Name
that is above all names ? Reformers will ever rise up so long
as there remains something to reform, and God speed them !
Why? Pride and lust and avarice would make short work of
the Lord's poor in this world were it not for those whom you
would stigmatize as reformers. Admit the proposition once,
and you must if you are a philosopher, that all of us Christians
are sons of God and brethren of Christ, and then, if you dare,
ridicule any effort, even the most foolhardy and desperate, to
help to cheer and brighten the " short and simple annals of the
poor."

While we insist on these things as matters of justice, we do
not forget that a democratic spirit, or humanity, taste, and con-
sideration for the feelings of others, often induce the rich both
in Europe and here at home to admit the general public into a
participation in the blessings flowing from the woods and
fields and waters. And we dare to say that if the rich show
themselves generous and brotherly in this regard, they need
have little dread of Communism and Socialism. Workingmen
generally, .in 'our opinion, have little jealousy of the wealthy
members of society when they themselves have health, decent
house-room, employment at fair wages, and recreation.

Now, two pictures arise at once in our memory, offering
strong contrasts in this connection. We recall the high and
massive walls that in some towns in Europe lined the narrow
street or road with its fifteen to thirty inches of sidewalk, and
kept all the hot, white dust whirling and driving into the
faces of the passers, who not only had to suffer this, but were
selfishly shut out from even a glance at the delightful gardens
that smiled on the other side of these insurmountable barriers.
How often did we feel the bitter uncharitableness of those who
owned these favored spots, and had such lack of consideration for
their brethren ! How delightful in comparison are those fences

1 888.] THE WAGE-EARNER AND His RECREATION. 517

one meets with in countries unoppressed by the relics of that
state of barbarism and terrorism, when the policeman of civiliza-
tion was not abroad, but every man's house was literally his
castle ! Walk along the lanes of Irvington or the lovely streets
of Poughkeepsie, Rochester, St. Paul, or almost any of our
cities, and think with satisfaction of the higher state of peace
and fraternity we in this country enjoy ; for though we are be-
hind Europe in some things we are ahead in others.

We recall, on the other hand, the lovely gardens of the Villa
Pamfili, and the walks and fields and woods of the Villa Bor-
ghese outside the walls of Rome. What Roman student that
ever roamed at will, or played ball, or lay at his blessed ease on
the sward, with no intimation in any direction that he was to
" keep off the grass," but thinks with kindness of those truly
noble Romans? Ye majestic pines, and shady elm-groves; ye
flowery meads and woody nooks ; ye celestial flower-beds and
cool, delightful fountains, grateful indeed are our hearts as we
think of you ! We bless their memory now, as we thanked with-
out envy then, the truly Christian men that shared these bless-
ings with us. If all rich men were such as they showed them-
selves in this there would be slight audience for the apostles of
anarchy.

A case to some extent parallel to this splendid hospitality of
Roman princes is furnished by the cliff-dwellers (not of Arizona,
reader, but) of Newport. A beautiful path runs all along the edge
of the precipitous rocks that line that romantic coast, and skirts
the green, trim sward that lies between the cottages and the sea.
A turn-stile at every fence-line marks the bounds of each one's
grounds without interfering with the liberty of the stranger who
may desire to stroll along this charming, God-given headland,
and enjoy the sight of the waves, or inhale the life-giving breezes
of old ocean, or listen to the " Voice of the great Creator, that
dwells in that mighty tone."

We are not able to say if this freedom of walk on the cliffs be
due to the generosity of the owners, or rest as a prescriptive or
original right of the people ; in practice it matters not so long
as it remains free ; but while we acknowledge the humanity and
Christianity of those who grant it, if gilt it be, we hold that the
public should never have parted with such rights anywhere,
should endeavor to re-acquire them as soon as practicable with
fair compensation, and with injustice to no individual, and that
in the cities of the future the government should prevent any
private party's taking possession of or holding as exclusive pro-

518 THE PRIEST AND THE BLESSED EUCHARIST. [July,

perty such natural features of landscape and water-front as are
evidently adapted for the general use of the people at large.
So close is the relation between innocent recreation and moral-
ity, that we maintain that in the monopolizing of these natural
objects of which we have been treating by the rich, (i morality,
justice, man's dignity, and the domestic life of the workingman "
are more or less " menaced or jeopardized," and, as Leo XIII. said
on the i/th of October last to the French workingmen : "The
state, by right measure of intervention, will be working for the
common weal, for it is its duty to protect and watch over the

true interests of its subjects."

EDWARD PRIESTLEY.

THE PRIEST AND THE BLESSED EUCHARIST.

" Hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam." From the Canon of the Mass.
" My flesh I will give for the life of the world." St. John vt. 52.
" O amoris Victima ! " Antiphon to the Blessed Sacrament.

O SACRED Body, Blood Divine!
Behold ! I live a life like Thine.
Pure, holy, stainless Host ! like Thee,
Love's gift and victim, let me be.

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 519

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY.

XXIV.
THE SQUIRE FLIES INTO A TEMPER.

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S birthday his jubilee, as the thought of
it had been shaping itself in his mind and in that of some few other
persons since the occasion when he spoke of it in the Murray
household was an event which has probably made a permanent
mark in the history of his native village. Some eighteen
months ago, at all events, when the present chronicler of certain
incidents that immediately preceded and followed it made a first
visit to Milton Centre, on an errand partly of friendship and
partly of business, people were still dating back to it in a half-
conscious sort of way, much as the earliest of the "true be-
lievers " may have done to the Hegira.

For there was a time, following directly upon the calamity
briefly sketched for the reader in the letter written by Martha
Colton while sitting near the old man's bedside, when it seemed
to everybody that Milton Centre was to be, if not a case of
wholly arrested development, yet of a growth altogether differ-
ent from that contemplated by him. It was not his daughter-in-
law alone who had feared that he was likely to make some un-
usual disposition of his immense fortune ; and of those who, for
entirely selfish reasons, felt that they had a stake of unknown
value contingent on his life, several were present on that occa-
sion. John Van Alstyne had seemed to be in the very act of
giving their surmises confirmation, elating a majority of his lis-
teners as much as he disappointed a very few, when he was
stricken down. How fully he might have unveiled his pur-
poses had time and strength been granted him it is now im-
possible to say. As the case actually stood, there was but one
of his audience who held any real clue to his precise intent.

He had begun talking even before the close of an entirely
impromptu charade, given in response to repeated calls for
" more," just after a picnicky sort of feast had been gotten
through with. The spectators were still sitting about in
groups or lying on the grass ; cloths were spread here and
there, covered with dishes and remnants of the entertainment,
around which the children lingered ; and pale wreaths of smoke
rose still from dying fires where the tea-kettles had been boiled.

520 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [July>

The stage on which the performances had been given was af-
forded by a low bank that rose at one side of the road running
through the picnic ground. It was only partially cleared, and
many a wide-girthed tree and convenient thicket of hazel and
blackberry bushes afforded the necessary coulisses for the actors.
It was the appearance of the grounds from this bank which sug-
ge^ted the word hastily chosen, and its dramatization involved
the appearance of the versatile Mr. Hadleigh, whose presence
of mind and quick wit seemed never at a loss, in the charac-
ter of Fagin, giving a lesson in pocket-picking to the Artful
Dodger and a number of his fellow-pupils. His aquiline nose,
bestrid with glasses, a black skull-cap, and a long beard of gray
lichen hastily stripped from a neighboring tree, converted him
into a sufficiently realistic Jew, and he contrived to give a like
air to an effigy of Fagin, the same beard depending from under a
white cap drawn over the face, which was found hanging from a
gibbet when the curtain was drawn aside for the last time. In
this scene Mr. Hadleigh made a final appearance in a get-up
whose purport was made evident by horns and hoofs, and an
ox-tail dragging the ground from beneath a flame-colored tunic
hastily adapted from a curtain which had done duty as a back-
ground earlier in the afternoon. He had just made a downward
plunge out of sight, the dead Fagin across his stooping shoul-
ders, and a malodorous smoke circling round them from a hid-
den saucer of burning sulphur, when Mr. Van Alstyne rose to
his feet. That he was less composed and calm than usual was
evident in his whole manner to those near him, and he hardly
waited for the applause and laughter to subside before he began
to speak.

Behind the scenes, too, the effect produced by Mr. Hadleigh in
the act of carrying off his own soul which, by an odd coincidence,
was the way in which the thing struck several of those who wit-
nessed it had not yet subsided. Nor had he begun to divest him-
self of his too suggestive costume when his attention was arrest-
ed by a word or two that Mr. Van Alstyne was saying. He came
back at once within convenient ear-shot, and, standing out of
sight behind a great oak, listened attentively to the words in
which his cousin elaborated, with considerable detail, certain
measures which he proposed carrying into immediate effect for
the benefit of his operatives. There is no present occasion to
enumerate them all, but as they included not merely a bonus
on profits, graduated on a scale determined by wages, but
also offered his hands of both sexes an opportunity to acquire

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 521

homes of their own on easy terms of purchase, and to hold
them, if not absolutely in fee-simple, yet by one limited by
the single condition that they could be resold only to those
actually engaged upon the Van Alstyne works, present and
prospective, it is not difficult to understand that the somewhat
frequent pauses in his speech should have been filled by ener-
getic applause from those whose interests he plainly had so much
at heart.

It was after the prolonged cheering which followed his ex-
planation of this latter detail of his scheme that Mr. Van Al-
styne seemed about to disclose with equal fulness the arrange-
ments he proposed for the consolidation of his efforts for the
common good.

" I have been calling you my ' hands,' you notice," were the
words in which he took up his talk again, " though I know that
to some ears the word seems to carry a contemptuous meaning.
But I have a greater reluctance to say ' my men ' to you, for the
reason that of late I shrink from assuming any title of ownership
even to myself. Why not my ' hands'? To most of you, at all
events, and to me, with whom you have worked together for a
good while, it should be, I think, a good enough word. We
entertain, I believe, a mutual hope and intention that only physi-
cal incapacity shall make us useless to each other, and only per-
sistent moral maladies put us forcibly asunder. We are parts
of the same body, you and I, working toward the same end,
and indispensably necessary to each other. True, I have a
power of option, of substitution where the units are concerned,
which you do not share in equal measure with me. But with
every day I live it becomes more plain to me that this power
does not in any wise inhere in me. It is a gift from Him who
made us all of one blood. It is superadded to the manhood
which is equal in each one of us, and it carries with it as rigid a
condition of accountability for its use as your own powers do.
I don't like, for my own sake, to think it carries one more strin-
gent still. Perhaps it may, and that is why I have bound myself,
and desire to bind those who shall succeed me, in ways that
shall give you a guarantee that the disadvantage on your side
shall be compensated for as far as may be. For, whether or not I
shall have more to answer for than the man who has his brain and
muscle only feeble both of them, perhaps to make his way
through the world with, my load, like yours, was laid on my
shoulders, and I don't feel called to flinch under it and play the
coward. I have not always seen my way to accomplish all I

522 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [July,

had it in my heart to do, but I think I can say with a clear con-
science that I have never ultimately held back from any move
toward it which became plain and obvious. But I am an old
man now."

Then he paused again, and in the interval before he took up
the thread of his speech some of those near him noted the
swelling arteries in his throat and temples, and the unusual flush
which began to suffuse his sallow cheeks.

" Fifty years ago to-day," he resumed, " the germ of all that
has been, and will yet, I hope, be still farther developed here, was
given me to unfold. Though I had not anticipated anything so
pleasant as this occasion has been to all of us, yet I have had it
in my mind for some time to call you together to-day and tell
you on what plans I have settled as the best by which I can
hope to carry out my wishes. I had hoped that all my arrange-
ments would have been completed by this time, but, by an in-
advertence, the final step yet remains to be taken. Still, I can
tell you what it is, since, if I am spared until Monday
Then he stopped again, and, though he tried to go on, his voice
was so curiously thickened that the words he attempted to utter
were lost. And then, as Squire Cadwallader, who had been
sitting at some distance, made a sudden move to go to his as-
sistance, John Van Alstyne fell heavily forward and spoke no
more.

Paul Murray, who was standing on the bank at the other side
of the road, sprang down at once to go to the old man, and Mr.
Hadleigh followed. They had lifted him from the grass before
the squire came up to loosen his neckwear and take other
necessary means for his relief. For some reason the doctor got
a most unpleasant impression from Mr. Hadleigh's countenance,
to which a blackened cork had imparted an exaggerated leer.
His judgment inclined to scoff at the suggestion when it per-
sisted in recurring during the vigil he kept that night beside his
friend, but, do what he would, he could not entirely shake off
the feeling that there had been a cold exultation in the young
man's eyes which matched better with the suggestion of his cos-
tume and the expression painted on his face than with the sym-
pathetic tone and words that issued from his lips.

Squire Cadwallader had been favorably impressed with Mr.
Hadleigh at first, as well as pleased, for various reasons, at-what
he thought his opportune arrival; but from that moment he re-
mained unpleasantly sub-conscious of a distrust of him which,
more than anything else, had prompted the caution he instinctive-

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 523

ly resorted to himself and had recommended to Zipporah Col-
ton. He felt half-ashamed as soon as he had given her that warn-
ing, for it proceeded from one of those apparently irrational
yieldings to sudden impulse which he was sure to characterize
as womanish in other people. Occurring in himself, he straight-
way felt the need of justifying it, though to do so shifted the
chief load of blame to his own shoulders. What could be more
natural, he asked himself as he was driving back home, than that
a man so certain in the ordinary course of things to be im-
mensely benefited by the sudden death of an almost utter
stranger should feel relief, and be unable to hide the feeling?
It would be absurd to suppose that any real affection could have
yet sprung up between them, and nearly impossible to dissemble
entirely a sudden joy. Once more the squire acquitted Mr.
Hadleigh at the bar of his common sense, explicitly admitted
that he had been unreasonably displeased with him, and then as
resolutely shut his eyes to the fact that instead of discharging
the culprit he had but immured him in some deeper dungeon,
where he might for the present keep him out of sight and mind.
He began to occupy himself instead with the consideration of
Mrs. Van Alstyne's offences against natural decorum. He was
sure he had simpler grounds there for his disgust. The poorly-
disguised gratification she had shown, and her eagerness to im-
part her conviction that her father-in-law's last words showed
plainly that he had made no will as yet, as well as her certainty
that he would have no further opportunity to do so, irritated
the squire not a little. It was Sunday, but he was all alone,
and his single ejaculation when she came up before his thoughts
would hardly have suited a Wednesday evening prayer-meet-
ing.

The fact was that Squire Cadwallader felt himself in sore
need of a good, solid reason on which to base an active displea-
sure against somebody or other. He wanted it that it might
serve as a screen between his own conscience and his under-
ground consciousness that the situation appealed in him also to
a double set of motives. John Van Alstyne's death, should it
occur before he could effect the realization of the schemes he
had been developing when he was stricken and certainly his
words seemed to imply that they yet lacked their necessary sane-
tion would be advantageous to him, too, in his character as
capitalist and manufacturer. He knew that, and felt hon-
estly ashamed of adverting to the knowledge. The friend in
him, as well as the physician, came manfully to his aid against

524 JOHN VAN ALSTYN&S FACTORY. [July,

the trader, and did a battle against his meaner self none the less
sturdy for being- as far as possible confined to pinning it under-
foot and resolutely trying to ignore it.

Before he reached his own place Squire Cadwallader was
obliged to pass that of one of his fellow-proprietors in the Har-
monia cotton-mill, as yet the largest of the factories on the Mil-
ton Kill, in which the doctor had been for years a sleeping part-
ner. Seth Lamson, a man in the first half of his sixties, with a
high, narrow head set on top of a long neck from the possession
of which he had derived considerable internal gratification since
witnessing John Van Alstyne's fall the day before, was sit-
ting in an arm-chair beneath one of the big elms on his lawn, as
was his habit on sunny Sunday afternoons after church-time
between June and mid-October. He was an elder of the Pres-
byterian church at the Corners a fact which was sometimes
held to color his views concerning the future welfare of his
neighbors more deeply than it affected his action in bettering
their present condition.

" Hullo!" he sung out, and then, rising, came out of his gate
and stood beside the carriage, with one foot resting on the step.
" You have been out to see Van Alstyne again, I suppose. How
is he ?"

" Hard to say," returned the squire. " Better, on the
whole, than I expected."

" Conscious?"

" To a certain degree. I don't know how far. His eyes
are sensitive to light and he can close them. Yesterday he
couldn't."

" There is no chance of his recovery, I suppose? with his
build, you know, and at his age?"

" His build has nothing on earth to do with it. That is an
exploded notion. But his age is against him."

" Well," said Mr. Lamson, shifting to the other foot, and
gazing into space with a piously meditative air, " he has had a
long life in which to consider the end he is approaching. 'All
the ways of a man are right in his own eyes, but the end there-
of is death,' the Scripture says or words to that effect," added
the elder, whose memory was untrustworthy, and who liked to
hedge on serious matters. " I don't want to say a word against
the dead or the dying, but it must be admitted that his example
has been notoriously unchristian throughout his life, and what
he was saying yesterday was rank socialism to my mind. I was
even then thinking that his allusions to Providence were, in a

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. 525

manner, blasphemous on his lips, when Providence cast him
down, as if in instant confirmation of the thought. If his de-
signs have been frustrated, which is what I am led to conclude
from his last words, the best thing we can do is to secure with-
out delay the upper site on his creek. Don't you think?"

The squire also was a member of the church, and occasion-
ally passed the plate, though he had resolutely declined all
nominations to the office of elder. But for the second time he
broke the Sunday stillness with an objurgation, not very pro-
fane indeed, but calculated to suddenly stiffen, as it did, Seth
Lamson's spine.

" Damn it, Lamson !" he said testily, "your talk about Provi-
dence sickens me ! John Van Alstyne isn't dead yet, and isn't
going to die if I can put a spoke in the wheel of all the people
that would like to get him out of their way. It's Providence
you are relying on, is it? If Providence is half as wise as I am,
I wouldn't bet on your chances, or mine either, against John
Van Alstyne's when we come up for judgment before Him."

" This is very singular language for a Christian man, Cadwal-
lader," said Mr. Lamson, standing erect and turning even paler
than his wont.

" I mean every word of it," returned the squire, taking out
the whip to touch his horse's flanks. " If you'll put it in your
pipe and smoke it, I'll do the same. Good day ! I've a patient
waiting and can't stop to talk. Get along, Dandy !"

xxv.

SLIGHTLY RETROSPECTIVE.

BETWEEN four and five o'clock that Sunday afternoon it oc-
curred to Zipporah Colton that a walk might refresh her more
than the vain effort she had been making to fall asleep on the
lounge in her own room. Excepting the servants, no one was
stirring about the house. Mr. Hadleigh, who had been sitting
with his cousin all the morning, had left him when Zipporah
came to take his place, and gone at once to bed with a severe at-
tack of the congestive neuralgia to which he said he had been
liable after excitement ever since his long illness. Mattie was
still with Mr. Van Alstyne, and would not be relieved by Mary
Anne Murray until supper-time. As for Mrs. Van Alstyne, she
was taking her usual siesta undisturbed. She said her nerves

526 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [July,

would not permit her to take any nursing duty. She had even
been obliged, she told Zipporah, to leave her poor William to
strangers at the very last, because when her heart was torn by
grief in that way she became utterly incapable ; she couldn't
bear even to look at suffering, she felt it so ! She did envy those
rugged people who could steel themselves against it they es-
caped so much !

" Lucky for her, and for me too ! " ejaculated Squire Cadwal-
lader when Mrs. Van Alstyne left the sick-room at the close of
this explanation. " It saves me the trouble of forbidding her to
come near him. If her blessed nerves will only keep that purr-
ing voice of hers outside of this door altogether for the next ten
days, I'll decorate her with a leather medal for services ren-
dered. Now you go and lie down, my dear, or else take a run
in the air. I can't have you breaking down on my hands when
I am counting on you."

Zipporah had been up a good deal the night before, some-
times with the doctor in Mr. Van Alstyne's room, where there
was, perhaps, no real need of her, although the squire now and
then good-naturedly contrived to put her to apparent use, but
more often prowling softly up and down the corridor outside, or
crouched upon a hassock near the door, her heart full not only
of an unaffected sorrow on her own account, but heavy with a
compassionate yearning over the pathetic loneliness of the sick
man's condition. There Paul Murray found her when he came,
two hours after midnight, to relieve Squire Cadwallader's vigil.
She was looking very white and tired then, and when Paul gen-
tly urged her to go away and rest, she had done so with a quiet
docility which pleased him, and pleased him all the more because
it was so distinctly unlike the attitude she had been maintaining
toward him for several days.

They had been thrown together a good deal throughout the
week, in consequence of the affair they had projected in common,
and Paul Murray, at first, had found the situation both pleas-
antly unavoidable and unavoidably pleasant. But, as has been
remarked of him before, he had a conscience. His conscience,
moreover, was of that aggressive order which does not wait to
be interrogated at set periods, but has an inveterate habit of
bringing its possessor to book at all seasons a little late some-
times, perhaps, or rather, to speak more truly, in a tone so quiet
as to be easily drowned for the moment by the tumult of ruder
voices. But it was so insistent and pervasive that Paul had
presently found himself under the necessity of excogitating a

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 527

scheme which should satisfy his interior monitor while leaving
him free to carry out what he had begun and could not at once
escape from. It was only for a little while at most.

His scheme, about which we may have more to say hereafter,
he soon found to be a perfect success. In fact, it worked to such
a charm that the first fault he detected in it was that it effected
the end it was aimed at so easily and completely that he was
ready, after a day or two's trial, to deny its necessity and relax
its rigors. Moreover, what was the use of it in any case? Did
he not know now, through a conversation into which he had
been drawn, rather against his inclination, that Miss Colton's
ideas concerning mixed marriages or, rather, concerning any
changes in religious belief apparently brought about with mar-
riage in view as a motive were as fixed and unalterable as his
own ?

The talk in question had taken place one evening at Squire
Cadwallader's, where it was started by a story Lucy told con-
cerning one of the maids in the house, a seamstress, who had
lived with them since her childhood and always attended the
same church as the family. She was now about to leave them in
order to marry Tom Murrough,the village blacksmith, and one
of Father Seetin's congregation. The squire's daughters knew
Father Seetin so well that Annie Pratt's account of her conver-
sion greatly amused them. The girl had just left the back-par-
lor, where the costumes for the coming entertainment were in
course of preparation, and where her needle and her taste had
both been put in requisition.

"Annie is going to be married to-morrow night," Lucy
began when she went out. "She is going to marry Tom
Murrough, after they have been courting and breaking off these
seven years. Think of that, Mr. Hadleigh ! "

" Is it that he was as constant as Jacob, or she more fickle
than Rachel?" Mr. Hadleigh responded, without looking up
from the mask that he was painting.

" Six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, I guess," said Lucy
with a laugh. " Though I never heard before that Rachel was

fickle."

" They were both pretty constant," put in Bella,
ried the day at last, and I always thought he would. He did
the breaking-off the first time, and when she tried making-up
again I told her just how it would end."
3 ' What was it all about?" asked Dr. Sawyer.
Religion " whispered Bella, who sat next him ; " don t go

528 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [[July,

on talking about it, because of Mr. Murray. I'll tell you after-
wards."

But Zipporah had just put the same question, and Lucy,
whose tongue was more apt to run away with her than was her
sister's, and who wanted to tell the story for its own sake, was
beginning it already.

"Oh! it was just a matter of religion," she said. " Annie
was almost brought up in our house and always went to the
Presbyterian church, of course. And Tom Murrough is a shining
light in Father Seetin's, isn't he, Mr. Murray? "

" Tom's pretty fair, I guess," answered Paul, who would
rather not have been appealed to. " It certainly wouldn't be
just to call him a ' hickory Catholic.' "

"A hickory Catholic? What is that?" asked Lucy, and
then went on without waiting for an answer. " At all events,
he wouldn't marry her unless she'd turn, and she wouldn't marry
him unless he would. And so it has gone on until now, when
she suddenly changed her mind a fortnight ago and went to
call on Father Seetin. She told me about it this afternoon, and
it is much too funny to keep. I declare, I'm half-ashamed to
own she was brought up here when what she says could really
be true."

"Why?" asked Paul Murray, on whom her eyes rested as
she stopped speaking.

" Because it sounds so ridiculously ignorant that it throws
too much discredit on us," returned Lucy. " Fancy ! This is
the idea she had, and of Father Seetin of all the men in the
world ! And as often as she has seen him come here to dinner,
too ! I said to her : ' So you've done it, Annie, after all the
times you said you wouldn't. What made you ?' * Well, it was
this way, Miss Lucy,' says she. ' I'd got Tom round to the
point that he said he'd go with me to Mr. Parsons and get mar-
ried, and we were going to do it this very week. But the day I
went up to Riverside to get my wedding-bonnet I met in the
cars an old German Catholic woman that used to know mother
when I was little, and I told her all about it. And she says,
" Now, you mind my words : As sure as you take a Catholic
man to a minister to marry you, you'll have an unhappy home
as long as you live. You'd better give it up altogether than do
that. I've seen it time and time again, and I never knew it fail."
So I thought an' thought. / don't want an unhappy home, I
says to myself. I always thought Tom was just stubborn about
it, but maybe it was just this that ailed him all the time. I

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 529

always heard tell that Mother Schneider was one of the wise
women my mother used to run to her at every turn. So after
a good while I just said to myself: ' Well, there's none o' your
folks to fret about you, Annie Pratt, and there's his all dead set
against it, and you know he don't like it himself. I guess you'd
better go and see his priest.' So 1 went, and, if you'll believe
me, Miss Lucy, I just managed to crawl along, as if I had a
chain and ball on. And when I got down to his house, and
stood on the stocp, I do declare I think you might have heard
my heart beating 'way out to the front gate. I was that afraid
I wonder I didn't faint. I had to stand there and quiet down
before I could ring his bell.' "

" Nonsense ! " broke in Zipporah. " What was she afraid
of?"

" That is what I wanted to know," returned Lucy. * ' What
in the world were you afraid of?' said I. * Did you think he'd
eat you ? ' "

" ' No'm,' said she, ' but they do tell such awful things about
priests an' sisters and all that kind o' folks. 1 had to wait awhile
in his parlor, because his man said he was engaged, and while I
was waiting I heard somebody beginning to sharpen a knife on
the grindstone. Lord preserve us ! thinks I, they're getting
ready to kill me an' bury me out in the backyard, and not a soul
will ever know what has become of me ! I hadn't even -told
Tom what I was going to do I was that ashamed of giving in
and I hadn't told any one here. And with that I jumped up and
was going to rush out in the hall and escape when Father Seetin
opened the door and came in !' '

" Well ? " queried Zip.

" Well, that's about all. I didn't ask anything further. Of
course it was a foregone conclusion as to what she would do
after taking that step. She is converted to Father Seetin, any-
way, and laughs at her own folly, the little goose ! She says she
would have been willing at any time to go to him for the cere-
mony, but he kept egging Tom on to hold out until she would
give in altogether."

" Well, I should think she would be ashamed ! " said Zip in an
aside intended for Lucy's ear only. They were sitting with no
one between them, and quite near each other, but the girl's
voice, for which one pair of not distant ears were always on the
watch, carried the words too distinctly. " I'd like to see myself
marry anybody that could be 'egged on' by any one else to
make me change my mind for such a reason as that ! I don't
VOL. XLVII. 34

530 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [July>

know Father Seetin to speak to, but I must say I didn't think he
looked like a man who would act in that way."

" What does it all mean, anyway, Mr. Murray? " asked the
squire, who was lying- back in an arm-chair near the table around
which the young people were busy. " In Father Downey's
time marriages of that kind between his folks and ours were
going on every now and then without any active opposition on
his part. Do you think it right to bring such a pressure to bear
in these cases?"

Paul flushed and cast a quick look at Zipporah, but she had
her eyes bent steadily on her work arid did not catch it.

" Father Seetin has no option that I can see," he answered
after a brief hesitation. " He is bound to do his duty as he un-
derstands it. If the case had been reversed he would have
counselled the woman precisely as he did the man."

" Oh ! I understand his view of it tolerably well, I fancy,"
returned the squire. " He naturally regards it from the profes-
sional standpoint. I was asking for your own opinion, if you
don't object to giving it. Do you think it right for the authori-
ties of your church to prohibit or discourage such marriages be-
tween couples willing to sink their religious differences and go
each their own way in peace ? " The squire, too, had caught
Zipporah's comment, low-spoken though it was, and he went
on without waiting for Paul Murray to reply. " I confess I was
a little mad about Annie myself. If she chose to go with her
husband afterward I wouldn't have blamed her an atom. That
would be all right. ' Let women be subject to their husbands
in the Lord,' is one of the texts where I don't disagree with
Paul as often as Mrs. Cadwallader does."

" Indeed you don't," interposed his wife good-naturedly.

"But if there is any time and place where a woman should
have things all her own way mind, I don't positively affirm
that there is, Miss Zipporah" looking at her over his glasses
in a way that brought a smile to her lips, and the blood to> the
roots of her hair as well " but if there is, it is when the ques-
tion of how and when and where she is willing to be married is
concerned. What man, except the man she is good enough to
condescend to, has any right to meddle ? I am sure you must
in your heart agree with me, Murray, prejudices aside."

"If I had only prejudices to put aside," Paul Murray answer-
ed, after another slight hesitation, during which he could have
wished himself almost anywhere else in the world, " I should
agree with you, of course."

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYN&S FACTORY. 531

"But, as it is, you can't," returned the squire, whose tact was
sufficient to let him catch in Murray's tone the effort he was
making. "Well, I understand that, too. Prejudice itself is
enough, for that matter. I walk softly around my own, I notice,
ready as I am to go rough-shod over anybody else's."

Then the current of conversation turned. It was after this
that Paul Murray's scheme for the conduct of his intercourse with
Miss Colton began to seem to him to have been devised with need-
less haste. There had been no day since they drove to Hender-
son's Falls together on which they had not met. Now, to dissemble
well a strong natural emotion, either a selfish heart and schem-
ing brain, or else an iron will and a sensitive conscience, both
arrayed against it, are imperatively necessary. Until now Paul
Murray had never felt the need of dissembling where his feel-
ings were concerned. Nor, to speak truly, was he at all sure
that he might not yet gain all he desired without forfeiting his in-
tegrity. So he looked the pleasure that he felt, and the tones of
his voice told it as plainly to the girl's ears as if his words had
been full of protestations, instead of being, as they were, not
much different from the commonplaces addressed her by the
others.

Zipporah was one of the girls who never develop into the sort
of woman of whom novelists, of their own sex and the other,
have so much to say the women, that is, in whom the instinct to
shelter and protect and cherish the maternal instinct, that is
is so strong that they love the men they marry all the better for
their weaknesses, shelter them under the wings of their brooding
compassion, consider them almost as their first-born, and are
glad to put their own strength of heart and will in the fore-
front of all the battles of life. There is a plenty of such women,
fortunately, for, as the late Mrs. Poyser remarked, "God
A'mighty made 'em to match the men," and in that point of
view they afford a clear bit of confirmatory evidence to the Dar-
winian theory of the survival of the fittest. But Zipporah could
not be included in that class. There was a defiant, virginal
pride in her which would not yield too readily, nor ever to a
mere internal traitor, nor completely and finally until overcome
in legitimate warfare. Such strength as she possessed would
find its only satisfactory exercise in resistance until she could
make willingly a full surrender, not to be taken back unless
love were taken with it. f

And so it happened, whether well or ill for Paul Murray's
final success with her it is perhaps premature to say, that the

53 2 JOHN VAN- ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [July,

slightly bantering tone which he fell into by pure instinct almost
from the first did not hurt him with her in the least. It " teased
her out of thought," to misquote Keats ; not, of course, into
abstract consideration of important subjects, but into recalling
his tones of voice, which, consciously to herself, took something
of their natural self-assertion out of her own, and the expression
of his eyes, which she could meet well enough but not endure
without blenching. But when, presently, something of his in-
terior trouble got into greater prominence with him, and the
consciousness of disadvantage which pursued him blent with
his increasing passion to make him less master of himself, he
began also to lose his incipient mastery over her. He pleased
her best when he seemed least anxious to do so. But that was
a fact in feminine psychology of which he had no direct know-
ledge and it was direct knowledge, or what he mistakenly
took to be its equivalent, pure reason, on which he determined
to base that scheme of his conduct toward her to which previous
reference has been made. He hoped for her conversion, but for
the life of him he could not see his way to broaching the subject
with her. His instinct spoke there, and warned him against a
pitched battle before all his forces should have been put on the
field. But, being a man, his reason was always getting the bet-
ter of his instincts.. He concluded to interest Father Seetin in
her. It was evident that she had a bright mind, and no very
formidable religious convictions opposed to his own. Her
conversion ought not to be difficult through the ordinary means ;
and unless, and until, it was accomplished he must dissemble.
What she had said in response to Lucy Cadwallader's story was
so exactly what he had expected that the evidence it afforded of
his accurate knowledge of her ought, perhaps, to have given
him more pleasure than it did. But by that time he was too
deep in the consideration of his own experiences, and too bent
on not making any false steps, to be a competent judge where
she was concerned.

He went back, therefore, through what he felt to be a ra-
tional impulse, to the attitude into which he had often dropped at
first for a much simpler reason. As he mistook it in perfectly
good faith for subtlety, it ought, doubtless, to be accounted to
him as such ; certainly it served his real purpose indefinitely
better than the weakness he felt conscious of would have done
if yielded to. Everything about the girl was beginning to wear
an air of absolute perfection to him ; his critical judgment was

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 533

in abeyance and all her words were as wisdom ; even as the
slight down that shades the lips of some of her sex is reckoned
unto them as a beauty by their purblind adorers. So, when he
took the bit resolutely between his teeth and determined to be
rational, he forced himself back into a more independent atti-
tude. When a difference of opinion came up, he took anybody's
else against hers, though it was also his. He was even a little
brusque with her now and again, besides being so inattentive
to what was going on under his eyes as to irritate Dr. Sawyer a
good deal by being rather marked in his politeness toward Bella,
who was a very good girl in her way, but so utterly unlike any-
thing that Paul Murray admired that it never occurred to him
that this special practice of heroic virtue could have unpleasant
consequences to anybody.

Still, as he could not always command either his eyes or
his voice, he occasionally betrayed himself to Zipporah, not as
fully as he might if she had understood his motive, or had been
willing to acknowledge to herself either the nature or the de-
gree of the attraction which each had for the other, but quite
enough to keep her thoughts busy with him. And, after the
talk which has been recorded, she got a certain enlightenment,
true as far as it went, upon both his difficulties, and it net-
tled her not a little. " Does he think 1 am going to like
him, and be another Annie Pratt," she said to herself wrath-
fully, "that he begins to be unmannerly to me already?"
And thereupon she began to second his efforts at detachment
with such zeal, and, being much cooler than he, with so much
better success, that, as has been observed already, he came to
the unpleasant conclusion that he might have spared himself the
trouble of making them. His own feeble efforts to cultivate
Bella, who had a counter-attraction to oppose to them, were quite
thrown away in comparison with Zipporah's amiability to Mr.
Hadleigh. If the latter had continued long, Paul Murray's con-
science might perhaps have had many a sop thrown to it to
quiet its remonstrances. But in the midst of his perplexities of
all sorts came that blow to Mr. Van Alstyne, Which, to him,
would mean so much more than any one but him suspected, and,
coming, it threw him so completely back upon himself
became entirely natural once more, or, at all events, as nearly s
as any man can be who is as thoroughly super-naturalize,
will as was Paul Murray.

534 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [July,

XXVI.
WHICH ALSO DOES NOT ADVANCE MATTERS.

ZIPPORAH slipped quietly down the stairs and came out on the
broad piazza which ran round three sides of the house. It was a
warm, bright, soft September day, whose Sunday stillness at
that moment was unbroken to her sense by any sight or sound
indicative of life, save the occasional note of a bird and the hum of
insects on the wing. For it was Brother Meeker's appointed sea-
son for divine worship at East Milton, and hence the shed around
the little church close by stood empty of the stamping horses,
whisking their tails in impatient chase of tormenting flies, in
front of the clumsy vehicles which brought the more distant,
members of his congregation to attend his ministrations. Other-
wise the Old Hundredth would have been filling the air with its
solemn melody at about this time, or Brother Meeker's strident
nasality of tone would have made itself heard through the open
windows as he pronounced the benediction.

The girl stood still for a little to consider. If she had fol-
lowed her most interior impulse it would have led her at once in
search of Mary Anne Murray, for she was not only suffering a
very real sorrow, but one which brought with it a sense of
helplessness which was new to her. Over and over again dur-
ing the hours that had erected themselves like a wall between
the painful present and a past which for her had contained no-
thing sharper than the pin-pricks of annoyance or petty vexation,
she had been trying to pray in earnest, and, to her own appre-
hension at least, she had not succeeded. Where was He, that
Author of life and death, to whom since her babyhood she had
said her prayers at night and morning in what now seemed &
perfunctory and idle repetition ? Perhaps it was not altogether
the girl's fault that they did seem so, for it had been a part of
the teaching given her that they could be of little or no avail until
she should have undergone the mysterious conversion known to
her as a change of heart. Empty, at all events, they seemed at
present; and in that sense of isolation and weakness which the
near approach of death forces home upon the soul which beholds
it for the first time, especially in that shape in which it seemed
impending over John Van Alstyne, she felt a longing to get
nearer to the person who, of all others, had most impressed
her with a conviction of the reality of the unseen world and
of her own personal nearness to God.

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYN& s FACTORY. 535

That impulse, nevertheless, was one she concluded not to fol-
low. Miss Murray would be coming up in the evening, which
would be better than going to seek her at her own house a
thing Zipporah had not done since making acquaintance with
Paul Murray. She had a broad-leafed straw hat dangling by its
ribbons from her hand, and after deciding against a promenade
around the piazza, whose longest side lay still in a broad glow of
sunshine, she tied it under her chin, let herself out at the front
gate, and strolled leisurely in the direction of the pine woods,
meeting not a soul as she went onward.

Two bridges crossed the mill-stream within half a dozen rods
from John Van Alstyne's house, one of which made a part of the
highway, and was used by teams and foot-passengers alike. The
other was got at by a scramble down a steepish bank shaded by
alders and a tangle of blackberry and wild-rose bushes. It was
only a couple of planks, with a single hand-rail, leading to a pas-
ture in which a few cows were grazing ; across it a footpath
stretched like a narrow gray-green ribbon to the woods. While
she stood hesitating for a moment which of these two to take,
Zipporah' s white frock, relieved against the blue of the eastern
sky she was just at the crest of the road before it began to
slope toward the water made her plainly visible to a pair of
keen, far-sighted eyes belonging to a person, as yet a good
stretch behind her, who was on his way to make a visit to the
sick-chamber. Seeing her, he changed his mind, quickened his
pace, and concluded to make his inquiries out of doors.

Having a long stride, as became his height, and a definite
purpose in view, which the girl in front of him had not, Paul
Murray was at the bridge by the time she was haif-across the
pasture. There was but one tree left in the field, a magnificent
oak, solid and long-armed, which stood nearly in the centre. As
she stopped under it for a moment's protection against the sun
that was beating on her back, Zipporah heard his footsteps on
the plank, and turned. The sun was full in her eyes then, and
she gave no sign of recognition, but, casting a hasty glance in
every other direction, went on along the footpath'atan accelerat-
ed pace. But by the time she had reached the stile and was
ready to ascend the steps if she really meant to cross the fence
which kept the cows from straying out of bounds which seem-
ed doubtful by the pause she made Paul Murray was pretty
close upon her track. When he spoke she turned rather quickly,
and, though she gave him only a faint and serious smile, her face,
under the shadow of her large hat, wore a look of relief so un-

536 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [July,

mistakable that he involuntarily answered it instead of resorting
to the ordinary commonplaces.

" Were you afraid ? " he said. " Did you think it might be
somebody else? "

" I didn't know. Strangers are not in the habit of crossing
this field. I never saw any one in it before but myself and the
milkers."

" But you turned and looked at me when you were under the
tree ? "

" I looked toward you, but the sun shone in my eyes. You
are not the only tall man in the village, Mr. Murray."

" Except Hadleigh, I am the only one at all likely to be here,"
thought Paul. " Is she afraid of him ?" But he said nothing.

" Shall we go back?" Zipporah went on with hardly a pause.
" Everybody in the house seemed to be asleep, except my sister,
who is with Mr. Van Alstyne. I couldn't rest indoors, so I
came out for a walk." And as she spoke she began to move in
the direction toward home.

" O no! " said Paul, coming back from his reflections ; "you
don't call this a walk, surely. Come over into the shade and tell
me about Mr. Van Alstyne. I was on my way there to inquire
when I saw you as you started down toward the bridge."

Any deep feeling shared in common creates sympathy, forms,
indeed, the most vital bond of union. In certain ways it may
be true, as one of our authorized teachers affirmed but lately,
that there is an element of illusion in all feeling, and that pas-
sion is non-rational. But no such affirmation can be absolutely
true of the rational creature man, whose Creator himself seeks
first his heart, and is honored by no faith, however firm, unless
it works by charity. Between the two who presently found
themselves pacing up and down upon the brown and soundless
carpet of pine-needles deposited by countless seasons, that pre-
liminary tie speedily became evident to each. There was a
strong personal affection, in the first place, for the kind old man
now lying so helplessly alone ; alive, but apparently responsive
to no other life ; shut away from sympathy, and made incapable
of action just when the long aspiration of his life seemed to need
only its final crown. And that affection, though of so recent
growth in the girl, yet took in her its most unselfish form. Of
all those who were that day grieving for him, she was perhaps
the only one whose sorrow was entirely unmixed with any ad-
vertence to the probable and most tangible loss of opportunity
or comfort to themselves which his death might bring. She

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. 537

was too young yet, and had had too little experience, to know
how sensitive she was to the spur of great ideas, but even the
spontaneous kindness which Mr. Van Alstyne had shown her
had attached her to him less than her equally spontaneous sym-
pathy with his unselfish aims. Until she knew him, one of the
most frequent employments of her idle moments and they were
many had been the construction of those castles in Spain in one
sort or another of which the young are always dwelling. And,
with her, money, in practically unlimited amounts, had always
lain at their foundation, chiefly, no doubt, because her girlish
aspirations toward pleasant personal belongings, modest enough
in themselves, were yet much more extensive than her means
for gratifying them. But whenever she put on her wishing-cap
it was always her own wants which came last upon her budget.
She wanted money, not in thousands but in millions, so that she
could pay this one's debts, and buy that one a house, and bring
up another's family in all ease and comfort, send Tom to college
and to Europe, and give every one she knew an unfailing yet
not too ample a provision for their wants. " For if they had too
much perhaps it wouldn't be good for them," she meditated
with youthful gravity, engaged, meantime, upon some shabby
task of remodelling or mending, such as had for the hundredth
time suggested these vast desires. Her dream capital was so
immense that when she had provided for all the wants of which
she personally knew, and had only her own left to consider, she
generally found them too paltry to waste much thought on.
" I would never darn another stocking, I'm sure of that ; nor
mend a glove; no, nor trim a bonnet. And I would have a horse
to ride, and buy every nice book that came out.* But dear me !
how very little that would take! And I suspect I should not
care a copper about such things if once they were easy to be
had. What could 'one do with money that would be satisfactory ? "
Now, it was that question, and the solution of it toward which
John Van Alstyne had been working, which had kindled in her
the enthusiasm lacking which no other feeling of which she was
capable would ever even seem to her to touch its perihelion. Mary
Anne Murray, too, had done something toward clearing her mind
about it when she had once said to her that, although it must be
sweet to give to others, she would always rather pay them. For
her Zipporah entertained a certain reverent admiration such as
women occasionally feel for one another, and which was not the
less strong for being only half-intelligent; lacking, as she did, the
clue to its most inner secret. She understood her less well than

538 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [July,

she did John Van Alstyne, whose aims seemed to her not only
the highest possible, but also entirely feasible and easy of fulfil-
ment.

" I don't say, mind," he had remarked to her one day, find-
ing in her a listener always ready and appreciative, " that alms
degrade a sound, healthy, free man or woman who is willing to
work. I merely feel that it degrades me to offer them. I can't
do it without blushing, inside anyway. They have their oppor-
tunities, such as they are strength and health and a good will
sum them up for the most part, lacking either a special capacity
or a special training and I have mine, which don't differ from
theirs except in the extraneous accident of money. The biggest
part of that came to me through a lucky chance. I have seen it
come to many another man in more objectionable ways. I am
responsible for no one else, but I'll be hanged excuse me, my
dear if I will combine with any man or any set of men to create
monopolies, or force down prices for labor, or take advantage of
them when they are forced down by others. As for my people
here, if I can't sell my calico at a profit when a tight time
comes, I shall set them at some other work until times are better.
Yes, I know what the squire says that is charity in another
form. I have nothing to say against that, except that charity is
the universal law of God, as I understand it, and greed the law
of the devil. There is just one thing 1 save for my hands in prac-
tising charity in that form, and as that is the one thing I desire to
save for myself, and can't save otherwise self-respect I shall
keep on using the liberty the law allows me of siding with the
under dog. I have most sympathy with him, I am bound to say."

LEWIS R. DORSAY.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

l888 -] LIQUOR AND LABOR. 539

LIQUOR AND LABOR.

IT was once the fashion, in some circles it is still the fashion,
to meet the clamorous workingman, wild from a sense of injury
and helplessness, with statistics of his saloon-spent earnings and
general thriftlessness. It was said to him, and with much truth,
too, when he demanded better wages on the ground of having
too little money for comforts and necessities: " My good man,
spend less at the saloon, be more thrifty at home, and you will
have enough money for comforts and necessities." This gospel
was preached from prominent non-Catholic pulpits, and possibly
delayed the late upheaval of labor conditions for some years. It
blinded many to the real state of affairs. Economical habits on
the part of workmen were considered the solution of the labor
question, and I believe a few schemes were set on foot .to teach
Polly how to make cheap soup, and Sam how to get rich by
putting a penny in the bank every day. We look back to those
times and their innocent schemings with amazement. No doubt
the art of economy is badly understood and practised in our
country, and the saloon absorbs too much of a workman's wages.
But then these things will not prevent a smile at the simplicity
which mistook an elephant for a mouse, and thought to pacify
him with more cheese!

Students of the labor question have paid no attention to the
point of economy on the workman's part as affecting his relations
with capital. It has no immediate bearing on these relations,
and can in no way directly affect the final settlement. To those
who think otherwise, it has been pointed out that the universal
tendencv towards lower wages and harder conditions for work-
men has been intensified by any economy they practised. Capi-
talists run about the world bidding for cheaper and ever cheaper
labor. And economical laborers, wherever they appear, always
bring about reductions of wages. Polly and Sam might as well
throw overboard the soup recipes and penny savings-banks and
adopt Chinese habits of saving at once. If men had said that
the workman's thrift would bring the final settlement more
quickly, they would have been nearer the truth. It is all that it
can do. Thrift benefits the workman, but how does it or can
it produce a sense of justice in the employer?

Thriftlessness at home is not, in my opinion, a safe charge to

540 LIQUOR AND LABOR. [July,

make against the work-people. The cooking might be improv-
ed and a wholesome variety of foods introduced into their
kitchens, but deliberate extravagance is not often found among
them in kitchen matters. The good quality of their clothing
and jewelry has often been commented upon unfavorably by
those who see only the holiday workman. Yet the great major-
ity of work-people never buy more than two complete suits a
year. It is a compliment to their natural quickness and good
taste that by means of this wardrobe they can make a more de-
cided impression than many would-be aristocrats.

No ; it is only in the matter of whiskey and beer that the
work-people are truly thriftless and extravagant, and there, un-
fortunately, no words are too strong to paint their prodigality,
whose evil effects are so far-reaching and take so many forms
that one is bewildered in tracing them. The evil is confined
almost entirely to workmen, the women, except in a few cities,
rarely falling under the influence of the drinking habit. If it
were otherwise, the misery, now tolerable and half-hidden, in
which so many families are plunged would become an open
shame and monstrous burden to the community.

Upon inquiry the first fact which strikes one is the univer-
sality of the drinking habit among workmen, young and old,
and of every variety of occupation. The only distinction on
this point that I could find among them was that some drank
more and others drank less ; but all were tainted with the habit
masters and apprentices, printers, weavers, moulders, clerks,
day-laborers, railroad men, tailors, shoemakers, and mechanics
generally. And the next fact which strikes one disagreeably is
that of this vast army of habitual drinkers hardly one in ten will
admit that he was ever betrayed into drunkenness, not oftener,
anyway, than about once or twice a year. All affirm themselves
moderate drinkers. The third fact, which clinches the other
two, is a financial one, and still more disagreeable than its fel-
lows. I am speaking, be it remembered, of those who are called
moderate drinkers, whose potations bring no visible distress or
disgrace upon themselves or their families. Their moderation
is altogether a sham. Let me give some results of my personal
investigation : I have known young printers, whose wages are
usually good, and whose reputations in this particular instance
were fair, who spent monthly from ten to fifteen dollars on
whiskey and beer. I have known day-laborers with a monthly
wage of $28 60, and a family to support, who found it easy to
tax that slender stipend from three to six dollars for liquor.

1 888.] LIQUOR AND LABOR. 541

Moulders and iron-workers, in some places notorious for their
beer-drinking propensities, I have known to have such a tre-
mendous thirst that it cost them monthly from ten to twenty
dollars to assuage it. Railroad-men, whose business demands
abstinence more than any other, are the slaves of the treating-
habit, and in their hours of leisure run the iron-worker very
close in the quantity of their potations. In a word, out of five
hundred workmen whose habits are well known to me, and
whose occupations are of all kinds, not one spends less than
three dollars a month on liquor ; and hardly a single one can
make it his boast that he has never been intoxicated. It inten-
sifies astonishment and regret over these discoveries to see the
number of young men with whom steady drinking has become a
matter of pride and habit both. For these young fellows the
saloon is decked with mirrors and bric-a-brac, and for them the
pool-room has been introduced as an aid to the bar. Their
money is poured out like water, and the habits thus formed
oftener cause their youth to be followed by a beggared manhood
and an early grave than by any happier condition.

Thirty-six dollars a year is a frightful tax to levy upon a
man's wages. Yet I assert once more, dealing in no vague
figures of " bureaus " or government statistics, but speaking from
actual, personal knowledge, that it is the tax levied and collected
by the degraded appetite of many scores of thousands of work-
men upon the labor of their hands. Nor do I mean that it is that
statistical effigy called " the average." It is the minimum tax
paid by the moderate drinker among workmen. It is a sum
four times as large as he contributes to his church, and nine
times larger than his quota towards education !

The effects of this so-called moderate drinking habit are some-
what startling. One can easily picture the happy condition
of one hundred workmen who have laid up in a common fund
thirty-six dollars a year for ten years. It is not so easy to pic-
ture what the same workmen have lost in ten years of spending,
because their loss is always more serious than can be represent-
ed by dollars. Generally speaking, the worst tendencies of
modern labor conditions are aided and strengthened by drinking
workmen. This is a serious statement to make when it is re-
membered that the labor organizations are made up of moderate
drinkers, but serious as it is there is no difficulty in proving it.

The worst feature of the modern industrial system is its
effort to class its human forces with the mechanical in the pro-
duction of necessities and luxuries. This effort is visible in

54 2 LIQUOR AND LABOR. [July*

the long hours of labor insisted on by employers, in the oppor-
tunities to work overtime granted to workmen, in the disregard
of sanitary regulations in factories, and in the employment of
children. The inhumanity of these things is plain and disgust-
ing. Yet who is found readiest to earn the wages of extra la-
bor? Whose children are sent most quickly to the sacrifice?
The man who spends thirty-six dollars a year for whiskey or
beer must find some means to make it up, and to assuage with
heavier draughts a thirst which too often increases yearly. The
legislatures have passed laws against child-labor, but members
of labor-unions connive with employers to evade them. They
must do it. Their beer-bills must be paid, and the children
must pay them. So, too, laws have been passed against long
hours of labor, but the evil of extra labor is not done away
with, for the drinkers must work extra to earn the price of their
drink. And these two things, the employment of children and
the overtime system, besides ruining the health of thousands,
have much to do with reducing wages to the lowest notch.
This fact cannot be put out of sight, that the children of the
moderate (?) drinkers are the earliest workers in the vineyards
of capital.

The tenement system is another disgusting evil of our time.
And its most contemptible upholder is the man who finds its
nastiness made endurable by beer. The filthy tenement-houses
of the great cities, the unhealthy and unsightly dwellings of
small towns, and the vile sheds, called dwellings, of country
villages, places which only the lack of 'public spirit permits to
exist and be profitable to dishonest landlords, are largely inhab-
ited by the drinking workman. He cannot afford to pay a de-
cent rent for a fair dwelling when so much must be paid for
beer, any more than he can afford to keep his children from
hard labor, and himself from working extra hours. He is thus
a direct supporter of a great public abuse, whose only victims
are himself and his unfortunate children. Does anybody doubt
this statement? Let him visit the hovels of towns and the tene-
ments of cities, let him pick out the cleanest and most respectable
families in them, not the brutalized sots whose life is one grand
alcoholic stupor, and let him inquire of them why they choose
to live in such quarters. They may have various reasons to
offer, but for many of them the real reason is a good-sized beer-
bill.

These are two instances out of a hundred where the drink-
ing-habit reacts with tremendous force upon the workmen.

1 888.] LIQUOR AND LABOR. 543

They are enough for my purpose, and prove conclusively the
assertion in a previous paragraph that the worst tendencies of
modern labor conditions are aided and strengthened by the
drinking habits of workmen themselves. The labor-unions and
other labor organizations have not changed things for the bet-
ter on this point, Mr. Powderly's being the solitary voice which
has been officially raised in warning and entreaty against the
strongest foe of workmen. If one chose to go minutely into the
subject, the bare items of thirty -six dollars a year, child-labor,
tenement miseries, and the like would take in many unnoticed
companions. The days spent in idleness after a heavy potation,
the comforts denied the home, the neglected children whose
after-lives bear the marks of a parent's indifference to duty, the
growing brutishness of a beer-sodden nature, the great oppor-
tunities lost and good works delayed for lack of means so foolish-
ly squandered, these are items which make a tremendous sum in
the life of one man ; and they all find their source and sustenance
in the steady workman whose whiskey-bill or beer-bill is thirty-
six dollars a year. And they can be increased. But for the
present it will do to make one computation. I have known
many persons who drank at the rate of three dollars a month
for thirty years. They would be a numerous class but for the
fact that moderation of this kind so easily and frequently be-
comes excess, and consequent destruction. At fifty these per-
sons were without money or credit. Had they been abstinent
and saving, what would have been, in the ordinary course of
things, their financial, physical, and moral standing at the end
of thirty years? Such as they ought to have been are very
scarce in our midst, and such as they are must increase with
every year.

What can be done to emancipate labor from the grasp of the
liquor demon? There are three things which can be done im-
mediately, which will find favor in every quarter, about which
there can be no debate, and whose success will gladden the
hearts of millions. First, pass around the pledge, total or par-
tial, among all the workmen of the land. Let every labor-union
and organization be a temperance body, where the cold figures
and hard facts of moderate drinking shall be taught to the mem-
bers every influence used to make them total-abstainers or
nearly so, and every effort put forth to keep them of one mind
in the temperance cause. Let the pastors of churches, the
teachers of schools, the heads of societies, the foremen of shops,
masters and superiors in all places, parents among their chil-

544 LIQUOR AND LABOR. [July,

dren, friends among friends ; let all, in a word, who have in-
fluence, exert it to induce others to take the pledge, let them
teach them to know why they take it, and to stick to it like the
oyster to his shell. This is one-third of the good work, and can
be done easily and done well if it be persevered in year after
year until the public mind is a unit on temperance.

Next, let every vote that can be voted throw all its power
against the gilded saloon, and for ever smash an institution
which is vile. There is no other word to describe it. It has
bred many infamies, but none greater than that of destroying
the young men of the nation. For immense numbers of boys
the saloon is the post-graduate course of the ward or parish
school. It is a solemn and terrible fact that the American
youth of this period are to an alarming extent actually bred in
the saloons. Their chief study is pool. Their chief aim is to
drink to the verge of intoxication without showing it. What-
ever form of selling drink shall in future be tolerated, it is cer-
tain that the saloon must go. High license or no license, this
institution is politically and socially damned. Whatever takes
its place, whether it be the town pump, whither few come and
where none linger, or some mode of selling drink radically dif-
ferent from the ordinary bar, the saloon must go. Last, let the
law closely watch the brewers and their breweries, distillers and
their distilleries, and straiten them in such ways as to prevent
them from tempting their victims; restricting and guiding the
manufacture and disposal of their product with firm hand and
wary eye, and, above all, seeing to the quality, which is now so
poisoned that many die from the quality rather than the quantity.

These three things will undoubtedly go far towards ridding
not only workmen but the whole country of the liquor evil.
The first work will aid the second, and both will assuredly com-
pass the third, for appetites being toned down or destroyed in
many and the saloon temptation being gone, the breweries and
distilleries will have so little to do that the law can easily regu-
late the traffic. Moreover, the three works must go together.
Any one being left out, the attempt to manage the two remain-
ing will be apt to end at best in a brief triumph and a succeed-
ing failure. Finally, the time is ripe for the temperance move-
ment. The need of it is bitter. If it cease not until the liquor
interest be left dead and rotten on the public gibbet the good
it will have accomplished will be equal to the second founding
of this American nation. JOHN TALBOT SMITH.

i888.] THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 545

THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.

IT is a maxim of general jurisprudence that all valid individ-
ual title to land within the territory of a country is derived from
the government which represents the nation. This legal axiom
is really a principle which jurists have adopted from the meta-
physical and higher order of knowledge. They have adopted it
from this source because of its real relation to their own study,
its indubitable truth, and practical utility.

It is a true conclusion of valid metaphysical reasoning that
exclusive ownership over a limited quantity of things useful on
the earth, land included, was introduced by human law which is
sanctioned by the rules of natural justice. Material and neces-
sary things are the gift of the Creator and Ruler of nature to all
mankind for their use and subsistence.

At an early period in the history of the race mankind became
distinguished into separate civil communities. It was by the
Jus Gentium, or in pursuance of certain evident principles of ex-
pediency and fitness, that the human family was divided into
different self-ruling bodies of men. Separate nations were estab-
lished with exclusive dominion over territory. The distinction
of races among men is by physical law ; but the distinction of
mankind into diverse autonomous nations is by human and posi-
tive law; by a general unwritten law of peoples requiring no
special enactment because so easily seen to be useful and right.*

The principles of this positive and fundamental law were
well explained by the great jurisprudents of former days. By
the Jus Gentium, or the common law of nations, it is said in the
Digests of Justinian (1. I.): "Distinct civil communities were
established, kingdoms were founded, ownership of property be-
gan, and land was subjected to proprietary boundaries."

Dominion over the goods of the earth was primitively in
common by the right and the ruling of nature. But the origi-
nally common ownership was not of such a character as to give
to individuals the authority to seize any part of these goods for
their own private use, merely at their option, and as their need

*"Quiaea quse sunt Juris Gentium naturalis ratio dictat, puta ex propinquo habentia
jEouitatem inde est quod non indiget aliqua speciali institution, sed ipsa naturalis ratio ea in-
stituit (St. Thomas, 2. 2. q. 57, a. 3>.-But the Jus Gentium is not the immutable natural law
of reason and justice, except under a certain respect, secundum quid. Absolutely or by it
nature, it is human positive law, as many valid arguments prove, and as St. T
serves.

VOL. XLVIL 35

546 THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. [July,

prompted : unless in a particular case it became necessary for
the preservation of life. For man is brought forth to a fellow-
ship with others, and the rights of others must limit the pre-
rogatives of each.

Mere animals which have not reason can act only by instinct
and the physical rule of their nature. They seize those objects
within their reach that will satisfy their wants. And, if need
be, they struggle with others for the capture of all that their
bodily appetite craves. The lion's share falls to the strongest,
the most violent, or the most cunning, and the weaker goes to
the wall. They cannot direct their actions rationally nor by de-
liberate justice. Hence, nature has made all the objects that
serve them positively common to all and to each.

Man is not a mere animal, necessitated in action by the in-
flexible law that governs all exclusively sentient existence. He
is a human and rational person entrusted with mastery over
himself, and over his acts that are deliberately free. He is capa-
ble of knowing the true and the morally right ; of suiting his
actions to the paramount rules of justice. The means of sub-
sistence and welfare are of equal concern to each individual per-
son in the mass of human society. Material things are for the
support of man, who is born to a life with his fellows. The same
necessity to live presses equally strong upon all. And the neces-
sities of all can be supplied from no other source than the un-
failing bounty of nature. It cannot, then, be admitted con-
sistently with true ethical principles that any individual person
has the right & priori to set apart for himself useful material
objects at his own discretion, and in entire disregard of all the
rest of his fellows. The giving of such absolute right to each
particular person is logically absurd. Besides, human society
could neither begin its existence nor could it now continue to
exist under such a preposterous condition. If the " absolute "
rights of several " occupants " or " appropriators " should come
in conflict, which must yield? The power to decide such mat-
ters must be, according to such a theory, denied to public au-
thority. These are the principles of an absolute individualism.

Civil power, supreme over all individuals, is a firm and in-
alienable prerogative of human society. Conflict of rights and
claims necessitates regulation and award of the disputed matters
by power superior to the disputants. The equitable and valid
division of nature's common stores among the particular parts
of mankind can everywhere belong only to supreme public au-
thority.

i888.] THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 547

' What pertains to mankind for its decision," says a distin-
guished and learned teacher of metaphysical philosophy, " does
not belong to the individual to decide for himself, indepen-
dently of the community."* To the same effect are the mem-
orable words recently pronounced by his Eminence Cardinal
Manning :

I. " By the law of nature all men have a common right to the
use of things which were created for them and for their sus-
tenance.

II. " But this common right does not exclude the possession
of anything which becomes proper to each. The common right
is by natural law, the right of property is by human and positive
law. And the positive law of property is expediemV't

These are the well-matured and lucid thoughts of a wise and
illustrious prelate. The general, undisputed teaching of Cath-
olic theologians and Christian jurists is here disclosed with the
Cardinal's felicitous literary excellence. These are the princi-
ples inculcated by St. Thomas Aquinas, and, as his Eminence
observes, they are " the doctrine of the Catholic Church. "J Pri-
vate property held by individual persons is, however, a genuine
vested right which comes immediately from human law, but fin-
ally from the ultimate law of natural justice. Thus only is it
valid and exclusive.

But perhaps it will be said : " The state does not ' create '
the right to property. The right of the individual to hold
property is prior to civil society, and is one of those rights
called the natural rights of man."

Man indeed has natural rights which are pre-existent to civil
society. He has the natural right to acquire property, but only
by methods which are legitimate and consistent with an equal
right in others. No individual man has a right from nature to
determine his own share of property independently of equal
rights in other men and against their equal rights. For nature
gives the goods of this earth to all in common. The individual,
then, has no right to be an absolute law to himself when nature

*Rev. W. H. Hill, S.J., in his Ethics or Moral Philosophy, p. 227. Also two extremely
learned and able articles in The Lyceum (first two numbers), a Uterary periodical of Dublin,
edited by the Irish Jesuits.

t The American Catholic Quarterly Review for April, 1888, ard the London Tablet, Feb-
ruary 18, 1888.

% We do not mean to say that no theory different from this doctrine has ever been broached
in the schools, or even taught at times in particular seats of learning ; but that the immemorial
and, until the French Revolution, the morally unanimous voice of Catholic ethics has ever
been the principle herein advocated. In witness of this we point to Cardinal Manning's state-
ment of this principle as " the doctrine of the Catholic Church."

548 THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. [July,

and reason subject him to social law. Before civil society arose
division of goods amongst individuals was regulated conven-
tionally ; to use the words of Aquinas, " secundum humanum
condictum" not by each individual's arbitrary and indepen-
dent choice. So soon as organized society originated, it became
the duty of social authority to determine, regulate, and measure
the rights of individuals to the objects owned in common,
wherever division of these objects was required. Nature im-
parts no moral power to any one man to assume to himself des-
potically the goods which she bestows on all collectively. Divi-
sion must, therefore, be awarded by just law, and not by indivi-
dual occupancy.

The term " create " is a misleading word as used above in
the phrase, " The state does not create the right to property,"
For it serves to effect a fallacious change of the real question.
Whether human law " creates " rights or does not is not the
precise point at issue. Nor is it the exact matter in question,
whether or not man has rights from the natural law that are
" prior to civil society." The relevant and vital principle is,
that the particular person has not the inborn and indefeasible
right to usurp to himself by his own imperious choice the goods
which nature gives as the undivided patrimony of all men.
This is the real question.

In all the civilized nations of mankind the principle is recog-
nized that the title to private property descends from the gov-
ernment to the individual. Hence, it is also agreed that it is an
essential prerogative of government to determine and regulate
the exclusive ownership of property for individual citizens.

It is a sociological maxim which is unquestionably true, as
well as authentically defended by the great saints, Augustine
and Thomas Aquinas, that the division of material things
amongst particular owners was introduced by human law found-
ed on the dictates of right reason. Hence, any designated por-
tion of the necessary things of the earth originally common can
pass into the legitimate private possession of a particular part of
mankind only by some method of valid distribution made by so-
cial authority. And such authority is intrinsic and essential to
human society. Consequently, wherever division is to be made,
the state is the sole power which can determine with justice
and validity the quantity that shall become the private property
of any individual person. The power to regulate the important
accident of quantity must necessarily include the entire power
to regulate justly every one's exclusive ownership of a share.

i888.] THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 549

Hence the right is implied to make the just award of other acci-
dents also, as, e.g., the quality of land, together with sites and
metes, etc. For all the other accidents of material substance
are included in quantity because they are radicated in the mate-
rial substance itself only through the medium of its quantity.
Title to private property as coming from the state or sovereign
authority, representing all, is not " a fiction of the law." It is a
valid principle which is necessary to the existence of civil socie-
ty. And accordingly it is well founded in the nature of things
and in the natural law. No other proximate and genuine
source of exclusive title to property can be admitted consistent-
ly with justice and the social nature of man.

A community has also the right of eminent domain an ulti-
mate power reserved to civil government by the law of nature
and reason. For this reserved right of the state is indispensa-
bly necessary to the self-defence of a community, to even its
preservation in existence. Therefore, such power is simply
necessary for the public good. The reserved right of eminent
domain is a lordship, a mastership over private property, of
such sort as to deprive all particular ownership of complete
absoluteness. For it subordinates all private proprietorship to
the more absolute right of the community. It also gives the
government authority to defend the public against the cupidity
of the few, who might craftily or forcibly acquire so much as to
impoverish the mass of the people.

Although the state does not " create " the right to property,
it nevertheless determines with finality and validity the shares
of individual persons to the things which nature leaves to all.
" The act," says St. Thomas Aquinas, " which accomplishes and
regulates the distribution of goods owned in common by many,
appertains to the power alone that is duly authorized to pre-
side over these goods (and their distribution)" (2. 2. q. 61, a.i).
This power is public authority. The state does not define and
fix the measure of the right in individuals to acquire property
except by the justice and the authority communicated to gov-
ernment by the immutable moral law. For every .genuine right,
duty, or rule of action which human government truly and justly
founds descends from the primary ethical law of reason.

The common ownership of property is prior to individual
ownership, and superior to it. Consequently, the common right
cannot be taken away unless with some concurrence of common
consent. But the common right in extremity of need cannot be
taken away by any human law. For the right of legitimate

550 THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. [July,

self-preservation is immediately dictated by the wholly irrever-
sible teaching of nature. It is a characteristic mark of all hu-
man and upright laws to be a specialization, or some determina-
tion of natural justice. Hence that law of particular ownership
is most just which makes the nearest approach to an equal divi-
sion, for an equal division is the nearest approach to nature's
common bounty. It is for the authority representing all to de-
termine particular rights. The original moral power to portion
out to himself his own particular measure and selection of pro-
perty independently of the many, does not belong to the indi-
vidual as if he were superior over the multitude in what con-
cerns all. This principle applies to all things left by nature to
be definitively settled by social authority. Just as the indi-
vidual, as opposed to the community, cannot make himself a
king merely by his own act, nor make of his fellow-man a slave,
so he cannot independently of the community choose his own
share of property against the others, or despite the equal right
to it which other persons possess.

When the division is once legitimately made then the com-
mon ownership ceases to exist. Hence, the communists falsely
claim a right to the private property of others, under the com-
mon title from nature, as if common ownership were now still
in force, and legal division had not been made.

All legitimate civil rights are derived from natural justice as
the source of the rightfulness that is in them. Only in instances
of extreme want are necessary things positively common by the
permission of nature. But to grant that each individual person
has the sovereign right from nature, and independently of just
social law, to determine his own share of the goods originally
given in common, is to concede the principles of civil confusion,
discord, and anarchy. The exclusive ownership which histori-
cally preceded civil society was valid because it sprang from
conventional agreement between competent parties. Thus,
Abraham and Lot divided the land conventionally between
themselves. Convention takes the place of civil law before the
organization of states. But the single individual person is not
and was never the totally sufficient cause which originates legiti-
mate private dominion over any part of objects belonging to all.
For there is not merely one single individual person with his
single right, but many persons, each and all of whom have
equal natural rights to the undivided things of nature. The
theory cannot be true or feasible which assumes that man is not
by birth and the inherent propensity of his being a social crea-

1 888.] THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 551

ture. History bears no record of any individual so stripped of
his kinship, so emancipated from all civil rule, as to be the all-
sufficient donor of the gifts of nature to his own exclusive do-
minion.

In the theory of "absolute individualism" the particular per-
son's exclusive ownership over his private property is an abso-
lute natural right. It is a superior prerogative which the com-
munity cannot abrogate or annul in any instance required by the
general good. The right of eminent domain is thence denied to
government agreeably with the hypothesis. To be consistent,
the advocates of the doctrine should also deny that anything is
ever common in extremis. That is, they should deny that the
person reduced to a situation of extreme and imperative neces-
sity has a genuine natural right to avail himself of the things
indispensably required for self-preservation.

" Absolute individualism " is the opposite extreme of " abso-
lute communism." Though heard of in the last century, it be-
gan to be more generally taught about the same time that
modern ontologism had its origin. Ontologism c.ame into vogue
some forty-five or fifty years ago, and was taught for a time
quite generally in colleges and seminaries. The text-books
which inculcated the doctrine displaced all the old and vener-
able authorities in many institutions of learning. Its advocates
maintained that man here in this life has an immediate intuition
of God. The theory was well reasoned to its ultimate conclu-
sions, which, however, were in conflict with dogmas of religion.
It was then censured as untenable in Catholic seats of learning.

The social and erroneous theory of individualism goes still
more diametrically counter to the common teaching in the great
schools of the church. For while ontologism ranked among its
defenders St. Anselm, and, as claimed, St. Bonaventure, the
theory of " absolute individualism " in relation to goods given
by nature to mankind in common can lay claim to no such ad-
vocates in the great schools of the church, nor to any supporter
in any other class of the wise teachers of yore. Its .last conclu-
sions are now likewise being reasoned out. For the minds of
men will argue to their final results all theories vitally affecting
human society.

It is already shown by many arguments that the principle
underlying this theory is disastrous to human society. For it
invests each individual with prerogatives which not only ex-
clude the very same prerogatives in every other individual, but
also reduce general law and social government to a mere nul-

55 2 THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. [July,

lity. What quantity, for instance, of vacant land may an in-
dividual appropriate as his own by " occupancy " ? This is a
question which proposes a most perplexing and embarrassing
difficulty to the defenders of individualism, or the theory that
11 occupancy " alone suffices to give exclusive ownership. If the
individual can determine the quantity for himself, then there is
no assignable reason why he cannot appropriate as his own an
entire territory or vast district a right in him which is clearly
inadmissible. On the other hand, if public authority or any
positive law is to determine the quantity for him, then the
theory of " occupancy " falls to pieces. Thus, those engaged in
the defence of this doctrine are entangled in a dilemma from
which no escape is possible. The only solution for the difficulty
is to admit the right and duty in society to determine equitably
each individual's share in the property given by nature to all in
common. Then the title of the particular owner is derived im-
mediately from government or from human law. It is further-
more quite evident that the theory of occupancy is absolutely
impracticable. In fact, an attempt never was made to establish
a civil community of mankind in accordance with such a princi-
ple that is, by letting each person have exclusive ownership of
whatever he might choose to " occupy " or " appropriate."

The theory that mere " occupancy " is the original source of
title to the exclusive ownership of land, and that such ownership
did not originate by conventional or legal division, seems never
to have been proposed or upheld by any eminent jurist, philoso-
pher, or theologian prior to a very recent date. Its advocates
appear to have adopted it, or rather seized upon it, from fear of
the communists and socialists. But fear is seldom a wise coun-
sellor, especially in matters requiring calm reasoning.

One false project or theory concerning human society can
never be logically disproved and defeated by another false
theory. True principles furnish the only conclusive proof that
communism and socialism, practised in communities of any size,
are both purely Utopian, and therefore utterly impracticable as
impossible, indeed, as would be the contrivance of a millennium
by man's ingenuity. Besides, the socialists themselves have the in-
telligence to see the falsity and impossibility of this new system
precipitately advanced against their scheme; nay, that it is
even farther removed from feasibility than is their own extrava-
gant plan of human society.

Property may become subject to a twofold jurisdiction. It is
in some cases related both to the civil and the ecclesiastical law.

1 888.] THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 553

It is then styled " mixed matter." Both the Jus Civile and the
Canon Law make definitive declarations concerning property.
And the teaching of both is one in principle respecting this mat-
ter. Such a coincidence of doctrine in these two systems of
jurisprudence reveals the general and established teaching of
Catholic jurists. These jurists maintain, as a commonly admit-
ted and unquestionable maxim, that exclusive ownership of pro-
perty is derived from human law. One would be, as it were,
only a novice in this question who has failed to inform him-
self of this fact.

All the just and positive enactments of mankind are, as before
said, derived from the fundamental law of nature and reason;
and they proceed from this primary law through the medium of
their justice. Their validity, their authority, is such as is com-
municated to them by the unalterable dictates of right reason.
Legitimate and particular dominion over any part of terrestrial
goods is deduced from the natural law of rectitude through the
wise, expedient, and just legislation of mankind. Since the sys-
tem of private property emanates from positive law which is
based on the ultimate ruling of nature, it therefore comes through
the justice which informs and invigorates authoritative human
laws. The legal and exclusive ownership, then, is mediately from
the dictates of right reason itself. The individual's title is medi-
ately from the law of nature, immediately from human law, and
not otherwise can it be exclusive.

To empower each person with the right to appropriate at
will, and without any limit determined by law or authority, what
is given to all, would be anarchy reduced to practice. For the
principle would be radicalism that makes human society, under
the rule of law and order, an impossibility. It would be an-
archy inasmuch as it takes from the government that jurisdic-
tion, or "general legal justice," as it is styled in the schools, by
virtue of which it should co-ordinate the things and persons be-
longing to the community, so as equitably to defend the welfare
of all. It is only brute animals that are intended by nature to
act in relation to things common to them without the guidance
of justice, moral law, and social equity. Individual selfishness is
brute instinct, not man's wisdom.

Some supporters of " absolute individualism," in the matter of
owning property first given in common, use the terms " nega-
tively & common " to signify what the schools of erudition
universally express by the opposite phrase/ 4 positively common.'
Thus arguments are advanced containing the fallacy styled by

554 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July,

logicians ignoratio elenchi, ignoring or evading the real point at
issue. By this means, also, the authorities using the terms are
misrepresented by a false or misleading reference to their writ-
ings. This species of sophism has received from the able Pro-
testant Archbishop Whately the very appropriate name of
" The Fallacy of Reference." That which is properly termed
" negatively common " to all in the language of the schools is not
the property of each. It is the undivided property of all collec-
tively ; and it is divisible only by an equitable rule that secures
the rights of each.

His Eminence Cardinal Manning, in the article before re-
ferred to, defines with masterly precision and truth the genuine
Catholic doctrine concerning private property, its origin, its na-
ture, and the limitations to which it is subjected by the equal
rights of all men.

JAMES A. CAIN.

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

A REALLY delightful book for children of all ages, including
those of us who are approaching our second childhood, is Sum-
mer Legends (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York), translated
from the German of Rudolph Baumbach by Helen B. Dole,
who, by the way, has done her part toward the making of the
book better than the proof-reader has. It is a collection of fairy
tales for the most part, which have passed through repeated
editions in Germany. They are not sentimental, like those of
Hans Andersen ; often, indeed, they have a delicate edge of
satire and a faint ironical flavor which very young readers will
be apt to miss. Still, there is plenty of material even for them
in a book which has, besides, a staying quality which will amuse
them later on. The tender humor of such tales as " The Water
of Youth," " The Four Evangelists," and " The Water of For-
getfulness " is pleasant, also ; but for pure fun " The Ass's Spring "
easily takes the lead. Its only fault and that, perhaps, was un-
avoidable is that its real climax is reached in the middle of the
story. Every touch after that weakens it. It relates the ad-
ventures of two who stood by the famous spring one day, many
years ago, before it had become a famous health resort

" one on this side, the other on that. He was an ass, and she was a

l888 -] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 555

goose, both in the first bloom of youth. They greeted each other silently,
and quenched their thirst. Then the ass drew near to the goose, and
asked bashfully : Young lady, may I accompany you ? ' "

Then each relates to the other their several histories. He
is descended from the sacred ass of Jerusalem ; she is of the
race of those who saved the Roman Capitol. They become in-
separable, though, alas ! the unlikeness of their natures dooms
their friendship to remain Platonic. But a wise owl, being
asked for counsel by the ass, advises him to seek the Wish-
Lady, who makes her appearance at the spring once every year,
on midsummer eve. To her, when she comes, Baldwin makes
his moan. If he could be a bird he knows very well what bird
he would be. Can she assist him ? Though the Wish-Lady
thinks his choice a singular one, she gives him a prescription
which works to a charm. A handsomer gander never stretched
its long neck.

" As fast as he could go, he hurried to the thicket where the goose had
taken up her abode. Alheid, my beloved Alheid ! ' he cried, 'where art
thou ? ' 'Here, my dearest,' sounded from the thicket, and a pretty little
she-ass came dancing out of the bushes. The lovers looked at each other,
dumb with amazement.

" ' Oh ! what an ass I am ! ' sighed the gander.

" ' Oh ! what a goose I am ! ' groaned the ass."

A number of the tales are Catholic in tone and incident, and
though there is here and there a blemish one would be glad to
see removed, yet on the whole the book is both sound and charm-
ing.

Another pleasant translation is made by Clara Bell, from the
French of Pierre Loti, From Lands of Exile (W. S. Gottsberger,
New York). There is a singular charm about the original of
these sketches, written on board ship by a French naval officer
in various Indian and Chinese ports, which has been well pre-
served by the translator. Occasionally, though, one feels that a
still more literal rendering would have been preferable to that
actually chosen. Why, for example, transform " Oh ! ce silence,
cette splendeur" into "Oh! that stillness, that glory! The
paper entitled " Subterranean Temples," which describes the
Temple of the Marble Mountain in Annam, is the most striking
in the collection. They are very French in oentiment and hand-
ling.

His friendly critics of the newspaper press descnt
Edgar Saltus as a " gifted and brilliant pessimist," " an artist in
the use of words," " an unconscious teacher, who has a mission,

556 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July,

and who proclaims it in every word he writes." Mr. Saltus is
a New-Yorker who has published several books, among them
a Study of Balzac, a Philosophy of Disenchantment, and two
novels, the latest of which, The Truth about Tristrem Varick
(Belford, Clarke & Co., New York), he ' dutifully inscribes," as
an " essay in ornamental disenchantment/' to his " master,
Eduard von Hartmann." Candor, real or assumed, provoking
candor, we feel moved to tell the truth about Mr. Saltus, both
as a teacher with a mission and as an artist in words. Gifted
and brilliant he is, but rather as a poseur than a real, Simon-pure
pessimist. Nor, if the lesson he attempts to convey in Tristrem
Varick be a continuation of the previous message with which
he is believed to have been charged, do we feel inclined to credit
him with anything so naive as unconsciousness concerning it.
Suppose we condense it : It is not impossible, nor, perhaps,
wildly improbable, that good men may exist men correct, that
is to say, in their social relations. My hero is such a person.
I claim no credit for him on that score. He happened to be
made that way; moreover, after having been afflicted by an in-
eradicable and unsatisfied passion for one woman, his betrothed,
he was cut off by the hangman's noose at the age of twenty-
six or thereabouts. But as for women ! Mr. Saltus shrugs his
shoulders. Well, in the last generation, perhaps. Certainly
we all had mothers. Still, you must admit that though his par-
ticular suspicion happened to be unfounded, Tristrem's father
had ample prima facie grounds for the brutality of disinheriting
his putative son, leaving him nothing but an old hat and a bun-
dle of letters from which he could hardly conclude anything
but his mother's dishonor. And then look at Tristrem himself!
When he drives a dagger to the heart of his oldest friend, not
through any low or mean motive of revenge, but solely that he
may enable his " amber-eyed " Viola to lift those golden orbs
Once more unshamed to her mother's face, because her mar-
ried lover no longer lives her mother, who knows all her story
from the start what does the young woman tell him as he hints
to her that she need no longer dread exposure her infant hav-
ing been abandoned and its father assassinated ? "I loved him,"
she mutters, and afterward promises his grandfather, who im-
plores her on his knees to supply the motive which shall exon-
erate Tristrem before the outraged majesty of justice, to which
he has weakly surrendered himself, that she will " come to see
him sentenced." Admit again, then, that in this worst of all
possible worlds, Tristrem was an unlucky dog, whose high

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 557

ideals and unselfish virtues availed him less than nothing, since
by means of them he lost the only attainable pleasures that exist.
Not simply unlucky, then. A positive fool, rather.

So much for the morals and the philosophy of Mr. Saltus.
As to his style, we find it over-praised. It is what the French
call un style meticuleux, whose seeming simplicity is studied and
over-labored; which drops, as if by accident, into words not
merely far-fetched but ill chosen, as when he talks about toying
" with apostils of grief." Nevertheless, it is a style in which, by
that irony of the inevitable which dogs the heels of the poseur,
Mr. Saltus pays his single involuntary tribute to a true " phi-
losophy of the unconscious."

The Spell of Ashtaroth (New York : Charles Scribner's Sons)
is by Mr. Dufifield Osborne, a recent graduate of Columbia Col-
lege. It is advertised as a " brilliant new novel," for which " has
been predicted a success greater than Ben Hur " (sic). It was
doubtless a false prophet who hazarded the prediction. Mr.
Osborne's work satisfies the purely literary sense no better than
did that of General Wallace, while in human interest, as well as
in ethical and religious purport, it falls indefinitely below it.
Mr. Osborne's tale, concerning as it does various Old Testament
worthies, seemed to him to require what is called the " solemn
style "the use, that is, of the second person singular in all the
conversations. That is a mistake to begin with, for the reason
that it involves not merely an incessant, but too frequently a
fruitless, effort to keep the verbs free from colloquialisms which
suit ill with thees and thous. The Quakers solve the difficulty
by dropping thou altogether, and by making no pretence at
forcing their verbs up to either the grammatical or the rhetori-
cal standard. But Mr. Osborne does make such a pretence, and
with this result, among others :

" Girls know nothing of war. They tremble when they hear of great
deeds. Didst thou mark how she turned pale when two days ago thou
toldest how thou slewest the Moabite ? . . . I would I might have held the
sword that thou dravest under his ribs ! And now to-day, I must stay in
the camp with the women and the old men while thou fightest. ... Ah !
well, I shall find some tall palm and watch the battle from its branches,
and 'tell Miriam what thou art doing. I will tell her thou art fallen and
hear her cry out "

" If thou dost I will chastise thee soundly when the day is over, 11

rupted Adriel hotly.

" ' Truly I did but jest to see thee flare up ! '

However, his slips of this sort are the least of our objections

558 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July,

to Mr. Osborne's novel. The action of the story begins before
the walls of Jericho on the night before they fall. Adriel, a
purely fictitious son of Achan, enters the city the next day with
his fellows, with the intent of obeying the Divine command to
root out and destroy its inhabitants. Entering alone a temple
of Ashtaroth, the Venus of the Syrian nations, he encounters
first a young man whom he slays, and then, within the inmost
shrine, a beautiful young girl. His suddenly-kindled passion
for her beauty leads him let us put it in the words of the ad-
vertisement of Mr. Osborne's novel to " chivalrously violate
the Divine command." He saves her alive and tries to flee with
her to

" other lands than this. There are cities by the great sea of which I have
heard cities the power and wealth of which it is hard to conceive and
there is, too, that Babylon of which thou hast spoken. Peradventure it
will go hard with us if there be not some refuge where the children of the
desert may not come. Thither, dearest, shall we journey and live under
the protection of thy gods, that thy Ashtaroth may bless our loves and give us
Protection against the Jehovah of Israel."

Elissa does not at first regard this proposition with favor.
She advises him to obey his own God, and sees no force in the
fact that she is Adriel's prisoner which should constrain her to
yield him anything but her lifeless body. Adriel, too, at the
bottom of his heart, is afraid that Ashtaroth will not count as a
very heavy weight in opposition to " the Jehovah of Israel."
Still, his passion overmasters his fear, he conquers the love of
Eiissa, and they seek to escape. But as Mr. Osborne is re-
luctantly constrained by the subject he has chosen to let " the
Jehovah of Israel " triumph, Adriel and Elissa are stoned with
Achan and the rest of his family, and, to quote once more the
felicitously worded advertisement, " all the sympathy of the
reader is with them."

"An arm, now rigid and powerless, still encircled her slender form
with all the seeming promise of protection, while smiling lips, now cold and
breathless, seemed almost to kiss the pale brow resting so near. They
smiled into each other's faces and they were beautiful, for the dying god-
dess of a dying race loved them. Ashtaroth had shed her blessing over their
sleep ; and had Jehovah cursed them to the uttermost? Who is he that
dares to say it ? "

Fortunately, no one is called upon to express any opinion con-
cerning the " uttermost curse " awaiting the creatures of Mr.
Osborne's fancy. The underlying motive of his story is an
old one, but as he is very young, and has kept the details of

l888 -] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 559

his work scrupulously clean, it is possible that he is not wholly
conscious of what it is. If he is, the light which it and his treat-
ment of it throws on him is to our thinking most unpleasant.
L he only novelty he can lay claim to-and it is one which
heightens his offence at the same time that it makes us doubt
th his and his publishers' full appreciation of it-is that of put-
ting it into a dress so antiquated that when it is drawn out of
the treasure-house of things gone by its very age shall make it
unfamiliar. For the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is
also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That he is
a jealous God we know. We know, too, that to love him is
to be jealous for him and for his honor, and for that reason to
" hate also," with St. Jude, "the spotted garment, which is car-
nal." They are very old antagonists, the Divine love and the
human ; the war is ancient in which the flesh lusts against the
spirit. Mr. Osborne's novel, pure in all its details, revolts us
more by this setting of sensual love, in its most universally ac-
cepted type, in avowed though fruitless opposition to that which
is Divine, than many another book, more coarsely done yet less
maliciously conceived.

Considered as character-painting, as a study of human nature
in a New England village, or as a piece of natural, unaffected
writing, we have none but good words to give to John Ward,
Preacher, a novel by Margaret Deland (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
Boston and New York). Besides the hero and heroine there are
half a dozen or more personages who perhaps stand out as dis-
tinctly in the reader's mind as they may have done in that of the
author. Rector Howe, for instance, who when John Ward asks
him what he would do if he thought it undeniable that the Bible
actually taught some doctrine which he could not accept, an-
swers, " I I? Oh ! I'd read some other part of the book. But
I refuse to think such a crisis possible ; you can always find some
other meaning in a text, you know." Admirable, too, in its way,
though disedifying, is the scene where the rector goes to ad-
minister the last consolations in his power to his life-long friend,
Mr. Denner. He begins to read the Visitation of the Sick, but
before he has finished the first sentence Denner interrupts him
with :

"'Archibald, you will excuse me, but this is not not necessary, as it
were. ... I have every respect for your office, but would it not be easier for
us to speak of of this, as we have been in the habit of speaking on all
subjects, quite in our ordinary way, as it were? You will pardon me,
Archibald, if I say anything else seems ah unreal?' . . .

560 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July,

" ' William,' the rector answered, 'have I made religion so worthless ?
Have I held it so weakly that you feel that it cannot help you now ? '

" ' Oh ! not at all,' responded Mr. Denner, ' not at all. I have the great-
est respect for it I fear I expressed myself awkwardly the greatest re-
spect ; I fully appreciate its value, I might say its necessity, in the commu-
nity. But but, if you please, Archibald, since you have kindly come to
tell me of this change, I should like to speak of it in our ordinary way ; to
approach the subject as men of the world. It is in this manner, if you will
be so good, I should like to ask you a question. I think we quite under-
stand each other; it is unnecessary to be anything but natural.'"

Thus appealed to, the rector answers that, though he may not
have lived it, yet he cannot now answer in any capacity but that
of a Christian.

" ' Just so,' said Mr. Denner politely ' ah ! certainly ; but, between ourselves,
doctor, putting aside this amiable and pleasing view of the church, you under-
stand speaking just as we are in the habit of doing what do you suppose
what do you think is beyond ? . . . Where shall I be ? Knowing^or perhaps
fallen on an eternal sleep ? How does it seem to you, doctor ? That was what I
wanted to ask you ; do you feel sure of anything afterwards ? '

" The other put his hands up to his face a moment. ' Ah ! ' he answered
sharply, ' I don't know I can't tell ; I I don't know, Denner ! '

" ' No,' replied Mr. Denner, with tranquil satisfaction, ' I supposed not, I
supposed not. But when a man gets where I am, it seems the one thing in the
world worth being sure of.' "

Like Miss Woolley's novel oi which we spoke last month,
this one treats those twin subjects, love and theology, which
lie at the base of so much of the decent fiction of the day.
But it does so with a much firmer and more practised hand.
John Ward, a Presbyterian preacher of most absolute convic-
tions, marries the rector's niece, who has few of any sort when
she marries, save that mutual love, such as exists between herself
and him, is the one great good of this life, and that, having at-
tained it, it is idle to bother one's head about the future. As to
the Calvinistic hell, she firmly declines to believe in it at all, and
as hell seems to John the keystone of the arch on which all else
hangs his argument being that the Incarnation and Passion of
our Saviour would have been futile if a man need not repent, but
may be happy hereafter after living here in sin he finally puts
her away.

" ' Don't you see, dear,' Helen says to him, ' we cannot reason about it ?
You take all this from the Bible because you believe it is inspired, I do not
believe it. So how can we argue ? ' "

Although she is admirably fair true to nature, that is in

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 561

the case of all her characters, Mrs. Deland's sympathies are evi-
dently with Helen. She has painted a very noble love and per-
fect trust between her and John a love which makes Helen
justify her husband even when he turns her from his door in the
hope that the suffering will be so great that it will bring her to
the truth as he sees it. But Helen is immovable. She has that
clearness of intellect and strength of will which women often as-
cribe to the women they imagine, and though her heart is very
near breaking, and John's actually does break he being evident-
ly the " weaker vessel," since he can believe in hell and yet love
God she never says yes through weakness of heart when her
mind says no through clearness of vision. And yet, to an un-
prejudiced observer doesn't there seem something the matter
with Helen's wits when, doubting eternity and not willing to
affirm a personal God, she can say that, although she does
not believe in a hell of fire and brimstone, she does believe
that the consequences of sin eternally affect character f And is
there not something even exquisite in the futility of this?

" If there is a God, and he is good, he will not send me away from you in
eternity ; if he is wicked and cruel, as this theology makes him, we do not want
his heaven ! We will go out into outer darkness together"

No wonder that John shuddered. A strong woman was
his creator and he is weak. But had it been otherwise, with
what a burst of mighty laughter he would have greeted this
piece of profundity. " Go to, my dear," he would have said
to her, " knit your stockings and don't talk theology. God
requires from none of his creatures what he has not put within
their power. I hope that he will save you, notwithstanding
your intellectual offences, for he will surely number you among
the inconceivably ignorant and the hopelessly dull, who can-
not grasp even the most elementary notion of what he is."

The Residuary Legatee (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York)
is a rather slight performance by F. J. Stimson, otherwise
known by his nom de plume, J. S. of Dale. Mr. Austin May,
who must either abstain from marriage for the eleven years
which lie between twenty-two and thirty-three or else forfeit a
fortune, first engages his Cousin May to wait for him all that
time, and then devotes himself to travel. Thrice during this
period he falls in love and engages himself to marry once a
Polish adventuress with a husband in a Siberian mine ; once an
English lady, providing her husband, " ever at her side," shall
die^in convenient season; and once an American girl who has

VOL. XLVIL 36.

562 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [July,

another lover. And he gives all three of them, of course at suc-
cessive periods, rendezvous at the house of his deceased relative
on the day when his apprenticeship expires. On that day he is
on hand himself, dread in his heart and fearful expectation on
his face. For, as he has fallen successively into love, so has he
fallen hopelessly out of it. The Polish countess, whom he
dreads the most, puts in no appearance. The Englishwoman
is dead, but her husband, who has found among her effects the
letter in which Austin made his conditional offer, comes to in-
quire what it may mean, and to express his opinion thereupon.
Miss Rutherford sends a letter to say she prefers the other man.
Only his Cousin May is left, and he discovers that he has loved
her and her only all the time. He discovers, too, that they
might as well have married at once as waited, since by another
provision of the will, if Austin violated the injunction by espous-
ing his cousin without delay, he would at once have reacquired
the fortune, as May, in such event, had been named as Residuary
Legatee. The story bristles with small affectations in point of
style and diction.

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

THE STORY OF A COLORED MAN'S CONVERSION.

I was born a slave and brought up and educated in Staunton, Va. My mother
is a pure black, my father nearly so, having some admixture of white blood. Both
were slaves up to the time of emancipation. My parents were both " Ironside "
Baptists. They taught me the total depravity of man, and that only the elect (a
few " Ironsides ") would be saved. My mother could read and write very well.
She taught me to spell when only four years of age. Also to make the script al-
phabet. She also had a limited knowledge of music.

When very young I was taught to say the Our Father and the little prayer,
" Now I lay me down to sleep/'

There being at that time no Baptist church in our town, my parents sent us
four boys, of whom I was youngest, and a girl to the Methodist Sunday-school.
My teacher was a Mr. Morris, who now lives in Tyson Street, Baltimore. He
taught me the Apostles' Creed and a considerable part of the Methodist Cate-
chism, which I soon became very fond of. I afterwards entered the Bible-class
taught by Mr. Thomas Campbell, the superintendent of the Sunday-school, also
one of Staunton's most respected citizens, and at one time superintendent of its
public schools. After two years in that class I became a teacher in the Sunday-
school, though not yet a member of any church. At the age of fourteen I gradu-
ated from the public schools, and six months later I joined the church called the
Augusta Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. Robert Steele, now presiding

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 563

elder of the Baltimore district, being pastor. I had a purpose to study for the
ministry, and hoped to be able to do so. I commenced my course of Biblical stu-
les under Mr. Steele, continuing them under his successor, Rev. Benjamin Brown,
a learned Methodist divine, now stationed at John Wesley's church, Hill Street',
Baltimore. I also studied Binney's Contend of Theology as a sort of doctrinal
text-book. I was always very fond of history, and read much of it, both ancient
and modern, including The Rise of Methodism ; also a great deal about the so-
called Reformation. I also studied vocal music for four years under Dr. D. J. L.
Braun, the most noted vocalist of our section of country-, and instrumental music
for the same length of time under Professor Koerber and his son Philip. I was
soon made a class-leader and took charge of the young people, with general
charge of the Sunday afternoon prayer-meeting.

I was especially fond of the New Testament studies, and these first pointed
me towards the true church. More than once did I ask my instructor why the
ministers nowadays do not forgive sins ; why after baptism hands were not im-
posed, as had been done by the Apostles. The fifth chapter of St. James also
caused me to ask why what is there described is not now done. My teacher
would always evade these questions ; sometimes he would speak of the Catholic
Church, which claimed all these, and say her clergy were deluded, blinding the
people, etc., etc. Afterwards I attended a Methodist seminary, and, besides the
usual lessons, read much of Sts. Augustine and Jerome, and also the History of
the Benedictines, which was exceedingly interesting to me. All of this reading
gradually influenced me in the right direction.

As yet I had never been in a Catholic Church or heard a priest's voice.
Meantime Catholic matters were often discussed among us even in class. Once
we had a very lively debate on the question, Were Roman Catholics ever a holy
people ? I began about this time to have much curiosity about the church, and a
longing desire to attend Catholic worship and hear a priest preach, and this long-
ing only grew the stronger as I continually heard and read so much about the er-
rors of the old church, and of how she had fallen from Christ. Led as much by
curiosity as by other human motives, I attended the Catholic church of our town
on Christmas day, and was present at the solemn Mass. It was St. Francis'
Church, Augusta Street, Staunton. I went with no expectation of hearing the
Gospel preached, or so much as the name of Jesus mentioned. The good priest
whose words reached my heart that day is Rev. Father McVerry, still pastor there.
The sermon was, to me, very effective. The preacher spoke solidly on the sacra-
ment of penance, and how the faithful should prepare by seeking forgiveness of
their sins to receive their Lord in Holy Communion. The services seemed, of
course, very strange to me ; but the sermon still more so. My mind was so full
of it that I could not help putting many questions about this strange sermon to
my professor, who soon became worried |and fretted about me. He had ever
been kind and indulgent towards me, but he told me that he feared that I would
wilfully lose my soul. He declared with much feeling that he could see that my
ideas had got into the Roman channel. I answered that I must have reached
that channel through the works of Wesley and the Protestant Bible, because I
had never till then read a Catholic book or heard a Catholic sermon till that
Christmas day.

At the opening of the next session, being without means, I could not re-enter
the seminary, and, on account of what they called my "queer ideas/' was denied
the help usually given so liberally in our colored Protestant institutions.

564 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [July,

Through the kindness of my old professor, I was appointed teacher in the col-
ored school of Chambersburg, Pa. After teaching one term, and in addition giv-
ing music lessons in vacation, I managed to save a little money. I entered a
college in Pennsylvania, studying hard and remaining till my savings were gone.

A chance advertisement was, in God's providence, the finishing stroke in my
journey to the church. It was in a Norristown, Pa., paper, and called for a
young man to teach English in a German family. I had learned German in
Staunton and had studied it further in Chambersburg. In my answer to the ad-
vertisement I stated that I was colored ; still the family accepted me. The
family consisted of a German Lutheran minister, his wife, two sons, and a daugh-
ter, all unable to speak a word of English. I proved to be useful to them, and I
also became organist in their church.

'The family became very fond of me, and the boys in three months knew
enough English to enter the public schools. I had access to the minister's large
library, and became much interested in the life of, Martin Luther. Nothing had
given my mind such trouble as the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Euchar-
ist. But little by little my soul became satisfied and my doubts came to an end.
I also read here Luther's Tzsch-reden (Table-talk). These works, with the min-
ister's many talks on consubstantiation and other doctrines, instead of settling my
doubts led me only the more eagerly to search for truth ; which no honest, fair-
minded person ever earnestly did without finally landing in the communion of
the holy Roman Catholic Church.

It was while in this family I commenced instruction under a priest, which I
kept up steadily for six months. These first instructions I received from Father
James Manahan, assistant priest of the Catholic church at Norristown. My en-
gagement in the minister's family terminating, I then entered the "Delaware
Association for the Education of Colored People," and was appointed teacher
of the school at Smyrna. There I resumed my^ course of instructions in the
Catholic faith, and was in about a year's time baptized in St. Polycarp's Church,
Smyrna. The Protestant people were furious at me and turned me out of the
school. Returning to Virginia, I by chance learned that my old school, in which
I had taught for four years, was vacant. My application was successful. But as
soon as it was known that I was a Catholic I experienced the same opposition,
and was forced to give up the school.

When it became known that I had actually become a Catholic, all my friends
set up a howl. I could no longer teach a whole term in any public school, for as
soon as it was discovered that I was a Catholic intrigues were started which
caused my dismissal. Consequently for a long time I suffered greatly. After
school hours somehow I felt that I must share with others what I had gained,
the gift of faith that was so precious to my soul. I do not mean that I taught
Catholic doctrine in a public-school building, but at my room or other convenient
places. Some of my dearest friends in Staunton declared that since I had gone
into idolatry they could no longer care for me as in days past. My mother
thought it awful, but said little. My sister really thought I had more sense than
to be paying a man fifty cents every week to forgive me my sins. My brother
(but one being alive at this time) declared that he would go to his grave mourn-
ing my lost condition. " Brother Lewis," a well-known class-leader, met me
about a year ago, when the following conversation took place :

" Well, brother, I am real glad to see you ; I've been praying God a long time
to see you."

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 565

" Mr. Lewis, I am very glad that some Staunton friend gives me such a kind
welcome."

" But, brother, what do you mean by addressing me so Mister Lewis. You
could not expect your old friends to love you as they once did. You know,
brother, you have turned your back on Him whom you once served and gone
after strange gods, worshipping idols. You were such a promising young man,
and no doubt would have been a power in our church. What ever possessed
you to take such a course ? "

" Being concerned about the salvation of my soul caused me to do as I have
done."

" What do you mean ? "

" I mean that since there is but one faith and one baptism, there can be but
one church, and that must be none of John Wesley's making, but the work of
God. Show me the power in John Wesley or any other man to set up a church
or religion and call it Christ's."

" Now, my brother, you don't just understand. In your church it is taught
that salvation is by believing in a man. Faith alone saves us."

" What then will you do with the passage of Scripture which says, ' Faith
without works is dead ' ? "

" That's quite true, etc.''

Our conversation was quite lengthy. He became much interested in Ca-
tholic doctrine, and concluded that if the old church taught all that I said she did
she had never erred. He insisted that I should see his new pastor, which I con-
sented to do the next day at his house. He introduced me as an old class-leader
who had left good old Wesley and gone to Rome. Our meeting was pleasant.
After nearly two hours' debate on Methodism and Catholicity, he said I had the
advantage of him because I could argue pro and con. meaning that I was ac-
quainted with both sides.

Our holy mother the church being the mother and mistress of all churches,
in her alone are found the necessary means of salvation. To her was given the
'command : " Go teach all nations." Ethiopia has not yet received the word,
although in America she stretches forth her hands. It is the bounden duty of
the church to grasp those outstretched hands and draw these poor people to her
bosom.

And now, if I am allowed a word about the prospects of making Catholics of
my people, I must say that in Virginia and other Southern States the conversion
of the negro cannot be very successfully carried on by white priests alone. Pre-
judice among my race against a white man (one of the curses of slavery) still
strongly exists. They have no confidence in what a white man says about re-
ligious questions, and think it perfectly ridiculous that a white man must have
charge of colored people. Many colored people being excessively suspicious, will
look upon efforts made by a white clergy alone as a device to entrap them in
some way or other. Meantime the Protestant whites will make great efforts to
hinder the Catholic Church spreading among the blacks. In this section a
school taught by a white teacher is a failure. A few colored priests, noble-
hearted men and good speakers, would in a few years make a good showing in
our State, and no doubt in all the adjoining ones.

This is a brief yet complete narrative of how I found the true church. God
grant that some Protestant who reads this may be so concerned about his soul's
welfare as to do likewise !

566 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [July,

"THE POOR YOU HAVE ALWAYS WITH YOU."

We call special attention to Dr. P. F. McSweeny's article in this number on
" The Church and the Classes." The figures there given demonstrate what
everybody knows, that the Catholic Church is the church of the poor.

We are the church of the poor. We claim this as a heritage, and there is
none to dispute our claim. The workingman is ours. What a blessing ! What
a privilege !

O God ! we feel like crying O God ! thanks to thy blessed Providence that
the poor belong to us and we belong to the poor !

The greasy mechanics are ours, and the dusty car-drivers are ours, and the
rough 'longshoremen are ours, and the grimy colliers are ours ; the tired factory-
girls, and the drooping shop-girls, and the wear)' seamstresses all ours. The
strikers are ours, the dangerous classes are ours, and we are theirs ; the toiling
millions make up the bulk of our Catholic people those multitudes to whom the
words " give us this day our daily bread " have the significance of the direst reality
earners of the daily wage. How others may feel we cannot tell ; but for our-
selves we are proud to belong to the poor man's church. "The poor have the
Gospel preached to them " is a mark that the Christ is indeed come and that
men need not look for another.

But if it be true that they are ours, it is also true that we are theirs ; we are
more theirs than they are ours : that is to say, nearly all our people are wage-earn-
ers, and yet there are multitudes of wage-earners who are not our people. Take
away from the church in America the working class, and what is left ? How few
there are in every congregation who are to be ranked above or apart from the work-
ing classes ! On the other hand, in each of our industrial centres there are large
numbers of daily wage-earners who are not Catholics. Of the eight millions of
American Catholics all but a few hundred thousands are the men and women who
stand over against the rich as "the poorer classes," "the masses of the people."
But there are fully as many more who are not of our church, and who are not.
more than one in ten of the different Protestant churches, and who are therefore
of no church at all. What religion they have is natural, or a lingering influence
of some form of Protestantism previously held by themselves or their parents.

It follows, therefore, that the solution of the social problem is in our hands.
Our non- Catholic fellow-citizens must look to the Catholic Church to effectually
leaven "the masses" with the love of order and with the virtues of good citizen-
ship to conquer the saloon and the boodle-boss. We can reach the whole body
of the common people with the influences of religion if we are alive to our provi-
dential mission ; and in doing so we shall maintain the rights of the poor man,
we shall secure the stability of the social order, and we shall gradually spread
among " the masses " the only form of Christianity which embraces all classes in
its organism.

The very test question about either a religion or a government is, What does
it do for the poor man? The true religion must answer: I make the poor man
love and worship God and live at peace with his neighbor. The true form of gov-
ernment must answer : I give the poor man a fair share in the gifts of Provi-
dence.

The religion which sifts out of the working classes the bright, thrifty, and
successful, leaving the mass of dulness and poverty and ignorance to rot and
fester upon the body politic, is not the religion to help solve the social problem

NEW PUBLICATIONS. 567

now pressing upon us. It cannot unite all classes in one church. It cannot
make men of diverse social states in civil society of one and the same state be-
fore the altar. It does not make for equality before God and the law. The rich
man's church is not the religion for a democratic state.

Look at Protestantism among us. It cannot be denied that it has no hold on
' the masses "; " the wage-earners " are not found in Protestant churches. No
anti-poverty society can compare with Protestantism. The most evident facts
show that it is a religion which extravagantly develops those natural virtues
which make men prosperous. The intelligent and thrifty trader, the frugal
money-saver, are at home in a Protestant church and the poor man is not. The
real truth is that the thrifty and the successful citizens of this republic find Pro-
testantism a congenial religion, and the shiftless and unfortunate are not inclined
to it. It deals too conspicuously with present happiness as the reward of virtue.
Its war upon luxury is too feeble.

Brethren, we feel like saying to the Catholic clergy, here is your portion
of the inheritance, the common men and women of this land. Bear in mind
these many busy, thinking minds, these many throbbing, loving hearts who run
up and down the world's highways gaining a hard living they are yours and you
are theirs. Be worthy of them. Be not lovers of luxury. Be poor bishops and
priests, for you are pastors of a poor people. Beware of the parade of wealth and
the patronage of the rich and the smile of the powerful. Let your only palace be
the house of God, and let purple and gold be reserved for the sacred vestments
of your ministry in the sanctuary of the great King.

Let the enemies of your people be your enemies : infidelity and intemperance
in other words, the godless school and the saloon. Let us push forward the
building of Christian schools ; let us make them the best schools in the land,
to give the poor man's child that treasure of heavenly wisdom : how to have a
solid hope of eternal joy. Let us of the pulpit tell the truth about the loathsome
sin of drunkenness and voice the people's best thought about the saloon.

Look at the state of Europe and ask yourself which is better : To be the be-
loved clergy of the common people, as in Ireland and in America, or a clergy
with the people against you, as in many parts of the continent of Europe ?

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ANDIATOROCTE ; or, the Eve of Lady Day on Lake George, and other Poems,
Hymns, and Meditations in Verse. By the Rev. Clarence A. Wai-
worth, Rector of St. Mary's Church, Albany, N. Y. - New York and
London : G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Poets have an intuition of truth. This is the first quality of a poet,
and the most necessary one. Father Walworth has this quality, and gives
evidence of it in every poem of this volume. We have read these poems
with a great deal of pleasure and unusual interest. We have found a great
satisfaction in doing so, not only from personal reasons, but also because
there are so many noble sentiments and high thoughts in this book.
Every poem, even the shortest ones, has this distinguishing characteris-

568 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July,

tic. We confess that we wait with unusual interest to hear the reception
the public will give it.

It seems to us that the author has bestowed a great deal of time on
each one of these poems in his endeavor to clothe in fitting terms of
imagination the great thought before his mind. It is not difficult to per-
ceive that the lack of a spontaneous imaginative faculty has been the au-
thor's difficulty. But the best poets are those whose thoughts are spon-
taneously clothed with fitting imaginative expression, whatever may be
their rank as thinkers. In this sense, a man may be a good poet and a
weak thinker; but in the genuine sense of poetical excellence, deep think-
ing is an essential requisite, and this the author really possesses. We give
him this applause with all our heart. Father Walworth is a powerful
thinker, and has clothed elevating thoughts in a garb which a common-
place mind could never furnish. Why, we are tempted to ask, does such a
man write poems ? And, without doubt, his reason is, the love of God, and
of noble deeds, and noble men and women. He has not failed, in our judg-
ment, to be a truthful interpreter of the highest lessons the human soul can
learn.

Those who take an interest in the American Indian, and believe him to
be something of a type of the primitive man, will extend a specially hearty
welcome to this volume. The author has a romantic admiration of the
finer types of the red man. This has led him to spend many weeks in in-
specting the ancient sites of the Indian villages and battle-fields of New
York and neighboring States. He has gathered a store of information
such as is possessed by very few. Many of these poems are on topics con-
nected with the poetical side of the Indian character.

There are also many religious poems in this volume of a pure and
beautiful devotional character, breathing the innermost affections and
emotions of a Christian and priestly spirit.

It seems to us that there are traces in these poems of Emerson's style,
but of that writer's thoughts we are glad to find no trace whatever. Alto-
gether, both style and thought are unique, and it may be that a large pub-
lic will find in this volume an exposition of the finer sentiments of the
Christian faith, without offending sincere men of any creed.

Father Walworth's position, so well defined and so Catholic withal, on
matters of public morality, shows how far one can be a good Catholic priest
of wide public influence without giving offence to any one. The enemies
of the church and the enemies of morality dare not oppose him. His
poems also are calculated to minister to the good taste and elevated reli-
gious sentiment of his fellow-countrymen in a like degree.

CHRISTIANITY IN THE UNITED STATES FROM THE FIRST SETTLEMENT
DOWN TO THE PRESENT TIME. By Daniel Dorchester, D.D. New
York : Phillips & Hunt. 1888.

The author of this book enumerates " three great competing forces in
the religious life of the nation : Protestantism, Romanism, and a variety of
Divergent Elements." He gives a separate account of each of these divi-
sions, both during the Colonial Era and during the National Era. The
latter era he sub-divides into three periods : first from 1776 to 1800, second

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 569

from 1800 to 1850, third from 1850 to 1887. In his preface he says that in
his book

" The Roman Catholic Church has been freely, fully, and generously treated ; eulogies
have been expressed upon some of the earlier gifted and devoted emissaries, and a great
amount of expensive and wearisome labor put forth in efforts to adequately represent the body
in the later statistical tables."

In the face of this assertion, the Unitarian Review for May, in a notice of
this work, says : " Dr. Dorchester's bias against Roman Catholicism ... is
pronounced"; but let us see for ourselves whether he has treated us
" generously " or not. We find in his account of the Spanish and French
explorers in the New World that one is characterized by lust for slaves,
women, and gold, and an enthusiastic devotion to the Madonna; another
is a freebooter, pitilessly cruel, unscrupulous, and dissolute, and at the
same time zealous for the church ; and a third unites ferocious avarice
with religious zeal. By this sort of word-coupling he insinuates the per-
fect compatibility of the most atrocious vices with Catholic piety with the
same coolness with which Mark Twain would join the practice of immo-
rality with the office of Methodist preacher. Granted that these explorers
were as wicked as the author says, why should the church in which they
were baptized be aspersed on that account?

We give another instance of his generosity toward us. He says that
the religion which the Jesuits taught the Indians

" Consisted of a few simple ritual ceremonies, the repetition of a prayer or chant, and the
baptismal rite. Thus the doomed heathen was easily turned into a professed Christian and an
enfranchised citizen of France. Didactic, moral, and intellectual training was deemed unessen-
tial. The simplest assent of a savage to a few dogmas of the church was sufficient. Such was
their converting, Christianizing process " (p. 191).

A worse calumny is hardly conceivable. The Roman Catechism teaches
that a priest who would admit an unrepentant person to baptism would
commit a sacrilege. Is it reasonable to suppose that the devoted Jesuit
missionaries would damn their own souls by this sort of thing? The rule
of instruction by the Jesuit Father Biard, quoted by the author himself,
would require six months or a year of constant preaching and teaching
from the missionary before reception of baptism.

We now pass to the author's discussion of the Know-Nothing move-
ment :

" It arose," he tells us, " out of the spirit of the times, for which Romanists were in part
responsible. American Romanism was receiving unprecedented accessions to its numbers and
strength from the quarter of a million of emigrants yearly coming to our shores, and 2
quarter of a million of dollars annually received from the several European propagandas ;
was clamoring for the exclusion of the Holy Bible from the common schools and the d:
the school funds ; and its attitude was felt to be increasingly insolent and defiant " (p. 554).

Now, we submit that jealousy of Catholic progress, denial of rights of con-
science, and hatred of the Catholic religion are flimsy excuses for warring
against us. Happily this frenzy of bigotry soon died out ; and i
too late for any one to even hope that it may be revived. Dr. Dorchester s
attempt to apologize for it shows the insincerity of his prof
favoring liberty of conscience.

We notice 'another instance of his "generosity " in the use whicl
makes of Dexter A. Hawkins's monstrous lie about the gifts of the city of

5 ;o NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [July,

New York to the Roman Catholic Church. The land on which the New
York Cathedral stands was not a gift from the city, but was bought in
1829 by the trustees of the Cathedral and St. Peters Church for $5,500.
Only three grants of land have ever been made for Catholic asylums in New
York, while sixteen have been made for Protestant, Jewish, and other non-
Catholic institutions under private control.*

In one place the enlightened author tells us that "indulgences" have
been " openly offered for sale " in New York. It is evident from this that
he himself has been "sold " in the matter of indulgences. It seems to us
a great pity that a man should expend so much labor in looking up our
statistics and not take the trouble to look at one of our little manuals of
instruction and find out the absurdity of such statements. We only wish
that the author could be induced to read The Sincere Christian and The
Devout Christian, by Bishop Hay. With this wish we will close our criti-
cism.

THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL. .By W. G. Blaikie, D.D., LL.D. The Ex-
positor's Bible. New York : Armstrong & Son.

The history of Samuel, Saul, and the earlier part of the life of David
furnishes themes of the greatest importance and interest, together with not
a few chronological and critical difficulties. Dr. Blaikie has given a state-
ment of the historical sequence of events which is ingenious and fairly
probable. The narrative and descriptive parts of his volume show accurate
scholarship, and are not deficient in the qualities of a good style of histori-
cal composition. They are, however, buried under such a mass of dull and
commonplace sermonizing that the book, as a whole, is likely to prove re-
pellent and unattractive to the generality of readers, and especially to
young people. The author embraces every opportunity which is available
to digress into polemics against Catholic doctrine and the Catholic
Church.

MORES CATHOLICI, OR AGES OF FAITH. By Kenelm H. Digby. Vol. I.
New York : P. O'Shea.

It would hardly be possible to say too much in praise of the unique and
wonderful works of Kenelm Digby. It seems hardly possible that they
should have been produced in this century, by an author who died so lately
as 1880. The flavor of antiquity is in them, and they exhale a mediaeval
fragrance. Mr. O'Shea has undertaken a noble though we trust not a haz-
ardous enterprise in beginning the publication of a new edition of Mr.
Digby's works in stately quarto, with the first half of the Mores Catholict as
its first volume. If he is warranted and encouraged in proceeding by the
sale of this first instalment, he promises to carry on his undertaking to its
completion. We trust he will receive ample encouragement, and will
succeed in achieving the work he has begun.

Mr. Digby was the son of the Protestant Dean of Clonfert, born in 1800,
and graduated at Cambridge in 1823, soon after which he was converted to
the Catholic Church. At the age of twenty-two he published his first and

* Pamphlet, Private Charities, Public Lands, and Public Money, Catholic Publication So-
ciety Co., New York. 1879.

I888 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 57 ,

most popular work, The Broadstone of Honor, which received high com-
mendation from Wordsworth, who dedicated to him his poem The Arme-
nian Lady's Love." The Mores Catholici was published in successive parts
between 1831 and 1840. We cannot do better than quote the appreciation
this great work given in the Prefatory Notice of the American editor :

It may be safely affirmed that this great work has made its author's
name immortal. No other work in our language-we believe we may say
with perfect truth, no other work in any language-presents so completely,
so felicitously from every point of view, the claims of the Catholic Church
to the veneration, love, and obedience of eveuy existing human being. It
may be said to be a picture of the life of the Christian world so accurately
photographed that no feature is wanting that could be required to give
due expression to the whole, in which the portraiture is so faithful that the
inner life is expressed as well as the outer semblance. The humility, the
devotion, the greatness, the learning, the genius of the man are all dis-
played in this incomparable work. In producing it he evidently placed
under contribution the principal libraries of Europe and Asia, and invested
the knowledge garnered from these sources with charms peculiarly his '
own ; charms which exhibit the genius of the poet, the acuteness of the
philosopher, the comprehensiveness of the statesman, and the holiness and
purity of the saint."

CLOUDRIFTS AT TWILIGHT. By William Batchelder Greene, author of Re-
flections and Modern Maxims. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's
Sons.

Mr. Greene's verses are beautifully printed on admirably thick paper.
It grieves us not to find anything more hearty to say by way of commen-
dation of his volume. Considered as a poet, we dare not recommend him
to take comfort in the thought he has embodied in his " Heart of Grace."
" Oblivious fame," we fear, will go on sleeping, let him raise his voice never
so high and pile up the " numbers of his songs '' until they resemble
Pelion upon Ossa. Fame is rather deaf to poets in our generation anyhow.
They multiply like rabbits in Australia under the fancied necessities of so
many monthly magazines, and though a good many of them manage
rhyme and rhythm with more facility and correctness than Mr. Greene,
and though they constitute a mutual admiration society, most of them
being " critics " as well, it is more than doubtful that fame will consent to
carry the burden they impose upon her beyond their tombstones. Mr.
Greene's will hardly go so far.

ESSAYS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM. By the late William George
Ward, Ph.D. Reprinted from the Dublin Review. Edited, with an In-
troduction, by Wilfrid Ward. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.
New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros., agents.

Mr. Mill has been by far the most powerful and influential writer on
philosophical subjects of our times, and although, as it seems to us, his in-
fluence is not by any means so great as it was, yet he still remains the
best representative of the philosophy which is most akin to the spirit of
our time and of the English-speaking peoples. This philosophy, too, is
of all philosophical systems that which is the most radically opposed to

572 NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [July*

the revealed religious truth of which the church is the guardian, for from
the denial of all necessary truth the denial of the claims of revelation to
be received logically follows. Recognizing these facts, Dr. Ward under-
took the task of subjecting Mr. Mill's philosophy to a careful examination,
the result of which he published in a series of articles which appeared in
the Dublin Review from time to time between the years 1871 and 1881.
Mr. Wilfrid Ward has collected these articles and reprinted them in these
two volumes, and all who read them as they appeared will be glad to have
them made more easily accessible. In an introduction he briefly points
out the exact scope and aim pf his father's work.

It is unnecessary for us to say much about these essays. Catholic
students of philosophy and theology are already more or less well ac-
quainted with Dr. Ward's writings. We fear, however, that his great
power has not met with the recognition which it deserves. It has been
pointed out by a writer in one of the literary journals that Dr. Martineau
might have strengthened his recent work if he had been familiar with
these essays. Dr. Ward cannot be considered as a brilliant, perhaps not
even an interesting, writer from a purely literary point of view. We have
heard it said that he is not clear. To this, however, we must demur. But
however wanting he may be in the adornments of style, no student of
philosophy can afford to neglect these volumes. In our opinion there is
no writer who has more completely refuted the subtle errors of the agnos-
tics than Dr. Ward. He has brought to the task a perfect familiarity with
the great and standard systems of philosophy, both heathen and Christian.
But he is to be especially commended for the peculiar skill with which he
has in these volumes subjected Mr. Mill and his school to the test of the
accepted principles of every-day morality, principles admitted by agnos-
tics as well as by Christians.

So that it is not the student alone whom Dr. Ward has benefited.
His work is of incalculable service to the professional man, to the intelli-
gent business man, even to the simplest Christian, because he makes of
the axioms of honorable conduct and of personal self-respect weapons
with which to refute the sophistries of false philosophy.

A COMMENTARY ON THE HOLY GOSPELS. By John Maldonatus. Translated
and edited from the original Latin by George J. Davie, M.A. Exeter
College, Oxford. St. Matthew's Gospel, chapters i. to xiv. London :
John Hodges ; New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

We have not critically studied this translation in comparison of the
original, nor, we think, is it necessary to do so. Morally speaking, mis-
translation is nowadays impossible. There is nothing to be gained by
stealing away the meaning of an author when the theft is sure to be de-
tected and amply avenged. In this case fidelity to the original text is all
the more secure because the publishers can only hope for remuneration
by winning the approval of Catholics such Catholics, too, as are quite
competent to discover faults in the book, and of standing good enough in
the community to ruin its prospects by their exposures.

It is more than three hundred years since John Maldonatus, S.J.,
in the ripe and peaceful years preceding his too early death, wrote these
commentaries ; and perhaps no one author in the Scriptural course has
been more steadily in vogue in the Catholic schools. The elixir which has

1 S 8 8 . ] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 573

gifted him with this literary immortality may be called his plain good
sense. He was, indeed, a man of extraordinary learning, possessing a
mastery of Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and other Eastern languages, together
with what seems like a perfect familiarity with the Fathers of both the
Eastern and Western Churches. But this learning was the servant of a
mind whose natural qualities were of a high order. The reader at once
perceives that Maldonatus is bent on treating the questions under discus-
sion in the controversial world with an honest purpose to get at the truth
and to impart it frankly to all comers. Hence his clear, candid, direct
style, his entire absence of literary or pedantic affectation, together with
his rare erudition, make him a very valuable author for all who are in
search of the true sense of the inspired word.

Excellence of paper, perfect type-work, perfect binding make this
book a beautiful specimen of the publisher's art.

IRISH WONDERS : The Ghosts, Giants, Pookas, Banshees, Fairies, etc., of
the Emerald Isle. By D. R. McAnally, Jr. Illustrated by H. R. Heaton.
Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

The author admits that " no pen can do justice to a story told by Irish
lips amid Irish surroundings.'' He has, however, made a laudable effort
to gather some specimens of unwritten Celtic literature. With this end
in view he traversed every county in Ireland, associating with the peas-
antry and noting down original expressions from reliable sources. His
study of folk-lore convinces him that the peasantry of England, France,
Germany, and some of the Scottish Highlanders, are much addicted to
superstitious beliefs and fancies, even more so than the Irish. One of the
strangest creations in this legendary fiction is the weird-wailing Banshee,
that sings by night her mournful cry and is deeply attached to the old
families. To study the origin of this mysterious being one needs to go
back to the dark days and solemn nights when savage enemies with dia-
bolical cunning lurked on the roadsides of Ireland to capture the adher-
ents of the religion taught by St. Patrick. Moral truths, keen observa-
tions, and flashes of wit are embodied in these legends. That they served
a useful purpose is easily proved. In a measure they supplied the juvenile
craving for the wonderful at a time when no printed books were accessi-
ble.

The numerous illustrations are worthy of much praise, and the work
of the publishers is likewise of a high standard.

A DAUGHTER or ST. DOMINIC, AMELIE LAUTARD. By Kathleen O'Meara.
American Edition. Edited by iMargaret E Jordan Introduct.on by
Rev. J. L. O'Neil, OP. Boston : Thos. B. Noonan & Co.

Araelie Lautard was a Frenchwoman, resident during nearly her whole
life at Marseilles. She had inherited a considerable income, v
spent, over and above her most necessary personal expenses ,n -
charity. She also devoted herself with astonishing zeal and wo
success to the conversion of souls, especially of men and wo
most degraded classes. Now, there are multitudes of such women , the
Christian world who live and die without permanent record be.ng left of

5 74 <# w PUBLIC A TIONS. [July,

their lives. But the very singular thing about Amelie Lautard, and what
makes her biography of peculiar interest, is the manner of her death, which
occurred in 1866, when she was nearly sixty years old. Happening to be in
Rome and hearing of the ill-health of Pius IX., she offered up her life to
God that the Sovereign Pontiff might be spared yet longer to the church.
The very instant she made this extraordinary offering, having been in her
usual condition of health, she was seized with a mortal illness and the next
day departed this life in sentiments of most ecstatic fervor.

This pretty little book tells her story in a highly interesting manner.

A THOUGHT FROM ST. VINCENT DE PAUL FOR EACH DAY OF THE YEAR.
Translated from the French by Frances M. Kemp. New York, Cincin-
nati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

It is a characteristic of the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul that the
maxims of human prudence are not so much rejected by him as they are
elevated to supernatural wisdom. No man ever produced greater super-
natural results by means more simple, more seemingly commonplace, than
this great saint. Without miraculous gifts, as usually understood, he was
a resistless missionary ; sprung from peasant stock and of homely manners
and appearance, he dominated for the good of religion the most haughty
aristocracy in Europe. His wisdom, thus achieving the highest superna-
tural results, was more the dictate of sound common sense absolutely con-
formed to the will of Divine Providence than the brilliant light of celestial
wisdom beaming from above in miraculous splendor. This little volume
is altogether a wonderfully successful attempt to cull from St. Vincent's
writings and letters, and from the testimony of his intimates, the principles
which guided his life. It might well serve for a book of meditations.
The few sentences allotted to each day are full of wisdom, and a wisdom so
easily comprehended and yet so very rare that one's mind is subjected to a
process of stimulation altogether remarkable.

The little book, though cheap enough, and none too large for the
pocket, is admirably printed and prettily bound.

THE PRAIRIE BOY : A Story of the West. By Harry O'Brien. Illustrated.
New York : P. J. Kenedy.

Verified facts form the basis of this story of the Prairie Boy. The prin-
cipal character, James Lynch, had rare gifts which enabled him to achieve
success in spite of the most formidable obstacles. Even as a boy he show-
ed wonderful courage, and Christian patience in a high degree. His ad-
mirable qualities are still spoken of in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he pass-
ed the early years of his life. The author, Harry O'Brien, is to be congra-
tulated for the literary skill displayed in arranging the data furnished to
him.

No attempt is made to prove that the Prairie Boy had a distinguished
line of ancestors. He is introduced at once as plain Jimmie Lynch, and is
taken in early life from New York to a country neighborhood in Wiscon-
sin. When he is sent to the district school, two miles off, his attention is
directed to the differences between city and country boys. Regardless of
danger, he attempts to ride a horse, which leads to disastrous results. On

1 888.] NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. 5 ; 5

a sick-bed he discusses plans for his career in the world, and after his re-
covery makes the very best use of his limited facilities for acquiring know-
ledge. School honors come to him later, and he is much esteemed for his
genial disposition. Though exposed to the influence of some bad com-
panions, he exerts a power for good among them.

In the description of camping-out, and the methods of settling the
question of leadership among boys, the author shows knowledge of human
nature, and perhaps draws on his own early experience. The following is
the account of his return home, after his first venture in business:

" He was glad to get home. The snow was deep on the ground when his father drove up
in the sleigh, and took in him and his baggage. It was bitter cold, but it was Christmas-time,
and who minds cold at Christmas ? The twilight gathered around them as they sped along the
lonely road, and the stars came out to shine upon them. It was the pleasantest thing in the
world, he thought, to be riding across the snow with the stars shining, and to know that one
was going home ; going home to the dear mother who never is free from thinking of her chil-
dren, and to the pretty old-fashioned spot where our childhood never knew a care, and which
seemed so big to our little eyes. It is sad that so many boys lose their love of home. If it
were a miserable home it would not matter. But to see how little the best homes are thought
of by careless sons who have tasted the rude pleasures of the city is a painful thing. It is a
bad point in a boy's character. Jimmie loved his mother's house, and was always glad to get
into its snug corners.

" His parents had reason to be proud of such a son. To those who knew him outside the
home circle he was grave in manner as an old man, and tender as a girl, and his heart was as
sound and sweet in his innocence as the heart of a young tree. Boys never know how far the
example of a truly good soul may go, and by a good soul I mean, not only one fond of Jong
prayers, but one who sets his faith to restrain his tongue and guide every action of his life.
Jimmie was timid in one way. He hated to make trouble for others, and when it was not ex-
actly clear that he had a right to say or do a thing he feared to say or do it. But when he was
sure of his right how he would pitch in ! He had his faults like the rest. ' He was sometimes
hard on a fellow,' Klinky said, 'about toeing the mark,' and he was but there, we are not
going to speak of all our friend's faults in public. It is well to know some of them, but God
alone should know all, who understands us and can pity us."

On behalf of the Catholic boys of the United States we hope that he
will write many more stories of the same kind. The moral tone of his
writing is healthful and vigorous, not at all goody-goody.

We wish to extend to this book a hearty welcome, for we have felt it to
be matter of regret that so few of our writers have given their attention to
Catholic boy-life in the United States. There are so many imported boys
in the books used for premiums, so much of a foreign environment intro-
duced with them, that they cannot be made attractive as heroes or as
models to be imitated by young Americans. Intelligent parents and school
managers find a difficulty in getting a variety of Catholic literature for
children. There is urgent need of writers in this field, and from the pre-
sent outlook it does not seem likely that the supply will keep pace with
the demand. Much can be done, however, by publishers who will offer
liberal encouragement to authors.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

Mention of books in this place does not preclude extended notice in subsequent numbers.
CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES First and Last Impressions of Ame

thpw Arnold Boston : Cupples & Kurd.
EARLV DAYS or Modems*, By J. H. Kenned,. New York : Charles Smbner's Son,

5/6 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [ July, 1888.

THE SOCIAL QUESTION- : ITS GRAVITY AND 'MEANING. An address by M. 1'Abbe Winterer
at the Social Congress of Liege, 1887. Translated by Mary J. Onahan. Chicago : Dono-
hue & Henneberry. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

A FAMILIAR EXPLANATION OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE. With a popular Refutation of the
principal Modern Errors. By Rev. M. Muller, C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati, and
Chicago : Benziger Brothers.

LIFE OF BLESSED JOHN FISHER, Bishop of Rochester, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church,
and Martyr under Henry VIII. By Rev. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R. London: Burns &
Gates ; New York : Catholic Publication Society Co.

A COMPLETE NOVENA IN PREPARATION FOR THE FESTIVALS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
By Dom Louis-Marie Rouvier, late Prior of the Chartreuse of Montrieux. London :
Burns & Gates ; New York : Catholic Publication Society Co.

THE FATE OF THE CHILDREN OF TUIREANN. Edited for the Society for the Preservation of
the Irish Language. With Notes, Translation, and a complete Vocabulary. By Richard
J. O'Duffy, Hon. Sec. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son.

MIXED MARRIAGES. Translated from the French by a Priest of the Diocese of Dubuque.
Fourth Edition. Dubuque : Palmer, Winall & Co.

MEMOIRS OF A SERAPH. From the French of M. 1'Abbe G. Chardon, Vicar-General of Cler-
mont. Two volumes in one. Baltimore : John Murphy & Co.

THE FATE OF THE DANE. By Anna H. Dorsey. Baltimore : John Murphy & Co.

ZOE'S DAUGHTER. By Anna H. Dorsey. Baltimore : John Murphy & Co.

CONSOLING THOUGHTS OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. By Rev. Pere Hugueft. New York, Cin-
cinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Brothers.

ST. JOSEPH'S HELP; or, Stories of the Power and Efficacy of St. Joseph's Intercession. From
the German of Very Rev. J. A. Keller, D.D. London : R. Washbourne ; New York, Cin-
cinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Brothers.

How TO MAKE A SAINT. By the Prig. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. (For sale by
Benziger Bros., New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago.)

THE VENERABLE BEDE EXPURGATED, EXPOUNDED, AND EXPOSED. By the Prig. Second
Edition. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. (For sale by Benziger Brothers, New
York, Cincinnati, and Chicago.)

THE CHURGRESS. By the Prig. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. (For sale by Benziger
Bros., New York.)

THE LIFE OF A PRIG. By One. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. (For sale by Benziger
Bros., New York.)

LIFE. By Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. Authorized translation by Isabel F.'Hapgood. New
York : Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

A THOUGHT FROM THE BENEDICTINE SAINTS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR. Translated
from the French by Helen O'Donnell. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger
Brothers.

DISCOVERY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF AMERICA. By Thomas De St. Bris. New
York : American News Co.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF THE CATHOLIC UNIVER-
SITY at Washington, D. C., May 24, 1888. By J. L. Spalding, Bishop of Peoria. Peoria :
B. Cremer & Bros. (An extended notice of this address and of the occasion on which it
was delivered will appear next month.)

MEDITATIONS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR. From the Christian Considerations of Father
John Crasset, SJ. Translated and edited by the Very Rev. T. B. Snow, O.S.B. 2 vols.
London : R. Washbourne. (For sale by Benziger Bros., New York, Cincinnati, and Chi-
cago.)

ENCHIRIDION SYMBOLORUM ET DEFINITIONUM, quas de rebus Fidei et Morum a Conciliis
CEcumenicis et Summis Pontificibus emanarunt. Edidit Henricus Denziger. Editio
Sexta, aucta et emendata ab Ignatio Stahl. Wirceburgi : Sumptibus et Typis Stahelianis ;
Neo-Eboraci, Cincinnati, et Chicagine : Benziger Fratres.

SOLITARY ISLAND : A Novel. By John Talbot Smith. New York : P. J. Kenedy. (School
Premium Library.) (This excellent work will be noticed next month.)

CONQUESTS OF OUR HOLY FAITH ; or, Testimonies of Distinguished Converts. By James J.
Treacy. New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co.

DISCOURS DU COMTE ALBERT DE MUN, DE>UT DU MoRBiHAN, accompagnes de notices par
Ch. Geoffroy de Grandmaison. Trois tomes. Paris : Librairie Poussielgue Freres.

THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB. Newly arranged, with additions. Edited, with Introduc-
tion and Notes, by Alfred Ainger. Two volumes. New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son.

vol.46
no. 2

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